MALIN HEAD, Ireland (2 Oct 2007) -- An operation to recover the body of a diver who died while trying to assess the chances of recovering a sunken German U-boat is to take place later. Michael Hanrahan, a father of four from Dublin, died during a dive at the sunken submarine, 16 miles off Malin Head on the Donegal coast, on Tuesday. The dive team was filming the U-boat when the diver got into difficulties. Other members of the team tried to help him - but they were unsuccessful. It is not clear what led to the accident. Later on Wednesday, a team will attempt to recover the body. Derry City councillor Shaun Gallagher paid tribute to the dead man. "He was a gentle giant and a lovely man - we're just devastated," he said. "At this stage it's too early to say what happened." It is the second fatal diving incident off the north-west coast in the last two months. At the end of July, Paul Jackson, a police officer from Humberside, had been looking at wrecks off Tory Island but failed to resurface. The U-boat, which did not see any war action, sank while being towed from Scotland to Londonderry to be scrapped. | | Michael Hanrahan, a father of four from Dublin, died on an exploratory dive to the wreckage of the U-728 submarine. Derry City Council plans to raise U-778 and house it in a museum. The boat is lying in about 70 metres of water. It is estimated there are about 150 such boats lying off Malin Head, all vivid reminders of the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II. The council said that "because of the depth of the waters involved, the procedure was expected to be highly technical". 
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