US: £117m Worth Of Cocaine In Smuggling Submarine

The US Coast Guard has intercepted a submarine carrying around $181 million (£117 million) of cocaine off the coast of Mexico.

The Coast Guards managed to seize just over 5,400 kilograms of the drug, before the last 1,800 kilograms went down with the home-made submersible as they tried to tow it back to shore.

The bust, which took place on 18 July but was only announced recently, was the largest of its kind in Coast Guard history.

The craft carrying the drugs was a semi-submersible - the crude, shoddy boat was painted blue and sailed low in the water, trying to evade detection.

The vessels areknown as narco-submarines, and are a favourite of drug smugglers, who can fit huge amounts of drugs in the hard-to-detect crafts.

The can sometimes cost millions of dollars to build - but the huge profits they can bring in if they are successful in getting the drugs to shore make it worthwhile.

The only part of the 12-metre long vessel that protruded slightly above the waves was a glass cockpit, that allowed the driver to see where he was going.

Unfortunately for the smugglers, the boat was spotted by a US Navy plane, who alerted the Coast Guard.

275 bales of cocaine were seized and four suspected Colombian smugglers were arrested, in the dramatic mid-ocean intercept around 200 miles south of Mexico.