US torpedo detonates against the Iranian warship Dena. Scroll down for video

Jon Michael Raasch – Daily Mail March 4, 2026

A US submarine sank an Iranian vessel using an underwater torpedo for the first time since the Second World War, it was announced on Wednesday.

The high-precision strike came as Pete Hegseth said the military is ramping up its bombing campaign on Iran, declaring America is ‘just getting started.’

The US has hit over 2,000 targets in its war on Iran, which has lasted just over 100 hours. And a top Iranian mastermind behind the plot to assassinate Donald Trump after the 2024 election was taken out.

The US military has ‘taken control of the skies’ and is now launching ‘laser-guided precision gravity bombs’ hours after Iran’s new supreme leader was named as Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba. Khamenei was killed in joint US-Israeli strikes on Saturday.

One of the biggest accomplishments, according to the Secretary of War, is the annihilation of an Iranian warship using an underwater torpedo.

‘An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,’ Hegseth said at a morning press conference at the Pentagon.

‘Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo, [a] quiet death, the first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.’

In 1982, Great Britain’s nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror sank an Argentine ship with a torpedo during the Falklands War.

Hegseth said the torpedo attack occurred on Monday in the Indian Ocean. The secretary did not name the vessel, but earlier, an Iranian warship sank off the coast of Sri Lanka.

A video of the incident, taken from the US submarine’s periscope and released by the Department of War, shows the Iranian warship jolt violently upwards before exploding in a giant plume of smoke and water.

The military used a Mark 48 Torpedo – with a 650-pound warhead – which was detonated under the vessel’s stern.

The rear section of the boat was lifted out of the water momentarily after impact in the video.

Sri Lankan foreign affairs minister Vijitha ​Herath announced that the strike occurred around 5am local time. He told parliament 180 people were on board the Iranian vessel, which he identified as the IRIS Dena.

‘By 6am we dispatched a naval vessel and by 7am the second naval vessel,’ Hegseth said. Sri Lankan officials announced at least 80 people were killed in the torpedo attack.

Sri Lankan officials also noted how 32 members of the crew were rescued and brought to a local hospital. There are still 148 Iranian sailors who are unaccounted for and suspected of having drowned as a result of the strike.

The IRIS Dena was one of Iran’s newest warships. It was reportedly equipped with surface-to-air missiles, a cannon, machine guns, torpedo launchers and anti-ship missiles.

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