HMS Totem was built as a group 3 variant of the British T-class submarine; these were constructed during World War II at HM Dockyard Devonport.

After the end of World War II, Totem, along with the other surviving group 3 boats, was equipped with submarine snorkels to allow for longer periods of operation underwater.

Between 1951 and 1953, Totem was one of eight British Navy submarines to be converted to the "Super T" design, which allowed the vessel to travel at higher and quieter underwater speeds.

The former Totem was commissioned into the Israeli Navy at Portsmouth, England on 10 November 1967 as INS Dakar (דקר‎, English: Swordfish),[1] under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Ya'acov Ra'anan.

During her voyage, she was making excellent speed, averaging over 8 kn (15 km/h; 9.2 mph), and Commander Ra'anan radioed Haifa to request entering port ahead of schedule.

On 25 April 1968, Vice Admiral Avraham Botzer, commander of the Israeli Navy, stated that Dakar sank on 24 January 1968, two days before being reported missing, due to "technical or human malfunctioning" and not "foul play".

On 9 February 1969, more than a year after Dakar went missing, a fisherman found her stern emergency buoy marker washed up on the coast of Khan Yunis, a town southwest of Gaza.

These conclusions – that the buoy had remained attached to the submarine for most of the preceding year until the cable broke, that Dakar rested in depth between 150 and 326 meters (492 and 1,070 ft), and that she was 50–70 nmi (93–130 km) off her planned route – misled searchers for decades.

On 24 May 1999 a joint U.S.–Israeli search team using information received from U.S. intelligence sources and led by Thomas Kent Dettweiler, a subcontractor from American Nauticos Corporation, detected a large body on the seabed between Crete and Cyprus, at a depth of some 3,000 meters (9,800 ft).

The exact cause of the loss remains unknown, but it appears that no emergency measures had been taken before Dakar dived rapidly through her maximum depth, suffered a catastrophic hull rupture, and continued her plunge to the bottom.

In May 2009, a book was published by Nauticos president David W. Jourdan entitled, Never Forgotten: The Search and Discovery of Israel's Lost Submarine Dakar.

[1] In 2013, on the 45th anniversary of the Dakar's loss, Israel declassified documents revealing that Israeli officials privately feared that the submarine had been sunk by the Soviet Navy.

Among the papers included were the records of a 27 January 1968 cabinet meeting in which Israeli Navy commander Shlomo Erell told the ministers that it was unlikely Egypt had sunk the submarine and that "there is the possibility that the sub was downed, without prior intent, by the Soviets.

Weeks later, Erell prepared a paper listing three possible reasons for the loss: technical or human error, military action by the Soviets, or a crash between the submarine and another vessel in the water.