EPRON

thumb|275px|Pennant of EPRON's rescue diver detachment thumb|275px|Pennant of EPRON's chief EPRON, (ЭПРОН) "Special Expedition for Underwater Works" —Special-Purpose Underwater Rescue Party, was a government agency of the Soviet Union to salvage valuable cargo and equipment from sunken ships and submarines.

==History== EPRON was established on 17 December 1923 and was initially under the Joint State Political Directorate () at the Council of People's Commissars. Its first operation was treasure-hunting near Sevastopol for the wreckage of HMS Prince, a steamship sunk by a storm off Balaklava in November 1854 when it was carrying gold from Britain to pay British troops fighting in the Crimea (GBP 200,000). The project team was financed, equipped, trained and managed by Japanese diving specialists, who had become highly experienced through salvaging warships of the Russian Imperial Navy sunk or scuttled during the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. The wreckage was allegedly located but there were no reports of gold being found in the quantities that had been initially deemed.