Stella Polare was an escort destroyer, type Ariete, one of 16 from its class. It was built in Rijeka with mark TA 36 (TA = Torpedoboat ausland, eng. torpedo boat with foreign origin). It was attached to 11th fleet of German Navy on 15th of January 1944. TA 36 had a plenty of missions and escort tasks. Once in the night on 29th of February 1944, TA 36 had an encounter with France destroyers Terrible and Malin. Transport ship Kapitaen Diedriksen and submarine destroyer UJ 201 (ex-Egeria) were destroyed. TA 36 was also supporting ships which were mining the Kvarner. On 18th of March 1944 ship Kiebitz sailed from Trst to Rijeka with task to install underwater mines over the Kvarner. TA 36 (ex-Stella Polare), TA 21 (ex-Insidioso) and UJ 205 (ex-Colubrina) were supporting Kiebitz. Captain Von Kleist was commanding the mining mission. In the evening that day, TA 36 was sailing to horn Kamenjak to mark the beginning of the mine field. When it passed the horn Masnjak at 17:10 TA 36 hit the mine. The explosion was too strong, the bow was destroyed till Command Bridge, thus the ship sunk in two minutes. After the disaster, Captain Von Kleist reported that ship hit a floating mine which was braked out from an old mine field. Adriatic Admiral started a detailed investigation. Today, when we know the exact wreck position it is proved that Von Kleist gave wrong sunk position coordinates while he was prosecuted. Thus he suppressed his navigation failure. In this sea disaster 46 German sailors died.

Today, the wreck of TA 36 lies on 65 meters. The bow sunk 150 meters away from the rest of the ship. TA 36 is cut in the front of Command Bridge in exact altitude of front cannon (100 mm). The underwater mine probably exploded below the monition storage which activated the rest of the monition. Thus the ship was destroyed from bow to bridge. The rest of the ship is extremely preserved. The backside cannons are standing like they are prepared for battle. The divers must take percussions for fisherman nets which are spread all over the bridge. TA 36 had a rich armament, so you can see a lot of different cannons types, some of them are antiplane guns with four tubes. In the year 2001 the fuel tank braked and released a huge amount of diesel fuel which made damage to east Istrian coast. Soon, TA 36 became the main publicity event, so the country organized technical diver groups to repair the holes on the TA 36 tanks.