Another reason for her bad condition might be the enormous amount of suction that occured when she sunk, this was due to her being in shallow water (still quite deep, though shallow for ocean dephs) and also due to size of the lusitania, though this cant be responsible for all damage, it is certainly responsible for some of it. Diana Preston in her book tries to claim that radar watchers could have mistakened lusitania for a submarine, while it is a possible this might have happened a couple times, i highly doubt that experienced radar watcher/operator would mistakened lusitania for a submarine, take in mind the differences between the two. the lusitania was 785 feet long, most submarines were around 300 feet long, lusitania was 88 feet wide a submarine about 35.