RIP USS Thresher
 

44 years ago today the USS Thresher went down.

Reading the story of that tragedy when I was a boy started a lifelong interest in submarines.

some photos of the sub:

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...000/h97545.jpg


and of the wreckage:



http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...000/h97567.jpg


http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...000/h97557.jpg

Sad. I will have to read up on it today.

I was 2 days old when it happened. Born Apr 8 1963.

RIP

I was negative 25 years old. :damn: Good pictures mate.

The Thresher got me interested in subs as well, It was given as an example of loss of life at sea in a book I read.

It's seems we don't learn from our mistakes all that well as it keeps happening, eg, Kursk.:cry:

I reported aboard my first submarine the USS Salmon SS-573, home port San Diego's old submarine base
called Ballast Point, on April 6th 1963 ...

I was too young to worry about the Thresher not coming back up, plus sub duty had been my dream since the old black & white
series Silent Service in the mid 50's ...

Sorry to add humor to a sad topic... but why does the right guy on the conning tower in the first picture look like Darth Vader...

Anways *Salutes*

USN's historical page for the Thresher. RIP. :cry:

Underwater wreck photos page.

One's whereing a hat the other is holding up a pair of binoculors, I fail to any resemblance to Darth Vader:-?

no periferal vision then i can see it

Geetrue, since you were serving at that time, do you have any theory on what happened?

I know the official navy version was that a pipe probably burst, knocking out power and that the sub drifted below crush depth, but that was all based on conjecture.

People talk, no matter where you live or where you work, people talk.

I just happened to be on a submarine when I heard my people talk. My boat was tied up next to the USS Permit, the sister ship to the Tresher, at the same time all of this was going on ,but it wasn't till maybe 5 years later that I heard nuc sailors themselves talk about it.

This talk will chill you ...

1. The Thresher has just finished her first major ship yard overhaul (probably refueled her reactor too)
2. The Tresher was on a shake down cruise out of Portsmith (I believe it was Portsmith, New Hampshire) and some of the yard personal were with her at the time. She had been going in and out of the yards to correct little items here and there.
3. It was reported to me by a very informed source (no smiley) that the lights connected to the buttons on the christmas tree were reversed by mistake. Red was green and green was red.
4. These buttons or pop valves I believe would be a better term replaced the levers that they use to throw to open the vents to allow water to enter in and sink the vessel to acceptable levels, but red was now open vents and green was closed vents.

5. The trim of the vessel was done else where, but still close enough for the chief of the watch to do everything that he was responcible for, which included flooding or surfacing the vessel.

6. The scuttlebutt has it that in an emergency situation of needing air to surface the pop valves were pushed too early and the air ran out and the head way was to fast to stop. Confusion of seeing all green or all red could have made a difference.

In other words they flooded the boat ... on the way down

My side blames the shipyard, but they like to live too ... so it was probably just someone to kick around.

Perhaps we have only lost two subs, because of men that care to correct bad situations and make sure that never happens again. :yep:

Thats a fascinating, yet chilling account! Thanks for posting....

thanks Geetrue, that is a chilling account, but it does make more sense than the official story.

Our SUBSAFE program came out of the Thresher loss.

Having reflected a bit more on Geetrue's story, it seems the most logical explanation.

I had read the official report and a book on the sinking eons ago. The official story implied that the crew had somehow panicked which prevented them for surfacing. That part never really made sense to me, that 100% of a highly trained crew would panic bringing about the destruction of the boat. Geetrue's story, that the crew did everything by the book, but were misled by the incorrectly wired green/red lights makes sense.

I can also see why the story was hushed up. Adm. Rickover had built the entire US nuclear sub program on the basis that the subs were 100% safe. The story that someone's bonehead mistake had resulted in the loss of a sub and the death of 129 persons would have pretty much wiped out that safety reputation.

I found this navy powerpoint on the SUBSAFE program.

http://ses.gsfc.nasa.gov/ses_data_20..._Iwanowicz.ppt

I sticks to the official story, but now I can see why there is such a huge emphasis on making sure a sub can surface in any situation. I presume also that now everyone triple checks that everything is properly wired.

yes waking up this thread after 14 years since new info has been coming out on what caused the loss of USS Thresher.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...ied-documents/

Following a successful lawsuit by retired Capt. James Bryant, the U.S. Navy has been forced to release the entire 1700 pages report on the sinking which was still confidential.

The official version was that a burst water pipe at depth had caused uncontrollable flooding which lead to the loss of the sub.

An alternative theory had been put forward by Bruce Rule in 2013 which is detailed here:

http://www.designed4submariners.com/...rpion_Loss.pdf

Basically according to SOSUS data analysed by mr. Rule:

1. While cruising "deep", around 1300 feet, Thresher had a short circuit which caused the reactors to shut down.

2. Due to the pressure and design faults, the compressed air was unable to blow the MBT (basically ice built up which blocked the air so the MBTs remained full of water); and

3. the crew scrambled to restart the reactors, but the sub drifted down way past its crush depth before this could be done.

This was an interesting theory, but new info has been coming out which gives it more weight:

1. Bruce Rule was a SOSUS technician way back in 1963 and he had analysed the data at that time on which he based his report;

2. mr. Rule testifed on this at the inquiry on the loss, but a lot of pressure was put on him to change his testimony and on members of the inquiry to not adopt his theory as the official cause.

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proce...-thresher-data

My own interpretation is that Adm. Rickover did not want any part of the loss to be blamed on the nuclear reactors which would have shaken confidence in their safety.

It was a terrible tragedy, but after 58 years just think of all the lives the investigation of what caused the accident have saved.

I think they call it 'Sub Safe" :yep:

In both the case of the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, the subs were lost because the emergency system used to blow ballast wasn't up to the task of diving to those depths. There was freezing in the system due to the extreme pressures they were working under.



Sub Brief on Youtube has good analysis of the loss of both boats, going into the details of the likely reasons they were lost.


The possibility cannot be denied that Rickover might have tried to downplay the safety risks of having a single nuclear reactor on a submarine as the sole means of propulsion. Soviets often would use two reactors on their early nuclear boats for this reason alone, and on some of their single-reactor designs, they would either use backup electric motors or they would use highly reactive metals to produce gas to blow out the ballast. Of course, Soviets were often trading off noise for deep diving and survivability as a result.

Both Scorpion and Thresher were operating within their submerged operating envelope, meaning the EMBT Blow system was rated for the depth they were at when their respective accidents occurred.


There was freezing in the system due to the presence of moisture in the compressed air used for the EMBT system. When the valves were opened releasing that compressed air, the pressure dropped and in turn caused the air temperature to drop. The lower temperatures caused the moisture to condense on the piping until it got cold enough to freeze, blocking the piping.


The reactor is not the sole means of propulsion. An Emergency Propulsion Motor can be clutched in to the shaft to provide emergency propulsion should the reactor shut down. Not sure where you're getting this idea of safety risks involved with a single reactor design. The USN has had ZERO reactor incidents with its single or dual reactor designs. All the reactors in the world don't matter if you have a steam line rupture and have to shut your Main Steam valves.

Some news ; more tragedy to the tragedy :


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV5FGTxIU4Q&t=762s