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.
