My mother was 6 when her father, Lt. Merrill Collier, was one of the officers that went down with the Thresher. He had only reported a week before. Top of his academy class, played the ukulele, loved by his family and friends and classmates. Apparently a humorous fellow. He left behind my grandmother, my mother and her brother, plus her unborn brother. It is a wound that never healed, especially for my mother, who remembers him and still misses him each day. I wish I could have known him, and mourn him, just as I mourn for all those here in the comments, and beyond, who have lost loved ones. May those lost at sea forever dwell in our hearts. May we never forget their bravery.
I lost my father when I was 21 he died in my arms. I at least got 20+ years with him, all I can say is you’re father knows you and I’m so sorry for your loss it never goes away
Please accept my condolences to your mother and the rest of your family. Know that your dad was a hero and his sacrifice not in vain. While the Thresher is on eternal patrol, it has revolutionized the submersible industry. Namaste 🙏
Its similar to being in outer space in the fact that your surroundings will kill you if you leave your ship. And sometimes even when you don't. Neither environments are conducive to human life.
@@bigimskiweisenheimer8325 I remember one of the first things my diving instructor told me "You are volunteering to go into actively hostile environment that will try to kill you at all times".
When I was in the Marine Corps this guy shows up to our unit one day to report as new vehical crew. I look up and his BDU's are salty as hell, easily 10 years old and wrong pattern. He looks to be 45 or 50 but is a Lance Corporal. Well he was in before. Got out a Staff Sargent. Desert Storm started and he wanted to be part of it. Somehow a recruiter got him in even at his age with some time served, stop loss equasion that could only make him and E-3. Well truth was he got in to get on our guard duty and into our armory. We actually walked patrol with live rounds. Well he chambered one and held his fellow guard at gun point while his partners blindfolded, gagged and bound him. This dud had been hanging out in the armory and with the SOG all the time to get times, routes, copies if keys and watch passcodes. We did not have much since most of it went to Saudi but he got away with something like 2ea M60 set ups, 4ea SAW's, 10ea M16A2, 2ea M203 Launchers, a dozen hand guns, some ammo and more. All went into a van parked at a dark spot where a light was burned out at the fence and he was gone. Base was on lockdown for 24 hours till they concluded he left North Carolina and our unit for like a month while we all got grilled by NIS and more. Like a year later I see him come in my office door again being held by two MP's. I was to process his AWOL and Desertion time in his online record, reattach him to the unit but report him TDY to the brig. I did so and they left. Three days later I was told to process his death certificate through our records. He was killed in the protective custody of the brig before trial. Everyone woke up in the brig squad bay and he was dead on the floor by his rack. He had been beaten to death but no one saw or heard a thing. Most Marines in the brig are there because of stupid stuff like fighting in town, having and earring, going AWOL for a weekend to get laid but they are still Marines and love the Corp. They saw him as scum for what he did, for bragging about it and not being squared away. They took out justice. Death certificate stated broken neck from accidental fall off top rack to concreate floor. Don't know if the details of weapons is true but the general story is since I saw the paperwork.
@@arianebolt1575 In these declassified documents this very video is about talks about they heard 2x BQC tones being repeated two days after the accident - 15:20ish in the video. The mainframe sonar even sent 37 pings from the thresher once BQC from the search party were recieved. This means that the navy as well as many other submarine experts, including the video author here, acknowledge that there were people controlling these. They did not all die during the implosion.
If i was a submariner (Im a former soldier) i would like my family to know everything besides any potential audio, video or pictures of me and any others death. At least know that the goverment is upfront about its information and all actions taken based upon it. There is enough "Kursk style" leadership to go around, even here in the west.
@@arianebolt1575 Implosion does not mean instant death as we are explained by the herd mentality and group think. TheDrive: "USS Thresher’s Crew May Have Survived Many Hours After Its Disappearance According To New Docs (Updated) Declassified reports from one of the submarines that were looking for the Thresher suggest some of its crew may have survived the initial incident. BY THOMAS NEWDICK | UPDATED JUL 15, 2021 1:07 PM EDT" "a newly unclassified report indicates that one submarine sent to search for it thought that at least some of the crew were still alive around 24 hours after the vessel was determined to have imploded."
So the reason the documents were classified was to cover up the fact the crew fought for hours and hours to save their doomed boat. We'll never know what great acts of bravery were done.
If I had to guess they didn't want to admit to their submariners that this had happened and the Navy couldn't save them. It would be extremely damaging to moral, and would probably raise questions about why the US subs don't have escape pods like Soviet subs (which presumably could've been used by the crew to escape given how much time they had). It's not pretty, but I can kind of understand the Navy's logic, as cold and calculating as it is.
The most likely reason that the papers were classified was that the Seawolf was a test bed for the USN next generation of nuclear reactors and sonar at the time. The papers would effectively tell the Russian Navy what the next generation of US sonar was capable, and wasn't capable, of detecting. I doubt those that said that the Thresher sank past crush depth almost immediately even saw the logs from Seawolf. They can tell the lie more convincingly if they never know they're lying. As for why the record wasn't corrected until now, probably a combination of those who would correct the record being unaware it needed to be corrected in the first place, and those that knew the truth being of the opinion that telling the truth before declassification would lead to more questions they'd rather not be asked, let alone answered.
@@dominicklittle9828 The downsides to the escape pod idea are that for a normal crew compliment submarine, it takes up a lot of weight and space in the hull. Take into account that any escape pod would need to be able to accommodate all crew located between it, and any other escape pods fore or aft as an emergency might cut off access to other pods. There has to be a minimum of two pods for a standard submarine, like there are two escape trunks, for this reason. The Russian submarine escape pod was feasible as the submarine it was installed in was very highly automated and therefore the entire crew was located in a single compartment. The connection between the main hull and escape pods is also a major risk of vibration noise. It is also worth noting that when the Russian escape pod was used in a real emergency, it was only partially successful, sinking shortly after reaching the surface, and in doing so, drowning one of the men who had used it to escape the submarine.
@@MrMattumbo The Russian submarines of the time didn't have escape pods. The only confirmed escape pod was on the Mike-class submarine launched in 1983. The Oscar and Typhoon class submarines have been rumoured to have escape pods, but it is worth noting that if one was available to the crew of the Kursk, they were unable to make use of it.
Tragic doesn't even begin to describe this, it's heartbreaking thinking about those on board. The elation of hearing a rescue attempt, exhausting your battery trying to get them a location, and then realizing and coming to grips with the fact that they can't do anything.
@@samfranklin9339 can't reach those depths with rescue equipment. NSRS goes to 600m (~2000ft) and these guys were sounding 7000ft. They didn't have anything as capable as NSRS back then. If Thresher was above 7000ft but slowly sinking/unable to recover then NSRS still wouldn't have gotten there fast enough imo. Again they didn't have anything on 24hr standby like we do now. But it still has to be flown somewhere, then installed on the vessel which has to sail there.
Folks, this is all misdirection. I speak from experience: I served as an Officer on a nuclear submarine and am familiar with the equipment being discussed. I've read the "new" information. Yes, the Seawolf logs record hearing *something*. They repeatedly requested whomever was making the noise (variously recorded as pings or bangs) to make a specific signal (e.g. "Victors" or morse letter "V", 5 bangs, etc.). Not once was the request complied with. The logs report a stationary "target" on their active sonar that they kept passing over, yet those same logs report that the nature of the target was unknown and may have been "biologics". Remember the mindset of the Seawolf's Captain and crew: They desperately wanted to find the Thresher (as everybody did), and hope was strong. Much like all the rescue workers on the recent collapsed building in Miami. They logged every attempt in real time, and without the benefit of hindsight and subsequent information. In reality, several factors augur for the sudden and catastrophic demise of all of the Thresher crew on the morning of April 10, 1963. First, the escorting ASR (Auxiliary - Submarine Rescue) Skylark heard and recorded her implosion at 0918:20 that morning. When a submarine implodes, it is instantaneous and utterly unsurvivable. The shattered remnants of her hull were found in 5 major pieces scattered over more than 30 acres. That happens when the implosion occurs well above the bottom, and the wreakage drifts down scattering widely through a great depth before hitting the bottom. And lastly, the bottom where the wreakage was ultimately located over a year later is 8100 feet deep. That is many times the classified crush depth of any combat submarine ever made. Her loss was a tragedy and an embarrassment. The massive investigation and inquiry into what went wrong resulted in an enormous effort to upgrade designs, quality controls, and emergency procedures on US submarines. The crew of the Thresher did not die in vain: I, and the thousands of other submariners who have served in the improved submarines in the years since owe our lives in part to their sacrifice. But rest assured that nobody in the crew suffered beyond the moments of mental anguish that they experienced knowing that they were sinking and could not stop it. When their end came, it came faster than their nervous systems could process. Why did the Navy keep this under wraps for so long? Probably several reasons. But at least one of them was to spare the surviving loved ones exactly the emotions that we see in most of these comments, fearing that the crew died a slow and agonizing death. Seawolf was doing her best to find survivors, even when none existed. I cannot explain all of the noises that they reported hearing in their logs, beyond the hope of fellow submariners desperately seeking to help and render aid. Such matters are seldom cut-and-dried, and much conflicting information must be sifted through to discern where the truth actually lies. But I am quite convinced that Thresher's crew did not suffer as so many are speculating based on a narrow thread of conflicting information that runs contrary to demonstrable evidence.
@@tagtag123 What evidence is there that what Seawolf heard and recorded was actually (as you assert) “mainframe sonar” and “distress pings” from Thresher herself? Why could those sounds not have been from other vessels in the area? Or misidentified from other sources? Please refer back to the evidence for a sudden catastrophic implosion. Simply being able to ask “what about” and cast doubt is not evidence. I note from your handle (“TruthfullEB”, with EB presumably an allusion to General Dynamics Electric Boat division) that you have an axe to grind. Would you care to share your credentials and reasons with everyone?
@@tkendall11 I agree with your general assessment. I, too, am a retired naval officer. While I was not a submariner, I ran several large-scale investigations into various types of accidents and mishaps as an EDO. Rather than misdirection, I might use the words speculative and emotional. It seems the original post could have benefitted from some "sleeping on it" time for thought and processing. That behavior of jumping to conclusions is exactly what we teach investigators never to do. Our gut feelings on such things are frequently wrong. We love an answer that fits our gut, though. As you correctly point out, this is a story told from a single source, the Seawolf. I have several obvious questions that I'd start asking if I could, but none of it really matters at this point. This information must be taken in with all the rest of the info available, and I'm reasonably certain there is info (and data) that would put this particular speculation to bed for good.
Realistically there was no way to rescue those men. They died a terrible death. Every man that goes to sea in submarines recognizes those risks and hopes it will never happen to him. Why the Navy classified this message traffic for fifty years is the real question.
Truthfully, I don't think any good would have come from letting out. Think about how much this disaster hurt people as it was. The magnitude of that extra 24 hours of suffering would have rocked the American public and the navy beyond comprehension. Considering submarine service was all volunteer as well, this would have killed enlistment for submarine crews.
@@JayneCobb88 so you think Russians got on "submarine technology level of US 1963" this year? do you also think Europe is a country and every Islamist is a terrorist?
@@vaclavmajer2178 Probably more like they didn't release at the time because of Soviets, and then bureaucracy happened. Which leads us to now, 50 years later.
Former EM1 Nuclear Electrician here. We are taught to believe our indications no matter what they are. If the Seawolf was reading 20 times above background on the nuclear instruments there was most likely a very big nuclear casualty as there were thousands of feet between it and the Thresher. Video of the wreckage also shows a massive hull breech aft of the sail while the rest of the pressure hull remained intact...with the expected failures of the shaft seal and sail having multiple failures. The ship was buried in nearly 30 feet of mud, so it hit with considerable force. A nuclear casualty would have to be expected at some point, even during a reactor scram the core requires constant cooling...and the battery would have died eventually. You can definitely assume the entire engine room was lost to flooding since the entire shaft up to the thrust bearing was completely out of the ship. The flooding from this at pressure would have put the ship into an unrecoverable position. Assuming the coolant loops didn't shear off from the shock of the ship hitting bottom, the entire engine room would have been filled with water and the electric plant would have been compromised with grounds. The core would have eventually boiled off coolant and melted. The Reactor Officer was new, and the normal RO was at home tending to his wife. If they were trying to get to the surface it's possible they tried an adhoc fast recovery and the reactor failed due to the reactivity addition rate being too high. Or they bled the steam out...so many scenarios here. But it's pretty safe to assume the indications from the Seawolf were legit, and those survivors on the bottom were likely exposed to high radiation and may not have survived a rescue.
@@mcfloyd9417 served aboard the USS Enterprise in EE03. Qualified SRO, Load Dispatcher, Electrical Rover, Reactor Electrician, and Switchgear Operator. So yes, I was definitely a nuke whether you like it or not.
@@RUFFSTUFFMEDIA I can't say for sure but my knee jerk reaction is no. I think this is probably why fast recoveries became procedural...at least that is what I heard coming down the pipeline. Back then I know scrams included different procedures than now...making recovery less probable.
@@Raistlin222 Well, if I remember correctly, back then you shut off all steam to the engineroom on a SCRAM. At the time, one sub had the procedural allowance to maintain decay heat propulsion via Captain's tactical situation. The development of the SUBSAFE program led to NR changing their procedures for the fleet.
Dad joined in 1958 at 17 years old. He started out on diesel boats (Cobbler, Cubera). He served on the James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson finally retiring as an E9 Master Chief Machinist Mate and C.O.B. USS Memphis. He knew men on both the Thresher and Scorpion. The Submarine force is a tight knit group. He never forgot these men. Eternal Patrol is what this is called.
The Reactor was Scrammed, ship rigged for reduced electrical, no ventilation fans turning. Air is getting stale. I served on the Permit class SSN. They have five water tight doors rated for 600 ft of pressure compartmentalizing the different sections of the sub. The strongest chamber was supposed to be the sonar sphere by design, yet is never intended as a life boat as it's access is in the bow compartment past the forward escape trunk. The ship's battery was their last hope. There is a means to use the battery to turn the screw to four knots worth of speed, but if they had that engine room flooding making them heavy, there was no way to use or access it. Auxiliary Machinery space had another electrical motor that was lowered beneath the sub to maneuver in port. It's small and rotatable. If they bottomed out on the sea floor, this too would be useless. Based on this release, my guess, is the Reactor Compartment Tunnel water tight doors were shut and was keeping the water out of the Operations Compartment. The two doors acted like a hull and backup which would become Sub Safe's standard practice going forward. Hull and Backups. There are some backups for ships control surfaces. The very last backup is pressurize air, good for a few full swings of the ships control surfaces before that option is used up. The air compressors need electrical power to recharge compressed air reserves. I seriously doubt the Captain would want to use the last of the battery power for air compressors. They were using it to call for help. This will haunt me.
There is no way they were bottomed out. The water there is 9,000 feet deep. The only way they could have still been alive 24 hours after the incident is if they were drifting in the water column at neutral buoyancy without power
@@bernieeod57 Doesn't explain the SOSUS picking up the implosion at 09:18:24 or so the morning of the 10th nor the discovery of an oil slick and debris south of the dive point some 8 hours after she went down.
Its a thought that crossed my mind everytime I put to sea on the Haddock, but these brave souls did not die in vain, their tragic sacrifice made it safer for all of us who followed in their wake to serve more safely in the silent service. MM1(SS)Aux.
Floating around in neutral buoyancy with minimal battery and apparently no HP air is enough to ruin a day for sure. The EPM is a sizable battery drain... the outboard is too - I've seen the starting surge in that, and it's notable... pretty sure it was an AC motor, the EPM was DC. Trim and Drain pumps were DC and could possibly help gain positive buoyancy... they weren't both in the engine room, were they? I think just the drain pump? Trim was in AMR? I cannot imagine mainframe sonar pings happening if the AMR was flooded, so it must not have been. I wonder what the fault was with the reactor and why they weren't able to get it started up again. Of course, if the engine room was flooded, no point in starting reactor. Wow, my brain is about to explode on this one. ET1(SS) (Reactor Operator) - SSN 639.
@@gfrerking , possibly a xenon transient, following a scram. The xenon decays away after awhile, but in the meantime, can't start up. These x transients would happen after rx trips (reason why controlled s d 's we're regulated slowly).
Alan Parsons, "On Air" is the album, "Brother Up In Heaven" is the cut. (One of the band members was related to the last person killed in the Iraq war ... and it was "friendly" fire.) 😥
Ens. Merril Collier, a USNA classmate, had just reported aboard Thresher, as his first submarine assignment. He longed to be a submariner. His loss was very sad to all of us who knew Merril. RIP
Looks like his grandson is higher up in the comments section. Amazing how a video like this can link together so many people with a single person in common.
I am the eldest granddaughter of Merrill Collier, and thank you deeply for your kind remembrance of my grandfather. I'd commented a bit ago and then had the pleasure of seeing your post. It is a wonderful thing to be able to connect with others. Thank you for your service, sir, and bless you.
The problem is, in the 1960's submarine rescue for the Thresher was by a diving bell which was unfortunately only good to 800 ft of depth. There was no possible rescue available for them unless they could have come up to at least 800 feet.
@@ee-ef8qr Attaching the bell to a sub isn't an issue, the issue is surviving the pressures at that depth, which is humanly not possible. The body cannot survive at those pressures even though we can easily get a bell to that depth.
Imagine if someone sunk the Titanic to successfully establish the Federal Reserve, and those same people, and their successors have been playing their game ever since.
@@KDill29 certain people got into life boats. Certain people didn’t. Then they made it a romantic movie. 🤔 But yes in all likelihood this is a very old game that's still being played.
This video reminds me of an episode I saw from "Twilight Zone". A submarine apparently sunk in WW2 but one chief survived. He was brought on board rescue ship. He started hearing banging noises but he was the only one who could hear them. He was going crazy continually saying they are calling muster on me. The onboard doctor thought the chief was delusional. He continued to hear the hull banging sounds. Finally he screamed they are calling muster on me. He got out of the sailors clutches attempting to keep him from jumping overboard to be with his fellow sailors but he managed to jump into the sea. An inquiry was made in the sunken sub. The divers got into the submarine only to fine a skeleton with a hammer in his hand. That episode still gives me the creeps so it seems like the chief was hearing a dead crewman banging on the hull. There is no telling what the gallant captain of the stricken sub told his men when they were staring their deaths right in the face. So very sad!
That Twilight Zone episode also came to mind as I watched this video. My take on it was that it could have been a current moving the hammer that was still in the clutch of the dead sailor. Maybe.
I remember that Twilight Zone episode and only saw it once. I would like to see it again. Do you know the name of that episode or number? I used to enjoy watching the Silent Service too.
I always found it odd that the Captain of the Iowa seemed so concerned with making the turret look presentable and normal after the detonation, and how lots of debris and broken items that could've potentially been evidence were just tossed overboard as trash. The whole idea that crewman Hartwig sabotaged the powder/gun to make it explode never really made sense to me. There's much easier and better ways to go about killing yourself, and if he wanted to do something harmful to his crewmates there were much better ways of doing that that also could've let him live. Perhaps if evidence was better preserved it could've conclusively shown it was an accident and not had led to an innocent sailor getting dragged through the muck.
Now we are being shown films of UFOs buzzing our aircraft. Yeah. Interstellar travelers are gonna come to earth to play chicken with airplane. THAT'S NOT A DOD LIE!!!!
@@matchesburn Iirc they said he was upset over a bad homosexual relationship (even though there was no proof either men was homosexual iirc, and if they were it wouldn’t matter), which tells all you need to know about their reasoning. Which I don’t get why they would come up with any excuse, but less one that stupid. Battleships have suffered far more violent magazine explosions just sitting in port (USS Main, IJN Mutsu, HMS Vanguard, etc.), and explosions during live fire exercises definitely weren’t that uncommon. Fortunately, I have heard the museum that currently operates Iowa keeps the light above both men’s bunks lit at all times in memoriam
@@Kevin_Kennelly Yeah they want us to believe that all aliens are gonna act like a Teenager high on coke behind the wheel. After figuring out how to survive long enough to travel here in the first place, they are either going to treat us like lab rats and study our ancient ways relative to them, or they are gonna curbstomp us and take our stuff.
A few months back on a vid about various deaths being listed as coof despite the deaths being ladder falls to drunk driving wreaks someone challenged me to give them 1 just 1 instance of any government ever lying to the people. I replied with a bunch of posts listing lies from various govts.
@@bobbyrayofthefamilysmith24 I would imagine they had some kind of power failure and maybe flooding. Ballast tanks could have froze on blow as well who knows. All I know is it's highly unlikely a sub in that condition can stay absolutely still at depth and motion.
@@bobbyrayofthefamilysmith24 they had similar problems on sister ships with the blow valves freezing up due to the bournoulli's principle causing a drop in temperature along with the drop in pressure, and the moisture freezing diminishes the amount of air that can come in to blow out the water.
May Thresher crew and their Goldstar families Rest in Peace, undisturbed by those who make their daily bread off revisiting for the voyeuristic buzz the sensational suffering they inadvertently endured in their national service to all of us.
@@wapiti3750 That is the most ugly and unfit sentence I have ever read or heard in 67 years of learning. You ARE definitely focused. Your special comment, what allows and produced it ARE extraordinary, imho, special by that measure. Your comment is a recordbreaker in my extraordinary book of experience. I cannot emphasize how phenomenally that is (BAD!).
It's a very unfortunate lesson learned, but the Thresher incident started the Navy's SUBSAFE program.... accountability of all parts and materials that penetrate the pressure hull.
That’s the one good thing that came out of this. If I remember correctly, USS Scorpion hadn’t been through her SUBSAFE refit before she was lost in ‘68.
@@mactac25: it’s lucky the British learned this lesson before WW2 with the HMS Thetis. Lost in just 150ft of water. Because of torpedo tubes. Her stern was sticking out of the water and they still couldn’t find her within 24 hours. Thresher is no less a tragedy then Kursk.
@@mactac25 there's no thing called a "subsafe refit". 'Subsafe" is an accountability *program* It's theorized that the Scorpion sank due to a hot run torpedo, caused by a faulty battery design. It's a long story, but due to the Soviet Union's expanding aggressiveness and the building cold war, at that time the Navy wasn't in a position to completely redesign and refit every fast attack sub that was in service.
At least one good point about this story but still, when your sub sinks/is out of controll and the situation is complicated, do you really believe the US Navy will rescue you at all costs? When someone decides to work on such ships i think he/she also deserves to know what he/she can expect, i would rather shoot myself than suffocate miserably.
Honestly if I was the captain of SeaWolf I would have messaged the DDs saying "Pretend you're in a room full of sleeping babies and turn off your fucking sonar and engines!!"
@@GrumpyIan the problem was that the Seawolf was fitted with some classified sonar at the time. The DD were basically trying to kinda hide it’s existence to the Russians by using their sonar and engines to cover it up, and the secondary purpose of finding the Thresher.
My age was 13 at the time. "Thresher" was one of the reasons I did not end up in the Royal Dutch Navy as a submariner, like my mother wanted. Riveting and very knowledgable exposé of what happened, Heartbreaking fate of crew deserves place in our memory.
I've gone back to the books, and it's very clear that the implosion happened at 0918 on 10th April. Not only did SOSUS detect it, clearly, but also the Skylark, right above Thresher, heard it as well at the same time. Further, at 1730 on the same day, the Recovery spotted an oil slick and debris, all of which were consistent with Thresher. In the old Polmar book, it is clear that the activities of Sea Wolf were taken into account, but attributed to various noises and echoes from other search vessels. Panic over!
Agreed, but it seems Jive wants to stay within his echo chamber and only "Likes" the comments that agree with him. I've pulled him up a few years ago and suggested he read Bruce Rule's book but sadly he hasn't taken up the offer. I haven't read the report Jive is reading in full, but I think further down the navy dismisses the Sea Wolf's account. Jive is deliberately twisting the truth here and creating mistrust in the navy he served in. This "us and them" mentality only fosters further misgivings for those who choose not to do their own research and think critically.
@@gaskit1448 Way down below in the comments someone posted that Bruce Rule said this was completely false, and Jive agreed that if Rule said that it was a game changer. It would probably be a good idea for him to publicly state here that he jumped to conclusions ... as the evidence is extremely clear and beyond dispute.
@@fergalohearga9594 Oddly enough, Jive himself states that he could see holes in most of the report coming from the Seawolf... but then overlooks them when confronted with the statement of the sub commander hearing the 37 active pings. Everything else was inconsistent but he hangs his hat on just the active sonar comment, considering this is from a raw debrief and nothing was verified from third parties.
Correction on the discussion around the 32 minute mark: they are talking about locating the sea mount the admiral asked for the location of. It was reported in a couple of the entries you skipped over and since it was close by and rose to 450 ft and Seawolf was operating at 400, the boss wanted them to find it so they could avoid it.
After imploding at 730 metres in 1/20th of a second, the idea that there could be a functional sonar and someone onboard Thresher left alive to operate it is utterly ludicrous.
Idk, the bow section was still intact. If only the engine room flooded, the reactor compartment could've shielded the bow from the force of the implosion. They could've then survived and used what was left of the batteries to trigger the sonar.
What we see with Titan - which is much smaller than submarine - is that very large chunks of Titan survived the implosion and left untouched by the forceful crush/annihilation. On pictures we can clearly see inner wires of Titan left undamaged, and yesterday we were being told that even body parts were found.
@@ranc1977 The Titan was made out of single frame carbon fiber. It shattered. Navy and every other submarine is made out of sectioned steel hulls. This is why the Titan was a submersible and not a submarine. A submarine can actually suffer depressurization and even implosions in certain areas of the hull and not be completely destroyed. As it’s actually happened before.
@@xCobraCommanderx You're not absorbing all information. The breaking news yesterday was that the body parts were recovered. If shattering of carbon was really deadly and catastrophic - those bodies would be a goo, broken to atoms - to due high pressure and high temperature. Obviously - this did not happen. You also not take into account that Rush Stockton used experimental technology - which may caused to carbon deviate from laboratory tests and actually slowed down the destruction process.
@@xCobraCommanderxretty sure what makes a submersible not a submarine is moreso that it can return itself to port and relies on other vehicles to be used. Not that it has sections separated by bulkheads or not to survive partial leaks
Feels like it was hours and days of just asking “you dead yet?”. It seems like seawolf found them quickly with good accuracy… but then it’s just asking for more messages? What’s the plan for actually getting to the men?
There was no plan, if almost impossible to save the crew of the sub, and it IS impossible when they are so deep down in the ocean. There was absolutely nothing the US could do beside maybe putting the sailors out of their misery with a torpedo. It’s sad but that’s a unfortunate reality of being a submariner. There’s a reason why subs are referred to as underwater coffins…
in the 1960s the US navy had no capability to rescue anyone at that depth. this is all hullabaloo over nothing; the navy could do nothing to save those men.
The plan is to get as much information as possible. The problem was eventually found, but just imagine your newest and most advanced boat getting lost without enemy action. You need to know how it was lost and fast. Thus trying to establish coms is very important.
Not just that from the report it seems like every time Seawolf was nearly down to a fixed position on them the Destroyers made it impossible for that last bit of triangulation. Imagine trying to find a bus in absolute darkness in a field. Now you are also in a bus and everyone dies if you bump into them. And every time you hear what you think is the other bus is actually a nearby freight train.
Still waiting for SCORPION families to send their own expedition to know what really happened. That they were being restrained from doing so only creates more doubts.
I wonder if some of the rumours of cold war gone hot are going to be behind the uss scorpion disappearing. The difference between the way the navy are treating the 2 sinkings is very different.
I still think Scorpion went down due to what submariners call a "Jam Dive". It's where the stern planes get stuck at some dive position and the sub tries to do an outside loop in the water. Yes, that's as horrifying as it sounds. The usual suspect is for the stern planes hydraulic ram to blow out on one end, dumping all the pressure on that side and going to full deflection. I was on Ohio-class subs, and we had 8 seconds to get through all our immediate actions. The Skipjack class was much faster moving, 3-5 seconds or less to respond. The Scorpion was transiting relatively shallow, about 300ft, and at flank speed, as fast as she could go. One of the response steps to stop the angle from increasing is to emergency blow the forward group. If you can't do that, you're going to go really deep scary fast. One of my subs had a wild hair up the ass of the drill boss, he did a jam dive while we were at sea and slow. We usually do those in the trainer. Even with a limited dive angle and slow, we got a lot deeper than I think anyone anticipated...
There have been two books written about the Scorpion disaster. I read Scorpion Down about 15 years back. A very interesting book with many interesting claims. My own opinion? 1) We only know what the Navy will release to the public. 2) As a submarine officer from the 1960s told me, "No one is going to start World War 3 because they were caught screwing around where they weren't supposed to be." 3) As much as our military defends us, it also tries to keep the crazies in government from starting a war.
I believe the scorpion went down due to a run away battery. Per the book blind man's bluff, this theory is talked about heavily as to what caused the scorpion to go down. Not to mention there was evidence of an explosion in the bow when they surveyed the wreck.
@@sloppyjoe400 The theory is a runaway torpedo due to a faulty battery design. BMB went into the theory and presented supporting cases as well as a narration from a sub simulator. However, the Navy pushed the "Scorpion headed home" and "no radio comms" narrative for decades. It wasn't until later that the Navy released that it tasked the Scorpion to check out a group of Russian ships in the region of the Azores and admitted that the Scorpion usually checked in every 24 hours. This means that the Navy knew about the Scorpion missing long before it left the crew's friends and family waiting at the dock. I guess it was all part of operational security.
The bottom is like 9000 feet. No part of the Thresher could possibly survive that. And the Skylark, which was nearby at the time of the sinking, got a message stating "exceeding test depth" then detected an implosion event a couple of minutes later by I believe both the Skylark and SOSUS. This all happened a day before the Seawolf arrived. I suspect all the BQC and ping activity was coming from surface vessels.
Unless only parts of the ship broke, and it remained afloat somewhere between test and crush depth for a while. Rythmic metal on metal banging is unlikely to have come from any of the surrounding vessels. It's hard to piece together what exactly went down, but if other vessels were pinging active in the area at the time, the Seawolf could have easily found that out...
@@Chrinik Damaged submarines are not neutrally buoyant. They are rising or they are sinking. And no one was alive after an implosion with an energy release in the area of 20K pounds of TNT.
@@Chrinik The Thresher suffered catastrophic breakup, key word is catastrophic, while I think we all wish there was hope of saving the men onboard there’s no chance anyone was alive on the Thresher after 09:18 when the implosion was recorded, while we won’t know what happened to what was left of the Thresher after 09:18 it’s most likely it simply sank into the depths and further broke apart upon hitting the ocean floor, it’s tragic but the idea that the Thresher was even fragmented and neutrally buoyant, with survivors somehow still alive on board, just doesn’t align with how we understand catastrophic events like this to play out
@@karoliner9631 Then I wonder who kept responding to Seawolf...something must have and if they found out who it was, it should be available information...
@@Chrinik I’ll grant it does sound rather strange until you remember that there was another submarine in the area and multiple surface ships that were actively looking for the Thresher as well, the Seawolfs version of events was evaluated by the court of inquiry and was discounted. Bruce Rule, a naval acoustic and SOSUS expert who testified at the Thresher inquiry, has stated: “This UA-cam video is false, the Seawolf report the presenter is reading from is correct, but the final report certified it was false readings. Seawolf was confused by the active sonar and noise created by the destroyers and the diesel submarine Sea Owl searching for Thresher on 11 April 1963, the day after she was lost. She mistook all sounds from the searching ships as banging on the hull and sonar pings from Thresher. It was a mistake.” It sounded like confirmation bias in the vain hope that there was a chance to save the Thresher. The Seawolf arrived a day after the sinking as well, by which time anything remaining neutrally buoyant would stay as such. I don’t see why something would just sink after all that time where apparent luck had stopped the whole or partial vessel from sinking to the depths. Submarines are amazing feats of engineering but when one implodes they rarely if ever are seen again, the few that we have found all end up in a similar place, the ocean floor. This report is spooky in a sense because of how much apparent activity was found but most if not all have been found inaccurate and deemed not credible readings of the Thresher. If all the banging were attributed to surface ships, the instances of “weak voices” were discounted, why do we believe that the pings were somehow exempt from being some other vessel? There comes a point where despite what we want to believe we have to come to terms with the reality that the USS Thresher had already joined many other vessels on eternal patrol.
I'm having trouble getting my head around this. NO combat submarine in any navy worldwide then or now could survive a submergence to 1300+ fathoms! I'm a retired STSC/SS and have seen "official" reports on both SSN589 and SSN593. Scorpion may have survived a long way down but not a chance below depths that I'm sure are still classified but nowhere close to the depths Thresher went down in. Whatever Seawolf heard, it wasn't live sailors aboard Thresher. Don't be surprised when further reports come out debunking this report as "flawed".
Not to mention the footage shot by Ballard when he was ostensibly looking for TITANIC. THRESHER isn't a wreck on the bottom like SCORPION is. Its a debris field! Maybe....and I mean maybe, somebody had the presence of mind to turn on the UQC-1 emergency pinger(s) before they passed crush depth and maybe.....maybe the units survived and were still transmitting from the debris, but I doubt even that. The UQCs are pretty rugged but I don't think they'd survive 1300+ fathoms.
Hey Bill, Retired STSCM(SS) here. I'm still looking for an explanation of the 3.5khz pings, 37 times? From the reports here, none of the other subs or ship had a Sonar at that Frequency. That's the part that has me scratching my head!!!
Can't recall the designator for the distress pinger. BQN-13 I think. Now in 63' I don't know if it even existed but on 594s and newer there was an emergency distress pinger that operated at 3.5 khz. If someone turned it on before the boat collapsed it could have survived all that time. It had only an "one-off" switch on it and a safety pin. Turn it on and it pinged at a set interval until the batteries were spent. So 37 pings, if they did happen, were likely distress pinger. Aaron oughta know that.
@donnysmith946 I could be wrong, but I believe it stated in the report that The Thresher had 3.5khz.. Don't quote me on that, but I remember earlier in the video, it said something about Thresher & 3.5khz
I think it was a bit chaotic, what I think was happening was that the metal on metal banging was coming from the DDG's or one of the DDG's on the surface. They are banging on the hull trying to let the Thresher know that they are up here. later on the party or parties concerned, realized they were confusing the issue, ceased their activity and never mentioned it. The garbled telephone transmissions were obviously the DDG's depth finders, which the Sea Wolf asked them to shut off... The 37 active pings? Probably the Sea Owl doing its own thing thinking it was helping or the DDG's again. There is no breaking up sounds after this... So no Thresher floating at a sub critical depth and then later sinking and imploding. Everyone would hear that, because everyone is listening...... Pictures of the Thresher show no intact compartments, the boat is completely fragmented, broken into five main pieces and strewn across the seafloor within a 33 acre area. So no miraculous survival of a few men in an intact compartment at 8400 feet. What the report shows is just the chaos of a hopeful search and over zealous people attempting contact hearing things and interpreting them incorrectly.
This kinda reflects how I was thinking as this video unrolled. First, though, why did it seem he was reading this for the first time & improvising interpretations? 34:30 He says they're in "continuous communication" but that it's "only one way communication" & "Thresher can hear Seawold talking to it" He doesn't know that Thresher heard anything. Sending messages to what they hoped was Thresher without knowing if they are being received isn't really communication, it's blind transmitting. ""Thresher can hear Seawolf talking to it and they're responding to commands." It never really sounded like Thresher responded to commands. There were possible sounds but none of them followed Seawolf's instructions, save for one or two times the number of bangs matched a request but then didn't continue to do so (coincidence?) & failed to follow subsequent commands. Might have been sounds of Thresher parts crushing, etc., or racket from topside? The thing I can't wave away is the 37 pings unless (a) they came from another boat or (b) it's possible for dying electronics to fire off a string of pings before finally quitting. We're used to govt lying about a lot of things, but maybe this time they didn't.
@@SubBrief Which video time hacks or dive & time hacks? I'll look again. It seemed to me that what Seawolf heard was never clear & unmistakeable or correctly responding to instructions (except the possible coincidence I noted).
@@SubBrief I'd very much like to hear the recorded UQC communications, as opposed to simply being told that they existed. I'd like to determine for myself how ambiguous the identification of the source of the UQC/BQC is.
Remember the 1/3rd trim parties we used to piss Dive off with. We were doing that under NORMAL propulsion. I find it hard to believe Thresher could hold a STOP trim during an engineering flooding casualty for 24 hour on battery. The boat was demolished on the sea floor; which only happens because it was not flooded. The battery capacity of the 594(3) was significantly less than the diesel/electric boats; while the mass was twice the size; with an electrical load approximately 4 xs a diesel boat. I find it implausible that Thresher survived for 24 hours.
Personally as a father, I would want to know how my son died. As much as it would hurt (this hurts just listening to it), I would want that burden. It's not closure, but it would at least provide clarity to his final moments.
I don't know if I would want to have my folks know I had a long, lingering suffocation. I think if it was my kids out there, I'd rather have the polite lie that it was so quick nobody would have recognized that they were in danger.
@@ScottKenny1978 true but now the family's if they are still around today hear this that they were lied to will be even more distraught bringing it back up
@@lenny567l yes. That's the problem with lying in the first place. Though I also think we had enough heavy medicines (morphine etc) onboard to let people go peacefully. Not something you want to talk about, obviously, but it's there.
So, Thresher spent over 24 hours drifting at neutral buoyancy before another failure and dropping below crush depth? Having served on a 594 class, I have some insight: 1) The 594 has 5 compartments, 3 of which can fully flood without overcoming the boats reserve buoyancy. The Bow compartment, Reactor Compartment, and the Machinery space (AMS). 2) The Machinery space could not have been flooded because the SSMG's are there. The fact that she was able to go active on its main sonar indicates it had AC power if only from the battery. 3) If they were neutrally buoyant, why did they not simply pump the trim tanks to sea? Or blow the negative tank? If they had the power to run main sonar, they would have had the power to run the trim pump, drain pump, and EPM. I find it difficult that the crew could not have made the boat surface if they had 24 or more hours to figure it out. Especially if they were drifting in the water column
T & D pumps are DC powered, if I remember right. One was in the engine room, wasn't it? Maybe that one wasn't usable. The other one in AMR? In any case, at that depth, the outside pressure very well could have been beyond the discharge pressure of the pumps. Could have been beyond the pressure of the air they had available (if any). If ER flooded, EPM would be out of the picture as well.
After reading much more of these documents, and reading others analysis of the information. I am beginning to think with all these other ships banging away with active sonars. That Sea wolf was confused in what they thought was Thresher. Just thinking about Thresher is heart wrenching. I can't imagine what was going through the minds of those 129 men onboard. Just doing their damnedest to work the problem and save the ship. God be with those who were lost, and those who were left behind.
Yes. The bottom depth was >8000', absolutely impossible to survive there. Also essentially impossible to maintain depth with no propulsion and active flooding. I find it exceptionally improbable that the thresher got "stuck" for hours at a depth where the hull could survive but that they didn't quickly sink or float to the surface. Neutral buoyancy is not the natural, stable state for a submarine, you have to work to stay there, and they didn't have the power to run discharge pumps or electric motor for that many hours. If they were trying to claw their way to the surface on the battery they wouldn't have wasted power on active sonar... they knew that if they sank in that depth nobody could help them anyway. Skylark heard hull-collapse transients. This is one of those cool stories, bro.
Problem I see Gene C, is that the 3.5Khz pinging could ONLY have been coming from the Thresher. To the best of my knowledge, there were no other platforms in that area had a 3.5Khz sonar..
As was USS Halibut SSGN/SSN 578, having served on board all three of these boats! All I will say Is anyone that trusts their own government at this point ! I served 3 decades +2 , loose lips sink ships! What happened to Thresher should never have happened, many of our fellow bubbleheads have given their lives For our Country as did those of the Soivet Union! All truth will eventually be brought to the light! The last 12 years should have wakened the entire Universe!
@@mr.b6374 we dismantled the Halibut as well. If I remember correctly, it was in dry dock 6, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard's largest dry dock, along with 2 other subs, simultaneously.
I was on the Seawolf later and during a reunion I talked to one of the sonar men that was there on the day it happened. He told me of these findings , even then they thought it was just sonar from other ships
USS Seawolf did not look like most nuclear subs optimized for submerged speed. I saw and toured her in Washington in drydock before she was dismantled. She looked like a really big WW2 Balao Class.
> However, after the commander of Task Group 89.7 ordered that echo ranging and fathometers be secured so as to not interfere with the search, no further acoustic signals were detected by the Seawolf other than those originating from other searching ships and the submarine Sea Owl.[19] Ultimately, the Court of Inquiry determined That while operating as a unit of the search force, the U.S.S. Seawolf (SSN575) recorded possible electronic emissions and underwater noises. None of the signals which SEAWOLF received equated with anything that could have been originated by human beings.[20]
Thanks for the great information, I served aboard the USS Point Loma AGDS 2, in 1977. We were deployed to the Caribbean with the Trieste II on board, we did deep dives in the Cayman Trench, (deepest any human had ever gone up to that point) , as I recall in early September or late August we headed for the Northern Atlantic. Bob Ballard was aboard (I had no Idea who he was at time, I was only 21 years old) We had no idea what our mission was till we arrived on station. I was a signalman and had access to bridge at all times. I saw a paper map and on it was the name "Thresher" with a red circle around it. I knew NOT to say anything for fear of the wrath of the CO. When we were on station the Trieste II did a series of 5 dives (I think) bringing up pieces of metal and placing them in wood and metal containers. Only after we got back to San Diego from the deployment did we find out "officially" that we had been to the Thresher site. Thank you for this great information "37 Pings" would be a great name for a novel about the Thresher. Keep up the good work!
I want to say thank you for everyone's response to this video. You have grown my channel by nearly 30% in 5 months. I could not be more thankful to everyone who is sharing of this video around the internet, commenting and thumbing +/- (doesn't matter, but we have a 96%+). You made my channel, the YT algorithm, and my accountant very happy. Thank you very much! Love all of you, please keep up the widespread distribution. The click through rate has made this one of the most successful videos on my channel and you get full credit for that. Thanks. Nothing but love for you all. -Aaron Facts: This is the USS Seawolf's narrative released by the U.S. Navy's investigation, not my opinion. 15:00 At just before 2pm 11APR63 There are people alive inside the USS Thresher. You can download the U.S. Official release here: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20986255/tresher9_10_reduced.pdf
I was curious to learn this information because I followed the sad official news story with my Navy vet dad at the time in 1963...everyone hoping the Thresher would be found with the crew safe....it was not to be. The Thresher seemed like a dark omen for what would happen later in November to another Navy vet while in Dallas. Many years later I stayed at the home of a relative who had bought the house of one of the Thresher crew members. I did not know this fact until after I had reported seeing someone walk into my room at night, only to be told it was not a person,but, a " friend" who visitors see from time to time in the home.....a " friend" who was lost on the Thresher. What a shame that nothing could be done at the time to save the men still alive. I hope they have methods to do so now. Brave men have gone under the waves and have been lost...from the Hunley to the Thresher....( not counting the Russky tubs in "Hunt for Red October " and in real life ), and they all should be remembered and honored.
@@janineroshka2489 Yup. We all have to die sometime, somehow. These crews died quick, relatively painfree and honorably for ALL we know. Their lives should, must and are celebrated by the living, if known and understood as such. Fair winds and following seas, friend. We remember the titans.
Dad worked with a ex USN sub engineer back in the early 90's......one comment he made about the thresher incident always stuck with dad.....'the only thing i can say is that the navy was honest about the thresher being lost.....everything else was bullshit'......this from a guy who spent 30 odd years running nuke reactors on subs, about half of them as chief engineer.....
@@jamesbrown5600 Dad got the impression that he knew it didn't happen the way the navy claimed it did.....but dad wasn't the type to push someone to talk about something they cannot so never dug deeper. The information in this video seems to back that the navy lied....or at least omitted information about the sequence of events around the loss of the Thresher.
@@m2heavyindustries378 In defense of americans being conspiracy prone: we have a point in our favor, the US Government. The alphabet agencies have, on many occasions, actively screwed with the American public. The CIA had MKUltra and the FBI had COUNTELPRO. I want to tell the conspiracy guys they're crazy and absolutely baseless, but its hard to do so when they can point at things our government has illegally done.
Conclusion #35 of the Navy Court of Inquiry: "That while operating as a unit of the search force, the U.S.S. Seawolf (SSN575) recorded possible electronic emissions and underwater noises. None of the signals which SEAWOLF received equated with anything that could have been originated by human beings." There's no way anyone could have survived at the sea depths on-scene, especially after Thresher imploded at 0918 on 10-Apr.
Explain the 3.5Khz Pings?? No other ship in the area had a 3.5Khz Sonar. Threasher;s BQS-6 was heard 37 times pinging and it had very very powerful Transmitter Tubes that sucked a LOT of power. The Sonar on the surface ships was a bit higher than the 3.5. I believe at the time the newest surface ship Sonar was an SQS-23 which was 5Khz
Those men were at 1100 feet, 7000 is just too deep to speculate. Has anyone calculated her buoyancy with totally flooded compartments? Just too heavy to surface, just a very slow dive that was beyond control? So many feet per hour, per flooded compartment. Not necessarily a compromised boat, but a very specific unrecoverable problem.
Yeah that's the only way this makes sense without going full on ghost story, but then you still had the Seawolf calculating their depth to 7000 feet which... *might* be them making an assumption and not an accurate detail at all. Like this whole thing is really weird.
@@codyspradley6277 no worries. What happened to the Thresher can not happen again. The loss of the Thresher was a catalyst for a lot of systemic improvements. It changed the way the boats are built, tested, and operated. No US submarine has been lost in over 50 years now. A nickels worth of free advice, work hard, study hard, and qualify. Don’t be goofing off until you have your fish, also called dolphins and have all your watch stations qualified. Be a hard charger and you will be noticed. Accept additional responsibilities as a challenge. You’ll likely be assigned collateral duties. The fundamentals of my collateral duty I still use regularly, even after being a civilian for 22 years now. Learn all you can. Lastly, welcome aboard.
This is pure BS and sensationalism. I was aboard Sea Leopard, SS-483, in the area, when Thresher went on eternal patrol. We had an FT aboard who had left Thresher just 3 weeks previously due to safety concerns. We were required to do a helo transfer to get him to shore ASAP. I don't recall his name, but would like to know it. I am Don James, Reactor Operator aboard the 611(B) and 598(G), ET1(SS)(DV).
Two things terrify me. The ideal of dieing in a cave that collapses or being sealed in. The second is drowning. Particularly in the ocean. A sub is a combination of both those things. It would either help me get over them both or fear would grip me into a catatonic state.
The "mainframe pings can also be a dd SQS-4 series sonar or VDS. The 23.5 could be the fathometer. The bangs are transients, which can be anything , The way to sort it out is to get them to respond to a count , gertrude, ot morse. There is no such response , there is no evidence here that there is anyone alive.
There are numerous stories of the UUS Oklahoma and other ships sunk at Pearl Harbor, where men on the rescue crews heard tapping in code from inside the sunken hulls for many days. That was only 50 feet of water. The pain and anguish I'm sure was the same listening to that as listening to what USS Seawolf heard, or thought they heard. Several years ago I met an old Submariner who was on the Triest dives and photographed the USS Thresher wreckage. Tough old senior Sailor, and it still bothers him. All hands in the hands of the Lord now.
This is the USS Seawolf's narrative released by the U.S. Navy's investigation, not my opinion. 15:00 At just before 2pm 11APR63 There are people alive inside the USS Thresher. You can download the U.S. Official release here: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20986255/tresher9_10_reduced.pdf
Aaron I think your knowledge and videos are excellent. But this video - I just can’t buy there being survivors 24 hours after the sinking. It’s an impossible scenario when the sub was heard to implode a day before. Almost all other naval experts I have read disagree with your findings. Keep up the good work , I enjoy your commentary and knowledge sharing.
And it wasn’t heard imploding afterwards..and we found the boat imploded. I agree. Love the videos will continue watching but I think this is just a confused Sea Wolf, and it’s totally understandable why.
At 1000 fathoms, there would be almost 2600 psi on the hull. At test depth (1300 ft for permit class subs) the hull can withstand 567 psi. That's roughly 4.5 times the pressure of test depth. Granted we don't know what the crush depth of the sub was, but I doubt the hull could withstand such pressure. It is unsettling though to think they could have survived.
As a proud U.S. NAVY veteran I salute those brave sailors. May they encounter fair winds and following seas on their voyage to their final port of call. At ease gentlemen, you have fullfilled your mission. God rest your souls. ✌🇺🇸
While they might not have been able to have been rescued... That doesn't excuse the U.S. Navy for covering this up and lying about it for nearly 6 decades. It's the lie that's inexcusable.
@@matchesburn the pings meant nothing in reality, all they were was a desperation act made by the poor souls on board the Thresher. What they did actually took some of the edge of the sinking of the thresher, since the public didn’t realize how desperate the crew was, the public knowledge was that the crew didn’t fully realize until to late and the sub imploded, giving the sailors a quick death.Also this was in the middle of the Cold War, you couldn’t willing give the public classified information. This is coming from a son and grandson of two submariners (grandfather was a CO and my dad was an officer). The sad part of being a submariner is that there is almost no escape once your vessel/boat starts sinking, unlike a surface vessel.
@@Manticore2026 ...There is absolutely nothing that compromises national security about the Navy saying, "We went to the area where the Thresher was last sighted and received signals that indicate that the crew was still alive, but unfortunately perished before any help could've been sent to them." *_Absolutely. Nothing. Excuses. This._* Why you're defending it, I have no idea. It's not defensible.
@@matchesburn It was better for the families to cope if they didn’t have to hear they their sons or husbands had basically suffocated to death, it easier for them to know that they died a quick and painless death. The second thing was the USS sea wolf was also in the report, which was HIGHLY, HIGHLY classified at the time. Third thing was that the Skylark reported hearing her (USS Thresher) implode and the reports from the sea wolf state that the active sonar ping might have been from other rescue vessels nearby. Fourth thing is that the Thresher was reported to have sunk 8,000+ ft below the surface, which guarantees that all sailors where dead or where soon to be dead. At the previous known depth of 1,100 ft below sea level, there was a slim chance of rescue but any deeper threw all chances out the window.
The grandpa of a friend of mine was a crew member of the USS Thresher. My condolences to all friends and families who lost a beloved person on that day
There should be a law passed by Congress that if your military officer and you cover up the loss of any military personnel you should be prosecuted and then cashiered out!
Hey Jive, I used to work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (civilian). There’s a huge memorial for the Thresher in the center of Kittery. Even 50 years later people at the yard don’t like to talk about it (even less the 2012 fire - future video perhaps?). What little they would say about the incident, they’d change the mourning into pride over SUBSAFE protocols that developed from the incident. I never got the chance to ask people outside the yard, but I was always told PNSY was THE PLACE to go to get subs serviced because of the short turn around time, low cost, and incredible safety record - despite it being the smallest yard. Hopefully it’s true. Everyone had monumental pride over that status as a sort of atonement for the Thresher. I was only in IT, so I never really saw subs much. I love your channel because it provides context to the mission I was supporting.
These rumors have been circulating for over fifty years now and I remember it being talked about when I was in sub school and later sonar a-school back in the late seventies. In his 1974 book 'The Thresher Disaster', John Bentley discusses them, without the Sea Wolfs transcripts of course. The prevailing rumor was that an anonymous submarine, searching the Threshers last known position, had possibly heard garbled human transmissions from a submarines underwater telephone, UQC, possibly located in the lost submarines bow compartment which had, rumor, been blown off of an imploding submarine and was floating on a thermal layer while slowly flooding and sinking. Its clear that the Navy considered the SWs reports and discarded them as in error.
There's no such thing as slowly flooding a submarine. The more water gets in, the more the sub weighs and therefore it sinks faster. The deeper it gets, the worse the leaking gets.
In dive 2, @ 1355, there is NO tapping...! Instead there is "taping", as in, the USS Seawolf is TAPING (recording) everything that is going on, everything they "hear"!
When you don't want your enemies to know, you don't tell your own people either. Not surprised the truth has been kept completely in the dark for all this time.
And what exactly do you not want your enemies to know? From the get go the U.S. Navy admitted it was an accident and likely from design and construction defects, and anyone in the know would realize that there was no helping those men in the time frame this happened. The only things that the Navy were protecting were themselves.
@@matchesburn They didn't want the Soviets to know the quality of the sonar equipment on US vessels, and announcing they found her so quick and were able to keep contact would tell the Soviets just that.
@@matchesburn it's far better to control the flow of information and feed your enemies some of the truth and false information as well. Making it harder for the truth to be completely known. Just like having it do it's first dive in deep water. If it fails, then there's no chance the Soviets can recover cutting edge tech. Sacrifices the crew, but guards military secrets. It might be cold blooded, but it's certainly effective.
According to an article I read, they decided that the contacts were merely interference from other search vehicles. How could anyone be alive in Thresher after she imploded? No human could have survived that sinking.
That's assuming that she imploded when the Navy says that she did. I'm admittedly a bit skeptical about Thresher NOT being lost when the Navy said she was lost EXCEPT for the main active sonar pinging. No other (known) sub in the area had that type of sonar except Thresher. So, either someone else did that we don't know about and was in the area, or it was Thresher. The real key here is whether Seawolf actually did hear what she thought she heard, whether those pings were from a Thresher-class sub's main active sonar, or not. If they were, then Thresher did not implode when the Navy says she did. If they were not, then the official narrative remains mostly intact.
Yeah everything in Dive 1 is questionable, but having active sonar secured with all search vessels besides the Seawolf would eliminate that interference. Either the order wasn't *actually* given or the request wasn't actually sent and this report is faulty. Like Dive 2 is where it gets downright ghost story. You're right you *shouldn't* expect receiving any sonar from that depth, let alone mainframe active.
I am just a stranger but thanks for sharing this. My grandfather was one of the engineers that worked on Thresher and the only reason I was told he wasn't on board for the voyage was because he got sick. A fortunate incident in a terrible tragedy.
This is terrifying, I can't even imagine what that operation must have been like for the crew of the Seawolf and even worse the survivors on Thresher, truly chilling news.
Don't want to be the nay-sayer, but this report is laden with suppositions, guesses, and mistakes. If the Thresher was semi-buoyant between test and crush depth, and then sunk to crush depth, it would have made quite a bang. SOSUS never recorded such an event. I was in the 3rd grade when this happened, and I'll never forget it.
@@moistmike4150 if it was taking on water for 24 hours, thats a really slow leak if there was never an implosion. But I don't know how much water a sub can take on and still be adrift in that state.
@@Chronostream Simple math. Mass of the sub minus Buoyancy required to maintain submergence at equilibrium. Compressed ballast air reserve is only good for so long, until mass of water leaking into hull is beyond ability of ballast tanks to counter.
@@moistmike4150 the whole time it would be sinking as it takes on water though. There was still enough air for someone to be conscious enough to maintain contact. Enough air left for the equipment to still run. Though have no idea how submerged the electronics can be and still operate since they appeared to still have at least a half working radio before the end. Seems like before the DDs were on the scene, Seawolf had a bead on the Thresher, as if they had not been dropping that fast. Suppose that Thresher was somehow in a goldilocks zone of being enough water to sink but not enough air to implode?
@@Chronostream Not sure what you mean by "not enough air to implode". If they were leaking atmosphere, then the likelihood of implosion increases as internal atmospheric pressure diminishes. Submariners are in an extremely hazardous profession, because even in the absence of a shooting war with torpedoes and depth charges, multiple factors going sideways during peacetime operations can coincide to make escape from their fragile steel tube progressively more impossible as time slips by. God bless those brave men (and now, women, with the recent loss of an Argentinian sub back in 2017).
I’m not convinced that the Seawolf heard anything from the Thresher. This would require the Thresher to stay above crush depth for an extended period. SOSUS data indicated the Thresher imploded early on 10Apr
@@madezra64 Ok. But data from SOSUS arrays, shows that on 10Apr63 at 09:18:24, at a depth of 730 metres (2,400 ft), 120 metres (400 ft) below her predicted collapse depth the Thresher imploded. The reason for these pings needs to be explored but considering the number of SAR ships in the area that might be a place to start. Moreover a mountain of other data supports the 0918 implosion
@@Dog.soldier1950 That's assuming that mountain of data is accurate and not obfuscated. Everyone is using SOSUS data like it's infallible. It's just as questionable as the 37 pings. Without a doubt that was the Thresher. The evidence is just staggering and refutes everything SOSUS reported, almost as if SOSUS was a part of the cover up? BUT, who knows yet.. More to come for sure.
@@madezra64 37 pings on 3.5kHz, that's all. AFAIK this is a frequency available to several sonar systems and not limited to the BQS-6. Seawolf did not know which other vessels were present and had no way of knowing, because the emergency frequency was overloaded. The pings might turn out to be the strongest evidence against Captain Jives theory. There seems to be some doubt that Thresher even could go active without reactor power, let alone after 24h draining battery. Also, if Thresher survived for a day adrift and only eventually sank, a second implosion would have been audible for SOSUS and search vessels.
A disabled Thresher could have hung at a depth for a while by an albeit unlikely combination of circumstances including frozen compressed air lines which thawed and allowed a bleed of air into the main ballast tanks which compensated for buoyancy loss from water inflow from damaged fittings or the main shaft seal, with an inversion layer either supporting her or holding her down. Eventually leaks won, and she slid down through crush depth. Maybe it was the control room which flooded, leaving those in the sonar room unable to command the motors but able to operate the sonar using reactor power...
What a bombshell...I can't believe how much this changes our perceptions of what happened to the Thresher & that they could keep it under wraps for so many decades. Certainly puts it in a different light. Also, great video name, JT 👍
Were there any rumors floating about this? Seems like just the type of macabre thing to scare impressionable young sonarmen with, "Member the fellas that sank back in '63? Heard them for days..." Maybe the CIA vans are real.
@@mqL49J As far as I know, there weren't even rumors that they were alive or the boat was located. I believe the official cover story was that Thresher was not found until the following year during salvage/recovery. No mention of the Seawolf etc. They were able to keep a tight lid on this, I would think because of the amount of embarrassment/damage this would cause the USN. Look at what Kirsk did to the Russian navy, for example.
@@scotty1108 I was as well. I'm assuming it's been kept so secret for so long because of how embarrassing or damaging the USN thought it would be. Goes to show that it's not inconceivable for a large event to be covered up & no one leak it to the public or even cause rumors in this case.
Bruce Rule himself said you're spewing fiction, and that should be the final word: “This UA-cam video is false, the Seawolf report the presenter is reading from is correct, but the final report certified it was false readings. Seawolf was confused by the active sonar and noise created by the destroyers and the diesel submarine Sea Owl searching for Thresher on 11 April 1963, the day after she was lost. She mistook all sounds from the searching ships as banging on the hull and sonar pings from Thresher. It was a mistake.”
No, that was a return from the seabed. The Seawolf was at about 400-500 feet depth, add the 8,100 feet fathometer return, and you have the roughly 8,500 to 8,600 ocean depth in the area they were in.
@@juslitor The only way I can imagine a transmission from that depth would be some kind of short circuit setting off the ping, but it seems unlikely to the point of being impossible for that to be the cause of a ping every 15s for 9 minutes.
@@DERP_Squad but they weren't at that depth most likely while pinging, they were likely buoyant hovering near crush depth despratly trying to save it for 24 hours as said, what I'm interested in was the acoustics recorded of an implosion event, but I guess it was to deep for a sub sonar to record and the sea net or whatever the acoustic listening posts are weren't built till many years later
@@schylertkatchew2659 hovering in a submarine is exceptionally difficult, even on a platform like an Ohio with systems designed to do just that. Thresher didn't have that. Even without a loss of power her chances are slim of maintaining neutral buoyancy
Others have already pointed this out, but this was not the final report. The USS Seawolf account of pings, etc. were discounted and attributed to other vessels in the area.
They did not tell the truth because it would not have changed anything. When the Seawolf possibly located the Thresher at 1100 feet it was already too late to rescue the men or save the sub. If unimaginably the Thresher were below crush depth at contact, the Navy had no way to reach them.
Reading into it they had a bathyscaphe which had a 2 or 3 man crew which was lowered and on its third trip actually sat on top of the sub on the sea floor but this was over a year later. They had no means to attach to a hatch and get inside. By time they found the sub it was quite broken up so if they’d been alive I’d guess the sub was at a shallower depth when communicating then sank to the bottom getting crushed and ripped apart upon descent.
Just taking the report at face value, since no one ever responded as instructed at the very least indicates that they were not in communication. I also find it difficult to believe the Navy would be so insensitive to just release documentation indicating people were alive when the prevailing thought is that they died without a major announcement or presser. The while thing is just horrible. My heart goes out to them and their families.
Sobering reality for all those who serve beneath the waves. We are in their debt for their sacrifice, which subsequently lead to SUBSAFE I and II. Rest in Peace.
My guess is that they knew there were people alive but that there was no way to rescue them. Either too deep or rescue devices not available in time. Makes for an easier way to notify family that their loved ones died instantly without suffering vs. suffocating slowly and suffering greatly.
I'm at a loss for words. I served on USS MIAMI (SSN-755) in early 2000's. STS2(SS) I remember listening to the recordings during SUBSAFE training. The story was that the end went fairly quickly for the boat and crew.
To this day I remember seeing the Boston newspaper headline of this story when it happened, because I’d just learned how to read. And have followed it ever since. I’m blown away right now.
None of this information CONFIRMS any of these transmissions are from the Thresher. There are multiple ships looking for the Thresher and these transmissions could be from another 'rescue ship'. I think it is irresponsible to assume any of this is from the Thresher. Not one single request from the Seawolf is met with the proper answer. The incident that led to the Thresher sinking would not have left them floating at depth. They took on enough water that they would have gone to the bottom which was not at a survivable depth.
I was very privileged to be at a sub base in mid 1970's . I could always sense when our Senior Command was onboard the station. Admiral Rickover was a powerful presence that could be felt in the area & sensitive personel could tell how close he was by the intensity of the man. I have known some Officers that did not like the perfectionist & demanding demeanor of The Admiral however even a young Navy sailor like myself could tell ; he knew another possible loss of a submarine , such as Thresher would be possible if everything was not as perfect as perfect could be. I will be so honored to see the Admiral when I return to Heaven. I'm sure Heaven is in better order since he arrived . He loved his submariners & I think we all know , he knew of the reports on the investigation of the loss of the thresher & how they were still alive many days after the public was told that the submarine quickly broke up. ................
I echo what Joseph Kartychak said. The Skylarks testimony was that the Thresher imploded. Was this part of a cover up? Did someone just mistake the sounds of a sub desperately trying to save itself with multiple attempts to blow the mains for the sound of implosion?
Thresher had several watertight compartments. 1 or more of them could have imploded on the way down leaving the others intact. The first attempt to conduct an emergency main ballast tank blow would have made some noise but probably not much because for whatever reason the air stopped flowing. Subsequent attempts would have made no noise at all. The loss of the Thresher is at least 2 events that stacked up in the worst way possible. The first being whatever caused them to lose depth control and then the inability to blow the main ballast tanks. While certainly a tragedy this loss was the genesis of the subsafe program which added layers of safety, redundancy and documentation to US submarines and their operation.
Mose717, thanks for the reply. I have never heard of one or two compartments imploding while others remained intact. Without question, I have heard of compartments flooding while others do not - Kursk is an easy case in point. I would be very interested in more info on this. My thoughts were more directed towards the idea that the screen icing over being less of a problem than thought, and that the sub had experienced a breach in the ballast tanks or something of the sort. Thanks for engaging. I remember this tragedy from when I was very young.
@@magellan6108 I've never heard of this either but losing a submarine is a pretty rare event so there isn't just a lot of data to look at. Beyond that, collapse depth is 150% of test depth and test depth is just the point where the guarantee from the shipyard expires. Not kidding. The point being that these numbers are somewhat arbitrary especially since there's no practical way to test the limits in a controlled manner. Breaching the ballast tanks is pretty hard to do, it would have to be a collision of some sort. Yeah, the Kursk went down in relatively shallow water so collapse wasn't an issue. My guess is Thresher had a loss of hydraulics and/or a reactor scram and then couldn't blow main ballast tanks. I wasn't around when this happened but we learned about it in Subschool.
The implosion was also detected on SOSUS at 09:18:24 on April 10, 1963. One complete implosion of all compartments in .2 seconds with the equivalent force of 22K Lbs of TNT.
Thanks all. I wonder if the investigating board struggled with this same cognitive dissonance. One voice testifying one thing; multiple voices testifying something else - i am wondering if this was one of the reasons the board chose not to cite this report. Leaving it in also would have left even more angst for the families.
I like to think the document was never released because the govt. would rather the public think the men died instantly vs. surviving (and most likely suffering) for a time after the sinking...
Your comment illustrates my points and complaints. You "most likely" think the policies and government make decisions of secrecy for such self-serving, cold-blooded, short-sighted, petty and cowardly, self-righteous, denigrating way. Such protracted deaths happening is neither "most likely" nor even evident here at all. US Navy and federal law and policies prevent and safeguard against such sloppy censoring and decision-making. Further, I believe supposing such is the raving imaginings for convenience, in casual conversation here, in painting those who made and make such decisions as unmitigated amoral opportunists in public power to do whatever they want; to do things like that is a PROJECTION of what deluded persons so strongly assumes MUST be what one is thinking because that is how the accuser thinks, entirely delusional, wrong and prejudicial in EVERY assessment and judgement thereby
Understand the classification, the fact the Thresher with it's location and depth did not experience a total crush event would and could be a compromise of strategic information in the eyes of the navy, especially with SSBN patrols being the new normal
I think you are spot on about why it would be classified at the time. We've always been given incredibly low ball numbers for submarine capabilities. This would have shown that US sub design could potentially operate at many times the depths we have been told they can.
@@thesollylama130 Agreed. This now declassified information is a literal platter of naval intelligence that even Jive commented on in the video. I think they intended to eventually declassify this information but never got to it.
Measurements made during the instrumented sinking of the discarded diesel-electric submarine STERLET (SS-392) in 1969 are consistent with the conclusion that the water-ram produced by the initial breaching of the Thresher's pressure hull at 2,400 feet entered the pressure hull with a velocity of about 2,600 mph. That force would have ripped asunder the pressure hull longitudinally and vertically, as verified by photographs of the Thresher wreckage.
Combine this with activities like the Tuskegee experiments and the CIA's habit of occasionally overthrowing democratically elected governments and one starts to empathize with the tin foil crowd.
@@ZboeC5 Sure, question everything. But do accept the answer to your questions... The problem isn't people asking questions. It's people asking questions and then refusing to accept the answer because it doesn't fit their world-view.
This is part of what I find so valuable about your channel (and similar channels that cover different content) - delivering the facts in a way that the layperson like myself can digest and form an opinion. Many thanks for covering this, as concerning as the information is 👍
There are plenty of situations when the truth would clearly bring better clarity and justice, however I am not sure that clarity would have brought justice in this tragedy. How much more of an emotional burden would have been placed on the hearts of loved ones if they were to have known these facts?
i agree. this is slightly childish outrage over nothing. whether classified or no, there was zero the navy could do to save those men. jive knows this. better to save the families from the knowledge those men suffered.
@@oldfrend Yeah, no. Like with the families of those that served on the USS Scorpion, most people prefer to know the truth - even if it is grizzly. Because that's what is called closure. And the Navy has no place deciding this for the families when not one single thing about it compromises national security. The fact that the Navy knew and lied about it is, honestly, the most damning part of this. If a boat goes down, as terrible as that is, there sometimes isn't anything you can do about it. This was one of those instances. But to lie about it so you don't look bad? That cheapens the death of those sailors.
@@matchesburn That's shortsighted. "Not a single thing about it compromises national security", you say. Really? Because I can easily see multiple pieces of information in this report that easily compromise national security: 1) The Seawolf and presumably all of class have sonar blind spots below 2) The frequencies that the emergency communications are set to; this can be used to bait vessels with false emergency messages 3) The frequencies that the fathometers and sonars operate on 4) Implications about the depth and speed at which Seawolf can communicate to surface 5) Training and equipment interoperability issues between surface and submarine components Even just releasing information that the submarine didn't immediately implode implies that: 1) you have sonar capable of picking up faint signals at significant range, 2) the nature of submerged power sources and backup power for the Thresher and class. Why do you think the US Navy was so tight-lipped about exactly what detections they may have made of the ARA San Juan? Same reason. And... for what? For what you insist is "closure"? You want to risk the security of the nation, and the lives of all the LIVING submariners by releasing information, just so that instead of saying "your sons died in an accident while honorably serving their country", the can say "your sons died in an accident while honorably serving their country, but oh by the way, the died slowly and suffering in a futile struggle to recover from the accident". There was a lot of information about capabilities that could be implicated from an official release that "we detected them still alive well after they went missing", and that's not even considering the morale effects, or the tacit admission that there is no rescue capability in existence. It just opens the DOD up to the accusations of being "incompetent" for hearing them and "doing nothing to save them".
@Bronco 53 I, the granddaughter, deserved to know the truth. My mom, aunt and uncle deserve the truth before they passed. My grandmother deserved the truth...in 1963. I cannot bring myself to tell her now. We all grieve differently. We, as The Thresher Family, should have know, in 1963. To be brought up my entire life thinking and fully believing it was instant, to now find out my Grandfather may have been down there knowing....it's totally different now. This is so new I'm not finished processing it
Anything beyond basic overview of events, as such was originally released, becomes a security issue. Every piece of information can become or is a weapon. However everything released from this log book is nothing other nations did not already know at the time. It is no secret other nations spy on one another. They place spies in the very factories that build our military machines and we in theirs. Every time something new comes out in the world; the major powers already know what it is or what it does. There truly are no secrets beyond the super classified and small operations with limited eyes. Why else do you think politicians can lazily handle classified information with no real repercussions. But your basic enlisted can serve thirty years for disclosing a color of paint. That is some reality for you all. As for the families, I firmly believe they deserve to know what happened and why. No matter how stupid it sounds or how painful the ending may have been. The truth is the reality that honors those that died; otherwise their sacrifice is reduced and meaningless. It took until now for some of the Thresher's story to come out. While it took decades of falsehoods to admit this blunder and inability of the navy. And for what? A couple overlapping frequencies the soviets likely knew about anyway...
So, if the Thresher lost the seal at the prop and the flooding wasn't contained for a while, could she have hung for a while at seventy or eighty degrees? Repair would have been made extremely arduous, if not almost impossible. The problem with this theory is the banks of batteries would have lost power within an hour or two at most, I would expect. Looks like the ratings and officers on Seawolf were feeding each other scraps of hope.
This is the ninth and tenth round of documents released. Is there any other material that corroborates what Seawolf heard? Is there anything else that contradicts Skylark hearing Thresher implode during that dive?
From what Ive read in the reports Seawolf was the only one to hear anything after Thresher's garbled "900" report. 2 minutes after which SOSUS heard the distinct and abrupt sound of an implosion at around 2800 ft. This was hours before Seawolf arrived on station.
It seems at least two questions must be answered if you are to believe that the sounds and signals the Seawolf was hearing came from crewmembers still alive on the Thresher: 1. If what the Skylark and SOSUS reported was NOT the sound of the Thresher imploding (at 2800 ft, quite consistent with what you'd expect), then what was it? 2. If the Thresher did NOT implode at this time, but only well after the Seawolf had arrived (a day or so later) and reported hearing sonar pings and metal banging on metal, why didn't the Seawolf or anyone else in the fleet above - all listening with sonar - hear any sounds consistent with implosion as the Thresher supposedly sunk some time during this period? I'm no expert, but I'm told a crush event is a one time deal, you don't partially crush/implode and you don't gradually crush/implode. Rather than having to come up with some elaborate explanation as to why it was different in this case, it seems a lot more straightforward to assume that the signals and sounds the Seawolf heard had nothing to do with the Thresher. Of course, full disclosure, that's what I want to believe as the alternative is quite horrific, but I also think it makes sense.
@@phj223 Also how did the Thresher manage to trim the bot after the casualty. If Seawolf really heard Thresher it must have someone remained between test and crush depths for more than 24 hours. How? This just doesn't add up at all.
I hate to say it, but the noises from the _Thresher_ just sound like the _Seawolf_ letting hope overcome reason and interpreting random noise as intelligent activity. If there had been anybody alive and operating the BOQ, they would have pulsed in morse, answered the _Seawolf's_ request for five pings, kept a steady pinging, anything but make random jazz doodling with the equipment. It was just the wreckage settling and maybe batteries giving up the last of their power in random connections, maybe mixed in with some biological activity.
My mother was 6 when her father, Lt. Merrill Collier, was one of the officers that went down with the Thresher. He had only reported a week before. Top of his academy class, played the ukulele, loved by his family and friends and classmates. Apparently a humorous fellow. He left behind my grandmother, my mother and her brother, plus her unborn brother. It is a wound that never healed, especially for my mother, who remembers him and still misses him each day.
I wish I could have known him, and mourn him, just as I mourn for all those here in the comments, and beyond, who have lost loved ones. May those lost at sea forever dwell in our hearts. May we never forget their bravery.
I lost my father when I was very young. Never got a chance to know him. Feels.
@@SubBrief I am so sorry for the loss of your father. ❤️
I lost my father when I was 21 he died in my arms. I at least got 20+ years with him, all I can say is you’re father knows you and I’m so sorry for your loss it never goes away
Salute of honor. DEEPEST CONDOLENCES TO FAMILY
Please accept my condolences to your mother and the rest of your family. Know that your dad was a hero and his sacrifice not in vain. While the Thresher is on eternal patrol, it has revolutionized the submersible industry. Namaste 🙏
I swear, you can't die in the Navy without it being supremely horrifying.
Its similar to being in outer space in the fact that your surroundings will kill you if you leave your ship. And sometimes even when you don't. Neither environments are conducive to human life.
@@bigimskiweisenheimer8325 I remember one of the first things my diving instructor told me "You are volunteering to go into actively hostile environment that will try to kill you at all times".
There are certain harsh realities that come with serving aboard submarines in particular and the military in general.
When I was in the Marine Corps this guy shows up to our unit one day to report as new vehical crew. I look up and his BDU's are salty as hell, easily 10 years old and wrong pattern. He looks to be 45 or 50 but is a Lance Corporal. Well he was in before. Got out a Staff Sargent. Desert Storm started and he wanted to be part of it. Somehow a recruiter got him in even at his age with some time served, stop loss equasion that could only make him and E-3. Well truth was he got in to get on our guard duty and into our armory. We actually walked patrol with live rounds. Well he chambered one and held his fellow guard at gun point while his partners blindfolded, gagged and bound him. This dud had been hanging out in the armory and with the SOG all the time to get times, routes, copies if keys and watch passcodes. We did not have much since most of it went to Saudi but he got away with something like 2ea M60 set ups, 4ea SAW's, 10ea M16A2, 2ea M203 Launchers, a dozen hand guns, some ammo and more. All went into a van parked at a dark spot where a light was burned out at the fence and he was gone. Base was on lockdown for 24 hours till they concluded he left North Carolina and our unit for like a month while we all got grilled by NIS and more. Like a year later I see him come in my office door again being held by two MP's. I was to process his AWOL and Desertion time in his online record, reattach him to the unit but report him TDY to the brig. I did so and they left. Three days later I was told to process his death certificate through our records. He was killed in the protective custody of the brig before trial. Everyone woke up in the brig squad bay and he was dead on the floor by his rack. He had been beaten to death but no one saw or heard a thing. Most Marines in the brig are there because of stupid stuff like fighting in town, having and earring, going AWOL for a weekend to get laid but they are still Marines and love the Corp. They saw him as scum for what he did, for bragging about it and not being squared away. They took out justice. Death certificate stated broken neck from accidental fall off top rack to concreate floor. Don't know if the details of weapons is true but the general story is since I saw the paperwork.
@@joeottsoulbikes415 sounds like the Corps to me.
As a submariner currently. I would not want my family to know i survived the initial event if they couldn’t save us
They didn't- the submarine imploded within five minutes
@@arianebolt1575 In these declassified documents this very video is about talks about they heard 2x BQC tones being repeated two days after the accident - 15:20ish in the video. The mainframe sonar even sent 37 pings from the thresher once BQC from the search party were recieved. This means that the navy as well as many other submarine experts, including the video author here, acknowledge that there were people controlling these. They did not all die during the implosion.
@@arianebolt1575Did you even watch the video??
If i was a submariner (Im a former soldier) i would like my family to know everything besides any potential audio, video or pictures of me and any others death. At least know that the goverment is upfront about its information and all actions taken based upon it.
There is enough "Kursk style" leadership to go around, even here in the west.
@@arianebolt1575 Implosion does not mean instant death as we are explained by the herd mentality and group think.
TheDrive:
"USS Thresher’s Crew May Have Survived Many Hours After Its Disappearance According To New Docs (Updated)
Declassified reports from one of the submarines that were looking for the Thresher suggest some of its crew may have survived the initial incident.
BY
THOMAS NEWDICK
|
UPDATED JUL 15, 2021 1:07 PM EDT"
"a newly unclassified report indicates that one submarine sent to search for it thought that at least some of the crew were still alive around 24 hours after the vessel was determined to have imploded."
So the reason the documents were classified was to cover up the fact the crew fought for hours and hours to save their doomed boat. We'll never know what great acts of bravery were done.
If I had to guess they didn't want to admit to their submariners that this had happened and the Navy couldn't save them. It would be extremely damaging to moral, and would probably raise questions about why the US subs don't have escape pods like Soviet subs (which presumably could've been used by the crew to escape given how much time they had).
It's not pretty, but I can kind of understand the Navy's logic, as cold and calculating as it is.
@@MrMattumbo what are the negatives to having an available escape pod built into the sub
The most likely reason that the papers were classified was that the Seawolf was a test bed for the USN next generation of nuclear reactors and sonar at the time. The papers would effectively tell the Russian Navy what the next generation of US sonar was capable, and wasn't capable, of detecting.
I doubt those that said that the Thresher sank past crush depth almost immediately even saw the logs from Seawolf. They can tell the lie more convincingly if they never know they're lying. As for why the record wasn't corrected until now, probably a combination of those who would correct the record being unaware it needed to be corrected in the first place, and those that knew the truth being of the opinion that telling the truth before declassification would lead to more questions they'd rather not be asked, let alone answered.
@@dominicklittle9828 The downsides to the escape pod idea are that for a normal crew compliment submarine, it takes up a lot of weight and space in the hull. Take into account that any escape pod would need to be able to accommodate all crew located between it, and any other escape pods fore or aft as an emergency might cut off access to other pods. There has to be a minimum of two pods for a standard submarine, like there are two escape trunks, for this reason. The Russian submarine escape pod was feasible as the submarine it was installed in was very highly automated and therefore the entire crew was located in a single compartment. The connection between the main hull and escape pods is also a major risk of vibration noise. It is also worth noting that when the Russian escape pod was used in a real emergency, it was only partially successful, sinking shortly after reaching the surface, and in doing so, drowning one of the men who had used it to escape the submarine.
@@MrMattumbo The Russian submarines of the time didn't have escape pods. The only confirmed escape pod was on the Mike-class submarine launched in 1983. The Oscar and Typhoon class submarines have been rumoured to have escape pods, but it is worth noting that if one was available to the crew of the Kursk, they were unable to make use of it.
Tragic doesn't even begin to describe this, it's heartbreaking thinking about those on board. The elation of hearing a rescue attempt, exhausting your battery trying to get them a location, and then realizing and coming to grips with the fact that they can't do anything.
Similar to the Kursk, you can only imagine what they went through, pure hell where a minute would seem like an eternity.
@@lesterbuckman5493 At least with the Kursk they could and should've been rescued. With Thresher I don't think we'd be able to rescue them now.
@@andrewcharlton4053 why wouldnt they be able to rescue them? (Both now and then?)
@@samfranklin9339 can't reach those depths with rescue equipment. NSRS goes to 600m (~2000ft) and these guys were sounding 7000ft. They didn't have anything as capable as NSRS back then. If Thresher was above 7000ft but slowly sinking/unable to recover then NSRS still wouldn't have gotten there fast enough imo. Again they didn't have anything on 24hr standby like we do now. But it still has to be flown somewhere, then installed on the vessel which has to sail there.
USN didn't have DSRV's operational until 1977, and their only able to get to 5000 ft max.
Folks, this is all misdirection. I speak from experience: I served as an Officer on a nuclear submarine and am familiar with the equipment being discussed. I've read the "new" information. Yes, the Seawolf logs record hearing *something*. They repeatedly requested whomever was making the noise (variously recorded as pings or bangs) to make a specific signal (e.g. "Victors" or morse letter "V", 5 bangs, etc.). Not once was the request complied with. The logs report a stationary "target" on their active sonar that they kept passing over, yet those same logs report that the nature of the target was unknown and may have been "biologics".
Remember the mindset of the Seawolf's Captain and crew: They desperately wanted to find the Thresher (as everybody did), and hope was strong. Much like all the rescue workers on the recent collapsed building in Miami. They logged every attempt in real time, and without the benefit of hindsight and subsequent information.
In reality, several factors augur for the sudden and catastrophic demise of all of the Thresher crew on the morning of April 10, 1963. First, the escorting ASR (Auxiliary - Submarine Rescue) Skylark heard and recorded her implosion at 0918:20 that morning. When a submarine implodes, it is instantaneous and utterly unsurvivable. The shattered remnants of her hull were found in 5 major pieces scattered over more than 30 acres. That happens when the implosion occurs well above the bottom, and the wreakage drifts down scattering widely through a great depth before hitting the bottom. And lastly, the bottom where the wreakage was ultimately located over a year later is 8100 feet deep. That is many times the classified crush depth of any combat submarine ever made.
Her loss was a tragedy and an embarrassment. The massive investigation and inquiry into what went wrong resulted in an enormous effort to upgrade designs, quality controls, and emergency procedures on US submarines. The crew of the Thresher did not die in vain: I, and the thousands of other submariners who have served in the improved submarines in the years since owe our lives in part to their sacrifice.
But rest assured that nobody in the crew suffered beyond the moments of mental anguish that they experienced knowing that they were sinking and could not stop it. When their end came, it came faster than their nervous systems could process.
Why did the Navy keep this under wraps for so long? Probably several reasons. But at least one of them was to spare the surviving loved ones exactly the emotions that we see in most of these comments, fearing that the crew died a slow and agonizing death.
Seawolf was doing her best to find survivors, even when none existed. I cannot explain all of the noises that they reported hearing in their logs, beyond the hope of fellow submariners desperately seeking to help and render aid. Such matters are seldom cut-and-dried, and much conflicting information must be sifted through to discern where the truth actually lies. But I am quite convinced that Thresher's crew did not suffer as so many are speculating based on a narrow thread of conflicting information that runs contrary to demonstrable evidence.
It was the souls of those lost
What about the mainframe sonar pings and the distress pings?
@@tagtag123 What evidence is there that what Seawolf heard and recorded was actually (as you assert) “mainframe sonar” and “distress pings” from Thresher herself? Why could those sounds not have been from other vessels in the area? Or misidentified from other sources? Please refer back to the evidence for a sudden catastrophic implosion.
Simply being able to ask “what about” and cast doubt is not evidence.
I note from your handle (“TruthfullEB”, with EB presumably an allusion to General Dynamics Electric Boat division) that you have an axe to grind. Would you care to share your credentials and reasons with everyone?
@@tkendall11 I agree with your general assessment. I, too, am a retired naval officer. While I was not a submariner, I ran several large-scale investigations into various types of accidents and mishaps as an EDO.
Rather than misdirection, I might use the words speculative and emotional. It seems the original post could have benefitted from some "sleeping on it" time for thought and processing. That behavior of jumping to conclusions is exactly what we teach investigators never to do. Our gut feelings on such things are frequently wrong. We love an answer that fits our gut, though.
As you correctly point out, this is a story told from a single source, the Seawolf. I have several obvious questions that I'd start asking if I could, but none of it really matters at this point. This information must be taken in with all the rest of the info available, and I'm reasonably certain there is info (and data) that would put this particular speculation to bed for good.
@@tagtag123 biologics, which if we follow the bouncing ball backwards, same biologics which made the implosion sounds heard by the Skylark.
Realistically there was no way to rescue those men. They died a terrible death. Every man that goes to sea in submarines recognizes those risks and hopes it will never happen to him.
Why the Navy classified this message traffic for fifty years is the real question.
Truthfully, I don't think any good would have come from letting out. Think about how much this disaster hurt people as it was. The magnitude of that extra 24 hours of suffering would have rocked the American public and the navy beyond comprehension. Considering submarine service was all volunteer as well, this would have killed enlistment for submarine crews.
Would have given the Russians hints to our submarine dive capabilities. Potentially endanger other crews
@@JayneCobb88 so you think Russians got on "submarine technology level of US 1963" this year? do you also think Europe is a country and every Islamist is a terrorist?
@@vaclavmajer2178 Probably more like they didn't release at the time because of Soviets, and then bureaucracy happened. Which leads us to now, 50 years later.
@@fourpony4566 As they say, rather classify something without consequences than unclassify something and face consequences.
Former EM1 Nuclear Electrician here. We are taught to believe our indications no matter what they are. If the Seawolf was reading 20 times above background on the nuclear instruments there was most likely a very big nuclear casualty as there were thousands of feet between it and the Thresher. Video of the wreckage also shows a massive hull breech aft of the sail while the rest of the pressure hull remained intact...with the expected failures of the shaft seal and sail having multiple failures. The ship was buried in nearly 30 feet of mud, so it hit with considerable force. A nuclear casualty would have to be expected at some point, even during a reactor scram the core requires constant cooling...and the battery would have died eventually. You can definitely assume the entire engine room was lost to flooding since the entire shaft up to the thrust bearing was completely out of the ship. The flooding from this at pressure would have put the ship into an unrecoverable position. Assuming the coolant loops didn't shear off from the shock of the ship hitting bottom, the entire engine room would have been filled with water and the electric plant would have been compromised with grounds. The core would have eventually boiled off coolant and melted. The Reactor Officer was new, and the normal RO was at home tending to his wife. If they were trying to get to the surface it's possible they tried an adhoc fast recovery and the reactor failed due to the reactivity addition rate being too high. Or they bled the steam out...so many scenarios here. But it's pretty safe to assume the indications from the Seawolf were legit, and those survivors on the bottom were likely exposed to high radiation and may not have survived a rescue.
SMH......You COULDN'T have been a Nuke.
@@mcfloyd9417 served aboard the USS Enterprise in EE03. Qualified SRO, Load Dispatcher, Electrical Rover, Reactor Electrician, and Switchgear Operator. So yes, I was definitely a nuke whether you like it or not.
@@Raistlin222 Did they have Fast Recoveries then? Hmmm.
@@RUFFSTUFFMEDIA I can't say for sure but my knee jerk reaction is no. I think this is probably why fast recoveries became procedural...at least that is what I heard coming down the pipeline. Back then I know scrams included different procedures than now...making recovery less probable.
@@Raistlin222 Well, if I remember correctly, back then you shut off all steam to the engineroom on a SCRAM. At the time, one sub had the procedural allowance to maintain decay heat propulsion via Captain's tactical situation. The development of the SUBSAFE program led to NR changing their procedures for the fleet.
Dad joined in 1958 at 17 years old. He started out on diesel boats (Cobbler, Cubera). He served on the James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson finally retiring as an E9 Master Chief Machinist Mate and C.O.B. USS Memphis. He knew men on both the Thresher and Scorpion. The Submarine force is a tight knit group. He never forgot these men. Eternal Patrol is what this is called.
The Reactor was Scrammed, ship rigged for reduced electrical, no ventilation fans turning. Air is getting stale. I served on the Permit class SSN. They have five water tight doors rated for 600 ft of pressure compartmentalizing the different sections of the sub. The strongest chamber was supposed to be the sonar sphere by design, yet is never intended as a life boat as it's access is in the bow compartment past the forward escape trunk. The ship's battery was their last hope. There is a means to use the battery to turn the screw to four knots worth of speed, but if they had that engine room flooding making them heavy, there was no way to use or access it. Auxiliary Machinery space had another electrical motor that was lowered beneath the sub to maneuver in port. It's small and rotatable. If they bottomed out on the sea floor, this too would be useless. Based on this release, my guess, is the Reactor Compartment Tunnel water tight doors were shut and was keeping the water out of the Operations Compartment. The two doors acted like a hull and backup which would become Sub Safe's standard practice going forward. Hull and Backups. There are some backups for ships control surfaces. The very last backup is pressurize air, good for a few full swings of the ships control surfaces before that option is used up. The air compressors need electrical power to recharge compressed air reserves. I seriously doubt the Captain would want to use the last of the battery power for air compressors. They were using it to call for help. This will haunt me.
There is no way they were bottomed out. The water there is 9,000 feet deep. The only way they could have still been alive 24 hours after the incident is if they were drifting in the water column at neutral buoyancy without power
@@bernieeod57 Doesn't explain the SOSUS picking up the implosion at 09:18:24 or so the morning of the 10th nor the discovery of an oil slick and debris south of the dive point some 8 hours after she went down.
Its a thought that crossed my mind everytime I put to sea on the Haddock, but these brave souls did not die in vain, their tragic sacrifice made it safer for all of us who followed in their wake to serve more safely in the silent service. MM1(SS)Aux.
Floating around in neutral buoyancy with minimal battery and apparently no HP air is enough to ruin a day for sure. The EPM is a sizable battery drain... the outboard is too - I've seen the starting surge in that, and it's notable... pretty sure it was an AC motor, the EPM was DC. Trim and Drain pumps were DC and could possibly help gain positive buoyancy... they weren't both in the engine room, were they? I think just the drain pump? Trim was in AMR? I cannot imagine mainframe sonar pings happening if the AMR was flooded, so it must not have been. I wonder what the fault was with the reactor and why they weren't able to get it started up again. Of course, if the engine room was flooded, no point in starting reactor. Wow, my brain is about to explode on this one. ET1(SS) (Reactor Operator) - SSN 639.
@@gfrerking , possibly a xenon transient, following a scram.
The xenon decays away after awhile, but in the meantime, can't start up.
These x transients would happen after rx trips (reason why controlled s d 's we're regulated slowly).
My great-uncle, MM1 John S. Regan, was aboard USS Thresher when she went down. What a horrific last few moments. Fair winds and following seas
Salute to your family's service.
Very Respectfully CPO (Ret)
MM1 (SS)
Alan Parsons, "On Air" is the album, "Brother Up In Heaven" is the cut. (One of the band members was related to the last person killed in the Iraq war ... and it was "friendly" fire.) 😥
Sorry for your loss.
Salute to your great-uncle for his service.
I salute your family’s sacrifice sir.
Ens. Merril Collier, a USNA classmate, had just reported aboard Thresher, as his first submarine assignment. He longed to be a submariner. His loss was very sad to all of us who knew Merril. RIP
Looks like his grandson is higher up in the comments section. Amazing how a video like this can link together so many people with a single person in common.
I am the eldest granddaughter of Merrill Collier, and thank you deeply for your kind remembrance of my grandfather. I'd commented a bit ago and then had the pleasure of seeing your post. It is a wonderful thing to be able to connect with others. Thank you for your service, sir, and bless you.
The problem is, in the 1960's submarine rescue for the Thresher was by a diving bell which was unfortunately only good to 800 ft of depth. There was no possible rescue available for them unless they could have come up to at least 800 feet.
Wish that rescue bell could be attached to a sub.
@@ee-ef8qr Attaching the bell to a sub isn't an issue, the issue is surviving the pressures at that depth, which is humanly not possible. The body cannot survive at those pressures even though we can easily get a bell to that depth.
Imagine what they won’t tell you tomorrow.
Imagine what they didn't tell us today.
Imagine if someone sunk the Titanic to successfully establish the Federal Reserve, and those same people, and their successors have been playing their game ever since.
They wont tell you tomorrow. But 40+ years later, if you are still around to hear about it.
@@pokerone6489 I've heard a story about that. The game started long before the titanic, if that's the case. The titanic was just a pawn
@@KDill29 certain people got into life boats. Certain people didn’t. Then they made it a romantic movie. 🤔
But yes in all likelihood this is a very old game that's still being played.
This video reminds me of an episode I saw from "Twilight Zone". A submarine apparently sunk in WW2 but one chief survived. He was brought on board rescue ship. He started hearing banging noises but he was the only one who could hear them. He was going crazy continually saying they are calling muster on me. The onboard doctor thought the chief was delusional. He continued to hear the hull banging sounds. Finally he screamed they are calling muster on me. He got out of the sailors clutches attempting to keep him from jumping overboard to be with his fellow sailors but he managed to jump into the sea. An inquiry was made in the sunken sub. The divers got into the submarine only to fine a skeleton with a hammer in his hand. That episode still gives me the creeps so it seems like the chief was hearing a dead crewman banging on the hull.
There is no telling what the gallant captain of the stricken sub told his men when they were staring their deaths right in the face. So very sad!
It felt like a ghost story reading it live.
We’re they hearing what they wanted to hear
They are hearing what they want to hear
That Twilight Zone episode also came to mind as I watched this video. My take on it was that it could have been a current moving the hammer that was still in the clutch of the dead sailor. Maybe.
I remember that Twilight Zone episode and only saw it once. I would like to see it again. Do you know the name of that episode or number? I used to enjoy watching the Silent Service too.
As someone who was on the USS Iowa BB61 on April 19th 1989 I know a thing or two about the Navy lying about an accident and trying to cover it up.
Neighbors son was in turret 2. She spent the rest of her life getting questions answered.
I always found it odd that the Captain of the Iowa seemed so concerned with making the turret look presentable and normal after the detonation, and how lots of debris and broken items that could've potentially been evidence were just tossed overboard as trash.
The whole idea that crewman Hartwig sabotaged the powder/gun to make it explode never really made sense to me. There's much easier and better ways to go about killing yourself, and if he wanted to do something harmful to his crewmates there were much better ways of doing that that also could've let him live. Perhaps if evidence was better preserved it could've conclusively shown it was an accident and not had led to an innocent sailor getting dragged through the muck.
Now we are being shown films of UFOs buzzing our aircraft.
Yeah. Interstellar travelers are gonna come to earth to play chicken with airplane.
THAT'S NOT A DOD LIE!!!!
@@matchesburn Iirc they said he was upset over a bad homosexual relationship (even though there was no proof either men was homosexual iirc, and if they were it wouldn’t matter), which tells all you need to know about their reasoning. Which I don’t get why they would come up with any excuse, but less one that stupid. Battleships have suffered far more violent magazine explosions just sitting in port (USS Main, IJN Mutsu, HMS Vanguard, etc.), and explosions during live fire exercises definitely weren’t that uncommon. Fortunately, I have heard the museum that currently operates Iowa keeps the light above both men’s bunks lit at all times in memoriam
@@Kevin_Kennelly Yeah they want us to believe that all aliens are gonna act like a Teenager high on coke behind the wheel. After figuring out how to survive long enough to travel here in the first place, they are either going to treat us like lab rats and study our ancient ways relative to them, or they are gonna curbstomp us and take our stuff.
“The government lied to us.”
Welcome to the real world, Neo.
Government lies are Conspiracy Theories.
@@Pfsif ok Cypher.
A few months back on a vid about various deaths being listed as coof despite the deaths being ladder falls to drunk driving wreaks someone challenged me to give them 1 just 1 instance of any government ever lying to the people.
I replied with a bunch of posts listing lies from various govts.
@@pickeljarsforhillary102 still no evidence for the "coof" thing. One instance of something does not validate another.
How do you figure given this BS allegation was specifically addressed and dismissed in the Finding of Fact of the COI Report?
I have a hard time believing thresher was able to hold position for 20 hours above crush depth on emergency power.
Excellent point.
@@bobbyrayofthefamilysmith24 I would imagine they had some kind of power failure and maybe flooding. Ballast tanks could have froze on blow as well who knows. All I know is it's highly unlikely a sub in that condition can stay absolutely still at depth and motion.
@@bobbyrayofthefamilysmith24 Near test or collapse depth the emergency blow system is only partially effective.
@@Jimmy_CV .. it's impossible... This guy is basically a dork...
@@bobbyrayofthefamilysmith24 they had similar problems on sister ships with the blow valves freezing up due to the bournoulli's principle causing a drop in temperature along with the drop in pressure, and the moisture freezing diminishes the amount of air that can come in to blow out the water.
To the men on the USS Thresher: Fair winds and following seas
For they are on Eternal Patrol.
fiddler´s green, boys
May Thresher crew and their Goldstar families Rest in Peace, undisturbed by those who make their daily bread off revisiting for the voyeuristic buzz the sensational suffering they inadvertently endured in their national service to all of us.
Sharks in the area of the implosion were well fed on the sailors' bodies. That is the only positive thing I can garner from this tragic sinking.
@@wapiti3750 That is the most ugly and unfit sentence I have ever read or heard in 67 years of learning. You ARE definitely focused. Your special comment, what allows and produced it ARE extraordinary, imho, special by that measure. Your comment is a recordbreaker in my extraordinary book of experience. I cannot emphasize how phenomenally that is (BAD!).
It's a very unfortunate lesson learned, but the Thresher incident started the Navy's SUBSAFE program.... accountability of all parts and materials that penetrate the pressure hull.
That’s the one good thing that came out of this. If I remember correctly, USS Scorpion hadn’t been through her SUBSAFE refit before she was lost in ‘68.
@@mactac25: it’s lucky the British learned this lesson before WW2 with the HMS Thetis.
Lost in just 150ft of water. Because of torpedo tubes.
Her stern was sticking out of the water and they still couldn’t find her within 24 hours.
Thresher is no less a tragedy then Kursk.
Most safety guidelines are written with blood
@@mactac25 there's no thing called a "subsafe refit".
'Subsafe" is an accountability *program*
It's theorized that the Scorpion sank due to a hot run torpedo, caused by a faulty battery design.
It's a long story, but due to the Soviet Union's expanding aggressiveness and the building cold war, at that time the Navy wasn't in a position to completely redesign and refit every fast attack sub that was in service.
At least one good point about this story but still, when your sub sinks/is out of controll and the situation is complicated, do you really believe the US Navy will rescue you at all costs?
When someone decides to work on such ships i think he/she also deserves to know what he/she can expect, i would rather shoot myself than suffocate miserably.
Well bismarck's words ring true. "Never believe anything until it has been officially denied."
The SeaWolf & SeaOwl told the DD's to F-off & be quiet multiple times, and they just kept on making noise.. wow.
Look at it from the DD's perspective. USN subs' sonar capabilities are all classified info. So, they do what they know to be most effective.
@Alex Østergaard The desire to do something and "help" even If it's futile. Humans don't always make the best decisions.
Honestly if I was the captain of SeaWolf I would have messaged the DDs saying "Pretend you're in a room full of sleeping babies and turn off your fucking sonar and engines!!"
I had just send a practices torpedo and bang on the Destroyers hull, perhaps they will get the message then!
@@GrumpyIan the problem was that the Seawolf was fitted with some classified sonar at the time. The DD were basically trying to kinda hide it’s existence to the Russians by using their sonar and engines to cover it up, and the secondary purpose of finding the Thresher.
My age was 13 at the time. "Thresher" was one of the reasons I did not end up in the Royal Dutch Navy as a submariner, like my mother wanted. Riveting and very knowledgable exposé of what happened, Heartbreaking fate of crew deserves place in our memory.
I've gone back to the books, and it's very clear that the implosion happened at 0918 on 10th April. Not only did SOSUS detect it, clearly, but also the Skylark, right above Thresher, heard it as well at the same time. Further, at 1730 on the same day, the Recovery spotted an oil slick and debris, all of which were consistent with Thresher. In the old Polmar book, it is clear that the activities of Sea Wolf were taken into account, but attributed to various noises and echoes from other search vessels. Panic over!
Agreed, but it seems Jive wants to stay within his echo chamber and only "Likes" the comments that agree with him. I've pulled him up a few years ago and suggested he read Bruce Rule's book but sadly he hasn't taken up the offer. I haven't read the report Jive is reading in full, but I think further down the navy dismisses the Sea Wolf's account. Jive is deliberately twisting the truth here and creating mistrust in the navy he served in. This "us and them" mentality only fosters further misgivings for those who choose not to do their own research and think critically.
@@gaskit1448 Way down below in the comments someone posted that Bruce Rule said this was completely false, and Jive agreed that if Rule said that it was a game changer. It would probably be a good idea for him to publicly state here that he jumped to conclusions ... as the evidence is extremely clear and beyond dispute.
@@fergalohearga9594 Oddly enough, Jive himself states that he could see holes in most of the report coming from the Seawolf... but then overlooks them when confronted with the statement of the sub commander hearing the 37 active pings. Everything else was inconsistent but he hangs his hat on just the active sonar comment, considering this is from a raw debrief and nothing was verified from third parties.
@@fergalohearga9594 Better watch it or the Sonar Girl will mute you too as he has others that quoted FACTS not BS.
@@mcfloyd9417 No worries! I don’t watch the channel anymore, as it lacks credibility … did he ever publicly acknowledge his gross error and apologise?
Hey, Jive, that's not a radio message, that's a formal naval letter. Old YN2/SS here.
Radio messages are ALL CAPS.
Was thinking the same thing YN2. But it's been long enough since I saw a radio message that I wasn't sure.
YN3(AW/IW)
Thanks for clarifying
Correct you are. RM3/SS
Can someone explain the significance to me?
@@KevinMcLaren71 Yn most likely typed up the ships log.
Correction on the discussion around the 32 minute mark: they are talking about locating the sea mount the admiral asked for the location of. It was reported in a couple of the entries you skipped over and since it was close by and rose to 450 ft and Seawolf was operating at 400, the boss wanted them to find it so they could avoid it.
I was wondering about that.
I think that was the 'pinnacle' part of the narrative.
@@SubBrief that's what I understood it to be.
After imploding at 730 metres in 1/20th of a second, the idea that there could be a functional sonar and someone onboard Thresher left alive to operate it is utterly ludicrous.
Idk, the bow section was still intact. If only the engine room flooded, the reactor compartment could've shielded the bow from the force of the implosion. They could've then survived and used what was left of the batteries to trigger the sonar.
What we see with Titan - which is much smaller than submarine - is that very large chunks of Titan survived the implosion and left untouched by the forceful crush/annihilation. On pictures we can clearly see inner wires of Titan left undamaged, and yesterday we were being told that even body parts were found.
@@ranc1977 The Titan was made out of single frame carbon fiber. It shattered. Navy and every other submarine is made out of sectioned steel hulls. This is why the Titan was a submersible and not a submarine. A submarine can actually suffer depressurization and even implosions in certain areas of the hull and not be completely destroyed. As it’s actually happened before.
@@xCobraCommanderx You're not absorbing all information.
The breaking news yesterday was that the body parts were recovered.
If shattering of carbon was really deadly and catastrophic - those bodies would be a goo, broken to atoms - to due high pressure and high temperature. Obviously - this did not happen.
You also not take into account that Rush Stockton used experimental technology - which may caused to carbon deviate from laboratory tests and actually slowed down the destruction process.
@@xCobraCommanderxretty sure what makes a submersible not a submarine is moreso that it can return itself to port and relies on other vehicles to be used. Not that it has sections separated by bulkheads or not to survive partial leaks
Feels like it was hours and days of just asking “you dead yet?”. It seems like seawolf found them quickly with good accuracy… but then it’s just asking for more messages? What’s the plan for actually getting to the men?
Commenting bc I want to know.
There was no plan, if almost impossible to save the crew of the sub, and it IS impossible when they are so deep down in the ocean. There was absolutely nothing the US could do beside maybe putting the sailors out of their misery with a torpedo. It’s sad but that’s a unfortunate reality of being a submariner. There’s a reason why subs are referred to as underwater coffins…
in the 1960s the US navy had no capability to rescue anyone at that depth. this is all hullabaloo over nothing; the navy could do nothing to save those men.
The plan is to get as much information as possible. The problem was eventually found, but just imagine your newest and most advanced boat getting lost without enemy action. You need to know how it was lost and fast. Thus trying to establish coms is very important.
Not just that from the report it seems like every time Seawolf was nearly down to a fixed position on them the Destroyers made it impossible for that last bit of triangulation. Imagine trying to find a bus in absolute darkness in a field. Now you are also in a bus and everyone dies if you bump into them.
And every time you hear what you think is the other bus is actually a nearby freight train.
Still waiting for SCORPION families to send their own expedition to know what really happened. That they were being restrained from doing so only creates more doubts.
I wonder if some of the rumours of cold war gone hot are going to be behind the uss scorpion disappearing. The difference between the way the navy are treating the 2 sinkings is very different.
I still think Scorpion went down due to what submariners call a "Jam Dive". It's where the stern planes get stuck at some dive position and the sub tries to do an outside loop in the water. Yes, that's as horrifying as it sounds.
The usual suspect is for the stern planes hydraulic ram to blow out on one end, dumping all the pressure on that side and going to full deflection.
I was on Ohio-class subs, and we had 8 seconds to get through all our immediate actions. The Skipjack class was much faster moving, 3-5 seconds or less to respond. The Scorpion was transiting relatively shallow, about 300ft, and at flank speed, as fast as she could go.
One of the response steps to stop the angle from increasing is to emergency blow the forward group. If you can't do that, you're going to go really deep scary fast.
One of my subs had a wild hair up the ass of the drill boss, he did a jam dive while we were at sea and slow. We usually do those in the trainer. Even with a limited dive angle and slow, we got a lot deeper than I think anyone anticipated...
There have been two books written about the Scorpion disaster. I read Scorpion Down about 15 years back. A very interesting book with many interesting claims.
My own opinion?
1) We only know what the Navy will release to the public.
2) As a submarine officer from the 1960s told me, "No one is going to start World War 3 because they were caught screwing around where they weren't supposed to be."
3) As much as our military defends us, it also tries to keep the crazies in government from starting a war.
I believe the scorpion went down due to a run away battery. Per the book blind man's bluff, this theory is talked about heavily as to what caused the scorpion to go down. Not to mention there was evidence of an explosion in the bow when they surveyed the wreck.
@@sloppyjoe400 The theory is a runaway torpedo due to a faulty battery design. BMB went into the theory and presented supporting cases as well as a narration from a sub simulator.
However, the Navy pushed the "Scorpion headed home" and "no radio comms" narrative for decades. It wasn't until later that the Navy released that it tasked the Scorpion to check out a group of Russian ships in the region of the Azores and admitted that the Scorpion usually checked in every 24 hours. This means that the Navy knew about the Scorpion missing long before it left the crew's friends and family waiting at the dock. I guess it was all part of operational security.
The bottom is like 9000 feet. No part of the Thresher could possibly survive that. And the Skylark, which was nearby at the time of the sinking, got a message stating "exceeding test depth" then detected an implosion event a couple of minutes later by I believe both the Skylark and SOSUS. This all happened a day before the Seawolf arrived. I suspect all the BQC and ping activity was coming from surface vessels.
Unless only parts of the ship broke, and it remained afloat somewhere between test and crush depth for a while. Rythmic metal on metal banging is unlikely to have come from any of the surrounding vessels.
It's hard to piece together what exactly went down, but if other vessels were pinging active in the area at the time, the Seawolf could have easily found that out...
@@Chrinik Damaged submarines are not neutrally buoyant. They are rising or they are sinking. And no one was alive after an implosion with an energy release in the area of 20K pounds of TNT.
@@Chrinik The Thresher suffered catastrophic breakup, key word is catastrophic, while I think we all wish there was hope of saving the men onboard there’s no chance anyone was alive on the Thresher after 09:18 when the implosion was recorded, while we won’t know what happened to what was left of the Thresher after 09:18 it’s most likely it simply sank into the depths and further broke apart upon hitting the ocean floor, it’s tragic but the idea that the Thresher was even fragmented and neutrally buoyant, with survivors somehow still alive on board, just doesn’t align with how we understand catastrophic events like this to play out
@@karoliner9631 Then I wonder who kept responding to Seawolf...something must have and if they found out who it was, it should be available information...
@@Chrinik I’ll grant it does sound rather strange until you remember that there was another submarine in the area and multiple surface ships that were actively looking for the Thresher as well, the Seawolfs version of events was evaluated by the court of inquiry and was discounted.
Bruce Rule, a naval acoustic and SOSUS expert who testified at the Thresher inquiry, has stated:
“This UA-cam video is false, the Seawolf report the presenter is reading from is correct, but the final report certified it was false readings. Seawolf was confused by the active sonar and noise created by the destroyers and the diesel submarine Sea Owl searching for Thresher on 11 April 1963, the day after she was lost. She mistook all sounds from the searching ships as banging on the hull and sonar pings from Thresher. It was a mistake.”
It sounded like confirmation bias in the vain hope that there was a chance to save the Thresher.
The Seawolf arrived a day after the sinking as well, by which time anything remaining neutrally buoyant would stay as such. I don’t see why something would just sink after all that time where apparent luck had stopped the whole or partial vessel from sinking to the depths. Submarines are amazing feats of engineering but when one implodes they rarely if ever are seen again, the few that we have found all end up in a similar place, the ocean floor.
This report is spooky in a sense because of how much apparent activity was found but most if not all have been found inaccurate and deemed not credible readings of the Thresher.
If all the banging were attributed to surface ships, the instances of “weak voices” were discounted, why do we believe that the pings were somehow exempt from being some other vessel?
There comes a point where despite what we want to believe we have to come to terms with the reality that the USS Thresher had already joined many other vessels on eternal patrol.
I'm having trouble getting my head around this. NO combat submarine in any navy worldwide then or now could survive a submergence to 1300+ fathoms! I'm a retired STSC/SS and have seen "official" reports on both SSN589 and SSN593. Scorpion may have survived a long way down but not a chance below depths that I'm sure are still classified but nowhere close to the depths Thresher went down in. Whatever Seawolf heard, it wasn't live sailors aboard Thresher. Don't be surprised when further reports come out debunking this report as "flawed".
I agree...something wayyy off about this. No wayyy sub or crew survived this depth.
Not to mention the footage shot by Ballard when he was ostensibly looking for TITANIC. THRESHER isn't a wreck on the bottom like SCORPION is. Its a debris field! Maybe....and I mean maybe, somebody had the presence of mind to turn on the UQC-1 emergency pinger(s) before they passed crush depth and maybe.....maybe the units survived and were still transmitting from the debris, but I doubt even that. The UQCs are pretty rugged but I don't think they'd survive 1300+ fathoms.
Hey Bill, Retired STSCM(SS) here. I'm still looking for an explanation of the 3.5khz pings, 37 times? From the reports here, none of the other subs or ship had a Sonar at that Frequency. That's the part that has me scratching my head!!!
Can't recall the designator for the distress pinger. BQN-13 I think. Now in 63' I don't know if it even existed but on 594s and newer there was an emergency distress pinger that operated at 3.5 khz. If someone turned it on before the boat collapsed it could have survived all that time. It had only an "one-off" switch on it and a safety pin. Turn it on and it pinged at a set interval until the batteries were spent. So 37 pings, if they did happen, were likely distress pinger. Aaron oughta know that.
@donnysmith946 I could be wrong, but I believe it stated in the report that The Thresher had 3.5khz.. Don't quote me on that, but I remember earlier in the video, it said something about Thresher & 3.5khz
I think it was a bit chaotic, what I think was happening was that the metal on metal banging was coming from the DDG's or one of the DDG's on the surface. They are banging on the hull trying to let the Thresher know that they are up here. later on the party or parties concerned, realized they were confusing the issue, ceased their activity and never mentioned it. The garbled telephone transmissions were obviously the DDG's depth finders, which the Sea Wolf asked them to shut off... The 37 active pings? Probably the Sea Owl doing its own thing thinking it was helping or the DDG's again.
There is no breaking up sounds after this... So no Thresher floating at a sub critical depth and then later sinking and imploding. Everyone would hear that, because everyone is listening...... Pictures of the Thresher show no intact compartments, the boat is completely fragmented, broken into five main pieces and strewn across the seafloor within a 33 acre area. So no miraculous survival of a few men in an intact compartment at 8400 feet.
What the report shows is just the chaos of a hopeful search and over zealous people attempting contact hearing things and interpreting them incorrectly.
This kinda reflects how I was thinking as this video unrolled. First, though, why did it seem he was reading this for the first time & improvising interpretations?
34:30 He says they're in "continuous communication" but that it's "only one way communication" & "Thresher can hear Seawold talking to it"
He doesn't know that Thresher heard anything. Sending messages to what they hoped was Thresher without knowing if they are being received isn't really communication, it's blind transmitting.
""Thresher can hear Seawolf talking to it and they're responding to commands." It never really sounded like Thresher responded to commands. There were possible sounds but none of them followed Seawolf's instructions, save for one or two times the number of bangs matched a request but then didn't continue to do so (coincidence?) & failed to follow subsequent commands. Might have been sounds of Thresher parts crushing, etc., or racket from topside?
The thing I can't wave away is the 37 pings unless (a) they came from another boat or (b) it's possible for dying electronics to fire off a string of pings before finally quitting.
We're used to govt lying about a lot of things, but maybe this time they didn't.
In the narrative, the USS Seawolf records BQC responses and UQC voice communication in response to the the USS Seawolf's call for response.
@@SubBrief Which video time hacks or dive & time hacks? I'll look again. It seemed to me that what Seawolf heard was never clear & unmistakeable or correctly responding to instructions (except the possible coincidence I noted).
@@SubBrief I'd very much like to hear the recorded UQC communications, as opposed to simply being told that they existed. I'd like to determine for myself how ambiguous the identification of the source of the UQC/BQC is.
@@SubBrief i would also like to know if and where we could hear those recordings our selves
Remember the 1/3rd trim parties we used to piss Dive off with. We were doing that under NORMAL propulsion. I find it hard to believe Thresher could hold a STOP trim during an engineering flooding casualty for 24 hour on battery. The boat was demolished on the sea floor; which only happens because it was not flooded. The battery capacity of the 594(3) was significantly less than the diesel/electric boats; while the mass was twice the size; with an electrical load approximately 4 xs a diesel boat. I find it implausible that Thresher survived for 24 hours.
Personally as a father, I would want to know how my son died. As much as it would hurt (this hurts just listening to it), I would want that burden. It's not closure, but it would at least provide clarity to his final moments.
Sometimes families get classified info... sometimes.
I don't know if I would want to have my folks know I had a long, lingering suffocation.
I think if it was my kids out there, I'd rather have the polite lie that it was so quick nobody would have recognized that they were in danger.
@@ScottKenny1978 true but now the family's if they are still around today hear this that they were lied to will be even more distraught bringing it back up
@@lenny567l yes. That's the problem with lying in the first place.
Though I also think we had enough heavy medicines (morphine etc) onboard to let people go peacefully. Not something you want to talk about, obviously, but it's there.
As a Granddaughter who believed for my 38 years on earth death came instantly this has rocked me. I am so glad my mom is not alive to hear this news
So, Thresher spent over 24 hours drifting at neutral buoyancy before another failure and dropping below crush depth? Having served on a 594 class, I have some insight: 1) The 594 has 5 compartments, 3 of which can fully flood without overcoming the boats reserve buoyancy. The Bow compartment, Reactor Compartment, and the Machinery space (AMS). 2) The Machinery space could not have been flooded because the SSMG's are there. The fact that she was able to go active on its main sonar indicates it had AC power if only from the battery. 3) If they were neutrally buoyant, why did they not simply pump the trim tanks to sea? Or blow the negative tank? If they had the power to run main sonar, they would have had the power to run the trim pump, drain pump, and EPM. I find it difficult that the crew could not have made the boat surface if they had 24 or more hours to figure it out. Especially if they were drifting in the water column
T & D pumps are DC powered, if I remember right. One was in the engine room, wasn't it? Maybe that one wasn't usable. The other one in AMR? In any case, at that depth, the outside pressure very well could have been beyond the discharge pressure of the pumps. Could have been beyond the pressure of the air they had available (if any). If ER flooded, EPM would be out of the picture as well.
@@gfrerking Yes, the drain pump was in ERLL and the trim pump was in AMSLL. They were DC powered and able to pump to sea down to crush depth.
@@bernieeod57 but the amount they pumped at that depth was significantly less, yes?
After reading much more of these documents, and reading others analysis of the information. I am beginning to think with all these other ships banging away with active sonars. That Sea wolf was confused in what they thought was Thresher. Just thinking about Thresher is heart wrenching. I can't imagine what was going through the minds of those 129 men onboard. Just doing their damnedest to work the problem and save the ship. God be with those who were lost, and those who were left behind.
Yes. The bottom depth was >8000', absolutely impossible to survive there. Also essentially impossible to maintain depth with no propulsion and active flooding. I find it exceptionally improbable that the thresher got "stuck" for hours at a depth where the hull could survive but that they didn't quickly sink or float to the surface. Neutral buoyancy is not the natural, stable state for a submarine, you have to work to stay there, and they didn't have the power to run discharge pumps or electric motor for that many hours. If they were trying to claw their way to the surface on the battery they wouldn't have wasted power on active sonar... they knew that if they sank in that depth nobody could help them anyway. Skylark heard hull-collapse transients. This is one of those cool stories, bro.
Correct. I love this channel and will continue to watch it but this vid sure seems like click bait. It worked! Lol
Problem I see Gene C, is that the 3.5Khz pinging could ONLY have been coming from the Thresher. To the best of my knowledge, there were no other platforms in that area had a 3.5Khz sonar..
@@donnysmith946 how would they have gotten the po
That's exactly what the board thought at the time - and why they rejected this information.
We dismantled the old USS Seawolf and it's predesossor the USS Parche at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
Both were very unique and very classified subs.
As was USS Halibut SSGN/SSN 578, having served on board all three of these boats! All I will say
Is anyone that trusts their own government at this point ! I served 3 decades +2 , loose lips sink ships!
What happened to Thresher should never have happened, many of our fellow bubbleheads have given their lives
For our Country as did those of the Soivet Union! All truth will eventually be brought to the light!
The last 12 years should have wakened the entire Universe!
Can confirm. We did dismantle them at PSNS
@@mr.b6374 we dismantled the Halibut as well. If I remember correctly, it was in dry dock 6, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard's largest dry dock, along with 2 other subs, simultaneously.
@@redalertsteve_ I was a Shipfitter (S/11) and spent years in C/350 doing the scrap shuffle.😂🤣
What shop or code were you in?
@@kellyc2425 71
I'd love to hear from anyone on the Seawolf that day. Especially the sonarmen and/or the captain. To hear what they're thoughts are
I was on the Seawolf later and during a reunion I talked to one of the sonar men that was there on the day it happened. He told me of these findings , even then they thought it was just sonar from other ships
@@mikeharris4592 Bingo. Pressure at depth isn't a conspiracy.
Their thoughts
I have doubts about the "pings". The implosion event heard by multiple sources precludes any guided activity from Thresher after that point.
This is easily one of the most heart wrenching things that could have happened to those on board. What a mess..
USS Seawolf did not look like most nuclear subs optimized for submerged speed. I saw and toured her in Washington in drydock before she was dismantled. She looked like a really big WW2 Balao Class.
She was of a similar hull design to Nautilus
> However, after the commander of Task Group 89.7 ordered that echo ranging and fathometers be secured so as to not interfere with the search, no further acoustic signals were detected by the Seawolf other than those originating from other searching ships and the submarine Sea Owl.[19] Ultimately, the Court of Inquiry determined
That while operating as a unit of the search force, the U.S.S. Seawolf (SSN575) recorded possible electronic emissions and underwater noises. None of the signals which SEAWOLF received equated with anything that could have been originated by human beings.[20]
Thanks for the great information, I served aboard the USS Point Loma AGDS 2, in 1977. We were deployed to the Caribbean with the Trieste II on board, we did deep dives in the Cayman Trench, (deepest any human had ever gone up to that point) , as I recall in early September or late August we headed for the Northern Atlantic. Bob Ballard was aboard (I had no Idea who he was at time, I was only 21 years old) We had no idea what our mission was till we arrived on station. I was a signalman and had access to bridge at all times. I saw a paper map and on it was the name "Thresher" with a red circle around it. I knew NOT to say anything for fear of the wrath of the CO. When we were on station the Trieste II did a series of 5 dives (I think) bringing up pieces of metal and placing them in wood and metal containers. Only after we got back to San Diego from the deployment did we find out "officially" that we had been to the Thresher site. Thank you for this great information "37 Pings" would be a great name for a novel about the Thresher. Keep up the good work!
I want to say thank you for everyone's response to this video. You have grown my channel by nearly 30% in 5 months. I could not be more thankful to everyone who is sharing of this video around the internet, commenting and thumbing +/- (doesn't matter, but we have a 96%+). You made my channel, the YT algorithm, and my accountant very happy. Thank you very much! Love all of you, please keep up the widespread distribution. The click through rate has made this one of the most successful videos on my channel and you get full credit for that. Thanks. Nothing but love for you all. -Aaron
Facts: This is the USS Seawolf's narrative released by the U.S. Navy's investigation, not my opinion.
15:00 At just before 2pm 11APR63 There are people alive inside the USS Thresher.
You can download the U.S. Official release here: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20986255/tresher9_10_reduced.pdf
Fair winds and following seas, mate. Right in the pickle barrel, eh? Who's pitching for ya' hot dog? Go Navy, go!
I was curious to learn this information because I followed the sad official news story with my Navy vet dad at the time in 1963...everyone hoping the Thresher would be found with the crew safe....it was not to be. The Thresher seemed like a dark omen for what would happen later in November to another Navy vet while in Dallas. Many years later I stayed at the home of a relative who had bought the house of one of the Thresher crew members. I did not know this fact until after I had reported seeing someone walk into my room at night, only to be told it was not a person,but, a " friend" who visitors see from time to time in the home.....a " friend" who was lost on the Thresher. What a shame that nothing could be done at the time to save the men still alive. I hope they have methods to do so now. Brave men have gone under the waves and have been lost...from the Hunley to the Thresher....( not counting the Russky tubs in "Hunt for Red October " and in real life ), and they all should be remembered and honored.
@@janineroshka2489 Yup. We all have to die sometime, somehow. These crews died quick, relatively painfree and honorably for ALL we know. Their lives should, must and are celebrated by the living, if known and understood as such. Fair winds and following seas, friend. We remember the titans.
congrats on the growth-- you've earned it
Just shows you can profit from BS which YOUR version certainly is. You should be ashamed.
Dad worked with a ex USN sub engineer back in the early 90's......one comment he made about the thresher incident always stuck with dad.....'the only thing i can say is that the navy was honest about the thresher being lost.....everything else was bullshit'......this from a guy who spent 30 odd years running nuke reactors on subs, about half of them as chief engineer.....
I suppose the american fetish for lunatic conspiracies does run quite deep then. Even with this so called nuke engineer.
What was his (the nuc eng) theory of what happened? How does his theory differ from the Navy's?
@@jamesbrown5600 Dad got the impression that he knew it didn't happen the way the navy claimed it did.....but dad wasn't the type to push someone to talk about something they cannot so never dug deeper.
The information in this video seems to back that the navy lied....or at least omitted information about the sequence of events around the loss of the Thresher.
@@m2heavyindustries378 In defense of americans being conspiracy prone: we have a point in our favor, the US Government.
The alphabet agencies have, on many occasions, actively screwed with the American public. The CIA had MKUltra and the FBI had COUNTELPRO.
I want to tell the conspiracy guys they're crazy and absolutely baseless, but its hard to do so when they can point at things our government has illegally done.
Conclusion #35 of the Navy Court of Inquiry:
"That while operating as a unit of the search force, the U.S.S. Seawolf (SSN575) recorded possible electronic emissions and underwater noises. None of the signals which SEAWOLF received equated with anything that could have been originated by human beings."
There's no way anyone could have survived at the sea depths on-scene, especially after Thresher imploded at 0918 on 10-Apr.
My Uncle committed suicide years later over the Thresher.
Explain the 3.5Khz Pings?? No other ship in the area had a 3.5Khz Sonar. Threasher;s BQS-6 was heard 37 times pinging and it had very very powerful Transmitter Tubes that sucked a LOT of power. The Sonar on the surface ships was a bit higher than the 3.5. I believe at the time the newest surface ship Sonar was an SQS-23 which was 5Khz
@@donnysmith946 My guess would be the USS Thomas Jefferson. I think the Ethan Allen-class had similar sonars to the Thresher.
Those men were at 1100 feet, 7000 is just too deep to speculate. Has anyone calculated her buoyancy with totally flooded compartments? Just too heavy to surface, just a very slow dive that was beyond control? So many feet per hour, per flooded compartment. Not necessarily a compromised boat, but a very specific unrecoverable problem.
Yeah that's the only way this makes sense without going full on ghost story, but then you still had the Seawolf calculating their depth to 7000 feet which... *might* be them making an assumption and not an accurate detail at all. Like this whole thing is really weird.
This is where is gets real for submariners.
The Thresher is on, what we call, Eternal Patrol.
That's what pushed me and my bros to get qualified; ain't nothing worse than not having your 🐟 and sitting on the bottom of the ocean for eternity ⏳😔
@@zulu5405 “welcome aboard, here’s your qual card. Get busy, Nub.” 🐬
I just enlisted for sub service this it's a wakeup call as to what could happen down there.
@@codyspradley6277 no worries. What happened to the Thresher can not happen again. The loss of the Thresher was a catalyst for a lot of systemic improvements. It changed the way the boats are built, tested, and operated. No US submarine has been lost in over 50 years now.
A nickels worth of free advice, work hard, study hard, and qualify. Don’t be goofing off until you have your fish, also called dolphins and have all your watch stations qualified. Be a hard charger and you will be noticed. Accept additional responsibilities as a challenge. You’ll likely be assigned collateral duties. The fundamentals of my collateral duty I still use regularly, even after being a civilian for 22 years now. Learn all you can.
Lastly, welcome aboard.
Indeed they are, until the day the Sea gives up her dead.
This is pure BS and sensationalism.
I was aboard Sea Leopard, SS-483, in the area, when Thresher went on eternal patrol. We had an FT aboard who had left Thresher just 3 weeks previously due to safety concerns. We were required to do a helo transfer to get him to shore ASAP. I don't recall his name, but would like to know it. I am Don James, Reactor Operator aboard the 611(B) and 598(G), ET1(SS)(DV).
Damn just damn. Not gonna lie yall, this hurt my soul
Yep.
Same.
Two things terrify me. The ideal of dieing in a cave that collapses or being sealed in. The second is drowning. Particularly in the ocean. A sub is a combination of both those things. It would either help me get over them both or fear would grip me into a catatonic state.
@@joeottsoulbikes415 man, me too. To have to feel that in depth of claustrophobia and all the horror going on around you. I can't imagine.
@@joeottsoulbikes415 You Just described my nightmares. You have to get up and turn the lights on and try to catch your breath.
@@williamjohnson4475 yeah that about sums it up mate.
The "mainframe pings can also be a dd SQS-4 series sonar or VDS.
The 23.5 could be the fathometer.
The bangs are transients, which can be anything , The way to sort it out is to get them to respond to a count , gertrude, ot morse. There is no such response , there is no evidence here that there is anyone alive.
NOT at that 3.5khz frequency
There are numerous stories of the UUS Oklahoma and other ships sunk at Pearl Harbor, where men on the rescue crews heard tapping in code from inside the sunken hulls for many days. That was only 50 feet of water. The pain and anguish I'm sure was the same listening to that as listening to what USS Seawolf heard, or thought they heard. Several years ago I met an old Submariner who was on the Triest dives and photographed the USS Thresher wreckage. Tough old senior Sailor, and it still bothers him. All hands in the hands of the Lord now.
This is the USS Seawolf's narrative released by the U.S. Navy's investigation, not my opinion.
15:00 At just before 2pm 11APR63 There are people alive inside the USS Thresher.
You can download the U.S. Official release here: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20986255/tresher9_10_reduced.pdf
Hey Jive, can we expect your article on The drive Warzone about this?
Keep up the good work man!
Just painful.
Absolutely heart breaking.
Didn't ballard dive the thresher for the govt right before he did the titanic with the same gear?
@@jadall77 Yes, the Titanic search was used as a cover story for locating and diving on both Thresher and Scorpion.
Aaron I think your knowledge and videos are excellent. But this video - I just can’t buy there being survivors 24 hours after the sinking. It’s an impossible scenario when the sub was heard to implode a day before.
Almost all other naval experts I have read disagree with your findings.
Keep up the good work , I enjoy your commentary and knowledge sharing.
And it wasn’t heard imploding afterwards..and we found the boat imploded. I agree. Love the videos will continue watching but I think this is just a confused Sea Wolf, and it’s totally understandable why.
David I agree with you.
I am with you very well said
At 1000 fathoms, there would be almost 2600 psi on the hull. At test depth (1300 ft for permit class subs) the hull can withstand 567 psi. That's roughly 4.5 times the pressure of test depth. Granted we don't know what the crush depth of the sub was, but I doubt the hull could withstand such pressure.
It is unsettling though to think they could have survived.
Well I hope they died instantly. We'll maybe never really know, but I sure hope no one "miraculously" survived to just sit down there.
As a proud U.S. NAVY veteran I salute those brave sailors. May they encounter fair winds and following seas on their voyage to their final port of call. At ease gentlemen, you have fullfilled your mission. God rest your souls. ✌🇺🇸
Captin, Jive; you need to write 37 Pings.
We had no way to rescue them.....
While they might not have been able to have been rescued... That doesn't excuse the U.S. Navy for covering this up and lying about it for nearly 6 decades. It's the lie that's inexcusable.
@@matchesburn the pings meant nothing in reality, all they were was a desperation act made by the poor souls on board the Thresher. What they did actually took some of the edge of the sinking of the thresher, since the public didn’t realize how desperate the crew was, the public knowledge was that the crew didn’t fully realize until to late and the sub imploded, giving the sailors a quick death.Also this was in the middle of the Cold War, you couldn’t willing give the public classified information. This is coming from a son and grandson of two submariners (grandfather was a CO and my dad was an officer). The sad part of being a submariner is that there is almost no escape once your vessel/boat starts sinking, unlike a surface vessel.
I think 37 pings: There was nothing we could do is better
@@Manticore2026
...There is absolutely nothing that compromises national security about the Navy saying, "We went to the area where the Thresher was last sighted and received signals that indicate that the crew was still alive, but unfortunately perished before any help could've been sent to them." *_Absolutely. Nothing. Excuses. This._* Why you're defending it, I have no idea. It's not defensible.
@@matchesburn It was better for the families to cope if they didn’t have to hear they their sons or husbands had basically suffocated to death, it easier for them to know that they died a quick and painless death. The second thing was the USS sea wolf was also in the report, which was HIGHLY, HIGHLY classified at the time. Third thing was that the Skylark reported hearing her (USS Thresher) implode and the reports from the sea wolf state that the active sonar ping might have been from other rescue vessels nearby. Fourth thing is that the Thresher was reported to have sunk 8,000+ ft below the surface, which guarantees that all sailors where dead or where soon to be dead. At the previous known depth of 1,100 ft below sea level, there was a slim chance of rescue but any deeper threw all chances out the window.
The grandpa of a friend of mine was a crew member of the USS Thresher.
My condolences to all friends and families who lost a beloved person on that day
There should be a law passed by Congress that if your military officer and you cover up the loss of any military personnel you should be prosecuted and then cashiered out!
Hey Jive, I used to work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (civilian). There’s a huge memorial for the Thresher in the center of Kittery. Even 50 years later people at the yard don’t like to talk about it (even less the 2012 fire - future video perhaps?).
What little they would say about the incident, they’d change the mourning into pride over SUBSAFE protocols that developed from the incident. I never got the chance to ask people outside the yard, but I was always told PNSY was THE PLACE to go to get subs serviced because of the short turn around time, low cost, and incredible safety record - despite it being the smallest yard. Hopefully it’s true. Everyone had monumental pride over that status as a sort of atonement for the Thresher.
I was only in IT, so I never really saw subs much. I love your channel because it provides context to the mission I was supporting.
These rumors have been circulating for over fifty years now and I remember it being talked about when I was in sub school and later sonar a-school back in the late seventies. In his 1974 book 'The Thresher Disaster', John Bentley discusses them, without the Sea Wolfs transcripts of course. The prevailing rumor was that an anonymous submarine, searching the Threshers last known position, had possibly heard garbled human transmissions from a submarines underwater telephone, UQC, possibly located in the lost submarines bow compartment which had, rumor, been blown off of an imploding submarine and was floating on a thermal layer while slowly flooding and sinking. Its clear that the Navy considered the SWs reports and discarded them as in error.
You really don't understand how much energy is release in a hull implosion. Bulk heads are no match for that event. No one was still alive at 9:20.
There's no such thing as slowly flooding a submarine. The more water gets in, the more the sub weighs and therefore it sinks faster. The deeper it gets, the worse the leaking gets.
In dive 2, @ 1355, there is NO tapping...! Instead there is "taping", as in, the USS Seawolf is TAPING (recording) everything that is going on, everything they "hear"!
When you don't want your enemies to know, you don't tell your own people either. Not surprised the truth has been kept completely in the dark for all this time.
I doubt the Soviets didn't know. The US Military and intelligence apparatus is a sieve to FIS. This is pure CYA.
And what exactly do you not want your enemies to know? From the get go the U.S. Navy admitted it was an accident and likely from design and construction defects, and anyone in the know would realize that there was no helping those men in the time frame this happened. The only things that the Navy were protecting were themselves.
A good reason why we call it 'The Silent Service.
@@matchesburn They didn't want the Soviets to know the quality of the sonar equipment on US vessels, and announcing they found her so quick and were able to keep contact would tell the Soviets just that.
@@matchesburn it's far better to control the flow of information and feed your enemies some of the truth and false information as well. Making it harder for the truth to be completely known. Just like having it do it's first dive in deep water. If it fails, then there's no chance the Soviets can recover cutting edge tech. Sacrifices the crew, but guards military secrets. It might be cold blooded, but it's certainly effective.
According to an article I read, they decided that the contacts were merely interference from other search vehicles. How could anyone be alive in Thresher after she imploded? No human could have survived that sinking.
That's assuming that she imploded when the Navy says that she did. I'm admittedly a bit skeptical about Thresher NOT being lost when the Navy said she was lost EXCEPT for the main active sonar pinging. No other (known) sub in the area had that type of sonar except Thresher. So, either someone else did that we don't know about and was in the area, or it was Thresher. The real key here is whether Seawolf actually did hear what she thought she heard, whether those pings were from a Thresher-class sub's main active sonar, or not. If they were, then Thresher did not implode when the Navy says she did. If they were not, then the official narrative remains mostly intact.
Yeah everything in Dive 1 is questionable, but having active sonar secured with all search vessels besides the Seawolf would eliminate that interference. Either the order wasn't *actually* given or the request wasn't actually sent and this report is faulty. Like Dive 2 is where it gets downright ghost story. You're right you *shouldn't* expect receiving any sonar from that depth, let alone mainframe active.
It didn't implode for at least 24 hours after it was lost. That's the whole point of this video you should watch and listen.
@@theswordguy5269 The BQS-6 sonar was BRAND NEW, no other class at that time had that system Period!!
@@joshw2929 And he's wrong. The Thresher imploded at 9:18 AM, April 10th. All souls were lost immediately.
I am just a stranger but thanks for sharing this. My grandfather was one of the engineers that worked on Thresher and the only reason I was told he wasn't on board for the voyage was because he got sick. A fortunate incident in a terrible tragedy.
This is terrifying, I can't even imagine what that operation must have been like for the crew of the Seawolf and even worse the survivors on Thresher, truly chilling news.
Don't want to be the nay-sayer, but this report is laden with suppositions, guesses, and mistakes. If the Thresher was semi-buoyant between test and crush depth, and then sunk to crush depth, it would have made quite a bang. SOSUS never recorded such an event. I was in the 3rd grade when this happened, and I'll never forget it.
What if it was a slow leak and not explosive compression? Not so much noise that way.
@@moistmike4150 if it was taking on water for 24 hours, thats a really slow leak if there was never an implosion. But I don't know how much water a sub can take on and still be adrift in that state.
@@Chronostream Simple math. Mass of the sub minus Buoyancy required to maintain submergence at equilibrium. Compressed ballast air reserve is only good for so long, until mass of water leaking into hull is beyond ability of ballast tanks to counter.
@@moistmike4150 the whole time it would be sinking as it takes on water though. There was still enough air for someone to be conscious enough to maintain contact. Enough air left for the equipment to still run. Though have no idea how submerged the electronics can be and still operate since they appeared to still have at least a half working radio before the end. Seems like before the DDs were on the scene, Seawolf had a bead on the Thresher, as if they had not been dropping that fast. Suppose that Thresher was somehow in a goldilocks zone of being enough water to sink but not enough air to implode?
@@Chronostream Not sure what you mean by "not enough air to implode". If they were leaking atmosphere, then the likelihood of implosion increases as internal atmospheric pressure diminishes. Submariners are in an extremely hazardous profession, because even in the absence of a shooting war with torpedoes and depth charges, multiple factors going sideways during peacetime operations can coincide to make escape from their fragile steel tube progressively more impossible as time slips by. God bless those brave men (and now, women, with the recent loss of an Argentinian sub back in 2017).
I’m not convinced that the Seawolf heard anything from the Thresher. This would require the Thresher to stay above crush depth for an extended period. SOSUS data indicated the Thresher imploded early on 10Apr
37 pings from the Thresher's mainframe sonar. They DEFINITELY heard the Thresher. This is undisputable.
@@madezra64 Ok. But data from SOSUS arrays, shows that on 10Apr63 at 09:18:24, at a depth of 730 metres (2,400 ft), 120 metres (400 ft) below her predicted collapse depth the Thresher imploded. The reason for these pings needs to be explored but considering the number of SAR ships in the area that might be a place to start. Moreover a mountain of other data supports the 0918 implosion
@@Dog.soldier1950 That's assuming that mountain of data is accurate and not obfuscated. Everyone is using SOSUS data like it's infallible. It's just as questionable as the 37 pings. Without a doubt that was the Thresher. The evidence is just staggering and refutes everything SOSUS reported, almost as if SOSUS was a part of the cover up? BUT, who knows yet.. More to come for sure.
@@madezra64 37 pings on 3.5kHz, that's all.
AFAIK this is a frequency available to several sonar systems and not limited to the BQS-6.
Seawolf did not know which other vessels were present and had no way of knowing, because the emergency frequency was overloaded.
The pings might turn out to be the strongest evidence against Captain Jives theory.
There seems to be some doubt that Thresher even could go active without reactor power, let alone after 24h draining battery.
Also, if Thresher survived for a day adrift and only eventually sank, a second implosion would have been audible for SOSUS and search vessels.
A disabled Thresher could have hung at a depth for a while by an albeit unlikely combination of circumstances including frozen compressed air lines which thawed and allowed a bleed of air into the main ballast tanks which compensated for buoyancy loss from water inflow from damaged fittings or the main shaft seal, with an inversion layer either supporting her or holding her down. Eventually leaks won, and she slid down through crush depth. Maybe it was the control room which flooded, leaving those in the sonar room unable to command the motors but able to operate the sonar using reactor power...
What a bombshell...I can't believe how much this changes our perceptions of what happened to the Thresher & that they could keep it under wraps for so many decades. Certainly puts it in a different light. Also, great video name, JT 👍
And now we may start wondering even more about Scorpion.
Were there any rumors floating about this? Seems like just the type of macabre thing to scare impressionable young sonarmen with, "Member the fellas that sank back in '63? Heard them for days..."
Maybe the CIA vans are real.
@@mqL49J As far as I know, there weren't even rumors that they were alive or the boat was located. I believe the official cover story was that Thresher was not found until the following year during salvage/recovery. No mention of the Seawolf etc. They were able to keep a tight lid on this, I would think because of the amount of embarrassment/damage this would cause the USN. Look at what Kirsk did to the Russian navy, for example.
@@MrTylerStricker I think you're right, and I'm genuinely surprised that the government was able to keep a secret.
@@scotty1108 I was as well. I'm assuming it's been kept so secret for so long because of how embarrassing or damaging the USN thought it would be. Goes to show that it's not inconceivable for a large event to be covered up & no one leak it to the public or even cause rumors in this case.
Bruce Rule himself said you're spewing fiction, and that should be the final word:
“This UA-cam video is false, the Seawolf report the presenter is reading from is correct, but the final report certified it was false readings. Seawolf was confused by the active sonar and noise created by the destroyers and the diesel submarine Sea Owl searching for Thresher on 11 April 1963, the day after she was lost. She mistook all sounds from the searching ships as banging on the hull and sonar pings from Thresher. It was a mistake.”
I think no matter what the crew on USS Seawolf heard, it was definitely beyond rescue. Nothing they could do.
1350 fathoms = 8100 ft = 2.4 km. Definitely werent at the bottom while transmitting.
No, that was a return from the seabed. The Seawolf was at about 400-500 feet depth, add the 8,100 feet fathometer return, and you have the roughly 8,500 to 8,600 ocean depth in the area they were in.
@@DERP_Squad Yeah, 2.4 km is a heck of a lot, so definitely had to be something else than the boat.
@@juslitor The only way I can imagine a transmission from that depth would be some kind of short circuit setting off the ping, but it seems unlikely to the point of being impossible for that to be the cause of a ping every 15s for 9 minutes.
@@DERP_Squad but they weren't at that depth most likely while pinging, they were likely buoyant hovering near crush depth despratly trying to save it for 24 hours as said, what I'm interested in was the acoustics recorded of an implosion event, but I guess it was to deep for a sub sonar to record and the sea net or whatever the acoustic listening posts are weren't built till many years later
@@schylertkatchew2659 hovering in a submarine is exceptionally difficult, even on a platform like an Ohio with systems designed to do just that. Thresher didn't have that. Even without a loss of power her chances are slim of maintaining neutral buoyancy
Others have already pointed this out, but this was not the final report. The USS Seawolf account of pings, etc. were discounted and attributed to other vessels in the area.
They did not tell the truth because it would not have changed anything. When the Seawolf possibly located the Thresher at 1100 feet it was already too late to rescue the men or save the sub. If unimaginably the Thresher were below crush depth at contact, the Navy had no way to reach them.
But they could have been rescued by the DSRV had it been in service at the time which could explain why they were built.
Reading into it they had a bathyscaphe which had a 2 or 3 man crew which was lowered and on its third trip actually sat on top of the sub on the sea floor but this was over a year later. They had no means to attach to a hatch and get inside. By time they found the sub it was quite broken up so if they’d been alive I’d guess the sub was at a shallower depth when communicating then sank to the bottom getting crushed and ripped apart upon descent.
This is honestly heartbreaking and incredibly sad may they're souls rest in peace :(
Just taking the report at face value, since no one ever responded as instructed at the very least indicates that they were not in communication.
I also find it difficult to believe the Navy would be so insensitive to just release documentation indicating people were alive when the prevailing thought is that they died without a major announcement or presser.
The while thing is just horrible. My heart goes out to them and their families.
Sobering reality for all those who serve beneath the waves. We are in their debt for their sacrifice, which subsequently lead to SUBSAFE I and II. Rest in Peace.
My guess is that they knew there were people alive but that there was no way to rescue them. Either too deep or rescue devices not available in time. Makes for an easier way to notify family that their loved ones died instantly without suffering vs. suffocating slowly and suffering greatly.
I'm at a loss for words. I served on USS MIAMI (SSN-755) in early 2000's. STS2(SS) I remember listening to the recordings during SUBSAFE training. The story was that the end went fairly quickly for the boat and crew.
I guess that the families can take heart that they fought to the end, and never gave up. A toast to the fallen....all of them.
To this day I remember seeing the Boston newspaper headline of this story when it happened, because I’d just learned how to read. And have followed it ever since. I’m blown away right now.
None of this information CONFIRMS any of these transmissions are from the Thresher. There are multiple ships looking for the Thresher and these transmissions could be from another 'rescue ship'. I think it is irresponsible to assume any of this is from the Thresher. Not one single request from the Seawolf is met with the proper answer. The incident that led to the Thresher sinking would not have left them floating at depth. They took on enough water that they would have gone to the bottom which was not at a survivable depth.
Subbed. Appreciate that you spent time to highlight the horrific details of the incident that has been cold-cased for 50 years. Such a tragedy.
I guess you're going to have to re-shoot that Thresher sub brief you did 3 years ago
I was very privileged to be at a sub base in mid 1970's . I could always sense when our Senior Command was onboard the station. Admiral Rickover was a powerful presence that could be felt in the area & sensitive personel could tell how close he was by the intensity of the man. I have known some Officers that did not like the perfectionist & demanding demeanor of The Admiral however even a young Navy sailor like myself could tell ; he knew another possible loss of a submarine , such as Thresher would be possible if everything was not as perfect as perfect could be. I will be so honored to see the Admiral when I return to Heaven. I'm sure Heaven is in better order since he arrived . He loved his submariners & I think we all know , he knew of the reports on the investigation of the loss of the thresher & how they were still alive many days after the public was told that the submarine quickly broke up. ................
Those new revelations kinda did a knot on my stomach, not gonna lie... it's sad.
I echo what Joseph Kartychak said. The Skylarks testimony was that the Thresher imploded. Was this part of a cover up? Did someone just mistake the sounds of a sub desperately trying to save itself with multiple attempts to blow the mains for the sound of implosion?
Thresher had several watertight compartments. 1 or more of them could have imploded on the way down leaving the others intact. The first attempt to conduct an emergency main ballast tank blow would have made some noise but probably not much because for whatever reason the air stopped flowing. Subsequent attempts would have made no noise at all. The loss of the Thresher is at least 2 events that stacked up in the worst way possible. The first being whatever caused them to lose depth control and then the inability to blow the main ballast tanks. While certainly a tragedy this loss was the genesis of the subsafe program which added layers of safety, redundancy and documentation to US submarines and their operation.
Mose717, thanks for the reply. I have never heard of one or two compartments imploding while others remained intact. Without question, I have heard of compartments flooding while others do not - Kursk is an easy case in point. I would be very interested in more info on this.
My thoughts were more directed towards the idea that the screen icing over being less of a problem than thought, and that the sub had experienced a breach in the ballast tanks or something of the sort.
Thanks for engaging. I remember this tragedy from when I was very young.
@@magellan6108 I've never heard of this either but losing a submarine is a pretty rare event so there isn't just a lot of data to look at. Beyond that, collapse depth is 150% of test depth and test depth is just the point where the guarantee from the shipyard expires. Not kidding. The point being that these numbers are somewhat arbitrary especially since there's no practical way to test the limits in a controlled manner. Breaching the ballast tanks is pretty hard to do, it would have to be a collision of some sort. Yeah, the Kursk went down in relatively shallow water so collapse wasn't an issue. My guess is Thresher had a loss of hydraulics and/or a reactor scram and then couldn't blow main ballast tanks. I wasn't around when this happened but we learned about it in Subschool.
The implosion was also detected on SOSUS at 09:18:24 on April 10, 1963. One complete implosion of all compartments in .2 seconds with the equivalent force of 22K Lbs of TNT.
Thanks all. I wonder if the investigating board struggled with this same cognitive dissonance. One voice testifying one thing; multiple voices testifying something else - i am wondering if this was one of the reasons the board chose not to cite this report. Leaving it in also would have left even more angst for the families.
I like to think the document was never released because the govt. would rather the public think the men died instantly vs. surviving (and most likely suffering) for a time after the sinking...
Your comment illustrates my points and complaints. You "most likely" think the policies and government make decisions of secrecy for such self-serving, cold-blooded, short-sighted, petty and cowardly, self-righteous, denigrating way. Such protracted deaths happening is neither "most likely" nor even evident here at all. US Navy and federal law and policies prevent and safeguard against such sloppy censoring and decision-making. Further, I believe supposing such is the raving imaginings for convenience, in casual conversation here, in painting those who made and make such decisions as unmitigated amoral opportunists in public power to do whatever they want; to do things like that is a PROJECTION of what deluded persons so strongly assumes MUST be what one is thinking because that is how the accuser thinks, entirely delusional, wrong and prejudicial in EVERY assessment and judgement thereby
Understand the classification, the fact the Thresher with it's location and depth did not experience a total crush event would and could be a compromise of strategic information in the eyes of the navy, especially with SSBN patrols being the new normal
I think you are spot on about why it would be classified at the time. We've always been given incredibly low ball numbers for submarine capabilities. This would have shown that US sub design could potentially operate at many times the depths we have been told they can.
@@thesollylama130 Agreed. This now declassified information is a literal platter of naval intelligence that even Jive commented on in the video. I think they intended to eventually declassify this information but never got to it.
Measurements made during the instrumented sinking of the discarded diesel-electric submarine STERLET (SS-392) in 1969 are consistent with the conclusion that the water-ram produced by the initial breaching of the Thresher's pressure hull at 2,400 feet entered the pressure hull with a velocity of about 2,600 mph. That force would have ripped asunder the pressure hull longitudinally and vertically, as verified by photographs of the Thresher wreckage.
@@DuffyF56 We're not arguing the Thresher didn't implode. It did. What's in question is how long it actually took her to finally hit crush depth.
@@madezra64 About 9 minutes from the first attempt to Emergency Blow based on SOSUS detection from multiple places, some as much as 1300 miles away.
It's this sort of behavior and policy of misinformation from the government that creates such fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.
Combine this with activities like the Tuskegee experiments and the CIA's habit of occasionally overthrowing democratically elected governments and one starts to empathize with the tin foil crowd.
@@ZboeC5 Sure, question everything. But do accept the answer to your questions...
The problem isn't people asking questions. It's people asking questions and then refusing to accept the answer because it doesn't fit their world-view.
This is part of what I find so valuable about your channel (and similar channels that cover different content) - delivering the facts in a way that the layperson like myself can digest and form an opinion.
Many thanks for covering this, as concerning as the information is 👍
The fact they still were fighting to be found, even when at home they were already declared lost to the public is gut wrenching...
There are plenty of situations when the truth would clearly bring better clarity and justice, however I am not sure that clarity would have brought justice in this tragedy. How much more of an emotional burden would have been placed on the hearts of loved ones if they were to have known these facts?
i agree. this is slightly childish outrage over nothing. whether classified or no, there was zero the navy could do to save those men. jive knows this. better to save the families from the knowledge those men suffered.
@@oldfrend
Yeah, no. Like with the families of those that served on the USS Scorpion, most people prefer to know the truth - even if it is grizzly. Because that's what is called closure. And the Navy has no place deciding this for the families when not one single thing about it compromises national security. The fact that the Navy knew and lied about it is, honestly, the most damning part of this. If a boat goes down, as terrible as that is, there sometimes isn't anything you can do about it. This was one of those instances. But to lie about it so you don't look bad? That cheapens the death of those sailors.
@@matchesburn That's shortsighted. "Not a single thing about it compromises national security", you say. Really? Because I can easily see multiple pieces of information in this report that easily compromise national security:
1) The Seawolf and presumably all of class have sonar blind spots below
2) The frequencies that the emergency communications are set to; this can be used to bait vessels with false emergency messages
3) The frequencies that the fathometers and sonars operate on
4) Implications about the depth and speed at which Seawolf can communicate to surface
5) Training and equipment interoperability issues between surface and submarine components
Even just releasing information that the submarine didn't immediately implode implies that: 1) you have sonar capable of picking up faint signals at significant range, 2) the nature of submerged power sources and backup power for the Thresher and class. Why do you think the US Navy was so tight-lipped about exactly what detections they may have made of the ARA San Juan? Same reason.
And... for what? For what you insist is "closure"? You want to risk the security of the nation, and the lives of all the LIVING submariners by releasing information, just so that instead of saying "your sons died in an accident while honorably serving their country", the can say "your sons died in an accident while honorably serving their country, but oh by the way, the died slowly and suffering in a futile struggle to recover from the accident".
There was a lot of information about capabilities that could be implicated from an official release that "we detected them still alive well after they went missing", and that's not even considering the morale effects, or the tacit admission that there is no rescue capability in existence. It just opens the DOD up to the accusations of being "incompetent" for hearing them and "doing nothing to save them".
@Bronco 53 I, the granddaughter, deserved to know the truth. My mom, aunt and uncle deserve the truth before they passed. My grandmother deserved the truth...in 1963. I cannot bring myself to tell her now. We all grieve differently. We, as The Thresher Family, should have know, in 1963. To be brought up my entire life thinking and fully believing it was instant, to now find out my Grandfather may have been down there knowing....it's totally different now. This is so new I'm not finished processing it
Anything beyond basic overview of events, as such was originally released, becomes a security issue. Every piece of information can become or is a weapon. However everything released from this log book is nothing other nations did not already know at the time. It is no secret other nations spy on one another. They place spies in the very factories that build our military machines and we in theirs. Every time something new comes out in the world; the major powers already know what it is or what it does. There truly are no secrets beyond the super classified and small operations with limited eyes. Why else do you think politicians can lazily handle classified information with no real repercussions. But your basic enlisted can serve thirty years for disclosing a color of paint. That is some reality for you all.
As for the families, I firmly believe they deserve to know what happened and why. No matter how stupid it sounds or how painful the ending may have been. The truth is the reality that honors those that died; otherwise their sacrifice is reduced and meaningless. It took until now for some of the Thresher's story to come out. While it took decades of falsehoods to admit this blunder and inability of the navy. And for what? A couple overlapping frequencies the soviets likely knew about anyway...
So, if the Thresher lost the seal at the prop and the flooding wasn't contained for a while, could she have hung for a while at seventy or eighty degrees? Repair would have been made extremely arduous, if not almost impossible. The problem with this theory is the banks of batteries would have lost power within an hour or two at most, I would expect. Looks like the ratings and officers on Seawolf were feeding each other scraps of hope.
This is the ninth and tenth round of documents released. Is there any other material that corroborates what Seawolf heard? Is there anything else that contradicts Skylark hearing Thresher implode during that dive?
U can bet ur ads that there is a after action report of the captain and xo
From what Ive read in the reports Seawolf was the only one to hear anything after Thresher's garbled "900" report. 2 minutes after which SOSUS heard the distinct and abrupt sound of an implosion at around 2800 ft. This was hours before Seawolf arrived on station.
It seems at least two questions must be answered if you are to believe that the sounds and signals the Seawolf was hearing came from crewmembers still alive on the Thresher:
1. If what the Skylark and SOSUS reported was NOT the sound of the Thresher imploding (at 2800 ft, quite consistent with what you'd expect), then what was it?
2. If the Thresher did NOT implode at this time, but only well after the Seawolf had arrived (a day or so later) and reported hearing sonar pings and metal banging on metal, why didn't the Seawolf or anyone else in the fleet above - all listening with sonar - hear any sounds consistent with implosion as the Thresher supposedly sunk some time during this period?
I'm no expert, but I'm told a crush event is a one time deal, you don't partially crush/implode and you don't gradually crush/implode. Rather than having to come up with some elaborate explanation as to why it was different in this case, it seems a lot more straightforward to assume that the signals and sounds the Seawolf heard had nothing to do with the Thresher.
Of course, full disclosure, that's what I want to believe as the alternative is quite horrific, but I also think it makes sense.
@@phj223 Also how did the Thresher manage to trim the bot after the casualty. If Seawolf really heard Thresher it must have someone remained between test and crush depths for more than 24 hours. How? This just doesn't add up at all.
The Thresher had several watertight compartments. 1 or more of them could have imploded while others remained intact.
Wow! Just wow! That is unbelievable! Thank you for going through this with us.
I doubt the Thresher was just kind of floating around just above crush depth. The Seawolf guys were high on hopium.
I am retired Army. The sea unnerves me (tough gal talk for « frightens me ») and the deep sea terrifies me. Respect to the submariners from me.
Isn’t it kinda a common practice when military people die to say they went peacefully to comfort people?
I hate to say it, but the noises from the _Thresher_ just sound like the _Seawolf_ letting hope overcome reason and interpreting random noise as intelligent activity. If there had been anybody alive and operating the BOQ, they would have pulsed in morse, answered the _Seawolf's_ request for five pings, kept a steady pinging, anything but make random jazz doodling with the equipment. It was just the wreckage settling and maybe batteries giving up the last of their power in random connections, maybe mixed in with some biological activity.
The 'random noise as intelligent activity' point reminds me of the Morse transmissions in the 1959 film On The Beach.
This is absolutely heartbreaking.