Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What Happened to USS Thresher?

https://www.popularmechanics.com/mi...r-submarine-sink-declassified-documents/

From reading this article, and the link enclosed in the article, it looks like the newly declassified documents will be released in May.

A fascinating story. Pick up the book Shadow Divers. All about diving wrecks.

Old submariner here. I served on one of the Permit-Class Submarines, of which Thresher was the first. Had she not gone down, the class would have been named Thresher.

No big conspiracies, no cloak and dagger stuff, information on the event has been widely discussed in the Sub-Surface Navy since it happened. Mechanical failure, followed by electrical system failures as a result of flooding, prevented a successful emergency blow to get her to the surface before she exceeded crush depth.

The article is intimating that the Navy was covering up lack of training, sloppy assembly, etc... Not really. It was a case of construction and operating procedures not keeping up with the added complexity of a rapidly evolving technology. The SUBSAFE program that came about as a result of the event addressed the shortcomings and life has been good on USN subs since.


Now the USS Scorpion, on the other hand, that's a whole 'nother story.....

We found atropine syringes washed up on Nantucket. A few days later Mom told us "Boys, there is a spy to see you.". There was. A dark suit from ONI. Far later I read that ocean microphones far and wide picked up the sound of bulkheads giving way. Wonder if there are any recordings.

There are.

What are atropine syringes for?

Atropine is use to stop the excessive acetylcholine caused by nerve gasses like Sarin and VX.

If you were exposed, you'd have a VERY short time to jab that syringe in your thigh...

John

IIRC adding the "Emergency Blow" system to the boats was a result of the "normal" blow system freezing up on Thresher when they tried to surface. Unless you were using "emergency" in the sense of "We really need this to work right now" in relation to the normal ballast tank blow system.

Emergency blow is a term used to describe the process of evacuating the ballast tanks as quickly as possible to save the boat.

Yes, the system was redesigned for the other upcoming Permit boats and retroactively fitted to the existing Permit and earlier Skipjack Class boats as a result of losing the Thresher. They added redundant piping and valving for an alternate route for high pressure air to reach the ballast tanks, changed the type of valves used, lowered the required pressure dewpoint of the compressed air system to prevent condensation from dropping out of the air during rapid pressure drop/increased velocity/decreasing temperature of the air as it passed into the tanks, and increased the physical size of the piping and valves. Also, the blow could be instituted completely manually, if need be.

Essentially, after the redesign, if a sailor could get to the valves, he could blow the tanks, even with a total loss of power.