The Sinking of USS THRESHER (SSN 593): An Update from the Declassified Report
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- Опубликовано: 12 авг 2021
- Lecture from 8/5/21 by Capt. Jim Bryant and Stephen Walsh: Captain Jim Bryant, USN (Ret.), a former commanding officer of a THRESHER Class nuclear powered submarine, and Stephen Walsh, a retired submarine naval architect, will discuss the most important details learned from recently declassified files, including the many factors that contributed to the first and worst nuclear submarine disaster.
Fifty-eight years ago, USS THRESHER (SSN 593), the most advanced nuclear submarine of its time, imploded at a depth of 2,400 feet, claiming 129 lives. After disputing the Navy’s official report about this event, Capt. Bryant filed a lawsuit that succeeded in forcing the release of over 1,700 pages of testimony and 100 exhibits of redacted and declassified material.
This presentation will serve as a follow up on last year’s lecture, History of the Modern U.S Attack Submarine 1941-1961. View it here: • Living Room Lecture: H...
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About the San Diego Archaeological Center:
The San Diego Archaeological Center is a nonprofit curation facility and museum where visitors can learn the story of how people have lived in San Diego County for the past 10,000 years. In addition to its role as a museum, the Center serves as an education and research facility and is the only local organization dedicated to the collection, study, curation and exhibition of San Diego County’s archaeological artifacts.
Note: The views and opinions expressed in this video are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the San Diego Archaeological Center. 
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I could make a few comments on the loss of Thresher as I was a nuke engineer on the follow-on USS Dace SSN607. What could cause a reactor scram? One thing appropriate here is over-pressure in the main condensers. Over pressure happens when main sea water cooling is lost. USS Dace was still in new construction when the early crew, I was one of them, began reviewing emergency procedures. We had a few sources from other submarines to compare our own solutions. One of the things come to being considered was what to do in the engine room on a major flooding event. Thresher had chosen to shut sea water hydraulic hull valves, which applied to bother main seawater and auxiliary seawater. We decided if the seawater valves were shut vacuum would be lost in the main condenser and continued steam would begin to pressurize the condenser. We considered the main piping size for main seawater was so large the sub would be lost and nothing could be done about it if it failed. If the event was in the auxiliary seawater system, (I think this happened), the use of steam would give the crew time to stop the leak by shutting the Auxillary hull isolation valves and the condenser would better keep it''s temperature and steam would remain available for a generator, then for the main turbines as control of the situation improved and main seawater was restored to hot condensers. We realized that continued steam flow to the condensers would begin to pressurize them but it would be a fast first step to return power. The crew would be pressed for time in any condition to avoid pressurizing the condensers. So we decided on a flood event to shut auxiliary seawater valves so water could continue to the injectors drawing vacuum in the condensers. Steam provided to the engine room steam passes through MS 3 & 4 and automatically shuts when the condensers begin to pressurize and the reactor automatically scrams. So we chose not to shut main seawater hull valves so restoring power would be less complicated. I believe Thresher chose the wrong emergency flooding option, however, the presence of filter cloth in the air strainers was the devil's hand in their experience.
Taking a moment to remember two friends as brothers still on eternal patrol on Thresher; Dan Philput and Ron Bains.
Excellent hypothesis. Thanks for sharing!
My condolences on the loss of your friends. Plus thank you for your service.
I was a Sonar Technician 78-84. During an Advanced Acoustic Analysis course the Instructors played a recording of the Thresher going down. Not sure of the source of the recording but squeaks, pops and imploding compartments could clearly be heard. I have never heard of that recording again.
Former President Jimmy Carter was a graduate of the US Naval Academy here in Maryland. He was a nuclear engineer and a submariner too! During the Three Mile Island accident , President Carter came to Middletown , Pennsylvania to access the situation! I felt very secure knowing he was an expert on nuclear power! Jimmy Carter has always been a hero to me! 🤗⚓⛵⚓
Wow! This is the most compelling report I have ever watched about the loss of the USS Thresher. I learned stuff that I could have used while qualifying aboard the USS Dace (SSN607), another Thresher(Permit) class sub.
I served aboard the commissioning crew of the Dace in Pascagoula, MS.
We were sent to the sub base in Groton, CT to assume the projects that the Thresher could no longer complete.
Real sub-safe was built into the Sturgeon class sub. I helped commission the USS Queenfish (SSN 651) in '66. I arrived several months early and was temporarily assigned to the USS Shark (SSN 591), and yes, it was in the class of submarines with the USS Scorpion (SSN 589) which sank with all hands in (May?) 1968. Talk about the luck of the Scandinavians......
To all, I wish "fair winds and following seas." (have you ever had to steer a diesel sub in
following seas?) My 20-year Navy career ended with my retirement in 1976 from the SOSUS facility in Pacific Beach, WA.
I read about the Thresher for the first time en 1987. Robert Ballard was the one who found her wreck in a classified expedition. It always puzzled me what could had happened so catastrophic to sink her the way she did. Now all became clear, i never knew she was similar to a skipjack class, an attack sub like the Scorpion; very good lecture, thanks.
I clearly remember this Thresher accident! I was only a child when the Thresher sank! My father was a former US Naval officer and a scientist! Dad left the Navy and got a job at Westinghouse Corporation building atomic reactors for submarines / Admiral Rickover's program! The sinking of the Thresher is a clear memory because dad and his co- workers were very concerned about the cause of this incident! I think this happened in 1963, 7 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. I believe 129 sailors perished !
Five years later just after i was born in April 1968 i was one month old which who was the second United States Navy nuclear attack submarine of the first teardrop hull of the Skipjack class The USS Scorpion SSN 58 9 on the 27TH Of May 1968 Some say that shoddy repairs some of the equipment which who were jury rigged Especially the hydraulic systems P o s s i b l y the Scorpion which who was struck by a close aboard explosion and it was possible the resulting of the explosion caused a jam dive and the force of the maybe detonation of something carried away the hydraulic control And the Scorpion out of control until the Scorpion crashed on the bottom of the North Atlantic Something causing the stern to become undo ne And the Scorpions conning tower became undone because of the out of control Scorpion which who was being out of control didn t had the SubSafe modification and the Scorpion which who was apart of a secret reduced repair time which who was cut to about $ 3 200 000 dollars Wh ereas the other SUBLANTFLT submarines amount of dollarage which who wasnt like the Scorpion underwent The year of 1968 which who was at the height of the Vietnam War which who was a money pit and a bloody quagmire and the 36th POTUS which who didnt have a bloody end game of getting our people out of the Vietnam War
Out of tragedy, comes improvements. Its a shame that it works this way. This video, answered many of the questions, that I had about the Thresher incident. Thanks everyone.
Capt. Jim Bryant, when young (I am 77 years old now) I was exempt from military service in the Danish armed forces, because of flat feet, said the recruiting Doctors. I remember telling them that it will not matter if they assign me to service in a Submarine... They said NO, because there was at that time no shortage in recruits, My love for the sea did not stop with that. When I was 40 I stopped working and during 12 years sailed singlehanded my 48 foot center cockpit, cutter rigged sailing boat on the high seas. My love for Subs still subsides though and anything to do with submariner life still attracts as I have been an avid scuba diver and underwater filmmaker. I have a question to you: When conducting diving tests, will it not be safer to do it places where the max depth to the sea bottom do not exceed by more than 10% the Max safety depth for that class of sub, in order to eliminate totally the risk of life loss? By the way the Danish navy has given totally up on Subs. We do not have any in active service now.
I think the issue is finding such depths, and staying in such depths. Seems like a comedy of errors, tragic but so avoidable had they just done as you suggested above at least until preliminary testing done.
I equate sailing singlehandedl as "good as it gets", dangerous but controlling your own destiny
Sailing as part of a crew on a working or vessel of war is work and dangerous and even as the Capt you are following orders and life expendable and one has little say in being sent to their death. One does it for love of country, but the 1% of pretty much every nation have much more say in the destiny of military men than any military leaders do by means of lobbying and selling the military every single peice of gear and machinery they use.
My knowledge of submarines is, at best, perfunctory but so well explained was this session, I was - to my surprise - able to follow the information! Great effort, thank you.
Very interesting discussion. Thank you to all participants.
600 psi of sea water equals about 1400’ test depth. Certainly shows everything must be correct, carefully reviewed design, and never cut any corners. At crush depth they got more than their 50% safety factor. We owe brave submarine crews only the best, for the inherent risks they take.
For the uninitiated, each 100' of depth produces 44.4 PSI upon the hull. I served aboard 5 subs, 1 diesel, and 4 nukes. One of our cute tricks, when we knew that we would submerge to test depth, was to stretch a string from port to starboard and watch it sag as we went deep. Ho hum; you really only needed to see it once.
Thank you for posting.
Important point from this video that the 37 Pings were NOT from a human source. Really Important to get this out.
What was the source?
Yes, these videos are how conspiracy theories are started...
Why is that important
Very interesting lecture.
While I agree that jams of the diving planes are serious problems, they don't seem to be necessarily catastrophic. If they are jammed in the down position, sure, continued forward momentum will drive the sub deeper when they want to rise. But in almost every conceivable case, they could simply reverse the screw direction and by driving backward they would gain lift from those malfunctioning diving planes. It's only when the diving planes jam in the horizontal position that it becomes a serious problem, because then the only way you can get to the surface is by using ballast control... And of course if the engines were not functioning, the diving planes were of no use at all whether jammed or not. And if your only hope of surfacing is to pump your breathable air into ballasts, I would think that decision would be quickly made, since the alternative is to suffocate as well. If you know you only have ~12 hours of breathable air, you wouldn't think twice about pumping 20% of that into the ballast tanks if it has even a small chance of getting you back to surface. The problem, of course, is if you're too heavy for the ballasts to lift you due to taking on water. They'd have needed to pump out all water first, otherwise they'd be wasting the air trying to surface a sub that's still too heavy to be surfaced that way.
My question is simple. Is there any place on that class of sub where enough water could have accumulated that was either a) undetectable to the crew, or if known to the crew b) because of the water's location it was unable to be pumped out quickly enough? I suspect it would need to be a good amount of water to prevent a MBT from surfacing the sub.
We may never know the buildup to it but in this video and everything else I’ve seen one thing is always implied. She was too heavy at test depth whether they knew it or not. It all happened so quickly I’ll bet an inexperienced crew was about two steps behind.
First I have a question, then an answer.
Do we know that running in reverse with jammed dive planes would actually cause the submarine to decrease depth? Of does it just cause it to descend with an upward-facing attitude? I would think it would be the latter, but I don’t know.
I think they’re theorizing that Thresher didn’t compensate for loss of buoyancy caused by compression of the hull at depth. The neutral buoyancy they would have had at periscope depth would have become negative buoyancy as they descended if they failed to pump out some water/ballast to compensate.
Failure to maintain neutral buoyancy ultimately caused the submarine to sink below crush depth faster than whatever caused the reactor scram could be corrected to restore propulsion to drive her to the surface.
The failure of the emergency blow is a reason Thresher couldn’t be saved, but is not why she was in a position to be lost.
As far as I could gather, they don’t believe significant flooding of any kind occurred because it wasn’t picked up by the underwater telephone of Skylark. The noise of such high pressure water entering the submarine would have made a tremendous noise- so it almost certainly didn’t flood and the wreckage not showing equalization of compartments confirms that.
For some reason she had a reactor scram while at test depth, and because of negative buoyancy could not restore propulsion before reaching crush depth. The rest seems difficult to figure out as to exactly what occurred.
The ballast tanks froze while they were trying to blow them. That one's understood and has since been corrected.
@@arianebolt1575 No, that's not what froze. The high-pressure air that was supposed to be used to blow the tanks had some moisture in it. That moisture froze and blocked the filter that was installed in the pipes to keep any debris out of the systems. Since the filter was blocked with ice, air couldn't reach the ballast tanks to blow them.
When did we start using BST buoys? They are never mentioned in Thresher and Scorpion losses.
The engineers said the Thresher withstood the shock trials in the Philippines within reason, but that she did sustain some damage.
That was the reason for the 9 month maintenance. It was anything but routine maintenance, but I've never read anything stating what damage the shock trials resulted in?
Dominick Cabal
0 seconds ago
I served on the USS SNOOK SSN592 (RM) during the Cold War (80s) . Thresher (SSN593) and Scorpion (SSN589) were sister boats....
Neglected to mention the recently (July 12, 2021) declassified report of how the crew survived for 24 hours after initial contact was lost.
Aaron from sub brief breaks down the declassified report from his perspective of a US Navy sonarman in the video 37 Pings
The report didn't prove that the crew survived for 24 hours. The sources of the pings and other noises have not been definitively established. I think it is highly unlikely that any crew members survived the implosion at the time the Thresher was lost.
It was mentioned in the Q&A at the end. You can also watch footage of the wreck and it doesn’t seem like there was anything intact to survive in, respectively.
yeh what i literal nightmare!
They specifically addressed the Seawolf's report of hearing sounds in this video starting at time 1:09:45. Short answer is Seawolf was confused by all the sound in the water from the other searching vessels. Bottom line, SOSUS recorded the implosion 26 hours before Seawolf showed up. Aaron's video is garbage. I'm sure he means well, but an inaccurate report of various sounds is not "proof" that people were somehow still alive on Thresher. He seems to have completely ignored the physics of the disaster. When the implosion was recorded, the pieces of the sub sank to the bottom. There were no surviving pressurized compartments for anyone to be alive in 26 hours later when Seawolf showed up.
They don't want to talk about it because it leaves a bad taste in the Navy's mouth and shows that they unnecessarily rushed the project which resulted in lives lost.
The sub rescue ship, Skylark was with the Thresher monitoring the trials the whole time.
They heard the implosion when it happened.
They also bad EB personell on board when it sank.,
BCP is what was on 616 class
You look just like Indiana Jones!
I wonder what these guys think of the report that suggests the crew survived 48 hours
They talked about it in the Q&A.
Seawolf was mistaken and had been confused by the active pinging of the surface vessels. They got tricked.
The implosion was recorded by multiple sources. The wreckage confirms it imploded and that no compartments had equalized. Whatever Seawolf heard or thought was heard was not people on Thresher.
yes
watched this after I saw "the youtube guy" video. Interesting how someone can jump to such conclusions.
I thought there was a new release of information that revealed from the beginning of the emergency to loss of the boat was more than 24 hrs. There were appropriate responses to search vessels from Thresher for over 24 hours.
No, there weren’t. They talk about this in the video, and even if you watch the widely discredited Sub Brief video, they were not getting anything resembling a confirming response because they weren’t hearing what they were hoping they were hearing- one can hardly blame them for desperately trying to find some evidence their fellow submariners were still alive and might save themselves or be saved.
Seawolf, with interferences from all the surface traffic and pinging heard what they so eagerly wanted to hear. It was not Thresher.
37 calls for help so sad
There were 0 calls because no one or thing can survive an imploded sub. They mention it in the q&a at the end.
Can you believe the navy lied they were alive .
They know it and did not try to save those poor basters they were alive after 24 hours can we say 37 pings
You didn’t watch the whole video much less make it to the q&a. The sub and occupants didn’t nor will they ever survive an implosion. What you’re referring to was an oopsie. A mistake. The ones listening heard what they hoped for through the interference of other vessels but once everything was halted there was not a sound heard. There were knocks/bangs at Pearl Harbor and from the Kursk maybe others but not from an imploded submarine. At least the didn’t physically suffer. Some may have been scared for those sinking 5 minutes but hopefully they focused on work and then, , over
they did try, they had no way to do it
Ok. Is the compartment where pings would be sent out in tact on the floor?