USS Thresher: The US Navy's Cautionary Tale
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- čas přidán 17. 02. 2022
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Your videos are becoming shorter every time, the adds though stay the same...
Dudes, it's been declassified. You can find the information online about the sinking of the Thresher. Apparently the crew spent hours trying to make it work again.
offer not available in your country, and that includes your country, as it's for the US only.
@@bobfg3130 and the declassified report has been seriously questioned by submariners and others who were involved in the search...
@@jwenting
The declassified report is recent. It was declassified in late 2021. Basically the crew spent hours trying to salvage the ship. The government lied. Look it up. There's a guy that has a video that is 1 hour long....or more.
I almost didn't exist because of this event. My dad was a co-op student and was scheduled to be on board to take simple measurements from some equipment. At the last minute they changed requirements for the test, and switched in a full engineer. Sad story... Creeps me out every time I hear about it.
Wow! Close call man! I’m sure the descendants of the guy who stayed on shore for “medical reasons” feel the same way!
Assuming he had any after the incident😏
:o
@@lucasglowacki4683 I am sure they do. It is always amazing just how fragile life is, and how much random chance plays into it. Gotta wonder if the engineer/officer who took my dad's place would have been on board anyway, or if he won the unlucky lottery.
Wow! Very sad story.
I imagine your Dad feels the same!🗿
Served on a Thresher class boat. Many on the equipment name plates referenced that we were on a 593 class boat. Always gave you something to think about on the long underway watches.
Of course, post sinking all the remaining boats were redesignated by the Navy as Permit Class.
@@pauld6967 Which I think is a disgrace; are they trying to hide the Thresher? For what other class was this done?
@@hk-wr2jt It isn't very common for the lead ship in a class to be lost.
However, I think there must've been at least one occasion prior to _Thresher_ and likely the class name was changed in that instance as well.
Plus you have the fact that the Navy traditionally avoids dwelling on mishaps where life was lost. For example, when the _Squalus_ sank and sailors died. The Navy raised it and put her back into service as the _Sailfish._
Sailors, being sailors, rapidly came up with the nickname "Squailfish" for the recommissioned submarine.
@@pauld6967 No. Class name was not changed in any other instance.
The Navy "traditionally avoids" admitting mistakes and will try to blame an individual. Any individual. Always.
Permit? We got a lot of that put on board during the overhaul in the early 80s.
I just joined the Navy, and ever since boot camp, all through training, they love to hammer this story home.
It's pretty much the entire reason everything on subs is overengineered like crazy, with full redundancies, and my job will be almost entirely a form of quality assurance. This event left a serious mark and legacy on the US Navy as a whole.
@Gerald H That's where I am now, and they went pretty in depth to it, others, and why stuff like this is important. It was especially impactful to the nuclear navy, like I said, the rate is essentially glorified quality assurance in no small part thanks to that.
Rickover's not around anymore, but he's still a legend here, haha!
@Gerald H Haha, a chief I've met said he and a friend had to jump into every single dumpster to check for a week for something similar, but wow!
I love that you can find literally almost every single thing in the curriculum on wikipedia, and any nuclear power technician learns like 95% of the rest, but once it's got that magic stamp top and bottom, front and back, it instantly becomes a state secret, guarded with our lives! Even though none of the math would be out of place in any high school...
The only real interesting thing that's happened in my class so far has been "the T-Track Strangler". Pretty self-explanatory incident. My class was pretty quiet and very sat until the holding period between schools.
@Gerald H We have A-school and Power School in Charleston, and then Prototype is also here, but sometimes there's also the option to go to New York. I won't have that option, though. So I'll basically be at this command for another year or so (hopefully longer if I get picked up for ELT) before being sent out into the real world.
@Gerald H A friend who served in sub service in 1980s mention Rickover interviewed every sub officer during that era. Sometimes he ask a question, "piss me off." And one officer took one of his ship models and threw it out the window. Anyway my question how did Adm. Rickover become such a force in the Navy? I heard the biggest ship he ever commanded was a minesweeper.
@@wrightmf He was pretty much the sole driving force pioneering nuclear powered ships and their unparalleled level of safety and quality control, was I believe the longest serving military member in US history, and like you mentioned had plenty of quirky character to boot! Not to mention an absolute genius in his own right, seeing as he personally oversaw the designs of most reactors developed under him.
Simon, I served aboard the Haddock. The last of the Thresher class boats. Yes we still called them Thresher class regardless of what the Navy said. Please do a podcast on the Scorpion. You would not believe all the stories surrounding the loss off that boat. One rumor is that when they were looking for the wreckage, the first boat they found was a Soviet boat and that there was known that three boats were in that immediate vicinity at the time. If you could crack that nut, there would be a large number of veterans watch that podcast.
Man, I remember a theory that the guys on the Thresher survived the implosion in some compartments and managed to (somehow) get the bow sonar pinging for some time.
Poor bastards :(
@@garethfairclough8715 apparently not just a theory. Read the dispatches on the subject that were released in the last couple of years.
I read the Book "Scorpion, sunk by the Soviets buried by the Pentagon".
@@garethfairclough8715 Freaking darkness...God bless those that passed without noticing it.
@@LeopardIL2 I’ll have to read that book. That is the rumor I was told when I was in (early 70s).
I served on the last boat of the Permit class (SSN-621). An extra ballast tank was installed just forward of the rudder, after the Thresher down.
Nice
I was on the Haddock too.
@@williegarland8888 What time frame?
@@sharhune2735 74 to early 76. We operated out of Pearl.
@@williegarland8888 Late 76 to late 77, also out of Pearl and then went into Mare Island for overhaul.
I work for the shipyard that made the thresher and currently makes the Columbia class and Virginia class as an engineer. Can confirm they make you listen to the sound of the pressure hull collapsing when you start to ingrain the fact a mistake can cost the lives of the crew.
Good
...and for their taking that extra step to drive the point home, we say "thank you."
That shipyard doesn’t make submarines. Maybe I miss understand your comment?
OPSEC guy.
The Thresher was built at Portsmouth naval shipyard. The Columbia and Virginia class subs are not built there.
Thresher was one of two losses, Scorpion was the other. different subs, different circumstances, both had all hands lost.
The Thresher was not a lucky ship. In November 1961, the Thresher was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They shut down the reactor and ran on diesel. After a few hours the diesel broke down, so they switched to batteries. When they found the diesel couldn't be repaired quickly enough, they tried to restart the reactor, but the batteries ran down before the reactors could be restarted. They had to wait till the next day for a diesel sub to come into port to give them a jumpstart.
Then the next year she was in Port Canaveral, Florida, when she was hit by a tug, which damaged one of her ballast tanks.
Confirmed.
I read the incident report in 1971 while at NPTU Idaho Falls
1961??
my dad was a submariner from 1958-1978....(he started out on the triton,which would make a good vid unto itself....the only 2 reactor sub the US navy ever made...and the 1st sub to go around the world underwater,without surfacing) the thresher incident was the end of my mom and dads marriage....because they knew the crew and their families very well....and this loss freaked my mother out...she gave my dad an ultimatum..to quit the service.....my dads response was this was his career,he was a lifer,and would never quit....and that was the end of their marriage.
it takes a special kind of woman to be a navy wife....and my mom had enough after thresher.
Wow.
Liar
L husband. I hope your mom found better afterwords
Bro no way anyone chooses being on a sub over their wife lmao.
@@NealBonesbetter? Who tells someone that if they don’t quit their job (let alone the military) than they’re leaving, especially if it’s the same job they already had before getting married. how can you say she’s the one that needed to find someone better when this is literally the only information you know.
In the 80s I hung out with a group of sub- mariners in Connecticut while they waited for the USS Providence to be completed at Electric Boat. They were told that the Thresher crew had complete contact with the topside command until the implosion. Also I got to have lunch on the vessel, something I was not mature enough to fully appreciate at the time. You do good work 💪
I also have eaten meals on board the USS Providence. Here's full circle for you, I was on the decommissioning crew last year
Youth is wasted on the young.
I was only nine when the Thresher was lost, but I can remember exactly what I was doing when her loss was announced: watching TV with my parents. It must have made quite an impression on me since I never forgot the date--April 10, 1963. RIP to al those lost on that spring day.
And yes, it's still secret to this day. My former supervisor spent 31 years in the Navy and was captain of his own submarine and wouldn't talk much about it even in civilian life.
Main thing he mentioned was about the SubSafe program regarding the Thresher.
has been declassified czcams.com/video/HV5FGTxIU4Q/video.html&ab_channel=SubBrief
its actually been declassified
That video is just reciting the view of the Seawolf crew...I´d take that with a big grain of salt...the implosion was recorded on the 10th both by ASR Skylark and SOSUS - Seawolf reports state hearing "something" much later...they wanted to hear "something".
Couldn´t have been from Thresher unless the claim of the recorded implosion was faked on a grand scale...I mean, I wouldn´t be surprised but it´s so much more further down that particular rabbit hole...very, very dark down there indeed.
Lol secret
Maybe your former supervisor just didn't know anything 🤷♀️
Subs are secret in themselves. A major source of evidence in the loss of the Thresher was the SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System), a Navy-operated system that listened through the world's oceans for sounds of intel value. One of the most important programs it supported was the AEDS, the Atomic Energy Detection System. The AEDS was operated by AFTAC (Air Force Technical Applications Center) and consisted of mostly Air Force-operated monitoring techniques, supplemented by the Army's atmospheric sound-detection system and the Navy's SOSUS for subsurface detection in the oceans. Their goal was detection of any nuclear event on a global basis. AFTAC's mission itself beyond the most basic wasn't declassified until 1997. In 1963, anything to do with nuclear intelligence was classified above Top Secret, thus sharply limiting what the US government was willing to say about what they knew about the loss of the Thresher.
@Gerald H Compartmentalisation in the US forces is insanity. It only benefits bureaucracy and negates operational needs. Today there are no secrets. Everything is deductible. The fact that carrier groups have one to four nuclear subs in the group is known. Their position is known too because wake satellites can determine the position of subs when underwater. Subs are not hi-tec. A nuclear sub is iterative tech from the late forties. Torpedoes are 150 years old, ICBMs date from 1958, cm are 1980s tech. Sonar is 100 years old. Data processing is 1940s. A sub in the crowded south china sea is a risk. Idiot Trump gave nothing away and a US sub got a bloody nose facing if China 3 months ago.
I have read no recordings exist for any of this, and the testimony of the people that heard this was all that was entered as record. So really, just human recall.
My great-uncle died in the Thresher disaster. Watching the news about the Titan submarine implosion hit close to home for my family, especially for his two remaining sisters. His oldest sister still remembers the morning he left for Portsmouth, NH, kissing their mother goodbye as she slept in the wee hours of the morning. They finally put a memorial up for the Thresher at Arlington a couple of years ago.
Simon, please oh please look into Bagger 288/293 and or Bingham Canyon Copper mine! They are both very impressive megaprojects!
Badger 288! is a great song by Rathergood. Badger 288 is there to save all mankind.
czcams.com/video/azEvfD4C6ow/video.html
And the bagger 293 has held the Guinness record since 1995!
I would say the copper mining in Arizona is pretty amazing. Globe-Miami and Bagdad are both massive mines.... And only two of many mega projects in the state.
RIP to the crew of THRESHER and the additional people onboard. Rest your oar, we have the watch.
Thank you, Simon. Your article brings back memories. When the Thresher went down, I had just graduated sub school, New London. While serving on the Entemedor SS340, just after sub school, we floated a wreath by New York to commemorate the sinking of the Thresher. While on the Plunger SSN 595, (65-69) (sister ship to the Thresher) under Captain Thunman we did the subsafe program. Admiral Thunman authorized the search for the Titanic after Ballard had re-documented the Thresher and found the Scorpion SSN 589. Things can happen quickly not a lot of time for recovery. Crew training is very, very important.
"Crew training is very, very important." I've had people ask me why we haven't had a number of submarines lost- your statement is always my answer.
I worked at Norfolk Naval Shipyard for 32 years mostly in the Level I Safe Safe Program . Once a year we had to attend refresher training on the Thresher Disaster to retain our training qualifications. Thresher reported PPG leaks around Maneuvering which has all the electronics to control the boat. Investigations found that non-destructive test had been performed on the PPG joints in question and were found to be un-satisfactory but the tests results were ignored. The situation is recoverable using HP Air Blow but records show that engineering (without the approval of NRRO Wash. DC) installed screen filters after the HP Air vlvs. that were open to sea water and constantly needing overhaul due to fouling. Testing was performed with screens installed and due to the Venture effect the screens froze up creating an ice dam, w/o propulsion and HP Blow Thresher was doomed. Admiral Rickover started and developed the Level I Subsafe Program, since then we have not lost a submarine. USS San Francisco was a close call but it was not due to the work of our overhaul, she ran full speed into an uncharted underwater mountain. To this day I mourn the 1 sailor who perished as a result of the collision.
Today marks 60 years since this tragic event.
RIP USS Thresher
Still on eternal patrol
My grandfather worked on that sub. After the sinking he felt responsible for the demise of the crew and fell into alcoholism. My mom was told by his brother he kind of died with them that day and was never right again. Be careful out there people alcohol may be fun but it can destroy you completely
My grandfather was one of the Navy QC inspectors, refused to ok work. Navy said ok it or we transfer you away from your home and wife and newborn daughter (my mother). He took the transfer.
@@cptomes Your grandfather was a man of integrity.
I have been in similar situations and it can get the pressure to just go with the flow can get pretty intense but that's just one of the ways life tests if your are a man. Do you stand your ground and possibly have to fight it out or do you meekly tuck your tail between your legs and whimper "yes sir" to the bully?
Also, if you stand & fight and it turns out later that you actually were in the wrong, be a man and admit it.
@@cptomes I was a supervisor working on fast attack and boomer navigation systems. This included the steering and diving systems and parts of those systems were sub-safe. On year we were really busy and the projects were piling up and behind. My new general foreman and the project managers were on me every day, sometimes more than once, to hurry the work up. I told them straight up; I do not hurry up sub-safe work, ever, and for no one! OK, we are going to your superintendent. I said no problem. Superintendent calls me into his office and asks what the issue is, I told him the number of men available to work sub -safe work is not enough to be supporting 4 steering and diving alignment, repair, and testing all at once and every project manager thinks his boat is supposed to be first. They keep pressuring me to hurry up and I won't do that. When he asked why, this is what I told him: I want to do a good job for these brave men to be able to carry out their missions in safety. I also want to be able to sleep at night knowing that the work I was responsible for was done right and would never compromise the safety of over 100 men. He said he agreed with me and wished more had my attitude and if anyone gave me grief, just give them his number. He also said never be afraid to ask me for help if you need it.
All the guys I know that worked on it feel guilt as well. It's sad. Each person who worked on it played such a small role in the grand scheme of things. Guys, that all they did was make rivets or weld stuff, that all feel the loss, I think, quite a bit differently than any of us can.
Sounds like family is folklore.
I was doing a siding job a few months back and the home owners had a never forget thresher sticker on their car. As naval history guy I had to ask and it was the ladies brother who was on the thresher. Such a shame
Great vid. My dad served on the USS Albacore, some say the Thresher's sister boat. The Albacore was an experimental boat and still holds the underwater speed record some 60 years later. The Albacore was a guinea pig boat. Go test this and if it works, great. After the loss of the Thresher, the Albacore went to sea with the orders to duplicate what we think sank the Thresher. The Albacore tried every possible reason. To this day, my dad is 81 years old. He sticks to his explanation that the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard sunk the Thresher. The cold air strainers failed during the emergency blow. The strainers may have been compromised from the factory. The shipyard is responsible for testing these strainers prior to installation. Great Job.
Worth noting that the SOSUS analysis in recent years suggested that there was no high pressure leak but rather an electrical short that led to the reactor scram.
The Sosus was not recorded at that time. The evidence was just human recall of what they heard? Im confused if nothing was recorded, how did they analize any of the sounds?
@@RL-up6zb tell that to Skipjack’s skipper and the engineer who reviewed the recordings.
Becky, an electrical short could not cause flooding unless there was a massive explosion. A reactor scram causes control rods to be rapidly lowered into the core of the reactor stopping the fission process. That's it. No explosion. American reactors are extremely well-engineered systems. But if you takeaway a couple of safety systems then all hell could break loose. Flooding caused the reactor to scram leaving no means of generating propulsion. Even a small leak from a hole the size of half the width of a pencil at 700 feet would produce unbelievable amounts of fog, shorting out vital electronic controls. This is what is generally thought to have happened onboard Thresher. Hence, lose the reactor, lose propulsion. Couple this with tons of seawater coming in and no way to get rid of it equals disaster. The Navy learned some lessons from the Thresher and came out with modifications to certain systems greatly enhancing survivability percentages. I rode nuclear sub back in the early 70s and I was profoundly grateful for these changes.
The loss of Titan brought me here. The ocean is TERRIFYING.
This is a prime example of lessons learned Oceangate should have followed for Titan, but yet ignored the lessons learned from this.
Everyone at work paused when the news of the Titan hit. It really hit home since its what we do.
...I remember when the Thresher was lost, I was almost 8 years-old and my mother, who was a dedicated radio listener, heard the report on one of New York's all news AM stations, she remarked how sad it was for all the families who had lost a father or husband just before Easter, which was the following Sunday..............
I’ve always been intrigued by the Thresher because my grandfather worked on the electrical systems while it was under construction at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
I vividly remember both the sinking of the Thresher on 10 April 1963 and the Scorpion on 22 May 1968 even though I was just a kid. Interesting that the keel of the Thresher was laid on 28 May 1958 and the keel of the Scorpion was laid on 20 August 1958.
I've always have wondered why, WHY, they don't do these tests where the ocean floor is shallower than that sub's crush depth....
Would have saved numerous lives since early WW2 (where we brought out some WW1 subs from moth-ball to serve as training subs)!
Because crush depth is a projection based on material science and is considered no-go outside emergencies in combat. Operating depth is the better metric to test.
@@acceptablecasualty5319 You do tests to operational depth in water slightly shallower than crush depth until the ship and crew were evaluated.
1963 yolo move by military leadership. Go big or go home.
@@acceptablecasualty5319 He's not suggesting testing crush depth. He's saying do the tests of operational depth in areas where if the sub sinks it'll be resting on the seafloor at a depth above crush depth and therefore hopefully won't get crushed.
Probably because testing at any operational depth would leave zero chance for survivors, crush depth or not.
Imagine being in that scenario. You and your crew are trying to get the sub to resurface, but instead slowly sinking further and further into the deep blue, until finally you sink beyond the maximum rated depth of the sub.
They couldn't blow!!!!
Legend has it that the Navigator was calling out the depth on the underwater telephone as they went down. Probably to take his mind off the fact that he knew he was dead.
Very interesting. It’s strange that the endothermic reaction of throttling a gas ( making it super cold when rapidly reducing pressure) was overlooked by the Engineers.
The endothermic reaction was the key to cooling the IR seeker on the SIDEWINDER missile which had been in service for years before the loss of the THRESHER.
I have friends in the seacoast area of NH that worked at the Navy shipyard and worked on the Thresher. All of them, though they played no part in the design and were only doing their particular jobs in the building of the sub, feel remorse and guilt for the lives lost that fateful day. I can't imagine.
Simon, your videos get me through the work day! 🇺🇸
Military Sealift Command is an interesting topic. It’s how the US Navy ships can stay at sea indefinitely getting all of their groceries, ammunition and materials while staying underway.
I’ve been asking for a naval propositioning ship and sealift command video for years
@Gerald H I was on an AE in the mid 90s until it was decommissioned and turned over to the MSC.
A scout ship was in contact with thresher while she sank. They used active sonar to broadcast a call for help, as it could be programmed to send any signal.
AC: This information was recently released in the last couple years and has not received widespread publicity yet. The crew lived for over 1.5 days before the sub imploded and sank.
@@KB4QAA You're welcome to believe what you want but that definitely did not happen she sank on Day Zero. Only when all of the destroyers and other submarine rescue ships shut off all their fathometers and stopped banging away with active sonar did the submarine USS Seawolf stop hearing anything. There was so much noise going around during the search that when Seawolf requested to keep things silent, was when all of the noise stopped. There's no way they hovered between 1300 and 2400 ft for over a day and a half. It was quick and it was over within a matter of minutes from "minor difficulties, attempting to blow" to implosion. Again, you're welcome to believe what you'd like but... Them already finding flotsam and debris where she went down, plus the LOGRAM of her implosion already captured with SOSUS on Day Zero, then hearing pings and banging on a hull? Nope. There was nobody to send any distress signal. The signals they did pick up we're all harmonics of frequencies used by search ships. I have to disagree with you here.
@@whoohaaXL and you are welcome to believe what you like too,
but contrary to what you say they did pick up sounds that sounded like people banging on a hull, so either interpretation is valid at this point
@@TonySpike an implosion record falsified over so many channels? nah...could´ve been just one flappy part banging on another...
@@KB4QAA I believe this is highly contested and unlikely.
Thanks
I think the story of Robert Ballard using the finding of Titanic as a cover for surveying Thresher is also worth knowing.
I just read that to get 'permission' to look for Titanic, that Ballard had to survey both the Thresher site and the Scorpion site, and make reports to the Navy about what he found. I have no way to confirm the statement that I found.
@@j.b.9581 yes, that's it. He had to get permission to use the survey ship and the equipment but had to find and survey Scorpion in secret first. He has since done an interview about it.
Thanks Simon!
One of the few first of class ships whose name was removed from the class. Permit class, should have been Thresher class
Perhaps you could have mentioned that the U.S. Navy has not lost a SUBSAFE certified ship since the institution of the program. USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was lost in May 1968. She, (and three other U.S. subs at the time) was NOT SUBSAFE certified.
I chirped up on one of your previous vids about submarines.
I was on the USS Dace (SSN-607) which was technically a member of the Thresher class. We used that as a bit of gallows humor about our life under the seas.
I was on the USS Dace as well, from 78 to 81. Will you be at the reunion in November in Pensacola FL?
@@dennisdoherty3221 alas, I can't.
Back when I worked at a naval shipyard we built subs and aircraft carriers for the US navy we had to listen to the sound of the Thresher exploding….not a sound I wanna hear ever again
It didn't explode, it imploded. If you don't know that, I'm calling bullshit.
@@chriswakefield9538 ohhh I used the wrong word lmao how many nuclear powered subs have you worked on?
Where did the audio come from? SOSUS? Because the Skylark didn't have recording equipment.
@@rolanddeschain470 Back then SOSUS, I believe only had LOGRAMS which was a paper rolling recording device. Kind of like a seismometer. I still have not seen the logram for the implosion of the thresher... Let alone an audio recording. Doesn't mean they didn't exist but the Skylark definitely didn't record it, you definitely got that right. It's not to say that a recording doesn't exist but in 1963 I don't think the system was that refined yet. If someone can correct me on this it would be greatly appreciated because I'm honestly not sure.
EDIT: Apparently, they were able to fully record sounds AT LEAST as early as 1962 when the Cuban missile crisis was able to record four Foxtrot class Soviet submarines. I have heard the sound of an imploding tugboat. So I would imagine it's probably something similar. Smaller compartments imploding sound like pops and the big ones are just one big boom. If you want to get a vague idea of how quick death comes, look up "tank car implosion" on CZcams. Since there was no ignition, (because air under that much pressure compressed ignites like a diesel engine), I would imagine that death probably comes three times as fast as the tank car implodes. If I remember correctly they vacuumed it until it collapsed on itself. Crushing from an outside source would be much more brutal and quick.
@@whoohaaXL I'm like 95% sure I've seen a readout for the Scorpion's implosion but never the Thresher. Official court of inquiry states the sonar pings weren't made by any human hands, so I wondered if it was speculation and sailor tales, or if they had actual recordings and data.
Short, sharp and to the point.
RIP to the fallen!
SCRAM, is in reality an acronym. It hails from the the very birth of atomic power. SCRAM is an acronym for "Safety Control Rod Axe Man", which was supposedly coined by Enrico Fermi. His reactor had a single control rod that would drop in place if a rope was cut.
Actually that is a backronym. The man who actually wielded the axe that day wrote in a letter to a friend saying that he never heard the story until years later. The more likely origin is from a discussion about safety circuitry. There was a big button that would insert all the control and safety rods. Someone asked what they would do after pressing the button and the response was, "Scram out of here." The first written reference was in a circuit diagram of this switch that was labelled scram switch.
@@williambowling8211 there were no buttons at the first reactor. It was all manually controlled- by hand. Hence the axe to cut the ropes to drop the control rods.
as a child of 11, this accident started me thinking. I lived in a Navy home. Dad was aboard CV20 during WW2. Oldest of family, my sister was an ET at Moffit Field NAFB Tower Radar and Control.
As a function of engineering efficiency, ALL nuclear subs are limited by their condensers. The steam produced by the heat of the reactor MUST be condensed. The condensate is cooled by sea water. No matter how strong the hull, valves, or torpedo tubes are nothing compares to the weakness of the condensate-seawater tubes. It is at this point engineers must decide between efficiency and crush depth.
Can you make a video on the Douglas C-54
Second that from an old Four-engine Douglas guy.
Best initial attack airtanker ever.
@@tgmccoy1556 there is one abandoned at my local airport
Apparently everyone's grandfather worked on projects associated w the Thresher.
Thresher went down when I was a child. I remember being horrified by the nightly TV news reports.
Years ago, one of my co-workers, a retired chief, and one of the early nucs recruited off the smoke boats told me a story of Scorpion. He's passed away in the 90's, but the version he told me was the Scorpion had a reputation of being hyper aggressive. The ussr task force they were shadowing got tired of their crap and and one of the destroywrs took them out.
He may have been bovine backwashing me, but it sure sounded plausible.
Anyone else make up words and sing along to the intro music?
"Mega-mega projects, mega projects, mega projects. They're really really really cool!"
No, just me?
Excellent video 📹
Highlights the tragedy of a doomed submarine.
In our time, we have seen the tragedy of the Indonesia and Argentina submarines.
The crush pressure totally destroys everything without hope of rescue
Very sad.
My mom told me about this, she and her first husband had a friend on the Thresher when it was lost.
I remember the day this happened. Shocking, horrifying, traumatizing for a kid watching it on TV.
My uncle lost his best friend on the Thresher. He served on the USS Farragut at the time. He never forgave the navy for what happened
Two words I never want to hear when I'm on station on a submarine: Cut costs.
Or falsified steel quality controls
Those men didn’t die in vain. Only one sub has been lost since SUBSAFE and it wasn’t yet compliant. I know that I felt better going to sea with those lessons already learned.
To a young child who’d just watched his dad make a model of Hoverloyd’s SRN-4 Before going on the princess Margaret on to Calais, It was thrilling, It was a truly British adventure, shame it’s not still going.
I became a U.S Navy Ocean Systems Technician in 1972 and served with some old salts who witnessed the demise of the Thresher as well as the Scorpion in real time, on sonograms.*
I was on the USS Permit (my 2nd boat out of 3). After an overhaul in the early 80's, some of the piping and other equipment, had been replaced . . . . . with pipes and equipment that had nameplates or engraving of SSN-593 or Thresher . These were parts built for spares for the Thresher that had been tested to make sure they complied with all requirements.. You can call us superstitious, but the first several dives during sea trial had everyone almost overly alert for any problems. Especially on the first deep dive because of the creaking that occurs.
Anyway, we obviously came through sea trials fine. But if you wanted to spook a newbie, you'd point out the engraving that could be seen on the piping that had no lagging. 😈
Actually, more details are known than the general public has been told. Sailors in the nuclear power program were given highly detailed reports on the contributing factors causing her loss, and the corrections that had been made to all following designs and many emergency procedures from what they learned.
I was a navy submariner back in the '80s and '90s. Some of my friends were on the USS Permit. The Permit was started first, but their construction was delayed. The first sub completed was to be the US Thresher (SSN 593), so they swapped the names and hull numbers. The Permit still had a few nameplates and such identifying them as the USS Thresher (SSN 593). They said it was rather eerie.
Fish.
Google will easily show that is incorrect.
@@hk-wr2jt I never saw it, myself, but my friends told me that the throttle wheels in the maneuvering room still had “USS Thresher (SSN 593) on it.
My grandfather’s physics group was contracted to make the underwater camera for the Navy to find the Thresher. Most of his group earlier had gone to work on the Manhatten Project & he was invited. My grandfather declined , not for pacifist reasons, but because, as he told me, “I had a job 5 minutes from home & I could just roll right out of bed.” (He taught college physics & was an expert in fabrication & electronics).
U talkin bilderburgers son
It's the same thing as with countless other accidents including Cherbobyl. They did " safety testing" by shutting down the reactor and then pushing the boat to max depth. What do they expect to happen when they shut down key systems, and then push the other components to their outer limits.
Thanks to Hello Fresh for sponsoring this video, and sending food to Simon.
He otherwise lies curled up in fetus position in the middle of the room, starving.
EDIT: 6:12 Oh, well... Nevermind. R.I.P Simon.
Suggestion for future Megaprojects (unless they've been done already): germany's Autobahn system, the U.S. interstate highway system or the Roman Empire road system.
Well done.
My great, great uncle designed the Thresher. He was on board the Skylark when the Thresher imploded, and he wasn't the same after the incident.
that one officer who stayed on shore was thanking god for his " medical issues "
I would not be too sure about that. He probably suffered severely from Survivor's Guilt. Is there any info about him and the rest of his life?
@@steveluke2395 i cannot find his name
At least one that was left behind, I believe an officer, committed suicide as a result of survivor's guilt.
This was a timely week in which to stumble upon this video.
Cutting corners is an act of negligence and conspiracy.
I was led to this video by a previous video I just watched and actually there were people still alive and communicating with other vessels trying to rescue them for over 30 hrs what a horrible death, no wonder the navy covered the facts up for over 50 years
Then your previous video lied about communications for 30 hours. The Thresher sank within a few minutes when some of her welding joints failed. Flooding then knocked out all of her electrical systems (No communications ) possible. With no way to pump out the water the sub became heavier and heavier. Sinking well past her crush depth & eventually imploding killing everyone onboard in a split second. Shalom
Please do a video on the internet itself. And also naval sealift command/propositioning ships
If only Stockton Rush would have spent an hour or two researching this, maybe he too could have curbed his hubris and avoided a tragedy.
Stokton crushed was building subs at 15….what were u doin at 15 getting grounded?
@peterguirguess853 well, to answer your smart ass comment, I was preparing for my 20+ year career in the Navy operating and maintaining submarines at that point.
I've forgotten more about submarines and submarining than Stockton Rush ever knew... and I still know more about it than all of the employees at Oceangate combined (including Rush).
Additionally, he didn't give a F about submarines (professionally) until around 2005'ish. It's well documented now, you should read up.
But he didn't want to hire someone like me, almost 50, ex-military with over 23 years experience in submarines. Maybe because I wouldn't stand for his BS and would call him out on it... or maybe because he was an idiot.
@@kevinschirmer4694 Thank you for your service, Kevin. Peter, yes, YATA
@@kevinschirmer4694I guarantee Stockton was aware of the Thresher. He was no dummy. Just incredibly arrogant.
He was far from an "idiot". Idiots don't graduate from ivy league schools with aerospace engineering degrees. Give him his due.
@@kevinschirmer4694THANK YOU for your service. But stop bragging. Its unbecoming.
And you never answered the question about what you were actually doing at 15.
I remember always hearing stories about this boat when i was in Nuke School in the navy
Very interesting video 👍👍
Good video 👍
My brother was supposed to be on this sub for this test. His fiancé convinced him to quit the Navy instead - she was sick of him being gone for years. He was upset for years over this because he knew so many men who were killed on the sub.😢
I thought he was happy she didn't let him on that boat!
Survivor guilt. Very common.
I had just turned 10 living north of Boston, remember wbz radio reported a navy sub on sea trials was "over due"
Bill Whittle touched on the Skipjack and Permit class subs in his Cold War What We Saw series. Worth the listen if you’re interested- episode is Cloaks and Daggers.
Video suggestion: How does Amazon print to order the books they publish? What type of a printing system can be so flexible to print to order single copies?
1:10 - Chapter 1 - Development
2:40 - Chapter 2 - Design
5:25 - Mid roll ads
7:00 - Chapter 3 - The loss
Golf Class rather than Gulf Class I believe
This is quite correct. NATO referred to Soviet submarine classes by letters from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, hence Golf and Hotel as referenced here.
Let's hear a Simon Whistler story on Simon Whistlers mega projects! All them channels make it a mega project lol
The stuff they just declassified last year is intense. Even when I used to work on subs they didn't tell us about that, just that it "instantly got ripped apart by the pressure". Kind of disturbing that even before SUBSAFE a boat could survive at 8000' for a while.
Couple video ideas;
USS San Francisco accident and subsequent chop & swap with the bow of the USS Honolulu
Moving the Cape Hatteras lighthouse further back on the island away from the beach. 19th century lighthouse on essentially a giant sandbar moved by a smaller version of the crawler NASA used
If doing the San Francisco, you could also cover its conversion to a “moored training ship” and its new service in the final training phase for the US Navy’s nuclear propulsion program.
czcams.com/video/yIt-wzZXbwM/video.html
She never survived at 8,000 ft. Not even for a fraction of a second. The Thresher, looks like it went through, a thresher.
@@whoohaaXL yes, at 13,000 feet. Consider the intense pressure it'd take to finally shred the boat like we know happened
A silver lining being that the sinking led to the discovery of the Titanic
I'm surprised you did not play the imploding sounds from the Skylark. They are haunting.
I wasn't trying to find a new Megaprojects video on the Thresher, but here we are 🤷🏼♀️
The sub didn’t suddenly implode, documents released just last year narrate that the sub sank. A total of 37 pings, from her main array, were recorded by another sub tasked with locating her. Sub Brief did a great in-depth video about this titled “37 Pings : Death Throes of the USS Thresher”
czcams.com/video/yIt-wzZXbwM/video.html
That was just the Seawolf crews´ take on those events. Keep that in mind. How would Thresher stay above crush depth for so long?
@Hunne2303 The general idea was subs and their individual compartments can withstand way more pressure than advertised..
It doesn't matter quite so much how deep your submarine can go, but how quietly it goes. Soviet subs of the era were clattering nightmares, as is any sub which is not properly manned and maintained (like now, for instance). Next what matters is how fast and deep your ASW weapons can go. The military has a history of overblowing rival nations' military capabilities, as we have recently seen. (Might also google the MiG-25 for an example.)
You should do one on the USS Scorpion.
The Hunley could be an interesting topic.
IF YOUR GONNA ORDERED HELLO FRESH!!!
be careful when coming to cancel,
I cancelled but they still took the money and sent me food that I hadn’t ordered
How ever I will say the food is of very good quality and the meals are 10/10
Tasty
USS Seawolf logs of the search for the Thresher are declassified btw
You should read Bruce Rules book on the loss of the Thresher.
While not a "Mega Project", the story of the USS Permit is worth reading.
The story of the scorpion is worth a nod, I believe.
My last name. Cautionary tale indeed. No seriously though, thanks for covering this!!!
many people believe that some of the crew survived the initial incident and communicated with the Seawolf for hours.
"At 12:11 AM, Seawolf heard, via its Rycom receiver, a signal from a distress beacon, or pinger, also known as the BQC. Although it couldn’t yet be confirmed that it was from the Thresher, this was clearly good news, since the pingers, two of which were fitted on each submarine, needed to be manually activated in order to broadcast a signal"
"Using its UQC underwater telephone, the Seawolf requested the Thresher turn its beacons on and off. A few minutes later, Seawolf reported “We hear what may be interrupted keying now,” suggesting the beacons were now being switched on and off deliberately."
"At 1:55 PM, the Seawolf reported that it received the emergency beacon tone three times. Five minutes later, another two tones were heard. As of this point, it seems the Seawolf thought that there were at least some people still alive on the Thresher, which would only have been possible had its hull not fully collapsed.More evidence then came to the crew of the Seawolf at 2:15 PM, when they reported hearing the main sonar from the Thresher. If true, this would have indicated that there were not only survivors aboard the submarine, but that it still had enough power reserves to transmit actively."
"At 2:24 PM the report notes that the sonar on the Thresher stopped transmitting, likely after the battery became exhausted. In total, the Seawolf had heard no fewer than 37 pings from the sonar of what it identified as the stricken submarine."
www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41523/uss-threshers-crew-may-have-survived-many-hours-after-its-disappearance-according-to-new-docs
czcams.com/video/yIt-wzZXbwM/video.html
It completely contradicts itself
Can you do a mega projects video on the All seas giant work ship they use to move oil rigs
Not this one? czcams.com/video/H9lgl0ObeAs/video.html