Navy declassifies more USS Thresher documents

[Fly320s]

Some of you might be interested in this.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/09/23/navy-declassifies-300-pages-of-probe-1963-uss-thresher-disaster.html/amp

[RoadKingLarry]

Having served on that class of submarine I will reserve comment until I have time to read the newly released documents.  I tend to lean toward accepting the "official" story based on personal knowledge about the systems involved.

[230RN]

OP's link went on about getting the stuff declassified and commentary thereon.

But I was reallyl looking for info on what happemed.  Last I heard the crew got instantly incinerated from the sudden "dieseling" of the air in the ship at that pressure* as the hull collapsed.

But why?  I don't expect them to find that joint SR-847 in DRAWING 825B failed.  There would be no reason to be secretive about that.

But if there were an outside agency involved, then they might want to keep it under wraps and maybe all this FOIA activity and Court actions might not be in the nation's best interest.

I hope RoadKingLarry might be able to say after wading through all 300 pages,

Terry
* (Approximately 40 atmospheres compared to say, 25 atmospheres for a diesel engine.  Captain tried to blow the ballast tanks at that pressure.)

[Angel Eyes]

Still waiting for info U.S.S. Scorpion to be declassified.






(and whether it was related to the sinking of K129)    

[RoadKingLarry]

At the time the Thresher was lost it was front line "hunter-killer" submarine in our fleet. When it happened classification of the findings was absolutely appropriate. The Thresher class, renamed to Permit class after the accident, were in service until the early to mid '90s.   The information could have been used by our cold war adversaries to negate our significant submarine warfare advantage.  A considerable amount of the basic technology used on Thresher is essentially not fundamentally changed on Los Angeles class boats as well as on several classes of middle subs even today. I have no first hand knowledge about Seawolf or Virginia class boats but some things just basic to submarine design though.

The lessons learned from Thresher were a major part of our culture. The changes by the Subsafe program is in my opinion a significant factor that we have not lost another submarine due to an accident since.

[230RN]

And I guess declassifying the stuff we were trying to keep secret back then, at this point, will reveal to Russia what we found out about their stuff in the meantime. Or we wouldn't be declassifying iit.

Cold war, 1968:  We got A and they don't, so keep it secret.

+N years:  We find out rhey finally got A, but we don't want them to know that we know it, so we can't declassify A even though we both have it, because then they'll know we know they have it too.

Same goes for the Scorpion thing.

Today:  We'd probably have been better off if we just said joint SR-847 in DRAWING 825B failed because of a bad weld and the problem has been corrected in all versions of the (formerly) Thresher class.  Oh, and by the way, don't go below 1299 feet in salt water.

I myself would not be too quick to congratulate that Naval Officer who instituted all those suits.  Damned self righteous do-gooders.

Terry, "Loose lips sink ships and the walls have ears," 230RN