Search For RMS Titanic Was a Cover Story

wiredog writes "According to National Geographic, Robert Ballard's search for the RMS Titanic in 1985 was a cover operation for the real search: They were looking for the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, two US nuclear submarines that sank during the Cold War." ABC News also has a story on this two-fer undersea search.

In other news

[InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837)]

Bush's search for WMDs in Iraq was actually a cover story for the real search: Where's Waldo? [triumf.ca]

Re:

[linal (1116371)]

found him!

news at 11

Re:In other news

[VValdo (10446)]

Where?!

W

Old News

[Major Blud (789630)]

I remember hearing about this quite a few years ago, so this really isn't ground breaking news. I wish I could name a source....probably the Discovery Channel. I saw the special on the National Geographic Channel about this last night. The part that amazes me is that Ballard was able to keep his French partner in the dark about searching for the Scorpion.

Re:Old News

[Jeremy Erwin (2054)]

Discovery Channel? DISCOVERY Channel? You and your newfangled fancy pants cable channels. Back in the day, we didn't have A&E or History, or Discovery. We had PBS. And it was free. Except for Pledge week.

Subs, Secrets and Spies, NOVA January 19, 1999 [pbs.org]

NARRATOR: Scattered fragments of twisted metal are all that remains of Thresher, the greatest submarine of her day. This footage was shot in the 1980s by Bob Ballard, as part of a classified Navy effort to survey the debris. His cover story was his search for the Titanic.

Re:Old News

[DerekLyons (302214)]

You and your newfangled shiny TV stuff... Back in my day we had books...
 
  "Explorations: my quest for adventure and discovery under the sea." (Hyperion, 1995) [amazon.com]
 
Seriously, not only is this not news, or even new news... TFA gets the sequence of events all wrong. Ballard had already been hunting Titanic with side scan sonar and photo sleds (which is even harder than finding a needle in a haystack) when the Navy approached him to map the wreckage of Thresher and Scorpion. Not find, but map (the locations were already known to the Navy). This was done as part of a Navy project to examine reactors known to be on the bottom of the ocean to determine if reactors could be disposed of by ocean dumping. They also dove on both wrecks using the Alvin (Oxford University Press, 1990) [amazon.com] to take samples of the seabed and wreckage and to take radiation readings (photographs from this expedition can be seen at the Naval Historical Center page on Scorpion [navy.mil] ).
 
When the Navy hired him to perform those surveys, he examined the earlier ones (there have been several), and realized that debris trails were the key to locating deep water wrecks. The Scorpion wreck site is compact as she broke up on impact with the bottom. Thresher's wreck on the other hand is scattered across a considerable area as she broke up (relatively) shallow. The Navy however refused to pay for a search for Titanic to prove the theory and to further test Dr. Ballard's new mapping sled. Instead the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution [whoi.edu] funded a search for Titanic as an extension of the expedition to map the Scorpion's wreckage. (Though all WHOI knew was that it was a classified USN expedition.)

Re:Old News

[tm2b (42473)]

I love the way people immediately start whining about things being "old news" without bothering to RTFA.

Pieces of this Cold War tale have been known since the mid-1990s, but more complete details are now coming to light, said Titanic's discoverer, Robert Ballard.

Re:Old News

[dotancohen (1015143)]

Like they refused to participate in America's war? :)

WWII?

Re:Old News

[Torvaun (1040898)]

That was America participating in Europe's war.

Re:Old News

[A nonymous Coward (7548)]

(by the way, I'm joking for the humor impaired)

By definition, the humor impaired won't understand your jokes, so there's no point in joking for them. Better to joke for the rest of us.

Re:Old News

[jabuzz (182671)]

What is this "English" Navy that you speak of? As a loyal subject of Her Majesty I know of a Royal Navy.

You could perhaps get away with describing it as the British Navy, but describing it as the English Navy has been completely incorrect since 1707.

Re:Royal Navy?

[Pentagram (40862)]

See here [telegraph.co.uk]. Not that I'm a royalist, but they do serve in the forces. (Though if they feel like "borrowing" a Chinook to impress their birds/go on a stag weekend, that seems OK too.)

The Diamond

[D Ninja (825055)]

Nah...Robert Ballard was really searching for a very expensive diamond [imdb.com] dropped overboard by Rose.

Titanic 2: Underwater Love

[Forrest Kyle (955623)]

So is James Cameron going to make a 3 hour chick flick where a young enlisted man falls in love with a high ranking officer, and they make love in the engine room while the Captain, the officer's life partner, searches frantically for him. Then the submarine starts to sink and the gay enlisted man gives the officer the last life jacket and the officer says, "I'll never let go!" and then he lets go and James Cameron wins 200 more Oscars?

Re:Titanic 2: Underwater Love

[Hal_Porter (817932)]

So is James Cameron going to make a 3 hour chick flick where a young enlisted man falls in love with a high ranking officer, and they make love in the engine room while the Captain, the officer's life partner, searches frantically for him. Then the submarine starts to sink and the gay enlisted man gives the officer the last life jacket and the officer says, "I'll never let go!" and then he lets go and James Cameron wins 200 more Oscars?

It's like a slash fanfic adapted for twitter.

Project Jennifer

[darkmeridian (119044)]

The U.S. government has used false pretenses to cover up secret submarine recovery operations before. In Project Jennifer, the CIA got Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer, ostensibly to mine undersea minerals but actually to try and recover a sunken Russian submarine. The project failed to recover much of the submarine, which broke apart as it was being pulled to the surface. However, two Russian nuclear missiles were recoverd.

Re:Project Jennifer

[VEGETA_GT (255721)]

I believe they also recovered 12 Russian crew members bodies in the piece they did recover which there given a proper burial at sea. Tho they have never actually stated how much of the sub was actually recovered or what was in it. In all honesty this is the first time I heard any specifics of what was brought up.

Re:Project Jennifer

[Iphtashu Fitz (263795)]

You're correct. They actually performed a burial at sea for the remains of the Soviet sailors that were recovered. In the 1980's during a trip to the Soviet Union, President Regan provided a copy of the video taken during the ceremony. This fact wasn't made public until almost 15 years later though. A short snippet of the video has been shown on a tv show about the Glomar Explorer & it's true mission. It was on one of the tv channels like Discovery or History Channel.

And here's a bit more trivia. Know why it was called "Project Jennifer"? Jennnifer was the name of the daughter of the guy who conceived of the idea.

Re:Project Jennifer

[Iphtashu Fitz (263795)]

And in fact here's the video in question: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9135890926136363372 [google.com]

No audio, just a 15 minute video showing the service.

Re:

[Iphtashu Fitz (263795)]

There's a lot of controversy about exactly what was recovered. It's now public knowledge that the remains of some of the Soviet crew was recovered. It's also believed that multiple missiles were recovered, as you indicated. But how could they successfully recover missiles from inside the sub as well as human remains but not recover much of the actual sub itself? The public story that the claw used to grab the sub broke and thereby caused the sub to also break in half seems a bit far fetched given what w

Re:Project Jennifer

[darkmeridian (119044)]

The operation pulled up only a small fraction of the submarine, but it was 38 feet's worth of submarine. You can fit six corposes and two nuclear missiles in that much space. It's also unclear what the CIA would be lying about at this time; were there space aliens in the submarine?

Re:Project Jennifer

[inviolet (797804)]

The U.S. government has used false pretenses to cover up secret submarine recovery operations before. In Project Jennifer, the CIA got Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer, ostensibly to mine undersea minerals but actually to try and recover a sunken Russian submarine. The project failed to recover much of the submarine, which broke apart as it was being pulled to the surface. However, two Russian nuclear missiles were recoverd.

Probably the most interesting thing about that mission was the real reason behind it...

The Russian sub had left its assigned patrol area without leave. It surfaced and may have attempted a rogue missile launch against Hawaii. A failsafe or tamper-proofing or other failure caused the missile to self-destruct inside the launch tube. The sub then sank.

In the salvage effort the Americans weren't aiming to learn anything about Soviet nuclear sub construction. Rather, they wanted to prove (to the Russians) the suspicion that the sub's officers had gone rogue. This information was a powerfully upsetting revelation to the Russian military command, because it meant they did not have reliable control over their boomers.

John Craven, one of the guys who worked on the salvage project eventually wrote a tell-some book about it. Fascinating stuff.

Titantic title unfair

[gihan_ripper (785510)]

Hey, RMS [wikipedia.org] might be a little on the large size, but Titanic? Come on.

Re:Titantic title unfair

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

That's GNU/Titanic. Get it right.

Re:Titantic title unfair

[berashith (222128)]

Titanic
Is
Totally
Another
Non
Immersible
Craft

means "Royal Mail Ship"

[Quadraginta (902985)]

"Royal Mail Ship" is a mark of honor for especially fast ships, qualified to carry the mail.

Probably also because it's similar to the Royal Navy title, HMS = "Her/His Majesty's Ship."

Wow, it makes sense now...

[monkeyboythom (796957)]

"I was a little short with him," said Thunman, who retired as a vice admiral and now lives in Springfield, Illinois. He emphasized that the mission was to study the sunken warships. Once Ballard had completed his mission--if time was left--Thunman said, Ballard could do what he wanted, but never gave him explicit permission to search for the Titanic.

And all this time I thought Ballard was pissy because the others on the boat were making fun of his hair loss.

Now I know it was both!

Imagine the phone call home?

[Lurker2288 (995635)]

"Hi, Navy? It's Bob Ballard. Guess what I just found."

Doesn't Compute

[headhot (137860)]

I call BS. The USN knew exactly where the Thresher when down as if failed durring monitored sea trials, and knew that the Scorpion didn't go down in the North Atlantic.

Re:Doesn't Compute

[brouski (827510)]

The point wasn't to locate the two subs, it was to get up close investigation of the wreckage.

Re:

[BCW2 (168187)]

They had only used towed cameras to photograph Scorpion before. The Thresher was visited by the Trieste and they had recovered some parts.

The Thresher did go down during sea trials after an overhaul. There were several factors that sank her, too many for here. One soul actually called the depth every 50 ft as they sank, no panic just steady data. He knew what was coming!

The Scorpion was sunk by a battery malfunction in a Mark 37 electric torpedo. The battery got hot enough to set off the warhead or exploded

Re:Doesn't Compute

[Raistlin77 (754120)]

The Scorpion was sunk by a battery malfunction in a Mark 37 electric torpedo. The battery got hot enough to set off the warhead or exploded and set it off. Then the rest of the torpedo warheads detonated.

This was proven not to be the cause, as the area where the torpedoes were stored was neither utterly destroyed nor even partially damaged. You can clearly see that part of the sub perfectly intact in photos. 1 torpedo exploding would cause significant damage - all the torpedoes exploding, whether all at once or in succession, would have completely obliterated the bow.

Re:Doesn't Compute

[CrimsonAvenger (580665)]

There were several factors that sank her, too many for here.

Realistically, it reduces to two things:

1) When the Main Seawater Pipe shears, the boat sinks. Period. The engine room has too much volume to be lifted to the surface by any combination of blowing ballast and driving up, even ignoring that you lose the main engines when the MSW shears.

2) The High Pressure Air system iced up. The air in the tanks wasn't dry enough, and when it expanded, it froze out until the pipes were blocked. Which pretty much prevented blowing ballast.

One soul actually called the depth every 50 ft as they sank, no panic just steady data. He knew what was coming!

Everyone who goes down in one of the boats knows. There's always the chance of taking the Thresher and Scorpion out of Port and Starboard when you go down, and any sane sailor knows it. Any experienced sailor knows how many times his boat has come closer than he'd like to doing it (mine, once while I was on it, once before that), and worries every time he goes down.

Re:Doesn't Compute

[CrimsonAvenger (580665)]

Don't like answering myself, but it occurred to me that "Port and Starboard" was not self-explanatory.

Used in that way, it refers to watchstanding. Normally, a Sailor stands one watch in three. Occasionally, for whatever reason, you find yourself standing one watch in two. Which means you are Port and Starboard with the other guy who stands your watch while you sleep.

The Thresher and Scorpion are on a Port and Starboard watch at the bottom, waiting for someone to come along and put them on a three-watch rotation...

don't forget how far deep the Atlantic is

[Quadraginta (902985)]

Knowing where on the surface the Thresher went down is quite different from knowing where she lies on the bottom, 11,000 or so feet below. Ships travel significant distances on their way to the bottom, since they don't just drop vertically. Not only are there currents, but also the boat is not spherical, so it has more hydrodynamic resistance in some aspects than others. That makes it glide and twirl down like a leaf falling through air. It's also breaking apart on the way, and releasing air, and these impulses further push and pull on the wreckage as it sinks. They reach a respectable downward velocity, probably 40-80 MPH near the end, but even so it takes a good 5-10 minutes to get to the bottom. Plenty of time to travel many miles horizontally.

In any event, the purpose of Ballard's expedition was not just to know where the subs were, but to know whether the Soviets had found them yet, and to know what condition they were in (so if the Soviets did find them, it would be known what knowlege might have been at risk).

Uh, duh?

[grocer (718489)]

Didn't anybody else wonder how Ballard got funding for a picture taking expedition? Salvage in the ocean is basically anyone's ball game and is funded on premise of profit...who else other than the Navy would be funding essentially R&D for salvage without salvaging anything?

Dual Use Technology

[Lumenary7204 (706407)]

The remotely-controlled drone that Ballard used to search for the Thresher, Scorpion, and Titanic is an excellent example of a piece of dual-use equipment.

More recent exploration of the Titanic's wreckage with remote drones and two-man submarines indicates that the edge of the iceberg that the Titanic hit may have been somewhat "crowbar" shaped, with a vertically-oriented escarpment below the surface puncturing the ship from underneath, in addition to gashing it open from the side. This may help explain why the Titanic sank so rapidly, since the side-hull tears didn't seem to be large enough to account for the volume of water pouring into the ship.

define your acronyms

[poot_rootbeer (188613)]

"RMS Titanic"...? Oh, you must be referring to the GNU/Hurd kernel.

A great submarine book..

[SixDimensionalArray (604334)]

One of my favorite books which tells some of the stories of cold-war era submarine operations is "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage" (ISBN# 006103004X). One of the stories is about the USS Scorpion.

I haven't read it yet, but the story of the USS Thresher is also told in "The Death of the USS Thresher: The Story Behind History's Deadliest Submarine Disaster" (ISBN# 1592283926).

Very interesting!

SixD

Re:A great submarine book..

[Iphtashu Fitz (263795)]

There's already been a tv show made about the book. It's titled the same thing and came out a few years ago. It was done by A&E though, not PBS. You can get a DVD of it here: http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=70724 [aetv.com]

Contradictory stories

[richmaine (128733)]

The two cited sources actually contradict each other. One says, like the slashdot headline, that the Titanic search was a cover-up. However, the other source directly quotes the searcher and makes it clear that it was not at all a cover-up, but rather the opposite - something that accidentally drew attention when it unexpectedly succeeded. There was concern that the attention might also raise other questions.

Methinks that some of the news media just likes to use the word cover-up, without particular regard for whether or not it fits.

Re:Contradictory stories ESPECIALLY

[davidsyes (765062)]

When these landlubbers mix up terms. For instance, "The ship is docked..." or "Tied up..." when it's really MOORED.

But, FTA, what caught my eye was:

"They call it scrambling"

BZZZT! Get ur stuff right, reporters. It's SCRAM, as in Safety Control Rod Activation Mechanism. I frackin' knew this back in 80, as a 15-year old. WTF is wrong with these well-funded reporting arms out there? So, the text probably ought have said, "They call it SCRAMing"..., that is, unless something changed that i didn't know about in the past decade or so...

If the reporter wants to discuss "reactors" and "scrambling", then maybe the story should cover intra-molecular scrambling....

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1381116996002701 [elsevier.com]

But, the reporter should have done some basic patent and process checking:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4337118.html [freepatentsonline.com]

"APRM 40 transmits a scram signal to the rod drive system 6 to scram the reactor. Scramming takes place when the power level reaches about 120% of the ..."

just to let everyone know...

[SethJohnson (112166)]

A friend of mine who is an editor on the 'reality' TV show, 'The Deadliest Catch [discovery.com],' told me it's actually a documentary on the search for the Russian sub that sank in 2003 [bbc.co.uk] while it was being towed to the scrapyard. Most of the work he has to do is replace the unmanned search subs with CGI crab pots in every shot.

The producers are financing the search for the nuclear sub by selling it to the Discovery Channel as a fishing show. Once they find the submarine, then they're going to remove all the CGI and do a little more editing and re-sell the same footage back to the Discovery Channel as a submarine salvage show.

Still no word on what the producers are planning to do with the nuclear kit they're hunting for.

Seth

With Pics!

[csmacd (221163)]

USS Scorpion has been visited a couple of times, http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-s/ssn589-n.htm [navy.mil] has pics.

Re:Fractured story

[Iphtashu Fitz (263795)]

I believe that Ballard was looking specifically for the nuclear reactors on board the two subs. The Navy hired him to locate them to ensure they weren't leaking anything radioactive. So he had to do more than just locate the hull of the subs but search the entire debris field of each sub. According to an interview I heard with him just the other day he used what he learned searching those debris fields to locate the Titanic.

Re:Fractured story

[Martin Blank (154261)]

A civilian provides plausible deniability, which is exactly why the military would ask civilians to do something for them. A civilian research vessel within a few dozen miles of your lost vessel is maybe cause for a raised eyebrow, but a US Navy-flagged vessel nearby is cause to put a few extra subs in the area and maybe send a battle fleet nearby to continue protecting the right to transit international waters.

gee duh huh

[Quadraginta (902985)]

Oh yeah, because, you know, you shouldn't hide military objectives. They should be done right out in the open. Gentlemen don't read other gentlemens' mail. And all this hiding behind rocks and stuff when you're in a shooting war? Totally not cricket, old boy. You're supposed to just form ranks in your nice red uniforms and march out into the machine-gun fire, closing up ranks whenever someone takes a bullet.

Sheesh.

Re:old news

[trongey (21550)]

I think I saw a special on the history channel about this years ago.

Actually, that was part of the coverup. It was a devious plot where they diverted your attention from what they were really doing by telling you what they were really doing. Nobody would ever believe they were telling the truth so the best way to hide it was to show it.

Re:Thresher was found years before.

[Xiaran (836924)]

I usually dont do this. But reading the comments here has somewhat frustrated me as you are not alone in not having read the article. It is quite clear if you read it that they were not searching for the subs. They knew exactly where they were. The Navy was interested in having the reactors of the subs inspected for safety and also seeing if they could get any further information.

Re:Anyone else notice....

[Darth_brooks (180756)]

Where do you think most of the decommissioned Russian nuke boats ended up? They towed them north and either opened the bilges or spent the afternoon firing torpedoes into them. I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that there are some unholy nuclear messes around the arctic circle.

The only difference being that the USSR didn't have much of an EPA to contend with. "Dump it in the ocean" was SOP for many countries for a long time. It doesn't make it right, but to think that we were the only ones is silly.