USS Thresher: The US Navy's Cautionary Tale 

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thresher was one of two losses, Scorpion was the other. different subs, different circumstances, both had all hands lost.

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.

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.

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.

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 💪

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.

Simon, please oh please look into Bagger 288/293 and or Bingham Canyon Copper mine! They are both very impressive megaprojects!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The loss of Titan brought me here. The ocean is TERRIFYING.

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

RIP to the crew of THRESHER and the additional people onboard. Rest your oar, we have the watch.

Today marks 60 years since this tragic event. RIP USS Thresher Still on eternal patrol

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.

...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.

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.

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.

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.

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)!

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).

I think the story of Robert Ballard using the finding of Titanic as a cover for surveying Thresher is also worth knowing.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.*

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.

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

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.

Two words I never want to hear when I'm on station on a submarine: Cut costs.

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.

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.

One of the few first of class ships whose name was removed from the class. Permit class, should have been Thresher class

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.

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.

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?

Thresher went down when I was a child. I remember being horrified by the nightly TV news reports.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My mom told me about this, she and her first husband had a friend on the Thresher when it was lost.

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.

Apparently everyone's grandfather worked on projects associated w the Thresher.

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”

I remember the day this happened. Shocking, horrifying, traumatizing for a kid watching it on TV.

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 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

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.

RIP to the fallen!

Short, sharp and to the point.

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.

I wasn't trying to find a new Megaprojects video on the Thresher, but here we are 🤷🏼‍♀️

This was a timely week in which to stumble upon this video.

Please do a video on the internet itself. And also naval sealift command/propositioning ships

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 had just turned 10 living north of Boston, remember wbz radio reported a navy sub on sea trials was "over due"

Can you make a video on the Douglas C-54

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.

1:10 - Chapter 1 - Development 2:40 - Chapter 2 - Design 5:25 - Mid roll ads 7:00 - Chapter 3 - The loss

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?

Thanks Simon!

Thanks

My last name. Cautionary tale indeed. No seriously though, thanks for covering this!!!

Let's hear a Simon Whistler story on Simon Whistlers mega projects! All them channels make it a mega project lol

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

I remember always hearing stories about this boat when i was in Nuke School in the navy

I'm surprised you did not play the imploding sounds from the Skylark. They are haunting.

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.

Cutting corners is an act of negligence and conspiracy.

While not a "Mega Project", the story of the USS Permit is worth reading.

Curious bit of trivia: the Thresher's 593 hull number could be seen on the American sub (the USS Wayne) in _The Spy Who Loved Me_ ...

Golf Class rather than Gulf Class I believe

A silver lining being that the sinking led to the discovery of the Titanic

actually the background noise in the ocean is about 85-90 DB so to hear something it needs to be louder than that to be picked out of background noise.

Do you think that you could make a video about Soviet titanium submarines? (Mike-class, Alfa-class, ... )

I need to ask my neighbor what sub he was on and when. Given his age I doubt he would have been in the Navy until maybe the late 60s-early 70s, but he was on one for a while (can't remember how long and if he was only ever on subs). My dad went on a sub briefly as part of a tour when he was in the navy. He felt claustrophobic and unsettled the entire time and said he could never serve on a sub. He said he needed to be able to see the ocean. He was only ever on surface ships when he was in the navy (Truckee, La Salle (dad said she was the Great White Whore of the Persian/Arabian Shore, but the change of whore to ghost and shore to coast was done to make it more polite, lol), and Blue Ridge). I think they still have sailors undergo pretty rigorous training to determine if they're fit to serve on subs given the environment and all.

The story of the scorpion is worth a nod, I believe.

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.)

Can you do a mega projects video on the All seas giant work ship they use to move oil rigs

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

I was a child when this happened. I remember being terrified by the TV News coverage. Lots of bad stuff in the news back then for kids to be exposed to.

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

And those cone shaped screen filters froze over with moister from condensation and it couldn't blow her tanks and went past crush depth never to be seen again. Subs have 2 ways to surface 1 is to use the screw and drive it up there or 2 to blow ballast and fly-float up very fast. SALUTE to the brave men on board. This is believed to be why she went down.

I was aboard the Haddo SSN604 as a Machinist Mate in the early 80's. The Thresher sank because stainless steel air control canisters/valves, with micro stress cracks which help control ballast blasts, froze open on a blow and that was that. ALL OTHER problems could have been delt with...but once the valves refused to close the ocean rushed in. On a re-fit we found the same problems on board our ship. hopefully that is a legal statement after all this time.