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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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.