Why Did the USS Thresher Sink?

• Documents pertaining to the sinking of the USS Thresher are currently being declassified by the U.S. Navy.
• All 129 aboard were killed when the submarine sank in April 1963 while conducting a training operation.
• The Navy was compelled by a lawsuit to make accident investigation files public.

There was no single incident or mistake that led to the tragic 1963 sinking of the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Thresher, according to a vast collection of previously disclosed documents on the incident.

The Thresher sank during diving exercises in April 1963, killing all 129 crew members. A former Navy submarine captain won a lawsuit in 2020 requiring the service to divulge its report on what happened. Since then, the Navy has made available multiple sets of files that provide fresh insight on the incident.

The USS Thresher

The USS Thresher was a nuclear-powered attack sub that was the first of its kind. Nuclear-powered submarines could stay submerged indefinitely and didn’t need a hull shape that was effective for operating on the surface, therefore, the Thresher class was the first to employ the revolutionary teardrop hull designed to enhance speed underwater.

Additionally, the Threshers were the first to use the more recent, robust HY-80 steel alloy. The subs had a length of 278 feet, a submerged weight of 4,369 tons, and a submerged speed of more than 30 knots.

The Thresher was performing diving trials 220 miles east of Cape Cod on April 9, 1963. The submarine alerted surface vessels observing the tests that it was having “minor problems” and that it would blow its ballast reservoirs to the surface. Sonar experts claimed to have heard enigmatic “air rushing” noises, but the sub did not come to the surface.

The Navy later discovered the Thresher in six parts on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The Thresher never raised. 112 personnel and 17 civilian contractors made up the 129 people on board who were all killed. Many ideas have been proposed as to why the sub sank, including the possibility that poor welds that ruptured during testing caused the sub’s essential electrical systems to be shorted out and its power to be drained.

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The Navy’s inquiry into the sinking was kept secret for many years until James Bryant, a former American submarine captain who oversaw three submarines of the Thresher class, filed a lawsuit against the agency in 2019 to force the release of the records. A judge sided with Bryant in 2020 and ordered the declassification of 3,600 pages of documents. Many of the data have been made available for public inspection online via U.S. Naval Institute News.

Bryant and other navy experts think the declassified files demonstrate that a number of circumstances combined to cause the deadly catastrophe, despite the Navy investigation’s blame for the sinking being placed on a malfunctioning seawater pipe.

Rushed Integration and Overconfidence

The panel of experts claimed that the Navy was hurriedly integrating the Thresher into the fleet in order to confront a new class of Soviet nuclear submarines. Insufficiently trained crews may have been sent to sea as a result of the submarine fleet’s expansion, according to some sources. The crews themselves had an overly optimistic view of their equipment and thought it was impracticable for nuclear-powered submarines to run out of power.

According to the Navy, badly welded piping on board the ship broke, resulting in a seawater intrusion that ultimately cut out the ship’s electrical system. The crews were incapable to quickly access the necessary equipment to prevent the flooding, and the ballast tanks malfunctioned. According to naval historian Normal Friedman, these issues were made worse by the crew’s inability to react swiftly enough to rescue the ship.

The Thresher and USS Scorpion losses in 1968 prompted a redesign of the engineering and training procedures used on Navy nuclear submarines. Under order to assure that submarines could come up even under the most severe situations, the Navy also established a specialized agency, SUBSAFE, to supervise submarine design and construction. The Navy hasn’t lost a submarine in 52 years because of SUBSAFE.

According to Bryant, the Navy will benefit from the release of the materials. For many years, critics claimed that hiding the Thresher probe files constituted a cover-up. The papers’ contents demonstrate that there was no true cover-up, and the Navy simply maintained them a secret to stop information about the operation of American nuclear submarines from being disclosed and used to the advantage of enemies.

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