The search for USS Thresher

Trieste (the Thresher search) · 1963 CE · Earth

Find, photograph and identify a nuclear submarine lost with all hands at 2,560 metres.

Historical context

When Thresher failed to surface on 10 April 1963 the United States had no vehicle able to look at a wreck 2,560 metres down except a borrowed Swiss idea built in Italy. Trieste was shipped to Boston and spent a summer drifting over an abyssal plain, seeing perhaps ten metres at a time. The search recovered almost nothing, and changed how every American submarine has been built since.

The voyage, step by step

1. Trieste arrives in Boston

   April 1963

   In April 1963 a dock landing ship carries the bathyscaphe from San Diego to Boston Harbor, round by the Panama Canal.

2. Towed out to the search area

   1963 CE

   The bathyscaphe is towed east across the Gulf of Maine, a float of petrol that cannot steer and can barely be handled in a seaway.

3. Over the site

   1963 CE

   Two hundred and twenty miles east of Cape Cod, the sea floor lies 2,560 metres down and the debris is spread over thirteen hectares.

4. Ten dives in the dark

   1963 CE

   Through the summer the bathyscaphe drifts a few metres above the mud, seeing perhaps ten metres ahead and moving at walking pace.

5. The field found

   August 1963

   In August 1963 the lights pick out torn plating, cable and shredded insulation scattered across the sediment, and the cameras run.

6. 593 boat

   1963 CE

   The manipulator closes on a foot of mangled copper pipe, and on deck someone reads the stencil: 593 boat.

Outcome

The debris field found and photographed in August 1963, and a piece of hull-numbered pipe recovered, which ended the argument about where Thresher lay.

Trieste (the Thresher search)

The bathyscaphe that had touched the deepest point of the ocean, sent three years later to find a lost nuclear submarine off Cape Cod.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Trieste (bathyscaphe) — Wikipedia
• U.S. Navy: the loss of USS Thresher and the 1963 Trieste search operationNaval History and Heritage Command

Continue exploring

• Challenger Deep diveJacques Piccard · 1960 CE
• Calypso in the Red Sea and Indian OceanJacques Cousteau · 1955 CE
• Trieste's first deep divesAuguste Piccard · 1953 CE
• The Galápagos Rift hydrothermal expeditionJack Corliss and the Alvin team · 1977 CE