Last week, National Geographic aired a program titled, “Titanic: The Final Secret”.
This story, in case you missed it, is an interesting one. The discoverer of the Titanic, Dr. Robert Ballard, discussed how the search and ultimate discovery of the shipwreck was basically a cover for another lesser-known top secret naval mission.
It was not Ballard’s original intention to conduct top secret missions for the U.S. Navy. His passion, at that time, was for finding the Titanic.
History of the Titanic
The RMS Titanic, the ship’s official name, was the largest passenger steamship in the world in 1912. Four days into her maiden voyage, from Southampton, England to New York City, U.S., it struck an iceberg. The ship sank, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 passengers.
This tragedy is considered to be one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
In 1982, Dr. Ballard approached the US Navy for funding to search for the Titanic. His hook, at the time, was the robotic submarine craft that he developed in the early 1980s. He was essentially told that the U.S. Navy had no interest in searching for the luxury liner. However, the Navy did take a keen interest in Ballard’s robotic submarine. So, Ballard and the Navy worked out a deal.
The Top Secret Navy Expeditions
The deal was that the Navy would fund two separate top secret expeditions. Neither of them had anything to do with the Titanic shipwreck. One was to find the wreck of the Thresher, off the eastern coast of the U.S., and the other was to find the Scorpion in the eastern Atlantic.
Only after these wrecks were found and mapped could Ballard could use any remaining time or resources to search for the Titanic.
The Thresher and the Scorpion were U.S. Navy submarines that sank during the 1960’s. The Thresher, the US Navy’s most advanced attack submarine in 1963, sank while performing seaworthiness tests after dockyard repairs. The Scorpion disappeared in 1968.
There was speculation that it was sunk by Soviet forces, but later discovered that the most probable cause was a rogue torpedo that the submarine fired itself.
Both the Navy and Ballard made good on their deal to each other. Ballard was able to find and map both wreck sites for the Navy, and with twelve days of resources available, the Navy allowed Ballard to search for the Titanic; which, of course, he found in 1985.
Dennis Dufrene is the resident historian and technical writer. With this background, Dennis brings insight and accuracy to the stories published here at Top Secret Writers. Dennis has 314 post(s) at Top Secret Writers
You might also like these articles:
 |
 |
 |
