Farther Than She Was Built to Go

A trio of red tugboats nuzzled SS(N) 593--the nuclear submarine Thresher--away from her berth at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The tug whistles blasted, and three small children, still flushed from farewells to their fathers aboard Thresher, honked back from a car parked near by. The submarine headed out toward a sunny sea.

Thresher's departure caused little excitement around the shipyard. Behind her were nine months of overhaul and modernization. New electronic and sonar gear had been installed. To put in the intricate equipment, several holes had been cut in the boat's hull--the largest was a yard square, to make way for an improved garbage ejector.

Place in History. Now, on a brilliant Tuesday morning, the sub set to sea for two days of post-overhaul tests in the Atlantic. The 129 men aboard--17 of them civilian technicians from the shipyard--figured to be back in time for a party Thursday night in the base gymnasium. The occasion was the 63rd anniversary of the Navy's first submarine force.

Thresher herself held a notable place in the history of the submarine service. Commissioned in August 1961, she was the first of a nuclear-powered class designed to run deeper (around 1,000 ft. down), faster (35 knots underwater), and more silently than any submarine ever built. Two other Thresher-type subs. Permit and Plunger, have since been launched, and 22 others are under construction. Thresher's teardrop-shaped hull had no flat surfaces; when venturing on her deck, crewmen wore special adhesive shoe soles. The hull was speckled with more than 1,000 tiny listening devices. She could travel 60,000 miles without refueling, stay out three months without support. The mission for which Thresher was built: to seek out enemy submarines with her keen underwater ears and destroy them.

Shortly after noon Tuesday, Thresher was 30 miles southeast of Portsmouth. With the rescue ship Skylark standing by, the submarine's klaxon blared, and she buried her nose in the Atlantic for her first series of test dives--all shallow. She performed perfectly, and at 9 p.m. Tuesday headed for deep water 220 miles off Cape Cod. Next morning, with Skylark bobbing above and maintaining constant contact with sonar and telephone, Thresher glided through a set of medium-depth dives. Her skipper, Lieut. Commander John Wesley Harvey, 35, decided that she was ready for the maximum test. None of this was new to him. An Annapolis graduate (eighth in the 696-member class of '50), he logged three years and 100,000 miles aboard the nuclear submarine Nautilus and got Thresher as his first command just three months ago. Methodically, Harvey and his crew prepared for the critical deep-dive trials that would take Thresher down as far as she was built to go.

The Silence of Death. The water was 8,400 ft. deep, and Harvey began easing down in a series of 100-ft. descents. As is normal in such dives, increasing water pressure set up a cacophony of staccato pops and grinding groans in the sub's hull. Routine messages flashed to Skylark on the surface. At 9:17 came the last message. It was garbled. But communications with deep-diving subs are always difficult, and the men on Skylark felt little concern.

Now Thresher was silent. Calmly at first, the Skylark tried to regain contact. Crewmen tried sonar, telephone and Morse code transmissions to raise Thresher. With growing fear, they began exploding small depth charges every ten minutes, hoping Commander Harvey would respond to those alarm signals. They kept up a drumfire of sonar and telephone messages--one every minute. But Thresher did not answer.

At 11:04 Skylark radioed the submarine base at New London, Conn., reported that the submarine had been out of touch for an hour and 47 minutes. Even this created no desperate alarm. Perhaps Harvey, his communications out, was simply riding out heavy surface seas in the tranquil depths. But by midafternoon, with Thresher silent for six hours, Navy patrol planes began circling the area. At 3:35 a hot line buzzed in the Pentagon office of Admiral George Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations. He learned for the first time that Thresher had disappeared. Within half an hour President Kennedy and all key Pentagon men had been informed too.

The Vigil. By nightfall five destroyers, two submarines, a frigate and another submarine rescue ship were headed for the spot where Thresher went down. The night searchers found an oil slick. And finally Admiral Anderson came to perhaps the most painful decision of his career. The Navy must begin telling families of the men aboard Thresher that a tragedy may have occurred.

At Portsmouth seven officers, most of them skippers of other submarines, manned a battery of phones and began calling the next-of-kin. They read a terse message: "U.S.S. Thresher is overdue, and we are investigating and will keep you informed as we receive information." About a dozen wives came to the base for the vigil, and Navy chaplains sat with them. At 11:30 the men on the phones changed their message: "We have heard no more from Thresher. We hold very little hope for survivors. Official announcement will probably come later from Washington." They kept up the calls until 3:30 Thursday morning.

A few hours later, rescue ships found another oil slick. Floating in it were bits of cork, plastic, and two gloves--identical with those used to work on Thresher's nuclear reactor. At 10:30 Thursday morning--slightly over 48 hours after the submarine slipped out of Portsmouth harbor --a weary, grief-stricken Admiral Anderson told the press of the oil slick and debris and said, "So I conclude with great regret and sadness that this ship with 129 fine souls aboard is lost."

Thresher's loss was the worst U.S. submarine disaster in history, and dramatized the terrifying dangers that submarines face as no other since the U.S.S. Squalus went down in 1939.* On Friday morning last week, Portsmouth marines marched to the Portsmouth flag mast. Drums and bugles sounded a muted dirge as the flag ran to the top, then fluttered down slowly to half-staff. The bustling base became silent. Military men snapped to rigid salutes; civilian workers stood with heads bowed, and a burly mechanic cupped his safety helmet over his heart and cried like a child.

What caused the death of Thresher? To find an answer, Admiral Anderson ordered the bathyscaph Trieste from the West Coast to scan the depths and convened a 5-man board of inquiry. Perhaps the most likely theory is that a fitting gave way under immense pressure, water blasted through with such force that air compression within the submarine produced white-hot temperatures that melted metal in the instant before Thresher plunged to the muck-covered bottom--where her secret may remain forever.

* The Squalus, fresh from the Portsmouth shipyard, plunged 240 ft. to the bottom off the New Hampshire coast when water suddenly filled a compartment. Twenty-six men died in the flooded section, but others remained alive behind a watertight hatch. They sent a smoke bomb and a yellow buoy carrying a telephone to the surface. Four hours later another sub found the buoy, talked by phone with those trapped below. Twenty-four hours after the Squalus sank, a Navy diver reached her deck and directed a 10-ton diving bell in four dramatic descents that saved 33.

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