April 10, 1963 – The USS Thresher Disaster

Horribly intriguing...
I remember reading a book 'Subsunk' as a young lad.
I find it hard to believe that a small pipe would be that critical and wouldn't have back up protection/shut off valves etc.
An old neighbour of my parents (now long gone) was in subs at the time of the Russian Revolution...infact he was a bit of a charcter, so he may have caused it.
There's a good submarine museum at Gosport near Portsmouth, and on Navy Days you can go into the modern working subs...I remember as a kid we were on a sub and it was getting late, we were in danger of missing our train home, so the sailor running the tour let us out the emergency escape hatch...we were really chuffed with that.
Del

Greetings.

I was working in the Bremerton Naval shipyard in the summer of 1964 as a lagger helper prior to going to college. I believe it was the Trieste submarine that was being built there. Because I was thin then (165 pounds) and smaller than almost all of the Lagger Mechanics (about 210 plus) I was asked to go work on the Trieste to remove all of the lagging so that they could inspect all of the systems. I declined but learned a lot about the Thresher and the Trieste because of the offer.

What annoys me is that usually is that there has to be a large accident before they review a design, even after 30 years a similar thing happened again with the space shuttle

I remember the discussions in newspapers after the accident,

all supposed that the test depth very likely was much deeper than 1000 feet.

RHABE

I was working at the PNSY during the Thresher incident. After the news broke, everyone who had anything to do with the Thresher, was called into work to review all the drawings and inspection reports for the boat. At the time, fault was laid upon some foreign made valves. I never followed up on the official cause. Because of this incident, a program called sub safe was instituted. In it, all materials that were used in the construction of critical systems, were inspected and tagged as subsafe material for use only in those critical areas. Materials that were not tagged as sub safe, were prohibited from being used in a critical system. Basically it was a means of tracking every item that went into a subsafe system.

The day before sea trials, engineers and designers were asked if they wanted to participate in the trials as observers to place their name on a list. My name was on that list, but fortunately for me, there were too many names on that list and I was not picked. Several people I knew as co-workers were picked and became victims. That was the last time I offered to volunteer for a sea trial on a sub.