Posted on 04/29/2026 5:58:38 PM PDT by Red Badger
In 1963, USS Thresher imploded at test depth killing all 129 aboard—the Navy blamed a "piping failure" and closed the case. But declassified documents from the 2000s revealed the submarine had over 800 documented defects before diving, whistleblower testimony proved inspectors were pressured to approve faulty welds, and acoustic analysis of the final moments shows the crew knew they were dying for nearly 5 minutes as water flooded in. The Navy knew Thresher wasn't safe, sent her down anyway, then spent 60 years hiding that 129 men died from institutional negligence, not accident.
26 Minute VIDEO AT LINK...............
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
I was on USS flasher SSN-613. Sister ship to Thresher, scheduled to be next out of the yards after Thresher. When it sank, navy made a bunch of changes in design that required retrofitting and therefore Flasher was delayed and other subs were completed first. One interesting thing added was a 3 inch emergency blow line, which bypassed the normal 1 inch ballast tank air line, because the 1 inch blow iced up on Thresher when they were trying to surface with no propulsion, and no more air could get into the tank to get more buoyancy. Sorry if that is a repeat of the article. Also had electric motor to the main shaft, and a ships propulsion motor (like an outboard) that could be lowered for emergency propulsion. Lots of changes resulted from Thresher. That class of submarine was originally called the Thresher class, but was called the Permit class after the next sub out of the yards.
Sub sink water, metal tube break, sub sink far, go boom, many men die, navy make SUBSAFE, no more sub go boom.
This is another one of many fake AI channels flooding YouTube these days.
Take what is said with a sack of salt, one grain isn't enough.
We did tons of training about Thresher...SubSafe was and is always at the tops of Submariner’s minds. It’s a major PITA when it comes to maintenence, but necessarily so.
“Documents remained classified for national security reasons long after the Cold War context that supposedly justified that secrecy had faded.”
This is terribly wrong. Should we have handed all that data over to China? Iran? Israel? Germany? France? Any number of countries operate subs and the end of the cold war did not mean everything from that era needed to be declassified.
” But from the very beginning, there was something careful, almost controlled, about how information was released. The Navy acknowledged the disaster, but was vague about specifics. Mechanical failure was mentioned as the likely cause, but details were classified.”
Ya think?
A nuclear engineer told me that the engine, being nuclear and designed to cut off automatically for safety, cut off and could not be restarted.
Safety protocols are always written in blood.
Childish. Several planes in WWII had well-known flaws and production never stopped to rework. The effort was too critical to atop production and spend the time to perfect something.
The emergency dive brakes on the P-38 are one example.
The B-29 engines easily catching fire was another.
B-47 bombers were flown LONG after it was well known they could shed their wings. In 1957 and 1958, we lost 49 of them and close to 500 airmen. That is a large bomber going down every TWO WEEKS, for TWO YEARS! Production of Sherman tanks was another... weaknesses were ignored to flood the war with them.
1958-1960 was the peak of the cold war. Nuclear war was not some arcane theory at that moment.
Yeah, they were pushing very hard and in a hurry. Those heroes died for our country. The lessons about their deaths were FULLY implemented. Yes, as is proper, we classified the lessons.
And it was hard on the families, but a DESIRE to know all the details is not a NEED to know details. The detail is that they died on a dangerous machine, doing a dangerous thing, and they are heroes.
This modern revisionist “reveal the coverup” thinking is simply childish.
AI slop that repeats to stretch the video for Youtube’s algorithm.
It's based on an idiotic, ignorant, incorrect, and antipatriotic notion that the US Government is the most evil institution ever to exist. People who subscribe to that notion should go live in North Korea. Permanently.
Indeed. People who aren't engineers and associated tradesmen have no idea.
SUBSAFE.
It was the constant refrain at the plant.
Worked with a guy who was bumped from Thresher’s last dive by a VIP. He would never every ride again.
USS Patrick Henry SSBN 599N
The Patrick Henry was based on a similar hull. My training when I was in ‘68-73 told a different story. Sonar from the time said that ice formed in the MBT blow valves aft and the boat developed a large up angle. In order to save the boat the forward MBT valves were opened and the boat then because the aft MBT tanks still had some air in them they developed a large down angle. The up angle earlier scrammed the reactor and within a couple minutes steam pressure for a full bell was lost. Loss of propulsion, the boat was trimmed heavy now that speed was reduced. Blow was attempted again and again the aft MBT valve(s?) froze and they developed an up angle spilling air out of forward tanks from which they couldn’t recover and they went down aft first. Could have been some other failure that caused the MBT blow but without ice they should have been able to recover. HI-Pacs (High pressure air compressors) had water seperators but there was always a little moisture and going from 3000PSI to 40PSI or less will sure bring out the moisture and freeze it pretty quickly.
This is what mandated the “Sub Safe” program. One of the biggest things to come from that was an emergency MBT blow system that could be overridden manually with huge knocker handvalves. The valves were so large they were very unlikdly to be bothered by ice.
There are always safety issues on any instrument of war. A submarine is an unbelevibly complicated weapon. We may not know what caused them to blow but we know what caused the sinking.
I had a 1st cousin who went down with the Thresher... Roy Overton Denny, Jr. Electrician’s Mate First Class.
he gets a pass for being so Godly...
The posted transcript is a supplement to the vid, in consideration of the many who would rather spend 10 minutes or less reading rather than - or in addition to - 26 minutes watching a mainly information- type video.
Aside from attention spans being too short, with text one can easily read certain parts again for better comprehension , as well as share them. As vids are increasingly used for information, then in consideration of others,i think good information videos should normally be supplemented by transcript.
Research finds that reading is better for deep comprehension, long-term retention, and integration of complex material, while video often wins for engagement, motivation, and visual demonstrations. But for impact, the video is superior, thus the transcript is a supplement.
Isn’t YouTube waging a war on alleged AI slop, demonetizing channels all over the site...?
Interesting that YT left this one up, eh?
HORRIBLE. When I was 13 I did a current events reading of that article in school.
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