Posted on 08/21/2002 10:12:24 PM PDT by vikingchick
Shocking New Theory!
The Titanic was sunk by a German submarine, not an iceberg, stunning new evidence reveals.
"The one thing people think they know about the Titanic is that she struck an iceberg," says David Roberts, an historian with the Merseyside Maritime Museum in England.
"However, based on survivor testimony, we can't necessarily make that assumption. In fact, when we look at the evidence, the only thing we can take for granted is that the Titanic skimmed past the iceberg, barely making contact with it.
"Subprofiler images of the Titanic's hull have now proven that the damage she sustained wasn't as bad as we first thought. So something else must have been responsible for her loss that night.
"By 1912, the German navy had perfected the U-boat design. At the time of the Titanic's disaster, the political turmoil that would lead to World War I was already brewing. And the Germans had sent U-boats out on patrol in the North Atlantic."
The luxury liner sailed out of Southampton, England on Wednesday, April 10, 1912. Just four days later, she bagan her death plunge to the bottom of the icy North Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, taking more than 1,500 passengers and crew to a watery grave and leaving only about 700 survivors.
"When questioned by a U.S. Senate inquiry panel, several Titanic crew members and passengers testified that they heard explosions deep in the bowels of the ship AFTER it had hit the iceberg," says noted Titanic historian Daniel Cherry.
"One officer said he heard four explosions, like the sounds of a big gun in the distance."
Roberts also said some survivors in lifeboats spotted a mysterious craft in the area, possibly a submarine that had surfaced.
"Many of the survivors huddled in lifeboats that night reported seeing a strange light from a nearby ship, almost like a beam from a searchlight," he explains. "They were encouraged because they hoped the other ship would come to their aid, but it never did.
"The most widely accepted theory is that the ship was the Californian. But to his dying day, her captain Stanley Lord insisted that there was another ship between his and the Titanic.
"The Californian was surrounded by a huge ice field and Lord had ordered that she stay put until daylight. During the night, the sailors on watch, including 3rd Officer Charles Groves, said they saw an unidentified vessel five to six miles from their location. The vessel was there until about 2 a.m., when she moved away from the Californian.
"She was the mystery ship that failed to go to the Titanic's aid. And the reason she didn't was that she had either just collided with the Titanic or used her torpodoes to sink her."
Albania | Italy | |
Bulgaria | Japan | |
Finland | Romania | |
Germany | Thailand | |
Hungary | Some reluctantly |
;-)
Thatsa nota my boat, itsa u boat.
You mean, Why does my knife chop up ice cubes instead of the ice cubes / ice bergs scraping open the Titanic's steel hull??
Where's my tin-foil hat? I need it!!
Absolutely...just like the WWI vintage film showing a battleship roll over - when the water hit the boilers - BOOM - even worse than a magazine explosion.
I was always told that our gyro shop, conveniently sandwiched between two boiler rooms - would be the best place to be if the ship started to sink in icy waters - we'd be dead from the explosions before we died from exposure.
Just one of many "morale boosting" messages the Boiler Techs used to give us....
Listen, I saw the movie with that busty red-haired chick....
no way it was a sub.
So, that's why Truman fired MacAuthur; he attacked a friendly nation...and forced them to surrender. It all makes sense, now.
Same thing happened to flight 800.
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