Free Republic

A U.S. District Court judge ordered the Navy to start releasing unclassified documents related to the sinking of USS Thresher (SSN-593), 57 years after 129 officers, sailors and shipbuilders died in the nation’s worst nuclear submarine disaster. Retired Navy Capt. James Bryant, a former Thresher-class submarine commander, sued the Navy in July to force the release of unclassified investigation documents detailing Thresher‘s operation during its final dive. The Navy previously rebuffed Bryant’s request for records under the Freedom of Information Act. During a Monday court hearing, Judge Trevor McFadden ordered the Navy to start releasing the requested material. Bryant, while...

A child’s drawing of a lost submarine rests behind Plexiglas in a back corner of the National Museum of the Navy in Washington, D.C., seemingly out of place amid massive ship models and aircraft dangling from the ceiling. “USS Thresher/ Bruce Harvey/ crayon,” reads its art-museum-style description. “The young son of Commander John Harvey, skipper of Thresher, drew the boat on the ocean floor after hearing of its loss. Bruce’s father and 128 other men died when the submarine sank off the New England coast.” Thresher (SSN-593), at the time the Navy’s fastest and most powerful submarine, represented a leap...

After an arsonist caused $450 million in damage to the USS Miami on March 2012, the U.S. Navy considered scrapping the submarine. The eventual decision to repair the Miami and return it to service in 2015 means that the Navy will not have to add to a rather short but fateful list - ships lost since WWII. Between December 1941 and September 1945, over 350 U.S. Navy warships and patrol craft were sunk or damaged beyond repair. In the nearly seven decades since, fewer than 30 ships have been lost directly due to enemy action or accidents. These are a...

The horrifying images are in. The killer shark that has been terrorizing aquatic adventurers on Long Island has been vanquished. A team of marine rescue specialists, dispatched by Governor David Patterson who declared a state of emergency from Montauk to Lake Champlain, descended upon Zach's Bay and captured the man eater before disaster ensued. EMS technicians arrived at the scene to treat panic-stricken bathers. Women screamed, children fainted, grown men cried in anguish at the sight of the monster. Maria, a 37 year old mother from Flushing, was treated for "The Vapors" and expressed the horror experienced by everyone who...

In total over the past 14 years three Russian nuclear submarines built by the Rubin design bureau have sunk. The K-219 underwater strategic cruiser sank near the Bermuda Islands on October 6, 1986 because of a fire in a missile silo: four people perished. The K-278 nuclear submarine sank in the Norwegian Sea on April 7, 1989 because of a fire in the stern compartment which spread to other compartments: 42 people perished. The Kursk tragedy in the Barents Sea happened on August 12, 2000 due to unknown reasons followed by a fire and an explosion in the torpedo room:...

Much has changed in the more than four decades since the submarine USS Thresher and her crew have rested at the bottom of the Atlantic at a depth of 8,400 feet. But the lives of the 129 men who perished have not been forgotten. "They are on eternal patrol," said Gary Hildreth, commander of the Thresher Base, during the 44th anniversary memorial service yesterday at R.W. Traip Academy in Kittery, Maine. Hundreds of people are still touched by the tragedy, which occurred not far from Cape Cod on April 10, 1963, during deep-dive trials. A mechanical error caused the submarine...