2023-06-21 07:39:21
The first blow caught him off guard in the ring. “Find the Titanic? That’s impossible”. It was in this way that what is today the most popular oceanographer on the globe was received in the eighties, Robert Ballard, when he asked the Navy for funds to search for the wreck of the ‘Ship of Dreams’. From then on he began a curious give and take that ended in a pact: the Armed Forces would give him the necessary technology to find the remains of the ‘Ship of Dreams’ in exchange for him investigating the wreckage of two sunken nuclear submarines –the USS Thresher y el USS Scorpion– and analyze its atomic danger.
The Titanic, famous for having sunk after hitting an iceberg on April 14, 1912, was the best cover for the United States secret services. A smokescreen whose purpose was that the Soviet Union would not realize that the remains of the submersibles were being searched for and studied. Fate, however, wanted the oceanographer to find the jackpot in the interim, the ‘White Star Line’ ocean liner, in mid-September 1985. «Doctor Robert Ballard, head of the scientific expedition that found the remains of the ‘Titanic’ ocean liner, explained his findings during a press conference held in Washington,” ABC explained on the 13th.
And that the most skeptical should not be scandalized, because these lines have little to do with conspiracy theories of unidentified flying objects or the fifty-something areas of rigor. The truth was revealed by Ballard himself in an interview given in 2017 and replicated shortly after in a documentary. And now, five years later, it is back in the spotlight after a mini-submarine disappeared while descending through the Atlantic Ocean with five tourists inside; all of them, eager to enjoy first-hand the remains of the ‘Ship of Dreams’.
nuclear secret
Understanding the origin of this story requires traveling back in time to 1982, the year Ballard, an oceanographer and commander of the Naval Reserve, was desperately seeking funding to develop the technology that would allow him to build a submarine capable of diving deep enough to discover the Titanic Eager to get to work, he decided to meet with Ronald Thunman, then deputy chief of naval operations for submarine warfare, to raise funds. “All my life I have wanted to look for the Titanic,” the scientist said at the time.
Thunman thought it was crazy to invest in the project; too many cons and little to gain. Although he did realize that the technology that Ballard was developing could be used by the Navy to study the remains of two sunken submarines: the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion, which disappeared in 1963 and 1968. By then the wrecks had already been discovered, but the United States did not know if its nuclear reactors could pose a danger or not. The officer himself revealed to National Geographic that, for him, from the beginning the importance was the submersibles, and not the sunken ocean liner.
Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the Titanic ABC
Thunman also revealed that while he confirmed to Ballard that he was free to do as he wished when studying the wreckage of the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, he did not expressly give him permission to investigate the Titanic’s sea grave. Although, in the words of the oceanographer, John Lehman, the Secretary of the Navy, was aware. “The navy never expected to find the Titanic and when it happened, they got very nervous,” the scientist added at the time. In the end, the military used the attractive legend of the ‘Ship of Dreams’ to hide the true objective of the mission and give the Soviet Union the slip.
Why did they need Ballard? As National Geographic itself revealed after investigating the facts, because the remains of the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion were found at a depth of 3,000 and 4,600 meters, an excessive distance for the submersibles available to the Army. Both parties established that the objectives of the expedition would be two. First, to determine the danger posed to the environment by the fact that the remains of two nuclear submarines were found underwater. Second, to find out if the Soviet Union had participated in the sinking of any of them. And the answer to both questions was negative.
The data collected by Ballard also revealed that the USS Thresher had sunk, most likely, because of a pipe failure. In the case of the USS Scorpion, the oceanographer was unable to clarify the facts. He alone found out that some unknowable disaster caused a flood in the bow of the submarine that took him to the bottom of the waters. “We did not see any indication that any external weapon caused the sinking of the ship,” Thunman added at the time.
Finding
While studying submarines, Ballard learned a number of lessons about the effects of ocean currents on sinking wrecks. Thanks to this, and despite the fact that he only had twelve days to find the Titanic, he managed to track down her wreck and reach her remains. Assuming the ship had broken in half, he looked for any trace of debris that might lead him to the jackpot. “That’s what saved our asses,” he explained to National Geographic. His expertise earned him the victory of the discovery.
Ballard himself recalled, shortly after unveiling his discovery, that not all the credit had been his, but rather that of the international team that accompanied him. And this is how the ABC newspaper reported it that day in 1985; “At his press conference, Dr. Robert Ballard, who led the explorations, had nothing but words of admiration and appreciation for the French colleagues who first located the Titanic with acoustic probes. Then the Americans went into action with the Ignorr oceanographic vessel, from which a fully automatic mini-submarine took thousands of photos of the ocean liner.
#nuclear #secret #search #Titanic #hid #years