"You can be 500 miles from something and, because underwater currents, the temperature gradients and other things, hear something that's 500 miles away," Polmar said. that was it," Drew said.īoth Drew and Polmar noted that there could be any number of explanations for what the Seawolf crew heard and reported in 1963. " said it was far enough from the continental shelf that it just went straight down and then once they got a little past crush depth. "It doesn't make any sense."ĭrew, who co-authored Robert Ballard's recently released memoir "Into the Deep: A Memoir From the Man Who Found Titanic," said the famed undersea archaeologist, who surveyed the Thresher wreck shortly before he located the Titanic, confirmed that the submarine sank in unsurvivable deep waters. "If a massive submarine is sitting at 1,000- to 2,000-feet deep for a day, don't you think sonar would have picked it up?" he asked. " couldn't have just been maintaining positive buoyancy and nobody can find them," he told in an interview.ĭrew noted that both the Seawolf and the surface ships that were part of the search-and-rescue efforts all had sonar systems. Everyone died instantly - there was no clanging on the metal."ĭrew also pointed out that it's highly unlikely the submarine could still float, or have positive buoyancy. "If it imploded, that means they collapsed inward. Polmar points to the recordings from the Navy's underwater Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS, as key evidence in forming his opinion. "I don't believe it," Polmar flatly told in an interview. Norman Polmar, an author and naval analyst who wrote the book "Death of the USS Thresher," discounts the possibility that what the Seawolf heard was surviving sailors in a still intact Thresher. Unbeknownst to the Seawolf at the time, every major investigation has concluded that, by the time it began its first dive search, the Thresher had already been crushed by the ocean pressure after sinking to 2,400 feet - 400 feet past what its hull could take. The log also notes that what the sailors were hearing "could be sounds from in vicinity." In between requests to "bang 5 times on hull," the submarine reported hearing more bangs, but a later entry conceded "he does not give us number asked for." On one dive, the Seawolf reported metal on metal banging heard on sonar. They asked for a repeat of the message, but one was never received. The Seawolf also reported sailors "may hear very weak voice" over their underwater receivers. Read Next: Army Lieutenant General Gets Fourth Star and Becomes Second Female Combatant Commander in HistoryĪbout halfway through its search, the submarine reported a "total of 37 pings heard counted." If you will send 5 dashes we will have positive Identification - send 5 dashes." There is no report of five dashes being received, but the Seawolf continued to try to get a fix on the source of the pings. The declassified log shows that, over a series of four dives, the submarine reported hearing various pings and sounds it thought might be the missing Thresher.Īt one point, the Seawolf broadcast: "We hear your underwater telephone. The new documents show that the Seawolf arrived in the area the Thresher was believed to have sunk on the morning of April 11, 1963, just over 24 hours after the sub disappeared.
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