the explosion of the submarine USS Thresher

[franksolich]

I'm fast running out of maritime disasters; one reasonably assumes there isn't much material on steamboat explosions or sailing-ship sinkings or an entire city being blown apart (Halifax, 1917), and so I might have to switch to famines or plagues or pestilences or fires. 

Anyway, this is one some here might actually remember:

At 9:18 a.m. on April 10, 1963, sonar operators aboard the U.S. Navy submarine rescue ship Skylark, which was accompanying the nuclear attack submarine Thresher, heard a chilling sound “like air rushing into an air tank,” and Thresher was no more. Its deep-dive trials southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, had come to a cataclysmic end and all 129 men aboard perished in 8,400 feet (2,560 meters) of water.

Five minutes prior to the implosion, Thresher had radioed that it was having minor problems. Skylark received several fragmentary, garbled messages, followed by silence. Moments later the chilling sounds of a submarine breaking apart and imploding were heard.

According to U.S. military reviews of the accident, the most likely explanation is that a piping joint in a sea water system in the engine room gave way. The resulting spray shorted out electronics and forced an automatic shutdown of the nuclear reactor.

When the accident occurred, Thresher was near its maximum test depth, which, though classified, was probably around 1,300 feet (396 meters). Most submarines are built to survive down to a “crush depth,” which can be 20 to 35 percent greater than their maximum test depth. However, without the reactor, the sub would not have had enough power to stop itself from sinking to the bottom.

As they sank, the men aboard would have heard piping and fittings giving way. They would have listened as the ship’s hull creaked and groaned, until it finally, deafeningly gave way to massive water pressure. All lives were likely extinguished within a matter of seconds.

read more at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/k19/disasters_detail2.html
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Actually, I'm kidding; I'm sure there's a lot of maritime disasters that are noteworthy, and I'll keep digging for them, although that blowing-up of Halifax, to me, seems the most interesting thus far.

[Crazy Horse]

The USS Thresher was a disaster. Though it did start the SUBSAFE program  Though it is a good program.

On other ideas frank, here's one

http://www.graveyardoftheatlantic.com/Deering/CADeeringHome.html

[djones520]

Frank, there are oh so many more ship board disasters for you to look up.  Just go to google and type in "Great Lakes Shipwrecks".

[Airwolf]

The USS Scorpion was another famous sub to go down and if I am right, on board the sub was a newsman from WOW-TV CH.6 in Omaha.

[NHSparky]

One of the major problems is the fact the EMBT (Emergency Main Ballast Tank) air system utilized piping way too small (1") from the air banks through the knocker valves back to the main ballast tanks.

A second problem was that prior to getting underway, those tanks were charged using "shore" air, but nobody thought to check the moisture content of the air being put into the tanks.  Had they checked, they would have found a LOT of moisture.

Physics lesson--what happens when a gas goes from high pressure to low pressure?  Answer: it cools down--a LOT.  In fact, the MBT banks had so much moisture in the air when it blew into the ballast tanks the moisture actually froze the piping.  No air to EMBT's, no getting to the roof, flooding continues, goodbye Thresher.

A final note--back in the day, on a reactor scram the main steam stops went shut.  Had they not, residual steam from the steam generators could have been used to drive the boat to the surface (which is an immediate action on flooding anyway).

(Just a few points from your friendly neighborhood bubblehead.)

[Bob Henneman]

Frank, sadly you are not even close to running out of naval disasters!

Check out the American packet steamer Sultana; the German liners Wilhelm Gustloff, General Steuben and Goya; the US Navy's Honda Point accident; the almost comical loss of the cruiser Milwaukee; or any number of battleships and other major warships lost to acidental cordite explosions.
You might be interested in a short article on my website, which deals with three battleships lost in accidents. http://www.bobhenneman.info/grounding.htm

Or this article I wrote on the strange live of the Italian battleship Guilio Cesare, which was lost in a strange accident after becoming the Soviet battleship Novorossiskhttp://www.bobhenneman.info/soviet.htm

[franksolich]

Frank, sadly you are not even close to running out of naval disasters!

http://www.bobhenneman.info/grounding.htm

http://www.bobhenneman.info/soviet.htm

Man, your site is a treasure-trove of naval history information, and not just about maritime disasters.

I'm going to use some of it later; we haven't gotten all the naval experts over here to this site yet, but they're coming over slowly, from the other site.  The U.S. Army's over here, but not all of the U.S. Navy yet.

I remember the very first naval thread I ever posted, about the German clipper-ship Seeadler, the last clipper-ship used in modern warfare.

That was a couple of years ago; that thread sunk like a lead ballon.

The second naval post I ever posted was about the Japanese battleship Yamato, in which I inquired whether or not it's true, the day of the mammoth battleship is over.

That one got a few responses, most of them something along the lines of, "well, that professional civilian sure doesn't know much, does he?"

For the record, although I've seen a lot of things in my life, I don't ever recall in real life, seeing a U.S. Navy vessel of any sort, or at least one that was identified to me as being such (in other words, I might have seen one, but didn't know what it was).  The only authentic real-life naval ships I've ever set my eyes on were Royal Navy vessels, Russian rust-buckets, and Ukrainian rust-buckets (the latter two on the Black Sea).

And yes, I've been on seas before (the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea), but as there was always so much to see, observed some phenomenae more than others.