The Secret Mission to Find the Titanic

Almost immediately after the death of the Titanic in April 1912, attempts were made to raise the wreckage and the bodies of the sunken along with the ship.

Discovering the Wreckage

But limited diving technology at the time prevented this from becoming a reality for more than seven decades.

In 1985, the wreck was found during joint research by former naval officer and oceanographer Robert Ballard and French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel.

But the dive at the beginning had nothing to do with the Titanic – it was a secret mission to search for the wreckage of two nuclear submarines, USS Scorpion and USS Thresher.

Of course, no one knew about this until 2008, when Ballard revealed the true nature of the mission, speaking to “National Geography“.

“The Navy is finally talking about it,” Ballard said.

The Navy’s Funding Condition

Ballard originally met with the US Navy in 1982 to secure funding for a new type of underwater technology that would enable him to find the Titanic. And the Navy agreed to finance the project, but only on the condition that it could be used to search for sunken submarines.

USS Thresher was sunk in April 1963 and the aircraft carrier USS Scorpion followed two years later in May 1965. Nuclear submarines remain the only ones that the fleet has ever lost.

The Navy agreed that Ballard could search for the Titanic if there was some time left for the mission after the subs were found.

“We didn’t see any indication that any external weapon caused the ship to go down,” Ronald Tanman, then vice president of naval operations for underwater warfare, told National Geographic.

Finding the Titanic

12 days before the end of the mission, Ballard was able to find the Titanic, guessing that the ship had split in two and left a trail of debris in its wake.

“The Navy didn’t expect me to find the Titanic, and when it did, I got really nervous about the publicity,” Ballard said. “But people were so fixated on the Titanic myth that they never connected the dots.”

Revealing the Truth

So, 23 years later, Ballard revealed the truth about his mission. He also wrote about his experience finding the ship in his book The Discovery of the Titanic.

Source: Science Alert