Published September 08. 2020 5:38PM | Updated September 09. 2020 7:42PM
By https://www.theday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/personalia?ID=j.bergman" rel="nofollow - Julia Bergman
Day staff writer
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Sixty-four-year-old Michael Shafer still thinks there’s more
to uncover about the worst submarine disaster in U.S. history, which
killed all 129 men aboard, including his father and uncle. “I want
to know the truth. I know there is more that the Navy has to tell us
about what happened,” the St. Petersburg, Fla., resident said during a
recent phone interview. Last month, the Navy notified Shafer and
other descendants of the crew of the USS Thresher that it is reviewing
all of its records related to the loss of the submarine 57 years ago and
is seeking to declassify and release as much information as possible
under federal law. “The Navy is committed to ensure the maximum
amount of information is released, and we are devoted to you as family
members of those lost to keep you up to date on the release,” Vice Adm.
D.L. Caudle, commander of the Navy’s submarine forces, said in the
letter to the Thresher families. Though not explicitly mentioned
in the letter, the Navy’s review was prompted by a lawsuit by a retired
submarine commander, Capt. Jim Bryant, who has questioned the service’s
official account of what happened. “We want to learn about the
mindset that allowed this submarine to be lost on what should have been a
routine and well-planned deep dive test after a nine-month overhaul,”
Bryant said in an April https://www.theday.com/op-edguest-opinions/20200426/did-flawed-operational-rules-doom-thresher" rel="nofollow - op-ed in The Day about his efforts. The
Navy has said the most likely explanation is that a ruptured seawater
pipe in the submarine’s engine room caused catastrophic flooding and
ultimately caused the submarine's nuclear reactor to shut down. But
Bryant has cited the analysis of naval acoustic expert Bruce Rule, who
testified during the Navy's investigation into the tragedy. Rule
believes there was no flooding because the sounds of high-pressure water
hitting the inside of the submarine were not detected during the
analysis of acoustic data. Bryant first filed a Freedom of
Information request to get unreleased documents about the Thresher’s
sinking, including 1,700 pages of testimony presented during the Navy’s
investigation, only 19 pages of which have been made publicly available. When that didn’t yield any results, he https://www.theday.com/military-news/20190723/retired-submariner-hopes-to-shine-new-light-on-sinking-of-thresherhttps://www.theday.com/military-news/20190723/retired-submariner-hopes-to-shine-new-light-on-sinking-of-thresher" rel="nofollow - sued the Navy in July 2019. A federal judge https://www.theday.com/military-news/20200215/federal-judge-rules-that-navy-must-release-documents-related-to-sinking-of-thresher" rel="nofollow - ruled
in February that the Navy had to begin releasing the documents, a
process that was supposed to start in mid-March but was delayed due to
the coronavirus pandemic. Tim Noonis of Hampton, N.H., whose
father, Walter “Jack” Noonis, was lost on the Thresher, said he’s
probably one of the few people who’ve read the testimony that is
publicly available from the investigation. Noonis, 58, said he’s
always been curious about what happened and has read as many books as he
could find “that might shed some light” on the sinking. “Does the Navy even know for sure? They could release every single page and we might still not know,” he said. Noonis’
sister, Joy MacMillan of Brentwood, N.H., said any new information
about the disaster that killed her father is welcome, and that family
members have speculated about other possible causes at annual memorials
and events honoring the Thresher. Given
the U.S. was in the Cold War and there was a great demand for
submarines, MacMillan said, “it does seem to me that the push was on and
that (the Thresher) wasn’t really ready for a dive that deep.” Navy
leadership at the time was aware that the design of the Thresher’s main
ballast tank blow system, used to surface the submarine, “was
inadequate when deep and was never tested at depth,” Bryant said in his
April op-ed. “That left the nuclear propulsion plant as the only
way to bring the submarine to the surface in the case of flooding at
depth,” he said. At the time, there was a procedure being tested,
but not yet approved, to respond to the emergency shutdown of a nuclear
reactor by allowing steam flow to continue to the main engines to
provide a few minutes of emergency propulsion. Adm. Hyman G. Rickover,
then head of U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, allowed another
submarine to use this procedure under certain conditions but not the
Thresher. Why this procedure wasn't allowed to be used by the
Thresher's crew is one of the questions Bryant is seeking to answer with
his lawsuit. The Navy, around 2012, planned to release more
documents on the Thresher's sinking but ultimately decided against it,
saying the information was mostly technical in nature, didn’t contribute
to any better understanding of the loss and would cause unnecessary
trauma to the remaining descendants. But descendants like MacMillan said they would like this information to be made public. “As a 63-year-old woman that still longs to be a kid who had a father growing up, I still long for answers,” she said. mailto:j.bergman@theday.com" rel="nofollow - j.bergman@theday.com
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