Titanic's Wreckage Was Found During Top-Secret Navy Mission To Find Two Nuclear Subs
- 6 years ago
The drama surrounding the Titanic’s doomed voyage in 1912 may be well known, but the discovery of its sunken wreckage in the North Atlantic has some surprising twists of its own.
The drama surrounding the Titanic's doomed voyage in 1912 may be well known, but the discovery of its sunken wreckage in the North Atlantic Ocean has some surprising twists of its own, reports the Washington Post.
According to National Geographic, the ship was discovered during a top-secret Navy investigation which had been launched to find two Cold War-era nuclear submarines--the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion.
At the time, in the mid-1980s, the U.S. government was interested in finding the sunken vessels to assess any environmental impact the nuclear materials aboard may have had and to look into why they may have sunk.
As such, oceanographer Robert Ballard made a deal with the Navy to try and locate the subs using a remote, deep-sea camera technology he had developed in exchange for funding his search for the Titanic, notes USA Today.
While the mission was a success all around, Ballard says the Navy was less than pleased about the publicity generated by the Titanic's discovery because it could have brought attention to the secret mission.
However, Ballard has said, "People were so focused on the legend of the Titanic they never connected the dots."
The story behind the Titanic's discovery is featured in a new exhibit at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C.
The drama surrounding the Titanic's doomed voyage in 1912 may be well known, but the discovery of its sunken wreckage in the North Atlantic Ocean has some surprising twists of its own, reports the Washington Post.
According to National Geographic, the ship was discovered during a top-secret Navy investigation which had been launched to find two Cold War-era nuclear submarines--the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion.
At the time, in the mid-1980s, the U.S. government was interested in finding the sunken vessels to assess any environmental impact the nuclear materials aboard may have had and to look into why they may have sunk.
As such, oceanographer Robert Ballard made a deal with the Navy to try and locate the subs using a remote, deep-sea camera technology he had developed in exchange for funding his search for the Titanic, notes USA Today.
While the mission was a success all around, Ballard says the Navy was less than pleased about the publicity generated by the Titanic's discovery because it could have brought attention to the secret mission.
However, Ballard has said, "People were so focused on the legend of the Titanic they never connected the dots."
The story behind the Titanic's discovery is featured in a new exhibit at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C.