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About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (April 14, 1963)
I! Black Clouds Shroud Watery Grave Of Sub KUITOltS NOTE: IP! newt man Michael G. Si-hoftcld re turned Thursday night from a flight over the Atlantic nhere the search is being conducted fur the nuclear submarine Thresher. This it his story. Ily MICHAEL G. SCHOFIKI.D I'niled Press International BOSTON (UPIl A constant drizzle ran down Ihe windows of the Navy P2V Neptune patrol bomber droning over the storm tossed Atlantic. Black squall clouds hung like a shroud over the watery grave of the nuclear submarine Thresh er and the 129 men aboard. Below the plane we saw a small armada of warships searching for bits of wreckage of the doomed sub. Visibility was near zero at times in the cold, damp fog and intermittent rain squalls and hail. Ilattlc Mountainous Waves The ships, bobbing like corks, battled mountainous 30-foot waves and gusty, 60-knot winds to hold station in a tight search pattern about 275 miles due east of Bos ton. The black weather was like the pessimism of the crew of the P2V assigned to Patrol Squadron 10 at Brunswick. Maine Naval Air nation, ineir pessimism was there even before Navy Secretary Fred H. Korth ruled the Thresher and all aboard lost. Lt. ijgi Thomas Vigorito. 26, of Brooklyn, N.V., tactical navigator on the bomber noted that some of the search ships were heeling as much as 50 degrees from port to starboard. Anchor Chain Useless "No ship has an anchor chain 7,000 feet long," he said, remark ing on the water depth in the search area. "It's bad enough when you have to look for something like this." said Lt. ijgl Herbert Ducey, "but it's downright grim with weather conditions like this." Ducey, 25, of Maplewood, N.J., is another navigator aboard the plane piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Harley O. Wilbur, 36. of Rochester, Mich The search for the Thresher and the submariners went on. In the distance, two deep-sea fishing trawlers, sails flapping in the breeze, made their way slow ly carrying men who seek sus tenance and their livelihood from the same sea. Bathyscaph May Solve Cause Of Sub Sinking P5A BATHESCAPH 2-24-2 .Ithoi SAN DIEGO, Calif. (UPI'-The Navy held hopes today the bathy scaph Trieste could determine the cause of the Thresher disaster, if the submarine is found. No rescue operation could be attempted by the deep-sea diving craft, but it will carry one movie camera and three still cameras as an aid in determining what caused the disaster. The Navy said it also would take along ra diation measuring equipment. The Trieste crew worked around the clock to ready it for shipment on the dock landing ship Defiance. The i:i,2S0-ton ship, which will carry the Trieste on a football field-sized open deck designed for landing craft, is expected to de part late Sunday or early Monday. The Navy said the 4,900 nautical mile trip to New London, Conn., by way of the Panama Canal will take 10 days. There was little hope the Tri este would be of use in the search for the missing submarine as it has practically no mancuvcrabil ity except up and down. But if the Thresher is found wrecked on the ocean bottom, the Trieste could make observations, take photographs and be of aid in de lermining what caused the tragic mishap. ' The 60-foot Trieste could 'easily reach the 8,400-foot depth where the Thresher presumably sank. Ihe deep-diving craft made a record 35.800 descent in the Pa cific in I960. The research vessel can remain submerged for 48 hours. Two win dows are designed to provide vis ual observation of the ocean and the craft also is equipped with a mechanical aim for picking up ocean specimens, mercury-vapor Mood lamps and a telephone for talking with persons on the sur face. CROWD RUNS RAMPANT MANAGUA, Nicaragua tUPl Four persons were killed and at least nine others injured Friday when a crowd of spectators pushed onto a road during a mo torcycle race. USS Skylark, rescue vesstl accompanying th Thresher, had lair contact at 9 a.m. i lOOFt ZOOFt. 300ft fOOFi. Thresher mode shallow and intermediate test dives April y. 300 feet greatest depth from which a mnn has escaped. Thresher was making deep dive "in excess of 400 feet" when lost. Man's greatest penetration of the ocean depths mode in experimental vessel, the Trieste, Jan.23, I960. Reached 35,800 feet with two men aboard. 1,000 feet depth capability of diving bell. No rescue ever made at this depth. 8,400 feet ocean floor where Thresher went down. -1 : i By BOYD LEWIS iS-4 shot out of the waves directly NEW YORK i SEA 'The sea under the bow of the Paulding. has embraced the Thresher withTnere was a grinding crash. Ihe; merciful finality. j submarine rolled over and dis- Only those who lived through I ap!x'ar 'm s.gm. ine fau.a- A-,t ..!,., tl.A Vn.v handful of " "V" T . .7 1 T 10 a nan, auwn at uie neau uui HERALD AND NEWS. KlamtUi Falls. Ore. .Sunday, April 14. ISM PAGE S-A Thresher Disaster Recalls 1927 Sub Sinking Piccard Ready To Probe Sea LAUSANNE, Switzerland (UPIl Veteran underwater explorer Dr. Jacques' Piccard said today he would be "ready and willing. H asked, to man the bathyscaph Trieste in a search for the wreck age of the submarine Thresher. "There is no question but thai l would drop everything and go to help man the Trieste for this search, if the U.S. Navy asked me to," Piccard told UP1 in an inter view. "So far, however, I have received no such invitation.. "In any case the Navy has sev eral fully qualified pilots who are perfectly able to handle the Tri este without me." Piccard said he felt the hathy scaph, in which he set a world depth diving record in Uie Pacilic last year, would be "invaluable" in the search for the Thresher, which disappeared off Cape Cod Wednesday with 12!) men aboard. trugglcd to save men in the torpedo room of the S-4 on the bottom off Providence- town, Mass., 35 years ago last December, can truly understand why tiie Thresher's (ate must be ailed "merciful." Such a one was this writer. then a rciuirter out of Boston for the United Press. To have lived through those frantic hours when divers sought vainly to car ry air to the men faintly tapping tapping . . . tapping in the sunken hull: to have lived through those painful, wintry months of frustrating salvage efforts after ill hope of life was cone; to have lived through weeks of painstak ing trial and naval inquiry to have lived through this is to re member "S-4" as the svmbol of mighty ordeal. And this is why one must say the Thresher's silent final plunge to the Atlantic deeps took her to a mercilul end. The Thresher closed its log on u test run: so did the S-4. Ihere 1 similarity ends. The S-4, carrying 40 officers, men and civilian engineers, was making s)ccd tests along a mea sured milo course on the tip of Cape Cod. She had two peri scopes, one of which was fixed on black and white wooden tar gets which visitors to the Cape can still sec lowering over the ciunes. The other was supposed to be used to scan the horizon for shipping, which was not scarce near the entrance to that famous fishing port. The S-4 ran the mile and lilted its bow to the surface. Unseen by the men of Ihe S-4 control room was a Coast Guard de stroyer. an ancient four-stack "tin can" which the Navy had turned over lo the Coast Guard to hunt rum runners, for it was then the time of Prohibition. The Paulding's watch officer spotted a suspicious motorboat .scuttling just inside the Cape. Ihe destroyer put on full speed ahead, black smoke pouring from its funnels. Moments later the bow of the afloat. Naval salvage crews were mo bilized. Tugs headed for the scene towing great pontoons. Divers were summoned from N a v v Yards at Charleston, Mass., and Brooklyn. A bald Navv eagle with the wings of a flier on his chest Capt. Finest King, later to be Chief of Naval Operations, was in direct charge of the salvage task force from the tug Falcon. A Navy commander named Edward Ellsburg, later to gain fame clearing the ports of Eritrea in World War II and as a writer oi sea fiction, also was flown Newspaper reporters, slill and newsreel cameramen and a small army of the curious swarmed down the winding highways ot the Cape that sub-zero 17th of December. 1 hailed a cab outside my office in Boston and said 1 want to go to Provincetown as fast as possible." The Portuguese fishermen be came our ferrymen on the grim run out to Ihe salvage scene. At $100 a trip it was belter than hauling in cod. The first divers down found the S-4 resting 105 feet deep, a deep1 gash near her conning tower. At first there was no sign nf life Then at midnight came a call from Cmdr. Ellsburg for some of us to get out to the Falcon. Three of us chartered a lobster- man and chugged across the black pit of the harbor to the f'al con, where Ellsburg revealed that he had been down in a diver's suit, had heard faint Morse code like tapping on the wall of the forward torpedo room and had got ten to the surface with difficulty after his suit sprang a leak. Navy oflicers estimated six -mvT W, wH DEATH SUB ARISES Flag flew at half-mast on fvte hulk of the S-4 in Charleston Navy Yard in March, 1928, She had been brought to the surface three months after the disaster. men were in the forward torpedo room. Their air could hold out at most about three days. Divers went down in relays in frantic, futile efforts to get an air hose into the torpedo room be fore the air became poisonous. The sea was choppy and bitterly cold. One after another the brawny divers were hauled out with the "bends" and were placed in the t alcon s decompression chamber to get the deadly nitro gen bubbles out of their veins The taps went on for a while, steadily fainter and more errat ic. By the third day there were no taps and there was no more hope. The S-4 job had become mere sal vage. Eventually the salvage crewsj got great chain slings under the! hull and wrapped them around the sunken pontoons. On a bright day just three months from the sinking, Ihe pontoons were pumped dry and Uie S-4 was brought to the surface. I stood on the after deck ot the tug Sagamore with my watch in hand. The sea boiled and the rusted bow of the S-4 broke the surface. I looked at my watch. It was three months to the min ute since the submarine had gone down. 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