Funeral At Sea For Submarine’s Crew

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30108, 17 April 1963, Page 15

Funeral At Sea For Submarine’s Crew

(N .Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) PORTSMOUTH (New Hampshire), April 16. A United States Navy plane dropped a wreath of flowers into the Atlantic at sunset yesterday in a tribute to the 129 men lost with the nuclear submarine Thresher.

The three-foot v/reath of white chrysanthemums was dropped from a Neptune patrol plane, flying 1200 feet above the waters. A chaplain aboard the destroyer Warrington read the traditional burial at sea prayer and committed the men of the Thresher forever to the deep The Warrington is one of five ships patrolling in a tight one-mile-wide oval at the presumed site of the Thresher’s grave, now marked by a striped rubber buoy. The captain of the rescue vessel, Skylark. Lieutenant Commander Stanley Hecker, told the naval court inquiry in Portsmoutl yesterday that the final message from the Thresher was garbled, practically drowned out by the sound of air rushing into the ballast tanks.

It was at 9.12 a.m. some 220 miles off the coast of Cape Cod when Thresher, on her depth test dive, 1 sent the voice message: “Experiencing minor problem . . have positive angle ... attempting to blow.” That voice. Commander Hecker said, was “very relaxed.” Then came the sound of air rushing into the ballast tanks and through it the sound of a voice with

another message completely garbled. He said it was 10.40 a.m.. an hour and a quarter after the garbled message, that he dropped explosive signals to advise Thresher to surface, and at 11.4 a.m. he sent a message to the submarine control headquarters ashore that he had lost contact with the submarine. In Washington a senior Navy spokesman disclosed that Admiral George Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations. did not learn about the

final noises from the Thresher until three days after the submarine’s loss. Admiral Anderson had told a press conference on Wednesday night only hours after the announcement of the loss of the Thresher that no unusual noises had been detected. Then officers and men aboard the Skylark told the Inquiry three days later that they had picked up noises which sounded like a submarine disintegrating. The Navy’s chief of information. Rear-Admiral John McCain, jun., said today that the Navy in Washington “absolutely did not know of the sounds” until the testimony was delivered He also declined to make a judgment why two hours elapsed between the last message from the Thresher and the first message from the Skylark to Navy submarine headquarters in New London, Connecticut. The United States Navy bathyscaphe Trieste left San Diego, California, yesterday aboard a Navy ship for a trip through the Panama Canal to join the hunt for the Thresher.