Undersea Pictures Not Of Thresher

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30147, 3 June 1963, Page 11

Undersea Pictures Not Of Thresher

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

BOSTON, June 1.

The United States Navy resinned its search for the sunken submarine Thresher today when it was disclosed that underwater photographs believed to be the missing craft showed no submarine at all, United Press International reported.

A Navy announcement in Washington said none of the photographs taken by the research ship Conrad "could be definitely identified as showing the Thresher," or a submarine of any kind. Therefore, the Navy said, plans were cancelled for the deep-diving bathyscaphe Trieste to photograph the wreckage in hopes of finding some clue to the cause of history’s worst submarine disaster.

The Thresher vanished in the North Atlantic on April 10 with 129 men aboard while on a test run some 220 miles

off the New England coast The search vessel Gillis took up the search today, using underwater closed-circuit television specially developed for deep submergence operations.

Dr. J. Lamar Worzel, chief scientist aboard the Conrad, told a naval court of inquiry in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that he had absolutely no means of identifying the Thresher by any of the 1500 photographs he had taken. None of the photographs was definitely of the Thresher. Previously secret Congressional testimony disclosed today that the Soviet submarine fleet is having so many mechanical difficulties that some submarines have had to be towed home on the surface by trawlers. United Press Internationa) reported. Congressman Daniel J. Flood said there have been at least six instances of this, including one off the coast of Alaska and another in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis. He said they could not submerge.

The information came from United States Navy witnesses before the House Defence Appropriations Sub-committee. They testified that they did not know whether the Russians had lost any submarines for this reasoon, but "perhaps they have.”