Declassified documents shed new light on notorious sinking of USS Thresher
Story by Stephen J. Thorne
At 8 a.m. on April 9, 1963, USS Thresher (SSN-593), the lead boat in its class of nuclear-powered attack submarines, left port at Kittery, Maine, for a series of dive tests in the deep ocean 350 kilometres east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, after a nine-month overhaul.
Some 25 hours later, while Thresher was nearing test depth during its first deep-dive trials, USS Skylark, the submarine rescue ship that was on station at the time, received a garbled message via underwater telephone.
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