April 2012 issue Boy's Life magazine

[Jake Peterson]

Hey all;

When the book threads finally get in, you can put this in the magazine section.

Anyway....

Just came across this copy while at the dentist office. There are two articles; one is called "Titanic Mystery" and the other is a fictional story of boy scouts "Aboard the Titanic"

the first article seems to check out with it's facts and such. There were two paragraphs that caught my eye though:

"Ballard's search was actually a cover story for a secret naval operation: to map and document data on the two U.S. nucular subs- USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher"

then later on in the article, a quote from Ballard: "I don't think the Pentagon expected me to find the Titanic. They were a little nervous that the cover story would be blown. But it wasn't and a few years later, they chose to declassify the information"


I'm thinking to myself, "This clearly makes no sense"

Think about it: if they had not found the Titanic, than the world would go on, and someone else would take the helm at finding her. If he does succeed (and he did) then the world would have proof via the photos that they would take.

maybe I'm missing something here....

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>"Ballard's search was actually a cover story for a secret naval operation: to map and document data on the two U.S. nucular subs- USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher"<<

You're not missing anything really. That's exactly what the mission was. In fact, Dr. Ballard had to get permission to search for the Titanic with the provision that he could do it for only as long as the funding held out. It was a case of Cold War skullduggery where each party had different interests but made them work for each other.

There were some compelling reasons to check up on both the Scorpion and the Threasher, namely the possibility of contamination from their reactors and at least two nuclear weapons which the Scorpion was believed to be carrying.

 

[Jake Peterson]

Hi Mike;

Here's another paragraph out of the article: "The cover story of Ballard's Titanic hunt was believable because the subs are located in the general area of the Titanic's last reported position. Navy officials told Ballard that after he found the subs, he could look for the Titanic."

Huh. I haven't done any research on either of those subs, so I don't know where they were located, but I didn't think they'd be 300 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, could they?

THAT would be too coincidental for me. Heh.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Huh. I haven't done any research on either of those subs, so I don't know where they were located, but I didn't think they'd be 300 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, could they?<<

They weren't. The Scorpion was last known to be close to the Azores and her location is about 400 miles southwest of the Azores. (Click on Submarine Photo Index )

The Thresher went down about 220 miles southeast of Boston. (Click on Submarine Photo Index )

Look on the bright side, the article at least got the name of the ocean right!

 

[Jake Peterson]

Hope this scan makes it through all right.

Anyway, notice the precariously large angle that the Titanic is at. I'm thinking she a little TOO far out of the water for that height.

Edit: Oops; forgot to cut out the address label there. Would a Mod be so kind as to take this image off, and I'll scan another one in?