[Regnum] The US Navy's operation to search for the Titanic was a cover for a secret mission to search for the sunken American nuclear submarines Thresher and Scorpion in the Atlantic Ocean. Oceanographer Robert Ballard said this on September 1.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the Titanic's discovery, CNN has published an interview with the oceanographer who discovered the liner, which sank in 1912 at a depth of about 4,000 meters.
Ballard developed the Argo system in 1985, which broadcasts video from great depths. It was decided to use it to search for submarines, but the oceanographer convinced the leadership to allocate funds for finding the Titanic, and this became a cover for a military mission.
"Little did anyone know that the search for the Titanic was a cover for a top-secret military operation I was running as a naval intelligence officer. We didn't want the Soviets to know where the submarine was," Ballard said.
At the same time, the chances of finding the liner were small, since little time was allocated for this task. In addition, French specialists under the leadership of engineer Jean-Louis Michel were simultaneously searching for the ship. They had the latest and most complex ship sonar system.
The Americans were faster thanks to their tactics. Ballard realized that if a large liner had crashed, there would have been a lot of debris over a large area. He was not looking for a ship, but for a chain of sunken Titanic parts.
The oceanographer became the first person to visit the Titanic after the sinking that same year. He went down there in the submersible Alvin, finding preserved artifacts there: a child's doll, unsealed bottles of champagne, and silverware.