商品簡介
This groundbreaking work explores why, on the morning of 10 April 1963, the USS Thresher (SSN 593), the world's most technically advanced submarine, lost propulsion and depth control and sank until it was crushed by sea pressure, extinguishing the lives of the 129 people on board. James Bryant, a former U.S. Navy nuclear submarine commander, bases this book on the over 4,000 pages of declassified information obtained through the author's July 2019 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. It took a judge's order in February 2020 to force the Navy to review at least 300 pages of Thresher-related information per month for declassification. The Navy started to release redacted and declassified material in September 2020, beginning with the report of the Naval Court of Inquiry, containing 1,700 pages of previously held testimony, findings of fact, opinions and recommendations, and 255 exhibits supporting the report. After analyzing all the declassified material, Bryan and a volunteer research team have concluded that this disaster was caused by a myriad of cascading factors resulting from the failure to recognize the inherent dangers of making the Thresher Class dive much deeper than previous classes of submarines. This book analyzes how each factor contributed to the disaster and examines the actions the Navy could have taken to prevent its loss.
