The famous Russian "Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf" says: "On the third day, Voron Voronovich flew in and brought with him two bubbles: in one - living water, in the other - dead water, and gave those bubbles to the Gray Wolf … The gray wolf took the bubbles and sprinkled Ivan Tsarevich with dead water - his body grew fused …”The tale, as they say, is a lie, but there is a hint in it.
During the polar expedition of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, many scientific discoveries were made. For example, the opinion about the shallowness of the Arctic Ocean has been refuted, the structure of its water masses has been investigated, the influence of the Earth's rotation on the movement of ice has been discovered, etc. Including the phenomenon of "dead water" was discovered. Instantly the ship's speed dropped from four and a half knots to one, although the depth was sufficient and the Kara Sea looked calm.
For the first time, the Hall brothers began to study this phenomenon in 1830, but theoretically it was substantiated by a Norwegian scientist shortly before the expedition of Fridtjof Nansen. However, before the incident with "Fram" no one could even imagine that "dead water" could have such power.
Here's what happened. When approaching the edge of the ice, the Fram suddenly slowed down sharply. The machine was running at full speed, but the ship was barely moving, as if someone was holding it with great force. The Fram seemed to carry the entire surface layer of water with it. Waves formed behind the ship, which crossed its trail at an acute angle. Sometimes they went ahead almost to the middle of the ship. "Fram" turned in different directions, circled, but the situation did not change. When the car stopped, an unknown force pulled the ship back.
It took much more time to overcome the short distance to the edge of the ice than if it was overcome by a rowboat on oars. Except for small ice floes, there was deep and clear water around: there were no obstacles to movement.
So the effect of "dead water" was discovered - an unexpected braking of the movement of ships on the open sea. Such inhibitions, however, were known before. Sailing ships under the influence of "dead water" lost their course and ceased to obey the steering wheel. This happened in past centuries, and navigators blamed this on the sticky fish, which supposedly sticks to the bottom of the ship and slows down its progress.
But this is the case even now, despite the fact that technology has made great strides forward. Today, scientists explain the effect of "dead water" by the expenditure of energy from a ship's engine to overcome internal waves. These waves arise at the interface between two layers of water with different densities, and this phenomenon is very insidious. Long gone are the days when Captain Nemo plunged on his "Nautilus" into the quiet depths of the ocean from all earthly sorrows. The oceans turned out to be much more restless than previously imagined.
… At half past seven in the morning on April 10, 1963, the American nuclear submarine "Thresher" began a deep dive in the Atlantic Ocean - 220 miles from Boston. On board, in addition to the regular crew, there were seventeen civilian specialists - representatives of the construction plant and some industrial firms, as well as four officers of the Portsmouth shipyard, where the boat was being repaired. The purpose of the dive was to test the boat at the maximum depth (up to 360 meters)
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The boat "Thresher" was accompanied on the cruise by the rescue vessel "Skylark", which was equipped with underwater communication devices and a rescue underwater bell. Its crew also included divers who could perform work at depths of up to thirty meters.
At half past seven in the morning on April 10, the submarine surfaced to periscope depth to determine its position before deep diving. By this time, it had already passed the continental shelf and entered the Wilkinson Trough, where the depth of the Atlantic Ocean increases sharply from 300 to 2400 meters.
At 7.47 am the Thresher board informed the support ship that the final preparations for the dive had been completed. The sea at this time was calm, visibility was excellent, the wind speed did not exceed 3.5 meters per second.
At about eight o'clock, the submarine commander, Lieutenant-Commander Harvey, gave the order to begin a deep dive. Three people in the Skylark's wheelhouse - the commander, navigator (both former submariners) and a sonar - bent over the control panel of the sonar telephone. In addition to them, there was also a sailor in the wheelhouse who was recording the negotiations: there was no tape recorder on the ship, and all messages were recorded in the logbook.
The Thresher commander was supposed to get in touch with the Skylark every fifteen minutes via the sonar channel. At 7.54 the first message was received from the submarine: "Everything is in order, we continue the dive." At half past nine in the morning, "Skylark" received the last message, from which it was possible to make out only two words "… ultimate depth …".
Events between these two messages, according to the records in the logbook, developed as follows.
8.00 - the underwater communication was checked.
08.02 - the boat reached a depth of 120 meters. The solid hull, outboard fittings and pipelines were examined.
8.09 - a message was received that half of the way to the maximum diving depth was passed. The dive rate slows down.
8.24 - the next communication session was carried out.
8.25 - the boat reached a depth of 90 meters less than the limit.
8.26 - the boat is close to the maximum diving depth.
09.02 - a message was received that the boat's course remains unchanged.
9.10 - the submarine did not answer the call. There was no answer and the repeated call after 1 minute. The concerned navigator of the Skylark took the microphone from the sonar and shouted into it: “Are you all right? Answer me! Answer, for God's sake! But there was no answer.
9.11 - an unintelligible message was received from the boat, from which it was possible to understand that there were some problems. The boat is trimmed aft, the divers are trying to blow through the main ballast tanks. After 2-3 seconds, the noise of compressed air entering the tanks was heard, which lasted for 20-30 seconds.
After that, after a while, that last message was heard. And after him there was a muffled, indistinct rumble.
Navigator Watson tried to remember where he had heard such a noise before. His eyes fell on the bulkhead of the wheelhouse and automatically recorded the chronometer reading - 9.17. Subsequently, he described the noise he heard as "the crackle of breaking sections of a solid hull", familiar to him from the experience of the Second World War. However, at that moment the Skylark did not yet realize the tragedy of what had happened.
The Skylark commander ordered the hydroacoustics engineer to contact Thresher and ask: "Is the submarine under control?" When this time there was no answer, he himself repeated his question three times. Knowing about the unreliability of the sonar telephone, the Skylark commander was also worried that the submarine, during an emergency ascent, could also ram the rescue vessel with all the ensuing consequences.
For an hour and a half, the Skylark unsuccessfully waited for the submarine to surface. The tension aboard the rescue boat increased as the 15-minute periods passed one after the other, and there was still no response from the Thresher. The sonar was listening in vain to the underwater noise. In vain did the radio operator look for the callsigns of "Thresher" on the air. In vain did the people on the bridge try to find the familiar silhouette of a submarine. In vain.
At about 10:00 one of the signalmen noticed a low gray silhouette, similar to the silhouette of a submarine, 3-4 miles away. With the help of signal lights and an ultra-shortwave radio station, inquiries were made immediately, but there was no response this time either. And after a few minutes, the silhouette seemed to melt into a misty haze. What was it? An optical illusion or a figment of the imagination of tired and anxious people?
At 10.40, the Skylark commander decided to move on to more effective measures: grenades flew into the water, the explosions of which were supposed to serve as a signal for the Tresher to surface immediately. However, this extreme measure did not give any result.
Having finally made sure that communication with the Thresher was lost, the Skylark commander sent a radiogram to the headquarters: “I have no connection with the Thresher since 09.17. I call the boat every minute, every 10 minutes I drop signal cartridges. All attempts to locate the boat are unsuccessful. The last message received is heavily garbled. One can understand that the boat was at a depth close to the limit … I continue to search."
In the afternoon, search groups of ships and aircraft left the area where the Thresher disappeared. The US Naval Command asked the captains of all merchant ships passing through the search area to carefully monitor the water surface.
The next day, April 11, the first finds appeared. In the area of the disappearance of the boat, pieces of cork and plastic, plastic bottles and glasses, as well as several rubber gloves that divers usually wear when working in the reactor compartment were picked up in the water. All the items caught could have belonged to the Tresher, but they might not have anything to do with it, since such things are used on almost all American ships.
Hour after hour passed, and the boat in distress could not be found on the surface. The depths of the ocean in this area are so great that the idea of a damaged Thresher lying on the ground was completely ruled out. Therefore, at half past ten in the morning on April 11, the chief of staff of the US Navy, Admiral Anderson, made the following statement to reporters: “The sad necessity compels me to conclude that the Thresher submarine, which we believed to be missing all this time, actually sank. Over the past hours, she had many opportunities to make herself known. With deep sorrow and a feeling of great grief, I am forced to announce that the nuclear submarine Thresher, which had 129 people on board, has died."
But the search for "Thresher" did not end, they continued during 1963-1964 and ended with some success. The fragments of the light hull were found and photographed on the ground, and their belonging to the "Tresher" was also established. As a result of studying all the circumstances of the death of the boat, several versions of what happened were put forward.
1. The boat, due to an error of personnel, slipped through the maximum diving depth and was crushed.
2. The boat lost its buoyancy due to the ingress of water into the strong hull through damaged fittings or a burst pipeline.
These were the official versions, but besides them, other assumptions were expressed in the foreign press. For example, the possibility of a submarine explosion was not ruled out, including as a result of the combat impact of an "unknown submarine enemy."
Scientists suggest that internal waves were the cause of the submarine's death. On that day, a cyclone raged in the test area, which could cause them. Later, powerful internal waves with a height of up to 100 meters and an oscillation period of about eight minutes were recorded here. Such waves could easily "drag" the boat to a depth below the limit for which its solid hull was designed. Exceeding the maximum immersion depth of the Thresher by 50 meters (that is, to a depth of 410 meters) led to a disaster: there was not enough safety margin.
Soviet scientists have noted another possible reason. The cyclone caused a strong vortex movement of the ocean waters in the submerged area of the boat, and this contributed to intensive mixing of the upper layer of the ocean. As a result, the lighter warm water from the upper layer could be drawn downward. If the Thresher suddenly fell into a layer of warm water near the maximum depth, then it could simply fall below the maximum allowable mark. The crew did not manage to blow through the ballast tanks, and the Thresher sank at a depth of 2800 meters.
From the book: "HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS". N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev