Forty years ago, a renowned American oceanographer and marine geologist, Robert Ballard, did what nobody had been able to do until that point: discover the Titanic that sank in 1912. However, when he embarked on that exquisite exploration, Ballard also signed up for a classified US Navy mission.
The Titanic descended into the ocean’s depths after an extraordinary collision with an iceberg on April 15, 1912. This tragic event captivated and astonished the global community, inspiring various artistic expressions, including the renowned film ‘Titanic,’ featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
Decades after the sinking, marine researchers and deep-sea divers faced significant challenges in locating the gigantic shipwreck, primarily attributed to erroneous information and the technological constraints of diving equipment available during that period.
However, Ballard was determined to change that—a promise he would keep.
In the wee hours of September 1, 1985, the video feeds of the command center of Knorr showed grainy black-and-white photos of a metal cylinder. The team’s cook rushed to alert Ballard, who was awake and reading in his cabin at the time.
“As I came in, we had a picture of the boiler on the wall, and we looked,” Ballard told CNN. “We realized it was definitely (from the) Titanic, and all bedlam grew loose.”
This was the moment that Ballard had been dreaming of. He had found the Titanic’s wreckage 73 years after the ship that was billed as ‘unsinkable’ sank.
Robert Ballard’s research vessel during the discovery was the RV Knorr, which scoured the beds of the Atlantic Ocean to locate the wreckage of the Titanic, which had remained ‘missing’ since it sank in 1912 after an unprecedented collision with an iceberg.
The Knorr carried the Argo, a deep-towed vehicle equipped with cameras and sonars, designed to scan the seafloor at depths up to 20,000 feet. This was critical for locating the Titanic, which rested at approximately 12,500 feet. The Knorr’s ability to tow Argo at a slow, controlled pace was essential for systematic grid searches.
The Argo recorded the Titanic in black and white, whereas an older device known as ANGUS, which used a 35-mm camera system, produced blue-hued still photos that showed the wreck’s presence. A year later, the team returned with more sophisticated color cameras to capture every inch of the debris, including the bow, grand staircase, and swimming pool, and all other photos that are imprinted on our collective memories.
Ballard became the first person to visit the wreck that year using Alvin, a crewed submersible he had previously piloted. The journey to the seafloor took more than two hours. He saw moving objects there, such as silverware, uncorked champagne bottles, and a child’s doll, but no human remains.
Since then, the prototype technology that enabled the discovery has revolutionized deep-sea science and exploration, greatly advancing our understanding of the ocean.
However, this historic discovery was, in fact, a “cover story” for a covert operation conducted by the United States Navy.
Classified US Mission That Helped Titanic Discovery
After marine explorers had made multiple unsuccessful attempts at locating the Titanic, Ballard stepped onto the scene in 1982 and embarked on a mission to trace the shipwreck using an autonomous underwater vehicle.
Ballard had tried to find the debris of the Titanic before the 1985 search. In his 2021 biography, “Into the Deep,” he discussed a 1977 expedition to locate the Titanic, which ultimately failed when a 3,000-foot drilling pipe equipped with sonar and cameras broke in two. The experience convinced him that he needed a remotely operated underwater vehicle that could transmit video back to the research vessel.
However, he did not have the necessary funds to back his idea, which led him to the US Navy, where he was enrolled as a Naval Reserve Commanding Officer. He applied for Navy support for his submersible technology, which would later be used in the Titanic hunt.
While the Navy agreed to fund Robert Ballard’s project, he became entangled in a clandestine US Navy operation while trying to find the submerged Titanic.
Ballard was informed that he would also need to investigate and take pictures of two US Navy submarines that were missing: the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion. And since the mission to locate these submarines was purportedly a secret one, the Titanic discovery expedition was supposed to be an “eyewash.”
Years after the mission was declassified, Robert Ballard spoke to National Geographic in 2008, revealing what the mission was really about. “The Navy never expected me to find the Titanic, and so when that happened, they got really nervous because of the publicity. But people were so focused on the legend of the Titanic, they never connected the dots,” the distinguished explorer said at the time.
The two nuclear-powered submarines were of interest to the US Navy.
One of the two ships, the USS Thresher, went down in the North Atlantic a few kilometers off Cape Cod in 1963 while conducting deep-diving tests.
The submarine, built to find and destroy Soviet submarines, was known to be the fastest in the US inventory. Meanwhile, the other missing submarine that the US Navy wanted to find in 1985 was the USS Scorpion, the second American nuclear submarine to have been lost at sea in 1968. This submarine had also sunk somewhere in the North Atlantic.
The United States Navy was aware that the submarines and their essential parts were in the North Atlantic, but it was unsure of their precise location beneath the ocean floor. This helped Ballard’s cause as the Titanic was also somewhere under the same ocean bed.
Ballard was assigned to photograph the wrecks for the Navy. Since the Cold War was still going on, the US Navy wanted to find out if the Soviet Union was involved in the sinking of the USS Scorpion. Additionally, there was a keen interest in assessing the condition of the nuclear reactors aboard the submarines.
The US Navy told Ballard that the location of the submarines had to be kept secret because the service did not want Russian satellites to track the mission and find the submarine. In response, Ballard said, “Let’s tell the world I am going after the Titanic.”
The mission to find the Titanic started with a precondition. Ballard was told that he could hunt for the Titanic only after he completes the mission that included locating and taking pictures of the US Navy submarines before the deadline. This meant that the rules of this expedition did not really favour Ballard or prioritise his mission from the outset.
Nonetheless, he persisted.
Ballard later told the media that Navy officials probably didn’t think he would be able to finish in time to start looking for the Titanic seriously.
The submarines were eventually located by Ballard, Photos were taken, and an inspection was conducted. However, the real test came after locating the submarine.
After locating the two submarines, the researchers had only twelve days to use their remaining funding. This meant they had to limit their search region to 100 square miles, as recalled in a media interaction by Ballard several years later.
With less than two weeks in hand, Ballard decided to shift strategy.
Ballard’s search for the USS Scorpion submarine had given him some invaluable insights. He had discovered that heavier, denser objects fall faster in currents, creating a debris trail.
Ballard realized that he could find the Titanic by recognizing its debris field. Ballard based his discovery of the Titanic on the hypothesis that the ship had split in two and left a debris trail. After this, it took the brilliant explorer merely eight days to find the Titanic. This crazy suspicion proved to be accurate and “saved our butts,” he later told National Geographic.
The Titanic’s boiler was discovered beneath more than 12,400 feet of water on September 1, 1985.
Interestingly, Ballard was initially not hopeful that he would locate the Titanic despite years of preparation because a French team, headed by engineer Jean-Louis Michel of the French oceanographic organization IFREMER, with whom Ballard had been working, was employing a new, advanced ship-mounted sonar equipment to find the ship’s final resting place in the limited time allocated for the search.
However, as fate would have it, the French team failed to spot the wreck, and Ballard’s “camera on a string,” as he put it, was able to do so due to a much smaller search area after the French sonar scanning.
Ballard is still able to clearly recall the first time he saw the Titanic, a fact he subsequently mentioned in public remarks. The Titanic was split in two, but its bow was upright. The remains of an elaborate stairway could be seen where one skylight was missing. There was furniture, china plates, and an unopened champagne bottle all across the ocean floor. Even the chandeliers were still somehow hanging.
Ballard described the image as a haunting mansion, mostly intact save for many leather shoes that remained as the only reminders of the dead. In his book, “Discovery of the Titanic, he wrote: “It was one thing to have won — to have found the ship. It was another thing to be there. That was the spooky part.”
As for the submarines, they were found by the US Navy, but there was no USSR link to the USS Scorpion sinking, as previously suspected. Ronald Thunman, the deputy chief of naval operations for submarine warfare during the mission, later told National Geographic, “We saw no indication of some sort of external weapon that caused the ship to go down.”
For nearly three decades, Ballard maintained a highly confidential association with the sunken nuclear submarines. The related documents concerning this operation were ultimately declassified.
Ballard went on to find several other famous wrecks, including the USS Yorktown, the Nazi cruiser Bismarck, and PT-109, a Navy ship that President John F. Kennedy commanded in his mid-20s during World War II. However, the Titanic continues to be his most revered discovery and is celebrated every year on September 1.
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