The secret mission helped discover the wreck of the Titanic

Submersible technology equipped with cameras and sharp judgment helped an oceanographer discover the wreck of the Titanic more than 70 years after the shipwreck.

Almost immediately after the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, authorities attempted to find the wreck and the bodies of the victims who sank with the ship. However, limited diving technology at the time prevented the search for more than seven decades. On September 1, 1985, nearly 39 years ago , the wreck of the Titanic was found during an expedition with the research vessel Knorr by American oceanographer and naval officer Robert Ballard and French oceanographer Robert Ballard. French Jean-Louis Michel , according to Business Insider .

Robert Ballard is the person who discovered the wreck of the Titanic. (Photo: CTPost).

However, the original diving trip was not to search for the Titanic but was a secret mission to locate the wrecks of the two nuclear submarines USS Scorpion and USS Thresher. It wasn't until 2008 that this information became public when Ballard shared the truth about the mission with National Geographic.

Initially, Ballard met with the US Navy in 1982 to ask for funding to develop Argo, an unmanned camera vehicle that could be towed behind a ship on the water, operating at depths of up to 6,096m. The US Navy agreed to fund the project if it used technology to find submarines sunk in the 1960s. The USS Thresher sank in April 1963 and the USS Scorpion sank five years later, in May 1960. 1968. These are the only nuclear submarines of the US Navy that were lost. The navy agreed to let Ballard search for the Titanic if there was still time on the mission.

Because at that time the United States was caught up in the Cold War, the above mission became top secret. Ballard received special training and served in the military as a naval officer. Ballard began his top-secret expedition by photographing the Thresher in the summer of 1984. The following year, he and a team of experts from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution returned to the Atlantic and searched for the wreck of the Scorpion in open waters. off the Azores. Ballard knew his naval duties left him with little time to find the Titanic, so he teamed up with the French Institute for Marine Mining Research, IFREMER.

In July 1985, the French research ship Le Suroit began exploring the area believed to be where the Titanic sank. Using a technique called "grass cutting" , expedition leader Jean-Louis Michel dragged a sonar system across the search area to detect large metal objects on the seabed. Despite scanning the Atlantic Ocean for 5 weeks, the sonar system did not get results. The search for the Titanic was handed over to Ballard and his colleagues, who had just finished surveying the Scorpion.

The submersible Alvin visited the wreck of the Titanic in 1986. (Video: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution).

Ballard's military assignment left him with only 12 days to search for the Titanic, but also gave him the idea of ​​a new search technique. While photographing the Thresher and Scorpion, he noticed ocean currents carrying small pieces of the wreck as they sank to the bottom of the sea, creating a long trail of debris. So, Ballard decided not to search for the Titanic's hull. Instead, he used Argo to probe its much larger debris trail on the seafloor, which can stretch a mile long. Once he found the location of the debris trail, he could use it to track the wreck.

The new method allowed Ballard to expand the search area and move through it in a much wider pattern. Instead of "mowing the lawn" with sonar, he dragged the Argo along the seabed and monitored live video from the vehicle's camera. A team of seven people maintained smooth operations between the research vessel Knorr and the submersible and analyzed all the data. They work in shifts to monitor continuously all day. After a few days, they saw riveted boards on the ship's hull and boiler. Argo continued to follow the trail of debris and the next morning, the bow of the Titanic appeared before their eyes in the pitch-black water.

As suspected, the Titanic broke in half as it sank to the bottom of the sea. The ship's bow lies upright and remains intact. The more damaged stern of the ship was located 400 meters away.

Ballard and his colleagues rushed to film the wreck using both Argo and Angus, another unmanned submarine designed to take still images. The photos reveal large parts of the hull and mast, including the mast hut where the deadly iceberg was first discovered. Some hatches were peeled off, and the deck lighting doors were gone, allowing a view of the grand staircase located inside the ship. The large trail of debris included nameplates, furniture, and even an unopened box of champagne. The only remaining traces of the victims are many pairs of leather shoes still lying on the sand at the bottom of the sea.

Just four days after Ballard's team discovered the wreck of the Titanic, stormy weather forced the team to pack supplies and pilot the Knorr back to the mainland. Dozens of scientists thoroughly studied the wreck site, including Ballard. He returned the following summer to observe the wreck for the first time from inside the manned submersible Alvin . Later, Ballard, became one of the people who strongly opposed salvaging objects from the Titanic.

In February 2023, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution released a never-before-shared 80-minute underwater video about the discovery. The film was shot with a camera on a research submersible in July 1986.