Reviving this post on the 45th anniversary of the sinking of the Thresher:
Another instance of brokenness that occurs early in the story. Jack and Ennis sit around the campfire talking about the loss of the submarine Thresher and what it must have been like in those last doomed moments. Here's some info about the event.
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the USS Thresher (SSN-593), the first of the new Thresher-class 3700-ton nuclear-powered attack submarines. Commissioned in August 1961, she underwent extensive sea trials during ‘61 and ‘62. On April 10, 1963, after completion of a re-fit, she began post-overhaul trials. Accompanied by the submarine rescue ship Skylark (ASR-20), she transited to an area some 220 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and started deep-diving tests.
At 9:13 a.m., the USS Skylark (a surface vessel assigned to assist Thresher) received a signal, via underwater telephone, indicating that the submarine was experiencing “minor difficulties, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow.”
Shortly afterward, the Skylark received a series of garbled, undecipherable message fragments from the Thresher. At 9:18 a.m., the Skylark’s sonar picked up the sounds of the submarine breaking apart. All 129 hands were lost—112 military and 17 civilian technicians.
The submarine community, the Navy and the nation were stunned. Thresher was the best of the newest. The ship was built at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine and was the first of a new class of submarine, designed for optimum performance of sonar and weapons systems