Listener Appreciation Week: The Top Secret Mission That Found the Titanic

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Rich: In March of 2025, I had the honor of being a guest speaker at the annual Boston Sea Rovers Ocean Symposium. This is a wonderful organization of dedicated divers and other ocean professionals who are all committed to the responsible exploration of earth's oceans. During the Events film festival, I was extremely surprised and excited to see Robert Ballard come to the stage. 

In case you don't know, Robert Ballard is a renowned ocean explorer, most famous for finding the RMS Titanic in 1985. He spoke about that mission and of the top secret cover story that is now declassified. The white star liner, RMS Titanic sank April 15th, 1912. As is well documented, I am not going to rehash that entire story here. 

However, the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic where the waters are very deep. While it was well known where the Titanic sank in [00:01:00] general, finding its remains was an impossible task at the time. The career of Robert Ballard is impressive and lengthy, but we'll start today's story. In 1982, when Ballard was working with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Ballard approached the United States Navy about funding his expedition to find the Titanic using his unmanned submersible. 

Argo, the Navy wasn't keen on funding a mission simply to find a commercial vessel. But was interested in Argo's technology. They agreed to fund Ballard's mission if he first used the Argo to investigate the wreckage of two lost nuclear submarines, USS Thresher, which went down during a test dive April 10th, 1963, and the USS Scorpion lost on May 22nd, 1968 regarding his mission. 

Ballard stated, we knew where the subs were. What they wanted me to do was go back and not have the Russians follow me. Because we were interested in the nuclear weapons that were on the Scorpion and also what the nuclear [00:02:00] reactors were doing to the environment. The Cold War between the United States and USSR was still ongoing at this time. 

It wasn't uncommon for merchant Soviet vessels as well as undetected submarines to be in Atlantic waters. Any activity regarding the lost submarines was at the highest levels of secrecy, and the Navy absolutely needed to prevent the Soviets from uncovering any of this information. Ballard's cover story was that he was searching for the Titanic, which happened to be relatively close to the location of USS Thresher. After completing its mission regarding the two submarines, Ballard was free to use any remaining time to search for the Titanic. Under the guise of searching for the Titanic, Ballard secretly investigated the submarine from the research vessel, however the top secret nature of the mission meant even some of his team weren't permitted to witness what was being done, 

staying above deck while he and others that had proper clearance performed the research. The mission was a success while the world believed [00:03:00] he was searching for the Titanic. Following the mission, Ballard said, "We were able to pull it off under the noses of everybody." By 1985, Ballard was ready to start his search for the Titanic in earnest. 

He used the information he gathered from USS Scorpion to help his search saying. What I discovered when I was mapping the scorpion was that when it imploded, the current carried away all the lighter material. I gambled that the same thing happened to the Titanic, and I thought, let's not look for the Titanic. 

Let's look for stuff that would have come off of it. On September 1st, 1985, Ballard found the legendary ship 13,000 feet, about 4,000 meters underwater, and 400 nautical miles from Newfoundland. The news was an international sensation and everyone waited to see the first images from the sunken ship. A year later, Ballard announced a return mission to the Titanic to explore the interior of the ship. 

This again, was a cover story for the real mission to visit the nuclear [00:04:00] submarines to measure levels of radioactivity in the ocean. Regarding this mission, Ballard said, embedded in my team were naval personnel that many on our team didn't know were naval personnel, but I was training them. Much more has been learned about the Titanic since 1985 and Robert Ballard has gone on to make many additional discoveries. 

I have to mention a memorable quote that I heard during his talk at the Boston Sea Rovers Film Festival when he quipped that he hopes to someday find an alien ship so he can finally stop talking about the Titanic. I gotta say that one got a lot of laughs, Robert Ballard's discoveries and contributions to ocean exploration are immense and incredibly important. 

He continues to lead a team of researchers from around the world onboard his research vessel Nautilus as part of the Ocean Exploration program. For more information about Robert Ballard and his work, please visit nautilus live.org. By the way, you can hear the entire story of the USS [00:05:00] Thresher in episode 52 of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs.