Photo By David Stoehr | Flanked by Sailors assigned to the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport,...... read more read more
NEWPORT, R.I. – Maurice F. Jaquay was a 26-year-old field support engineer for the Raytheon Corp. who boarded the USS Thresher (SSN-593) in April 1963 to conduct tests on the submarine’s sonar equipment. He lived on Tuckerman Avenue in Middletown, Rhode Island, with his wife Carol and two children, a daughter named Hope, who was two, and a ninth-month-old son, Maurice Jr. His father-in-law, William J. Boyle, was the chief of police in Cumberland, Rhode Island.
On April 10, 1963, Jaquay was one of 129 people — 16 officers, 96 enlisted sailors and 17 civilian technicians — who died when the Thresher, known to be the world’s most technologically advanced nuclear-powered submarine of its day, sank while conducting deep-dive trials roughly 220 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
To mark the 60th anniversary of that fateful day, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport held a remembrance ceremony on April 10. Under sunny skies and with a light breeze rolling in off Narragansett Bay, Commanding Officer Capt. Chad F. Hennings gave a brief statement, followed by a moment of silence that lasted 129 seconds — one second for every life lost aboard the Thresher.
“Thank you for participating in this solemn ceremony this morning, and thank you for what you do for Division Newport to keep our Sailors and our country safe,” Hennings told the assembled crowd at the conclusion of the ceremony.
The Thresher was built at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and commissioned in August 1961. It was the lead ship of a class of nuclear-powered attack submarines, “silent guardians” created to find and destroy Soviet submarines.
On April 9, 1963, the submarine departed from Kittery and joined Navy rescue ship USS Skylark (ASR-20) to begin initial post-overhaul dive trials. That afternoon, Thresher conducted a trim-dive test, surfaced and performed a second dive to half of its 1,300-foot test depth.
The submarine remained submerged overnight before reestablishing underwater communications with Skylark at 6:30 a.m. on April 10 to commence deep-dive trials.
Fifteen minutes after reaching its test depth, officers on board Thresher communicated via underwater telephone it was experiencing difficulties. Amid garbled transmissions, the Skylark crew at 9:18 a.m. reported hearing a high-energy, low-frequency noise, characteristic of an implosion.
Then silence.
Repeated efforts to reestablish contact with Thresher failed, and a rescue ship began to recover debris. After a 15-ship search operation, including four ships launched from Newport, the Navy declared Thresher lost at sea on April 11. While the exact cause is not known, a Naval Court of Inquiry determined the incident likely was caused by the failure of silver-brazed joints in the piping system, which led to flooding in the engine room and a shutdown of vital equipment.
‘A lot of lessons were paid in blood’
The legacy of the Thresher and the men who lost their lives that day is the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Safety (SUBSAFE) program, launched in June 1963, mere months after the disaster. The goal of the program is to “provide maximum assurance of watertight integrity and recovery capability of a submarine.”
Standing behind Hennings as he spoke on April 10 were more than a dozen Sailors, including Petty Officer 2nd Class Brody Costantini, an information systems technician in Division Newport’s Undersea Warfare Electromagnetic Systems Department, who serves as a fleet liaison. While serving on board the USS Louisville in Hawaii from 2017-19, Costantini was a quality assurance inspector.
“The SUBSAFE program is very big on every single boat,” Costantini said. “There’s a whole hierarchy where every division is required to have X amount of people certified in quality assurance. There are redundancies after redundancies put in place.”
Since the launch of the program, no SUBSAFE-certified submarine has been lost. Ceremonies like the one held April 10 help keep the memory of the Thresher and its crew fresh in the consciousness of every employee at Division Newport, and across the Navy.
“It’s awful what happened, that 129 people died. A lot of lessons were paid in blood,” Costantini said. “It’s because of this that we have all of these plans in place. We don’t want to repeat this. It’s awful what happened, but because of it, we’re all a lot safer.
“There was not one time in my head whenever we went out that I thought we weren’t coming back. And it’s because of stuff like this.”
Quality assurance should be a priority “across the whole timeline,” Costantini said, from the research phase through implementation on a submarine.
That’s a big reason why Sailors are assigned at Division Newport, Costantini said.
“We’re supposed to be fleet liaisons,” he said. “We offer our operator knowledge to engineers and then we give our personal experience to contractors. We can say, ‘Hey, this isn’t your life at stake. It’s mine. So if you don’t cross off the Ts and dot all your Is and this thing fails when it was supposed to pass, you can seriously hurt or end up killing people.’”
At Division Newport, the quality policy is to “provide quality products and services, which meet or exceed internal and external customers’ requirements and expectations.” Frank Engle has been the SUBSAFE program director here since June 2021, and he stresses that policy to all employees at the command.
“I try to tell everybody that the real risk [Sailors] face is not some Chinese torpedo, it’s us not doing the job right and sending them down over 1,000 feet for a couple days,” Engle said. “They need to understand that everything you’re doing is about bringing them back. If you look at your job and understand it like that, you’ll do your job right. There is no gray area. There is a set of requirements, and this set of requirements is what’s going to make that boat come back.”
The USS Thresher National Commemorative Monument was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery on Sept. 26, 2019, and there are other historical markers scattered throughout the country.
In 2020, the Navy began the slow release of its long-classified report into the Thresher after retired Capt. James Bryant sued for disclosure of the Naval Court of Inquiry documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Among the roughly 3,600 pages are findings of fact and opinions, testimony, photos and exhibits.
Check out a NUWC Division Newport produced video here:https://www.dvidshub.net/video/879395/uss-thresher-remembrance-ceremony-held-nuwc-division-newport
More information about the USS Thresher is available at: https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/ships/submarines/uss-thresher--ssn-593-.html
NUWC Newport is the oldest warfare center in the country, tracing its heritage to the Naval Torpedo Station established on Goat Island in Newport Harbor in 1869. Commanded by Capt. Chad Hennings, NUWC Newport maintains major detachments in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Andros Island in the Bahamas, as well as test facilities at Seneca Lake and Fisher's Island, New York, Leesburg, Florida, and Dodge Pond, Connecticut.
Join our team! NUWC Division Newport, one of the 20 largest employers in Rhode Island, employs a diverse, highly trained, educated, and skilled workforce. We are continuously looking for engineers, scientists, and other STEM professionals, as well as talented business, finance, logistics and other support experts who wish to be at the forefront of undersea research and development. Please connect with NUWC Division Newport Recruiting at this site- https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Home/Warfare-Centers/NUWC-Newport/Career-Opportunities/ and follow us on LinkedIn @NUWC-Newport and on Facebook @NUWCNewport.
| Date Taken: | 04.13.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 04.13.2023 11:39 |
| Story ID: | 442570 |
| Location: | NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 326 |
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