captain
Contributor
According to the USG Rear Admiral the debris field is quite large and the carbon composite hull was not seen, perhaps blown out into pieces. Only the titanium end caps found intact. That would indicate a loud bang to me. As the Admiral described, it’s a catastrophic event with a significant broad band sound.
As an esoteric exercise I ran a Boyle's law calculation on the change in volume of the air in the sub at implosionI just ran across some astonishing info. There has been much talk about the forces involved in an implosion at the depth of failure. I've been unable to understand what kind of forces we are talking about when a catastrophic implosion occurs.
According to an article in US Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine, USS Thresher imploded at a calculated depth of 2400ft with a force equivalent to 22,500 pounds of TNT. That would be 1.125KT. The Hiroshima weapon was estimated at 15KT. Tactical nukes can be in the sub 1KT range. W25 is reported to be 1.7KT.
I understood that we're talking about huge pressure, but I didn't realize the violent nature of the actual event.
Thresher Freedom of Information Act Request Yielding Results
In a partial response to a FOIA request, the U.S. National Archives released a photo essay of pictures from the search for the Thresher in 1963–1964.www.usni.org
Assuming the inside of the sub was 5 feet in diameter and 15 feet long the interior volume would have been 785 cubic feet. Pressure in the sub was 14.7 psi ( normal atmospheric pressure).
If implosion depth was 11,500 feet, sea water pressure was about 5100 psi.
At the instant of implosion the internal air volume (785 cu/ft @14.7 psi) would have been compressed to 2.8 cubic feet at 5500 psi.
Not a lot of room for 5 bodies in 2.8 cubic feet. That is equal to a box about 17" x 17" x 17".