How Search For The Titanic Masked A Top-Secret Cold War Spy Operation

In the early hours of September 1, 1985, grainy black-and-white images of a metal cylinder flickered onto the monitors in the command centre of the research vessel Knorr. The team was searching the Atlantic seabed for the shipwreck of the Titanic.

Members of the watch team suspected the object was a sunken ship's boiler. They sent the expedition's cook to wake Bob Ballard, chief scientist and a long-time seeker of the wreck.

The cook "didn't even finish his sentence. I jumped out," recalled Ballard, according to a report in CNN. "As I came in, we had a picture of the boiler on the wall, and we looked. We realised it was definitely (from the) Titanic," Ballard said.

During its maiden voyage in April 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank. Its 1985 discovery intensified fascination, leading to the 1997 blockbuster film, many documentaries, museum exhibits and luxury trips to view the wreck 13,000 feet below the Atlantic.

It was a big challenge for Ballard and his crew to find the Titanic. It wasn't just about technology. An earlier attempt in 1977 had failed when a 3,000-foot drilling pipe carrying sonar and cameras snapped. That taught Ballard that remotely operated vehicles streaming live video were a better approach, though funding was hard to secure. The US Navy eventually backed him, developing a deep-sea imaging system called Argo.

Its main goal was investigating the loss of two nuclear submarines, the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, and gathering Cold War intelligence. Ballard persuaded them to let him search for the Titanic, keeping the real military mission a secret.

"The Titanic (search) was cover for a top-secret military operation I was doing as a naval intelligence officer. We didn't want the Soviets to know where the submarine was," Ballard said.

Despite careful planning, Ballard doubted success. Time was limited, and a French team had a sophisticated sonar system to locate the wreck first. "The agreement was that the French would find it," he told CNN, "(and) once they found it, I'd have plenty of time...to film it."

When the French team missed the wreck, Ballard's "camera on a string" found it. Soon, he realised heavy objects sank straight down while lighter debris drifted with currents.

Argo captured black-and-white video of the Titanic, while ANGUS, an older 35-mm camera system, recorded blue-hued still images confirming the wreck. The following year, Ballard returned with advanced colour cameras, documenting the ship's swimming pool, grand staircase and bow, creating the iconic images familiar today.

In 1985, Ballard also became the first person to visit the Titanic through Alvin, a crewed submersible.

Ballard's career did not stop at the Titanic. He discovered wrecks including the Nazi warship Bismarck, aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, and PT-109, commanded by a young John F. Kennedy during World War II, CNN reported.