Northrop Grumman Honors Late Employees With Donation to USS Thresher Submarine Memorial

Northrop Grumman Corporation  has donated $5,000 toward construction of a memorial to the Navy submarine USS Thresher (SSN 593) in memory of two employees who perished when the Thresher sank in the Atlantic Ocean 50 years ago.

Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine employees Kenneth R. Corcoran and Donald T. Stadtmuller were performing work on the Thresher's gyroscope when the submarine sank during deep-diving tests approximately 200 miles off New England in April 1963. All 129 military crewmen and civilian technicians onboard perished. 

Prior to his employment as a field service engineer for Sperry Marine, Corcoran was a 20-year Navy veteran who had retired as a lieutenant. Corcoran was 46, leaving behind a wife and three sons.

Stadtmuller had graduated from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1958 with a bachelor's degree and had made a number of previous trips aboard Thresher as a field engineer for Sperry Marine. Stadtmuller was 26 years old when he died aboard the submarine.

"It is our honor to contribute to the memorial recognizing our employees and the dedicated crew of the Thresher," said Bill Hannon , vice president of Northrop Grumman Maritime Systems. "Their sacrifices serve as a reminder that there will always be dangers inherent in the vital work of maintaining global security."

Funded by outside donors, the Thresher Memorial features a 129-foot flagpole in a memorial courtyard with granite plaques from more than 250 contributors. The memorial is in Kittery, Maine, adjacent to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where the Thresher was based. 

The Thresher was the first of only two nuclear-powered U.S. Navy submarines to go down at sea. Its nuclear fuel remained intact and has never posed any safety threat. A thorough inquiry into the likely cause of the sinking led to design changes that made subsequent nuclear submarines safer and more secure.  

Submarine USS Thresher sinking 50 years ago led to safety changes

The first sign of trouble for the USS Thresher was a garbled message about a "minor difficulty" after the nuclear-powered submarine descended to about 1,000 feet on what was supposed to be a routine test dive off Cape Cod.

Minutes later, the crew of a rescue ship made out the ominous words "exceeding test depth" and listened as the sub disintegrated under the crushing pressure of the sea. Just like that, the Thresher was gone, along with 129 men.

Fifty years ago, the deadliest submarine disaster in U.S. history delivered a blow to national pride during the Cold War and became the impetus for safety improvements. To this day, some designers and maintenance personnel listen to an audio recording of a submarine disintegrating to underscore the importance of safety.

"We can never, ever let that happen again," said Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy, an engineer and former submariner who now serves as commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C.

This weekend, hundreds who lost loved ones when the Thresher sank will gather at memorial events in Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Maine.

Built at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, and based in Groton, Conn., the first-in-class Thresher was the world's most advanced fast attack submarine when it was commissioned in 1961.

Featuring a cigar-shaped hull and nuclear propulsion, the 278-foot-long submarine could travel underwater for unlimited distances. It could dive deeper than earlier submarines, enduring pressure at unforgiving depths. It was designed to be quieter, to avoid detection.

On April 10, 1963, the submarine already had undergone initial sea trials and was back in the ocean about 220 miles off Cape Cod, Mass., for deep-dive testing. Some submariners are baffled by the initial message about a minor difficulty because it's believed a brazed joint on an interior pipe had burst — a problem anything but minor.

The Navy believes sea water sprayed onto an electrical panel, shorting it out and causing an emergency shutdown of the nuclear reactor.

The submarine alerted the USS Skylark, a rescue ship trailing it, that it was attempting to surface by emptying its ballast tanks. But that system failed, and the sub descended below crush depth.

Understanding their dire situation, Navy crew members and civilian technicians would have scrambled to close valves to try to stem the flooding, struggled with a ballast system disabled by ice, and worked to restore propulsion by restarting the reactor, a 20-minute process.

Their deaths would have been instant because of the force of the violent implosion. The sub's remnants came to a rest on the ocean floor at a depth of 8,500 feet.

There was nothing the divers on the Skylark could do.

"It's one of those times when there's silence," recalled Danny Miller, one of the Skylark divers, now 70 and living in Farmington, Mo. "You don't know what to say. You don't know how to feel. You just know something tragic has happened."

The Thresher wreckage covers a mile of ocean floor, according to University of Rhode Island oceanographer Robert Ballard, who used his 1985 discovery of RMS Titanic as a Cold War cover for the fact that he had surveyed the Thresher on the same mission.

"It was like someone put the submarine in a shredding machine," Ballard said in a recent interview. "It was breathtaking. There were only a couple of parts that looked like a submarine."

Word of the disaster spread quickly.

Paul O'Connor, now a union president at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, remembers seeing the bulletin on TV. He was 6. Barbara Currier, whose husband, Paul, was a civilian worker on the Thresher, was shopping with her daughters when she heard the news on the radio in a store.

What followed was a blur of activity for families. Navy officers in dress whites showed up on doorsteps. Friends and neighbors brought food.

After the submarine was declared sunk, President John F. Kennedy ordered the nation's flags lowered to half-staff. International leaders sent condolences.

"The men, they were heroes. Most of them were doing what they wanted to do for their country to keep the country safe," said Currier, 86, who never remarried and still lives in the same house in Exeter, N.H. "They were pushing things to the limit."

For the families, the silver lining is that subs are now safer. The Navy accelerated safety improvements and created a program called "SUBSAFE," an extensive series of design modifications, training and other improvements.

People involved in the SUBSAFE program are required to watch a documentary about the Thresher that ends with an actual underwater recording featuring the eerie sounds of metal creaking and bending as a U.S. Navy submarine breaks apart with the loss of all hands.

"Every job we do, we need to have in the back of our minds that we have the lives of the sailors in our hands. It's that critical and it's that literal," said O'Connor, president of the Metal Trades Council.

Hundreds of family and friends of the Thresher's crew, along with sailors who previously served on the submarine, will gather Saturday for a memorial service in Portsmouth, N.H. A day later, neighboring Kittery will dedicate a flagpole that stretches 129 feet high in remembrance of the number of lives lost.

Because of their tender ages, and the lack of a body or proper grave site, children like Vivian Lindstrom, who lost her father, Samuel Dabruzzi, a Navy electronics technician, were unable to grieve properly.

Thanks to the reunions, they at least know they're not alone, said Lindstrom, of Glenwood City, Wis.

"We've experienced the same things, felt the same things," she said. "We feel like family. We call ourselves the Thresher family."

Baseball field named after hometown hero lost aboard sub

Paul Chevalier Currier was one of the shipyard workers aboard the USS Thresher when the nuclear attack submarine sank during sea trials on April !0, 1963. Pictured are Currier's family at the field in Exeter named in his honor, from left, Peter, Ellen, John, Barbara, Beverly and Paul Jr.

Of the generations who have played baseball at Exeter's Currier Field, it's unlikely more than a few youngsters ever gave thought to the man for whom the field was named.

According to the family of Paul Chevalier Currier, that would've been fine with him.

"He certainly didn't go looking for glory or anything," his son John said recently. "He didn't teach the kids or coach the kids to better himself at all — he did it for the kids."

Currier was almost as devoted to his hometown as he was to his family. A 1940 graduate of Exeter High School — back when it was an all-boys institution — he later rode a ladder truck as part of the town's then-volunteer fire department. He was active with the Knights of Columbus and in St. Michael Church, where he did community outreach work as a member of the Holy Name Society.

But in Exeter, his most lasting legacy is likely through the Little League program. A sports enthusiast who played both baseball and basketball in high school, Currier was one of the local league's first coaches in the early 1950s.

"He was an important part of the league as it was getting off the ground decades ago, and we owe part of our success to people like him," said Troy Gilbert, president of the Exeter Junior Baseball League.

Currier also loved his country. He served in Italy during World War II as a sergeant in the Army Air Corps. Following his discharge, he eventually returned to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, where he had been an apprentice before the war, and worked his way up to ship progressman machinist.

Currier was one of the shipyard workers aboard USS Thresher when the nuclear attack submarine sank during sea trials on April 10, 1963, about 220 miles off the New England coast. All 129 sailors and civilians aboard Thresher (SSN 593) died that day in the worst submarine disaster in history.

On Memorial Day, less than two months later, Exeter's Little League field was renamed in Currier's honor. And to this day the annual Paul C. Currier Memorial Trophy goes to the town's major league champion.

Currier left behind his 36-year-old wife Barbara, five children ranging in age from 13 to 2½, and an imprint on his community that continues to resonate nearly half a century later.

"I miss my father more as an adult than as a kid," said John, who still lives in Exeter. "He's my hero and my angel."

Reminiscence of a husband and father

Barbara Currier still lives in Exeter, and all five children live either in town or nearby. They gathered recently in John's home to reminisce about their husband and father.

They recalled a town much smaller than the Exeter of today, where the whistle of the town's fire alarm could be heard throughout most neighborhoods. Barbara remembers waking to the sound of the whistle and watching Paul dash off into the night to respond to another emergency. Sometimes she would have to shake him awake.

The children acknowledged it was pretty cool having a father whose life outside the home revolved around submarines, fire trucks and baseball.

John, who was 8 at the time of the Thresher tragedy, remembers going to the fire station with his father and climbing on the ladder truck. The family still has a clipping from the June 19, 1958, Exeter News-Letter, featuring a photo of Paul with the rest of his ladder crew and a bunch of local kids atop the truck. He spent nine years with the department.

The older children recall their dad leading them on submarine tours at the Navy yard, during special events. And they remember many evenings spent playing ball in the back yard.

As with most kids, however, the Curriers' full appreciation of their father's legacy occurred later in life. Beverly, only 6 when Paul died, ruefully admits she abused her birthright on occasion as a child.

"I used to tell kids I didn't like, 'This is Currier Field and I'm a Currier — you need to get off,'" she said.

Now, as adults, they carry on their father's memory in more appropriate ways. John's license plate reads SSN 593 and he keeps an old Thresher ball cap on the rear dash of his car. Beverly has SUB 593 for her plate.

Paul Jr., who wasn't even 3 when his father died, became a coach as well in what is now known as the Exeter Junior Baseball League. He even headed the team his father used to coach — the Tigers.

"That's why I got into coaching," he said. "If there's anything I have in common with him (Paul Sr.) it's probably sports."

Likewise, Peter — the oldest child — followed his father's footsteps to the shipyard, after serving with the Army in Vietnam in the early 1970s. Peter recently retired as a planning manager after more than 37 years at the yard.

He worked with men who had worked with his father, and even went out on a submarine sea trial once but was told not to share his family history for fear of "jinxing" the dive.

And he didn't share that news with his mother until much later.

"I just wanted to test fate," he admitted. "I wasn't worried."

The family has been gratified to see they aren't the only ones who continue to remember their patriarch.

Peter said his father's picture continues to hang on the wall of his home shop at the shipyard — Shop 31. This past May, Exeter High School — where Paul and each of his children graduated over a 40-year period — selected the senior Currier as one of the veterans honored at its annual Memorial Day remembrance.

But the baseball field bearing his name serves as Paul's most prominent memorial. A monument stands in a small cluster of bushes and trees beside the field, behind home plate. Dedicated 49 years ago, the stone describes him as a "devoted coach and friend."

Their father, a humble man, would have scoffed at all the fuss, John said. "He would probably think putting that stone there was a waste of money."

Every April 10, John leaves a small American flag at the marker. Then — in years past, at least — he would drive to Memorial Bridge to drop seven roses into the Piscataqua River. The first six roses represent each surviving family member; the seventh, he said, is for the remaining 128 men who died that day aboard Thresher.

With the bridge closed this past April, he dropped the roses from a wharf along the Portsmouth waterfront at Prescott Park.

'Just like it was yesterday'

Barbara Currier met her future husband in 1946 at the wedding of her aunt to his cousin. Teasingly asked by her children if she still remembers the encounter, she replied: "Just like it was yesterday."

Paul was an air armorer with the 451st Heavy Bombardment Group — the Fightin' 451st — during World War II, helping to load B-24 bombers in Italy. Barbara, who met him after the war, doesn't know much about those years.

"He was very closemouthed about it, as most the men were," she said.

One story that Paul, a devout Catholic, was proud to share was the time he kissed the Pope's ring during a public service during the war.

"It really was a highlight of his being over in Italy," Barbara recalled.

His younger sister Claire O'Shea said after Paul returned home from the war she lived with him in Exeter so she could finish high school at Robinson Female Seminary. Their mother died when they were young and their father had moved to Maine with his second wife to start a new business.

Paul, six years her senior, continued to help put Claire through school when she proceeded to commute to the University of New Hampshire from their home.

She recalled how he and their cousin Curley would take her out to the local pub with them on a Saturday night, and invariably they would wind up outside the home of their cousin Genevieve. The two men would then launch into a rousing rendition of the song "Sweet Genevieve" on her front lawn until their cousin finally appeared at the door to let them in for a bite to eat.

"He was a very good person, he had a lot of friends, and he really took care of me from the time that my mother died until I got married," said Claire, now a resident of Sebago, Maine. "He was really a very special person."

In winter he worked a second job driving an oil delivery truck during the day, then went in for second shift at the shipyard. The warmer months, of course, were devoted to baseball.

"He was what I like to call an all-around A-1 citizen," said wife Barbara. "He just was a great man, I thought. His children meant everything to him."

She and oldest daughter Ellen were shopping for Easter gloves in a local department store when news of a lost submarine came over the radio system. Barbara instantly had a premonition it was her husband's vessel, and she rushed home to call the Navy yard. Her suspicion was confirmed by a return phone call and then a telegram from the Navy.

While Paul's loss was devastating, he had instilled in their children a strict but loving discipline. They all worked together to get through the years following the tragedy, especially Peter, the oldest at 13 when the disaster occurred. Other extended family members chipped in as well.

"I couldn't have made it without my family, without his family, without Peter and without the kids being so good," Barbara said.

And to the children, Barbara was the rock who sustained them ever afterward.

"She devoted her life to her kids," Peter said.

"They need taking care of, you just have to do it," Barbara said. "You have to go on. You don't want to, really, but for the kids' sake you have to. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably still do it the same way I did."

September 20 will mark the 60th anniversary of her wedding to Paul; three days later she will turn 86 years old. Paul would have turned 90 in October.

"It seems like yesterday, which I'm sure is how all older people feel," she said.

Plans are under way to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Thresher tragedy next April with the dedication of a 129-foot memorial flagpole in Kittery and a remembrance ceremony for family members at the shipyard. The memorial flagpole is being funded by private donations. For those left behind, the tributes are fitting for the Cold War casualties of USS Thresher.

"Those guys were all heroes," John said. "They all died for their country."

D. Allan Kerr is a member of the Thresher Memorial Project Group. He may be reached at the_culling@hotmail.com.

Permanent memorial

Organizers: Thresher Memorial Project Group

Location: Kittery's Memorial Circle

How to donate: Visit http://threshermemorialkittery.sharepoint.com. Donations toward the privately funded memorial may be mailed to P.O. Box 321, 200 Rogers Road, Kittery ME 03904.

Personnel who perished aboard Thresher: Visit 

USS Thresher