Titanic was a front for the Cold War mission
Explorer Robert Ballard recalled how looking for the Titanic in 1985 was in fact a cover for his recently declassified mission, where he had to explore two sunken U.S. nuclear submarines. Ballard wanted to be the one that finds the Titanic wreck, securing the funding from the U.S. Navy, in exchange for completing research on the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion, which were both located in the same general area.
This is how the search for the Titanic was the perfect cover story. “They wanted me to go back without being followed by Russians, as we were interested in the nuclear weapons that were on the Scorpion and also what the nuclear reactors were doing to the environment.” as Ballard explained to CNN in 2018.
