It was a joint operation to find the wreck, i thought so for a long time and i'm glad you found out for me

no problem. i just figured i'd try the pm out and i got some useful information out of it.

Ballard seemed quite pleased with himself when he found it, who wouldn't

i would have loved to see the wreck, shame it will go in 30-40 yrs time

Yeah I think anyone would have been pleased. when you say go you mean?

collapse, as in fall apart from the erosion

It won't be totally gone though

Maybe some will be their but the mass size of it will certainly crush most of the ship

I thought it was more like 20 years. Anyway as john said, the erosion will cause the thing to colapse in on it's self, and will be unrecogniseable. A bit like the lusitania, which is hard to distinguish.

cya,

Back to the topic though, you have to really read the entire article. However, more convincing is the fact that one of these crewmembers was one of the British sonar technicians that conducted these tests back in 1977. He stated that this sonar image was of two large metallic objects on the ocean floor about 1/2 mile apart in 12,500+- feet of water, within the exact area of the North Atlantic were Dr. Ballard found the wreck. And that this image is now classified top secret in the British Navel Archives.
I would not be surprised if the article is true. Any time you get government envolvement you can get some shady dealings.

If you do your history you would see that C&C Technologies did the exact same thing with accidental discovery by BP and Shell Oil Company, of the only known German U-boat "U-166" sunk in the Gulf of Mexico. It was picked up on sonar by oil exploration company checking out the pipeline butC&C Technologies jumped in and took over the actual pin pointing of it and later the discovery title. http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2001/10oct/uboat.cfm

I think it's quite possible that sonar contact may've been made with the Titanic wreck before Ballard photographed it, and perhaps on more than one occasion.