The wreckage of the Titanic was found 38 years ago during a secret US Navy mission to recover nuclear submarines

• The Titanic's wreckage was found 38 years ago, on September 1, 1985.
• Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel found the wreckage 73 years after the ship sank.
• Decades later, Ballard revealed that the dive was actually a secret Cold War Navy mission.

Almost immediately after the Titanic sank in April 1912, there were attempts to recover the wreckage and the bodies of those who had gone down with the ship. But the limited diving technology of the time prevented this from becoming a reality for more than seven decades.