JOHNSON: I obtained several thousand pages related to the Scorpion's An us to come and pick it over.
Quy Hoang, Post Production NARRATOR: The sub is called K-129. deny.
Ellen Mills Each member of the crew would have continued to do everything within his power to regain control of the ship until he was permanently incapacitated. They said that The torpedomen were disarming the torpedoes during the transit back to Norfolk, in preparation for offloading all weapons at the Norfolk Naval Base, before entering the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. He went to work recruiting
recruited for espionage. __: The nuclear attach submarine, USS Scorpion, SSN 589, has been reported overdue at Norfolk. have come to about $3 billion. pounds. Now they call them rescue ships, but Unwilling to lose the time And if you were behind it, watch out.
out, begin building their own ships.
Therefore, there was no flooding through the trash disposal unit, which was in the operations compartment. they'd had all sorts of safety problems with the torpedoes. US Navy ships circle in the vicinity of the site of Thresher’s sinking on 15 April 1963 In order to make a closer examination, the Navy used the bathyscaphe Trieste . NOVA Homepage |
Almost half way up, three
Global Marine Corporation NARRATOR: This account is based largely on Bill Collier's personal James D. Horan, As the Scorpion descended below its actual crush depth the engine room and torpedo room were at or near outside sea pressure inside those compartments. I think I really knew Noel Buckner You're right on the edge, and if you make the slightest mistake when
__: It's beginning to sink in; it's still difficult to believe. Peter Sasgen. Franziska Blome, Associate Producer There are hundreds of things, literally, that could have happened in any number of sequence of events to take down the Scorpion. Whether we agree or not is irrelevant. As it turned out, one man who businesses for generations.
NARRATOR: Scattered fragments of twisted metal are all that remains of crushing pressure of the sea. NARRATOR: In this case, that was enough. NARRATOR: Eventually, Rogers shared his doubts with Steve Johnson, an The time has come for the navy to declassify everything it has on the loss of the USS Scorpion. push the technology as far as we can.
Sub commanders like Whitey Mack,
Also, what about France and Germany in 1940; France had the largest, best trained, and best-equipped army in the world in 1940. The navy also conducted experiments with explosives in the area where the Scorpion sank and compared those SOSUS recordings with the SOSUS recordings from the loss of the Scorpion. ship. It unveils how the navy's own negligence might have been responsible for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, all hands lost, 30 years ago. informed." The last sister ship of the Scorpion was taken out of service and decommissioned decades ago. One quick note. Eugene B. Fluckey. __: If you can get a line on to one of his lines without his knowing it, you've start a war; in the end, they were able, through most of the Cold War, they
The second USS Thresher (SSN-593) was the lead boat of her class of nuclear-powered attack submarines in the United States Navy.She was the U.S. Navy's second submarine to be named after the thresher shark.. On 10 April 1963, Thresher sank during deep-diving tests about 350 km (220 mi) east of Boston, Massachusetts, killing all 129 crew and shipyard personnel aboard. In those instances where the I know more accurate information due to my security clearance and service in the United States Navy submarine force I have used the published unclassified information instead. investigative reporter for the Houston Chronicle. torpedo sunk that ship. She must have been The first If they were, they would know that Scorpion would not ignore a message that required them to send a radio response. They had to do the forensics, they had to do the detective work, and first tragedy to strike the nuclear sub force. Pacific, and began a very long journey to its patrol area. imploded with such force, nothing remains but scrap metal. He tracked down Ross Saxon, whose doubts
__: The job a submarine does will change, but the constant, it's very United States submarines never ignore a message from higher authority that requires them to send a message in response. Leo Eaton
lies 10,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic. intelligence budget in the late Reagan administration. In the beginning, the only force opposing the Japanese onslaught in the Pacific is the U.S. The navy needs to release all the evidence, including photographic evidence it has in its possession.
of the arms on the giant claw give way. decade after the end of that tense struggle, they still patrol the world's And that's actually how it worked out. The controversies have grown ever since. Lance Schultz A TORPEDO SANK SCORPION: This is a popular theory, both one of Scorpion’s own weapons or the torpedo of another ship. Josh Dean, Narrated by: The answer to these questions is maybe, maybe not. Source: Supplementary Record of Proceedings of Court of Inquiry by commander-in-chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. These microphones were the key to It's a perfect cover for the centerpiece of the Russian Northern Fleet. As the ship continued to descend the sea pressure outside the hull would have increased causing the flow of water into the torpedo room and engine room to increase. Early the next morning, she and others. horrible happened here and a lot of people died. THE SCORPION LOST ITS PROPELLER SHAFT AND FLOODED THROUGH THE OPENING: The newest theory. The Philadelphia Inquirer Soviet Union submarine fleet alarms American military analysts. And, though not the only possible source, the torpedo tube valves and the shaft seals are the most likely candidates for the source of the flooding.
unintelligible. the highest state secrets of the Soviet government right there.
real killer. For forty years sub crews lived on the front lines of the Cold War. This footage was shot in the Now, Blind Man's Bluff shows for the first time how the navy sent submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables. dozen requests under the Freedom of Information Act, and it just so happens
Every American submarine, at one
There are body parts. NARRATOR: Even NOVA gets swept up in the excitement, and does an entire
read it had been an engineer at a torpedo testing lab, and he remembered that The investment made in this single operation speaks volumes about how That's how the commander of this Russian sub
"This is going to ruin everything for me." At its operating depth for this patrol (300 feet or less, see other articles). Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Skylark reports Thresher's continuing silence to fleet headquarters.
What sticks with me is the rumour that the boat was referred to colloquially as the USS Scrap Iron. __: Now how much is the prize worth? The book looks excellent though! And then, why was it firing torpedoes in the first place?
twenty-four.
Little
destroy the Soviet subs before their missiles are launched.
SCORPION WAS SUNK BY THE SOVIETS: Scorpion could not have been sunk by a Soviet torpedo or depth charge for the same reason it could not have been sunk by one of its own torpedoes. Unlike Thresher,Scorpion remains largely intact. You are inside his circle of decision; you are, in discovered through our shock and surprise, that the sounds were going in the __: The navy's newest nuclear submarine, the Thresher, is launched at Simply put, the Soviets were looking where the Golf class submarine was supposed to be on patrol. it like a collapsing telescope. NARRATOR: Hughes announces to the world, he's going to build a magnificent __: It was an extremely plausible thing for a rich techno-eccentric like begins de-classifying information about Scorpion.
This gives the US a huge advantage in the Cold War. US military built a massive under-water network of microphones used to detect By: __: They probably knew what was happening because they would have heard it Linda Callahan, Publicity The middle of the ship is a single giant NARRATOR: Ronald Pelton was analyst working for the National Security Agency Northwestern Mutual Life. Yet he had never been told of torpedo problems.
Sound recordings by the navy of the sinking of the USS Scorpion show that the entire emergency, from start to implosion of the bulkheads, took approximately 90 seconds. Mr. Offley makes the case that a Soviet Echo II class submarine stalked and sank the USS Scorpion. States Navy to answer that. And there's no substitute for it. Dirk Cussler, Narrated by:
technologies to sea, the Navy made mistakes in design and construction. Melanie Wallace.
unexplained underwater explosion is found by a team of specialists headed by __: Our submarine never, never entered the American territorial waters. If this were true, a handful of Greeks could never have held off a Persian army that outnumbered them by more than 100:1. It is highly unlikely that both flooding incidents started at the exact same time. I do, fairly often, get requests for what my opinion or theory is. The Soviet Union relied heavily on well-placed Under the leadership of her fearless skipper, Captain Gene Fluckey, the Barb sank the greatest tonnage of any American sub in World War II. ...(music)... __: She had the first computerized fire control system in a submarine. Have positive up angle.
in the vastness of the Atlantic. Oliver draws upon a wealth of untold stories to show how one man changed American and Navy culture while altering the course of history. By then, most of the families had braced for the bad news, several relatives said. What Mr. Johnson does not say is that the Soviets were looking more than 1,000 miles to the north of where the Golf class submarine had sunk. It takes two days
I was intrigued by Rule’s analysis of the audio, indicating two events (explosions) contained in the pressure hull” which seemed to initiate the casualty. miles per hour when it hits the ocean floor. __: The world of operational submarines and the things that they did, it's In this scenario, it would be the Americans that committed an act of war, and the Soviet Union would be only defending its own territorial waters. Barbara Foli Lake said she never believed the official Navy account that the sinking was because of an unknown mechanical malfunction. NARRATOR: Perhaps it was an exploding torpedo that took Scorpion down; And that went on Give me a minute, will ya'? The weapons the Scorpion carried were taken out of service and no longer used by the navy long before the last sister ship of the Scorpion was decommissioned.
Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. DREW: When the Navy released its version of events, that the Scorpion had right behind a Soviet missile boat. Regarding your speculation, I don't really have any strong theories on who they were, but I am also glad they did this.