In late May, 1968, the U.S. nuclear submarine Scorpion left the Mediterranean to begin her trip home to Norfolk, Virginia. Atlantic Fleet Headquarters diverted her to shadow a Soviet naval task force and see what it was up to. At midnight on May 22 theScorpion radioed her position as some 400 miles south of the Azores and had given her estimated time of arrival at Norfolk as 1700 hours on May 27. She was never heard from again. In June the US Navy team in charge of finding the missing submarine came across data from two hydrophone arrays in the Atlantic. Analysis showed what may have been breakup noises from the Scorpion. Further analysis revealed that the loss of the ship was precipitated by an explosive event at 1842 hours on May 22. This event preceded by 91 seconds the first of a succession of events that logically would be the successive implosions of internal ship bulkheads as the ship descended past crush depth. Based on the sound data the leader of the navy team believed he knew where the Scorpion could be found. On October 28 the oceanographic research ship USNS Mizar discovered the Scorpion in about 11,000 feet of water. The following year the deep submersible Trieste II surveyed the wreckage from June 2 to August 2, making a total of nine dives. TheScorpion had broken into three large sections. Nothing indicated an external torpedo explosion. On the bow section, the torpedo room was intact, with no sign of implosion. Apparently, it had flooded and equalized continuously with sea pressure as the ship sank. No identifiable item in the debris field originated in the torpedo room. Two of the torpedo shutter doors either were open or ajar. Suprisingly, both forward escape and torpedo loading hatches and the forward escpe trunk access hatch were missing and located subsequently in the debris field. Apparent on the after section was that the engine room had imploded into the auxiliary machinery room. Curiously, the after escape trunk access hatch was open. Also apparently, the operations compartment had imploded probably at the same time as the engine room. A few battery cells had spilled out, as had the operating mechanism for the negative tank flood valve. With one exception - a small flask in the tunnel - all identifiable items in the debris field came from the operations compartment or the sail. For the sail section, the bridge access trunk was missing, and the lower bridge access hatch was found in the debris field. The number 2 periscope and fairing, the loop antenna, and the helical whip antenna all were in the raised position. Also found on the ocean floor was a body wearing a life jacket, so during the 91-second gap, the ship may have functioned partially. What happened to the Scorpion? Did the Soviets sink her? Was she a victim of poor maintenance? Was it a torpedo malfunction? If so, what kind? Author Ed Offley, in his book Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon: The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion,tries to make the case that the submarine was sunk by the Soviets. An act of war that killed 99 men and was hidden so well that the civilian chain of command and the press missed it has the makings of an interesting story. But Offley's book is a conspiracy yarn on the same scale as the theory that the 9/11 attacks were caused by the U.S. government and not Arab terrorists. In order to be told, this tale would require senior admirals involved to recant their stories years later to the author. Of those who allegedly did -- including Vice Admiral Arnold F. Schade, ComSubLant, and Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- only Vice Admiral Philip A.Beshany, Director of Submarine Warfare, is still alive. The Russians deny any involvement. According to the author, Ed Offley, as the Scorpion was returning home from a Mediterranean deployment she found herself in a "running confrontation" with a Soviet Echo II-class submarine beginning some time before May 17, 1968. On the 17th, the U.S. boat was diverted to conduct surveillance of Soviet surface ships and another Echo II near the Canary Islands. Offley then states that the Scorpion could not escape the pursuing Echo II and that this was reported by radio to the sub force commander. The Echo II allegedly torpedoed the Scorpion on May 22, 400 miles southwest of the Azores. The author then describes a secret search that began on May 23, after the boat failed to reply to a message. The author claims that a torpedo exploded next to the Scorpion'scontrol room, flooding the entire boat. Offley believes that the attack was retaliation for the alleged sinking of the K-129, a Soviet Golf II-class diesel-electric powered ballistic missile submarine, by the USS Swordfish (SSN-579) after a submerged collision north of the Hawaiian Islands in March 1968. In a review of Offley's book, Captain James B. Bryant acknowledges that the diversion of Scorpion to conduct surveillance of Soviet surface ships is a matter of record, but points out that the U.S. boat was faster, quieter, and equipped with the better sonar and torpedoes than the Soviet sub. Further, no record exists of a message from Scorpion to the sub force commander stating that she could not evade an Echo II-class boat. While Scorpion was lost on May 22, the search for her did not actually begin until after May 27, when she failed to make port. Also, a 1970 U.S. Navy report, declassified in 1998, concluded that a torpedo explosion was unlikely. There was no visual indication of an internal or external explosion in wreckage photographs or audio clues in acoustic recordings. Those sources, however, point to pressure hull implosion. This would not have happened if the hull had equalized with sea pressure, such as a result of a torpedo explosion. The Navy has never declared a cause for her sinking. Offley claims that a secret search for Scorpion began when USS Compass Island (AG-153) left port on May 24, and that Scorpion was found by sonar in early June, thanks to the Soviets letting the U.S. Navy know where the sub was lost. The five months search for Scorpion was in fact, according to Offley, part of the cover up. Compass Island was a navigational test platform and equipped with a Sonar Array Sounding System (SASS) used to make bottom topography charts. In a recent interview, the commanding officer of the Compass Island, Captain Joseph E. Bond, U.S. Navy (ret.), denied that his ship left port on May 24 or discovered the wreckage in early June. He clearly remembers receiving a phone call late on May 27, instructing him to get under way, but, because of tides, they left at 0300 or 0400 the next morning. He also said that the sonar mapping system could not detect anything as small as the wreckage, especially at its 11,000-foot depth. Vice Admiral Beshany, who remains sharp at 92 and was recently remarried, does not recall speaking with the author about secret searches, Soviet aggression toward the Scorpion, or any of conspiracy theories described in the book. He vehemently denied that any such theories are true. In 1993, a Russian captain claimed that he saw the Sorpion's periscope as a junior officer aboard the Echo II involved with the Soviet surface ships. He said that his captain came to the Echo II's bridge and told him to wave because the Americans were taking pictures. So much for Soviet aggression.
Bryant's review of Offley's book, which he labeled "pure fiction," was published in the August 2007 issue of Proceedings. A rebuttal by Offley was published in the September 2007 issue of the U.S. Naval Institute's periodical. Offley basically agreed with Bryant that key to the whole thing is that the senior admirals involved in the Scorpion incident would have had to recant their stories years later to the author, and then asserted that this had in fact happened. Admiral Schade, so Offley claims, revealed that his command was searching for the Scorpion at least four days before the sub's failure to reach port on 27 May 1968. Admiral Moorer "confirmed Schade's allegation in an on-the-record interview." And in 1997, Admiral Beshany confirmed the same while also providing additional details about how the Atlantic Fleet was looking for a nuclear powered attack submarine in secret the week before the incident went public. "This revelation remains crucial," argues Offley, "to understanding how the Navy's accounts of the Scorpion incident -- including press releases, contemporaneous interviews, and even sworn testimony before the court of inquiry -- were misleading to the point of deceptive." Offley then states that if Captain Bryant had asked, he would have produced the transcripts and tapes from the interviews he conducted with Admirals Schade, Moorer and Beshany. "They revealed that intelligence information gathered the week of 20-26 May (the Scorpion went down on 22 May) had sparked a top secret search for the submarine." The author said that he would have also happily shown Bryant Navy documents he discovered in the naval archives last year that indicate the secret search actually began on May 18 -- four days before the sub even sank. Offley then points out that he first published articles on the Scorpion in 1983, following his interviews with two of the aforementioned admirals, and that three more articles were published between then and 1998. "At no time during that 15-year span did either the former CNO or former COMSUBLANT utter a single word challenging the accuracy of those accounts. In fact, Schade agreed to a follow-up interview with me on 14 March 1986, where he provided even more details about the secret, pre-27 May search, well aware that I had already published two major articles centering on his 1983 disclosure. Neither did Beshany object when his revelations appeared as part of a package of stories that ran in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on 21 May 1998, and have remained posted on the newspaper's Web site to this day." Offley concludes his remarks by suggesting that the official Navy account of the Scorpion incident, and not his reporting, meets Bryant's definition of "pure fiction." Also published in the September issue of Proceedings was a letter from a Compass Island crew member, Peter G. Claymore. Almost a year after the loss of the Scorpion, Claymore reported aboard the USS Compass Island (AG-153) as first lieutenant. Captain Bond was still the skipper, and several of the officers who had been on board during the Scorpion search were still on board as well. As part of his briefings for relieving his predecessor, Claymore was told about the mission to help in the search but that the Compass Island was sent home early on because she lacked the proper equipment for finding the submarine. "The Compass Island was involved in navigation research for the Fleet ballistic missile program," explained Claymore, "an activity in which she was very successful. But knowing exactly where you are does not mean that you know where everything else is. In order for Mr. Offley's conspiracy to be successful, those in on it would not only be a few senior officers, most of them conveniently dead, but a large number of lower ranking officers and enlisted personnel. Did he even examine the log of theCompass Island, or was that too doctored to hide the truth?" Bryant's rebuttal of Offley's rebuttal was published in the October 2007 issue of Proceedings. The captain got to what he thought was the heart of the matter: the possibility that the sub was sunk by a Soviet torpedo. Offley claimed that a Russian torpedo breached the Scorpion's hull on the port side of the control room. The boat rapidly filled with seawater, smashing the internal bulkheads, and then the boat imploded as she sank to the bottom. But here's the problem: "Offley can't claim to have both an implosion and an explosion," argued Bryant, "because you can't have an implosion if the pressure hull was equalized with sea pressure. It would sink to the bottom intact with a hole in it." From the photos taken of the sub's wreckage, it is clear that the operations compartment containing the control room imploded at about the same time as the engine room. There is, in fact, very little of the operations compartment's hull left as the engine room was forced forward 50 feet into the machinery space and the sail was ripped off. "There is no visible evidence of a torpedo explosion as stated in the declassified secret Navy report and by many experts who have looked at the pictures," reported Bryant. Additionally, "The Navy analysis of the acoustic recordings reports that it was an implosion and not an explosion that crushed the boat." Therefore the "whole premise of the book is false." Stephen Johnson's book Silent Steel, was published in 2006. In it he revealed that the official evidence indicates conclusively that the Scorpion's hull was crushed by implosion as the submarine sank below crush depth. "If there was no explosion," wrote Bryant, "there was no Soviet torpedo. The claim in Offley's book that an Echo II-class Soviet nuclear-powered cruise-missile submarine could outrun, target, and kill the Scorpion borders on the ludicrous. "Please ask any Cold War ASW experts," Bryant continued. "There was no secret search for the Scorpion directed by Vice Admiral Arnold Schade prior to the day it failed to return to Norfolk, as alleged by Offley." Bryant reported that he had recently spoke again with Captain Joseph Bonds who commanded the USS Compass Island that mapped the seafloor prior to the search for the wreckage. Bond told Bryant that he confronted Offley at a book signing and told him there was no secret search involving his ship and that his ship did not find the Scorpion in early June 1968 as reported in the book. All the author said in response was that he thought Bonds was dead. Offley later called Bonds and said that he had been unable to locate him for an interview. Bryant found that strange considering he found Bonds after a five minute internet search. Offley had quoted in his book a Compass Island sailor who said the ship left port on May 24, three days before the submarine-missing report was issued, and that the she found the sub's wreckage in early June. Bryant asked Bonds about it and learned that the captain had met with the source. "The sailor, a boiler tender, explained to Bonds that he wanted his former ship to 'get credit' for what it did." Once again, Captain Bryant called Scorpion Down pure fiction.
Finally, Stanley L. Carmin, Ernest Castillo III, Edward K. Dalrymple, Frank Gambino, Joseph C. Guilfoyle, Charles D. Harwood, Louis E. Haskins, John J. Holdzkom, Commander Donald B. Leach, USN (ret.), George Miller, C. L. Polk, Bruce Rule, Ronald F. Smith, and George P. Widenor collaborated on a response to Captain Bryant's review of Scorpion Down and Offley's rebuttle which was printed in the November 2007 issue of Proceedings. Declassified Navy documents, they argued, provide two completely independent lines of evidence (acoustic and photographic) that conclusively establish the Scorpion was lost because the sub's pressure hull collapsed at great depth from hydrostatic pressure. The first and strongest acoustic signal received by Canary Island underwater sensors on May 22, was produced by collapse of the pressure hull, probably at a depth near 1,900 feet. Subsequent, weaker acoustic events were produced by collapse of small internal structures such as spherical tanks, at depths as great as about 5,000 feet. Extensive photographic coverage of the Scorpion wreck shows no structural damage consistent with the explosion of a torpedo, nor any torpedo wreckage. Offley alleged a U.S. Navy conspiracy to confiscate, suppress, and destroy SOund SUrveillance System (SOSUS) acoustic detections of an "underwater dogfight" between the Scorpion and the Echo II to prevent this detection event from being examined by the Navy's Scorpion Board of Inquiry. "We fifteen inviduals," wrote the collaborators of the response herein being discussed, "with a collective total of 400 years of experience at SOSUS sites and/or at activities that analytically supported SOSUS, agree that all acoustic data from 22 May were forwarded to the SOSUS Evaluation Center in Norfolk, Virginia. The analysis of these data was disseminated within Navy channels and beyond as appropriate. Most of these 15 individuals participated in this analysis effort." Offley alleged further in his book that a strong SOSUS detection (recording) of the "underwater dogfight" was viewed at the ASW Training Center in Norfolk circa 1982. Such a detection would have involved a range in excess of 1,500 nautical miles. "This is difficult to accept," wrote the 15, "when the more sensitive Canary Island acoustic sensors did not detect such an event at a range of only 400 miles. Offley does not explain how the purported dogfight tape first appeared 14 years after it was supposedly made or what happened to it since. These and other anomalies and inconsistencies indicate the tape was created at the ASW Training Center by copying three separate, unrelated detection events, a U.S. nuclear submarine, a Soviet Echo II class nuclear submarine, and a torpedo, onto a single tape for training purposes. This tape was then misinterpreted to Offley's sources, a junior instructor and a basic-level student, as a real event. Bottom line: there was no SOSUS detection of a hostile encounter between the Scorpionand a Soviet submarine." The 15 agree that Offley's allegations that the Scorpion was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet Echo II submarine and that the U.S. Navy engaged in a conspiracy to cover up Soviet involvement are total fabrications. "There was no Soviet involvement," wrote the 15, "there was no explosive event from a torpedo or any other source; there was no SOSUS tape. The Scorpion collapsed at great depth," continued the 15, "most likely because of an on board problem the crew could not overcome." Sources: "Real Story of Scorpion?" by Captian C. A. K. McDonald, USN, Proceedings, June 1999, pages 28-33. Review by Captain James B. Bryant, U.S. Navy (ret.) in Proceedings, August 2007, pgs 82-83. Letters from Offley, Bryant, Claymore, Carmin et al in Proceedings, September, October & November 2007.
