Scorpion Down (1 of 4 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Scorpion Down by Ed Offley. Copyright 2007 by Ed Offley.
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SCORPION DOWN
Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon: The Untold Story of the USS SCORPION

Ed Offley

DEDICATION
http://www.dailylit.com/books/scorpion-down/dedication

GLOSSARY
http://www.dailylit.com/books/scorpion-down/glossary


The truth was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.

--GEORGE ORWELL, 1984

The radio is begging them to come back to the shore, all will be forgiven, it'll be just like before.

All you've ever wanted will be waiting by your door, we will forgive you, we will forgive you, tell me we will forgive you. . . .

But no one gives an answer, not even one goodbye. Oh, the silence of their sinking is all that they reply. Some have chosen to decay and others chose to die, but I'm not dying, no I'm not dying, tell me I'm not dying. . . .

Captain will not say how long we must remain. The phantom ship forever sail the sea, It's all the same.

--PHIL OCHS,
"THE SCORPION DEPARTS BUT NEVER RETURNS," 1969

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PROLOGUE

THIS IS THE LAST THING THEY HEARD IN THEIR CLOSED WORLD: the faint scree-scree-scree of the incoming torpedo's high-speed propeller. Then, an ear-splitting thunderclap as the torpedo warhead detonated, and its underwater fireball slammed a shock wave into the center of the submarine, ripping a hole through the outer steel plating.*

Close behind--in less than a heartbeat, not nearly long enough for a thought or a regret--the ocean thundered in, shorting out lights and plunging the confined spaces of the submarine into chaos.

The explosion penetrated the submarine amidships on the port side. It was the perfect impact point to destroy the USS Scorpion (SSN 589) and kill its ninety-nine officers and enlisted crewmen, because this was the control room--the brain of the attack submarine--where the captain and his maneuvering watch operated the Scorpion on her underwater missions.

The first casualties occurred in a millisecond--lives extinguished in less time than it takes to blink an eye. The water column swept away the two duty control planesmen from their pedestal seats at the forward end of the control compartment, where they operated the controls that moved the ship's rudder and diving planes. It dashed the captain and the officer of the deck from the raised control station where they supervised the maneuvering watch. The torrent took out the crew manning the ballast control station, torpedo fire-control computers, electronic countermeasure sensors, and navigating gear.

Inside the cylinder, the world of U.S. Navy regulations and procedure--of hot bunks and the late-night meals called midrats, of dreams of liberty ports and loved ones at home, of bureaucratic routines and top-secret operational plans--vanished as the seawater thundered through. The lights blinked out, the instrument panels sparked a final short-circuit and went black, and the screams of the crew went unheard behind the baritone roar of the flood.

But it did not stop there.

The sea hurtled aft, drowning the men in the enclosed sonar shack and radio room. It raced two decks down to destroy the crew's berthing compartment, mess decks, officer's staterooms, and food storage areas. It plunged further down into the belly of the Scorpion, surging toward the battery compartment and storage areas at the keel. Aft of the control room, the water raced through the open hatchway and reactor compartment access tunnel into the relatively spacious auxiliary machinery compartment--a thirty-five-foot-long segment of the submarine--and sought out every open space at the center of the hull.

Only seconds had elapsed since the blast, but already more than a third of the Scorpion's crew were dead, including the captain, executive officer, navigator, and members of the maneuvering watch, and most off-duty crewmen whose berthing spaces were closest to the explosion's impact.

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[* The narrative of the Scorpion sinking is based on extensive interviews with former navy officials and scientific experts and a number of declassified navy documents, particularly the Supplementary Record of Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry Convened by Commander-in-Chief, United States Atlantic Fleet . . . to Inquire into the Loss of USS Scorpion (SSN–589), vol. 1, released with extensive security deletions on January 28, 1969 and later declassified from top secret with text restorations in October 1993. Interpretation of the events stemmed from interviews with participants in the Scorpion search and court of inquiry, particularly Dr. John P. Craven, director of the Deep Submergence Systems Project and chairman of the Scorpion Technical Advisory Group, and Dr. Chester L. Buchanan, chief of the Ocean Engineering Branch of the Naval Research Laboratory and on-scene technical adviser when the wreckage of the Scorpion was officially discovered in October 1968.]

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