The Dark Mystery of the USS Scorpion Submarine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ธ.ค. 2021
- In May of 1968, the USS Scorpion nuclear-powered attack submarine was conducting a last mission near the Mediterranean when she suddenly disappeared.
The ship was surveilling Soviet activity in the area and was expected to return to port at Norfolk, Virginia, within days, but after a final message indicating that they were closing in on a Soviet vessel, the crew was never heard of again.
A massive search operation was then launched, but subsequent investigations revealed a series of mishandlings from the Navy, including a potential cover-up and a rushed overhaul procedure that could have cost the lives of almost a hundred sailors.
Dan Rogers, an electrician’s mate on the submarine, requested a transfer and tried to warn them: (QUOTE) "I didn't know it was going to sink, but I was absolutely uptight after having been on there and seeing the things I had seen. I was just unable to deal with going to sea again on the Scorpion."
This resolution would ultimately save his life, but his comrades weren’t so lucky...
My grandpa died on the USS Scorpion in 1968. Rest in peace John P. Burke. You'll forever live through me.
Many thanks to your Grandpa, officers and crew of USS 🦂 SCORPION. They served this nation well.
Fair Winds & Following Seas.
Hopefully your dead ancestor will watch this video and read all the comments and see yours and realize it's about him and be comforted knowing he'll "live on" at least a few more years in your memory until you die too.
Comforting.
The dead don't read; the living do ... shut your nonsense.
That a way!
That a way!
I served on submarines for 14 years. Every time I hear of the loss of another submarine, even the tales of the Thresher and Scorpion, along with the others lost since, it makes my blood run cold. The water outside tries to kill us, the fires inside try to kill us, and the cooks in the kitchen tried to kill us four times a day, but still we stood the watch.
LOL
The food was that bad huh ? 😆😅🤣
@@shooter7734 Crunchy sweet tea made with real brown sugar, pizza with American cheese on it, medium rare omelets...let's just say I'm lucky they didn't find a creative way to f#$%-up beanie-weenies. Not all the cooks for that bad, but when certain cooks ran the kitchen I'd go to my bunk for a can of tuna.
I thought the food on subs was great.
Did your Captain show you the string experiment?
My mate was sub crew and said on his first drill the captain tied a piece of string along one corridor that run along part of the length of the vessel and made sure it was pulled tight, as the sub descended the string became more and more slack.
That's all I need to know to know I'm not cut out for under the waves, I'll stick to the crab boats thank you! 😂
Submarines once, submarines twice
Being a submariner in the 70’s on 637 class the scorpion and thresher sinkings always bothered me especially that all is secret, the sub-safe program greatly improved the boats safety, proud to have served subs, very demanding occupation
I too was very grateful for the sub-safe program - loved the 637s...most watertight, crew comfort-oriented fast boat ever built, in my opinion, but then, haven't had a chance to set foot on a Virginia Class boat yet.
Thresher files are slowly getting released. Sub brief I think it was did a video on it a while back which is definitely worth doing. Effectively ran into issues and had to blow the tanks, valves froze up due to moisture in the air and it slowly sank. From memory it was days they had signs of people trapped but covered it up
As a knuckle dragger on Dallas who prototyped on the 635, we may have bitched everytime we had to replace the desiccant in the HPAD, the sacrifice made by those before me was never lost.
Thank you for your service.
My dad joined in March '78 and served on subs as well.
I was a submariner for 20 years. For a short time I tried to get transferred to the Scorpion but it didn’t work out. These sailors are my brothers. Their loss affected me then and still does. Rest In Peace my brothers.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
Eternal Patrol, always ready.
My uncle Douglas Campbell was lost on the scorpion. I have found a Lot of .looks to me like ? Paperwork and records .stuff that at the time was or may be.
classified .
Did you know James Wells?
Do you ever reflect on the events that lead to you not getting transferred
As a fellow submariner several of my former sub- school classmates were on the Scorpion. Fortunately I was assigned to a fleet boat after sub school. RIP my friends.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
Why would she be on the surface? A sub of this type only surfaces when trouble is already mounting.
It was likely bad maintenance causing the sub to “die” and fall below crush depth
One interesting bit of history that I'm surprised wasn't mentioned, was that this was the SECOND Scorpion (SSN-589). The first Scorpion hull was cut in half, had a missile section added to her, and was renamed the George Washington (SSBN-598), and then a second hull was laid down. A friend of mine served onboard the Washington, and many of the parts had "Scorpion" or "SSN-589" etched on them.
That would be eery..
keel
I know that story.
@@watchgoose thank you
Cause you never rename boats.
I lost 2 shipmates and friends on the Scorpion. We went to prototype together at S1C. PO Englehart and Johnson, RIP.
Godspeed.
Fair Winds and Following Seas, lads.
My Thresher friends were SOC Forni and TM1 Casey.
I qualified on the S3G then two S5W’s. Later 2 TRIGA or pulsing reactors.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
I was a student at nuclear power school protype when the Scorpion went down. I had volunteered for sub duty, but after the Thresher and Scorpion went down, I opted for surface craft. For the last 50+ years I have wondered whether that was a good or bad decision. Just about every submariner I have met over the years loved sub duty. Constantly reminded me surface ships are just "targets".
Submarine duty is amazing. I went on Collins a few times and did parts 1 and 3 of sub school. It's so interesting and complicated, everyone on a sub is important, there are no "general duties" type positions.
I was in nuke school at Vallejo, class 71-02, around July or Aug 71 and we were told by our thermodynamics instructor, that Lt who liked chewing tobacco, that Scorpion had been in an underwater dogfight with Russian sub. Even back then the faulty torpedo theory had been thrown out.
when I was in Nuke School and it was determined I was going to be assigned on a sub my heart dropped. I wanted a ship.
@@yanni2112 submarines are volunteer only bro. Not sure what you're talking about.
@@HuntsT
Depending on Service needs....everyone is a "volunteer."
My (would've been) uncle died on that sub. My mom has been wondering what happened to her 18 yr old brother her whole life. Thank you for this documentary that includes the details in what happened that traumatized her and her family, leading to the breakup of the whole fams.
:( my condolences to your family I was only 4 years old when it happened
If it's of any comfort the second it imploded it would have been over quick for your uncle. Almost instantaneously.
Sounds like the Kursk incident. The families of the sailors from that sub didn't get answers for a long time.
My brother was also on board the scorpion he also was 18 . I never had the chance to meet him Scorpion sunk in 68 I was born in 71. My mother had always said I had the same sparkle and smile I have read everything there is to read studied it all . And read all his letters home. You want the truth of what happened read scorpion down. They where sunk by the Russian in retribution for sinking one of there's . Other than the facts in the book scorpion down there are numerous Russian submariners and sailors who have admitted it. USN 589 USS SCORPION ETERNAL PATROL RIP ALL 99 MEN
@@jayegill3190 My condolences to you and your family, :(
My step-dad who had spent 23 years in the Navy and the rest of his life in Civil Service, swore that the Scorpion had been downed by a "Crazy Ivan" maneuver, and the the thresher had been lost because of a screen on the blow valves that due to wind chill, became blocked with ice, thereby preventing the ship from blowing ballast and surfacing.
She goes below her Crush depth, and was lost with all hands.
A salute to all Sailors and Merchant Marines who have been lost to the Sea... ⚓🏅
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
That's exactly what I heard when I was in Submarine school.
Had nothing to do with wind chill and everything to do with a defective design. The lines would freeze in an emergency blow
@@steveunderwood6576combat lmfao ok dude
My Dad served on the USS Sculpin. He says when submarines are lost, they’re considered “still on patrol”.
The way it sound is very spooky.
It’s how the Germans spoke of missing U boats
@Between the Dimensions It is called "Eternal Patrol"
When I reported on board Key West in '95, there was an older guy who said he'd served on Sculpin. He had a lot of tall tales, so we took everything he said with a grain of salt, but he claimed that, when EB was originally beginning construction of Sculpin, she was to be named Scorpion. Don't remember his reasoning for the eventual name swap.
Correct there classed as still serving at sea if they never return to port, the loss of life has saved many many subs over the years they gave there life to save others
I served as a reactor operator on the Scorpion in 1961/1963 during the time we received the Commendation. It was an adventure.
Lucky man.
You weren't exposed to any hazardous radiation?
@@kevinmalone3210 My bunk was about 25 feet from the reactor core. Radiation was less than out in the street as we were protected from cosmic rays. There were of course, high radiation areas inside the reactor compartment when the reactor was operating, but we didn’t go there then.
That must have been a gut feeling hearing about the Scorpions fate
The only thing comparable in my life is being on a beach vacation in Thailand 1½ weeks before the tsunami
Anyone who asks "how could the Navy be so negligent?" needs to remember that just a generation earlier the same Navy hadn't seen any need to actually test the torpedoes being used during a war.
We weren’t sissy’s then complaining about tests.etc. Black and White men were men. So be quiet we’re tired of your kind.
Those bad fish caused boat losses. A notable one was Tang who only had a few survivors.
The Navy's negligence with their torpedoes from the start of the silent service is nothing short of criminal. Even more infuriating is the amount of time the Navy went ignoring all the evidence of faulty and dud torpedoes and continued to send men into certain death. I truly would not have wanted to serve on a submarine if it was before the mid-90s. Mycap truly goes off to the heros is like mush mortensen, O'Kane, Dealey, Cutter, Underwood, etc. who knew the majority of their torpedoes were useless and continued to do their duty regardless. I wish I could have met some of those heros to thank them and soak up all knowledge possible to hand down. RIP to the heros we have lost
They were tested, dude, you have no clue ... They test them in a pool !
@@dupes6248 our torpedo bomber pilots had the same problem with dud fish in WWII.
Even though I was a surface sailor the ships I served in always took a report of a U.S. or allied submarine being in trouble very seriously. One in particular comes to mind where an automated signal broadcast from a buoy released from a sub triggered a "SUBMISS-SUBSUNK" message which started an Atlantic Fleet wide search and identification effort to find the boat. Part of the signal included a code identifying the boat.
We had been involved in two other "SUBMISS-SUBSUNK" events, both were from boats actually still safe in port but somehow the buoy was triggered. This boat was very quickly confirmed to be at sea off the east coast. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the boat came close enough to the surface to clearly hear the radio traffic about a missing sub, that submarine. Her skipper decided to break radio silence and ask what the hell was going on. "We ain't lost, we're right here."
Totally an accident, but it proved how serious the Navy took submarine safety after the loss of USS Scorpion. Example, my destroyer broke off from her exercise and headed at flank speed toward the known operating area of that sub, the thinking was that our sensitive acoustic gear might hear something helpful if the boat was down.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
The wreck photos of Scorpion are startling since its stern appeared to have been rammed forward into the hull like a cork into a bottle. The propeller still on its shaft appears to have been forced out like a hydraulic shaft from its cylinder as the stern was likely pulled into the hull as the section under the sail failed. The Scorpion's fate likely began by ignoring the hard lesson that the Thresher taught before her and gambling on maintenance was deadlier than the sea itself.
The stern pressure buckling safety factor was not as high as the main hull section.
The rear section supposedly collapsed in on itself like a telescope...the pictures seem to prove it...
I know what neglected maintenance does. Was a tank driver 1980 and the tanks were old. Had to rig them to keep them going as spare parts were hard to get. Breakdown would happen regularly.
The way the aft section of the sub ended up is termed "telescoping".
Pressure telescoping.
Nothing inside could possibly survive that, so the end was quick, they didn't suffer.
I was 16 & living in Virginia Beach VA... "next door" to Norfolk. And I can remember how this "went down". It was weird... the Navy didn't know it was missing until the Scorpion didn't return to port as scheduled... At least that was the original "story"... The Navy had a series of hydrophone observation posts around the Atlantic. In fact one was located at Cape Hatteras, NC. Anyway, it has since become known that the hydrophones heard the sub when it imploded!! Regardless.... it was certainly a SAD day in Tidewater VA where many (most?) of the crew lived.
☹️
I don’t know about you, but I’m in Yorktown.
I was 17 and also living in Va Beach. My junior-year English teacher lost her husband when the Scorpion went down.
i'm in chesapeake now (born in norfolk) and worked in the shipyards for years. you don't hear anyone call it tidewater much anymore. i just the other day, heard the grateful dead substitute tidewater for norfolk in one of the verses of a cover of Elvis's "Promised Land" from the 6-12-80 show and that was the first time in years i had heard the word tidewater. kinda put a smile on my face. and now i ended up here. weird because while that show was being played in Portland, while not far away, Mt St. Helens started erupting and now i'm here reading about another disaster... just one of those weird coincidences i guess? well not sure if you still live around here, but if not, greetings from tidewater!!!
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. My mom went with everyone else to welcome them back and they waqited and waited. The Navy later stated they knew she was lost but didn't inform the families.
I served on the USS Sculpin SSN-590, She scared us several times. But, she always managed to get back topside. She's gone now from what I understand, taken out of service in 90 or 89' stored at Bremerton, and finally dismantled for scrap a few years later. (This is what I was told, concerning her dismantling) Fast boat, and handled like a Corvette in the water. For her time, a great achievement.
How did she scare you
The one common denominator between the two lost US Navy nuclear submarines, not meeting the Submarine Safety Program (SUBSAFE) certification. The first nuclear submarine lost, the USS Thresher, was before the program was implemented. The second nuclear submarine lost, USS Scorpion, never received the certification, but was released for duty. It’s no mystery, without testing and quality control programs in place or if the safety programs are not rigidly adhered to, critical complex system failure will occur. Remember what happened to the space shuttle Challenger when the managers disregarded the engineers warning that the cold temperatures before the launch violated the safety limits of the shuttle solid fuel rocket “O” rings. The lost of the shuttle Columbia was due to falling ice debris falling off during the launch. There were no contingencies for this possible severe ice damage scenario in NASA’s quality control plan. Once the tiles were damaged and the shuttle was in orbit, there was nothing they could do to save the crew. Soon after the shuttle program was deemed to be too dangerous and safety measures too costly to implement and the shuttle program ended.
Great point but also let's remember engineer's were also the ones who said the Columbia's heat shielding "should" be fine. Because it hasn't caused major damage before
Subsafe was implementer after Thresher sank. We got it in during overhaul in 1967, a few years before the Scorpion sinking.
Good point. In simpler terms it's like, well what did you expect? I will never forget watching the Challenger disaster in real time in grade school. I was nine I think. It was like too much for me to comprehend at the time. Our teachers were acting weird. I asked about them trying to rescue the people on board and Mrs. Marie like, didn't know what to say. They sent us home that day.
I think you're confusing the two shuttles. The Challenger was destroyed before it reached orbit. The cold made the O rings not seal properly which allowed burning to exit basically making a torch against the main fuel tank.
It was the Columbia that was damaged by falling ice knocking off tiles which allowed reentry heat to compromise the orbiter and cause the explosion upon reentry.
@@cerealkilla8930 Yeah, as School Kids were made to Witness the Disaster, Very Traumatic, About 5yrs Ago, I found out that No Astronaughts Died & 6 of the 7 are Accounted for Alive Today!! Judith Reznik is a University Professor, Didn't even Change Names!! NASA Claims they All were Identical Twins😆 A Load of B.S. You can Find Pics of the Astronauts now 35 Years Older!! I Don't think they were Really Aboard! NASA are a Scam!! No MSM Media Coverage or Apology for the Blatant Hoax! Research Challenger Hoax! But Don't get Fooled Twice😉
Dad served 21 years in the Silent Service from 1952-1973 on SSN and then into SSBN. He lost friends on the Thresher and the Scorpion.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost.
My brother EM2 John Phillip Sturgill was aboard Scorpion when she was lost in 1968. Lots of Family's still need answers... still grieving.
It's always the women who come in here looking for sympathy with their sob stories. You've added NOTHING to the conversation.
Anyone that serves in a submarine definitely gets my upmost respect. I see older gentleman with hats or a patch on their jacket I’ll stop and shake their hand. I am utterly terrified of water, closed spaces and the deep ocean. God bless everyone of you
"...the US Navy never again rushed a overhaul procedure..."
Regulations are written in blood.
all safety regulations are, naval, aviation, rail, just about every single rule can be traced back to the fatal accident that brought it in
Always.
Quite contrary. I’ve been through a few Dry dock periods of overhaul, many times as overhauls come to the end getting rushed was norm.
You can say that again. but they also did a lot of maintenance deferrals in the shipyard too,. . Shipyard time after the cold war was over were only for the absolute necessities.
Most of the safety training manuals in the Navy were written from the loss of others lives. I served as an airman/aircrew in the Navy, we adhered to NATOPS, a manual written from years of experience, mistakes and sometimes the blood of others. NATOPS= Naval Air Training Operating Procedures Standardization, which were tailored for each platform.
I am a Navy veteran but never served on a sub. I met someone once who was a former submariner, who left the submarine service after the loss of the Scorpion and several of his friends. He told a group of us that the Soviets pulled a Crazy Ivan, causing a collision with the Scorpion which turned away too late. There was enough damage to cause the Scorpion to sink below the crush depth in her poor condition. Two years later, the Soviet K-108 submarine and the USS Tautog (SSN-639) collided, with damage to both subs, although both survived the encounter.
Who knows?
When I was in Submarine School in Groton in the fall of '84, our instructor claimed that there was another wreck near the Scorpion, and it wasn't one of ours...
@@asnrobert I heard whispers of there being another wrecked sub down there but we could not pinpoint a missing foreign sub at that time but it is possible.
There is no evidence of a collision. The evidence shows Scorpion was at periscope depth and more than likely had an internal main battery explosion.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
I was on USS Tautog (85-89) and she had a permanent list of I think 2-3 degrees after the collision.
It was known as The Terrible T and let me tell you, it sure was.
Had the weakest ward room and goat locker. The Captain at the time was a tyrant. Every week there was a Captains Mast.
I miss the sliders and the liberty call in Subic
and getting my dolphins “tacked on”
That was fun. But hot racking in the torpedo room sucked.
Lol
The sub's loss is not a mystery... The military leadership ordered the sub to sea with a long list of critical problems not fixed in her very much rushed overhaul... any one of these critical problems could have sunk the boat... most certainly this is what happened... and of course no one in the military command got blamed in the coverup...
I reported aboard USS Towers (DDG-9) April 1983, not long after she had a main steam rupture (1200 psi propulsion plant).
Reason reported was Long Beach Shipyard had previously performed substandard work with substandard piping material. If I recall correctly 2 sailor’s died, one scarred for life.
Oh, also Dark Seas, US Navy has “Shipmates”, not Comrades
Weather it be Challenger or many others, when you take off your engineering hat and put on a manager's hat that had some time critical needs disasters will happen.
@Burr Anderson you’d think they’d stop, given how bad their track record of getting found out is.
@@MrKim-kv2vv 1200 psi steam is something one does not want to be messing with. It's very dangerous.
@Burr Anderson Because the people who run the government are mostly sociopaths who cannot admit to being wrong about anything, in fact they cannot even acknowledge that they can make mistakes. Also, Bureaucrats, be them in the private sector or the gov sector, only real job is to maintain the allusion that the bureaucracy does no wrong either. They have to try to make people believe they're perfect and their institution is perfect. You see this all the time, politicians learn that their policies don't work in the real world so what do they do, they double down on the same non working policies rather than changing course and trying something else that might work, that's a sure sign of sociopathy. Also, all bureaucrats are consumed with avoiding institutional embarrassment, especially in the government, that is job one.
11:33 the ship on the right is the U.S.S. Long Beach, the first nuclear powered surface combatant in the world: My grandfather, my last living grandparent, served on board her as a missile technician. I'm very proud of him, as well as that beautiful (though unique looking) ship.
On board USS Long Beach 1986-1989.
@@hitman456 Man, thank you for your service! You and that ship are important pieces of history.
My Grandpa was on the scorpion on February 1st 1966 and the story of that mission is amazing. My Grandpa is the reason why the crew got out of the situation they were in that day. He then later got transferred to the USS George Washington before it sank and he knew many people on the ship when it went down.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
As part of his grant from the USN/NOA to hunt for Titanic, Robert Ballard was required to find exactly, Scorpion, and whether she was leaking radioactive materials. Ballard did so and she is listed as a hazard even though she is nearly 5 miles deep. When Ballard decided to try and find U.S.S. Nevada (the ONLY battleship to get underway during the attack), he was requested to see if Nevada was shedding radioactive materials/radiation (after she was badly damaged during the BAKER nuclear test). The USN TRIED to decontaminate Nevada but found it to be too difficult and expensive (for such and old ship) so she was sunk in the Molokai Channel, after over a year of attempted decontamination was able to only clean about 40% of the ship.
not only from her reactor...she was reported to have nuclear torpedoes on board...as far as the alpha and baker shots the navy was at first jubilant that so many ships had survived until they realized they were hopelessly contaminated and unusable...
The Scorpion is not 5 miles deep. Closer to 2 miles.
😂 LOL. Five Miles? Try 12,500 ft. about 2.4 miles
Ballard was a former navy officer. He did everything the Navy asked him just to get the funds and means to find the Titanic.
The narrator said during the video that Scorpion was in 3000 meters of water, so a lot less depth than you thought.
Bob Ballard from the Woods Hole Institute found the USS Scorpion under the guise of searching for the Titanic since the search for the USS Scorpion was classified.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
I have heard that, due to the state of general disrepair on the boat, the crew members used to refer to her as the "USS Scrap Iron", and NOT as a term of endearment.
Virtually all US Navy ships have nicknames that are derogatory especially if they are a few years old. My ship was USS The Wounded Whale. The USS Terrebonne Parish was The USS Terrible T". A number of the names are not repeatable on a family forum like TH-cam! Scrap Iron even sounds a little like Scorpion.
@@AVB2 Understood. The Merchant Marine training ship I was on was known as the Empire Crate, Empire Beachball, or the Great White Whale.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. My dad told lots of stories of her issues. One time as they were underway the boat started corkscrewing randomly. They got it under control but it scared the hell out of everyone on board including the skipper.
@@steveunderwood6576 We were told two men got off of the Scorpion in Rota Spain, was it your mother that delivered a still born baby, or was it the wife of the other man?
Unfortunately, in my time in the Navy, it often puts operational requirements ahead of anything else, including required maintenance, updates and repairs. My area was in aviation and the same pressure to get airborne, get sorties flown, show a high op tempo and operational readiness, take precedence above doing the maintenance and repairs sometimes. It has cost lives. Unless we are at war, prioritizing ops over safety is unacceptable.
You don't know what needs maintenance sometimes till it breaks. I was one of those sailors from the early days. Prototypes were only running five years or less and design was being upgraded on each offering. Electric Boat, Westinghouse, GE, all had different designs and all had different design maintenance problems that occured at sea that didn't occur at prototype. They were like commercial airplanes that fell from the sky in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. You don't have a maintenance problem till you do.
To be fair, there’s literally no reason to maintain them if they’re useless at their best because the crews are too scared and selfish
My father had Orders to the Scorpion right before her loss, but my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and my father requested to stay on the west coast ending up in San Diego to teach. After that he was Stationed in Hawaii for the next few years. My father felt bad as I was told. I was only 3 years old at the time. I knew that he had a few friends on the Scorpion. Many years later I was in the Navy when I myself lost 23 of friends and shipments. VP-50 2 P3 Orion ASW Aircraft that collided off the cost of California. It hunts me how one little event can save one man's life yet take many more. R.I.P Shipments We have the Watch.
I was on Skipjack SSN 585. Towards the end of it's long life it had developed cracks in the hull aft. For last time out limited to 50 ft depth,nobody was happy.
Trash disposal unit (TDU) is under a counter in the galley, basically a small torpedo tube. The best theory so far is the battery charge explosion. They were forward under the crew's rack (bedding) compartment. Not a happy thought, but very possible. The torpedo theory doesn't work because there is zero trace of external explosion. If it had happened it would be obvious
Sub guys are crazy, I am crazy but that's a no thank you even for me
In life you are either qualifyed or you are not ! I agree with you on the torpedo, it didnt happen that way.
I studied the upgraded Skipjack class in Sub School. You make a good point. I was STS/SN at the time.
Inciteful. From all I've seen it ounds like a hard life.
At 50ft depth you've all but been reclassified as a surface combatant.
The final analysis given matches what I believe was the widely understood cause and taught in the 90's when I served on the USS OHIO. The only way that the torpedo room avoids implosion is to experience nearly instant pressure equalization which can only come about via a weapon malfunction in my view. The sub's emergency battery is unlikely to discharge that much energy over such a short period of time to accomplish that before exceeding crush depth. Same goes for the TDU theory. The US did have a Sturgeon class boat that had a WRT tank failure flood a battery well and almost cause the loss of the ship. My first Engineer served on that boat. I can't remember the name of the ship however. Shoes were melting into the decking in the torpedo room as they tried to keep things cool.
...."The Command"....[Kursk]...is now available on you tube...you think our navy is bad?...check out these guys...
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. As per the norm, the Navy covered what really happened because it would have made the "cold" war warm up.
Fun fact: the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic was the publicized byproduct of a secret USN commissioned mission to map the wrecks of the Thresher and the Scorpion.
2:20
Wow, it was in overhaul for over 20 years. Quite the refit.
I served on the USS Point Loma AGDS2 from 77-79 , the ship was an oceanographic exploration ship that carried the DSRV Triest II a deep submersible research vehicle, we were ported at pier 13 32nd street in San Diego. We did North Atlantic cruises in 77 and 79, in 79 we actually went to the Scorpion wreckage site at which the Triest dove and recovered some debris from the site. As I remember the deepest the Triest dove during one of the dives in the Caribbean at the Bahama Blake plateau was 20,280 ft.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
RIP to the crew of the USS Scorpion. Condolences from the UK
Rest In Peace to her crew.....my oldest brother was a submariner inn the Pacific with the USN during WWII
My dads father was James Mitchell Wells, it’s crazy bc I also married a man who’s actively surviving the navy and also on submarines…. This story is close to my heart and the navy did these men and their families very awful! Justice is deserved to these people still 😢❤
I know a welder who worked in the "Bremerton area".
He's worked on dive-planes: they use an internal box construction with a heavy 'skin' of plate steel.
Your thumb-nail shows this very build-up.
The skin plate was welded in such a way a battered one could be sliced away, new steel welded in place over the box-frame core.
My point: 50-75 mm thick steel plates, bent to fit and welded along the edges, has been collapsed into the box-frame construction.
As seen on the thumbnail.
It would take an enormous over-pressure, like close proximity to an explosion, to make the steel plates mush down like they did.
There is an outside chance the hull implosion could create pressure waves that collapsed the dive-planes, but that seems unlikely.
No, simply diving deep wouldn't crush the structure.
No ! But sinking to 12 thousand feet would !
I was stationed at Lajes Field, Azores when the sub went missing. The following year a search was recommenced though nothing had been reported as to deficiencies. My unit helped provide transport support to the harbor where vessels came to resupply for the effort.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
Prayers for the souls of the crew. Peace and strength to their families and loved ones.
Back in the 60s I visited Groton, Conn. where I toured s submarine. Docked nearby was the Scorpion. I've had an affinity for that sub ever since and was heartbroken when she disappeared.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
@@steveunderwood6576 Your dad was a lucky dude, an example of "We all have our time".
I've also considered what you mention, as far as.the sinking. Is it possible that there could have been an international "incident"? Yep. Is it possible that certain "facts" were covered up? Yes again. As to what the motivation for such a cover up, I can only speculate, possibly avoid an escalation? I'm sure if the Russians were doing it to us, we were doing it to them.
Anyway, thanks for your response. It kind of gives me a connection to the boat and her crew and you have no idea how much I appreciate that.
My father commanded a sister ship of the USS Scorpion and he told me the Skipjack class had a lot of issues from lack of replacement parts, to her hull and parts not being approved by SUBSAFE due to backlogging, but would not confirm or deny if the Scorpion was lost due to hostile action.
I was on the Skipjack in the 80s. She was old but she still spent up to 9 months out of the year at sea. A lot was learned from Scorpion and Thresher to maintain submarines safely.
Lol ok.
@@scottn7cy Did you ever know a sailor on Skipjack named Mike Sherwood? If memory serves he told he was aboard Skipjack from late 79 thru 81 or 82 when he got busted for smoking pot and got sent to my ship the USS Juneau, a gator freightor, and that was how I got to know him.
@@jamesbrown5600 Don't recall that name. He must have left before I came onboard.
Russians were in the area...and this right after the embarrassment of K-129...so suspicions remain...
I was attending Submarine School at New London Connecticut when this happened. I was trained on a Skip Jack Trainer. Our class was formally asked if anyone wanted to non-vol from submarine duty. Non did. That Scorpion had suffered a Mad Ivan Event was the leading contender for us at the time. This was also the class when the BLOW AND GO training tower burnt down.
A tower full of water burned down ??? I bet that was interesting to watch.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. The Navy knows what happened and it was combat with USSR but it wasn't a sub that sank her. For some reason that is still classified.
My fellow submariners on eternal patrol.
Sad. Just sad.
Scorpion was not Subsafe certified, otherwise this most likely would not have occurred. Skimping on critical maintenance cost the lives of 99 crew.
Scorpion's keel was laid down in 1958, but from June 1943 to May 1964, Scorpion remained at Charleston for maintenance 02:20 ... I guess the Philadelphia wasn't the only ship conducting teleportation experiments.
I caught that error as well.
Me three. Maybe it was sent back to help defeat the Nazis in Europe while Kirk Douglas went back in time to help out in Pearl Harbor?
This channel is *notorious* for making simple mistakes like this. Some of these videos (mostly of aircraft) are literally just a verbatim recitation of the respective Wikipedia article. They still have some neat videos, but I would never trust their info without proper evidence.
Yeah, that one made me do a double take of my cup of coffee.
None of the Skipjack class were Subsafe certified. They weren't built to the specs that Subsafe required.
Never served on Subs but was a Marine Machinery Mechanic and certified to work on L1/SUBSAFE boundaries. There's not one thing on a Submarine I haven't worked on aside from the reactor. Respect for all those who serve on these black tubes 🐬
It’s a shame, that after 53 yrs, so much remains classified about this incident.
That's because the Navy was allowing boats to deploy that had no business, maintenance wise, deploying. The Navy's to brass were knowingly sending unsafe subs out on patrol. Granted, the reason they felt compelled to do such was because we were in the middle of the Cold War and every sub was needed fullfilling missions most of which were considered nationally vital, like following Russian Boomers when they deployed and sticking with them throughout their deployment, or spy missions, or survelliance missions etc...etc... That is why the evidence pointing at the top of the Navy will likely never be released. Remember for all bureaucrats their number one job is to avoid institutional embarrassment, and the typical bureaucrat will lie, cheat & steal if need be to do so.
@@jamesbrown5600 almost every veteran can testify to the hypocrisy of command.
There are more documents that were declassified recently, just as there were about the USS Thresher. The Navy is supposed to release them soon.
@@jamesbrown5600, the old good-ol'-boy cover the brass' asses no matter what the cost. Almost as if the 99 men that were literally "MURDERED" by the CNO's orders did not matter to anyone at the top.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. I agree! afer all these years what really took her down is still classified. It is known and has been discussed in public due to leakers but not by the Navy.
You would think that maintenance of an attack submarine would be a very high priority. At the time, for Scorpion, it obviously wasn't. It's so very sad that it took the tragic loss of an entire crew to get the Navy to rethink it's priorities.
navy was frantic to keep an eye on the russians...then there was that Walker thing....
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
According to historical sources, Robert Ballard in 1985, was given 12 days to find Titanic, after he did a “job” for the Navy by checking the status of the reactors on both the Thresher and Scorpion…
You are correct. It was a CIA plan to throw the Russians off the trail. It is public record now.
I watched that video
Love to see an update on this now that Bob Ballard's mission has been declassed.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
@@steveunderwood6576well then, mystery solved. We don’t need to look into run away torpedos or other potential faults that may affect the safety of futures subs and their crews thanks to a random post on the internet.
Frightening. I can do alot of things, being a submariner would not be one of them.
My hat's off to them.
Neither could I. I have been aboard museum boats and have worked on them as a civil contractor. Cannot imagine being locked in with 100 some odd folk.
I served onboard an early Los Angeles Class Fast Attack Submarine in the early 2000's for 3 years as an Auxiliaryman (Forward Mechanic) and you really don't think about the fact that the boat is underwater most of the time. My division and I were working almost all the time either with maintenance, repairs, replacements, improvements, cleaning, etc. That's just the nature of it. I enjoyed it though. Take care.
bubble heads are pretty special people
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. He told some wild stories where sailors lost their cool due to fear...
Heard many theories about what happened to them, from the torpedo theory... to being sunk by the Soviets in retaliation for one of the boats (the k-129) lost off Hawaii, and them (the Soviets) think we had done it... no matter what, may they all Rest in Peace. MM1/SS Retired here.
My brother was on the scorpion and had sent a letter home dated the day after k129 sinking . He states and I quote. Last night we shot the bear and today I dance with the Polynesian girl .
@@jayegill3190 The Russians (Soviets) knew of the Scrapion condition when it was birthed in Spain. They set a trap, made themselves known, lured the boat to follow, knew its 3D diving limits due to scrappy/crappy condition, got Scrapion totally defensive, and sunk her.
Back in the days of traitor Robert McNamara, who was responsible not just this boat being stripped of her new gear and safety fixes, did the same thing to all US services. Many tens of thousands died as a result.
In combat (Vietnam), spying, maintenance deaths, later on cancers, and variety of long term medical issues surrounding nuclear poisoning, lung problems (asbestos). And yet, his faux smiling face was the center piece for demoncrat publicity on the news shows once he was out of office as SecDOD.
His horrible problematic failures in logistics, deaths of US servicemen, faulty and inferior pet weapons systems, the anchor DOD chief of modern waste and fraud with the .mil industrial complex, destroying our world wide lead over enemies, destroying future projects that would insure our peaceful dominance all are attached to McNamara. On top of that, he promoted civilian POTUSs to enter a needless war semi full steam, where we lost the war (and never should have been there). Retired executives at Ford who had to work under this beast (when he was at Ford as CEO prior to DOD), been reported to say had he stayed at Ford, Ford would have gone broke.
soviets were pissed because of our recovery effort of K-129....
@@frankpienkosky5688 They were pissed, but that recovery effort happened long after the Scorpion sank. The Soviets had no clue what happened to their own sub and didn't even know where it was. How else could we have parked a ship right over the top of it and attempt to retrieve it without the Soviets being even the slightest bit suspicious? Also,
how could they retaliate if they didn't even know what happened to their own sub?
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. It was the USSR for another boat they thought we sank. Not K129
My first few weeks at sea I had nightmares that the ship sank and I end up stuck in the paint locker staring at the bottom of the ocean through the hatch. That in itself was terrifying.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
@steveunderwood6576 Ross Saxon who examined the Scorpion in the Trieste, swore to his dying day that there was no evidence of Torpedo or Shellfire as to the cause.
I'm loving all the submarine content being put out. SSN 789,798,764,742 gold
My mother in law was one of the civilians waiting in port for her husband return while there was many officials that already knew of the vessels likely demise.
bullshit and if you're not lying, so what? doesn't add ANYTHING to the story.
@@RobertLegereIII That is true. Those waiting on the dock were sent home, being told Scorpion was just late, then found out about the Scorpion being lost on the news later that day. My mother and I were waiting on the dock. What it adds to the story is that the Navy was never forthcoming in divulging information.
It's absolutely tragic what happened to those submariners. So much speculation and pointing fingers, but nobody ends up taking any sort of responsibility for the countless issues that plagued the Scorpion. It should have never been out to sea with the issues that were reported, and then having it be rushed through it's repairs and upgrades, with shoddy and inadequate work having been done as well as having far too many quality checks either overlooked or blatantly ignored. We can only hope and to pray that all souls on board felt nothing and their passing happened as close to instantly as possible. Otherwise, I can't even begin to imagine the sheer terror and pain they must have felt as their ship plunged to the bottom. To any of the family members who have made comments here on this video, I send to you all my most sincerest apologies for your loss as well as the ineptitude and laziness of the US NAVY Top Brass in investigating and trying to understand and explain exactly what had happened, for your sake and to hopefully prevent something similar from ever happening again. 🙏 As a proud US citizen, it disgusts me, and is so incredibly embarrassing to see something like this play out with our own military, soldiers, and leadership. 😔
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. That.s the Navy...
I retired from the navy. My dad was a submariner. My grandmother asked at Thanksgiving one year how many people were on a submarine. I said 140 with they deployed but 70 couples when they came back. I don't think he ever forgave me for that. He knew I gave submariners props just not my gig
That's funny! My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
You’ve gotta have a serious set of balls to go on a sub. I could never. The thought of going underwater at such depths and if something goes wrong there’s very little you can do to survive. Steel coffin.
I served on P & O Class diesel boats in the Royal Navy. When we left the UK into the Atlantic we would hear OOW tell the skipper "we are crossing 100 fathom mark" which we knew if the boat had a problem we would not reach the bottom in one piece
Yeah, we knew the escape hatches were only there for mom and the politicians.
@@Anton-om5qf I served on an FBM for 5 patrols and we stayed on the surface till we past 100 fathoms then we dived and disappeared for 72 days. I did 2 of those patrols out of Holy Loch Scotland.
@@edmartin875 Holy Loch ... loved those Fish and Chips!
A bit of black humor from a 1962 sub sailor.....When asked why I chose subs over surface ships i replied "First you have to find us....then you have to out fight us.....and if that happens we all die together and are buried at sea in a mult-million (now billion) dollar coffin!"
Blind Man's Bluff is an excellent read. In it I learned that the nickname the crew had given the sub when it's problems started was "Scrap Iron". The batteries in these torpedoes were from a newer manufacturer as there had only been a single source up until recently, and they needed another for parts availability. The newer companies batteries were crap, they would leak electrolyte into the cells from a cracked burst membrane and they would start to get hot, hot enough to cook-off the warhead in a low-order explosion that would have been sufficient to force the hatch open, flooding the torpedo room. They were eventually all recalled from service. The acoustic traces indicated that the sub had reversed course at high speed before she sank. The scientist tasked with determining her location, and secretly getting the first images of the wreck, asked a sub commander what would cause a sub to reverse course as high speed like this one did. The reply, "hot running torpedo" meant that a torpedo could start up running and since it was not surrounded by water would overheat rapidly, causing a potential fire or explosion risk. By reversing course, the internal gyros would think it has turned off course and was on it's way back to the sub that launched it, so safeties would shut it down. But this torpedo wasn't "hot running", it was just hot, because of the leaking, improperly flooded, crappy battery and that couldn't be shut down because the motor wasn't running. It overheated and cooked off the warhead.
The Scorpion did not reverse course. Bruce Rule's book Why The Scorpion Was Lost describes this. The hull was found on course as projected facing towards the west.
Just another sad result of BuOrd bureaucrats NOT doing their jobs and testing these things much better before risking men's lives and the subs with such junk. They never learned a thing from their predecessors of WWII torpedo fame. It must be some form of brain rot to "work" there.
That is the best submarine book I ever read. Myst read if you love ships
Most excellent information about the Scorpion's torpedoes. I read the book and watched the TH-cam video here a couple times. (also, I'm a retired sub sailor).
@@Amasaman Your guess is as good as any. However even if it reversed course it would only have been for few minutes. As far as heading goes I imagine when a sub explodes, then implodes, then breaks up into multiple parts, and then sinks thousands of feet it could spiral around hundreds of times before it lays to rest at any random heading.
Honor for those who lost their lives
Great work Dark Seas. Rock Hard
The theory proposed in the very good book "Blind Man's Bluff" I think is the correct one. The electric Mk 37 torpedo was, as said, prone to just startup if incorrectly handled. Reports were that the Scorpion had a wicked shimmy above a certain speed and the thin aluminium barrier between the battery and motor on the torpedo was prone to puncture or fall off if vibrated or knocked. Not mentioned is the fact the Scorpion did a sudden 180 turnabout just before it exploded and that is an emergency drill to shut down a hot running torpedo because the gyro system prevents the torpedo from coming back on the launching sub.
Anyone who is even remotely interested in submarines or naval warfare should read "Blind Mans Bluff". Excellent book!
@@jeremymcauliff2510 Commander Craven interviewed 5 submarine commanders and asked them what they would do if they had a hot running torpedo. They all said they would turn 180 degrees to initiate the gyro cutoff mechanism. And then throw that bastard off the sub. I'm sure this is what Scorpion did, but they ran out of time, the thermal runaway exploded the torp.
@@k9killer221 was he commander? I thought advisor or something on highest level
@@juliusraben3526 You are right, he was a senior consultant to the Navy. But was cleared to very high levels.
How do they know that she did a 180 turnabout before it exploded? Was a black box recovered?
Thanks.
That year was a crazy year, to begin with. My condolences to all those families that lost loved ones I was only 4 years old when that happened :(
I was early teens and it really seemed like the whole world really was headed for hell in a handbasket. So many things going on it'd take a book to skim the wavetops of that year. Then I almost died of pneumonia at the end of the year.
Lot of prophesy hobbyists really thought the End of the World was at hand. Jehovah Witnesses were in high gear, I remember my dad was getting irritated with all their "visits".
It's more crazy than you think. They were actually submarine sinkings that year. Israel, France and Russia all lost subs.
@@WALTERBROADDUS :( RIP
Thank you My brother was aboard Scorpion.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. My mom was prego with me.
I served on the Skipjack in squadron 62 with the scorpion and felt the loss of the 589 deeply. The trauma was heavy with all of our wives and caused stress in my marriage as well as others. We sometime fail to realize military wives are not trained or prepared to deal with these types of events. Military wives are the unsung heros of the armed forces.
Yes, they are! I could never imagine the emotions after the loss like this…😢
As disturbing as the death of 99 sailors is, perhaps what’s worse is that whoever decided that operations take priority over crew safety isn’t even named, and likely ended up not being punished, but likely was promoted, not for the loss, but in spite of it. 🤬
navy brass....protect their ass....nothing new there....
All of your videos are so fucking badass. I've always been an interested historian especially when it comes to world war II. The way you portray all of your content is exactly the type of stuff I look for. Never stop making content man, been a subscriber for over 2 years and I'll never stop watching and liking! 👍
I'm so glad there are people brave enough to do that job as my cowardly ass couldnt. I guess I understand it needs doing, and next to none of them that chose to serve us that way get anywhere near rewarded enough for it. Bless submariners everywhere.
As a retired cold war submariner, Its not about the reward... it was all about wanting to make a difference to keep ivan at bay. Today its the Ivan AND the ChiComs.
@@terenceharper5612 Well said, Sir!
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. My dad said they all felt like badasses for being a submariner.
@terenceharper5612 is funny now though how we pretend to be against them militarily but fund them economically so well. Now as a result they're a dangerous superpower.
Bad maintenance, rushed deployments, overworked crews and cold war paranoia ultimately sank her.
Not true about "Ultimately" My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. They were heading back to port and on the way took a detour but what "ultimately" sank her was combat. As far as I know, It's still classified.
Blinds man bluff is a fantastic read. Great story thanks for sharing
It was interesting that I could not tell my parents or my wife what I did on my submarine but they could read of several missions my sub did in Blind Mans Bluff. Jim
Anyone involved with sending this ship to sea without subsafe qualifications should be prosecuted.
This was 54 years ago, anyone involved is dead now.
Short comments at the beginning and end pique my interest. The Navy never again rushed a service operational inspection and the CNO chose to override the inspection in order to rush returning Scorpion to service as well as save money. In my mind that points directly to the cause and culprit.
It's almost as if, if you don't maintain equipment properly, it breaks. Who woulda thought? 🤔
I rode an "S" girl for 7 years out of the 20 I served in the submarine force. I was my first submarine that I qualified on and I knew her frontwards and backwards. Great little sub. Fast as all get out, but noisy by today's standards. One thing I don't understand about your depiction of the USS Scorpion is using video clips of WWII submarines that clearly do not have the albacore hull design. It can't be that hard to find pictures of the "S" girls out there. Thank you for the the video and "fair winds and follows seas" for those on eternal patrol. Rest in Peace
when there are so many maintenance & equipment related tasks that need overhaul, repair, replacement, this all leads to one final answer...it remains the fault of the Navy for not taking steps to complete those tasks; leadership.
To be fair, one must take into account the situation at the time. The cold war was in full bloom. Attack Subs like Scorpion were used for all kinds of missions and all of them are considered vital. The top brass were taking huge risks, that is for sure, but the times in which those decisions were made, they were not made for reasons of incompetence, they were made because the President or the SoS of the CIA or the DoD need intelligence, and every single Russian Boomer that puts to sea is followed and tracked on its entire patrol by a US attack submarine, there were also the surveillance and intell missions, SEAL team injection and extraction etc....etc.... The fact is their agressive decision making finally caught up to them with Scorpion.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
I believe current thinking is that a battery explosion caused an internal over-pressure that either killed or disabled the crew. The boat eventually drifted below crush depth and was lost. Retrieved pieces of the battery housing showed evidence of an explosion.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
The sub my father served on the USS Haddo was the same class as the Thersher, He told me he was always worried on that boat.
Read “Scorpion Down”; it came out about 15 years ago. A very compelling argument that the sub was sunk by the Soviets in retaliation for the loss of K129 in the Pacific
I have read both "All Hands Down" and "Red Star Rogue," and both make very convincing arguments.
The us navy should of heeded the warning signs that sub had too many problems, that sub needed a complete overhaul, doing that would of spared the lives of those precious men, God rest their souls.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. The lack of maintenance could have played a part but she was sunk by a torpedo and that has been confirmed in mutiple ways.
A submariner who is also a engineer, said once, "I'm going into a cigar shaped coffin... I've a bad feeling about this." He helped to keep the men alive, spent 20 years in the president's have, and he wiped away the sweat when he retired. A bad feeling? I think not.
Where the hell are you coming from with this drivel ?!?!
@@martypalmiere7672 calling yourself drivel for a few typos, is quite lunacy at the making. If not, take a chill pill and be done with it, yo'.
The pronunciation of Groton is with the first "o" as sounded in the word "rot" NOT a long 'O' sound. Rhymes with Rotten.
I put the Thresher class submarine USS Flasher SSN 613 in commission. We were the first "as built" submarine with SUBSAFE as we were a sister ship to Thresher.
Scorpion was sadly lacking in proper overhauls and upkeep. I had heard the the crew called her "Scrap Iron". I was still aboard Flasher and we were in port in Pearl Harbor when the report that Scorpion was over due came in. A few weeks later I was on my way to TI (Treasure Island) to get off active duty as my 4 year active was coming to an end.
As a kid in south Florida in early 1969 I found a blue book cover on the beach that was labeled with the Scorpions motif, my friends mother called the police and we gave it to them. Never heard anything after that.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
To Kill The Potemkin, a fiction book about what may have happened to the Scorpion. Great read, read it a few times as a kid.
Sorenson's Beach. Please knock. No volleyball. I felt that Zapata had been there for a reason.
There was a very hot Cold War going on under the waves and in war corners are cut and lives are lost. The crew are hero’s who gave their lives to keep us all safe. I salute the eternal patrol of the comrades in arms.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
Stunning. The Navy regs are 'written in blood'. I pray that the SCORPION submariners and their families are strong and at peace. Terrible sacrifice. I pray the USN learns and employs the learned lessons. The more dangerous the mission the greater the need for adherence to all known prophylaxis. Lord, watch over those whose lives we place at risk.
Hey, I love all your channels, and you're a joy to watch! As a fan and native New Englander, if you're going to keep covering US subs, I thought you might like a pronunciation tip about Groton, Connecticut! It rhymes with "rotten" or "forgotten", not "boat"! Keep up the great Dark Work!
Not sure I buy the Hydrogen explosion, but I did not serve on this class of submarine. On Los Angeles and Ohio class submarines the batteries are in a compartment which firstly has Hydrogen detectors to prevent overcharging of cells and secondly could contain a hydrogen explosion. As to a being destroyed by a Russian torpedo, I highly doubt that as well. If that had occurred, the sub would have been in more pieces. I find the accidental detonation of a torpedo interesting but if that was the case. How did the torpedo room remain intact? I would agree with failed maintenace which resulted in a failure which led to an implosion. The crew reports are enough to confirm this idea. I highly doubt any crewman would take the time to write about the maintenance issues if they were not in dire straights.
I heard John Craven explain your very question about the torpedo room remaining intact. He said if this was a problem of the Mk-37 Torp battery, which was, as I understand, butted right up against the back of the warhead, that it could have cooked off the warhead, which would mean that it didn't explode as it was designed too, and thus possible that the force of the cook-off explosion was enough to blow the forward hatch off and immeadiatly flood the torpedo room and preserve its structural integrity. I don't know, but John Craven was the Navy's go to guy to figure what happened to Scorpion, and some other things for the Navy so I give a lot of credence to his theory.
Craven said in his opinion, with all the evidence he's seen, he believed the most likely scenario for the Scorpion sinking was as follows:
1) Torpedoman doing maintenance discovers a torp battery overheating i.e. a hot torpedo.
2) Torpedoman reports a hot torpedo to the bridge.
3) The talker reported a hot running torpedo to the OOD or the OOD simply misunderstands that its actually a "hot" torpedo, not a "hot running" torpedo.
4) Thinking the torpedo propellers are running, the OOD orders a 180 degree turn in order to engage the safety interlocks on the Mk-37to prevent it from arming. This would explain why
Scorpion was travelling east when it sunk instead of west towards the USA.
5) The overheating torpedo battery cooks off the torpedo warhead, but it doesn't explode as designed but it explodes with enough power to blow off the forward hatch cover and the
forward torpedo room is flooded almost instantly; Scorpion cannot recover from it and starts heading down to the ocean floor.
6) Shortly after reaching crush depth Scorpion implodes killing the entire crew nearly instantly.
@@jamesbrown5600 Interesting... Thank-you. The idea of a torpedo battery over-heating is a scary prospect. It must have been a different time. My boats would never have a torpedo loaded with arming power unless going to shoot the damn thing. If the torpedo was not being fed arming power, I wonder in the batter would have overheated? I remember batteries was the number 1 maintenance activity for the MK48 since they spent so much time being stowed. Thanks again for explanation. I need to look up John Craven.
@@jamesbrown5600 The whole 180-degree turn thing is false. It was based on a mistake in the initial analysis of the sound recordings that failed to compensate for changes in ship's depth. Once other analysts identified and corrected the mistake, the sound recordings show a vessel that sank vertically with essentially no horizontal movement and certainly no high-speed 180-degree turn.
Craven's theory about a torpedo fire certainly *could* have happened, and was a real problem that needed to be fixed. However it doesn't line up with the evidence as well as they hydrogen theory. Several years ago, the Navy recovered debris from the battery well that shows evidence of a detonation and combustion prior to the ship's collapse. Furthermore, there is a known flaw in periscope depth procedures from the time. If the ship attempted to go to periscope depth during the last few minutes of a battery charge, significant hydrogen buildup could occur in the battery well due to changes in the ventilation lineup. Other ships from the time had near misses due to that procedure, with explosive levels of hydrogen getting formed in the battery well. Scorpion was likely the first ship that got a spark as well.
@@grast5150 Dr. Craven went into a lot of detail, but what James Brown didn't mention was that the Navy was well aware of the problems with the batteries on the Mk 37. What Dr. Craven believes happened was demonstrated here in Washington State at Naval Base Kitsap, Keyport at the Weapons Testing Station. They had a MK 37 on a vibration stand. The way the battery was designed was that it was in two parts, inert until two chemicals were brought together. There was a small pin that upon firing would puncture a membrane between the two chemicals, allowing them to mix and run the torpedo. Dr. Craven speculated that the vibration was enough to create a small puncture in the battery, allowing a small portion of the chemicals to mix, but not enough to power the torpedo. However, it was enough to start a fire.
"The torpedoes used Mark 46 silver-zinc batteries. These had a known tendency to overheat, occasionally igniting or exploding." (Wikipedia)
This is the problem that Keyport had. The Mk 37 they were testing did not have a warhead on it, but it was on a vibration machine, and caught fire from the defective battery design. They said they had to let the fire burn itself out because they couldn't get near it from the smoke, gasses and the severity of the fire.
Dr. Craven's thoughts and other things that will scare you, are published in this book 'The Silent War.' John P. Craven www.amazon.com/Silent-War-Cold-Battle-Beneath/dp/0743223268
Thank you for your service to our great country Christopher.
My dad put Scorpion’s sister ship Scamp 588 in commission. He was out of Subs by 1968, because I was born, but Scorpion’s loss was always something he wondered about.
Thanks for your service I'm an Army veteran those subs are an engineering masterpiece
"The price of safety is eternal vigilance"
served on the 638, which was under construction when Thresher was lost. Sub Safe program was backfited into 638 before commissioning. It seems likely the failure to fully implement Sub Safe mods played a role in the loss of Scorpion. No Sub Safe boats have ever been lost.
True but they seem to be developing a taste for undersea mountains.
@@chuckaddison5134 Command Training and boat construction are two different animals. We had a Commander that was relieved after not running into but skipping up the side of an undersea mount after coming off a flank bell only because he was threatened with an official log entry by the Navigator for not correcting the navigation gyro drift sooner by fixing on a satellite. When they slowed down long enough, sonar could sense the mount approaching and thanks to good training of the rest of the crew in the conn JUST had enough time to avoid colliding with it outright.
@@chuckaddison5134 why do our ships keep running into things?
@@frankpienkosky5688
I suspect that the answer to your question involves more than a single answer. For surface ships that operate in two dimensions only. The answer is most likely poor watch standing practices. Modern Ships possess all the equipment to safely navigate anywhere in the world. However as the old saying goes, "familiarity breeds contempt" . Over time folks standing the watches become complacent and just don't do the job as well as it should be done. Thus allowing the brown stuff to hit the rotating air mover.
For submarines it's a bit more complex. For the USS San Francisco it was the same problem that the Royal Navy had searching for the HMS Bounty mutineers. Which was the island, or the San Francisco's case mountain, was not where the map said it should be. In the USS Connecticut's case I suspect it was the same or perhaps the mountain wasn't on the map at all. Many parts of the ocean floor are not as well or accurately mapped as others. For example the US coastal areas have been well mapped since almost the foundation of the country. Due to the necessity for cargo and Naval vessels to safely navigate. With the adoption of the submarine, it became necessary to map the locations of all the undersea hazards. As submarine hulls became stronger and capable of greater depth the need grew more important. While we have great maps of the waters we frequent we are less informed in areas we do not frequent. As the South China Sea becomes an area of more frequent visitation I imagine it will get a much greater mapping effort.
Another answer might be similar to Terence Harper's answer to me above concerning the drift of inertial navigation.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. It's been confirmed in more than one way that the Scorpion was sunk by USSR in retaliation for something they believed we did to them. That's still classified.
USS Scorpion was supposedly nicknamed "Scrap Iron" by her crew.
It is also interesting to note that USS Scorpion and her crew play a major part in the Neville Shute novel 'On The Beach'.
Always an excellent production. Music effects and all
I hope everyone involved in not certifying the Scorpion Sub safe were relived of duty for failure to repair (an Army term when Officers failed to complete their duties).
I'm a huge fan of your work, and also a Connecticut native. For future reference it's pronounced Grah-ton not Groe-ton. You should visit the sub museum if you get the chance. Then have pizza at Mystic Pizza or go to Ford's for lobster. Thank you for all your amazing videos!
I noticed that too. I actually worked at EB in 1976. Hated it, worked at P&WA on the assembly floor hated it. I left there in 79. I grew up in Lebanon/Amston Lake and Hebron.
Anyone remember a pizza joint called "Six Wops and a ghost"......I acknowledge the non-politically correct verbiage, but that was what we all called it. The real name was Seven Brothers....but one died!
I was with the Tautog from 76 to 79. It was a 637 class & a good sub. Great crew.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
Blind Man’s Bluff is an excellent book. I highly recommend reading it.
Interesting and sad story. I did notice a slight error in time at 2:21, "then from June 1943 to May 1964...". Not possible if the ship was commissioned in 1960.
I heard it too. Video was rushed to completion without checking.
Yep.
lots of bad footage used in the video...depicting all kinds of boats...very obvious to everyone but those who put this together...Skipjack boats had a very distinctive appearance.....
@@frankpienkosky5688 Agreed- I was very confused to see what looked like a crew servicing a deck gun. Lots of stock footage used I guess.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confermation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit. Those are two differnt boats. The original was lost in 1944 to a mine in the Yellow Sea.
I was a submariner who served as a weapons specialist aboard USS Flasher (SSN613), 1977-81. In 1981 we had a mk37 torpedo mishap. The torpedo activated inside a torpedo tube. When the Flasher reversed course the torpedo shut itself off. Fortunately this was a training weapon. It had no warhead to explode. At the time of the loss of the Scorpion the mk37 had no other anti submarine acoustic torpedo. I was the senior weapons specialist aboard at the time. So I was questioned if any of Flasher’s equipment could have caused the mishap. There is nothing safe about a submarine. Some Admiral decided the submarine force would continue to carry mk37 torpedoes until after there was a replacement.
How would the fish know you had reversed course or was that just a coincidence?
@@customcoffinworks4916 …. The torpedo was still in the torpedo tube. When Flasher reversed course a safety interlock activated and the the props stopped spinning. Later that day the torpedo was shot out of the ship. To be retrieved by a waiting navy recovery craft. But the torpedo sank. Reports were made and that was the last I heard of it. Not long afterwords we offloaded all mk37’s still aboard. Never carried them again. The navy still had mk37’s and we only carried a few still then
I can tell you right now, the Navy conclusion is that it was a Mk 37 torpedo startup and ensuing explosion that caused the loss of the Scorpion. It's a precursor to the loss of the Kursk. Same thing happened.
@@idanceforpennies281 ….I’ve read that. I accept it as the most probable reason for the loss. The navy knew the 37 was a danger to it’s own submarines and considered it an acceptable risk.
@@customcoffinworks4916 Torps have a safety mechanism, especially the mk 37's, sometimes when techs were doing maintenance the mk 37 would start running, I believe they called a hot running torp, and the officer in charge would order a turn of 180 degrees which would engage the safety system and not allow the torp to arm..
I served with Submarine Squadron16 (Subron 16) in the early to mid-70s. The rumors were talked about all the time. These 2 accidents were the birth of the Sub Safe program.
My Father was Joe Underwood. He was an ICman on the Scorpion. He was one of the two men that got off the boat in Spain just before she was lost. What caused her to sink wasn't just the weaknesses of the boat but they may have contributed. The Navy has confirmation of what caused her sinking and it was combat. My dad had been a sub sailor for 11 years when he got off the boat. When saw the first published photos he instantly knew that she had been hit on the surface. Years after my dad's death, a well placed Naval officer told me what he knew and it confirmed that she was on the surface when she was hit.
R.I.P you brave men.