USS Scorpion (SSN-589)
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The USS Scorpion (Identifier SSN-589) was a Skipjack- class nuclear submarine of the United States Navy . It entered service in 1960 and sank in 1968 as the second nuclear powered submarine of the American Navy in the North Atlantic under circumstances that were still not fully understood. It is believed that a torpedo detonated inside the submarine . 99 sailors lost their lives. The wreck was not found until five months later at a depth of 3300 meters.
technology
The Skipjack- class boats were relatively small for nuclear submarines at just 76.8 meters in length. Thanks to the teardrop or teardrop shape of the hull , which was first tested at the Albacore , the boats were able to reach speeds of 30 knots for the first time .
The Scorpion was armed with six bow torpedo tubes from which, in addition to the Mark 37 torpedo , the Mark 45 ASTOR with a nuclear warhead could be fired.
Mission profile
The Scorpion was one of the hunting submarines . As such, it benefited most from its speed and its small size, which goes hand in hand with great maneuverability. The tasks of hunting submarines include shadowing enemy missile submarines , and patrols in strategically important marine regions such as the " GIUK gap ", the strait between Greenland , Iceland and Great Britain .
The Scorpion took part in several maneuvers in which it served as a training object for allied forces by simulating an enemy submarine and its tactics. The Scorpion was also able to perform covert operations . This includes, among other things, the acquisition of performance data from enemy ships , which is collected with the periscope or the ESM masts . Another possibility for the so-called “special operations” is telecommunications and electronic reconnaissance , for which the submarine has to drive close to the coast and usually also operate in hostile territorial waters .
history
Name and insignia
The Scorpion was the sixth ship in the US Navy to be named after the Scorpion ; its predecessor, a submarine in World War II, was lost under unknown circumstances.
The insignia of the boat shows a submarine hull in the shape of a tear, which was used for the first time in a class of regular submarines with the Skipjack class. Their core drive is symbolized underneath. Bottom left is a ballista , the Scorpion was called, the right is the constellation Scorpio to see.
construction
The Scorpion was in on 20 August 1958 , Electric Boat , the shipyard of General Dynamics in Groton , Connecticut , keel laid . She was launched on December 19, 1959. The ship was christened by Mrs. Elizabeth S. Morrison . The commissioning took place on July 29, 1960, its first commanding officer was Norman B. Bassac.
First trips
The first home port of the Scorpion was New London , Connecticut, where it was assigned to the "Submarine Squadron 6, Division 62". Her first journey began on August 24, 1960 and lasted two months. The Scorpion crossed the Atlantic and participated in NATO exercises in European waters, along with parts of the US Navy's Sixth Fleet . The rest of the year up to May 1961, the submarine carried out exercises off the east coast of the United States , before it sailed again for Europe and denied further exercises there until its return on August 9th. In September the boat was relocated to Norfolk , Virginia , where it received the Navy Unit Commendation in 1962 , an award given for exceptional performance in war or for particularly excellently executed operations in peacetime.
Missions from Norfolk
In Norfolk, the Scorpion was mainly used as a training boat for underwater tactics. So she often mimed a hostile submarine, including in the waters off Bermuda and Puerto Rico . From June 1963 to May 1964 a first overhaul was carried out in the shipyards in Charleston , South Carolina . From August 1964 a patrol trip in the Atlantic followed, in spring 1965 another in European waters. Soviet submarines were shadowed on these trips.
From the end of 1965 the Scorpion was used for covert operations, its commander received the Navy Commendation Medal for these operations , other officers and sailors received lower awards. The exact nature of these operations is still kept secret today.
overhaul
On February 1, 1967, the Scorpion was brought to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for a second overhaul . However, only a few repairs that were essential for operation were carried out, a complete overhaul was not carried out for reasons of cost and to increase the statistical service life of the nuclear submarines. This shortened overhaul was approved by the Chief of Naval Operations , Admiral David L. McDonald , on June 17, 1966, which was necessary because a complete overhaul should have taken place according to the " Submarine Safety Program " ("SUBSAFE"). This program was decided after the fall of the Thresher .
Last missions from Norfolk
At the end of October 1967, the Scorpion began training and testing the weapon system under its new commander Francis Slattery. The Scorpion finally left for her last voyage on February 15, 1968, a voyage that took her into the Mediterranean . The Seawolf was originally intended to be used for this voyage, but it ran aground in January and had to be overhauled. In the Mediterranean, the Scorpion mimed the hunted for boats of other NATO countries. A remarkable incident occurred in mid-April: When the Scorpion appeared and exchanged radio messages with the Cutlass , a Soviet destroyer ran at high speed towards the Scorpion and only turned shortly before a collision. According to the Commander of the Cutlass, Herbert E. Tibbets, the destroyer did this three or four times. Shortly after this incident on April 15, the Scorpion was in Naples harbor, where it collided with a barge during a heavy storm and sank it in the process. However, divers who examined the stern of the Scorpion on April 20 could not find any damage.
After this port visit, the Scorpion was supposed to investigate activities of the Soviet Navy , which launched suspicious balloons in the Atlantic . Before this mission, there was a stopover in Rota , Spain , to bring two team members ashore, one for family reasons, the second for medical reasons. The investigation into the hydroacoustic operations of the Soviets, in which two survey vessels, a submarine rescue ship and a submarine of Project 659 (Echo class) participated, turned out negative. Slattery said he took some photos but was unable to find out much about the purpose of the balloons. The location of these operations is unknown, but US Navy released documents speak of a sighting of a group of Soviet ships 500 kilometers off the northwest coast of Africa . The aerial surveillance of this group was suspended between May 19 and 21. This roughly corresponds to the time the Scorpion was in the area, suggesting that the Scorpion shadowed this group.
Then the Scorpion drove back towards Norfolk, where it was expected on May 27, but never arrived. The last report was made on the evening of May 21st. In her, the commander announced that she was 50 nautical miles south of the Azores on the assigned route home. The Scorpion sank approximately 400 miles (740 km) southwest of the Azores around May 22 with 99 crew members on board to a depth of approximately 3380 meters (11,100 feet). On June 5th the boat was declared lost and on June 30th it was removed from the Navy's register of ships.
After the downfall
Search for the wreck
After the Scorpion had not reported over the radio in Norfolk in the last week before the planned arrival and did not appear in front of the naval port on May 27, a search for the ship was started. However, from the beginning there was little hope of rescuing the 99 seamen on board, as the ocean is 3,000 meters deep on the entire route, which is well beyond the depth of the submarine of about 600 meters. None of the submarines sailing the route in search of the Scorpion found a missing submarine sign.
Meanwhile, the Navy's leading deep-sea scientist , John Craven , began a search. Knowing that a possible explosion and implosion on the tapes of the Navy's underwater listening system , SOSUS , would have been filtered out, he contacted an oceanographic laboratory in Bermuda that was funded by the Navy. In fact, eight underwater explosions were found on the records there, but they could also have been caused by submarine earthquakes or the like. Since the exact location of the explosions did not emerge from the records, but only the direction from which the sound was coming, Craven put the direction in connection with the time of the explosion and the route of the Scorpion and thus came up with eight possible locations that are immediately of scouts were flown. However, they did not find any residues such as oil or debris on the water surface.
Independently of Craven, Wilton Hardy, an acoustician at the United States Naval Research Laboratory , contacted a US Air Force underwater listening facility with two stations on Newfoundland , about 300 kilometers apart. In fact, their staff found signs of an underwater explosion, which, when compared with Craven's data, turned out to be one of the eight possibilities that Craven had also considered. This point, which later turned out to be the actual place of ruin, was only about 640 kilometers southwest of the Azores. The submarine sank only 18 hours after its last report.
That point, which the search focused on from that point on, was called the Oscar point . However, since the Scorpion had to sink 3,380 meters to the sea floor after the first explosion , a circle with a diameter of a good 30 kilometers resulted, in which the wreck probably had to lie. The Navy sent the Mizar , a former polar tender, which had been converted into a deep-sea research ship , as a search unit to the Oscar point. After this was searched unsuccessfully, the Navy ordered the Mizar to search west of the point, as it was assumed that the Scorpion had gone west before the disaster; however, the search remained without result.
Meanwhile, Craven made further calculations, which showed that the recorded explosions, and with them the submarine, had moved eastward. For this reason, Craven used a search method based on Bayesian estimation . He let numerous marine experts bet on the most likely scenario in order to include the factor “hunch”. The participants gave estimates regarding the angle, speed and direction of the descent of the Scorpion . The result was that the Scorpion must be east of Point Oscar. After the search in the west was unsuccessful, the Mizar finally went east. On October 29, five months after the boat was lost, one of the underwater cameras actually captured images of the wreck at a depth of 3,380 meters.
Exploring the wreck
Photos of a remote-controlled submersible operating from the Mizar clearly showed that the Scorpion had been torn in two by the explosion, which had independently carved two ruts in the seabed. The front part included the torpedo room and the control center, the rear consisted of the remains of the engine room and the reactor department. The tower has been demolished and, with the two parts, lies in a field of small rubble.
In 1969 the Bathyscaphe Trieste II was sent to the submarine and took a large number of pictures in seven dives, some of which were later published. The Navy was particularly interested in torpedo tubes ; However, it was not possible to take pictures from inside the torpedo room. In the published pictures, the entire bow area where the explosion took place was completely left out. The Trieste also tested water and sediments for contamination by radioactivity .
A second thorough exploration took place in 1985, when the deep submersible Alvin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) dived to the wreck on behalf of the Navy and took the first color photos of the Scorpion . This was done in great secrecy; for camouflage it was reported that the mission was to find the Titanic . Only after a newspaper report did the Navy admit that the mission had led to the Scorpion and published some of the pictures, but again none of the explosion in the torpedo room. According to reports, a camera arm of the Alvin was again not able to film images of the interior of the torpedo room. From other published images it was evident that the engine room, which is located in the stern of a submarine, was pushed into the departments in front of it like a telescope, which was possible because the diameter of the teardrop-shaped shell decreases sharply towards the stern.
Possible reasons for the drop
After the accident, a committee of inquiry consisting of seven officers was formed. The result of his investigation was communicated to the public in a press release in January 1969, whereby it was made clear that no exact cause could be determined on the basis of the evidence. It was not until 1993, when the Clinton administration cleared the entire report, that it became apparent that a torpedo accident was most likely to the Investigative Committee; only on the basis of assertions of the command for weapons technology that a torpedo explosion inside the submarine was impossible, this result was withheld. Gas leaks, fires and other mechanical failures were also taken into account. From the outset, the Navy categorically denied the possibility that the Scorpion could have been sunk by an enemy submarine. Today, a torpedo battery fire that ignited the warhead is the most likely cause.
Mechanical cause
It is relatively unlikely that a mechanical failure on board could have led to the sinking. Possible causes include gas leaks, water ingress into the pressure hull or fire. Rumors of mechanical failures were mainly fueled by the poor condition the Scorpion was in before the last voyage. The maximum diving depth is said to have been limited to 100 meters; Likewise, there are said to have been requests for transfers in which dangers were allegedly pointed out. A few months before the last use, strong vibrations should have occurred during a test drive that almost led to the boat sinking. The cause of the error should never have been found.
Hot run of a torpedo
For a long time, the most likely cause of the accident was a torpedo hot run . A torpedo is activated in the torpedo tube and the screw begins to turn. In order to deactivate the torpedo again, the submarine must complete a 180-degree turn, after which the torpedo deactivates automatically to avoid attacking its own ship. This would also explain why the Scorpion headed east before the explosion.
Since the Navy ruled out the possibility that a torpedo could explode in the tube, it was alternatively assumed that a torpedo had been ejected after a hot run and then, despite the existing safety devices, attacked his ship.
One of these possibilities is considered particularly likely because the Mark 37 torpedoes, of which the Scorpion had 14 on board, were known for hot runs . In addition, a test device for this type of torpedo had been misused several times, which triggered hot runs . Combined with the fact that many devices on board a submarine are routinely subjected to function tests on the journey home, a hot run was also accepted as the most likely cause by the investigative committee.
Fire from an enemy submarine
Categorically excluded from the Navy, there were frequent rumors that the Soviet military could be responsible for the loss of the Scorpion . Indications for this are above all the involvement of the Scorpion in secret service operations , which are still subject to secrecy. In particular, the monitoring of Soviet activities a few days before the sinking is given as the reason for sinking, as the group is said to have included an Echo-class submarine. It is also stated that a Soviet helicopter first lured the Scorpion with sonar signals and then torpedoed it. However, US reports released in the 1990s say that there was no change in the group's pattern of operations either during or after the Scorpion's presence .
Another reason for a possible sinking of the Scorpion see followers of this theory in the two months before the happened accident aboard the Soviet submarine of the Golf class , K-129 in the Pacific (This submarine was later in the project azorian part of the CIA lifted). After the incident, the government of the USSR said that the K-129 had been sunk by submarines of the US Navy, so that the Scorpion could also have been sunk in revenge. Such speculations were fueled by statements by Russian naval officers in the 1990s, according to which there had been agreements between Soviet and American submarine officers not to investigate the involvement of the other side in either case.
Torpedo battery explosion
Today, on the basis of new information that was not yet available to the investigative commission, but was only published by journalists of the New York Times in 1998 in the book Jagd unter Wasser (original: Blind Man's Bluff ), it is assumed that a burning torpedo battery of the type Mark 46 detonated the warhead for the Mark 37 torpedoes. This theory is based on a secret incident when testing a battery: During a vibration test, the battery exploded without warning. It turned out that the membrane, which was supposed to prevent the flow of electrolyte into the energy cell and which was supposed to tear completely when the torpedo was activated, had been damaged somewhat due to the movements and the chemicals slowly mixed, which generated heat and ultimately triggered a fire. In light of the vibrations that have occurred on board the Scorpion , this is now seen as the most likely cause of the accident. One of the engineers at the laboratory where the explosion took place also says he remembers hearing in a conversation that the Scorpion had a battery from the faulty charge on board. The warning of these batteries came a few days before the Scorpion set off for Norfolk home.
Consequences for the environment
The wreck of the Scorpion is very dangerous for the area, as two Mark 45 ASTOR torpedoes with nuclear warheads were on board in addition to the reactor . The US Navy regularly examines water and sediment samples as well as fish from the area for contamination by plutonium . According to the naval reports, the results have so far shown no radiation or other pollution. This shows that the reactor is still tight.
literature
- Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew: Hunt under water. The real story of submarine espionage. Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 2000. ISBN 3-570-00425-2
- Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler: All Hands Down: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion ( English ), 2008. Edition, Simon & Schuster ,, ISBN 0-7432-9798-9 .
- Ed Offley: Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon: The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion ( English ), 2007. edition, Perseus Books Group, ISBN 0-465-05185-5 .
See also
Web links
- ZDF-History: Deadly revenge - nuclear submarines in battle Information on the documentation from 2011
- USS Scorpion in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (Engl.)
- Images of Scorpion on navsource.org (Engl.)
- Pictures of the Scorpion on history.navy.mil (engl.)
- Summary of the report of the inquiry commission (Engl.)
- Theories of sinking of the Scorpion by Soviet submarines (Engl.)
