The USS Scorpion Disaster

Join Kelli as she goes over what happened to the USS Scorpion, a skipjack-class nuclear-powered attack submarine that disappeared in May of 1967. It was found five months later, 2 miles down on the Atlantic seabed, broken into pieces. It's entire crew of 99 men sank with it.

Was it an attack? Did it implode? What caused her to sink?

Though tons of theories have been crafted, because we don't *actually* know what happened, we'll use our favorite philosophical tool (Occam's Razor) to determine which of the many theories is the most likely.

Sources to Read:

• Stephen Johnson, Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion. John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, NJ. 2006.
• US Navy FOIA Reading Room, specifically the Scorpion Case Files https://www.secnav.navy.mil/foia/readingroom/SitePages/Home.aspx?RootFolder=%2Ffoia%2Freadingroom%2FCaseFiles%2FScorpion%20Submarine&FolderCTID=0x012000CD3AEB341204C14DB4C7B99C57E99B26&View=%7B988EEA5C%2DDFDB%2D4A5D%2D8414%2DB7A63DACECE2%7D

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The USS Scorpion Disaster
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a podcast that covers the… unpopular stories from history - tales about disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.

In today’s episode, I want to talk about another naval disaster, because it’s been a while. I haven’t talked about ships since I did a story about disaster and survival cannibalism on board the HMS Mignonette. That episode was in September of 2024. So it’s been far too long. Shame on me. 

And though there isn’t any cannibalism in today’s episode, there’s a fair amount of misery and mystery. Let’s talk about the USS Scorpion.

In May of 1968, the USS Scorpion, a Skipjack-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, disappeared along with its 99-man crew. She was meant to arrive at her home port in Norfolk, Virginia on May 27th, but she never made it. When she didn’t show, and nobody could reach her on the radio, a search party went out looking for the submarine. But to no avail.

Months later, sections of her hull were found 2 miles down on the Atlantic seabed, 460 miles southwest of the Azores. Or 740 kilometers. And the Azores are west of Portugal, for those of you who need the geographic context.

So in today’s episode, we’re going to explore what happened to the USS Scorpion. Was there a mishap on board? Was it attacked? Let’s dive into the murky depths of classified Naval inquiries, the Cold War, and nuclear submarines.

As usual, we’ll start this story with some historical context – what was going on in the world in 1968? What was the USS Scorpion doing before it disappeared, and might that have anything to do with its disappearance? Once we have a better understanding of the times, we’ll take a look at the story itself. This is one of those episodes where there are lots of theories about what happened, because we just… don’t actually know? We have some pretty good ideas based on what evidence does exist, but it took years to get some of this information out of the navy, which only fueled speculation that perhaps they knew more than they shared. So was this a horrible accident? An act of war? We’ll take a look at the evidence ourselves and employ one of my favorite philosophical tools – Occam’s Razor – to figure it out. The simplest answer, the one that requires the fewest assumptions, is usually the correct one.

So let’s get started.
Historical Context
I’m going to try and keep the historical context as brief as possible. I just want to give you a cursory overview of the period, enough to understand some of the choices made

In terms of the military context of the 1960s, there are two main events to consider. The Cold War, and the Vietnam War. And yes, I know they are related. Let’s work through it chronologically.

Though the Soviet Union was our ally during World World II, this quickly changed once the war ended with Japan’s surrender in 1945. And to be fair, though we were both allied powers, we weren’t really… friends. It was an alliance of convenience, because we shared a common enemy. Nazi Germany. 

In fact, we started becoming hostile to each other during the Russian Revolution, but that’s a story for another day.

During WWII, despite being aligned against Nazi Germany, the US and Soviet Union were deeply distrustful of each other, often keeping plans from one another and arguing battle strategies. When the war ended, and we divvied up land in Germany to control, the tension was already there. The Soviet Union started encroaching in Eastern Europe to be a buffer zone, which the US saw for what it was; the spread of communist ideology in the face of what it considered an enemy, western democracy and capitalism. The Cold War began soon after.

Now many consider the height of the Cold War to be the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a 13-day standoff between the US and Soviet Union in October 1962.

In the late 1950s, the US started setting up nuclear missiles in allied countries, all pointing at Moscow. We had them in Britain, Italy, and Turkey. Russia, for their part, decided to do the same with their allies: Cuba. Only about 100 miles away from the US. It was an intense standoff; the world was on the brink of nuclear war, the closest it had ever come and has ever been since. 

Side tangent, this just made me reminisce about some of my favorite nonsense to show my students. Do you know or remember the 1952 Duck and Cover PSA? I used to show it to my students every year just for fun. If you don’t know what Duck and Cover is, it’s an almost 10 minute long public service announcement put together by the Civil Defense administration to teach kids – using cute cartoons coupled with live action sequences of other kids – how to… uhh… supposedly survive an atomic bomb drop. By, you know, ducking and covering under a school desk, or against the curb, or in a doorframe.

Yeah… it’s… pretty bleak. Wouldn’t really help if the bombs were dropped right on top of you, but still. Better than nothing. It was the 50s equivalent of shooter drills today, which are also super bleak. Duck and Cover had some catchy tunes, though. You know, to not scare the kids about their impending doom.

Anyway, go watch it on YouTube if you haven’t seen it. Duck and Cover, 1952. The thumbnail is probably a turtle wearing an army helmet. It’s got that mesmorizing 1950s way of speaking H-where they overemphasize the H in words like HWhere, HWhat, and HWhite! 

Anyway, back to, uh, the… Cuban… Missile Crisis? I’ve had better segues.

So after intense negotiations, JFK and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to stand down; the Soviets would remove missiles from Cuba, and in return, the US agreed not to invade it. Again.

There is plenty more to that story, of course. Like the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, our failed attempt at overthrowing Cuba, which in part led to the Missile Crisis in the first place. But I’m trying to keep this context brief for a change.

By its nature, a “Cold War” is not an actual war. The US and USSR were not technically at war with one another. Instead, proxy wars broke out in other countries; wars that were fought because of this tension between communism and capitalism, between the US and the Soviets. One of those wars was the Vietnam War. North Vietnam was backed by both the Soviet Union and China, communist states. South Vietnam was supported by the US and its democratic allies. By fighting wars in other countries, like Vietnam, but also Korea in the decade beforehand, the US and Soviet Union were fighting for global hegemony, but without actually turning the guns on each other. We just… fought using other countries instead.

And it is during this decade of political turmoil, tensions, nuclear fears, invading countries, missiles, and more, that we needed to make sure our navy was ready for anything. Which included our nuclear-powered attack submarines, like the USS Scorpion.

That might be my shortest historical context ever. I’m kinda proud of myself! But really, all you need to know to truly appreciate today’s story is that we were at war in Vietnam, on the verge of war with the Soviet Union, and needed a fighting-fit military, ready to go at a moment's notice.
Nuclear-powered Submarines
Perhaps more so than the historical context, some scientific context is necessary for this episode. Or perhaps not, but I’m going to do it anyway. Because nuclear-powered submarines are fascinating and terrifying, they are still in use today, and my lovely father-in-law served on one – the HMS Renown, a Resolution-class ballistic missile sub – during his time in the Royal Navy. So here’s hoping I get it right!

Please consider and remember that I’m an historian and a writer, not an engineer, submariner, or nuclear scientist… So where applicable, I will give visuals to help make this whole section more broadly accessible to us non-military folk. Which is my thing. I’m not attempting to cheapen the science or engineering by describing it in simple terms. And I’ll also be specifically describing the design of the skipjack class of nuclear-powered submarines, which are no longer in service. There were only 6 made. So while other nuclear submarines may look and function very similarly, please know I’m trying to focus on this one particular model. Ok. That’s all of my disclaimers. Don’t come for me, I’m doing my best.

Now nuclear-powered submarines are cool because unlike previous models, they don’t need to surface as often to recharge their batteries. Previously, a submarine would have to surface, diesel engines would run the propellers, and that system would charge batteries. When the batteries were charged, the engines were turned off, and the submarine could descend again. The batteries would then take over running the propeller. When they ran out of juice, they would need to surface again, rinse, and repeat. But having to surface is when submarines are visible and therefore most vulnerable to attacks, and you don’t want to run out of juice in the middle of a stealth operation, right? Kind of defeats the purpose.

So immediately after WWII, scientists and engineers started to research nuclear-powered propulsion. The world witnessed the power of nuclear weapons with Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and we know that the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction was a few years before that in 1942. I went over that in my Chernobyl episode, and probably also my Fukushima episode. Or you can go watch Oppenheimer if you have a few hours to kill. So the thought was, why not apply this all-new, powerful, self-sustaining energy source to submarines?

The first operating power plant was the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union, which started up in June of 1954. Shortly after that the US commissioned the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, which became operational in January of 1955. The hope was to eliminate the need for submarines to come up for air as frequently, so it could just stay at depth for significantly longer periods of time.

Now theoretically, a modern nuclear submarine could stay underwater for 20ish years, which is wild to think about. Realistically, and with modern standards and practices, that time is limited to 3-4 months. Any longer than that and fresh food rations are spoiled, and I imagine the crew’s mental state would be as well. But this is still significantly longer than the older diesel-electric submarines would stay submerged; those only averaged 2-5 days underwater before needing to surface. So 3-4 months is a significant improvement, especially when at war.

The limiting factors for nuclear subs were now crew rations and supplies, as well as nuclear fuel. When it ran low on fuel, it needed to come back to base, be “dry-docked,” and then serviced. And in case you didn’t know, dry docking is literally taking the vessel out of the water to service it. Docking it. In the… dry. Instead of the… wet. All boats and subs need to be dry docked when serviced to inspect exterior parts for damages, leaks, and to remove barnacles and such.

Anyways. When the reactor fuel needed to be replaced, a “patch,” or section, was cut through both the outer superstructure, also called a casing, and the inner hull, or pressure hull. Since a submarine needs to be able to withstand pressure as it descends, it needs these two layers. As the submarine descends, the specific metals and metal alloys that make up the pressure hull allow the air within to stay at the same atmospheric pressure, which of course is necessary for the people living inside it. It’s what holds back the crushing weight of water and atmosphere. The space in between the two hulls fills with water to act as ballast, which is how the submarine can dive and surface. The broader point is that there are two hulls. That’s what you need to remember, I guess.

So to replace the reactor core, they had to cut through both hulls. They did this through the back of the tall fairwater, or sail. Okay, so imagine in your head what a submarine looks like, alright? Even if it’s the Beatles’ yellow submarine. Just picture your typical submarine. The tall bit that looks like the sailfin on a fish, that pokes out of the water, is the fairwater. It’s that tower-like structure, and coming out of it you’ll often see the periscope and other antennas. The fairwater also normally has radar equipment and other electronics… It also serves as a bit of a look-out platform.

Now once they’ve cut these patches out of the hulls, they can access the reactor containment vessel. I’m not going to get into how nuclear reactors work again; for that, listen to my Chernobyl or Fukushima episodes. But if you know anything about nuclear reactors at all, even just by watching shows like Chernobyl, you already know that you can’t just hang out in the same space as a functioning, running nuclear reactor. The whole thing is housed in a heavily shielded midship compartment, midship meaning the middle of the ship, and is enclosed by a thick hull and bulkheads, or heavy steel walls. We wouldn’t want radiation leaking into the living spaces, right? So the reactor sits in a sealed compartment that is locked and isolated during operation. The skipjack-line of submarines were notable for using high yield-80 steel in its hull and frame, originally designed as armor for aircraft carriers. It allowed the skipjacks to dive 700 feet deeper than previously-designed submarines. They could also withstand more explosive energy in case of attack, so skipjacks were top of the line at the time.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why the heavy reactor and its housing would be in the middle of the ship, and not, say, at one of the ends where it is further from the living spaces… well, think of all that heavy steel closing it in. You wouldn’t want the submarine to be off balance. So placing it in the middle of the submarine helps with that balance, and the encasing around it also helps with the structural integrity of the hull. 

After all of the repairs are made, the whole thing is patched back up and then tested at sea. This is super, super important. To understand why, let’s take a quick look at another submarine disaster, that of the USS Thresher, that happened only four years before the Scorpion went missing.

The Thresher was dry docked and getting repairs in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. It had previously been in Florida and was struck by a tugboat, which damaged a ballast tank. Repairs kept it out of service for nine months. It was put back in the water in April 1963 to perform tests. You need to make sure a submarine can handle speed, depth, and pressure while underwater, so it would be tested near the base first before being allowed back into action. Makes sense.

On the morning of April 9th, it dove and surfaced several times to test how it handled the pressure. While doing this, it stayed in communication with a submarine rescue ship – standard practice – to report how the trial went. It stayed at depth overnight, and then the following morning continued its deep-dive trials. Every 100 ft it dove tested each system’s integrity. When the Thresher reached its test depth – 1,300 feet, or almost 400 meters – the surface rescue ship received a hard-to-hear communication that said “minor difficulties, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow.” After that, an even harder to make out message which contained the number “900.” Then, radio silence. Something was wrong.

15 Navy ships were sent out to find the missing Thresher. Pieces of the wreckage were found two months later in June 1963, and more in August, 220 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, sitting at a depth of 8,400 feet. It had imploded and sank during its deep dive tests, and all 129 crew members and technicians, who were only on board for the tests, died. It remains one of the deadliest disasters in submarine history, only surpassed in casualties by the French submarine Surcouf [sir-koof] in 1942.

What is believed to have happened is that a piping joint failed, and water sprayed the electrical equipment, shutting down the reactor. But without power from the reactor, the submarine couldn’t surface and couldn’t dump water from the ballast tanks. And so, the submarine sank below its lowest possible depth – known as the crush depth. Pressure overcame the vessel and it imploded, crushing all 129 men on board.

So while vitally important to make sure a submarine is sea-ready, those tests can also be quite tricky and scary. But once all of the tests are done, and the nuclear reactor is running as planned, the submarine can resume its duty out at sea.

So let’s pivot to the Scorpion, and where this story really begins – it’s dry docking in Norfolk Virginia in 1967.
The Scorpion at Port
In the beginning of the summer of 1967, the Scorpion was dry-docked at its designated home base in Norfolk, Virginia. It had been out at sea for 31 months, and it was running on empty. You know when your car is empty, but you know it’s got another gallon or two in reserve, so you’re playing gas chicken? …No? Just me? Anyway, it was that empty. It was brought in for service and refueling in February of 1967. And she needed a complete overhaul. 

Importantly, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard was not very well kit out for refueling nuclear reactors, which seems like an oversight considering it was the Scorpion’s home base. Machinist Mate Second Class David Stone, a sailor with nuclear training, wrote the following in a letter to his parents, as found in Stephen Johnson’s book Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion. Quote:

“Mose of the yardbirds… don’t even know what they’re doing and a few – physicists, etc. – direct the work, so I get treated like a big wheel since everyone wears anti-contamination clothing. Because I am on speaking terms with the shipyard commander, and the Scorpion commanding officer, they think I’m some sort of nuclear inspector. We all laugh about it because in a few hours we’ll be sweeping down the decks or carrying out the trash.”

End quote.

Yikes. I mean I’m glad some nuclear physicists were there, but in retrospect it's more than a little concerning how blasé and informal this all sounds.

It took a few months to install the new nuclear core. It took a few months beyond that to do other repairs and inspections. On July 5th, they started up the reactor only to find problems with it, so they had to engage the control rods to slow down the reaction and stop it to do even more repairs.

After learning so much about Chernobyl, the term “control rods” makes me shudder. *Shudder audibly* I know nuclear reactors today are very safe and well controlled, I get that. But those graphite tipped control rods in the RBMK… terrifying. Again, go listen to that episode for that specific story if you’re not already aware of the nitty gritty details of what went wrong there.

It wasn’t just the nuclear reactor that had problems on the dry-docked Scorpion; in addition to fixing some basic wear and tear, some of the air compressors needed to operate the ballast tank – which allows water to flow into and out of the space between the two hulls – were malfunctioning as well. Two of the water pumps that brought seawater into the reactor boilers, which helps modulate the temperature of the whole system, were also damaged. 

Once all of this was fixed, she was trialed at sea to make sure she was seaworthy. Remembering the Thresher, which was only a few years prior, I can only imagine how tense the crew was while testing the Scorpion at depth. They would have watched for pressure leaks in the inner hull. They would have looked at the joints sealing pipes together, holes in hoses bringing seawater into the reactor housing. Any water leakage could be catastrophic, like with what happened to the Thresher. 

During the trials, the propulsion shaft seal was leaking. It wasn’t meant to be a watertight seal, but it was letting in too much. It was recently just put in, too. They corrected the problem… though it wasn’t a permanent fix.

When it was time to test speed, it got to within 2 knots of its top speed. For the land dwellers like me, 2 knots is 2.3 miles per hour. The skipjack-class submarines would go up to 30 knots, which was pretty impressive. But after its refitting and service, the Scorpion wasn’t hitting top speed anymore. Johnson notes that, quote,

“Considering the immense speed of which the Scorpion was capable, the loss of 2 knots might seem inconsequential, but to submariners who knew they might need to outrun an enemy torpedo, they could mean the difference between life and death.”

End quote.

It was also curiously noisier, which is problematic for a vessel meant to be silent in its stealth operations.

Now here’s something else worth remembering, to be filed away for later in this episode. The USS Thresher tragedy led to a change in safety protocols, including the creation of SUBSAFE, which stands for – easily figured out, to be honest, because it's not actually an acronym – the submarine safety program. SUBSAFE began in December 1963, and the point was to prevent non-seaworthy submarines from being able to operate. Between 1915-1963, the US lost 16 submarines due to internal faults, not from war. And after the Thresher, they put SUBSAFE in place to prevent that from happening again.

SUBSAFE pretty much just targets flooding. It investigates any system that is exposed to pressure or is needed for flooding recovery. It has a pretty detailed and rigorous list of qualifications to make sure a submarine’s hull will remain watertight, and in cases where there is a hull breach, it can recover and surface. They really, really, didn’t want another incident like the Thresher. And fun fact! Since implementation, the US Navy has not lost a single, SUBSAFE-certified vessel to flooding. 

*cough*

Do you… do you wanna guess whether or not the Scorpion was SUBSAFE certified? If you’re actually listening to me and not just zoning out or playing this as background noise, you can confidently guess that the Scorpion was not, in fact, SUBSAFE certified.

So when the tests were done, despite a few issues, it was considered to have passed its trials. The only main problems were the reduction in speed and that slightly leaky propulsion shaft seal. Everyone was happy, especially the Navy, which was eager to keep the fleet ready to go. After all, like I set up in the historical context, this was during the height of the Cold War, just post-Cuban Missile Crisis, mid Vietnam War. The Navy wanted its 1967 fleet of 932 active ships, which included 146 submarines of various types, rrrrready to go.

And so, instead of figuring out the speed issue or properly fixing that shaft seal, the Scorpion was returned to its berth – where ships are built and launched into the water – and prepared for its return to sea. Just in case, they did have a diver check out the propellers in case there was some kind of chip on them which would explain the reduction in speed, but they were fine. It was sent back into action, via some training for its crew up in New London, Connecticut.

But while training its crew on firefighting – something all crew members need to be practiced in, for they are out at sea alone and need to fight their own fires – a leak sprung inside the housing of the sixth torpedo tube. It would have meant seawater filling the torpedo tube, which is obviously not great, so it was once again dry docked for repairs, this time in Connecticut. And while they were at it, they figured they’d check out those propellers again.

The leak was fixed, and upon inspection, they noticed a tiny gauge in the face of one of the propellers, 4 inches long, 1/16th of an inch deep. Not really an issue, wouldn’t cause a 2-knot drop in speed. The gash was left alone, because it might have caused more troubles to fix than it was worth, but the propellers were all polished and sharpened.

It had one final test to clear before being sent back into active duty – the weapon system accuracy trial. Essentially, the crew was tested at loading and firing torpedoes. The men needed to be able to do their part, and the submarine needed to be able to fire the torpedoes without, you know, breaking. Or malfunctioning. Or… exploding. So the Scorpion went down to St. Croix [croy] in the US Virgin Islands, where the Navy had an underwater test range for this exact thing, to pass the weapon system accuracy test. The Scorpion’s most important weapon was the Mark-37 torpedo, with 330 pounds of a high blast explosive mix of TNT, RDX, and some other components. So of course, this would need to be tested. They didn’t use live torpedoes, though. They used REXTORPS - Recoverable Exercise Torpedoes – a way to test torpedo capabilities without the risk of explosions in case something was wrong. Kind of like a blank in a weapon; it’s used for training. There were a few problems with the tests, but eventually, they completed their weapons training and went back to home base, Norfolk. Just to be sure everything was operating smoothly, they decided to test their Mk-37 REXTORPs again. 

This time, it didn’t go so well.

A pair were loaded into the torpedo tubes, but wouldn’t respond to the electronics required to make them discharge. So, the torpedomen assumed there was a short in the circuit. The REXTORP was left in the now-flooded torpedo tube, and they turned to the other one, which launched as intended. But before they had time to deal with the first REXTORP, they heard the motor start up; the weapon had activated, and now at risk of being what’s called a “hot run” torpedo, which is a torpedo that activates while inside the ship, which could potentially lead to an explosion.

Now even though this was a REXTORP and didn’t have any explosive agents in it, it could still potentially overheat, and it was producing electricity, which could still be a deadly combo. Luckily, the chamber was already flooded – that’s step one with a hot run torpedo. Surround the thing in seawater to cool it down, and any gasses generated would dissipate into the ocean. Then, report it to the control room. The standard operating procedure for a hot run torpedo is to turn the submarine 180 degrees, which essentially turns on a fail safe that deactivates the live torpedo. Once the battery runs out, then the crew can extract the torpedo for repair.

If done calmly, though still a dangerous situation, it can be fixed. There are measures in place. Things happen. But the Scorpion’s crew had been very much out of practice, especially its torpedomen. They’d been out of sea for longer than anticipated, and it’s not like they can get daily practice with what they do. Johnson recounts, quote,

“What took place in the Scorpion torpedo room that day was far less calm and precise. The scene was one of chaos as torpedomen, caught flatfooted by the hot-running torpedo, attempted to determine the best course of action. [One of the torpedomen later told the Court of Inquiry, after the Scorpion’s disappearance,] “At the time [Peercy and I] were in the torpedo room [with] the rest of the weapons department and torpedo handlers, and Peercy tried to get the control room on the phone. Between [us] we got so excited, I guess, we didn’t know what was going on. Peercy thought it was going to get too hot inside the tube, so he just turned to the stop [bolt] and let it go out the tube.” Peercy would later admit to the Court of Inquiry that he released the torpedo without getting the proper permission from the control room… He would later say he was surprised by the malfunction, since he had never before experienced a Mark-37 hot run. He and his [torpedomen] immediately conducted tests on the torpedo tubes and the fire control system but were unable to locate the problem.”

End quote.

Scary, huh? I don’t blame the men, really. They had normal, valid, human reactions. 

And apparently, this was a Mk-37 hazard – a rare chance that it might unexpectedly activate while in the torpedo tube. The safety mechanisms on the torpedo would most likely prevent the warhead from detonating while inside the tube… but, I mean, still. They did frequent REXTORP tests with the Mk-37s for this very reason.

Another strange problem was a vibration that was only noticeable at one particular speed. They first felt this in the Caribbean when they went down to do the first weapons trials. It happened at 24 knots, and went away as the submarine sped up. Some described it as a corkscrew-like motion, and a later report described it akin to a washing machine with an unbalanced load. Nobody on board could explain what might cause that to happen. Electrician’s Mate Second Class Dan Rogers later said that, quote,

“It was really something. I never experienced anything like it. Nobody screamed or anything but as you passed the other guys in the passageway you just gave each other the look that submariners give each other when something wasn’t right.”

End quote.

Later external inspections revealed the same outcome as the last time divers checked the propellers – nothing wrong with them. The captain, Francis Slattery, and his superior, Captain Jared Clarke, commander of Submarine Squadron 6, wanted an answer, so they sent sound recordings to be analyzed; the findings determined that one of the propellers probably had a manufacturing defect. It wasn’t visible externally, which supports the divers’ findings that there was nothing wrong with them, but it should be changed. But that recommendation came too late; it was mailed three days before the Scorpion left port to rejoin its Fleet.

But apparently, with all this checking and rechecking of the propeller, they managed to fix whatever issue was causing them a 2 knot drop in maximum speed. The noise was still an issue, though.

In January, more exercises were carried out, and another kind of problem came to light. Slattery was told by his CO Jared Clarke that he, for lack of a better way of explaining it, wasn’t good enough. Clarke would later tell the inquiry panel that, quick quote, “He was an extremely competent mariner. He knew his boat extremely well and he was a capable administrator – and he operated his boat safely… [but he [operated the Scorpion]] below the potential of his ship.” End quote.

In early February, the Scorpion was given orders to head out to the Mediterranean. It would first serve in training exercises to test the capabilities of the hunter-killer submarine the USS Sturgeon, then do more exercises near the Azores, before heading through the Strait of Gibraltar and joining the Sixth Fleet in Naples, where it would stay and do more exercises until the middle of May. 

The problem was this friction point that existed between SUBSAFE recommendations – that long vetting process that would ensure all systems were operating properly in case of a catastrophic flood – and the Cold War. SUBLANT, the US Submarine Force Atlantic, needed that ship back out on duty. And so, corners were cut, the overhaul in port was heavily reduced from what SUBSAFE recommended, and therefore it wasn’t SUBSAFE-vetted. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral David McDonald signed off on foregoing SUBSAFE’s review to get it back out on the water faster.

Among the things that weren’t fixed while dry docked was the cooling system. It was apparently leaking freon more than expected, and had been in poor shape for years by this point. Freon of course was needed for the freezers – you know, for food, those freezers – and air conditioning. But since they weren’t fixed, the Scorpion just… brought a lot of freon on board to continually replenish it. It leaked too much freon into the air – up to 1,000 parts per million, which means nothing without context, of course. Essentially it was leaking seven times the normal allowable limits into the air. Captain Slattery even wrote back about this while in the Med in March of 1968, requesting it be fixed upon their return. It was a major concern.

My broader point is this – there were still issues with the Scorpion after it was supposedly repaired. Those issues should have been properly addressed. Had they gone with the essential SUBSAFE checks, put in place four years earlier after the Thresher implosion, those issues would have been solved. Instead, the Navy signed off on not doing SUBSAFE checks before its deployment, because she needed to be ready for war just in case.

The USS Scorpion left for her deployment on February 15th, 1968.
The Scorpion at Sea
So as not to completely bore you, because otherwise this story could go on for a long time, I’ll just highlight a few of the worrying things that happened before the main incident in question. There were three months between the Scorpion setting sail and disappearing… so a lot to cover. Which is why I’m giving you the highlight reel. 

One really worrying issue became apparent right before the Scorpion was helping train the hunter-killer USS Sturgeon – it was leaking hydraulic oil. At an alarming rate. It was losing 50 gallons an hour, which would drain the entire ship’s supply in eight days. Without the hydraulics, they wouldn’t be able to control the rudder, stern planes, or fairwater planes – the things needed to steer the ship. They breached, investigated, found the source of the leak, and solved the problem. 

They continued on to their hunter-killer training, but during that exercise, the rudder failed. Each time it failed, the ship would be thrown into a sharp left turn, cutting speed, which is obviously a massive problem.

For whatever reason, this only happened a few times, and they considered it a temporary blip. They mentioned the rudder failures to their higher ups, but not the oil leakage. From there, they carried on to the Azores, stopped off in Rota, Spain, for repairs and maintenance, then through Gibraltar, then into the Med.

Another problem encountered during this trek was the radio equipment; its antennas were broken and malfunctioning, and so there were communication problems. The navigation system even died at some point over the Atlantic crossing, though it was later fixed in port at Rota.

It’s also worth mentioning that morale on board the Scorpion was pretty low. Letters sent home during stops on land confirm this. Here’s what Radioman First Class David Pettey, who successfully (and fortuitously) requested transfer off the Scorpion, says of his time on the boat. Quote:

“In my opinion the morale of the crew was so bad there was no morale. The men had even quit complaining. The men would work like dogs and they [the officers] would promise the men a week off and then they would break that promise… They hung up a sign one time that read ‘Please Don’t Make Us Any More Promises.’”

End quote.

Pettey had 17 years experience; he wasn’t a new guy. So his perspective is really interesting. He was even trying to volunteer for hazardous army positions in Vietnam just to get off the Scorpion, which he considered toxic, as relayed in Johnson’s book. He left the boat in late March, 1968, and was transferred to the Skipjack, the same type of nuclear-powered attack submarine, and the submarine for which the class was named.

More problems arose – a hasty paint job inside the torpedo tubes was peeling, and paint chips were getting everywhere. Captain Slattery worried the paint chips would damage the gaskets which drew water from the torpedo tubes when drained for reloading. He wanted to dry dock the Scorpion again when they eventually got home in late May; there were too many problems accruing for a vessel that was only just refitted. He argued, in a letter, that, quick quote, “Delay of the work an additional year could seriously jeopardize Scorpion’s material readiness during the intervening year; [there could be] potential damage to [the] torpedo tube slide and drain valves.” End quote.

In April, while in Naples, the Scorpion again had an issue with its propeller. This time, it was more obvious; the waters around Italy were filled with fishing nets and lines, and they would get tangled up in them. So divers from the USS Shenandoah went down and removed ropes caught in the stern and propeller. There were no other problems found at the time.

When it was time to depart the Mediterranean, the Scorpion had to make a quick detour; one man was seriously ill – coughing up blood, which Slattery worried might be something contagious like tuberculosis – and another man’s wife had given birth prematurely, and the baby passed away shortly after. Both men were transferred off the Scorpion for medical and emergency leave, respectively, on May 16th. They’d then catch a flight from Rota to get home. After those two men left the ship, the Scorpion went back underwater and set a course for home, due to arrive on May 24th.

However, they were given a reconnaissance mission on the way back to observe Soviet naval activity in the Atlantic near the Azores.

Obviously, since the US was engaged in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the Soviets were denied access to ports in the Atlantic. Its fleet was separated over long distances in hostile waters. And so, when they needed to scurry through Atlantic waters, they would have to do it quickly and sneakily. To combat this, they set up a system of support vessels to make a mid-Atlantic Soviet base, of sorts. Not only would this give a bit of safety in numbers for the Soviets, but it would allow them to continue to extend their naval reach. Especially in the winter, when their home ports were encased in ice.

One of the ships operating near this Soviet flotilla was a Soviet guided missile submarine. It wasn’t as powerful as a skipjack-class nuclear-powered attack sub like the Scorpion, but the presence of Soviet missile subs in the Atlantic wasn’t a comfortable thought – remember, this isn’t too long after the tensions of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet attack sub was near the Azores, so the Scorpion was sent to go check it out. This mission was completed by 11 pm on May 21st. It surfaced, just enough so the fairwater and its communications equipment poked out, and attempted to send a message to the Naval Communication Station back in Rota. The idea was for Rota to relay their message back to SUBLANT, but they were unable to reach the Spanish port.

Strangely, 2000 miles further away to the East than Rota, the Naval Comms Station in Nea Makri Greece intercepted the signal and offered to relay the messages to Rota, which would then send them on to SUBLANT back in the US. Communications between Scorpion and Nea Makri were established at 1:02 am on May 22, and Nea Makri received a coded signal that said “I have one immediate message.” Three minutes later, communications were lost.

At 1:31, they managed to reconnect. The Greek radioman sent the message that they were, quote, “being interfered with extremely,” which was likely either atmospheric interference or another ship broadcasting on the same frequency.

It took two hours to fully communicate the Scorpion’s message, which was considered a long period of time. By 3:03 am, the Scorpion finished transmitting its messages - it ended up being more than one – but none of the messages implied any problems on the ship, that they were being pursued by Soviets, or anything that might explain its later disappearance. They also relayed their position as of 12:01 am on May 22, which was 29 degrees, 19 minutes North, 27 degrees, 37 minutes West. This puts them southwest of the Azores. And this was the last message of the USS Scorpion. It sank 13 hours later.

The Scorpion was due to arrive at port in Norfolk on May 27th, 1968. Nobody had been expecting to hear from it before its arrival date, so families were told a few days beforehand when it would arrive. Wives, children, and girlfriends came to Norfolk and stood in the rain, waiting for their husbands, fathers, and boyfriends to come home. But they never came.

As the Scorpion’s approximate arrival time came and went – 1 pm – the SUBLANT staff immediately suspected something was amiss. There was no reason for the Scorpion to be late. They didn’t immediately put out a SUBMISS alert – which means submarine missing – but instead initiated a search east of Norfolk. If the Scorpion was near shore and needed help, they could still find them before any panic got out. By 1:15, planes were in the air and ships heading out to their arrival path. But by 3, SUBLANT couldn’t delay the call any longer, and put out the SUBMISS alert. The families were told the submarine was “delayed” and to go home. But many wives found out the truth from the news media, who had been tipped off and were already busy preparing the story that the Scorpion was missing. It was perhaps a poor choice not to tell the families what was happening, but I imagine SUBLANT didn’t want to falsely alarm anyone in case the Scorpion did just show up late. 

Over the next few days, upwards of 55 ships and 35 airplanes were sent out to look for the Scorpion, but to no avail. It was the largest US Naval Operation since the Cuban Missile Crisis 6 years earlier. The Scorpion was officially declared lost on June 5th.

Now what is interesting, and a testament to the power of technology, is that the Navy actually located the Scorpion shortly after the SUBMISS was declared on May 27th. In previous generations, it may never have been found. To put other famous shipwrecks or ones I’ve talked about into perspective, the wreck of the Titanic was located in 1985, the French frigate Medusa in 1980, and the doomed Franklin Expedition’s Erebus and Terror were found in 2014 and 2016, respectively! They only found the Thresher so fast because they already knew where it was, approximately.

The Mignonette, the last ship disaster I actually talked about, hasn’t even been found! Modern technology has made geolocating these ships, based on rough approximations of where they went down, possible. But the US managed to find the Scorpion virtually right after it disappeared, which is pretty awesome. 

The US Naval Ship Mizar, an oceanographic research vessel that found the wreck of the Thresher, arrived on June 10th to scan an area where mysterious sounds were heard. At its helm was Director John Craven. 

On St. David’s Island in Bermuda, the navy had a sound fixing and ranging station, SOFAR. SOFAR was capable of picking up high and low frequency sounds that could be heard for thousands of miles; the idea, without getting too technical, was that perhaps the sound of the Scorpion exploding or imploding could have been heard by SOFAR recordings. Johnson explains in his book that, quote, 

“[there are] unique acoustic signals that [accompany] the collapse of a submarine’s pressure hull. The death rattle of the Scorpion, if captured by SOFAR hydrophones, was the only means of locating the submarine.” 

End quote.

So, they went through the files. And, in a long and technical story involving hydroacoustics physics, and data analysis shortened and simplified, they did record something strange on the evening of May 22nd, 16 hours after the Scorpion’s final broadcasted message. The SOFAR station had recorded the final sounds of the Scorpion as it sank. They were able to determine a general area, but not the exact spot. This is where the USNS Mizar came into play; they were asked to join the search.

After five months, the Mizar had made 80 sweeps of the search area. The tech sounds pretty cool for its time. They lowered a one-ton steel sled down a 3 mile long cable, and it would float about 30 feet above the seafloor. Every 30 seconds, it would take a picture using a 35 mm film camera with an ultrawide 9.8mm lens. It captured roughly 100 feet in each image. Each night, they’d haul the sled up and look at the pictures – this is pre-digital cameras, my friends, so each image would be processed the old fashioned way. Then they’d have to search over each image for any evidence of the ship.

They ended up taking 200,000 images, and most showed absolutely nothing. But on the 74th sweep, they picked up bits of steel. On October 28th, they found the submarine's bow.

Here’s how Johnson describes what was found. Quote:

“The bow of the Scorpion containing the torpedo room was relatively intact, contradicting the theory that a massive internal torpedo explosion had destroyed the submarine’s hull. The aft section of the hull, containing the reactor compartment and the engine room, was in a configuration that was completely unexpected: 50 feet of the stern were drawn forward inside the pressure hull, and much of the operations compartment had disintegrated. The rudder and stern planes protruding from the stern looks like the tail of an aircraft jutting from a cylindrical hangar.

The sail-like fairwater had sheared off when much of the Scorpion’s operations compartment amidships had either imploded or been ripped to pieces during the descent. The fairwater was lying on its port side, with its starboard fairwater plane pointing to the surface. The bow had dug a sizable crater upon impact with the seafloor, and the aft portion of the boat, containing the remnants of the operations compartment and the stern, was lying atop the seafloor ooze. The $48 million Scorpion looked like a toy broken and then carelessly discarded by an angry child.”

End quote.

But despite knowing the Scorpion’s final resting place, the wreck gave no clear indication of what happened to her. As Johnson notes, quote, 

“Navy scientists and undersea warfare experts, knowledgeable about submarines in general and the Scorpion in particular, have, over time, formulated reasonable scenarios that might explain how the submarine met its end. Fiction writers, journalists, and others have darkly hinted that the Soviet Navy, if not the mythic Bermuda Triangle, were to blame. Self-destruction with one of its own torpedoes, a dramatic and shocking event, was officially considered, and this scenario remains a flash point of controversy. It is also not unreasonable to suspect a lack of safety improvements whose installation was delayed due to problems plaguing submarine maintenance in the 1960s.”

End quote.

So let’s dive into some of those explanations and discuss their merit, shall we?
Theories 
So this was the official timeline:

The sinking occurred on Wednesday, May 22nd, 1968, at 1:44 pm EST. This would be 6:44 pm their time. The Scorpion had some kind of incident and then sank west-southwest of the Azores. It fell 10,100 feet to the sea floor, where it broke into two pieces on impact. The nuclear reactor, also on impact, was thrown from the hull.

Nobody knew it had sunk or disappeared for five days, and they only figured it out when it didn’t arrive back home when scheduled, which was May 27th.  

By 1 pm on the planned arrival day, they started getting concerned that they hadn’t received a signal from Captain Slattery. They then requested search teams. At 3pm, the SUBMISS alert was officially issued. Later that afternoon, President Lyndon B Johnson got word about the missing submarine. At the 6pm news hour, CBS broke the story that there was an ongoing search for the Scorpion.

Over the next few days, ships trekked the Scorpion’s planned route home in reverse to their last known location. The search effort ended at 4:05 pm on Tuesday, June 4th without locating a single piece of debris, and the Scorpion was officially presumed lost.

The next day, June 5th, the Court of Inquiry convened to figure out answers.
Now what’s pretty curious about this whole case is how the information was made available. The official navy position, both at the time of incident and today, is that the Scorpion sank due to an unspecified mechanical malfunction. It caused the submarine to go past its crush depth, and once that happened, it imploded and sank to the bottom.

The Navy conducted a Court of Inquiry shortly after the disappearance. And after months of back and forths, the statement they issued was “the certain cause of the loss of Scorpion cannot be ascertained from any evidence now available.”

It was only 30 years later, in 1993, when the court's findings were declassified, that we learned there was a fair amount of dispute between members of the panel. The message they put out was that the sinking was probably caused by, quick quote, “an explosion of large charge weight external to the pressure hull.” But there was disagreement.

One put forth a scenario based on the Mark 37 torpedoes. I’ll quote it:

A Mark 37 torpedo in a tube in fully ready position, without propeller guard, starts a ‘hot run’ due to inadvertent activation of the battery. The ship begins a [180-degree] turn to attempt shutdown of the propulsion motor by means of the anti-circular run device. Acting on impulse, and perhaps influenced by successful ejection of a Mark 37 exercise shot which was running hot in the tube in December 1967, the torpedo was released from the tube, became fully armed, and sought its nearest target, Scorpion.

End quote.

I mentioned this earlier; that training session where the torpedomen panicked and ejected the REXTORP when it started hot-running. Perhaps that happened, but with a real torpedo, they dropped it out of the tube, and it automatically trained on the closest target – the Scorpion. Stephen Johnson references this in his book, too.

John Craven, the man who helped find the Scorpion, had a similar argument. He thought that the sounds they heard on SOFAR were evidence of an explosion. He posited that because the sounds came from further east as they went on, the ship turned sharply in that direction – the maneuver used to help with hot-running Mark-37s. So he was also originally on board with the idea that they had a hot-running torpedo, shifted 180 degrees to trigger the failsafe, but when that didn’t happen, they launched it (like they did with the test version in the Caribbean), and it targeted the Scorpion and detonated it. But a lot of this evidence, like the turn towards the east, is not based on fact but assumption.

I’ll be honest, this is still hotly debated. There is talk that perhaps the weapon detonated inside the tube before it could be disarmed or discarded, if a hot run is indeed what happened, but neither Craven nor the Board of Inquiry seemed to think that was what happened.

Another, Vice Admiral Arnold Schade, commander of the Atlantic Submarine Force, thought that maybe, quote,

“Scorpion was lost as a result of a flooding type casualty which originated at a depth of [deleted] feet or less; that for undetermined reasons the flooding caused the ship to sink near or beyond the hull designed collapse depth; that the Engine Room telescoped into or around the Auxiliary Machinery Space at a depth of around [deleted] feet, and that this was the initial acoustic event.”

End quote.

The rest of the court disagreed, saying the evidence they had didn’t line up with that. But Commander Schade and Atlantic Fleet Commander Admiral Ephraim Holmes added this. Quote again:

“The Court of Inquiry developed a scenario related to the acoustic events which concludes that the USS Scorpion was steaming at a depth of 250 feet or less at which time flooding most probably occurred as the result of an unknown casualty in the area of the Operations Compartment or Torpedo Room. 

The Court concluded further that the casualty was most probably due to causes other than the implosion of a major compartment. This opinion is presumably based on the fact that visible structural damage to the submarine is more probably associated with an explosion rather than an implosion. Although this explanation of the cause of the loss of the USS Scorpion is relatively well documented, it is not the only explanation of the manner in which the submarine could have been lost. Therefore, [I (Commander Holmes), am] of the opinion that the conclusions of the Court concerning the most probable cause of the loss of the USS Scorpion, although logical, cannot be confirmed, and therefore, the cause of the loss cannot be definitely ascertained.”

End quote.

Basically, you think what you want, but you can’t conclusively prove what happened, so that needs to be our statement. So it shifted from “Maybe the Mark 37s” to “IDK, something happened.” Hence the official statement, which again was “the certain cause of the loss of Scorpion cannot be ascertained from any evidence now available.”

And even after they had access to the images of the Scorpion, they still tended to favor the torpedo explosion argument, but publicly said they didn’t know the true cause.

It certainly wasn’t a satisfying answer to the families and loved ones of those that died. Or those that were on the ship but left before its fateful demise. Remember, some of the men were on it virtually days before it sank.

But as documents over time gradually became declassified, some stepped forward with their own ideas and interpretations. And biases. And agendas. And conspiracy theories. According to a man named Ed Offley, who claims he spoke to Vice Admiral Schade and Admiral Moorer, both had a different answer when questioned separately in 1983. The short of it is that both Schade and Moorer said they presumed the Scorpion lost as early as May 23rd, the day after their last message, because they hadn’t checked in. 

There were also concerns that the Soviets might have attacked the Scorpion. Retired Vice Admiral Phillip Beshany, in a 1997 interview with Offley, apparently said the following. Quote:

“There was a lot of classified material relating to the Soviet [warship] group. In fact, there was some concern that the Scorpion might have been trailed and sunk by them.  . . . There was some activity on the airwaves that aroused peoples’ concerns that they were aware of the presence of Scorpion . . . speculation that they might have detected her, trailed her and decided they would just eliminate her.”

End quote.

Well that certainly changes things, doesn’t it? So not only is there supposedly conflicting evidence about when the Navy presumed the Scorpion lost, but now there was hidden, top secret concern that it might have been the Soviets who sank her? That would mean that most didn’t know or weren’t aware. The idea was that most assumed the Scorpion would be coming home as scheduled, and only a few higher level men knew or suspected otherwise, so families were called in and crews in Norfolk waited for the Scorpion to arrive.

Offley then goes on to reexamine the official timeline and make assumptions that men who did know, like Schade and Moorer, therefore went along with the charade of families attending and allowing the main search to continue, despite knowing they’d find nothing, to, quote, “[craft] a fictional narrative to overwrite the true sequence of events.”

Hmmmm… I don’t know, guys. This is starting to sound a bit conspiracy theory-esque, isn’t it? 76 different witnesses were interviewed for the Court, and in none of that information was there a hint of a search before the planned arrival time. 

So I did even more digging. And as it turns out, although Ed Offley has written books and his work appears on the US Naval Institute website… he’s not got such a great reputation in the public eye. In the comments of the article I read, Russell Fennick, son of William Fennick, who died on board the Scorpion, had this to say. Quote: “My father died on the USS Scorpion. I have absolutely no trust in anything Ed Offley says or writes. He was not invited, in fact told to stay away from the 50th Memorial service as he has drawn the ire of many family members with his nonsense.”

I think that says it all. 

Now to complicate things further, in 1969, the Navy deep research vessel Trieste II did nine dives to survey, photograph, and analyze the wreckage of the ship. And to their surprise, they found their first body. It was… intact? And it appeared to be wearing a lifejacket.

Now why on earth would a submariner be wearing a lifejacket? And if the ship imploded, why was the body intact? It opens up too many possibilities. It could be something as simple as the Scorpion has just breached to fix something, the man was above board wearing this lifejacket, he came back in, the Scorpion dove down, and something happened right then that caused it to sink. All anyone can do is speculate, and there’s so much evidence that is ripe for assumption. I’ve seen people talk about how this never happened, but a drawing of what the Trieste II crew saw is part of the packet of declassified information on the official Navy records website, so who knows. Very curious, regardless.

Over the course of this episode, we’ve looked at a lot of potential issues. The hot-running torpedo issue. The Freon leak. Faulty equipment. Vibrating hulls. Propeller issues. Leaky pipes. Peeling paint in the torpedo tube. Communication errors. We already know that the Scorpion should have been properly examined using SUBSAFE specs, but it wasn’t. So of all of the potential problems, what might have been the reason the Scorpion sank?
Occam’s Razor
So I went digging into the Navy’s Reading Room declassified files myself. You can do the same, I put the link in the podcast description. 

When you look at the images, and the official timeline of events, it’s clear that there wasn’t some kind of internal torpedo explosion – at first. The torpedo room, though sheared from the hull on impact, was still intact. There was, however, evidence that the pressure hull near the operations department and stern had implosion damage. This, Johnson tells us, could not have happened if the submarine was flooded. It seems most likely, based on all available evidence and knowledge, that the Scorpion only imploded below the crush depth. Meaning an implosion was not the reason it originally sank.

So the torpedoes didn’t explode, the vessel didn’t implode above the crush depth, and it didn’t seem to have flooded and sank. But something caused the submarine to go down below crush depth, then sink to the seafloor, where it imploded along the way due to natural pressure forces at depth.

Unfortunately, we just don’t know what that is, beyond speculation. The only explanations are built on assumptions.

In 2012, the US Submarine Veterans called on the Navy to reopen the investigation, but the Navy rejected that request. 

What makes the most sense, as annoying as it may be because it’s not a clear cut answer, is one of two things. Either some kind of small explosion or fire on board the ship may have damaged the machinery, and perhaps the Scorpion had no ability to surface, and it instead sank below crush depth. Many believe a battery explosion, caused by some known-to-be-faulty battery cells, might have been the culprit. It best matches the noises heard through SOFAR, and it best explains the visible damage of the wreckage. It would have caused enough damage to the hull to breach it, without completely destroying it like a hot-running torpedo or torpedo explosion would have.

The other answer may be that weird vibration and faulty propeller; one rotor blade was missing in the wreckage, with the propeller and shaft detached. Some submariners believe that perhaps the shaft detached from the Scorpion, it caused some flooding, and that sank the Scorpion to below its crush depth.

Some of the other theories, as much as they might sound like good, simple, explanations, just don’t line up with the evidence. There’s no evidence of a hot-running torpedo, or a Soviet attack.

But in the end, regardless of how it happened, it was an absolute tragedy. There’s no conspiracy here, just a horrible, horrible accident. The men should have never been on board because it wasn’t SUBSAFE verified, but the war made some people make bad calls. But the most important thing to take away from this story is the toll. 

99 men died that day, their families forever broken, left wondering, remembering, and pushing for answers from a Navy that doesn’t have any. And that’s where the story needs to stay – remembering and honoring the men who were taken down with their ship. Don’t buy the constant conspiracy theories. It only hurts those at the heart of the story.
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things! My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode on the USS Scorpion Disaster. Thank you for tuning into my podcast, and check out some of the other episodes if you want more!

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Sources
Stephen Johnson, Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion. John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, NJ. 2006.
Ed Offley, The USS Scorpion: Buried at Sea. US Naval Institute. February 2025. https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2025/february/uss-scorpion-buried-sea
US Navy FOIA Reading Room, specifically the Scorpion Case Files https://www.secnav.navy.mil/foia/readingroom/SitePages/Home.aspx?RootFolder=%2Ffoia%2Freadingroom%2FCaseFiles%2FScorpion%20Submarine&FolderCTID=0x012000CD3AEB341204C14DB4C7B99C57E99B26&View=%7B988EEA5C%2DDFDB%2D4A5D%2D8414%2DB7A63DACECE2%7D