All Hands Down: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion by Kenneth Sewell & Jerome Preisler

Author:Kenneth Sewell & Jerome Preisler [Sewell, Kenneth & Preisler, Jerome]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Naval, Europe, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, United States, 20th Century
ISBN: 9781439104545
Google: oq0cbWHyJEgC
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-07-27T22:00:00+00:00

III

As concern grew, the effort to find Scorpion commenced. COM-SUBLANT Schade ordered the Orions at Lajes back into the sky, and diverted surface vessels and submarines from their prescribed courses toward the sub’s last reported position—and to the wide patch of ocean from which the unexplained acoustic event picked up by the P-3B’s sonobuoys might have originated.

Because the secrecy of the hunt precluded its mention in deck and flight logs, its full scope may never be known. But anywhere between “a few ships and planes” to a dozen vessels with extensive air support are said to have been involved. According to one participant, the first vessel to reach the area was a fast-attack sub on which he served as an engineering officer. Traveling at flank bell—or maximum speed—from a nearby location, it used active sonar to conduct its solitary effort, and remained at it for the next five or six days.

Whatever its extent, the search proved fruitless, and Schade’s and Moorer’s apprehensions about Scorpion deepened as the week wore on. At SUBLANT headquarters, the two adjoining offices that comprised the message room hummed with monitoring activity. Communications streamed to and from the task force, but a general alarm wasn’t sounded. The reason why remains a matter of conjecture. One explanation offered by officials was that the Navy was reluctant to distress the families of the Scorpion’s crew until they were absolutely positive something had gone wrong. As a prominent officer declared, “No observed changes in the pattern of operations of the Soviet ships, either before or after Scorpion’s loss…were evaluated as indicating involvement or interest in any way.”

Rear Admiral Beshany would contradict this assertion after his retirement. “There was some communications analysis that the Scorpion had been detected by the group she had been shadowing and conceivably they had trailed her,” he said. “There were some speculations that not only did they track her but attacked her.”

The Navy had reasons for keeping a lid on things. Over the next few years these would stack up like weights atop the truth of what happened. Eventually Scorpion’s demise would be politically bound to the growing web of secrecy that surrounded another submarine’s loss—this a Soviet ballistic missile boat that had gone down near the Hawaiian Islands a little over two months before. At its onset, however, the reasons behind the clampdown on information were probably more basic. The Navy was wary of having its submarine intelligence-gathering operations compromised, and a general alert would have raised unwanted questions from the crewmen’s families and the media. But when Scorpion didn’t show up at Norfolk on her due date, May 27, the clock was ticking on at least one secret: the sub’s apparent loss would have to be officially acknowledged.

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