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USS Scorpion.
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The Scorpion gets Stung.
On May 22nd 1968, the submarine USS ‘Scorpion’ sank in the Atlantic with the loss of all lives. This was not public knowledge until 5 days later, when she failed to arrive at her home base in Norfolk, Virginia, at the scheduled time. But the Navy brass had suspected that there was a problem when she did not ‘call in’ at noon each day, as expected. They immediately started a secret search for her, and sought the assistance of SOFAR in the process.
Miles Mayall continues the story:
Miles Mayall continues the story:
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‘I can remember one day very clearly, - night I guess it was. I was living down the other end of Jennings Land there, and I got off work 4:30. Got home 5:00 o’clock and when I walked in the house the phone started ringing – it was Gordon Hamilton and he says “Miles, can you please come back to work, something big has come up.” And I went back down there and worked all night. What it was, the Scorpion submarine had not surfaced at noon (to) give any messages and everything like that and it had sunk, and they said, ‘could you look at your records and see if you had any sounds’ and we went up and found the
sounds - found it, and we sat there all night, Gordon and myself and worked on this and analyzing all the sound. We told them where it sank and what happened to it – it went too deep because we could measure the pulse, anything -explosion or bubble of air in there, when it collapses, it goes back and forth with a frequency, and we knew the size of it and we could get Gordon to get the size of it (the submarine) and everything. And we told them what happened; it went too deep – same as the Thresher. The Thresher was another one that was exactly the same.’ |
Two investigations into the cause of the sinking consumed three years, with the Navy finally announcing that an equipment malfunction had caused the sub to dive out-of-control to below its crush depth. Gordon Hamilton gave his testimony and his expert opinion at these investigations. While we do not know what went on behind closed doors – there is much speculation that his conclusion was not fully accepted by the Court of Inquiry. Also there was (and still is) much speculation that there was a Navy ‘cover-up’, and that all of the facts were not made public (which is the Navy’s prerogative, in the interests of National Security).
Scorpion had been on a regular deployment mission in the Mediterranean, and was on her way home to Norfolk when she received a top secret message to investigate/shadow some Russian ships and a submarine near the Canary Islands. She accomplished this mission, and set off for home. It
was shortly after this that she disappeared.
1968 was a bad year for the US Navy. Earlier that year, on January 23rd1968, the North Vietnamese seized the American spy ship, the US Pueblo, because they said it was operating within North Viet Nam waters. The US vehemently denied this, saying that they were several miles away in international waters.
(Draw your own conclusion as to who was right, and who was in the wrong, after you have read the rest of this post!).
The Pueblo had on board 19 different encryption/decryption machines, which were built ‘Ford tough’, based on experiences learned during the second World War, when the Japanese kamikaze pilots would often specifically target the communications room on a ship – communications being (arguably) the most important facet of a battle. The Pueblo crew managed to destroy a lot of secret stuff, codebooks, messages and equipment before they were overrun by the North Vietnamese, but the machines were essentially indestructible. While this was an incredible blow to the US Navy, these machines were essentially useless for listening in on the US messages without the access codes, which were changed on a daily basis. But the Russians (via the North Vietnamese) had a good look at the technology of these machines.
Fast forward to 1985, when US Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker was arrested for spying for the Russians. In a plea-bargaining session, he admitted selling secrets to the Russians as far back as March 1967, (ten months before the Pueblo incident), including the ‘keylists’ - the daily access codes for the encryption machines.
So, do you think the Pueblo was in international waters, or had she sailed into North Vietnamese territorial waters as claimed by the Vietnamese?
Therefore, starting sometime after January 23rd1968, the Russians had access to ALL US Navy (and possibly other branches of the military) communications, and would know the exact location of every ship in the US Fleet. This would have had a devastating effect if the Cold War had somehow become a Hot War.
Where does the Scorpion fit into all this?
First of all, the Russians knew she was coming to visit them near the Canary Islands.
And then there was the incident of the Russian sub K-129, which sank in the Pacific shortly before March 8th 1968, (two and a half months before the Scorpion loss). The Russians say that she was in collision with the US sub ‘Swordfish’; the Americans denied all knowledge of this, however, the ‘Swordfish’ went into dry dock on March 8th in Yokosuka, Japan, for repairs to her periscope and conning tower which allegedly occurred during a surfacing operation in an ice-field. The Russians, by this time, would have known exactly where the ‘Swordfish’ was, what she was doing, and who she was banging into, but the American didn’t know that the Russians knew all this. And the Russians weren't about to tell the Americans that they had full access to the Americam codes ... Perhaps the ‘Scorpion’ was sunk by the Russians in a tit-for-tat move (the failure of the hull being the 'equipment malfunction’ mentioned in the Scorpion Court of Inquiry report.)
Conspiracy theorists believe that there was frantic ‘behind the scenes diplomacy’ between the Super Powers to agree that the details of these 2 incidents should never see the light of day. This has been borne out by several recent veiled comments from high-ranking officials from both sides of the Cold War.
A later conversation with Miles Mayall:
Scorpion had been on a regular deployment mission in the Mediterranean, and was on her way home to Norfolk when she received a top secret message to investigate/shadow some Russian ships and a submarine near the Canary Islands. She accomplished this mission, and set off for home. It
was shortly after this that she disappeared.
1968 was a bad year for the US Navy. Earlier that year, on January 23rd1968, the North Vietnamese seized the American spy ship, the US Pueblo, because they said it was operating within North Viet Nam waters. The US vehemently denied this, saying that they were several miles away in international waters.
(Draw your own conclusion as to who was right, and who was in the wrong, after you have read the rest of this post!).
The Pueblo had on board 19 different encryption/decryption machines, which were built ‘Ford tough’, based on experiences learned during the second World War, when the Japanese kamikaze pilots would often specifically target the communications room on a ship – communications being (arguably) the most important facet of a battle. The Pueblo crew managed to destroy a lot of secret stuff, codebooks, messages and equipment before they were overrun by the North Vietnamese, but the machines were essentially indestructible. While this was an incredible blow to the US Navy, these machines were essentially useless for listening in on the US messages without the access codes, which were changed on a daily basis. But the Russians (via the North Vietnamese) had a good look at the technology of these machines.
Fast forward to 1985, when US Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker was arrested for spying for the Russians. In a plea-bargaining session, he admitted selling secrets to the Russians as far back as March 1967, (ten months before the Pueblo incident), including the ‘keylists’ - the daily access codes for the encryption machines.
So, do you think the Pueblo was in international waters, or had she sailed into North Vietnamese territorial waters as claimed by the Vietnamese?
Therefore, starting sometime after January 23rd1968, the Russians had access to ALL US Navy (and possibly other branches of the military) communications, and would know the exact location of every ship in the US Fleet. This would have had a devastating effect if the Cold War had somehow become a Hot War.
Where does the Scorpion fit into all this?
First of all, the Russians knew she was coming to visit them near the Canary Islands.
And then there was the incident of the Russian sub K-129, which sank in the Pacific shortly before March 8th 1968, (two and a half months before the Scorpion loss). The Russians say that she was in collision with the US sub ‘Swordfish’; the Americans denied all knowledge of this, however, the ‘Swordfish’ went into dry dock on March 8th in Yokosuka, Japan, for repairs to her periscope and conning tower which allegedly occurred during a surfacing operation in an ice-field. The Russians, by this time, would have known exactly where the ‘Swordfish’ was, what she was doing, and who she was banging into, but the American didn’t know that the Russians knew all this. And the Russians weren't about to tell the Americans that they had full access to the Americam codes ... Perhaps the ‘Scorpion’ was sunk by the Russians in a tit-for-tat move (the failure of the hull being the 'equipment malfunction’ mentioned in the Scorpion Court of Inquiry report.)
Conspiracy theorists believe that there was frantic ‘behind the scenes diplomacy’ between the Super Powers to agree that the details of these 2 incidents should never see the light of day. This has been borne out by several recent veiled comments from high-ranking officials from both sides of the Cold War.
A later conversation with Miles Mayall:
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MM. It’s funny I can remember that night I worked on the Scorpion, and I never did for the Thresher but I know I did the Thresher, but I can’t remember doing it. I remember like, Ham called me up, I went back there and worked all night on it (Scorpion) and everything like that, came home about 5 o’clock in the morning, and we told them where everything went down.
BH. But didn’t you have to… you had to get the tapes from Canary Island as well to be able to actually do all the trilateration. MM. No, we got them on the radio… BH. Aha, to give the times of… MM. Alpha Foxtrot Two Xray Mike Victor was our call sign, and they were Alpha Foxtrot Two Xray Mike Victor Two, - every five o’ clock you would talk if something came up, you’d talk to the Canary Islands so you could get their things – times and things. BH. OK. There’s… On the internet, there’s an interview** with Ham by Ron Doel of the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, and he said it took them about – it took Sofar about a week to positively identify the location, so I guess um… MM. of the Scorpion? BH. Scorpio, yes. But, um… MM. I think we had to get the tapes from all the other stations. BH. Yeah. But he said he was sure immediately what it was, and what caused it. MM. Yes, because I went in there that night and we analyzed our tapes and everything, and also got onto the Canary Islands and got some times from them – and roughly where it was, we have no idea why they went too deep but that’s exactly what happened. The equipment that was supposed to…. BH. There was quite an investigation about that and Ham’s opinion was there’s a cover-up in there somewhere – there was more to that. I’ve got that interview – I’ll print it out and get it to you if I can or e-mail it to you MM. Thank you, Bruce. BH. There’s a lot out there on the internet – it’s there, but you have to hunt to find it. |
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**The interview mentioned above can be found on "The People" page under Gordon Hamilton's name.
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Possible reasons why the Thresher sinking was not quite so memorable for Miles:-
o The sinking happened during the morning. There was no ‘working through the night’.
o There was a ‘tender’ nearby the Thresher which was monitoring the test dive, so the Navy knew exactly where she was, and probably what the problem was. It is possible that Sofar did not even do any detailed investigation.
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Dianne Bauer-Icard tells me that she and Liz Laudadio assisted in the preparation of the reports that Ham used for his submissions to the Scorpion Courts of Inquiry.
B. Hallett.
Nov. 2013
**The interview mentioned above can be found on "The People" page under Gordon Hamilton's name.
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Possible reasons why the Thresher sinking was not quite so memorable for Miles:-
o The sinking happened during the morning. There was no ‘working through the night’.
o There was a ‘tender’ nearby the Thresher which was monitoring the test dive, so the Navy knew exactly where she was, and probably what the problem was. It is possible that Sofar did not even do any detailed investigation.
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Dianne Bauer-Icard tells me that she and Liz Laudadio assisted in the preparation of the reports that Ham used for his submissions to the Scorpion Courts of Inquiry.
B. Hallett.
Nov. 2013
Bow section of the Scorpion.