Posted on 02/18/2025 4:52:16 AM PST by Nervous Tick
The loss of the Skipjack-class nuclear attack submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589) remains to many an unresolved mystery more than 56 years after it sank, with all hands, on 22 May 1968. But a closer look at the event suggests a different description: that it is one of the more closely guarded secrets of the Cold War.
This is a focused review of the critical 18-day period immediately following the sinking, and eight key events that occurred during that span. It includes the sinking itself; the Scorpion’s failure to reach Norfolk as scheduled on Monday 27 May; the formal declaration of “Event SUBMISS” at 1500 EDT that day; the frantic eight-day open-ocean search that ended on 4 June with the Navy’s announcement both submarine and crew were presumed lost; and the opening of the Court of Inquiry into the incident the following day. In addition, it includes evidence to suggest the wreckage was not, as the Navy declared, discovered five months later on 28 October, but in early June—less than a week after the Navy pronounced the Scorpion was presumed lost.
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The veterans’ account of happened next at the COMSUBLANT message center indicates that 12 hours earlier, something far from routine had taken place in the eastern Atlantic. According to Hannon and Larbes, the quiet of the overnight watch ended abruptly several hours after midnight, when a number of senior COMSUBLANT officers suddenly barged into the message center, loudly speaking and arguing over the Scorpion’s status.
“I had never seen a captain or an admiral come into that place in the two and one-half years I worked there,” Larbes recalled. “Now we had captains and admirals running around wanting more information [about the Scorpion]. It was so crazy – they even suspended all of the saluting and all that.”
When Hannon arrived back at the message center shortly before 0800 on Thursday morning, 23 May, he found the workspace still full of senior officers, including a two-star Marine general. They were clogging the narrow aisles between the desks and tables with crypto machines. The room was full of cigarette smoke, and Hannon had difficulty performing his daily routine because of the nonstop telephone calls, arguments, and heated conversations.
But seemingly secure in a workspace where everything was classified Top Secret, the officers made no attempt to conceal their conversations from the duty radiomen, Hannon and Larbes said. Based on what they overheard, when the senior officers arrived at the message center after midnight, they already knew the Scorpion’s fate.
“There were officers openly discussing the fact that they believed the Scorpion had been sunk,” Hannon said.
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In the days and weeks that followed, Hannon said he became confused, then furious, as he watched the Navy hide the truth about the sinking, beginning with COMSUBLANT’s release on 24 May of the Scorpion’s scheduled 1300 arrival on Monday, 27 May, some five days after it sank. On the morning of the day that its disappearance could no longer be hidden, Hannon said he drove over to the destroyer-submarine piers and was devastated to see the families of the crew braving the nor’easter for the return of loved ones who were already gone.
“That sight has haunted me for more than 50 years,” Hannon said in 2017.
As I recall the hallways inside Bancroft Hall... salutes were required for all officers and brigade officers Midshipman LCDR on up. So it depends on your definition of "inside."
“Yeah, it looks different after reading the article. I had to violate FR rules just to read the article.”
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Your remark/post made me laugh so hard!
read it. and you should have heard my navy friends panic whenever i brought it up
From what I recall, the Thresher had some LP piping that failed as she was trying to fill her ballast tanks. Piping, not a hull repair.
Blind Man's Bluff reads like a Tom Clancy' novel, except it's actually real!
Strongly recommend.
It is pretty convincing
What then were they shooting at?
When that was proposed, it was supposedly related to a test of some kind. From the article, it is most likely that the Russians sank her.
Ping......................
Thanks Red Badger.
Several people posted comments directly to the article. One claims to be a son of one of the crewmembers, and he expressed your view. He also offers counter evidence. The majority of the posted opinions agree with you in tone. I was taken in by the article, but read the comments on the article at the bottom. I need to remember to be more skeptical. That doesn't mean it did not happen, but only that this is but scant evidence that it did.
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