Take a look here:

http://www.decklog.com/SSN-589.asp

USSVI friend of mine maintains this site.

I have to say I became really interested in the USS Scorpion after reading "To Kill The Potemkin" by Patrick Robinson, an amazing novel if I do say so myself. I used to think about it a lot evidence pointing one way or the other. As a few above me have said we will never really know anyways. I have read Scorpion Down, and another one which is a little less contreversial (I can't recall the name off the top of my head) which supposes a failure of the trash disposal unit and an explosion of the main battery which IIRC from the blue prints is somewhere under the command deck. IIRC the screw as well is considered classified, but it is down on the ocean floor. Rest assured there are MANY MANY MANY more pictures of the Scorpion that have yet to see the light of day. As well, speaking of conspiracy theories, no one has brought up K129 yet. For those of you who are not familiar, the K129 was a Soviet Golf II Class SSB which went out of touch sometime before March 8th, 1968, a few months before the loss of Scorpion. Not only are the circumstances surrounding the loss of K129 rather mysterious (in my opinion more so even than the loss of the Scorpion), the events after-word (how the USN found and attempted to raise the K129, without the Soviets knowing) are some of the most hotly contested. Officially (as the secrecy on this was blown in the 70s) the K129 was "partially raised" by the Glomar Explorer, as it broke apart half way up and all that was retrieved was the torpedo compartment. Weather the USN got everything or not, the pictures taken of the sub on the bottom (the K129 was found by the USS Halibut using the same method Craven used to find the Scorpion, all this is in Blind Man's Bluff), and whats actually still down there (again officially the after part of K129 broke loose, fell about 12-20,000 feet and smashed into the ocean floor about 20 kts) is still unknown as the actual location of the wreck site is still classified as well. As to exactly what the K129 was doing at the time it was lost, read Red Star Rouge, which is another contreversial book, for a number of reasons. All these things taken into consideration, especially when getting into different theories postulated by experts and so on, I have to admit that in the area of naval construction and operation and so on I am a layman and honestly do not have enough experience/expertise in the subject to adequately judge or support an argument either way. That doesn't make it any less interesting though, does it? In the coming years I would imagine that some of these things will be declassified. Another interesting point about all this is that 1967-68 was a bad time for submarines in general. IIRC the French also lost a ??Mistral?? class SSK in the Mediterranean Sea, which has never been found, and Israel lost the Dakar. Regardless of what happed, the sailors on all these boats died doing their duty and left people behind, which is something that knowing the exact events behind their loss is not going to change. Let us not forget that.

I remember reading about how bad the ship was in need of maintenance and how low morale was among crewman.

Torpedoes have a safety device built in where if the fish turns back a full 180 degrees the torpedo shuts down. If you have a hot run in the tube you turn the boat around to get the torpedo to shut down.

You have a picture of the bow because the torpedo tubes are amidships just forward of the sail.

If you were talking about any newer boat with a spherical sonar array in the bow you would be right. However the Skipjacks and all the boomers before the Ohio class still had their torpedo tubes in the bow.

http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0858820.jpg

You can see the torpedo tubes right on the bow in this picture of the USS Scamp which was another Skipjack class.

here is another picture from Navsource from the decomm postmark for USS Sculpin, it has a crude but accurate layout of the ship. You can again see where the torpedo tubes are at in the bow, the quarters of the bow that are blocked off above and below the torpedo tubes are where the sonar was located. Kind of related to the Russian "chin" sonar array layout that they usually use instead of a spherical array.

http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0859006.jpg

One of the other things puzzled people about the scorpion is weather the masts in the sail were forced up when the sub imploded or weather the Scorpion was at comms depth when the incident occured. That was the one theory with the trash unit that had given some problems in the past, if it failed and became open to the sea, even at comms/periscope depth it would have caused massive flooding and a possible battery explosion. The only thing that does not make sense about that would be IIRC the trash unit was in the middle of the boat and if their had of been flooding there or an explosion of the battery, that compartment would not have imploded.

Yup, thanks for the correction. If you look at the Scorpion picture all you see of the bow is from the forward escape trunk and back. The tubes would be located forward and down of that point........

USS Scorpion with Guppy on the horizon
 

Looking at the tail you can see the extreme pressures the sea put on her.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...00/h97221k.jpg

As to the argument over different sails I have a few things to say. This pic is one picture not made up of many pictures. Different camera angle and at the time 20 years later. Notice the shadow from the sail plane it makes the shape look different.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...00/h97223k.jpg

Thats right, and thats the area that most people want to see, to see if there is any obvious damage at the tubes indicating a hot run. Apparently durring the 86 expedition they did enter the torpedo room, but again what they found remains highly classified.

There is also some confusion about the hot torpedo theory. If I understand correctly, a "hot run" is a torpedo that has activated and thinks it's in the water. A 180 degree turn should shut down the weapon as a safety feature to prevent it from sinking ownship. If the battery on the torpedo shorted out it would have created excessive heat and may have caused a low order detonation of the weapon.

If the torpedo crew called the conn to report a hot torpedo without being specific enough, incorrect action may have been taken due to mis-communication (what was needed was not a turn, but a way to cool the weapon).

Yet another US torpedo to imperil US submariners.

Just found this thread reseaching blogs on same subject. Very interesting topic. View pic of sail and see plane set to full dive. I have seen depictions on theory that Scorpion was attempting to evade Russian launched torpedo and after having brought Scopion towards surface crew began emergency dive evasive maneuver where upon torpedo detonated near keel of Scorpion.

I'm sure most everyone has read this tragedy is in part the collateral result of John A Walker's handy-work.

I myself am a former submariner (USS Pintado, SSN-672) from near the end of the cold war. I do not know what happened to Scorpion, but, much of the details are still classified. I also know there were many more incidents and close calls of sub vs sub from that era, some of which would surprise and/or scare you. While almost all of it is heresay; much is rooted in fact.
My personal belief with Scorpion has to do with a hot run in the tube, but, there are details which haven't been released. Spy mission ?