Wow guys lots has happened the last few days I have been gone. So I have a couple of things here to note, I am still new at this so I don't know how to quote but I would like to take a shot at answering questions. Mind you I have never served on a sub I wish I could, I have found everything I can to read and learn about them, both Russian, and American. I am by no means an expert but I have a couple of ideas.
Ok going down the list......
Of course I am not from Russia but several of the books I have read indicate that the ship yards there were sometimes pushed by external factors, such as having the navy take delivery of the ships early, say in the case of K-19 so that the dock workers could get there Christmas bonus. I know that the movie K-19 is just that, a movie however in the book "Rising Tide" they go into a fairly detailed account of ships being accepted by the navy with many defects that were overlooked so the ship could be accepted early. So I will not say all the time but a lot of the time in the 50's and 60's this seemed to happen a lot. So that leads me to believe the quality of the boats was not what it could have been if they had taken the time to do things right.
Now the Russian subs that were lost, I do not have exact numbers but, if memory serves they Russians had produced many more submarines then the US had. So by the numbers they may have lost more subs, but they had also produced a lot more as well.
So why no pictures of the middle portion of the hull? Because no one in american media has ever got to see a US naval nuclear reactor. I am quite certain that there are many, many more pictures but we of course do not have the clearance to see them. Even seeing parts of it I am sure is not allowed hence the reason no more pictures.
So I have a question to people who have served on nuclear submarines. I am not sure you are allowed to answer this but, what happens if a sub has a unrecoverable problem, drops below crush depth and is crushed. What keeps the reactor from going up? What happens if there is a battle between two subs, and one is taken out with a torpedo? The sub that got hit most likely has no way to shut down the reactor then what?
Going to the picture of the sail in 68 vs 86, just guessing here. But I think they cut the picture up. Think about it, that damage "looks" like some kind of blast damage. In or out doesn't matter the general public would see that and loose it because it "looks" like blast damage. What ever really happened, there was a lot of bad PR to be had here. IF a Russian sub sank the Scorpion, how horrible would that look? IF there had been some problem with the reactor, and the sub sank, they most likely wouldn't tell us about the radiation because people would once again see big mushroom clouds in there deepest darkest thoughts when thinking of a nuclear ship. SO I put forth in all reality no matter what happened they were in a tough spot and had to cover a lot of the situation up. None of this if fully released would be good for the navy at all.
Just to further this point of cover up. The navy really would have to cover a lot of this up. Think about the Three Mile Island accident. They were able to bring that reactor under control but not after it had leaked radiation in and around the power plant. What happens to a plant in a sub that has an explosion? I am sure there would have been some kind of contamination if there was a disaster I am sure no one would have had time to shut down the reactor. What would the public do if they thought there were to subs on the floor of the Atlantic with broken reactors leaking out all over.......not good PR either. This is one of those, need to know situations. The public, and the rest of the world did not need to know.
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