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.
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