Spectre of the Scorpion

I have always been fascinated by mysteries of history -- Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, Jack the Ripper, the fall of Troy and Mycenae, Teotihuacan, Vilcabamba, Mohenjo-Daro, the Exodus. Submarines are fertile ground for mystery. By the very nature of their mission they are isolated and often incommunicado, in a medium -- the sea -- which we understand only imperfectly at best. The result is that they can disappear with no warning or apparent reason and in some cases not even a location. Their mysteries can defy solution for decades.

For example, to this day, we don't know what happened to the submarine USS Grampus. Grampus was last seen for certain on February 12, 1943. She may have been seen on the night of March 5-6, 1943 in the Vella Gulf in the Solomon Islands by fellow submarine Grayback, but no one knows for sure. They do know that two Japanese destroyers were in the area, and that a large oil slick was seen on March 6. But Japanese records do not show an anti-submarine attack at that time, possibly because the two destroyers in question were sunk shortly thereafter in the Battle of Kula Gulf, taking their records with them. We know that Grampus was never seen again. Was she sunk by depth charges? Air attack? Gunfire? Possibly a friendly attack? (This happened a lot in World War II -- just as the submarine USS Seawolf.) Was she sunk in Vella Gulf? Nearby Blackett Strait? No one knows.

Maybe this summary of the story of the Grampus helps explain the enduring fascination with the to-date unexplained sinking of the submarine USS Scorpion on May 22, 1968. I have discussed it earlier here and here. Short story long, Scorpion sank after observing Soviet navy exercises of some sort. No one knows why she sank, but the US Navy investigators believed they had narrowed the possible causes to a malfunctioning trash disposal unit or a malfunction of one of the sub's torpedoes, possibly a hot run in the tube that caused a fire or detonated, or a hot run that caused a launch of the torpedo, which proceeded to make a circular run.

The Navy never suggested Soviet involvement and went so far as to deny the Soviets had anything to do with the loss of the Scorpion. They don't know what caused it, but they know the Soviets didn't do it. That sort of logic has been an embarrassment to the Department of Homeland Security on more than one occasion.

In 1998, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a series on the Scorpion that suggested she was indeed sunk by the Soviets, in retaliation for what they believed was the US sinking, either accidentally or intentionally, of the Soviet K-129 off of Hawaii. Turns out she sank on her own accidentally. The series was written by reporter Ed Offley.

Now Offley was written a book on the subject, Scorpion Down. I didn't even know about it until I saw it in a book store today. So I scooped it up. I can't wait to read it.

This will be my fourth book dealing with the Scorpion, the others being Silent Steel, Red Star Rogue, and the recently-acquired Blind Man's Bluff. Of the other three, only Red Star Rogue has even suggested a possible Soviet connection.