Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon: The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion
by By Offley, Ed
Category: History , Military , Naval

The loss of the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589) on Memorial Day, May 27, 1968, has been commemorated by an American admiral as "one of the greatest unsolved sea mysteries of our era." To this day, the U.S. Navy officially describes it as an inexplicable accident. After the sub failed to return to port at the Norfolk Naval Station following a routine three-month Mediterranean deployment, a frantic search ensued (the largest U.S. naval operation since the Cuban Missile Crisis). Nine days later the Navy announced that the submarine and ninety-nine crewmen on board were presumed lost.In this work of investigative journalism, Ed Offley reveals that the U.S. Navy knew from the very beginning that the Scorpion had been sunk by the Soviets. Even before the Scorpion failed to show up at port, senior Navy officials had initiated an elaborate cover-up to suppress the real story of the undersea battle. The Navy has concealed the truth from the general public and families of the crewmen for nearly four decades. All ninety-nine American sailors aboard the Scorpion died in combat.Here, Ed Offley tells the true story of the USS Scorpion for the first time. Offley tells the dramatic story of a secret battle that could have brought about World War III, and he conclusively demonstrates that the Navy's official story about the Scorpion incident - from the frantic open-ocean hunt for the wreckage to a Court of Inquiry's final conclusions - is nothing more than a carefully-constructed series of lies.