USS SCORPION NEWS COVERAGE

USS SCORPION NEWS COVERAGE

The HOUSTON CHRONICLE of Houston, Texas has given permission to post the following stories about the sinking of the USS Scorpion. My sincere thanks goes to the Chronicle Staff members that assisted in my having these articles.

The articles are as received from the Chronicle with certain html code added to make them more readable. Only the text has been received and not the photo's mentioned. We will attempt in the future to add these photo's as they become available.

The articles are in reverse order as to their publication date.

NOTE !!! if there is anyone who reads these articles and was on the Scorpion during the Inserve Inspection please contact me at your eariliest convenience.
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STORY 1
NEWSPAPER HOUSTON CHRONICLE
EDITION 2 STAR
PUBLICATION DATE 05/21/95
DAY SUN
SECTION A
PAGE 19
LENGTH 34 INCHES
HEADLINE Sub sank in 1968 after skimpy last overhaul/USS Scorpion was lost with all on board
BYLINE STEPHEN JOHNSON
CREDIT Staff
PHOTOS, GRAPHICS Photo: The nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion, shown during launching ceremonies in 1959
ART CREDIT Houston Chronicle file
NOTES Copyright 1995, Houston Chronicle.

Unable to maintain its nuclear submarines during Cold War-era Soviet naval expansion, the U.S. Navy drastically reduced the USS Scorpion's overhaul work before the submarine's mysterious sinking with 99 crewmen.
At the time, Navy officers were concerned about ````acute political embarrassment'' over the Navy's serious difficulties in keeping its submarine force at sea, according to documents declassified at the Houston Chronicle's request.
Armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes, the Scorpion sank in the mid-Atlantic on May 22, 1968, six months after it received the briefest and cheapest nuclear submarine overhaul in Navy history.
The Scorpion departed Norfolk, Va., on Feb. 15, 1968, and was lost at sea 97 days later. Its destruction occurred only five days before its scheduled return to Norfolk.
Though the Navy announced at the time that the submarine had a regular overhaul, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal the Navy's troubled maintenance system was incapable of providing work needed by the submarine.
Navy correspondence shows: Because the Navy was concerned that 1960s nuclear submarines spent nearly half their service life being repaired, the Scorpion was picked to become the subject of a reduced overhaul experiment.
Eliminated as part of the experimental program was the long-overdue installation of submarine safety systems deemed essential five years before the Scorpion went down.
The Navy's repair system was so overloaded the Scorpion's reduced overhaul was eventually slashed to no more than emergency work necessary to get it back to sea.
The cost of the Scorpion's last ````overhaul'' was nearly seven times less than those given other nuclear submarines at the same time.
After two investigations, the U.S. Navy says it still does not know what led to the Scorpion's destruction. A mid-1980s study showed no radiation is leaking from the submarine's nuclear reactor or its two nuclear-tipped torpedoes, now 11,000 feet deep in the Atlantic.
The Chronicle reported in May 1993 that one former crewman saved his life by refusing to sail aboard the Scorpion after complaining to superiors about its poor condition.
Navy researchers initially speculated that the Scorpion was destroyed by one of its own torpedoes, but that theory was rejected after a second investigation of the wreckage, which found no torpedo damage, the Chronicle reported in December 1993.
Navy teletype messages, memos and letters reveal in minute detail how the Navy found itself incapable of repairing and building its fleet of submarines on schedule during the 1960s. At the same time, the Soviets were stepping up their construction of nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines and ballistic missile submarines.
A major factor hampering the Navy's ability to repair its undersea warships was a massive and costly retrofit of safety systems begun five years before the Scorpion was lost, Navy documents reveal. This ````Submarine Safety Program'' was deemed necessary after the April 10, 1963, sinking of the nuclear attack submarine USS Thresher with 129 aboard.
The Scorpion and the Thresher are the only two American nuclear submarines lost in 40 years of nuclear submarine operations and the only submarine mishaps since World War II that caused the loss of all hands. Heavily publicized by the Navy when the sleek warships were built at the end of the 1950s, the two were launched within seven months of each other.
Forgotten documents, discovered in the archives of the commander of the submarine force of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, reveal a day-by-day history of how and why the Scorpion was picked for the one-of-a-kind experimental overhaul reduction program.
Among these memos was one encapsulating the concerns of Navy officers desperately trying to keep nuclear submarines on patrol as the Soviets began to challenge American seapower: ````The inordinate amount of time currently involved in the routine overhauls of nuclear-powered submarines is a recognized source of major concern to the Navy as a whole and the Submarine Force in particular and stands as a potential source of acute political embarrassment,'' says a March 24, 1966, letter from the headquarters of Submarine Squadron Six, the Scorpion's command at Norfolk Navy Base.
The memo warned Navy brass, already concerned about the duration of submarine repairs, that the Scorpion's planned 1967 overhaul would ````establish a new record in overhaul duration.'' This message and dozens of others were exchanged between various commands in response to a March 2, 1966, request by the Atlantic Submarine Force seeking ways to reduce ````the high percentage of (nuclear attack submarine) time off line.''
The magnitude of the problem was highlighted in an undated 1968 letter from Submarine Squadron Six's headquarters saying that ````40% of total available SSN (nuclear attack submarine) time was being spent in shipyards.''
Under mounting maintenance pressures and with new submarine construction taxing Navy resources, this reduced overhaul concept moved through the Navy bureaucracy until approved by the office of the Chief of Naval Operations on June 17, 1966.
On July 20, 1966, the CNO also allowed deferral of Submarine Safety Program work that would have provided the Scorpion with an enhanced ability to survive a mishap while submerged. Eliminating the safety work would greatly shorten the time the Scorpion spent in the shipyard, Navy memos repeatedly note.
Letters written before and after the Scorpion's loss report that the Submarine Safety or ````SubSafe'' program actually overloaded Navy and civilian industrial capacity. It became impossible to complete submarine repairs on schedule, and new submarine construction was hampered.
In addition to detailed inspections of piping and the submarine's hull, the specialized program provided for the installation of various emergency systems to allow crew members to blow water from submarine ballast tanks at great depths.
A Navy inquiry into the Thresher disaster found that faulty piping probably spewed salt water onto the nuclear reactor controls, shutting down its power. Unable to propel herself to the surface, the vessel lacked the air pressure necessary to expel water from its ballast tanks for buoyancy. When the Thresher descended below its crush depth, her hull imploded.
By May 1968, the Navy had spent a half-billion dollars -- equal to the cost of an aircraft carrier of the period -- to implement the Submarine Safety Program, according to a report prepared by the Naval Sea Systems Command. This report was sent to the Court of Inquiry explaining why the Scorpion was one of a handful of submarines that had not received ````SubSafe'' certification.
It stated: ````The deferral of this (work) during certain submarine overhauls was necessitated by the need to reduce submarine off-line time by minimizing the time spent in overhaul and to achieve a more timely delivery of submarines under construction by making more of the industrial capacity available for new construction.''
Before the Scorpion's abbreviated overhaul period began, it was slashed further because of growing pressures upon the Norfolk Navy Shipyard's overtaxed repair capacity.
According to a November 1966 memo from Submarine Force headquarters: ````To minimize time off the line in view (of the) shipyard workload . . . request best estimates (of the) total time (of) duration to accomplish specific alternate work (packages) . . . ,'' said the memo sent to the commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet. This message advised that only refueling of the reactor (an absolute necessity) and emergency repairs necessary to get the Scorpion back to sea would be performed.
A 1992 study obtained from the Naval Sea Systems Command shows the Scorpion receiving only $3.32 million in repair work during the 8-month overhaul, with more than 70 percent of the money spent on nuclear refueling, the least expensive ````overhaul'' given a nuclear submarine.
During the same period, the study says, the Scorpion's sister ship USS Snook received a 24-month overhaul at a cost of $22.5 million, while another sister ship, the USS Sculpin, underwent an 18-month, $24 million overhaul.
The USS Shark, another of the Scorpion's sister ships, also received a greatly reduced overhaul getting only nine months of work at a cost of $4.3 million between June 1967 and March 1968. It was the second-cheapest overhaul performed on an American nuclear submarine, according to the Naval Sea Systems Command analysis.
The Shark's next refit period occurred a mere eight months later, lasting 22 months and costing nearly $24 million. Had the Scorpion survived her final voyage, she, too, was scheduled to receive a full overhaul along with her submarine safety systems retrofit at the same time, according to Navy records.
Officials with Naval Sea Systems Command today say they have no record of any maintenance program known as a ````planned availability'' experiment for American nuclear submarines. The reason for this may be in a 30-year-old memo discussing the Scorpion's selection for the abbreviated overhaul program.
The ````Confidential'' Submarine Force memo written on March 25, 1966, predicted that the ````success of this ``major-minor' overhaul concept depends essentially on the results of our first case at hand: Scorpion.''
After a massive six-month search following its disappearance, the Scorpion's wreckage was located 400 miles southwest of the Azores. Though the precise cause of its loss remains unknown, enemy action and sabotage were ruled out by Navy investigators.

STORY 2
NEWSPAPER HOUSTON CHRONICLE
EDITION 2 STAR
PUBLICATION DATE 12/27/93
DAY MON
SECTION A
PAGE 1
LENGTH 26 INCHES
HEADLINE Report heightens nuclear sub mystery/Torpedo theory contradicts findings of USS Scorpion's wreckage in 1968
BYLINE STEPHEN JOHNSON
CREDIT Staff
PHOTOS, GRAPHICS Photos: 1. Retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ross Saxon of Houston displays the flag that blew aboard the research submersible Trieste II (color); The USS Scorpion submarine (b/w, p. 8.)
ART CREDIT 1. Carlos Antonio Rios/Chronicle, 2. Chronicle file photo
A recently unveiled report suggesting that the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion may have been destroyed by one of its own torpedoes has only heightened the mystery surrounding the loss of the sub and 99 crewmen in 1968.
Examination of the wreckage revealed no torpedo damage, and many investigators and others familiar with the disaster, including the commander-in-chief of the Atlantic fleet at the time, have rejected the torpedo theory.
But it received renewed publicity after it appeared in documents released by the Navy in October under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
One of the documents summarized the testimony and findings of a 1968 Navy Court of Inquiry into the disaster.
The court's ````Finding of Facts'' determined the ````most probable cause'' of the tragedy was the launch of an inadvertently activated torpedo, which turned and struck the 252-foot submarine on May 22, 1968, five days before it was due at its home port of Norfolk, Va.
Since no one survived and since no distress signals were received from the Scorpion, the Court of Inquiry's only direct evidence was the submarine's wreckage 400 miles south of the Azores and an audio recording of the Scorpion's death throes recorded by a secret submarine tracking system.
The wreckage and recording provided enough tantalizing information to generate theories, but not enough to support any one.
The recordings were made by the Sound Surveillance System, which consists of hydrophones connected by cables to various stations around the Atlantic. The system's real capability is in the computer analysis of sounds that reveals the presence and locations of enemy submarines.
The system revealed a series of 15 eerie sounds beginning at 6:59 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on May 22 and continuing for 190 seconds. Navy research scientist John Craven, who heard the recording and saw graphic depictions of the low frequency sounds, told the Court of Inquiry, ````It sounds like an explosion, it looks like an explosion.''
But when the Scorpion's wreckage was discovered and examined five months after the disaster, investigators could not find damage consistent with a torpedo explosion inside or outside its hull.
Because no ````classic'' torpedo damage could be seen on the wreckage, which lies 11,000 feet beneath the Atlantic, the commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet did not accept the torpedo theory. The commander, Adm. Ephraim P. Holmes, was ````of the opinion that the conclusions of the Court . . . cannot be confirmed and therefore, the cause of the loss cannot be definitely ascertained,'' according to a letter from his office to the Court of Inquiry. The letter, known as an endorsement, was obtained by the Chronicle in 1992. The Navy was so stymied in its search for the cause of the tragedy that a second investigation was launched a year later, according to letters released along with the inquiry transcript in October.
Former submarine Lt. Cmdr. Ross Saxon, now of Houston, participated in that investigation, inspecting the wreckage aboard the deep diving research submersible Trieste II. He said the six-month expedition, which included Craven and other research scientists as well as high-ranking Navy officers, found nothing to support the theory that the Scorpion was destroyed by a torpedo.
While the Navy has not released the findings of that secondary investigation, Saxon rejects the possibility that a torpedo sank the Scorpion. No torpedo damage can be seen on the submarine's hull, he said, and the torpedo doors on the bow are tightly shuttered, indicating that no torpedo had been fired moments before the submarine was destroyed.
Saxon and his colleagues continued their investigation May through October of 1969, making nine dives at the wreck site. ````The findings of everyone there were consistent across the board, that the Scorpion went down for an unknown reason,'' he said. ````Personally, I discount any theory that claims a torpedo struck the Scorpion or exploded inside the ship.'' ````We were given about 21 scenarios to examine and we discounted either 20 or 21 of them, including the possibility of a torpedo explosion,'' Saxon said. ````However, during our last dive we saw some things that suggested several more scenarios but I can't talk about those,'' he said, refusing to divulge classified information.
During the original inquiry, a parade of officers and scientific experts appeared before the court offering differing and ultimately unsubstantiated theories about the Scorpion's loss.
Some suggested a trash disposal unit failed, flooding the submarine with seawater. Others theorized that the vessel was sent to crushing depth by a failure of the stern planes -- winglike structures that guide a submarine's vertical movements.
Last May, the Chronicle reported that the Scorpion had been denied scheduled work before its last mission and was one of only a handful of submarines not equipped with a submarine safety system developed after the loss of another nuclear submarine, the USS Thresher, in 1963. The Navy maintained that the Scorpion was in excellent condition.
But one sailor told the Chronicle he refused to sail aboard the Scorpion because he so mistrusted its mechanical condition. Other crew members who died on the Scorpion had expressed similar concerns in letters to family.
Rumors spread in the absence of an official explanation for the sinking, and families agonized over whether their loved ones were killed or captured during a Soviet attack or were the victims of sabotage.
A Soviet attack seems unlikely. The original inquiry found that no Soviet warships were closer than 200 miles to the Scorpion at the time of its destruction, and those forces were under U.S. surveillance.
The families of lost crewmen remain dissatisfied with what they believe is unreasonable secrecy about an event so far in the past. They want all the documents related to the Scorpion declassified so they can see what steps were taken to investigate the disaster. ````After all these years this is what comes out?'' said Theresa Bishop, widow of Chief of the Boat Wally Bishop, the most senior enlisted man aboard and a torpedo expert. ````We all want to know what happened. None of us buy the torpedo (theory) because we know that didn't happen.''
Retired Navy Capt. Zeb Alford of Houston, who commanded the Scorpion's sister ship USS Shark in 1963, reviewed the recently released documents and noted that for the Scorpion to be killed by its own torpedo, the weapon would have to have been activated accidentally, launched unnecessarily and then turned on its own ship. ````If you did have a ``hot-run' (accidental activation of a live torpedo), what you would do would be to let the torpedo's battery power run down and to then remove it from the torpedo tube and disarm it,'' Alford said. This is the same textbook solution the Navy mentions in the Findings of Fact.
Alford left the Shark in 1963 to help prepare Navy testimony before Congress about the sinking of the Thresher, lost with 129 men in April 1963. Because the commander of the Thresher was in communication with a vessel above at the time of its fatal dive, enough information was available for the Navy to conclude that a pipe weld failed, causing the ship's reactor to shut down. The Thresher then sank below its crush depth.

STORY 3
NEWSPAPER HOUSTON CHRONICLE
EDITION 2 STAR
PUBLICATION DATE 05/23/93
DAY SUN
SECTION A
PAGE 17
LENGTH 24 INCHES
HEADLINE The Scorpion: a long and deep mystery/The explanation that never came/Navy's silence on Scorpion adds bitterness to families' grief
BYLINE STEPHEN JOHNSON
CREDIT Staff
DATELINE HIGHLAND SPRINGS, Va.
PHOTOS, GRAPHICS Photo: An aging photograph is a painful reminder for Barbara Baar Gillum of the brother she still mourns.
Joseph Anthony Baar Jr., 21 died when the USS Scorpion was lost 25 years ago.
ART CREDIT Stephen Johnson/Chronicle
NOTES Copyright, 1993 Houston Chronicle

HIGHLAND SPRINGS, Va. -- Youthful and handsome, submariner Joseph Anthony Baar smiles from a photograph in his sister's living room, a reminder of the brother who will never return from the sea.
The black and white image also reminds Barbara Baar Gillum and her mother that they still have no idea how or why Baar and his 98 shipmates died. ````All we really ever wanted was an explanation,'' Gillum lamented, looking at the image of the brother who will always be 21. ````After the disaster everything was covered up.''
The same questions torment others whose loved ones were aboard the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion when it was lost with all hands on May 22, 1968.
These survivors remain angry and hurt that the U.S. Navy either would not or could not tell what happened.
A memorial service scheduled for Saturday at Norfolk Naval Base's Submarine Pier 22 will recognize the 25th anniversary of the Scorpion's loss.
The crew left behind 64 widows and 99 children. Some wives, pregnant at the time, later gave birth, adding to the number of children who lost fathers.
The sailors represented 25 states, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Of the 12 officers and 87 enlisted men who perished, most, like Baar, were younger than 25.
A sea-blue memorial book was given to the families containing photos of each crewman and information about their lives. The biographies for the younger crewmen are painfully brief.
The agony of the families began on May 27, 1968, as they waited dockside in Norfolk, Va., for the Scorpion's scheduled return. When it didn't arrive the families were sent home, only to learn from inquiring news reporters that the sub was missing.
Many families began distrusting the Navy that day, when officers told the media the sub was missing without telling the families who had waited most of the day. ````None of us took what the Navy said seriously after that,'' said Allie Sueflow, whose husband was Machinist's Mate James Kenneth Brueggeman. ````The Navy told us all day it would be coming in,'' said Julie Ballou, who gave birth to a daughter two days before the Scorpion's expected arrival. ````I thought it cruel that the Navy didn't tell us anything. It was like they were saying, ``Well, 99 men are gone but don't worry about it.' '' Ballou, of Rigsby, Idaho, was the wife of Machinist's Mate Robert Bernard Smith.
Vernon and Sybil Stone of Ames, Iowa, have been haunted for two decades by a letter from their son, Machinist's Mate Second Class David Burton Stone, complaining about the Scorpion's condition on its final voyage. ````This concerned us, and after the Scorpion was lost we wrote Adm. (Hyman) Rickover who we thought was in charge of all the nuclear submarines and sent him a copy of David's letter. He sent us a nice reply but that was all.''
Probably because of his high profile as the father of the American nuclear submarine program, several crew members' parents wrote Rickover following the disaster.
But he was only in charge of the Navy's nuclear propulsion systems and he refused to testify at the Norfolk inquiry.
No record could be found indicating Rickover forwarded crew members' letters or parental concerns to the court. Court members contacted by the Chronicle don't recall receiving such letters to review.
Famous for being a harsh, unyielding perfectionist, Rickover replied to Mrs. Stone with a gentle note thanking her and her husband for forwarding their son's letter. ````Although there is nothing one can do at a time like this,'' Rickover wrote, ````I hope you will find some comfort in the knowledge that he served his country well.''
Five years earlier, Rickover issued an ominous warning to a Congressional hearing investigating the loss of the nuclear submarine Thresher, according to David Bentley's book, ````The Thresher Disaster.'' ````We must correct the conditions that permitted the inadequate design, poor fabrication methods and incomplete inspection to exist, if we are not to have another Thresher,'' Rickover said.
Surviving families still struggle with the lack of finality in the Scorpion disaster, which yielded neither answers nor bodies for burial. ````The difficult thing was this tragedy never had an ending,'' said David Stone's sister, Laura. ````Everyone had to find their own personal moment in which they finally said it was over. ````Sometimes I believe that I'll look up and see those guys coming back.''
Luella Violetti still sobbed last August when she talked about her son, Torpedoman Robert Paul Violetti. In poor health at the time, Mrs. Violetti died a month later ````still expecting Robert to come through the door,'' said her daughter, Anne Pierce of Broomall, Pa. ````My mother always believed my brother would come home.'' The son's life intertwined with the Scorpion twice.
As an 11-year-old Boy Scout, Violetti went with his troop to watch the launching of the Scorpion Dec. 29, 1959. He later joined the Navy and was assigned to the Scorpion July 31, 1967.
The father of a Scorpion officer still embraces the belief that the Soviets forced the submarine to the surface and took the crew prisoner. ````If you want to find them, look in Siberia,'' demands the elderly man. There is no evidence that the Soviets had any role in the Scorpion's destruction.
Others recount their difficulty in accepting the unseen and seemingly unreal deaths of their loved ones. ````There's a marker in West Islip, N.Y., that was erected in memory of my husband but it's tough because you don't know what happened,'' said Mary Brodersen of Bellmore, N.Y., the widow of Machinist's Mate Mark Christiansen.
Laura Stone was 14 when the brother she idolized died aboard the Scorpion, and she is only now beginning to consciously cope with the event. ````Several years ago Laura started asking us questions about David and then she just cried and cried and cried,'' said Sybil Stone. ````It's still very hard for her.'' Recalls Laura Stone, ````My parents fell apart at the time of David's death and they tried to isolate me from it. You can't understand what it's like to be asked about this after so long. ````Because my brother was older, I thought he was perfect in every way. He was very cool. He played the guitar and was a great artist. I admired him. ````It seemed like we sat in front of the television for weeks waiting to hear the news. We were hanging on to that.'' Laura Stone also has had to deal with the lack of public familiarity with the disaster that killed her brother. ````When my brother's death comes up in a conversation people say they never heard about that submarine. I just say, ``Well, 1968 had a lot of misery in it for everyone.' ''
The misery lasted almost 25 years for Mary Lou Clifton of Lewisville, Texas, mother of Machinist's Mate James Mitchell Wells. ````I look at his picture every day and shed a few tears,'' she said last year. The tears stopped April 27, when Clifton died at age 86.

STORY 4
NEWSPAPER HOUSTON CHRONICLE
EDITION 2 STAR
PUBLICATION DATE 05/23/93
DAY SUN
SECTION A
PAGE 1
LENGTH 88 INCHES
HEADLINE A long and deep mystery/Scorpion crewman says sub's '68 sinking was preventable
BYLINE STEPHEN JOHNSON
CREDIT Staff
DATELINE NORFOLK, Va.
PHOTOS, GRAPHICS Map: 1. Route of the final voyage of the Scorpion (color) Graph: 2. The final voyage of the Scorpion
(color), (TEXT) Photos: 3. USS Scorpion (b/w, p. 16); 4. Dan Rogers (b/w, p. 16); 5. A view of the bow section of the USS Scorpion where it rests on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. (b/w, p. 16)
ART CREDIT 1. Chronicle, 2. Chronicle, Sources: U.S. Navy documents, Jane's Fighting Ships, 3. Associated Press, 4. U.S. Navy; 5. Steve Ueckert/Chronicle
NOTES Copyright, 1993 Houston Chronicle.

NORFOLK, Va. -- In a farewell gesture, Electrician's Mate Dan Rogers splashed the USS Scorpion's bone-white mooring line into Chesapeake Bay as the nuclear attack submarine edged away from its pier.
He exchanged shouts with former shipmates as they coiled the wet line into a compartment atop the submarine's smooth snout. Dying afternoon sunlight glimmered off the warship's wake as a winter breeze chilled the submarine piers of the Norfolk Naval Base on Feb. 15, 1968.
Six weeks before, Rogers had jeopardized his career in the Navy's submarine elite by quitting the Scorpion because he considered it unsafe. He worried about his career as he watched the sub accelerate toward the Atlantic, where it submerged for a high-speed dash to a Mediterranean mission. And he feared for his former shipmates. His concerns were well-founded: In 97 days the Scorpion was lost -- a disaster far less noted than the sinking five years before of the only other U.S. nuclear sub lost at sea, the USS Thresher. To the surviving family and former crew members, though, the lack of public notice didn't ease the private grief and bitterness over a loss that might have been prevented.
Almost 25 years later, Dan Rogers perched on the edge of a chair in his north Harris County home, chain-smoking cigarettes while reading for the first time the summary of the Navy's inquiry into the sinking. The document extols the Scorpion's virtues and exonerates the Navy of responsibility for the disaster.
To the U.S. Navy brass, it was a superbly maintained ````showboat'' that did double duty as a stalker of Soviet submarines and as a symbol of American technological prowess.
Rogers, 51, exhaled a plume of smoke and growled: ````If it was so great why didn't it come back? I can tell you why. It needed an overhaul and it didn't get one. ````If that was an ``excellent' submarine, then I'm glad I never served on a bad one.''
During the 12 months he served aboard it, Rogers had been appalled at the Scorpion's poor condition, lack of maintenance and bizarre malfunctions. And his decision not to sail with it on that winter day in Virginia saved his life.
Foreboding about the submarine was not restricted to Rogers. Machinist's Mate Max Franklin Lanier turned to his wife Ladell shortly before the Scorpion's final mission and lamented, ````This thing ought to be going in for maintenance instead of out for a long mission.''
Just before midnight on May 21, 1968, the Scorpion communicated with the outside world for the last time. Running a few feet below the windswept surface of the heaving North Atlantic, the 252-foot attack submarine extended its radio antenna into the night air for a routine call to a Navy communications station in Greece.
The sub's radioman reported the Scorpion was traveling at 18 knots and was 250 miles south of the Portuguese Azores islands. After the transmission, the Scorpion's crew guided the submarine downward for the nuclear-powered race home to Norfolk after three months at sea.
The fair winter weather that marked the Scorpion's departure from Norfolk had been replaced by spring storms on May 27, when the warship was due to return. Winds churned the slate-gray bay waters and rain pelted the families waiting dockside that day for their husbands and fathers.
Children in new clothes stood by their anxious mothers for one of the infrequent reunions that punctuate the long separations of submarine families. ````I remember that day,'' said Allie Sueflow, who awaited her husband's return with their twin boys and daughter. ````It rained hard enough to knock down a small tree. She recalled a nightmare she'd had, a panorama of terror in which she saw the faces of her husband and his shipmates illuminated by flames as they struggled inside their submarine. ````We were told the submarine was delayed so we passed coffee around until they told us all to go home. When we got home, a newscaster called and asked me if I knew the Scorpion was missing. The Navy hadn't told me anything.''
Other families, told the warship was merely delayed, were shocked when they arrived home to hear radio and television reports that said the submarine had been officially declared missing.
The family of Machinist Mate Second Class David Burton Stone was at the dinner table. ````I was in the middle of telling some dumb joke when the call came,'' recalled Laura Stone, who was 14 when her brother died. ````My uncle had seen the news on TV and called. The joke was left hanging forever.''
The Navy launched a massive search, but it was five months before the Scorpion's shattered wreckage was found two miles beneath the Central North Atlantic, 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
Because of Cold War tensions and the deep secrecy surrounding submarine operations, mystery soon enveloped the Scorpion's disappearance. The tragedy became even more enigmatic when the Navy's inquiry, conducted in secret, failed to pinpoint what killed the submarine and her crew.
All that was certain was that on approximately May 22, 1968, the Scorpion and its 99 men died in a disaster witnessed only by other creatures of the deep.
Various theories blamed the Soviets, an explosion of the Scorpion's own torpedoes, and a collision with an undersea mountain. The Navy rejected those theories, according to inquiry transcripts declassified 21 years after the disaster and obtained by the Chronicle under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
And though the Navy couldn't determine what doomed the Scorpion, it was confident in concluding what didn't: the disaster was not caused ````by the intent, fault, negligence or inefficiency of any person or persons in the naval service,'' and the ````overall material condition'' of the Scorpion was ````excellent.''
A nation overwhelmed by the Vietnam War and the other cataclysmic events of 1968 soon forgot the Scorpion. Fate had wedged the tragedy between the April assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the June murder of Robert F. Kennedy.
As a result, the Scorpion disaster remains virtually unknown when compared to the April 10, 1963, sinking of the Thresher. When that submarine sank with 129 men off the New England coast -- during a more placid American period -- news coverage and congressional interest in the matter were intense.
But Rogers and hundreds of families remember. Rogers sees no mystery in the loss of the Scorpion. He believes its poor condition led to its demise. The view is supported by information obtained from Navy documents, interviews with former crewmen and letters from sailors written before their deaths on the final voyage.
Far from being a gleaming and well-maintained warship, the submarine had a history of confounding maintenance problems, was equipped with a safety system that never worked, and was denied massive reconditioning before its last mission.
The Scorpion's history of problems began early. Scorpion was built by Electric Boat Division, at Groton, Conn., and launched Dec. 29, 1959. It suffered chronic problems in its hydraulic system, which among other things operates the stern planes and sail planes -- winglike surfaces that control a submarine's movement. The submarine's hydraulic problems continued into its final mission.
After four years of service, Scorpion received its first and only full overhaul at Charleston Naval Shipyard, which had never before done such work on a nuclear submarine. Workers discovered numerous faulty piping welds that had to be redone. Similar inadequate welds were blamed for the loss of the Thresher, whose destruction encouraged the Navy to fit submarines with a safety system that would allow crewmen throughout their ships to blow ballast and make the vessels buoyant in an emergency.
The Scorpion's system never worked properly and was disconnected at the time it sank. In 1968 it was one of only four vessels out of 60 in the Atlantic Fleet submarine force not certified as having all the required safety systems.
As Cold War pressures mounted and the Soviets began launching a vast submarine fleet, the U.S. Navy by 1966 realized it lacked the capacity to perform all the overhaul work needed by its own growing nuclear submarine force.
This problem was so serious that the Scorpion didn't get scheduled reconditioning. Nearing another full overhaul that could take more than a year to accomplish, the Scorpion was selected in 1966 as the first to take part in a ````new overhaul concept,'' an experimental program that would provide abbreviated but more frequent reconditioning.
In place of a full overhaul, the experimental program was to provide reconditioning totaling 85,000 man-days -- a form of labor measurement used by the Navy in the context of shipyard work. But only 48,407 man-days were performed during the reconditioning between February and July, 1967.
And less than a third of that work went into the Scorpion's mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems. Most went into refueling and other maintenance of the sub's nuclear reactor.
Dan Rogers reported for duty aboard the Scorpion on Jan. 29, 1967, having enthusiastically volunteered for the elite nuclear submarine service after serving aboard the nuclear-powered surface ship USS Bainbridge. He expected to find the Scorpion being rebuilt by the Norfolk Naval Shipyard's civilian workers. Instead, he walked into a maelstrom of activity as the Scorpion's sailors worked two grueling six-hour shifts every 24 hours to recondition the submarine with little shipyard help.
Machinist's mates had to fabricate their own spare parts because of shortages; work was slipshod. Rogers once was ordered to weld a bookcase onto the submarine's hull -- the crew's protection from the crushing depths -- without proper authorization.
Rogers didn't realize the pressures his officers were under to keep the submarine combat-ready with limited resources. ````We called the Scorpion the ``USS Scrapiron,' '' he said. ````You'd spend the entire day working on equipment, and it was still in bad shape. We were giving the thing an overhaul without spare parts.''
Rogers' dream of being on a nuclear submariner gnarled into a nightmare of disappointment when he complained to superiors about maintenance problems. His warnings were ignored and his concerns grew.
Another former Scorpion crewman who doubts the Navy's claim about the submarine's ````excellent'' condition is retired Master Chief Electrician Andy Elnicki, 51, who spent nearly four years aboard the warship. Rogers and Elnicki were shipmates for 12 months.
Elnicki left the Scorpion 13 days before its final departure to help build another nuclear submarine. The 30-year veteran served aboard nine submarines, including four he helped build. He now lives in Jewett City, Conn.
Elnicki was stunned when told the Navy had declared the Scorpion in ````excellent'' condition at the time of its loss. ````I don't think I would agree 100 percent with that assessment,'' he said sardonically. ````We always had problems. We were always making adjustments you normally wouldn't have to make on equipment. ````I was confident in the (nuclear) reactor systems where most of the work was done but not in the other systems. The shipyard didn't hardly touch the rest of the submarine.''
Elnicki recalled that difficult work usually done by the shipyard was instead accomplished by the crew and a submarine tender, a maintenance ship.
Following the shorter-than-planned refurbishing, the Scorpion returned to sea only to be stricken by more problems, the first being a seawater leak through its propeller shaft seal.
Navy officers said the leak was soon fixed but another more serious problem that defied explanation occurred during a high-speed run to the Caribbean in November 1967. ````The boat began to corkscrew through the water,'' recalls Rogers. ````It was bad. The guys raised their eyebrows at each other like submariners do when something's wrong. Huge pieces of equipment were swaying on their rubber mountings.''
The incident came up during the inquiry into the sinking, with conflicting explanations. One theory blamed a torpedo guidance wire, even though the Scorpion had not fired torpedoes.
An officer on board at the time, who said he had never experienced such a malfunction before, claimed that air-contamination of the hydraulic system affected the submarine's control surfaces. ````We put the thing in dry dock and we never could figure out what was wrong with it,'' said Rogers, who by then distrusted the submarine.
On Dec. 29, 1967, Rogers wrote a letter to Cmdr. Francis A. Slattery, who had assumed command of the Scorpion three months before. Rogers was seeking disqualification from submarine duty. ````To get off the Scorpion, I had to disqualify myself from submarine duty entirely and I was willing to say whatever I had to,'' said Rogers. ````I actually wanted to stay in submarines and eventually was able to.'' In the letter, Rogers characterized himself as a sailor who could not ````adapt'' to submarine duty because of poor relations between the Scorpion's officers and enlisted men.
Rogers wrote that enlisted men like him were not heeded when they raised maintenance concerns: ````Nor does any facet of duty aboard the Scorpion compensate for the personal humiliation experienced as a result of not being trusted by certain officers on board. These same officers have no respect for professional pride which is found in almost every petty officer and disregard their petty officers' opinions even when solicited. ````My personal opinion is that such a lack of leadership on a vessel such as a submarine places all personnel in danger, but even disregarding that, it is still necessary for the crew to work and live together under closer than normal conditions and a lack of morale makes this extremely difficult.''
Slattery ordered it retyped deleting Rogers' warning about ````danger.'' Slattery endorsed Rogers' request to disqualify in a Jan. 2, 1968, letter that recognized Rogers' ````clear record.'' He recommended against Rogers being given future submarine duty.
Rogers left the Scorpion and awaited reassignment. Soon after, the Scorpion was selected as a last-minute replacement for a Mediterranean mission because of accident damage to the nuclear attack submarine USS Seawolf.
Scorpion officer Lt. Robert Walter Flesch of St. Charles, Mo., asked Rogers to return to the crew, holding out the promise of a visit to Mediterranean ports. Rogers' sense of foreboding steeled his decision despite the prospect of exotic sightseeing.
The crew was told of the mission as they struggled to make repairs on the Scorpion, recalls Elnicki, who had only a few days left aboard the submarine. ````On my way out I remember handing ````Popsicle'' (Electrician's Mate Gerald Pospisil of Wilber, Neb.) a stack of 15 or 20 work requests for electrical work alone,'' he said. ````Because the Scorpion was replacing the Seawolf I told him, ``These jobs will have to be done in two weeks instead of four, now.' There was a lot of work left to do.'' On Feb. 16, 1968, the day after the Scorpion left Norfolk, the submarine's crew was already struggling with repairs. A leaking hydraulic system in the submarine's conning tower or ````sail'' stained the Atlantic with 1,500 gallons of oil.
Letters written during the voyage by Scorpion crewmen and mailed during port visits revealed a submarine plagued with problems. Communications Electronics Technician James Frank Tindol III wrote of the hydraulic leak to his wife Ingrid Ann Tindol:
````7:30 p.m., Feb. 16, 1968: Rumor going around that if the hydraulic leak isn't found soon we'll have to pull into Bermuda to fix it. Good.''
````3:30 a.m., Feb. 17: Hydraulic leak is losing 50 gallons per hour -- bad. Auxiliary men (machinist's mates) think it is from the sailplanes.''
````9:50 a.m., Feb. 17: (Machinist's Mate First Class Robert James) Cowan (is) in the sail looking for the leak, can't find it.''
````4 p.m., Feb. 17th: hyd. leak seems to have stopped -- looks like no Bermuda.''
About the time Tindol began chronicling the hydraulic problems, Rogers found himself explaining to Submarine Squadron Six commander Capt. Jared E. Clarke III his reasons for disqualifying from submarine duty. ````I told Clarke I had concerns about the Scorpion's condition but I let him know it was the only submarine I didn't want to serve on.''
Clarke said little, but surprised the enlisted man by asking him which submarine he'd like to serve on. ````I told him he was holding my disqualification request in his hand. He threw it in the trash and put me on the USS Lapon, another nuclear attack submarine.'' Rogers' Navy records reflect the transfer.
As Rogers settled into that assignment, troubles continued aboard the Scorpion. On April 12, Machinist's Mate Second Class David Burton Stone, 24, wrote his parents a letter embellished with a drawing of Sicily's Augusta Bay, one of the Scorpion's ports of call. ````We have repaired, replaced, or jury-rigged every piece of equipment . . . at one time or another and the boat hasn't been overhauled in 4 1/2 years,'' he wrote. ````The officers get in and do a lot of arm waving and jaw working, we do the work and they take the credit if anyone gets any, but we grin a little at each other 'cause we know better.''
Scorpion commander Slattery also realized the submarine was in need of repairs, and wrote to his superiors about it. Because important reconditioning needed by the Scorpion was not scheduled until the following year, Slattery wrote a March 23, 1968, request for emergency repairs and warned: ````Delay of the work an additional year could seriously jeopardize Scorpion's material readiness.''
Its once-sleek hull was so encrusted with barnacles the warship's speed was reduced 1 1/2 knots, complained Slattery, who also sought replacement of the submarine's propeller and its torpedo tube drain valves. Additionally, he wrote that some of the valves that opened to allow the pumping of seawater out of the submarine were leaking, forcing water pressure directly against a drain pump inside the hull.
Because of various leaking valves, the Scorpion had been restricted to an operating depth of 300 feet, though Skipjack-class submarines were designed to descend to more than 2,000 feet.
Another letter contradicting the Navy's claim that the Scorpion was in superb shape was written by a sailor flown to meet the submarine in Rota, Spain, after it crossed the Atlantic.
When Senior Chief Radioman Robert Johnson joined the Scorpion he wrote his wife Doris a letter dated March 2, 1968, raising doubts about the condition of the Scorpion's communication's equipment. Johnson wrote: ````I reported aboard and found all the radiomen working. Would you believe that every piece of electronic equipment including antennas was inoperative?''
The deficiencies that were so obvious to the Scorpion crew somehow escaped the notice of Navy higher-ups, many of whom testified at the inquiry that they knew of no problems with the Scorpion.
One was Capt. Jared Clarke, the squadron commander who allowed Rogers to return to submarine duty after he left the Scorpion. Clarke did not mention to the inquiry board the conversation Rogers claims the two had about the Scorpion's condition.
Now retired, Clarke has declined interviews, telling Navy officials too much time has passed for him to recall the events of 1968. During his inquiry testimony, Clarke said he certified the Scorpion as ````combat ready.''
Rogers, who was honorably discharged from the Navy in 1971, never was called to testify despite his complaints about the warship. Three members of the inquiry board contacted by the Chronicle said they were not familiar with Rogers or his complaints and would have welcomed his testimony.
Rogers knows no better than any other living person exactly what happened beneath the north Atlantic on that May day 25 years ago. But one theory he finds plausible blames a mundane kitchen function -- trash disposal -- for setting off a chain of events that led to the horrific disaster.
In testimony during the 1968 inquiry, classified until recently, Vice Admiral Arnold F. Schade pointed to the trash disposal unit or ````TDU,'' a simple device compared to other complex submarine systems.
After reviewing studies that remain classified, Schade told the inquiry board a number of reasons led him to believe the trash disposal unit precipitated the disaster.
Rogers and a former Scorpion officer have suspected the TDU ever since they learned other nuclear submarines almost sank when malfunctioning TDUs allowed high-pressure seawater into submarines. ````I don't know what work was done on the TDU but if we'd had a full overhaul it would probably have been rebuilt and checked out,'' Rogers said. ````Replacing a 10-cent part may have saved the submarine.''
But even if it is on target, the TDU theory doesn't answer every question. The Scorpion's nuclear power coupled with crew procedures should have allowed the submarine to recover from a failure of its trash disposal unit.
Speculated Schade: ````Since it did not recover, we can only assume there were some sequential failures associated with this . . . There might have been additional material failures, flooding that caused fires, loss of propulsion, or . . . personnel failures, lack of appreciation of what was going on, and a (lack of) ability to counter it in time, but I think it would have to have been something else at the same time.''
Deceptively simple, the TDU consists of an inner door in the submarine's galley separated from sea pressure by a basketball-sized valve containing a 10-inch tunnel. A mechanism prevents the inner door from being opened while the valve is open to the sea.
Rather than blindly trust that mechanism, crewmen are trained to check for pressurized water against the inner door using a bleed valve before opening it for trash insertion.
Should the system be broken, as it was on several submarines, according to Schade, then opening the inner door without first checking for water on the other side could send a torrent into the submarine.
It was apparent to Schade that the Scorpion had taken on water while submerged at ````periscope depth,'' a shallow level where the careful trash dumping procedure occurs.
The testimony of Schade and others indicated the Scorpion had filled with water prior to sinking 10,000 feet beneath the Atlantic. There was no evidence its torpedoes exploded, but a huge hole blown from the side of the Scorpion's midsection indicated the possibility that seawater had reached the huge batteries several decks below the galley where the TDU was located.
````Explosive hydrogen gas and poisonous chlorine gas are produced when salt water hits battery acid,'' said Rogers. ````The crew could have been incapacitated by the chlorine or the hydrogen gas produced could have exploded, causing that hole.''
The elusiveness of a definite answer was illustrated by inquiry testimony from former Scorpion Torpedoman James M. Peercy. When asked if he had any guess about what caused the loss of the Scorpion, Peercy replied: ````I don't know sir. There are a lot of things that can sink a submarine.''
Rogers was aboard the Lapon when it was dispatched with many other vessels May 27, 1968, to search for the Scorpion. ````We didn't find them but I realized while we searched that I could have been down there with them if I hadn't done what I did.''
Had it not been for Rogers' foreboding about the submarine's condition, his complaints would today be silenced beneath two miles of cold Atlantic water.
.........................................................

The final voyage of the Scorpion
The last mission of the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion included various ports of call and maneuvers in the Mediterranean Sea before its ill-fated return voyage across the Atlantic.
Feb. 15, 1968: Scorpion departed Norfolk, Va.
March 1: Rota, Spain
March 10: Taranto, Italy
March 23: Augusta Bay, Sicily
April 10: Naples, Italy
May 16: Rota, Spain
May 21: Final radio contact
May 22: Scorpion sank with 99 crew members.

The USS Scorpion
Crew: 12 officers and 87 enlisted men
Launched: Dec. 29, 1959
Length: 252 feet
Displacement (weight): 3,513 tons
Speed: 36 knots submerged

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