The Mediterranean had become the latest cold war arena. Since the Arab-Israeli War in 1967, the Soviet Union had been sending growing numbers of attack subs armed with nuclear cruise missiles to stalk U.S. aircraft carriers and to try to trail U.S. missile subs roaming from a base in Rota, Spain. U.S. surveillance subs were also watching ports in Egypt, where some of the Soviet vessels stopped. The traffic was so thick that by December the Med saw its first underwater collision, between the USS George C. Marshall (SSBN-654) and a Soviet attack sub.
Most of the time, however, the problem was simply detecting the Soviet subs. SOSUS listening nets, which helped in other areas of the world, didn't reach into the Med-or, for that matter, down the west coast of Europe, a key Soviet route to the area. The Med itself has horrible sonar conditions, with saltwater meeting fresh water, warm meeting cold, all of it sending sonar bouncing in unpredictable directions. Besides all that, nobody on the U.S. side really understood how the Soviets operated in the Med, or how many subs they were sending. Indeed, submarine analysts in London and their counterparts in Norfolk, Virginia, were having long analytic arguments about Soviet operations, arguments that went on all the longer because there were so few facts to hack them up.
On the assumption that sheer numbers would fill in the gap left by expertise, the United States began trying to train its allies' sub forcesthose in southern Europe and the Middle East-in the art of sub-chasing. Scorpion, in fact, was sent to the Med to play rabbit, to be hunted by foreign forces as part of their training. For Scorpion's men, this should have been a plum assignment, one with the rare perk of port stops in sun-sprayed Spain, Italy, and Sicily. But many would have preferred to have stayed onshore with Rogers, at least judging from their letters home.
"We have repaired, replaced, or jury-rigged every piece of equipment," twenty-four-year-old Machinist's Mate Second-class David Burton Stone wrote to his parents on April 12. Stone sent his letter two months into the trip, just before Scorpion got caught in a dangerous game of chicken with a Soviet destroyer. The incident was typical of operations in the Med: both sides had taken to harassing the other at sea. When Scorpion surfaced to exchange messages with the USS Cutlass (SS-478), the destroyer raced forward as if to ram the submarine. With a crash seemingly moments away, the Soviet ship backed off.
"It did it three or four times," says Herbert E. Tibbets, the commanding officer of Cutlass, who watched the incident from his bridge. "I kept sweating, thinking, `I hope those guys hack it down this time."'
Reports of that incident and rumors of another mission have left many of the families convinced that the Soviets were the likely cause of Scorpion's destruction. According to the most virulent story, Scorpion supposedly was hit by a Soviet torpedo during a final mission in which she tried to chase a Soviet attack submarine away from a U.S. Polaris boat out in the Atlantic.
There was, in fact, a final mission, but it had nothing to do with chasing Soviet attack subs. It began in late April. Scorpion was on her final port visit, this one to Naples, Italy. From there, her men expected to be going home. Instead, they were told they were being sent to monitor strange Soviet activity. U.S. satellites had photographed a group of Soviet surface ships, just outside the Med, flying balloons about the size of weather balloons. The Soviet ships had been engaged in this baffling behavior for nearly a month. In the Pacific, the Soviets had been known to launch balloons equipped with electronic sensors in the vicinity of U.S. nuclear tests. Perhaps this was a new application of that spying technique.
Figuring that Scorpion was going to pass near the area on her way home anyway, Captain James Bradley, still the Navy's top submarine intelligence officer, ordered the sub to swing by and take a look. Slattery and the other Scorpion officers were distressed. After more than two months at sea, the officers wanted to go straight home, and they made that clear at a farewell cocktail party in Naples, cornering Bradley with their concerns. He was sympathetic, but the orders stood.
Scorpion set out toward the Soviet ships on April 28. Slattery stopped outside the breakwater at Rota, Spain, to drop off a crewman and a spook who had become ill, then went on. Scorpion lurked near the Soviet ships for two or three days before Slattery turned his sub for home. When he reached a safe distance from the Soviets, he radioed a message that he had collected a few photographs but little insight about the Soviet exercise.
It is not entirely clear where this group of ships was working, but declassified Navy documents cite one possibility. Air-reconnaissance planes had spotted two Soviet hydrographic survey ships-a submarine rescue ship and an Echo 11-class nuclear attack submarine-conducting an unspecified "hydro-acoustic operation" southwest of the Canary Islands, which lie about 300 miles off northwest Africa. Air reconnaissance was cut off on May 19 and resumed on May 21, just about the time Scorpion would have left the area.
"There were no observed changes in the pattern of operations of the Soviet ships, either before or after Scorpion's loss, that were evaluated as indicating involvement or interest in any way," the Navy would later report in a document prepared in 1969 by a court of inquiry into the Scorpion disaster and kept classified for years.
On the evening of May 21, the Scorpion's crew radioed in their location and reported that they had embarked upon their assigned route home, the "Great Circle Track" through the North Atlantic. Ordered to transit at 18 knots, they said they expected to arrive in Norfolk at 1:00 P.M., Eastern Standard Time, on May 27.
Admiral Thomas Moorer, the CNO, and Vice Admiral Arnold E Schade, commander of submarines in the Atlantic, began to worry when Scorpion failed to answer messages on May 23 as well as repeat messages over the next two days. They quietly asked a few Navy ships and planes to scan for signs of the submarine. No general alarm was raised. After all, Slattery and his men could be racing home underwater and out of radio contact.
Concern turned to fear on May 27, at 12:20 P.M. It was twenty minutes before Scorpion was supposed to arrive at Norfolk. By now, she should have been on the surface, her crew talking with the base. Schade initiated an intensive communications check. Ships and planes flooded the air with Scorpion's call name.
"Brandywine…. "
"Brandywine…. "
"Brandywine!"
There was no answer.
At 3:15 P.M., Scorpion was declared missing.
Back at the dock, the crewmen's families waited, waited for their husbands, sons, and fathers to come back from sea, waited in a spring rain that washed the dock clean. They knew nothing about the frantic radio messages tearing through the air around them. Then the Navy told them to go home, told them that Scorpion had been delayed. It was only when news reporters started calling that the families learned that their sons, husbands, and fathers were missing.
By the time Craven turned for the Pentagon, intelligence officers had already been frantically scrambling for acoustic evidence or other signs of an accident, a collision, or a battle. Reconnaissance pilots placed all known Soviet and Eastern Bloc surface warships, merchant ships, and submarines at least 50 miles away from any point Scorpion was expected to pass. The Navy would later report that there was "no evidence of any Soviet preparations for hostilities or a crisis situation such as would he expected in the event of a premeditated attack on Scorpion." Indeed, by the time Craven walked into the War Room, the Navy basically had ruled out Soviet involvement in Scorpion's loss.
Vice Admiral Schade set out himself to join the search on the USS Pargo (SSN-650). Rogers, the former crewman, went out looking as well, aboard his new submarine, the USS Lapon (SSN-661).