Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 27, 1993 TAG: 9310270191
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"The torpedo was released from the tube, became fully armed, and sought its nearest target, Scorpion."
The newly declassified report says the nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion, which sank mysteriously in May 1968, probably went down after the torpedo's propulsion motor started up inadvertently while in a dry tube.
The report said that while the exact cause of the accident may never be known for certain, the most likely scenario went something like this:
The crew decided to jettison the torpedo, apparently because the crew had done so successfully in a similar situation a year earlier. But once in the sea, the torpedo turned on the sub.
The result was an enormous explosion that tore the Scorpion into two sections.
The torpedo was armed with a non-nuclear high explosive.
The forward hull section, including the torpedo room and most of the operations compartment, is in a trench on the Atlantic Ocean floor about 10,000 feet below the surface about 400 miles southwest of the Azores off the coast of Portugal. The rear section, including the nuclear reactor compartment and engine room, is in a separate trench that was formed by the impact of the hull with the ocean floor.
The Scorpion is one of only two nuclear-powered submarines the Navy ever lost. The other was the USS Thresher, which sank in 1963 off the East Coast, killing 129 men.
A separate Navy report released this week said a faulty "silver-braze" piping joint is a prime suspect in the Thresher's sinking.
The faulty joints had nearly caused two other submarines to sink and there should have been a thorough investigation beforehand by all responsible for Thresher's safety, the report said.
Despite that finding, the report said the loss of the Thresher was not caused by the "intent, fault, negligence or inefficiency" of anyone in the Navy or at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, where Thresher was built and serviced just before her final voyage.
Navy reports on the circumstances and probable causes of both accidents were prepared in the months following each accident, but were classified as secret and withheld from the public.
by CNB