Misterija USS "Scorpion"

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Potonuće USS Scorpion 1960 godine je i dalje pod velom tajne, a podatci o istrazi još uvek pod zabranom i posle 40 godina:









Several hypotheses about the cause of the loss have been advanced; some debate whether an explosion ever actually occurred. Some have suggested that hostile action by a Soviet submarine caused Scorpion's loss; there was even speculation that the loss was somehow connected to the Bermuda Triangle. Shortly after her sinking, the Navy assembled a Court of Inquiry to investigate the incident and to publish a report about the likely causes for the sinking. The court was presided over by VADM Bernard Austin who presided over the inquiry into the loss of the USS Thresher. The panel's conclusions, first printed in 1968, were largely classified. At the time, the Navy quoted frequently from a portion of the 1968 report that said no one is likely ever to "conclusively" determine the cause of the loss. The Clinton Administration declassified most of this report in 1993, and it was then that the public first learned that the panel considered that a possible cause of the malfunction was one of Scorpion's own torpedoes. (The panel qualified its opinion saying the evidence it had available could not lead to a conclusive finding about the cause of her sinking.) However, the Court of Inquiry did not reconvene after the 1969 Phase II investigation and did not take testimony from submarine designers, engineers and physicist who spent nearly a year evaluating the data.

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Blind Man's Bluff

In 1999, two New York Times reporters published Blind Man's Bluff, a book providing a rare look into the world of nuclear submarines and espionage during the Cold War. One lengthy chapter deals extensively with Scorpion and her loss. The book reports that concerns about the Mk 37 conventional torpedo carried aboard Scorpion were raised in 1967 and 1968, before Scorpion left Norfolk for her last mission. The concerns focused on the battery that powered the torpedoes. The battery had a thin metal-foil barrier separating two types of volatile chemicals. When mixed slowly and in a controlled fashion, the chemicals generated heat and electricity, powering the motor that pushed the torpedo through the water. But vibrations normally experienced on a nuclear submarine were found to cause the thin foil barrier to break down, allowing the chemicals to interact intensely. This interaction generated excessive heat which, in tests, could readily have caused an inadvertent torpedo explosion. The authors of Blind Man's Bluff were careful to say they could not point to this as the cause of Scorpion’s loss — only that it was a possible cause and that it was consistent with other data indicating an explosion preceded the sinking of Scorpion.

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Red Star Rogue

In 2005, the book "Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.," by former American submariner Kenneth Sewell in collaboration with journalist Clint Richmond, claimed K-129 sank 300 miles northwest of Oahu on 7 March 1968 while launching her three ballistic missiles in a rogue attempt to destroy Pearl Harbor. The book is considered to be a circumstantial, sensational story.

Sewell claims that the sinking of Scorpion was caused by a retaliatory strike for the sinking of K-129, which they attributed to a collision with USS Swordfish (SSN-579).

In 1995, when Huchthausen began work on a book about the Soviet underwater fleet, he interviewed Admiral Victor Dygalo, who stated that the true history of К-129 has not been revealed because of the informal agreement between the two countries' senior naval commands. The purpose of that secrecy, he alleged, is to stop any further research into the losses of Scorpion and К-129. Huchthausen states that Dygalo told him to "overlook this matter, and hope that the time will come when the truth will be told to the families of the victims."

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Present location

Stern section of Scorpion, seen in 1986 by Woods Hole personnel

Today, the boat is reported to be resting on a sandy seabed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in approximately 3000m of water. The site is reported to be approximately 400 miles southwest of the Azores Islands, on the eastern edge of the Sargasso Sea. The U.S. Navy has acknowledged that it periodically visits the site to conduct testing for the release of nuclear materials from the nuclear reactor or the two nuclear weapons aboard her, and to determine whether the wreckage has been disturbed. The Navy has not released any information about the status of the wreckage, except for a few photographs taken of the wreckage in 1968, and again in 1985 by deep water submersibles.

The Navy has also released information about the nuclear testing performed in and around Scorpion site. The Navy reports no significant release of nuclear material from the boat. The 1985 photos were taken by a team of oceanographers working for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The circumstances of the Woods Hole mission show the high level of secrecy the Navy attaches to Scorpion; at the time the photographs were taken, the Navy and Woods Hole both maintained that the Woods Hole team was searching for the wreckage of the noted sunken ocean liner, RMS Titanic. It was only after newspapers learned and reported that the Woods Hole team was also searching for Scorpion that the Navy admitted as much, and released some of the photographs taken during the expedition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)

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Jos jedna nuklearna podmornica na vecnoj patroli.

USS Thresher (SSN-593)


Loss of the Nuclear Submarine
USS Thresher (SSN-593)
The second THRESHER (SSN-593) was laid down on 28 May 1958 by the Portsmouth (N.H.) Naval Shipyard; launched on 9 July 1960; sponsored by Mrs. Frederick B. Warder; and commissioned on 3 August 1961, Comdr. Dean W. Axene in command.

Following trials the nuclear attack submarine took part in Nuclear submarine Exercise (NUSUBEX) 3-61 off the northeastern coast of the United States from 18 to 24 September.

On 18 October; the submarine headed south along the east coast. After calling at San Juan, Puerto Rico, she conducted further trials and test-fired her torpedo system before returning to Portsmouth on 29 November. The ship remained in port through the end of the year and spent the first two months of 1962 evaluating her sonar system and her Submarine Rocket (SUBROC) system. In March, the submarine participated in NUSUBEX 2-62, an exercise designed to improve the tactical capabilities of nuclear submarines, and in antisubmarine warfare training with Task Group ALPHA.

Off Charleston, the ship undertook operations observed by the Naval Antisubmarine Warfare Council, before she returned briefly to New England waters from whence she proceeded to Florida for SUBROC tests. However, while mooring at Port Canaveral, the submarine was accidentally struck by a tug which damaged one of her ballast tanks. After repairs at Groton, Conn., by the Electric Boat Company, the ship returned south for more tests and trials off Key West. THRESHER then returned northward and remained in dockyard hands through the early spring of 1963.

In company with SKYLARK (ASR-20), THRESHER put to sea on 10 April 1963 for deep-diving exercises. In addition to her 16 officers and 96 enlisted men, the submarine carried 17 civilian technicians to observe her performance during the deep-diving tests. Fifteen minutes after reaching her assigned test depth, the submarine communicated with SKYLARK by underwater telephone, apprizing the submarine rescue ship of difficulties. Garbled transmissions indicated that--far below the surface--things were going wrong. Suddenly, listeners in SKYLARK heard a noise "like air rushing into an air tank"--then, silence.

Efforts to reestablish contact with THRESHER failed, and a search group was formed in an attempt to locate the submarine. Rescue ship RECOVERY (ASR-43) subsequently recovered bits of debris, including gloves and bits of internal insulation. Photographs taken by bathyscaph TRIESTE proved that the submarine had broken up, taking all hands on board to their deaths in 5,500 of water, some 220 miles east of Boston. THRESHER was officially declared lost in April 1963.

Subsequently, a Court of Inquiry was convened and, after studying pictures and other data, opined that the loss of THRESHER was in all probability due to a casting, piping, or welding failure that flooded the engine room with water. This water probably caused electrical failures that automatically shutdown the nuclear reactor, causing an initial power loss and the eventual loss of the boat.

THRESHER is in six major sections on the ocean floor, with the majority in a single debris field about 400 yards square. The major sections are the sail, sonar dome, bow section, engineering spaces, operations spaces, and the tail section.

Owing to the pressurized-water nuclear reactor in the engine room, deep ocean radiological monitoring operations were conducted in August 1983 and August 1986. The site had been previously monitored in 1965 and 1977 and none of the samples obtained showed any evidence of release of radioactivity from the reactor fuel elements. Fission products were not detected above concentrations typical of worldwide background levels in sediment, water, or marine life samples.

http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08593b.htm
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08593a.htm

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Zanimljivost vezana za ove 2 potonule podmornice jeste to sto je jos 1985 g poznati istrazivac Robert Balard u `pohodu` na olupinu Titanika a u reziji USN krenuo da prvo istrazi olupine podmornica .

Naravno sve je tada obavljeno pod velom tajne a pod izgovorom da se ide na put traganja za najcuvenijom olupinom svetskih mora .

Bob Ballard Special: Titanic's Nuclear Secret: Titanic's Nuclear Secret

Citat:It was the grandest ocean liner ever built: its final resting place the most intriguing nautical mystery of the 20th century. In 1985, Dr. Robert Ballard stunned the world when he discovered the Titanic more than two miles down in the Atlantic. Few knew that when he found the great ship, Ballard was on a secret mission for the United States Navy. The Navy had sent Ballard, not to hunt Titanic, but to investigate two other deep-sea tragedies: top-secret American nuclear submarines lost in the Cold War's darkest days. Now, Dr. Ballard discloses the details of those missions, how he got the Navy to agree to let him search for Titanic and how his work examining two sunken subs - the Thresher and the Scorpion - gave him the crucial knowledge he needed to find the lost ship.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080602-titanic-secret.html


Searching for the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion with the Titanic as Cover


http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2010/06/searching-for-t.....-as-cover/