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Michael Slattery (Keebs/Slatts), CSC
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Slattery, Francis Atwood (CO USS Scorpion), CDR.
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Home Town West Minot County
Date of Passing May 22, 1968
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CDR Slattery was the Commanding Officer of USS Scorpion (SSN-589) when it was lost in May 1968
USS Scorpion (SSN-589) Disappearance (Mediterranean)
From Month/Year
May / 1968
To Month/Year
May / 1968
Description For an unusually long period, beginning shortly before midnight on 20 May and ending after midnight 21 May, Scorpion attempted to send radio traffic to Naval Station Rota, but was only able to reach a Navy communications station in Nea Makri, Greece, which forwarded Scorpion's messages to ComSubLant. Lt. John Roberts was handed Commander Slattery's last message, that he was closing on the Soviet submarine and research group, running at a steady 15 knots at 350 feet "to begin surveillance of the Soviets". Six days later the media reported she was overdue at Norfolk.
Search: 1968
The Navy suspected possible failure and launched a public search. Scorpion and her crew were declared "presumed lost" on 5 June. Her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 30 June. The public search continued with a team of mathematical consultants led by Dr. John Piña Craven, the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Navy's Special Projects Division. They employed the methods of Bayesian search theory, initially developed during the search for a hydrogen bomb lost off the coast of Palomares, Spain, in January 1966 in the Palomares B-52 crash.
Some reports indicate that a large and secret search was launched three days before Scorpion was expected back from patrol. This, combined with other declassified information, led to speculation that the U.S. Navy knew of the Scorpion's destruction before the public search was launched.
At the end of October 1968, the Navy's oceanographic research ship Mizar located sections of the hull of Scorpion on the seabed, about 740 km (400 nmi; 460 mi) southwest of the Azores, under more than 3,000 m (9,800 ft) of water. This was after the Navy had released sound tapes from its underwater "SOSUS" listening system, which contained the sounds of the destruction of Scorpion. The court of inquiry was subsequently reconvened, and other vessels, including the bathyscaphe Trieste II, were dispatched to the scene, collecting many pictures and other data.
Although Craven received much credit for locating the wreckage of Scorpion, Gordon Hamilton, an acoustics expert who pioneered the use of hydroacoustics to pinpoint Polaris missile splashdown locations, was instrumental in defining a compact "search box" wherein the wreck was ultimately found. Hamilton had established a listening station in the Canary Islands that obtained a clear signal of what some scientists believe was the noise of the vessel's pressure hull imploding as she passed crush depth. A Naval Research Laboratory scientist named Chester "Buck" Buchanan, using a towed camera sled of his own design aboard Mizar, finally located Scorpion. The towed camera sled, which was fabricated by J. L. "Jac" Hamm of Naval Research Laboratory's Engineering Services Division, is housed in the National Museum of the United States Navy. Buchanan had located the wrecked hull of Thresher in 1964 using this technique.
Observed damage
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It would appear that the bow of Scorpion skidded upon impact with the globigerina ooze on the sea floor, digging a sizable trench. The sail had been dislodged, as the hull of the operations compartment upon which it perched disintegrated, and was lying on its port side. One of Scorpion's running lights was in the open position, as if it had been on the surface at the time of the mishap, although it may have been left in the open position during the vessel's recent nighttime stop at Rota. One Trieste II pilot who dived on Scorpion said that the shock of the implosion may have knocked the light into the open position.
The secondary Navy investigation — using extensive photographic, video, and eyewitness inspections of the wreckage in 1969 — offered the opinion that Scorpion's hull was crushed by implosion forces as it sank below crush depth. The Structural Analysis Group, which included Naval Ship Systems Command's Submarine Structures director Peter Palermo, plainly saw that the torpedo room was intact, though it had been pinched by excessive sea pressure. The operations compartment collapsed at frame 33, this being the king frame of the hull, reaching its structural limit first. The conical/cylindrical transition piece at frame 67 followed instantly. The ship was broken in two by massive hydrostatic pressure at an estimated depth of 1,530 feet (470 m). The operations compartment was largely obliterated by sea pressure, and the engine room had telescoped 50 ft (15 m) forward into the hull due to collapse pressure, when the cone-to-cylinder transition junction failed between the auxiliary machine space and the engine room.
The only damage to the torpedo room compartment appeared to be a hatch missing from the forward escape trunk. Palermo pointed out that this would have occurred when water pressure entered the torpedo room at the moment of implosion.
The sail was ripped off, as the hull beneath it folded inward. The shaft came out of the boat, which has been the mystery of the loss for nearly 50 years. The broken ship fell another 9,000 feet (2,700 m) to the ocean floor.
Navy investigations
Court of Inquiry report — 1968
Shortly after her sinking, the Navy assembled a Court of Inquiry to investigate the incident and to publish a report regarding the likely causes for the sinking. The court was presided over by Vice Admiral Bernard L. Austin, who had presided over the inquiry into the loss of Thresher. The report's findings were first made public on January 31, 1969. While ruling out sabotage, the report said: "The certain cause of the loss of the Scorpion cannot be ascertained from evidence now available."
In 1984, two newspapers—the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star—obtained documents related to the inquiry and reported that the likely cause of the disaster was the detonation of a torpedo while the Scorpion's own crew attempted to disarm it. The U.S. Navy declassified many of the inquiry's documents in 1993.
Naval Ordnance Laboratory report — 1970
An extensive, year-long analysis of Gordon Hamilton's hydroacoustic signals of the submarine's demise was conducted by Robert Price, Ermine (Meri) Christian and Peter Sherman of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL). All three physicists were experts on undersea explosions, their sound signatures, and their destructive effects. Price was also an open critic of Craven. Their opinion, presented to the Navy as part of the Phase II investigation, was that the death noises likely occurred at 2,000 ft (610 m) when the hull failed. Fragments then continued in a free fall for another 9,000 ft (2,700 m). This appears to differ from conclusions drawn by Craven and Hamilton, who pursued an independent set of experiments as part of the same Phase II probe, demonstrating that alternate interpretations of the hydroacoustic signals were possibly based on the submarine's depth at the time it was stricken and other operational conditions.
The Structural Analysis Group (SAG) concluded that an explosive event was unlikely and was highly dismissive of Craven and Hamilton's tests. The SAG physicists argued that the absence of a bubble pulse, which invariably occurs in an underwater explosion, is absolute evidence that no torpedo explosion occurred outside or inside the hull. Craven had attempted to prove that Scorpion's hull could "swallow" the bubble pulse of a torpedo detonation by having Gordon Hamilton detonate small charges next to air-filled steel containers.
The 1970 Naval Ordnance Laboratory "Letter", the acoustics study of Scorpion destruction sounds by Price and Christian, was a supporting study within the SAG report. In its conclusions and recommendations section, the NOL acoustic study states: "The first SCORPION acoustic event was not caused by a large explosion, either internal or external to the hull. The probable depth of occurrence ... and the spectral characteristics of the signal support this. In fact, it is unlikely that any of the Scorpion acoustic events were caused by explosions."
The Naval Ordnance Laboratory based much of its findings on an extensive acoustic analysis of the torpedoing and sinking of Sterlet in the Pacific in early 1969, seeking to compare its acoustic signals to those generated by Scorpion. Price found the Navy's scheduled sinking of Sterlet fortuitous. Nonetheless, Sterlet was a small World War II-era Diesel-electric submarine of a vastly different design and construction than Scorpion with regard to its pressure hull and other characteristics. Its sinking resulted in three identifiable acoustic signals, as compared to Scorpion's 15. The mathematical calculations Price used remain unknown to the public. In addition, the NOL based its findings on the data recorded by the Canary Island hydroacoustic facility, and that data may have been "cleansed" of the initial (bubble pulse) signature from an external torpedo explosion before release.
The NOL acoustics study provided a highly debated explanation as to how Scorpion may have reached its crush depth by anecdotally referring to the near-loss incident of the Diesel submarine Chopper in January 1969, when a power problem caused her to sink almost to crush depth, before surfacing.
In the same May 2003 N77 letter excerpted above (see 1. with regard to the Navy's view of a forward explosion), however, the following statement appears to dismiss the NOL theory, and again unequivocally point the finger toward an explosion forward:
The Navy has extensively investigated the loss of Scorpion through the initial court of inquiry and the 1970 and 1987 reviews by the Structural Analysis Group. Nothing in those investigations caused the Navy to change its conclusion that an unexplained catastrophic event occurred.
Environmental concerns
Today, the wreck of Scorpion is reported to be resting on a sandy seabed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in approximately 3,000 m (9,800 ft) of water. The site is reported to be approximately 400 nmi (740 km) southwest of the Azores, on the eastern edge of the Sargasso Sea. The actual position is 32°54.9′N 33°08.89′W. 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 the Scorpion site. The Navy reports no significant release of nuclear material from the sub. The 1985 photos were taken by a team of oceanographers working for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
The U.S. Navy has periodically monitored the environmental conditions of the site since the sinking and has reported the results in an annual public report on environmental monitoring for U.S. nuclear-powered ships and boats. The reports provide specifics on the environmental sampling of sediment, water, and marine life that is done to ascertain whether the submarine has significantly affected the deep-ocean environment. The reports also explain the methodology for conducting this deep sea monitoring from both surface vessels and submersibles. The monitoring data confirm that there has been no significant effect on the environment. The nuclear fuel aboard the submarine remains intact and no uranium in excess of levels expected from the fallout from past atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons has been detected by the Navy's inspections. In addition, Scorpion carried two nuclear-tipped Mark 45 anti-submarine torpedoes (ASTOR) when she was lost. The warheads of these torpedoes are part of the environmental concern. The most likely scenario is that the plutonium and uranium cores of these weapons corroded to a heavy, insoluble material soon after the sinking, and they remain at or close to their original location inside the torpedo room of the boat. If the corroded materials were released outside the submarine, their density and insolubility would cause them to settle into the sediment.
Call for inquiry: 2012
In November 2012, the U.S. Submarine Veterans, an organization with over 13,800 members, asked the U.S. Navy to reopen the investigation on the sinking of USS Scorpion. The Navy denied approval to reopen the investigation of the cause. A private group including family members of the lost submariners stated they would investigate the wreckage on their own since it was located in international waters.
Theories about the loss
Accidental activation of torpedo
The U.S. Navy's court of inquiry listed as one possibility the inadvertent activation of a battery-powered Mark 37 torpedo by stray voltage. This acoustic homing torpedo, in a fully ready condition and without a propeller guard, is believed by some to have started running within the tube. Released from the tube, the torpedo then somehow became fully armed and successfully engaged its nearest target: Scorpion.
Explosion of torpedo
A later theory was that a torpedo may have exploded in the tube, caused by an uncontrollable fire in the torpedo room. The book Blind Man's Bluff documents findings and investigation by Dr. John Craven, who surmised that a likely cause could have been the overheating of a faulty battery. The Mark 46 silver-zinc battery used in the Mark 37 torpedo had a tendency to overheat, and in extreme cases could cause a fire that was strong enough to cause a low-order detonation of the warhead. If such a detonation had occurred, it might have opened the boat's large torpedo-loading hatch and caused Scorpion to flood and sink. However, while Mark 46 batteries have been known to generate so much heat that the torpedo casings blistered, none is known to have damaged a boat or caused an explosion.
Dr. John Craven mentions that he did not work on the Mark 37 torpedo's propulsion system and only became aware of the possibility of a battery explosion twenty years after the loss of Scorpion. In his book The Silent War, he recounts running a simulation with former Scorpion executive officer Lieutenant Commander Robert Fountain, Jr. commanding the simulator. Fountain was told he was headed home at 18 knots (33 km/h) at a depth of his choice, then there was an alarm of "hot running torpedo". Fountain responded with "right full rudder", a quick turn that would activate a safety device and keep the torpedo from arming. Then an explosion in the torpedo room was introduced into the simulation. Fountain ordered emergency procedures to surface the boat, stated Dr. Craven, "but instead she continued to plummet, reaching collapse depth and imploding in ninety seconds — one second shy of the acoustic record of the actual event."
Craven, who was the Chief Scientist of the Navy's Special Projects Office, which had management responsibility for the design, development, construction, operational test and evaluation and maintenance of the UGM-27 Polaris Fleet Missile System had long believed Scorpion was struck by her own torpedo, but revised his views during the mid-1990s when he learned that engineers testing Mark 46 batteries at Keyport, Washington just before the Scorpion's loss, said the batteries leaked electrolyte and sometimes burned while outside their casings during lifetime shock, heat and cold testing. Although the battery manufacturer was accused of building bad batteries, it was later able to successfully prove its batteries were no more prone to failure than those made by other manufacturers.
Malfunction of trash disposal unit
During the 1968 inquiry, Vice Admiral Arnold F. Shade testified that he believed that a malfunction of the trash disposal unit (TDU) was the trigger for the disaster. Shade theorized that the sub was flooded when the TDU was operated at periscope depth and that other subsequent failures of material or personnel while dealing with the TDU-induced flooding led to the sub's demise.
Soviet attack
The book All Hands Down by Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler (Simon and Schuster, 2008) concludes that the Scorpion was destroyed while en route to gather intelligence on a Soviet naval group conducting operations in the Atlantic. While the mission for which the submarine was diverted from her original course back to her home port is a matter of record, its details remain classified.
Ed Offley's book Scorpion Down promotes a hypothesis suggesting that the Scorpion was sunk by a Soviet submarine during a standoff that started days before 22 May. Offley also cites that it occurred roughly at the time of the submarine's intelligence-gathering mission, from which she was redirected from her original heading for home; according to Offley, the flotilla had just been harassed by another U.S. submarine, the USS Haddo. W. Craig Reed, who served on the Haddo a decade later as a Petty Officer and diver, and whose father was a U.S. Navy officer responsible in significant ESM advances in sub detection in the early 1960s, recounted similar scenarios to Offley in Red November, over Soviet torpedoing of the Scorpion and details his own service on USS Haddo in 1977 running inside Soviet waters off Vladivostok, when torpedoes appeared to have been fired at the Haddo, but were immediately put down by the Captain as a Soviet torpedo exercise.
Both All Hands Down and Scorpion Down point toward involvement by the KGB spy-ring (the so-called Walker Spy-Ring) led by John Anthony Walker, Jr. in the heart of the U.S. Navy's communications, stating that it could have known that the Scorpion was coming to investigate the Soviet flotilla. According to this theory, both navies agreed to hide the truth about both incidents. Several U.S. Navy SSNs collided with Soviet Echo subs in Russian and Scottish waters in this period. Commander Roger Lane Nott, Royal Navy commander of the SSN HMS Splendid during the 1982 Falklands War, stated that in 1972, during his service as a junior navigation officer on the SSN HMS Conqueror, a Soviet submarine entered the Scottish Clyde channel and Conqueror was given the order to 'chase it out'. Having realized it was being pursued, "a very aggressive Soviet Captain turned his submarine and drove it straight at HMS Conqueror. It had been an extremely close call."
The Soviet submarine force was as professional as the British and the Americans. According to a translated article from Pravda, Moscow never issued a 'fire' command during the cold war. This is disputed by Royal Navy officers, "there had been other occasions when harassed Russians had fired torpedoes to scare off trails." The Navy court of inquiry official statement was that there was not another ship within 200 miles of Scorpion at the time of the sinking.
U.S. Navy conclusions
The results of the U.S. Navy's various investigations into the loss of Scorpion are inconclusive. While the court of inquiry never endorsed Dr. Craven's torpedo theory regarding the loss of Scorpion, its "findings of facts" released in 1993 carried Craven's torpedo theory at the head of a list of possible causes of Scorpion's loss.
The first cataclysmic event was of such magnitude that the only possible conclusion is that a cataclysmic event (explosion) occurred resulting in uncontrolled flooding (most likely the forward compartments).
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
May / 1968
To Month/Year
May / 1968
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
People You Remember The following officers and men were lost with Scorpion (SSN-589).
Officers Chief Petty Officers Commander Francis Atwood Slattery, Commanding Officer Lieutenant Commander David B. Lloyd, Executive Officer Lieutenant Commander Daniel P. Stephens Lieutenant John Patrick Burke Lieutenant George Patrick Farrin, Lieutenant Robert Walter Flesch Lieutenant William Clarke Harwi Lieutenant Charles Lee Lamberth Lieutenant John C. Sweet Lieutenant (j.g.) James W. Forrester, Jr. Lieutenant (j.g.) Michael A. Odening Lieutenant (j.g.) Laughton D. Smith
TMC (SS) Walter William Bishop, Chief of the Boat (COB) MMC(SS) Robert Eugene Bryan RMC(SS) Garlin Ray Denney RMCS(SS) Robert Johnson MMCS(SS) Richard Allen Kerntke QMCS(SS) Frank Patsy Mazzuchi EMC(SS) Daniel Christopher Peterson HMC(SS) Lynn Thompson Saville ETC(SS) George Elmer Smith, Jr. YNCS(SS) Leo William Weinbeck MMC(SS) James Mitchell Wells
Enlisted Men FTG3(SS) Keith Alexander M. Allen IC2 Thomas Edward Amtower MM2 George Gile Annable FN(SS) Joseph Anthony Barr, Jr. RM2(SS) Michael Jon Bailey IC3 Michael Reid Blake MM1(SS) Robert Harold Blocker MM2(SS) Kenneth Ray Brocker MM1(SS) James K. Brueggeman RMSN Daniel Paul Burns, Jr. IC2(SS) Ronald Lee Byers MM2(SS) Douglas Leroy Campbell MM3(SS) Samuel J. Cardullo MM2(SS) Francis King Carey SN Gary James Carpenter MM1(SS) Robert Lee Chandler MM1(SS) Mark Helton Christiansen SD1(SS) Romeo Constantino MM1(SS) Robert James Cowan SD1(SS) Joseph Cross FA Michael Edward Dunn ETR2 Richard Philip Engelhart FTGSN William Ralph Fennick IC3(SS) Vernon Mark Foli SN Ronald Anthony Frank CSSN(SS) Michael David Gibson IC2 Steven Dean Gleason STS2(SS) Michael Edward Henry SK1(SS) Larry Leroy Hess ETR1(SS) Richard Curtis Hogeland MM1(SS) John Richard Houge EM2 Ralph Robert Huber TM2(SS) Harry David Huckelberry EM3 John Frank Johnson IC3(SS) Steven Leroy Johnson QM2(SS) Julius Johnston, III FN Patrick Charles Kahanek TM2(SS) Donald Terry Karmasek ETR3(SS) Rodney Joseph Kipp MM3 Dennis Charles Knapp MM1(SS) Max Franklin Lanier ET1(SS) John Weichert Livingston ETN2 Kenneth Robert Martin ET1(SS) Michael Lee McGuire TMSN Steven Charles Miksad TMSN Joseph Francis Miller, Jr. MM2(SS) Cecil Frederick Mobley QM1(SS) Raymond Dale Morrison QM3(SS) Dennis Paul Pferrer EM1(SS) Gerald Stanley Pospisil IC3 Donald Richard Powell MM2 Earl Lester Ray, Jr. CS1(SS) Jorge Luis Santana ETN2(SS) Richard George Schaffer SN William Newman Schoonover SN Phillip Allan Seifert MM2(SS) Robert Bernard Smith ST1(SS) Harold Robert Snapp, Jr. ETM2(SS) Joel Candler Stephens MM2(SS) David Burton Stone EM2 John Phillip Sturgill YN3 Richard Norman Summers TMSN John Driscoll Sweeney, Jr. ETM2(SS) James Frank Tindol, III CSSN Johnny Gerald Veerhusen TM3 Robert Paul Violetti ST3 Ronald James Voss FTG1(SS) John Michael Wallace MM1(SS) Joel Kurt Watkins MMFN Robert Westley Watson TM2 James Edwin Webb SN Ronald Richard Williams MM3 Robert Alan Willis IC1(SS) Virgil Alexander Wright, III TM1(SS) Donald H. Yarsbrough ETR2(SS) Clarence Otto Young, Jr.
