New Fast-Attack Nuclear Submarines to be Named Arizona and Oklahoma

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I suppose it is possible that the command wasn't transferred to Sub-Dev-Gru-1 until '73 and the divers were TAD (Temporary Active Duty). I spent about have my time in the Navy assigned TAD to ships I was never aboard as a way to get around Navy bureaucracy. All the Sea Lab divers were TAD years before I was old enough to join the Navy.

Actually, it looks like she wasn't put under the "exclusive" command of SUBDEVGRU-1 until 1975, but from January 1971 she spent almost 30 months undergoing conversion work followed by post-refit sea trials, another yard period, and a 3-month deployment. Reading into that, she was slated for SUBDEVGRU-1 before she went into the yard, but they didn't formally take control of her until the refits and sea trials/shakedown were complete.
 
So there's a rather heated argument going on in some quarters about the latest batch of documents related to USS Thresher's loss that was just released under the Freedom Of Information Act; among them were logs from USS Seawolf the following day where she (supposedly) reported active sonar pings, garbled voice communications, and banging on the hull.

USS Thresher’s Crew May Have Survived Many Hours After Its Disappearance According To New Docs

Suffice to say I think the people making that interpretation - including one rather well-known former sonar operator on YouTube - ought to get metaphorically raked over the coals for hyping this up. Besides the fact that all the other evidence shows Thresher went past crush depth and imploded just after 9:18 am local time on April 10, 1963, the hypotheses that Thresher either a) somehow remained partially intact with survivors at a depth of 8,400 ft (6,000 ft past where she is believed to have imploded and scattered herself in five main pieces across an area of 33 acres) or b) was somehow floating neutral above crush depth for close to a day with enough power to run the active sonar but not enough to surface before finally sinking both don't pass the sniff test.

Thresher was the one that sank because ice formed in her valves right? They came to that conclusion because one of the sisters had a very close call with the same issue when trying to do an emergency blow.

Scorpion was the one surrounded by conspiracy theories right?
 
Thresher was the one that sank because ice formed in her valves right? They came to that conclusion because one of the sisters had a very close call with the same issue when trying to do an emergency blow.

Scorpion was the one surrounded by conspiracy theories right?

Thresher was conducting deep dive trials off New England on April 10, 1963; the test procedure was to descend to her test depth (given as 1,300 ft) in 100-ft increments while circling slowly under the submarine rescue vessel Skylark to maintain communications on her underwater telephone (a.k.a. "gertrude"). Close to test depth Thresher transmitted a garbled message at 9:13 interpreted as "... minor difficulties, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow," and then another garbled transmission at 9:17 which has been reported as including "exceeding test depth." Shortly after 9:18 am both Skylark and the SOSUS listening network reported a sound consistent with an implosion, and afterwards Skylark was unable to regain communications.

The wreck was not fully located until the following year; five large sections were found within a debris fiedl covering about 33 acres at a depth of 8,400 ft. The inquiry at the time focused on seawater piping in the sub that was silver-brazed rather than welded at the joints; prior testing had found deficiencies in 14% of these joints although most were considered noncritical. However, two failures of silver-brazed pipe joints on other subs had occurred previously; one of these was on the diesel-electric submarine USS Barbel near her test depth and had admitted an estimated 18 tons of water into the engine room in the three minutes it took for the submarine to blow her ballast tanks and get to the surface. The hypothesis was a similar casualty had occurred on Thresher and shorted out electrical systems which caused an automatic shutdown of her reactor. Under then-current procedures it would have taken 10 minutes to restart the reactor. Later testing on Thresher's sister ship USS Tinosa showed that moisture in the sub's air flasks could cause the valves to freeze up in seconds when an emergency blow was ordered; it's believed this happened to Thresher and doomed the sub. The SUBSAFE program was instituted afterwards to address those issues; as the saying goes the regulations are written in blood.

USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was an older Skipjack-class nuclear sub that went missing in May 1968; she had been overhauled at Charleston Naval Shipyard the previous year but due to the additional length of time required for SUBSAFE overhauls (what before had been 9-month yard periods were now 40 months due to shortages of parts and increased quality-control checks), she was given a reduced overhaul that deferred many of the SUBSAFE requirements (in particular, fixes to the emergency blow system). Scorpion was deployed to the Mediterranean afterwards; she was reportedly restricted to a maximum dive depth of 500 ft given her non-compliance with SUBSAFE. Scorpion departed the Med on May 16, 1968, subsequently stopping at Rota in Spain to drop off two crew and escort a ballistic missile submarine out of port. Afterwards she was ordered to monitor Soviet naval activity near the Azores; the sub's last message was that it was en route on May 21. She was reported overdue six days later. Scorpion's wreck was found at the end of October 1968 at a depth of 9,800 ft; while the bow was generally intact the aft end of the sub had telescoped forward into the midships section approximately 50 ft, breaking the hull in half and shearing off the sail. As with Thresher, there were sound recordings from distant listening stations, but with no eyewitnesses there have been a lot of conspiracy theories. Several plausible hypotheses including an explosion of the sub's batteries or an explosion of a torpedo battery (the Mark 37 torpedoes used at the time had experienced battery fires) have been raised.
 
The one conspiracy I hear is that Scorpion was sunk by the Soviets.
 
Several plausible hypotheses including an explosion of the sub's batteries or an explosion of a torpedo battery (the Mark 37 torpedoes used at the time had experienced battery fires) have been raised.

The one conspiracy I hear is that Scorpion was sunk by the Soviets.

I was assigned to the Bathyscaph Trieste II at the end of her major overhaul after returning from the Scorpion survey. A couple of the pilots and the photographer's mate were still onboard. None of these men believed that it was sunk by the Soviets.

Considerable credence to the internal torpedo problem is that SOSUS indicated that she made a 180° turn from west to east shortly before the implosion. This is standard procedure for a hot running torpedo — a torpedo that starts running while still onboard. A system in the torpedo is designed to shut it down after a 180° turn to prevent it turning the boat that launched it. The batteries on the Mark 37 torpedos that were aboard the Scorpion were due (past due) to be replaced with safer batteries.

A battery explosion and fire may not have breached the hull but could have damaged some piping or control systems that brought her to crush depth. I find it hard to believe that the Soviets would risk nuclear annihilation by intentionally sinking a US fast attack boat.
 
I was assigned to the Bathyscaph Trieste II at the end of her major overhaul after returning from the Scorpion survey. A couple of the pilots and the photographer's mate were still onboard. None of these men believed that it was sunk by the Soviets.

Considerable credence to the internal torpedo problem is that SOSUS indicated that she made a 180° turn from west to east shortly before the implosion. This is standard procedure for a hot running torpedo — a torpedo that starts running while still onboard. A system in the torpedo is designed to shut it down after a 180° turn to prevent it turning the boat that launched it. The batteries on the Mark 37 torpedos that were aboard the Scorpion were due (past due) to be replaced with safer batteries.

A battery explosion and fire may not have breached the hull but could have damaged some piping or control systems that brought her to crush depth. I find it hard to believe that the Soviets would risk nuclear annihilation by intentionally sinking a US fast attack boat.

I'm not sure if the Navy has ever declassified images or findings from the inside of the torpedo compartment on the wreck; in 1986 at least Robert Ballard conducted submersible dives on the site (the Navy's condition for letting him go back and dive the Titanic that year) which included the Jason Jr. ROV that was presumably small enough to fit through the hatches. A torpedo battery malfunction might have caused a low-order detonation of the warhead; not enough to set off the other torpedoes but enough to incapacitate everyone in the compartment and blow out tube doors and hatches. The flooded torpedo room would have then been too much for the ballast tanks and dive planes to overcome. According to the book Blind Man's Bluff, after the wreck was found Scorpion's former executive officer was put into a submarine simulator and presented with a scenario described as "hot torpedo" (the supposition being the torpedo room crew noted the battery overheating and the call to the conn being confused with a "hot-running" torpedo); as per procedure he ordered a 180-degree turn to trigger the failsafe. The simulation then progressed to a detonation and flooding in the torpedo room; from explosion to implosion the scenario took 90 seconds - the SOSUS record shows 91 seconds between the first of two small explosions and the final implosion signature.

With that said, there are some signs the submarine may have been running at periscope depth (masts were extended and a running light was uncovered); however these could have been knocked loose during the implosion. The area around the Scorpion's battery compartment is pretty badly torn up; whether that's evidence of an explosion during charging or the effects of the implosion is up for debate.

The Soviet action theory is pretty hard to ascribe credence to. Besides the sheer insanity of it, SOSUS and other sensors got fairly detailed records of the sub's sinking; any evidence that she was attacked would have gotten out by now.
 
in 1986 at least Robert Ballard conducted submersible dives on the site (the Navy's condition for letting him go back and dive the Titanic that year) which included the Jason Jr. ROV that was presumably small enough to fit through the hatches.

Jason Jr. was not small enough to fit through the hatches. I believe the diameter was 4.5ft by 3.5ft without the light fixture added. Unfortunately JJ was lost at sea when the barge carrying it sank.
 
Jason Jr. was not small enough to fit through the hatches. I believe the diameter was 4.5ft by 3.5ft without the light fixture added. Unfortunately JJ was lost at sea when the barge carrying it sank.

MIT Museum

Doesn't seem quite that large in the photo; the only sources I've found that state dimensions say 2 1/2 ft (no mention of along what axis) and 200 or 250 lbs.

Titanic discovery engineering team cited 20 years later

THE DEPTHS OF DISCOVERY EXPLORING THE SUNKEN SECRETS OF THE TITANIC WAS A TRIUMPH OF TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN SPIRIT HEALTH & SCIENCE

Reportedly the Navy has been back to both nuclear subs periodically since then to monitor for radioactive materials; in addition to the reactor Scorpion had two Mark 45 nuclear torpedoes as part of her patrol loadout. I can't imagine why some relatives of the crew on the latter are surprised the Navy doesn't want a civilian-chartered "investigation" anywhere near the wreck.

The videos that have been declassified show the DSV Alvin taking sediment cores around the wrecks and also recovering cage traps:

EDIT: Jump to 16:58 and you can see footage of Jason Jr. (or a successor ROV) being deployed; the configuration is visibly different than what was used on Titanic and the narration states it was modified for a mission objective in the "forward compartment."
 
ROV that was presumably small enough to fit through the hatches.

The Jason was way too large to fit inside torpedo or main hatches. Even if they had a tiny ROV, it is improbably that they could tell very much after an implosion — which is a similar problem on the Thresher wreckage. The Navy had ROVs that small in the 1970s. See The First Commercial Remotely Operated Vehicle

Related Side Story:
Members of the dive team I was on worked an implosion experiment a few months after I got out of the Navy. Two surplus WWII diesel boats were intentionally sank off San Diego to study the implosion and wreckage. Each boat was cleaned, instrumented, and fitted with explosive external valves on main ballast dump valves. I don't remember which submersible was used to inspect the wreckage but it was either the DSV Alvin or one of her sisters, the Sea Cliff or Turtle.

As related to me, one of the two subs failed amidships and the other in the aft torpedo room. The inside of both wreaks were wiped clean leaving the hull looking like a piston wall. The conclusion was that the implosion released so much energy so fast that the spaces in the first compartment to fail turned to seam and tore the internal pressure bulkhead loose, which acted like pistons driving all the contents to the other end of the boat. The DSV could actually fly a short distance inside one of the hulls.

It is quite possible that a modern nuclear submarine would not fail in the same way as the old diesel boats did because the crush depth is significantly deeper, but much more energy would be released when it did fail. Anytime that much energy is rapidly release, the devastation is extensive enough to obliterate a lot of evidence.
 
The Jason was way too large to fit inside torpedo or main hatches. Even if they had a tiny ROV, it is improbably that they could tell very much after an implosion — which is a similar problem on the Thresher wreckage. The Navy had ROVs that small in the 1970s. See The First Commercial Remotely Operated Vehicle

Related Side Story:
Members of the dive team I was on worked an implosion experiment a few months after I got out of the Navy. Two surplus WWII diesel boats were intentionally sank off San Diego to study the implosion and wreckage. Each boat was cleaned, instrumented, and fitted with explosive external valves on main ballast dump valves. I don't remember which submersible was used to inspect the wreckage but it was either the DSV Alvin or one of her sisters, the Sea Cliff or Turtle.

As related to me, one of the two subs failed amidships and the other in the aft torpedo room. The inside of both wreaks were wiped clean leaving the hull looking like a piston wall. The conclusion was that the implosion released so much energy so fast that the spaces in the first compartment to fail turned to seam and tore the internal pressure bulkhead loose, which acted like pistons driving all the contents to the other end of the boat. The DSV could actually fly a short distance inside one of the hulls.

It is quite possible that a modern nuclear submarine would fail in the same way as the old diesel boats did because the crush depth is significantly deeper, but much more energy would be released when it did fail. Anytime that much energy is rapidly release, the devastation is extensive enough to obliterate a lot of evidence.

One of the reasons suspicion has focused on Scorpion's torpedo compartment is that the bow appears relatively intact, which might be consistent with flooding prior to implosion. If so, it's possible signs of a fire or warhead detonation might still be discernable ... if they can get cameras in there. Given the Navy's interest in the two Mark 45 torpedoes onboard, I'd lay money they've at least put some hard thought into getting an ROV inside since the 1980s.
 
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