Halibut Hangar

On this day, October 28, 1968, the USNS Mizar (T-AGOR-11) towed her magnetometer and cameras over a sunken wreckage two miles below. Two days later the United States Navy declared to the world that the sunken USS Scorpion (SSN 589) had been located. A recently published book, by Ed Offley, Scorpion Down, Basic Books, 2007 provides convincing, compelling, and conclusive primary source accounts that the Mizar’s October 28, 1968 “discovery” was nothing more than an elaborate “cover story”, by senior Navy and government officials, to obfuscate the fact that the wreckage had been located months earlier on June 9, 1968, by the USS Compass Island (EAG 153)1.

Book in WorldCat

To submarine fiction readers Scorpion Down will read like a submarine thriller that drops depth charge after depth charge until the truth about Scorpion’s sinking is finally forced to surface.

To USS Halibut (SSN 587)² submariners it will read like a detailed x-y grid plot of a target area after years of patient passes in a very dark sea, which finally promises to illuminate the target and enable recovery ... of the truth.

Offley has left many actively pinging transponders on a carefully constructed high probability, narrow confidence band grid of targets. I suspect it will not take 25 more years to recover documentary evidence of the truth about Scorpion's³ sinking.

Map Showing Compass Island's Search Track Beginning June 9, 1968

Web:

• Scorpion Down
• UPDATED Radio WNIA, Scorpion Down, Interview with Ed Offley (mp3)
• UPDATED 10/29/2008 Casualties of the Cold War: in Scorpion Down, veteran correspondent Ed Offley claims the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion was sunk in 1968 by the Soviet Navy.

-----notes-----

1. In the world of intelligence, especially military intelligence, especially superpower military intelligence it is actually very difficult and expensive to slow the relatively short half-life of a secret. Human actions will always belie randomness and thus secrecy, so intelligence officials use cover stories to explain the human non-randomness. Or as John Craven, technical coordinator of the Mizar’s Scorpion search might say: an ideal cover story must always be true and explain every aspect of non-random behavior with respect to the secret(s) being protected.

According to Offley’s compelling case the ultimate secret sought to be protected is that the former USSR intentionally torpedoed and sunk the USS Scorpion, on May 22, 1968 at 1644 (4:44 pm local time) in retaliation for the earlier US sinking of USSR’s K-129 submarine. The cover story used by senior Navy and government officials was intentionally or unintentionally articulated by Craven. Craven maintained and reasserted to Offley that the USS Scorpion sank as a result of an internally exploding torpedo (hot-running torpedo).

Later, when images (Navy and Ballard) of the sunken Scorpion showed no sign of an internal explosion the cover story was tweaked, by the USS Scorpion’s board of inquiry to say that the hot-running torpedo was jettisoned by crew members and then spontaneously locked on and sunk the Scorpion.

Offley conclusively demonstrates that senior Navy and government officials responded to the Scorpion’s sinking within hours of its May 22, 1968 sinking. This fatally torpedoes and sinks the official cover story. The old cover story cannot be tweaked, amended or salvaged, Craven's assertions notwithstanding – it has been fatally and conclusively blasted out of the water.

Offley, having successfully sunk the Scorpion’s cover story goes on to construct a theory of why Navy and government officials covered up the fact that they had begun the Scorpion search within hours not days and located the wreckage within days not months of its sinking. In this effort Offley is less successful. He unnecessarily complicates his theory by weaving in the Walker spy ring, North Korea’s proxy piracy of the spy ship USS Pueblo (AGER-2) and Russia’s access to submarine crypto gear, KLB-47, KWR-37, and KW-7.

2. Offley incorrectly associates hull number 575 with the USS Halibut (SSN 587). Submarine hull number 575 belongs to Halibut’s sister ship the USS Seawolf (SSN 575). In Offley’s book the Seawolf was scheduled to participate in upcoming NATO exercises in the then volatile Mediterranean. However, system failures forced Seawolf into the shipyard and Scorpion took her place for the Mediterranean NATO exercise.

As noted above Halibut figures into Offley’s book as the submarine that located the sunken Russian submarine K-129. According to Offley’s book Scorpion was sunk in retaliation for America’s earlier sinking of K-129, which Halibut then located and photographed. The CIA subsequently salvaged the K-129 submarine using the USNS Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193) – remember the manganese nodules cover story?

America honored a prior Russian request to provide evidence that the K-129 submariners recovered in the salvage operation were given a proper at sea burial. America presented Russian President Boris Yeltsin with photos of the sunken K-129, the at sea burial ceremony, and the flags used during the at sea burial of the recovered K-129 Russian submariners.

3. Another book on the USS Scorpion by Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler, All Hands Down: the true story of the Soviet attack on the USS Scorpion, Simon and Schuster, 2008 is schedule for publication around April 15, 2008 (Sewell is also co-author, with Clint Richmond, of Red Star Rogue: the untold story of a Soviet submarine's nuclear strike attempt on the U.S.).

What submariner, as described in All Hands Down, in the entire US Submarine Force, officer or enlisted, standing an in port 15 hour engineering watch would ever request the below decks watch to wake the captain so he (engineering watch) could take a piss?