Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion [Hardcover]

Stephen Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2006

Praise for Silent Steel

"The magnitude of the tragedy of the USS Scorpion is matched only by the depth of the mystery surrounding her loss. Stephen Johnson has done a remarkable job of shining new light on this dark moment in U.S. submarine history."
--Sherry Sontag, coauthor of Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

"What happened to the USS Scorpion? The question has vexed submariners for almost four decades. Now, with meticulous research and incredible attention to detail, Stephen Johnson examines and dissects one of the most tragic and mysterious submarine accidents in U.S. Navy history."
--Douglas Waller, author of Big Red: Inside the Secret World of a Trident Nuclear Submarine

"Stephen Johnson has crafted a forensic masterpiece that leads the reader back through time to unravel the gnawing enigma of the tragic 1968 loss of the nuclear attack submarine USS Scorpion. Sifting through a maze of conflicting theories, he meticulously lays out a tale of undersea detectives searching for conclusive evidence to one of the most baffling mysteries of the cruel sea."
--Rear Admiral Thomas Evans, author, analyst specializing in submarine history and operations, and former officer on the Scorpion

"The manuscript arrived with yesterday's afternoon mail. I finished reading it by nightfall. It's that good! Thoroughly researched, impeccably documented, with an appealing and literate style, Silent Steel should become essential reading for submarine enthusiasts and for anyone else who enjoys an engaging and informative yarn."
--A. J. Hill, author of Under Pressure: The Final Voyage of Submarine S-Five

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Johnson painstakingly details the last 18 months of the Cold War–era fast-attack nuclear submarine U.S.S. Scorpion, which disappeared with all hands on May 22, 1968, in the mid-Atlantic. Commissioned in 1960, the Scorpion tested nuclear sub warfare tactics in exercises around the world until its final voyage following four months of duty with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. When the ship didn't emerge at its homeport of Norfolk, Va., on its scheduled arrival date of May 27, 1968, the navy launched its largest search in U.S. naval history and reported the ship and its 99 crewmen officially dead on June 5. Four months later, the navy located pieces of the ship's hull in more than 10,000 feet of water. Further investigations came to no definitive conclusion about what caused the demise of the Scorpion. Was it a Soviet attack? Did one of the Scorpion's torpedoes accidentally detonate? Did its hull crack due to poor maintenance? Did its main storage battery explode? Mining navy documents and first-person testimony, Johnson's deeply researched effort explores these and other possible explanations, but concludes that the ship's end will remain an enigma. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

On February15, 1968, nuclear attack submarine USS Scorpion left Norfolk, Virginia. On May 22, 1968, the Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was lost in the Atlantic. After 37 years, a court of inquiry, and three undersea investigations--the latter two headed by Dr. Robert Ballard, best known for his discovery of the Titanic--why the sub sank has not been determined. Johnson offers a very readable account of the very tragic mystery, complete with sketches of crew members and a well--delineated picture of the naval and submarine culture of that time. While he describes the evidence generated by all three investigations, the question of what caused the Scorpion to implode and smash with such force on the floor of the Atlantic is still a controversy. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471267376
• ISBN-13: 978-0471267379
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A fifth generation Texan, Stephen Johnson worked his way through college as a construction worker and became a newspaper reporter upon his 1976 graduation from the University of Houston.

Stephen initially worked for the Texas City Daily Sun and the Temple Daily Telegram near Fort Hood, TX. In 1979 he began a 20-year career at the Houston Chronicle.

While assigned to cover Fort Hood during the 1970s, Stephen lived in the field with the ragtag Army units of the period and won recognition for covering the troubled "Hollow Army" of the post-Vietnam era.

During the 1980s, he acquired numerous awards for his groundbreaking work in exposing shortcomings in the public mental health care system serving the seriously mentally ill. He explained that chronic "homelessness" was not necessarily a matter of economics but one of serious psychiatric illness poorly served by an inadequate public mental health care system.

This work led Stephen to investigate starvation, fire deaths, abuse, rape and financial exploitation of the disabled and the mentally ill in unlicensed care homes commonly called "boarding homes."

Despite other responsibilities, Stephen maintained a focus on military and defense matters, believing America would eventually find itself again sending troops into combat.

He's traveled to such places as Central America, Saudi Arabia and to domestic military posts and bases to observe America's military forces.

In 1989 he wrote on the state of readiness and training of various Army units and pronounced the "Hollow Army" a thing of the past. Soon after, U.S. military performance in Panama and during the Gulf War vindicated his view.

Because he observed the development of the U.S. Army's AirLand Battle Doctrine during the 1970s while covering the U.S. Army post at Fort Hood, Stephen was able to foretell, with great precision, how the 1991 Gulf War would be conducted while accurately predicting low coalition casualties in a conflict of short duration.

Stephen has also reported on the gritty elements of urban life, having been to dozens of homicide scenes, numerous aviation mishaps and more criminal and civil trials than he can recall.

A chance phone call to the Houston Chronicle newsroom in 1987 by a former USS Scorpion crew member introduced him to the story of the ill-fated fast attack submarine. Stephen eventually wrote several stories about this enigmatic disaster mishap during the mid-1990s.

Deeply moved that America had mostly forgotten about this unexplained disaster and the men it killed, Stephen was determined to write the definitive book about this misunderstood calamity and the U.S. Navy's bitter internal controversy over what caused the Scorpion disaster.

What resulted was a unique look "under the hood" of the U.S. Navy's troubled efforts to maintain its nuclear attack submarines at the height of the Cold War.

In 2000, Stephen left newspaper journalism to write books full time and in 2002 began research on Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion for Wiley & Sons Publishing.

Silent Steel is Stephen's third book.

He presently splits his time between Atlanta, GA and Bloomfield NJ.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Remembering the sailors and the ship., January 9, 2006

By 

M. Chapman "superedit" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion (Hardcover)

USS Scorpion's sinking remains a controversial topic more than 35 years later. But the focus has always been on the ship and not on the crew, all of whom perished aboard the submarine.

Stephen Johnson deftly weaves the personal stories of crew members with that of the ship itself. Scorpion was a cranky, failure-prone submarine and her crew had to work doubly hard to keep her in service. The never-ending failures and breakdowns caused at least one crew member to transfer off the ship, though his guilt haunted him for the rest of his life.

Along the way we see that the Navy hadn't learned its lesson from the sinking of the Thresher just five years earlier. Though Scorpion had been back-fitted with several "SUBSAFE" modifications, her emergency-blow system remained inoperable due to design defects for the rest of her brief life. The Navy seemed more interested in holding repair costs down, rather than the safety of a nuclear warship and her crew.

Johnson's style is subtle and understated, and is thus more effective at conveying the human tragedy of the sinking than the semi-hype of Sherry Sontag/Christopher Drew ("Blind Man's Buff") or John Craven ("The Silent War").

Those looking for a definitive explaination of the sinking may be disappointed -- as with many technical failures, there are far more questions than answers.

Intriguing, sobering, ultimately very sad, and very worthy. A tribute to those who died beneath the restless sea. Highly recommended.

58 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars In defense of John Craven, June 3, 2006

By 

Jeffrey F. Bell (Honolulu, HI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion (Hardcover)

I agree with most other reviewers that this is the most comprehensive unclassified discussion of the SCORPION sinking. But it is not a balanced analysis.

The author treats all theories equally -- except those of Dr. John Craven. He goes out of his way to denigrate Craven and everything he said or wrote about this incident. Inflammatory wording and tortured logic abound in these sections of the book.

It's true that Craven's original idea of a circular torpedo run is untenable. But the modified theory he described in his memoir THE SILENT WAR is the only one that fits the observed condition of the wreckage:

-- The torpedo room is the only part of the wreck without implosion damage, so it must have been already flooded and open to sea pressure when SCORPION sank below crush depth.

-- The torpedo room deck hatches are missing and since they open outward they must have been blown off by high internal pressure.

-- The logical source of overpressure in that compartment is a low-order detonation of an overheated torpedo warhead. Such "cook-off" detonations actually occured on SARGO in 1960.

Given SCORPION's decaying internal systems, the fire might not have been caused by the controversial batteries in the Mk-37 torpedo, but rather leaking hydraulic oil or oxygen. In that case the warhead cook-off might not have been in one of the Mk-37s but rather in an old Mk-14 -- or even one of the two nuclear Mk-45 ASTORs.

I found it curious that these torpedos and their W34 nuclear warheads are hardly mentioned in this book, or any other account of this sinking. After all, this is the only time a US warship has sunk with nukes on board and their status and possible role in the sinking must have been the top priority of the investigation. But a little thought convinced me that these invisible torpedos make Craven's model even more credible.

Modern nuclear bombs use insensitive high explosive triggers but the W34 was designed in the mind-50s before this safety feature was introduced. Several Air Force bombs of this vintage cooked-off in fuel fires. The amount of HE in a mini-nuke is a lot smaller than that in a conventional warhead and would make a smaller bang, less likely to chain-detonate the other torpedos and more consistent with the light damage and weak sound signature observed. In fact by substituting a Mk-45 torpedo for the Mk-37, one overcomes almost all of the objections to an internal torpedo explosion.

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Ship, February 17, 2006

By 

William Lee "SubVet" (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion (Hardcover)

I have been talking to Steve for over the last 3 years about this book, so it didn't come as a big surprise; but I was very happy about the depth of research and background material that was shown in the book.
I didn't expect any definate answers as to what happened to my shipmates and the boat to go down and there weren't any. What I was glad to see, was documentation on some of the issues that have been speculated about. Hopefully this will stop some of the speculation that has gone on about possible causes of the accident.
I use the word accident on purpose, because I spent two and one half years on the Scorpion from 64-67 and I know there is no way someone on the boat would have done anything to cause what ever sunk it. Having been on two other nuke subs and having been very active the last 5 years with almost 12,000 other subvets in USSVI, I feel now, just I did the day I walked off the Scorpion, that the crew on that boat was really special. They were extremely competent and dedicated to what we were asked to do. Steve talks about them having to fix things when the shipyard and other resources weren't available. This was routine, the whole time I was on it. Thanks in large part to our COB, Wally Bishop, we had no nuc/nonnuc attitudes and were all close friends. It is true that you are closer to some of your shipmates than to those in your family.
Whatever caused the ship to sink, it was not negligence by the crew. There will be another book coming out soon that purports to tell what really happened to it. If you read that book, I would suggest you come back to this book and look at the listed research and Steve's very erudite explanation of it(and that is by no means all the research that Steve did on the book) and then look at what backs up whatever supposed proof that others feel make their viewpoint valid.
I think one of the most important things this books shows is the background of what was going on during the 60s on subs. I can remember twice going out and doing ops because another boat couldn't. I can also remember working on equipment underway because we were not allowed to stay in port to fix things that didn't work.
Cdr. Lewis, as described in Steve's book, was a master skipper. I think anyone in the crew would have done whatever he asked with full confidence that he would get us back safe and alive.
I could tell a lot of stories about Admiral Fountain, but I also learned a lot about him later and came to realize why he was the way he was. He may not have been the most personable officer, but he was very good at his job and helped us be the best we could at what we did.Being the XO, is not going to win you awards for most liked officer anyway. Someone else, while not mentioned in the Book, but responsible for the high standards set by the officers, was LCDR Apple, the engineer when I was on the Scorpion. He set up expectations for the engineering department, that I am sure were carried on until the end.
Wally Bishop was a hero to all of us while we served with him. He of course will be a hero always now. My best friend ever, Bob Chandler, went down with the boat as did most of the people I served with. I think they all deserve the respect they are entitled to and was glad to see that Steve recogized this and treated them with such respect.
I am glad that Steve took the time and effort to detail everything that was known about the Scorpion and to not engage in worthless guessing of what happened.
I can't say this is a happy book, but to anyone interested in what is actually known and what was done to find out as much as possible, this book answers those questions.The book also shows what it was like to be on a nuc fast attack in those days. This book is the best that has been written about that subject. We were engaged in a war that no one understood; we on fast attacks had a specific job to do which we did extremly well and to this day, most don't know what it entailed. That is fine. We didn't expect or want people to understand. I just found out the other day that I don't qualify to belong to the VFW because no one handed out any medals to us. I am glad; that is the way it should be.
Read Steve's book and try and understand that we were dedicated and glad to take on the tasks that we were given. I know my buddies never gave up hope and were doing their job in a professional manner until the last second. We also understood every second that we were out there, that something like what happened to the Scorpion could happen.It certainly wasn't the first or second time that some emergency came up that could have turned out bad. We also thought it was worth it for the information that our country gained from our operations. Hopefully the Navy learned things from this experience that caused other lives to be saved.
Thanks Steve, you did a great job with a very difficult subject to write about.
Bill Lee