All Hands Down: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion

Kenneth Sewell · Jerome Preisler

Apr 2008 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

A Cold War disaster that took ninety-nine lives, and was denied for forty years—what really happened to the USS Scorpion?

May 1968: An American submarine is sent to investigate suspicious Soviet ships gathered in the mid-Atlantic. No one aboard the USS Scorpion was aware of the trap they rode into—that the Soviets planned revenge for the mysterious sinking of a Russian sub two months before…or that a traitor has been supplying the KGB with the US Navy’s top-secret codes.

In this thrilling story that portray the human side of a naval tragedy that was officially denied for forty years, veteran submariner and bestselling author Kenneth Sewell chronicles the astounding true events behind the demise of the USS Scorpion.

Ratings and reviews

The story is well writen and engaging. There is an error that causes the actual placement on the sea floor to be in question. The solution is as follows. A torpedo hitting the hull would not have caused the damaged as is viewed in the pictures from the research ships. To have such a configuation on the ocean floor with the ship broken in two would require a breach or weaking in the area below the operations section. If the ship sustained an incident in this area it would have quickly desended to crush depth and split in two. The heavier reactor section would have caused the aft section to head toward the bottom in a reactor down configuaration. The bulkhead frame 67 would have failed during this plunge and the propeller shaft would have seperated as is indicative with the photographs. The structural pressures of the hull seperating would have caused the sail to seperate on the way to the bottom and land seperate from the main hull. The periscopes where obviously in the extended position which would be consistant with the operations near the surface at the time of the incident. This is evident from the twisted nature of the periscope conduit. Had the periscopes been retracted they would not have been twisted but would have been found bundled. Therefore it is evident from the photographs that the Scorpion was sunk by a torpedo which detonated under the hull causing structural failure due to hydostatic pressures. In essence the hull is flexed upwards first by the shock wave of the explosion then by its own weight as it flexes downward into the void caused by the explosion. (Note that most torpedoes and this torpedo in particular is designed to detonate below the mass it has homed.) This flexture ruptured the hull and essentially caused the ship to split in two. This event probably happened at crush depth. The sosus records give a good time line of the events and are consistant with a vessel struggling to survive.

Amazing cold war story!

AAA BOSS NETWORK

About the author

Kenneth R. Sewell is a nuclear engineer and a US Navy veteran who spent five years aboard the USS Parche, a fast attack submarine that was the Navy’s most decorated ship. The USS Parche conducted a number of special operations. In addition to All Hands Down, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller Red Star Rogue, and Blind Man’s Bluff. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Jerome Preisler is the author of more than twenty books, including the New York Times bestselling Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series. His musings and reflections about baseball appear in “Deep in the Red,” a bi-weekly column that runs throughout baseball season on the New York Yankees YES Network Online. A native New Yorker, he divides his time between New York City and Maine.