Tag Archives: USS Scorpion (SSN-589)

Thresher at 60

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Laid down only four short years after the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571) took to the sea, USS Thresher (SSN-593) was the lead ship of her 14-unit class.

USS Thresher. Starboard-bow view, July 24, 1961. (Official U.S. Navy Photograph)

Commissioned on 3 August 1961, she was longer than the preceding Skipjack class of attack boats but still ran a good deal shorter at 279 feet than the WWII-era “fleet boat” subs that had brought Japan to its knees.

Designed to dive to as deep as 1,300 feet to seek and destroy the increasing herds of Soviet subs, Thresher was lost with all hands during deep-diving tests, on 10 April 1963– the first of SSN in any fleet lost at sea but sadly not the last.

Her 129 souls aboard represented the largest single loss of life in the 123-year history of the U.S. Submarine Service. 

She was lost in 8,400 feet of water, a depth impossible for any SSN.

Illustration of the depth of 8400 ft where the Thresher sunk. From The Death of the USS Thresher by Norman Polmar, p96

In recognition of this loss, the National Archives has an excellent post on more resources available online.

And there is also this retrospective video from the USNI, and how the loss of Thresher, and later USS Scorpion (SSN-589), helped institute the SUBSAFE changes that have kept American boats from joining the “Eternal Patrol.”

In all, some 64 American submarines were lost between USS F-4 (SS-23) in 1915 and Scorpion in 1968, 52 of them during WWII.

The boats, and their 3,852 forever embarked crewmen, are still on patrol.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

Plumbing the Archives (and finding some gems!)

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While I spend a lot of time digging through various archives, a new one is proving interesting. While the Associated Press’s video news archive on YouTube has been around since 2015 and has chalked up over 2 billion views, it is normally ho-hum at best, simply reposting the latest Hollywood gossip or political talking head that aired three days ago.

However, they have been blitzing the channel almost every morning for the past couple of weeks with some great short clips from the 1960s and 70s.

Among the more interesting gems I’ve noticed popping up lately (and getting single-digit views no less!):

The very early XV-6A (P1127) Harrier prototypes doing landing tests on the supercarrier USS Independence (CV-62) in June 1966.

An XB-70A Valkyrie prototype (#AV-2) crash out of Edwards AFB in the same month, featuring amazing footage of both AV-1 and AV-2 in flight.

The newly-commissioned (and soon to be tragically lost) Skipjack-class nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589) cruising on the surface.

A May 1974 clip of the amphibious assault ships USS Inchon (LPH-12) and Iwo Jima (LPH-2) in the Suez operating RH-53D minesweeper birds of HM-12 in an effort to clear the canal of mines sown in the Yom Kippur War, including a shot of Iwo with no less than seven big Sikorsky’s on her deck. The TF65 (Operation Nimbus Star) mission saw HM-12 sweep some 7,600 linear miles in about 500 hours of on-station time.

B-52 Strat carpet bombings in the jungle outside of Saigon in Nov. 1965, with fighter escort from an F-100 Super Sabre.

Israeli self-propelled artillery guns of the Yom Kippur War era including rare Soltam L-33 Ro’ems which were M4 Sherman tanks modded with a huge hull and a 155mm L/33 howitzer.

April 1978 clip of white-painted UN-marked French Panhard armored cars (including some 90mm gun-armed variants) rolling off an LST into Beirut

And a longer August 1978 piece on the Panavia Tornado– likely early prototype XX946– in tests with the RAF, including some great low-level passes at MOD Boscombe Down. Keep in mind that the RAF only accepted their first two production Tornado in July 1980.

‘A New Kind of Navy Man Pioneering a New Concept of Sea Power in the Age of Space’

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Enjoy this great 27-minute circa 1960 film “Man And The FBM” covering the Navy’s Cold War Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine force and the UGM-27 Polaris nuclear-tipped SLBMs they carried. 

Keep in mind, the film was made just a few years after USS Nautilus took to the sea and only 15 since the first, comparatively puny, A-bomb was dropped from a propeller-driven bomber.

These first nuclear-powered FBM submarines, armed with long-range strategic missiles, were ordered on 31 December 1957, with the building attack submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589) lengthened with a 130-foot section to accommodate 16 Polaris missiles.

Rear Admiral William F. Rayborn, USN (left), and Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, USN, Chief of Naval Operations. Examine a cutaway model of the ballistic missile submarine George Washington (SSBN-598), July 1959. Official U.S. Navy photograph. Catalog#: USN 710496.

Completed as USS George Washington (SSBN-598), she was commissioned on 30 December 1959, just short of two years later, the first of the “41 for Freedom” boats that kicked off the strategic missile deterrent patrol system still maintained today. Footage of the GW’s commissioning is included in the film. 

Seldom heard from, the 41 boats of the FBM program made an incredible 2,824 armed patrols during their time on earth, each typically about 65 days. This is about 502 patrol years at sea during the Cold War.

Enjoy!