Scorpion Down

"Here's the payoff when a veteran military affairs correspondent spends almost a quarter century investigating one of the greatest mysteries in U.S. Naval submarine history. A meticulously researched, gripping narrative that draws you in with the first sentence." --Douglas Waller, author of Big Red: Inside the Secret World of a Trident Nuclear Submarine The loss of the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion on Memorial Day, May 27, 1968, has been commemorated by an American admiral as "one of the greatest unsolved sea mysteries of our era." After the sub failed to return to port following a routine three-month Mediterranean deployment, a frantic search ensued. Nine days later the Navy announced that the submarine and the ninety-nine crewmen on board were presumed lost. In this stunning work of investigative journalism, Ed Offley reveals that the U.S. Navy knew from the very beginning that the Scorpion had been sunk by the Soviets. He tells the dramatic story of a secret battle that could have brought about World War III, and he conclusively demonstrates that the Navy's official story about the Scorpion incident -- from the frantic open-ocean hunt for the wreckage to a Court of Inquiry's final conclusions -- is nothing more than a carefully-constructed series of lies. Ed Offley has been a military reporting specialist for newspapers and online publications since 1981, including the Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Virginia, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Stripes.com, and DefenseWatch magazine, and is currently Military Reporter for the News Herald in Panama City, Florida. He served in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam.