Our latest Discovery Channel project is a
three-hour series on nuclear submarine accidents for
Discovery's new series called "On The Inside". The
USS Scorpion episode first aired on 4 January 1999
and will be rebroadcast throughout the coming
months. (Check your local listings for rebroadcast
information in your area.) The series involves some
of the most complex forensic engineering analysis
work we've done so far, made more difficult by
government secrecy. The program includes details
regarding the search and eventual discovery of
Scorpion's wreckage in October 1968 and its
re-examination in 1984. Most of the material in the
program has never been revealed on TV, or for that
matter anywhere else.
The Skipjack-class fast attack submarine, USS
Scorpion (SSN-589), was lost with a crew of 99 when
she experienced, what most experts believe was an
internal explosion. She sank to the Atlantic sea
floor, where it lays in three major pieces at 11,000
ft. several hundred miles off the Azores.
Working from recently de-classified US Navy
investigation reports and information gathered from
now-retired incident investigators, JMS began their
reconstruction of the events sur
rounding her loss. Detailed 3-dimensional computer models of the submarine
were developed to examine and illustrate her design as well as to recreate what
happened to the sub as a result of the explosion. By studying her design, and
debris field photographs taken from submersibles searching the wreck in 1968,
JMS was able to create the first 3-dimensional reconstruction of the debris
field scene. This reconstruction and analysis of acoustic "events" recorded by
the underwater hydrophone network installed by the US government during the cold
war, allowed JMS to recreate the sinking and "break-up" sequence that the
submarine experienced during her decent to the bottom.
