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

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

In January 1968, a U.S. intelligence ship, USS Pueblo, was seized by North Korea. Among other items, the North Koreans confiscated a valuable cryptographic unit that was capable of deciphering the Navy's top-secret codes. Unknown to the Navy, a traitor named John Walker had begun supplying the Navy's codes to the KGB. Once the KGB acquired the crypto unit from the North Koreans, the Russians were able to read highly classified naval communications.

In March, a Soviet sub, K-129, mysteriously sank near Hawaii, hundreds of miles from its normal station in the Pacific. Soviet naval leaders mistakenly believed that a U.S. submarine was to blame for the loss, and they planned revenge. A trap was set: several Soviet vessels were gathered in the Atlantic, acting suspiciously. It would be only a matter of time before a U.S. sub was sent to investigate. That sub was Scorpion. Using the top-secret codes and the deciphering machine, the Soviets could intercept and decode communication between the Navy and Scorpion, the final element in carrying out the planned attack.

All Hands Down shows how the Soviet plan was executed and explains why the truth of the attack has been officially denied for forty years. Sewell and Preisler debunk various official explanations for the tragedy and bring to life the personal stories of some of the men who were lost when Scorpion went to the bottom. This true story, finally told after exhaustive research, is more exciting than any novel.

What Customers Say About All Hands Down: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion:

SCORPION sank to great depth and collapsed at 18:42:34 GMT on May 22, 1968. SCORPION was lost because of an onboard problem the crew could not overcome. The technical documents, ((SCORPION Analysis Reports One (25-pages) and Two (10-pages)), upon which the following summary is based, have been provided to the Navy's Director of Submarine Warfare (OPNAV N87) and to the Naval History and Heritage Command where they may be available through a Freedom of Information Act request.Summary: When the US nuclear submarine SCORPION was lost in the east central Atlantic on May 22, 1968, the event produced a series of acoustic signals detected by underwater sensors on both sides of the Atlantic.By comparing the detection times of these signals, the position of the SCORPION was determined. The pressure-hull collapsed in one-tenth of a second.- Other than the two small internal explosive events, all of the more than 15 SCORPION-associated acoustic signals were produced, first by the collapse of the pressure-hull, and then, over the following three minutes at increasing depth, by the collapse of small, more pressure-resistant structures such as spherical tanks within the wreckage.- There were no explosions from a torpedo or any other source external to the SCORPION pressure-hull. There was no Soviet involvement in the loss of SCORPION, just the failure of an extremely complex machine (a nuclear submarine), the same reason why the USS THRESHER was lost on April 10, 1963, the Soviet K-8 was lost on April 8, 1970, the Soviet K-219 was lost on October 6, 1986, the Soviet K-278 was lost on April 7, 1989 and the Soviet K-141 was lost on August 12, 2000. This positon provided the basis for the search that identified the SCORPION wreckage.The first reanalysis of these acoustic signals in 40-years has provided the following new information:- The initiating events that caused the loss of SCORPION were two small explosions that occurred one-half second apart at 18:20:44 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on the May 22, 1968 and were contained within the submarine's pressure-hull. The source of these explosive events cannot be determined from analysis of the acoustic data.- These explosive events incapacitated the crew who were unable to maintain depth-control.

Facts are well documented and appear to be very accurate when compared to other known facts and information.

The cover is a lie; it is NOT a True story. The author used this name to try to intise more readers and make them believe his account was how the real USS Scorpion was lost but it didn't and couldn't happen his way. This book is a FICTIONAL account of the loss of a submarine. The submarine just so happens to be named the Scorpion.

see, e.g., the warfare.ru site. Every source I consulted stated that the first utilization of the Ka-25 for ASW use by the Soviets was in 1961--much earlier than as claimed by Mr. Rule. The most extensive negative review is one of the first, by Mr. So I would take all of his statements which do not have citations, with a grain of salt. He makes many claims but with no citation to any source. Rule. This first claim is"The first deployment of the Ka-25 - for test and evaluation purposes - did not occur until 18 Sep 1968, four months after SCORPION was lost, and it occurred not in the Atlantic but in the Mediterranean from the Soviet ASW Cruiser MOSKVA."So I decided to check this out.

What if Scorpion evades. The basic argument is to dismiss any explanation other than the posited one as being implausible, and then concluding that their even MORE implausible conclusion is the only possible remaining explanation.Well, US subs don't sink that often, so no matter what the actual explanation might be, it will be implausible. Like, everything. Not only did the Soviets destroy the Scorpion, they did so intentionally with forethought, and all in retaliation for the presumed US destruction of one of their own boats, even though they never really knew if in fact a US sub was involved in the destruction of K-129.

All Hands Down reads easily, and is well written. What if Scorpion gets out a distress call.the author uses a standard construct of fiction here, where the antagonist is, at the same time, incredibly dense (insanely aggressive and irrationally emotional in the reaction to the loss of K-129) and also incredibly competent and capable (setting up an elaborate trap for Scorpion, executing it perfectly without anything going wrong, and then covering it up perfectly for decades). What if the torp doesn't destroy Scorpion. The stories about the lives of the sailors are itneresting and engaging.On the subject of what actually happened to the Scorpion, however, the book fails to makes its case, and does so rather badly.

Huh.Can you imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong with this Soviet plan. The real world is never so tidy.Overall, the book was very disappointing. It provides no real evidence beyond hearsay and conjecture. Certainly the basic story here about hyper aggressive Soviets does not really convince.