The United States has lost two of its deep-sea nuclear submarines since World War II, one of which is the USS Scorpion attack submarine, whose details of its sinking are still unknown.
The two nuclear submarines are classified as attack submarines of the US fleet, according to the report of the American Public Mechanics magazine.
Although there are a number of theories about the reasons for the sinking of the two submarines, the US Navy has not revealed full details of what happened to the submarines, one of which was carrying nuclear weapons that were not recovered after the accident.
The Scorpion submarine was carrying two nuclear weapons that weren’t recovered, and the nuclear reactor of the submarine, which remained at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean with its crew of 99 sailors, wasn’t recovered.
The submarine was spying on the Soviets… How did the US fleet lose its most dangerous nuclear submarine forever?
The USS Scorpion submarine was designed as part of a new generation of attack nuclear submarines, whose speed under water is greater than its speed in a floating position on the surface.
Thanks to its reliance on nuclear energy, the Scorpion submarine can spend more time underwater compared to diesel submarines, which need to stay in floating mode for longer periods.
The submarine weighed 3,000 tons and was equipped with 6 torpedo tubes of 533 mm in diameter, anti-submarine and surface ships.
The well-known story of the Scorpion submarine is that it was sent to a mission to monitor Soviet naval units in the Atlantic Ocean in 1968, and it determined its location during that mission, but it didn’t return after that to remain on the ocean floor southwest of the Azores, located in the northern Atlantic Ocean.
There are 3 stories about the submarine’s sinking, one of which says that the torpedoes it carried exploded before being launched due to a technical defect in the launch system, while the other story says that the waste disposal system on board the submarine had a problem that led to the explosion of the submarine’s batteries.
As for the third story, it is also related to the submarine’s batteries, whose continued charging causes the accumulation of hydrogen gas in a fatal manner without being detected, until it leaks due to the excessive pressure to operate and lead to an explosion inside the submarine.
The Scorpion submarine was carrying on board two torpedoes equipped with nuclear warheads, noting that it wasn’t recovered, knowing that the destructive capacity of each of them is estimated at 11 kilotons, or the equivalent of 11,000 tons of TNT high explosive.
