USS Scorpion 1968
Marker: recorded wreck position (Modern).
Key facts
| Name | USS Scorpion | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1968 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Modern | derived from year |
| Ship type | nuclear submarine | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Nationality / flag | United States | Wikidata P137 operator → P17 country |
| Operator | United States Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Sea / ocean | North Atlantic Ocean | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Position | 32.9150, -33.1482 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was a Skipjack-class nuclear-powered submarine that served in the United States Navy, the sixth vessel and second submarine to carry that name.
Scorpion imploded and sank on May 22, 1968. She is one of two nuclear submarines that the U.S. Navy has lost, the other being USS Thresher. She was one of the four submarine disappearances in 1968, the others being the Israeli submarine INS Dakar, the French submarine Minerve, and the Soviet submarine K-129.
The wreckage of Scorpion remains in the North Atlantic Ocean with all of her armaments and her nuclear reactor.
Diving & visiting
The remains of Scorpion rest on a sandy seabed at 32°54.9′N 33°08.89′W in the north Atlantic Ocean. The wreck lies at a depth of 9,800 ft (3,000 m) about 400 nmi (740 km) southwest of the Azores on the eastern edge of the Sargasso Sea.
The U.S. Navy periodically revisits the site to determine whether wreckage has been disturbed and to test for the release of any fissile materials from the submarine's nuclear reactor or two nuclear weapons. Except for a few photographs taken by deep-water submersibles in 1968 and 1985, the U.S. Navy has never made public any physical surveys it has conducted on the wreck.
Location
- Recorded position: 32.9150, -33.1482 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: North Atlantic Ocean
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article USS Scorpion (SSN-589) (revision 1378996910), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Wreck site”; condensed by selecting paragraphs; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
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