DDH - Brandywine

The Dave Bowman Show

Among the memories I have from my time in New London, CT, at US Navy Submarine School, is a few moments on a bright but very cold January afternoon, listening to an audio tape. The problem with such memories is that I remember the sounds more than I recall the technical details. We were told that this was a highly classified recording of the direct loss of USS Scorpion on May 22, 1968. For all I know, it was a tape of a powered screwdriver spinning. I was very young and easily influenced, and the instructors were trying to impress upon us the dangers involved with what we were training to do. In the subsequent years, I have come to believe that no such tape actually existed, but on that day, it was a sobering reminder that the ocean – and everything in it (including the Soviets) was trying to kill me. The year 1968 was a very bad year for submarines. The Soviets, the French, the Israelis and the United States all lost boats in those months. The French and Israeli boats would not be found for many years, and in both cases would be seen as accidents. Bu to this day, the Soviet K-129 and the American Scorpion are believed by many to have been pawns in the greater spy game that started with John Walker stealing the US operational codes, the North Koreans stealing the USS Pueblo to get the decoding machines and the alleged attempt by rogue units in the KGB to start a nuclear war between the United States and Communist China. That tape we heard, was supposedly the end of the third act of that complex and frightening story… NOTE: At no point in this discussion will CLASSIFIED materials be discussed. All information discussed is sourced to public domain material and all opinions are those of the host ONLY. The United States Navy has not reviewed or approved any materials discussed in this program and will not comment on the contents of this program. The program host acknowledges that he was exposed to some level of CLASSIFIED materials regarding the events discussed in this program, but that at no point will he discuss any materials which he knows to be CLASSIFIED. All opinions are his alone, and all materials are sourced from publicly available information found in open sources.