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

Prologue: Abyss -- Gorshkov's gun -- Off to poke the bear -- Baited -- Pier 22 -- Brandywine -- Lost -- Trapped and killed -- Boat's wake.;Discusses the mysterious sinking of the U.S. submarine USS Scorpion near Hawaii in 1968, involving the sinking of a Soviet sub months earlier, secret codes confiscated from a U.S. intelligence ships by North Korea, and a government cover-up. Forty years ago, in May 1968, the submarine USS Scorpion sank in mysterious circumstances with a loss of ninety-nine lives. The tragedy occurred during the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and it followed by only weeks the sinking of a Soviet sub near Hawaii. Now in All Hands Down, drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, many with exclusive sources in the naval and intelligence communities, as well as recently declassified United States and Soviet intelligence files, Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler explain what really happened to Scorpion. 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 ... A Cold War disaster that took ninety-nine lives, and was denied for forty years—what really happened to the USS Scorpion? May 1968: An American submarine is sent to investigate suspicious Soviet ships gathered in the mid-Atlantic. No one aboard the USS Scorpion was aware of the trap they rode into—that the Soviets planned revenge for the mysterious sinking of a Russian sub two months before...or that a traitor has been supplying the KGB with the US Navy's top-secret codes. In this thrilling story that portray the human side of a naval tragedy that was officially denied for forty years, veteran submariner and bestselling author Kenneth Sewell chronicles the astounding true events behind the demise of the USS Scorpion .