One Navy admiral called it "one of the greatest unsolved sea mysteries of our era." To this day, the U.S. Navy officially describes it an inexplicable accident. For decades, the real story of the disaster has eluded journalists, historians, and the family members of the lost crew. But a small handful of Navy and government officials knew the truth from the very beginning: The sinking of the U.S.S. Scorpion and its crew of 99 men on May 22, 1968, was an act of war.

In this major work of historical reporting, Ed Offley reveals that the sinking of the U.S.S. Scorpion has never been a mystery, but rather a secret buried by the U.S. government in a frantic attempt to keep the Cold War from turning into a hot war. The Soviets had torpedoed the Scorpion in reprisal for the destruction of the Soviet missile sub K-129, which the Americans had sunk in the Pacific just ten weeks earlier. But why does the U.S. Navy continue to hide the real story of what happened on that fateful day in 1968?

In Scorpion Down, military reporter Ed Offley tells the true story of the U.S.S. Scorpion for the first time and dramatically recounts a little-known episode that nearly brought about World War III. And he conclusively demonstrates that the Navy's official account of the Scorpion incident--from the frantic open-ocean hunt for the wreckage to a court of inquiry's final conclusions--is nothing more than a carefully constructed series of lies. [close]