Plausibly Live! - The Official Podcast Of 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