Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion Book

I guess there is something about submarines (like 8000m mountains) that both repels and fascinates me. Personally I can imagine few things I would find worse than spending time in a submarine - sounds like the worst parts of flying in a far more hostile environment.

There is therefore something uniquely horrific about a sub that sinks below its crush depth and implodes several thousand feet under the sea, what a way to go. This is the story of the loss of the USS Scorpion in just such circumstances, although the exact cause of the accident remains a mystery to this day.

It must be a challenge to write a such a book since there is no obvious conclusion. It would be more satisfactory to be able to solve the mystery, but this sad story doesn't lend itself to that. Perhaps we will never know the cause.

However this doesn't detract from a compelling read. Johnson does an admirable job of examining the facts that are known and of piecing together the last voyage of the Scorpion. He also brings the human interest element in without making it seem mawkish - ultimately this is a human tragedy with 99 lives lost.