The loss of the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589) on Memorial Day, May 27, 1968,  has been commemorated by an American  admiral as “one of the greatest unsolved sea mysteries of our era.”  To this day, the U.S. Navy officially describes it as an inexplicable accident. After the sub failed to return to port  at the Norfolk Naval Station following a routine three-month Mediterranean deployment,  a frantic search ensued.  Nine days later the Navy announced  that the submarine and the ninety-nine crewmen on board were presumed lost.

For decades, the real story of the disaster has eluded journalists, historians, and family members of the lost crew. But, as military reporter Ed Offley reveals, a handful of Navy and government officials knew the truth: the sinking of the USS Scorpion wasn’t an accident—it was an act of war.

In this stunning work of investigative journalism, Ed Offley reveals that the U.S. Navy knew from the very beginning that the Scorpion had been sunk by the Soviets. Even before the Scorpion failed to show up at port, senior Navy officials had initiated an elaborate cover-up to suppress the real story of the undersea battle. The Navy has concealed the truth from the general public and families of the crewmen for nearly four decades: All ninety-nine American sailors aboard the Scorpion died in combat.

In Scorpion Down , Ed Offley tells the true story of the USS Scorpion for the first time. In exhilarating narrative, he tells the dramatic story of a secret battle that could have brought about WWIII, and conclusively demonstrates that the Navy’s official story about 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.