Soviet submarine Scorpion
|
|
| Missing image B-427_Scorpion.jpg B-427, homeported in Long Beach, California | |
| Career | Missing image Supennant.png Soviet Naval Pennant |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | |
| Laid down: | 10 April 1971 |
| Launched: | 22 June 1971 |
| Commissioned: | 4 December 1971 |
| Decommissioned: | 1994 |
| Fate: | sold to Australia |
| Homeport: | Long Beach, California |
| Stricken: | 1994 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 1952 tons surfaced, 2475 tons submerged |
| Length: | 299 feet 6 inches |
| Beam: | 24 feet 7 inches |
| Draft: | 20 feet |
| Powerplant: | three Kolomna 2D42M 2000 hp diesel engines, three electric motors; two 1350 hp and one 2700 hp, one 180 hp auxiliary motor |
| Propulsion: | three propeller shafts, each with six bladed propellers |
| Speed: | 16 knots surfaced, 15 knots submerged, 9 knots snorkeling |
| Range: | 20,000 miles surfaced at 8 knots, 11,000 miles snorkeling, 380 miles submerged at 2 knots |
| Endurance: | three to five days submerged |
| Depth: | 300 meters (985 feet) |
| Complement: | 12 officers, 10 midshipmen, 56 seamen |
| Armament: | ten 21-inch torpedo tubes, six forward and four stern |
Scorpion (B-427) was a project 641 -- also known by its NATO reporting name as the Foxtrot class -- diesel-electric attack submarine of the Soviet Navy. The "B" (actually "Б") in her designation stands for большая (bolshaya, "large"). Her keel was laid down on 10 April 1971 at Sudomekh Shipyard of Leningrad. She was launched on 22 June 1971 and commissioned on 4 December 1971.
For twelve years she patrolled the Atlantic, protecting the ballistic missile submarine bastions of the Northern Fleet. In the mid-1980s she was partially retired to school boat status, training crews from Cuba, India, and Libya.
In 1989, Scorpion was returning to Vladivostok from Vietnam when she ran into a typhoon. A mechanical breakdown that could not be fixed in time prevented the sub from diving. The storm battered the boat, destroying the light hull and damaging the ballast tanks and high pressure air bottles. Scorpion limped back to Vladivostok where she was repaired and refitted with a new light hull.
She was decommissioned in 1994. On 25 July 1995, she sailed from Vladivostok to spend nearly three years at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. She left Sydney Harbor on 31 May 1998 for Long Beach, California, arriving on 25 June and tying up next to RMS Queen Mary. On 14 July, she opened to the public as an exhibit.
(Note that some Web sites mistakenly state that the name of B-427 in the Russian language was "Podvodnaya Lodka." Podvodnaya lodka, literally "underwater boat," is the translation of "submarine;" "scorpion" would be скорпион or skorpion.)
References
Scorpion’s Web page: http://www.queenmary.com/QMweb/html/sub.html