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We welcome anyone with a passion for submarines and a desire to learn and share knowledge about this fascinating hobby. Use of these forums indicates your intention to abide by our code of conduct:
1. No spam. All automated messages, advertisements, and links to competitor websites will be deleted immediately.
2. Please post in relevant sub-forums only. Messages posted in the wrong topic area will be removed and placed in the correct sub-forum by moderators.
3. Respect other users. No flaming or abusing fellow forum members. Users who continue to post inflammatory, abusive comments will be deleted from the forum after or without a warning.
4. No threats or harassment of other users will be tolerated. Any instance of threatening or harassing behavior is grounds for deletion from the forums.
5. No profanity or pornography is allowed. Posts containing adult material will be deleted.
6. No re-posting of copyrighted materials or other illegal content is allowed. Any posts containing illegal content or copyrighted materials will be deleted.
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USS Scorpion
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The bow on top sonar receiver is a AN/WLR-9 Sonar Warning receiver. It is common on all American SSN/SSBN's , and is also in other forms with their own indigenous models of the same type and purpose on most or all NATO submarines too. British SSN/SSBN's, Dutch, (& Japanese) & is located in the same general area on the top bow of the boat. (as Wlambing answered).
I did not answer yesterday as I intended to because I was stuck on the apparent sonar on Scorpion's sail top leading edge. I expect it is a warning sonar of similar purpose of some kind. I was searching through the highly detailed exhaustive "U.S. Submarines Since 1945: An Illustrated Design History" by the great Norman Friedman with illustrations by James (Jim) Christley. It describes most sonars on American boats but didn't see a reference to that particular one yet. I am sure another out there can identify it. It seems particularly unique to that boat. Maybe its a high frequency high resolution mine detection active sonar?
The Scorpion is shown in one of her very last photo's of her wearing an Atlantic two tone camouflage. Black/dark gray near to black hull, and a dark /medium gray sail. with black sprayed sail top. The Pacific Fleet submarines had a similar scheme then at that time but it had a more blue tint to the gray sail color. The different color tones between the operating areas are indistinguishable in B&W photos, but noticeable in color.
SteveLast edited by Albacore 569; 06-16-2022, 12:25 PM.
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There were all kinds of things getting tried out in the 50's and 60's, just as is still the case. Everybody carries a sail mounted "baby" shark tooth, a bow mounted one and a keel mounted WLR-9 nowadays, if one is missing from one of those locations, it may be incorporated into something else, or they got something better and hid it inside another array. In the case of the Skipjack's, it may be a simple as the picture got taken before the mount was installed, or the CO said no. In those days they could still do that.
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Originally posted by wlambing View PostThere were all kinds of things getting tried out in the 50's and 60's, just as is still the case. Everybody carries a sail mounted "baby" shark tooth, a bow mounted one and a keel mounted WLR-9 nowadays, if one is missing from one of those locations, it may be incorporated into something else, or they got something better and hid it inside another array. In the case of the Skipjack's, it may be a simple as the picture got taken before the mount was installed, or the CO said no. In those days they could still do that.
CCCLast edited by CC Clarke; 06-16-2022, 10:12 PM.
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Yep, you're right! For a while in the 60's, there was a paint scheme where all verticals, including upper hull forward of engine exhaust (or aft hatch on nukes), angled forward were painted Ocean Gray, and all horizontals were basically Flat Black (really a dark Charcoal Gray, think charcoal gray hot rod primer). We used to call it "the Pacific Paint job". Everything went all black in the early 70's.
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