A ceremony was held on Sunday at a park in Sarasota, Florida to dedicate the first-ever undersea memorial to honor those who went down with the USS Scorpion.
Almost exactly 50 years ago, the USS Scorpion was lost at sea when it disappeared while on patrol in the North Atlantic in 1968, with the nearly 100 officers and crew lost and presumed killed, Reuters reported.
Those and nearly 4,000 others lost in dozens of US submarines that have sunk or gone missing since 1900 - will be honored.
The memorial (Eternal Patrol) will eventually consist of 66 concrete reef balls, one for each of the 65 US submarines lost in battle or during peacetime, plus one in honor of submariners lost in non-sinking accidents.
The 590-kilogram concrete globes, will sit on the ocean floor at a depth of 14 meters to form an artificial reef that will attract a rich array of marine life.
“Submariners who die go on eternal patrol,” said Navy veteran J. Al Smith, 89, in explaining the name of the memorial.
Spokeswoman Becky Peterson from the Eternal Reef Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the undersea environment, said the company is due to complete the project by the end of the summer.
