Randall Wilson was visiting from Alaska with family. And Mayra Trejo, 34, of Bellflower took her cousins to a Long Beach landmark, the Queen Mary.
When they arrived, Wilson noticed a rusty, football-field-long craft floating low in the water next to the towering ship. He walked over for a look.
“We were like, ‘What is that?’ ” said Wilson, who is 21. “It’s pretty cool. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a submarine — anywhere.”
And not just any submarine.
What’s on display, though not open for tours these days because of its condition, is the Scorpion, a Soviet-built vessel and an aging reminder of the Cold War. For 22 years, it tracked U.S. vessels across the Pacific Ocean.
“It was one of the first subs that could have launched Russian nuclear warheads,” said Robert Lisnow, a Los Angeles attorney who represents the owner.
After it was decommissioned in the mid-1990s, the submarine crossed the ocean to Australia as its new, nonmilitary owners sought to create a tourist attraction. In 1998, Ed Skowron of Palm Springs bought the vessel and brought it to Long Beach, after spending $970,000 to transport it on a giant flat-bed ship.
Here, the Scorpion joined the Queen Mary in the Long Beach Harbor. It welcomed visitors daily for 17 years.
“People enjoyed it,” Skowron said.
Now the sub’s fate is uncertain. A rupture in the hull flooded a ballast tank and caused the vessel to tilt dangerously in summer 2015. It’s been closed ever since.
Weighed down by an estimated $10 million in needed repairs, according to court documents, a reopening is nowhere in sight. And the Scorpion appears no longer to be wanted by some.
‘It doesn’t fit’
A Queen Mary Land Development Task Force commissioned by the city recommended — in a 15-page “Guiding Principles” report delivered to the Long Beach City Council in September — the sub be relocated “to allow more space for water activities in the water adjacent to the Queen Mary.”
Mayor Robert Garcia, who pushed for creation of the task force two years ago, deferred a question about the submarine’s future to city staff. John Keisler, Long Beach’s economic and property development director, said in an email the task force’s recommendations aren’t binding.
“At this time, the city is unaware of any preparations to remove the submarine,” Keisler wrote.
However, the submarine is absent from a grand plan for the Queen Mary’s future unveiled last week, which followed the disclosure days earlier of a report that said the Queen Mary needs at least $235 million in repairs. The plan appears to echo the task force report.
Keisler said an image of the Foxtrot-class submarine was included in the Seaport Master Plan prepared by Queen Mary Seaport Development — the then-holder of the Queen Mary master lease — in February 1998.
But that’s not the case in the latest plan.
Last week, Urban Commons, current holder of the 45-acre lease for the Queen Mary and surrounding waterfront, unveiled a $250 million blueprint for a half-mile boardwalk, amphitheater, indoor adventure park, hotel rooms and beach area. The submarine is noticeably absent from the slick artist renderings and conceptual layout of the re-imagined attraction.
“I see that we’re being replaced by a bunch of sand,” Skowron said Thursday.
Dan Zaharoni, chief development officer for Urban Commons, addressed the absence in an email.
“Our plans for Queen Mary Island currently do not include The Scorpion because the lease is controlled by another party,” Zaharoni said. “In its current state, the vessel is inoperable and until it becomes operable again, we are unable to make plans for its future.”
That’s fine with local preservationist Mary Rohrer, founder of QMI Foundation, a Queen Mary nonprofit. She said she doesn’t understand why the submarine came to Long Beach in the first place.
She never thought it belonged.
“It doesn’t fit with the Queen Mary,” Rohrer said. “It’s not the same era.”
Not to mention that, at one point, it was a very unfriendly vessel.
Fire sale
Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, much military equipment was auctioned off to the highest bidder.
“The Soviet Union had an estate auction,” said Andrew Jenks, a professor at Cal State Long Beach who specializes in Russian history. “It was kind of like a fire sale for the Cold War.”
And Jenks said the Scorpion is a byproduct of that.
According to an illustrated “Russian Scorpion” booklet sold to tourists who visited the submarine’s former gift shop, the vessel was obtained by a group of Australian business people from the Russian Federation. For a few years, it was on display in Sydney.
Then Skowron, who had served in the Coast Guard, received a call from someone asking if he’d like to own a Soviet sub. Skowron leaped at the opportunity.
Skowron declined to name the price he paid.
But, Jenks said, “I imagine it was fairly cheap.”
Doubtless the bulk of his costs involved hauling it across the Pacific and cleaning it up, he said.
In any event, the submarine’s allure in the late 1990s owed to the depth of fear there once was about the ominous world nuclear power, Jenks said.
“This is a Cold War trophy. That’s what this is,” he said. “It basically says to people, ‘We won.’ ”
At the same time, he said, submarines are intriguing because few have traveled in one or journeyed well beneath the ocean’s surface.
“It gives them this window into this secret, hidden world,” Jenks said.
Historic submarine
Then, of course, there is the rich history.
“This was a very historic submarine,” said Eric Wertheim, defense consultant and author of “The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World.”
“This was the submarine that NATO forces were operating against for a good part of the Cold War,” Wertheim said by phone from the East Coast.
Remember hearing about those submarines that surfaced during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, when the U.S. and former U.S.S.R. were brought to the brink of nuclear war? Those were Foxtrots.
Wertheim said the submarine class “played a very big role in hunting for U.S. carriers and playing a cat-and-mouse game with U.S. ships.”
“It was a long-range vessel for scouting far from Soviet waters,” he said.
According to the booklet, the diesel-and-electric-powered vessels could travel 20,000 nautical miles without refueling.
Wertheim said 62 Foxtrots were built between the late 1950s and early 1970s for the Soviet navy, and 17 others for its allies.
The Soviets referred to the class as Project 641.
By the late 1990s, those Soviet subs had become giant artifacts. And Skowron thought the B-427 submarine he bought — and renamed Scorpion — would create a tourist magnet on the West Coast.
So he made arrangements to pair the submarine with the Queen Mary in a maritime attraction.
Keisler said Queen Mary Seaport Development Inc., holder of the master lease for the Queen Mary property at the time, brought the Scorpion to Long Beach in July 1998.
‘Long, tight ride’
Skowron said “virtually every television station in town was there” to cover its arrival. In a couple weeks, it opened for public tours.
Judging by comments left behind by visitors, some were struck by its design and close quarters.
“Was really awesome!” wrote one in 2005, according to a log provided by Skowron. “Props to the men that had to endure that long tight ride!”
Skowron said 7,900 people per month peered inside the submarine’s long belly during the peak summer tourist season.
“As a tourist attraction, the Scorpion and its on-site gift shop proved successful and highly profitable, clearing in excess of $500,000 yearly, unlike the perennial money-losing Queen Mary tourist attraction,” a lawsuit filed by the submarine’s owner, Newco Pty Ltd., in June 2016 stated.
Tours continued until late June 2015, when the ballast tank flooded and the operator, Save the Queen, shut the attraction down, court documents show. Save the Queen terminated the Scorpion’s lease in November 2015, saying that was authorized by the terms of its 10-year lease with Newco, signed in early 2011.
In court filings, Newco and the now-former operator blame each other for the submarine’s condition. Also named in the 2016 lawsuit were Urban Commons and Garrison Investment Group.
Newco seeks $10 million in damages to cover repairs. It also aims to block removal from Long Beach Harbor.
Newco maintains that, in 2011, the submarine was in good condition.
“I’m angry that they let it go to such disrepair that it is beyond belief,” Skowron said.
Raccoons and rust
Save the Queen claims, in an October filing, that a rupture on June 23, 2015, that closed the exhibit resulted from an earlier problem Newco failed to fix.
“In reality, a pre-existing outer hull fracture further ruptured that day, causing massive flooding of a ballast tank,” the claim stated. “Of necessity, Save the Queen closed the Scorpion to tourists and requested that plaintiff make necessary capital improvements to the submarine in order to restore operations.”
Save the Queen stated that Newco “fails to mention the large dent to the Scorpion’s outer hull and other damage the submarine suffered upon its delivery in 1998.”
In any event, all sides agree the submarine is not exactly in mint condition.
A casual visit to the harbor reveals numerous rust spots and streaks, broken instruments, missing paint and cracks.
And an embarrassing raccoon infestation is common knowledge.
“That’s what it’s pretty much known as,” said Rohrer, the preservationist. “I’ve actually seen raccoons on it myself. It’s typically at night, and it’s just an ongoing problem.”
That’s not to say the vessel, fixed up, couldn’t still attract visitors, Jenks, the history professor, said.
By now, the Cold War has begun to fade into history and the shine is off the trophy allure, Jenks said. But he suggested the chill in U.S.-Russia relations could again make it a hot stop on the Southern California tourist circuit.
“Now we’re entering a new phase,” Jenks said. “Russia has emerged as the enemy, as a new threat.”
Poor condition or not, Wilson, the visitor from Anchorage, Alaska, said the former Russian vessel was particularly interesting.
“I think it’s cool,” he said. “I think they should leave it here.”
“And,” said Trejo, his cousin, “they should let us get on it.”
