BUTLER TWP — Robert Domanski’s 5-month-old daughter saved his life 50 years ago, but nothing over those years could blot out the anguish of losing 99 friends.

Navy veteran Domanski served aboard the USS Scorpion nuclear attack submarine from February 1964 until February 1968, when he decided to forego the sub’s upcoming trip to the Mediterranean and leave the Navy to be with his wife and baby daughter.

Three weeks later, on May 21 or 22, 1968, and for unknown reasons, the Scorpion disappeared into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean near the Azores.

The vessel was scheduled to return to its home base in Norfolk, Va., on May 27, 1968, to give the sailors aboard some well-deserved leave.

“The families were waiting on the piers and the submarine never showed up,” Domanski said sadly.

The 22-year-old and his young wife had discussed Domanski serving on what turned out to be the sub’s final mission because he always wanted to see the Mediterranean.

But his final decision was to be a father to his baby.

“ ... or I would have been on it,” Domanski said.

The Scorpion was eventually found in 9,800 feet of water with significant structural damage. No bodies were ever recovered.

“It has really, truly affected me all my life,” said Domanski, a torpedoman who was a Petty Officer 3rd Class. “It was very hard on me over the years.”

After eating, sleeping, joking, working and talking with fellow sailors for years at a time aboard a closed vessel, all 100 shipmates knew each other like brothers, Domanski said.

“It was 50 years ago and now I’m 76,” Domanski said, “and I still think ‘Gee whiz, those poor buddies of mine.’”

The Natrona Heights native, who has lived in Butler since he left the Navy in 1968, said the disappearance of the Scorpion has affected every aspect of his life.

“Over the years, you don’t make friends because you think you’re going to lose them,” he said.

He thought about the sub’s disappearance “constantly” for 30 straight years after she plummeted to her watery grave and took 99 Americans along.

Many of his thoughts are of William Fennick, a Butler man who perished in the submarine.

“We talked about Butler a lot,” Domanski said, his voice trailing off.

Domanski was employed in the silicon department at then-Armco when he heard about the Scorpion tragedy on the TV news.

“I thought ‘Hey, I was on there for 38 months and then you get off and it happens,’” he recalled.

Domanski said every mission the submarine completed was top secret, and he cannot discuss his job aboard the Scorpion even to this day.

“We were in places we weren’t supposed to be at times,” he said. “We spied on different ships and subs.”

The specially designed submersible vehicle that reached the Scorpion in the 1980s was the same one that later reached the RMS Titanic.

Many theories by a host of experts have posited on the reason the sub went down, including a hydrogen-fueled explosion, an explosion during the disarmament of a torpedo, a flood caused by the ship’s trash-disposal system and even a blast by a Soviet torpedo.

Regardless of the reason, one sailor’s life was forever changed.

On Monday, Domanski won’t travel to Norfolk or the Azores, where a monument was erected to his 99 friends.

“I’ll probably say a prayer or two ... again,” he said.