USS Halibut (SSGN-587)

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Regulus take-off from the Halibut
Regulus take-off from the Halibut
Overview
Keel laying April 11, 1957
Launch January 9, 1959
1. Period of service flag
Commissioning 4th January 1960
Decommissioning June 30, 1976
Technical specifications
displacement

3655 tons surfaced, 5000 tons submerged

length

106.7 m

width

8.8 m

Draft

8.5 m

crew

9 officers, 88 sailors

drive

An S4G reactor

speed

20 knots

Armament

6 × 533 mm torpedo tubes , 5 × Regulus cruise missiles

The USS Halibut (SSGN / SSN-587) was a nuclear submarine , type SSGN , of the United States Navy and represents a single -ship class.

history

In 1953 and 1955, the Navy equipped two World War II submarines for launching cruise missiles, and in 1958 the two Grayback-class boats planned as SSG were put into service. As the first nuclear-powered cruise missile platform, the Halibut was laid down in 1957. The shipyard was the Mare Island Naval Shipyard . On January 9, 1959, the boat was launched and was christened by the wife of the House of Representatives Chester E. Holifield . A year later, Halibut was put into service.

On March 11, the ship began its maiden voyage and shot down the first SSM-N-8A Regulus on March 25 . In June there was a short layover in Mare Island, at the end of the year the Halibut reached Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and was taken over into the regular fleet. As part of a maneuver with navies of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization , seven cruise missile launches followed on the first voyage in 1961. Further voyages to the Pacific followed until 1964, but in that year the Regulus was decommissioned, with which the Halibut had also lost its main task.

In late 1964, the Halibut was used with eight other submarines to evaluate the new Thresher-class fighter submarines . In early 1965, the boat was finally rebuilt in the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard , which was accompanied by the reclassification to SSN-587 . As a hunting submarine, it took part in the submarine hunt in the Pacific after the conversion . Under John Piña Craven , the boat was also officially equipped for “hydrographic research”, for which the former Regulus hangar was converted into a “batcave”, from which intelligence equipment was controlled, among other things. The Halibut was therefore primarily equipped for covert operations. In 1968 she supported the CIA's Azorian Project by determining the exact location of the sunken Soviet K-129 . In 1971 the Halibut was then used to secretly tap into a Soviet underwater communications cable laid in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk ( Operation Ivy Bells ).

In 1976 the Halibut was decommissioned and remained in the reserve fleet . On April 30, 1986, the submarine was removed from the Naval Vessel Register and finally canceled in the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard .

literature

  • Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew: Hunt under water. The real story of submarine espionage . Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 2000. ISBN 3-570-00425-2

Web links