USS Memphis (SSN-691)

The Memphis in Fort Lauderdale Harbor
Overview
Order	4th February 1971
Keel laying	June 23, 1973
Launch	April 3, 1976
1. Period of service
Commissioning	17th December 1977
Decommissioning	April 1, 2011
Technical specifications
displacement	6300 tons surfaced, 7100 tons submerged
length	110.3 m
width	10 m
Draft	9.7 m
Diving depth	approx. 300 m
crew	12 officers, 115 men
drive	An S6G reactor
speed	30+ knots
Armament	4 533 mm torpedo tubes
USS Memphis coat of arms

The USS Memphis (SSN-691) was a nuclear-powered submarine of the United States Navy . She was named after the city of Memphis , Tennessee and was the fourth boat in the Los Angeles class .

history

SSN-691 was commissioned in 1971 and was laid down at Newport News Shipbuilding in mid-1973 . After a construction period of almost three years, the final equipment and test drives followed, which together took around one and a half years, so that the Memphis could be put into service at the end of 1977.

On July 12, 1979, when the boat was in Naval Station Norfolk , a chain of the loading crane broke when reloading torpedoes, causing the torpedo to fall several feet on the Memphis and jamming in the loading hatch. The Mark 48 weapon had no ignition device, but the boat could have been sunk in an explosion. After two days it was possible to remove the torpedo.

In 1988, Chief of Naval Operations Carlisle Trost ordered a Los Angeles class boat to be selected as a test boat for new hull materials and more. In 1988 it was decided to convert the Memphis . The conversion began in mid-1990, making the submarine around 50 tons heavier. The knowledge gained flowed into the development of the Seawolf and Virginia classes . As of January 1994, the boat underwent another overhaul at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard . In addition to refilling the reactor, prototypes of fire control and sonar systems were also installed until 1996.

In August 2000, the Memphis overheard a major naval maneuver by the Russian Northern Fleet in the Barents Sea , with the explosion triggered by a defective exercise torpedo on board the Russian nuclear submarine K-141 Kursk and its subsequent sinking recorded. This led to the fact that high Russian officers initially spread the theory that the Kursk had been rammed by the Memphis and thus sunk (cf. the collision between the USS Baton Rouge and B-276 ).

In 2006 the Memphis was used in the Persian Gulf. In 2010 she took part in the UNITAS maneuver . On April 1, 2011, the submarine was decommissioned and is now to be dismantled as part of the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program .

Web links

Commons : USS Memphis (SSN-691)  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

• Entry in the Naval Vessel Register (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ James Bamford : NSA. The anatomy of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world . 2nd Edition. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-570-15151-4 , Chapter 6: Ears, p. 179 f .