USS Seawolf (SSN-575)
.jpg) The Seawolf in front of the Golden Gate Bridge |
|
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Keel laying | September 7, 1953 |
| Launch | July 21, 1955 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | March 30, 1957 |
| Decommissioning | March 30, 1987 |
| Whereabouts | Canceled |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
4280 tn.l. submerged |
| length |
102.9 m |
| width |
8.4 m |
| Draft |
6.7 m |
| crew |
13 officers, 92 sailors |
| drive |
An S2Wa nuclear reactor, 15,000 hp |
| speed |
20 knots |
| Armament |
6 533 mm torpedo tubes |
The USS Seawolf (SSN-575) was the second nuclear-powered submarine of the United States Navy . It was put into service in 1957 as a platform for a liquid metal-cooled reactor and spent the first half of its service life mainly with exercises and test drives. It was later converted to carry out special operations. In 1987 the Seawolf was decommissioned and dismantled in 1997.
As was common in the 1950s, the submarine was named after a sea creature, the Anarhichas lupus (English Seawolf ) from the family of sea wolves .
technology
hull
The Seawolf was 102.9 meters long and 8.4 meters wide, and when submerged she displaced around 4280 ts . Her hull was based heavily on the design of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) , the Navy's first nuclear-powered submarine. It did not yet correspond to the hydrodynamically optimized hull shape, which resembles a drop, as it was introduced with the USS Albacore (AGSS-569) . Instead, the hull was still similar in appearance to the World War II boats, with a destroyer-like V-hull and a real deck. Externally, the biggest difference to the Nautilus , apart from the extension of around five meters, is the tower , which is larger and stepped in shape here. The down rudders were hinged on the bow.
After equipping the submarine for special operations, the hull received several additions, including so-called "fish", on which cameras and gripping tools could be lowered to the seabed.
drive
Technically the biggest change compared to the Nautilus was the chosen type of reactor. Instead of a conventional pressurized water reactor , the S2G was installed. This abbreviation stands for Submarine (S), second generation (2) and the manufacturer, General Electric (G). The S2G was a liquid metal-cooled reactor that used sodium as a coolant . This was smaller, quieter and more powerful than its pressurized water counterpart on the Nautilus . Three of these reactors were ordered. One for use on Seawolf , one as a land-based training reactor, and one replacement. However, the technology never caught on , partly for safety reasons and because of constant technical problems with the superheaters . As early as 1960, ran Seawolf therefore with a pressurized water reactor of the type S2Wa of Westinghouse . The radioactive reactor compartment that had been removed from the Seawolf was welded into a stainless steel container by the Navy, which was dumped in three kilometers deep water in 1959 120 kilometers off the coast of Maryland .
This S2Wa , a version of the reactor used on the Nautilus made from spare parts of the S2W , equipped the ship with an output of around 15,000 hp, which acted on two shafts via geared turbines . The Seawolf reached speeds of around 20 knots when submerged. This reactor also caused more and more problems in later years and was much louder than the S5Ws that were available shortly after the replacement and were used from the boats of the Skipjack class . Because of this, and because of the shape of the hull, the Seawolf was the loudest submarine in the US fleet.
Armament and Electronics
Although the Seawolf was designed as a prototype, it was fully operational. This also included six forward-facing torpedo tubes with a diameter of 21 inches / 53.3 cm for the discharge of torpedoes . As sonar , the Seawolf used a BQS-4 , which could both actively and passively track other ships. It was installed in the bow and sent and received sound via a "sonar wing" protruding from the deck.
history
Planning and construction
The Seawolf was commissioned in 1952 as the second nuclear submarine for the United States Navy. It followed the Nautilus , which had recently been laid on keel , and also received a hull similar to this one, but a different type of reactor, which was first used on Seawolf . Both submarines were primarily used to test the new, atomic propulsion technology, but were fully operational.
The keel of the submarine was laid on September 7, 1953, and the construction yard was the Electric Boat from the General Dynamics group. Construction was completed on July 21, 1955, and the boat was launched. The boat was sponsored by Elizabeth Cole, the wife of William Sterling Cole , a member of the House of Representatives and later Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency . Before she could hit the champagne bottle against the bow of the boat in front of 20,000 visitors, the Seawolf began to slide down the ramp. Only at the last moment did the bottle hit the body and burst. Even during the first full-power test runs, cracks in the steam generator's pipe systems and problems with the superheaters appeared, triggered by a leak in the steam generator through which the coolant, an alloy of liquid sodium and potassium, could escape. This delayed the commissioning of the boat and limited the performance of the entire propulsion system. Only on March 30, 1957, the Seawolf was officially taken over into service with the US Navy. The construction cost a total of around 53 million US dollars.
Trial submarine
In the first half of her service life, the Seawolf carried out many test drives that were intended to demonstrate the efficiency of the new propulsion system. On April 2, the Seawolf began her first voyage, which took her into the waters off Bermudas for around a month . She carried out two more training runs off Key West until August, and the first major relocation began on September 3rd. Until September 23, the Seawolf took part in a NATO exercise in the North Atlantic, during which the submarine covered over 6,000 miles. Further exercises followed in the Caribbean in November, followed by a first shipyard overhaul by February. After the boat was launched again in February 1958, it took part in exercises along the US east coast in the following months.
On August 7, 1958, the submarine went underground for a demonstration voyage and remained underwater for two months, during which it covered 13,700 miles. For this achievement, the crew was awarded the Navy Unit Commendation . The Seawolf was then docked in its shipyard at Electric Boat. In the following two years the reactor was replaced by a conventional pressurized water reactor.
On October 25, 1960, the Seawolf began its first voyages with the new reactor. From January 25, 1961, the Seawolf was used to locate and maintain contact with the pirate-kidnapped Portuguese passage ship Santa Maria . The Seawolf tracked the ship off the coast of Brazil and chased it for a few days until the pirates surrendered in Recife , whereupon the Seawolf returned to domestic waters. From there she led a two-month mission with an oceanographic background to Portsmouth . For the next three and a half years, the Seawolf stayed on exercises in local waters, interrupted in April 1963 by a search for the sunken USS Thresher (SSN-593) .
In April 1964 the Seawolf began another major relocation. Together with the carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) and the nuclear cruisers USS Long Beach (CGN-9) and USS Bainbridge (CGN-25) , the submarine formed Nuclear Task Force One , the first combat group to consist entirely of nuclear-powered ships History. After the departure of the Seawolf , the three surface units began a world orbit in Operation Sea Orbit . The following year, the Seawolf stayed in domestic waters and docked on May 5, 1965 in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard , where the nuclear fuel was renewed and the submarine was certified according to SUBSAFE . It was launched again in September 1966. After a year of test drives, the boat was returned to the fleet, where it carried out further test and practice drives. After the necessary replacement of a propeller in the Charleston Naval Shipyard in October 1967, she carried out further tests in the Bahamas .
In January 1968 the Seawolf was preparing for a planned NATO exercise in the Mediterranean Sea in the Gulf of Maine . At high speed, however, she ran into an undersea mountain and severely damaged her stern. The necessary repairs put the boat out of action until March 1969; instead of the Seawolf the ailing USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was deployed, which sank on the return from this voyage. In 1968 the Seawolf was classified as a second-line submarine , i.e. no longer used at the front. The reason for this was the relatively poor condition and above all the high noise level of the boat. Until the late summer of 1969, the repairs were again followed by test drives, and the Seawolf spent the last three months of the year in the Mediterranean.
Special operations
At the end of 1970 the boat was finally moved from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the way, when the boat was south of Cuba, the drive failed and the Seawolf turned up incapable of maneuvering. The destroyer USS Blandy (DD-943) took the submarine in tow. After the problem in the engine room was resolved, the Blandy turned away, the Seawolf ran under its own power to the naval base in Guantánamo Bay . Later the Seawolf reached the Pacific as planned. There she was overhauled at the beginning of 1971 in the Mare Island Naval Shipyard and equipped for special operations. The boat was in the shipyard until mid-1973 and was then stationed in Bangor , Washington . It was selected despite its poor condition, because the Navy did not want to withdraw any of its newer submarines from the front line, but had no real use for the old, noisy Seawolf anyway. She was the second boat for special operations alongside the USS Halibut (SSGN-587) .
At the end of 1974, the Seawolf , equipped with special cameras that could be lowered to the seabed, was sent to the scene of the accident on the Soviet submarine K-129 . The secret recovery of the boat by the Hughes Glomar Explorer in the Azorian project , operated by the CIA, had largely failed in the middle of the year, now the USA wanted to find out whether a second attempt could be worthwhile. The wreckage that had not been recovered was scattered over a wide area, making another attempt at recovery impossible. In the following years the Seawolf repeatedly renewed wiretapping systems on submarine communication cables of the Soviet Navy in the Sea of Okhotsk , which had been installed there in 1972 by the Halibut . The Seawolf exchanged the tapes and brought the recordings back to the United States for analysis. Despite its poor condition and although the fleet with the USS Parche (SSN-683) had received a new submarine for special operations, the Seawolf was overhauled again from 1978 and equipped with new nuclear fuel, for which the Navy spent 80 million US dollars .
After the Seawolf sailed again in 1980, a fire broke out in the engine room during a test drive, which forced the boat to surface and open the hatches. The submarine then had to go into dry dock for another year. The next voyage took the boat to the Sea of Okhotsk, where at the beginning the monitoring system was successfully equipped with new tape material and the old one was taken on board. The boat was damaged in this operation, but reached local waters on its own and was brought back to dry dock to repair the damage. A short time later, the eavesdropping operation was betrayed by the NSA spy Ronald Pelton .
After this had happened, from 1984 the Seawolf was only used to locate rocket fragments on the open sea and, if necessary, to rescue them. An operation near Soviet waters, especially the still ongoing tapping of underwater cables in the Barents Sea , was ruled out due to the poor condition and noisy propulsion system. In 1987 the Seawolf was finally deactivated after 30 years of active service. She was taken to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and remained moored there until dismantling in 1997.
Web links
- Seawolf in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (Engl.)
- Seawolf on globalsecurity.org (Engl.)
- Images of the Seawolf on navsource.org (Engl.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Greenpeace: NAVAL NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS (Eng.)
- ↑ a b Time Magazine of August 1, 1955: Wolf in the Water (engl.)
- ↑ Norman Polmar: The Death of the USS Thresher: The Story Behind History's Deadliest Submarine Disaster. Lyons Press Guilford, CT 2004, ISBN 1592283926 (English), page 59f
- ↑ a b Stefan Terzibaschitsch : Sea power USA. Bechtermünz Verlag, Augsburg 1997, ISBN 3-86047-576-2 , page 526f
