This U.S. Navy Submarine Terrified Russia for a Simple Reason And another reason Mil Upgrades are in Black Budgets January 24, 2019 Topic: Security Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: SubmarineMilitaryTechnologyWorld. U.S.RussiaCold WarUSSR This U.S. Navy Submarine Terrified Russia for a Simple Reason Halibut was decommissioned on November 1, 1975, after 1,232 dives and more than sixteen years of service. The ship had earned two Presidential Unit citations (the second in 1972 for Ivy Bells missions) and a Navy Unit Citation. by Kyle Mizokami Halibut and her crew were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, for “several missions of significant scientific value to the Government of the United States.” One of the most unusual submarines of the Cold War was named after one of the most unusual fish in the sea. Halibut are flatfish, bottom-dwelling predators that, unlike conventional fish, lie sideways with two eyes on the same side of the head and ambush passing prey. Like the halibut flatfish, USS Halibut was an unusual-looking submarine, and also spent a considerable amount of time on the ocean floor. Halibut was a “spy sub,” and conducted some of the most classified missions of the entire Cold War. USS Halibut was built as one of the first of the U.S. Navy’s long-range missile ships. The submarine was the first built from the ground up to carry the Regulus II missile, a large, turbojet-powered cruise missile. The missile was designed to be launched from the deck of a submarine, with a ramp leading down into the bow of the ship, where a total of five missiles were stored. This resulted in an unusual appearance, likened to a “ snake digesting a big meal .” Halibut also had six 533-millimeter torpedo tubes, but as a missile sub, would only use torpedoes in self-defense. Halibut was a one-of-a-kind submarine. At 350 feet long, with a beam of twenty-nine feet, she was dimensionally identical to the Sailfish-class radar picket submarines , but her missile storage spaces and launch equipment ballooned her submerged displacement to five thousand tons. Her S3W reactor gave her an underwater speed of more than twenty knots and unlimited range—a useful trait, considering the Regulus II had a range of only one thousand miles. Regulus II was quickly superseded by the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile, whose solid rocket fueled engine made for a more compact missile with a much longer range. The combination of the Polaris and the new George Washington–class fleet ballistic missile submarines conspired to put Halibut out of a job—Regulus II was canceled just seventeen days before the sub’s commissioning. Halibut operated for four years as a Regulus submarine. In 1965 the Navy, recognizing that a submarine with a large, built-in internal bay could be useful, put Halibut into dry dock at Pearl Harbor for a major $70 million ($205 million in today’s dollars) overhaul. She received a photographic darkroom, hatches for divers to enter and exit the sub while submerged, and thrusters to help her maintain a stationary position. Perhaps most importantly, Halibut was rebuilt with spaces to operate two remotely operated vehicles nicknamed “Fish.” Twelve feet long and equipped with cameras, strobe lights and sonar, the “fish” could search for objects at depths of up to twenty-five thousand feet. The ROVs could be launched and retrieved from the former missile storage bay, now nicknamed “the Bat Cave.” A twenty-four-bit mainframe computer, highly sophisticated for the time, analyzed sensor data from the Fish.
That is really cool stuff .. I have been aboard decommissioned sub once it is a very different world . I had a friend that was on the Nautilus last crew , Lots of interesting stuff to the observer but totally boring to those enduring it real time .
You can visit Nautilus almost any time. She is a museum ship at the New London (CT) Submarine base, along with some other interesting military "toys" from days gone by. I have to add that many, and I do mean MANY other submarines pulled off some strange stuff, for which medals were deserved. Not all were authorized, but some were, then never issued for security reasons.
The one space on the Nautilus I'd love to see would be the reactor/ engine room! Wonder if it's still classified information.
Nope, when the Nautilus was DeCommissioned, the Reactor was taken out and shipped to the Arco Site, and buried...
Yup, and the engine room is accessible when I went aboard on tour. The reactor compartment is not. It's a safety issue, ladders and falls. The compartment was pretty thoroly cleaned up, IIRC. That tour was quite a few years back, things may have changed.
A tidbit of info if interested. Not sure if you folks know what a mechanical seal is, they are used mainly on high end pumps etc in industry. Anyway I took a course years ago on rebuilding them. Part of the course testing was completely at a technical college because it involved the lapping of the seal faces to very high tolerances. The College instructor asked if any of us knew where mechanical seals came from and why they were invented. We all shrugged and said not really. He informed us they were invented for the Nautilus. They could not operate the pumps in such a confined space handling radioactive material. So the whole nuke sub thing would never have happened without the mech. seal being invented for that purpose. Always find it amazing how seemingly simple things we take for granted. Actually were invented first for the military, or the space program then spin off into industry creating thousands of jobs and generating millions and millions of dollars back into the economy. Anyway my 2 cents
Well, mechanical seals are older than the late 50s. I can't go too deep into details, 'cause I didn't get very deeply into them until I hit the Nav. But we had them in a power plant I interned in, an old coal fired commercial plant. They were not original, but the plant Superintendent insisted that we replace the old packing with mech seals as the boxes wore out. Given that a bit of leakage is expected and necessary for "standard" packing boxes, that would have been exceedingly un-good with radioactive liquids, as you say. Mech seals sure made life easier, and as it turned out way cheaper than spending money on adjusting or repacking. One thing, most of the time you MUST use a seal fluid system of some kind, because those fine finishes do NOT like contamination. (Think waste water pumping.) Yeah. There's a lot of fussin' and stewin' over so called dot mil waste, but for absolutely sure a very large share of engineering and scientific advancement comes from dot mil "waste." Not quite the same thing as 300 frn ball peen hammers.
Remember reading that every dollar invested in our space program paid dividends in orders of magnitude. List of inventions is ,well not endless, but very long.
Advanced Analyzers for Monitoring Submarine Atmosphere One of my points of responsibility and my introduction to what appears simple on the front panel may just be amazing in the small package used to keep Sub Sailors healthy. This follows that the system is used in the Civilian Market. Yet another reason you have to keep your head screwed on tight and never skip a PM. Advanced Analyzers for Monitoring Submarine Atmosphere | SBIR.gov Excerpt> The Central Atmosphere Monitoring System (CAMS) IIA mass spectrometer is capable of measuring ions between 2 and 210 atomic mass units (AMU). The IR spectrophotometer identifies carbon monoxide because it cannot be detected by mass spectrometry in a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, due to the two gases having the same atomic mass. Although the combination of mass spectrometry and IR spectrophotometry have provided reliable service to the Navy for 40 years, the system is costly to maintain, and not flexible enough to meet all future capabilities. The Navy is looking to identify advanced analyzer technologies that have emerged since the development of CAMS, such as long-life, solid-state lasers or energy detectors, in order to improve performance and reduce maintenance costs of current atmosphere monitoring systems. Gases measured by CAMS IIA: GASES MEASURED IN PERCENT (torr): Carbon Dioxide Hydrogen Nitrogen Oxygen Water Vapor GASES MEASURED IN PPM (millitorr): Acetone Aliphatic Hydrocarbons Aromatic Hydrocarbons Benzene Carbon Monoxide Methanol Methyl chloroform Refrigerant 114 Refrigerant 12 Refrigerant 134A Silicone Stibine Trichloroethylene Cost to maintain: The high vacuum and sophisticated tuning required of mass spectrometry are the main factors in the current system’s high maintenance costs. Many common failures require entering the vacuum boundary of the mass spectrometer for repair, and are outside of the operators’ technical capabilities. The cost to repair the mass spectrometer averages $145,000 per unit, not including ancillary costs such as packaging, shipping, and administration.
A navy commander told me that many things the military has are not revealed to the public for many many years. A submariner talked about how two subs, one in Maine and one in Alaska could about lay waste to the planet. From their DOCKS! Multiple Warheads.
Well, that's a stretch, a long stretch. My google fu tells me that the missile range won't allow it. (trident reach about 7500 nm. Might be others that will reach further, but I would not know about that ---) Tomahawks won't go that far.
Sub Sailors tell a lot of Sea Stories. OTOH, if it was my choice I'd lay into a known Northern fleet location and dump all my war power from their own home front range. Then let them deny why they started the war. But that's just a Sea Story.
