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USS Blueback (SS-581)

1959 COLD WAR VIETNAM WAR

History of USS Blueback (SS-581)

USS Blueback (SS-581) and her three Babel-class crews, considered the ultimate attack submarine of her era, equipped with diesel Engine America, working with the U.S. Navy during a pivotal year of the Cold War. The class was built from 1956 to 1959 and operated from 1959 to 1990.

The successor to the Dart-class combat craft, the U.S. Navy's three Babel boats have served at sea for decades.

USS Blueback awarded June 29, 1956 and built April 15, 1957 by Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She was launched on May 16, 1959, and officially commissioned on October 15, 1959, until she was decommissioned on October 1, 1990 and removed from the Naval Register on October 30 of the same year.

Length 219.5 feet, beam 29 feet, draught 25 feet. Displacement includes 1,775 tons light, 2,180 tons fully loaded and 2,700 tons underwater. Power comes from 3 Fairbanks-Morse 38 8-1/8 diesel engines 3,150 hp and 2 GE electric motors 3,150 hp, all driving a single axle aft.

The boat travels at 12 knots when surfaced and can reach a superb 25 knots while underwater. With a range of 14,000 nautical miles / 16,155 miles, the hull was tested at a depth of 700 feet.

There were 8 officers and 69 soldiers on board. The ship has active (BQS-4) and passive (BQR-2) sonar tuning, as well as a Mk 101 Fire Control System (FCS) for the mission at hand.

The weapons are fairly modest, these are 6 x 533 mm (21") torpedo tubes, all mounted on the bow with 18 x torpedo loads.

Blueback conducted her trials in the Gulf of Mexico and operated on the Pacific coast via the Panama Canal (the Soviet Union was the main enemy at the time). The ship conducted a series of training exercises and operations in and around Hawaii. In the mid-1960s, the ship supported U.S. operations related to the Vietnam War (1955-1975).

This was completed in 1965 and 1967 with an overhaul in Bremerton, WA. She returned to Vietnam in the early 1970s to help train destroyer crews. During the post-war period, it participated in various court cases, joint exercises and general operations until it was decommissioned in 1990.

Of the three ships of its class, only the Blueback has survived and been preserved as a museum ship, beginning in 1994 at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, Oregon. Barbel was targeted in January 2001, while Bonefish was not refurbished following a fatal fire in April 1998 - Northrop Grumman claims her hull was used for testing.