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USS Nathan Hale (SSBN 623)

USS NATHAN HALE was the sixth LAFAYETTE - class nuclear powered fleet ballistic missile submarine. Deactivated while still in commission in May 1986, the NATHAN HALE was decommissioned on November 3, 1986, and stricken from the Navy list on January 31, 1986. She went through the Navy’s Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at Bremerton, Washington, from October 2, 1991 to April 5, 1994. On the latter date, the ship was classed as scrapped.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS NATHAN HALE. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

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About the Ship's Name:

Nathan Hale, born in Coventry, Connecticut, 6 June 1755, graduated from Yale College in 1773. Two years later, as residents of the colonies pressed for the rights of Englishmen, Hale, a teacher, was appointed a lieutenant by the Connecticut General Assembly 1 July 1775. As the fight for English common rights turned into one for independence, he fought with the Continental Army in the siege of Boston and was later chosen as one of the captains of Knowlton’s Rangers. Volunteering as a spy for General Washington in the summer of 1776, he went to Long Island disguised as a Dutch school teacher. On 21 September, however, he was captured. The British Commander, General Sir William Howe, offered him a captaincy and ample purse if he would change allegiance. Hale refused and was sentenced to hang the following day.

His jailer, the infamous Provost Marshal William Cunningham, refusing him a Bible, chaplain, or paper for letters, tauntingly demanded some last words. Nathan Hale spoke prayerfully for American freedom, ending with the unforgettable expression; "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

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USS NATHAN HALE History:

USS NATHAN HALE was a LAFAYETTE-class fleet ballistic missile submarine built to give the United States a survivable nuclear second-strike capability in the most tense decades of the Cold War. Her career, which ran from the early 1960s through the mid-1980s, followed the classic pattern of the "41 for Freedom" boats: construction during the post-Cuban Missile Crisis arms race, years of Polaris deterrent patrols from Atlantic bases such as Charleston, Rota and Holy Loch, a mid-life conversion to Poseidon and a shift to Pacific operations from Pearl Harbor and Guam, followed by deactivation as the newer TRIDENT-equipped OHIO-class submarines entered service and arms-control limits began to bite.

The contract for NATHAN HALE's construction was awarded on February 3, 1961, to the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics at Groton, Connecticut, as part of the LAFAYETTE-class building program that expanded and modernized the U.S. Polaris force. Her keel was laid there on October 2, 1961. Over the next two years, the yard assembled the 425-foot hull, installed an S5W pressurized-water reactor and its turbine machinery, and fitted 16 vertical launch tubes for Polaris ballistic missiles, along with four bow torpedo tubes. As was standard for LAFAYETTE-class submarines, the design provided for two alternating crews (Blue and Gold) to maximize time on deterrent patrol.

NATHAN HALE was launched at Groton on January 12, 1963, sponsored by Mary Lee Lamar Anderson, the wife of Admiral George W. Anderson Jr., then serving as Chief of Naval Operations. After fitting-out alongside the yard and initial pierside testing, she conducted builder's and acceptance sea trials off New England. The submarine rescue ship USS TRINGA (ASR 16) was among the support units that escorted newly built ballistic missile submarines during this period. TRINGA's records note escort duty for NATHAN HALE and her near-sister USS LAFAYETTE (SSBN 616) during trials out of New London in the early 1960s.

NATHAN HALE was commissioned on November 23, 1963, at Groton. The ceremony was subdued because it took place the day after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, a reminder of the broader political tensions in which the Polaris program was embedded. Commander Joseph W. Russell took command of the Blue Crew, and Commander Samuel S. Ellis of the Gold Crew, reflecting the dual-crew system that allowed long patrols with short turnaround times between deployments.

Immediately after commissioning, NATHAN HALE began shakedown operations and missile system testing in the Atlantic. In early 1964, she operated from the Eastern Test Range off Florida, conducting a Demonstration and Shakedown Operation (DASO) in which she fired Polaris missiles from the submerged launch tubes to prove the ship, crew and weapon system. The record of test launches from Cape Canaveral shows that NATHAN HALE's first Cape launch took place on January 13, 1964, and she would continue to use the Eastern Test Range periodically throughout her career to validate both Polaris and later Poseidon missiles.

During 1964, the boat also became part of an early Navy experiment in health behavior change. An official Navy medical history notes that "Operation No Smoke" placed 125 officers and enlisted men aboard the Polaris submarine NATHAN HALE on a three-month cigarette-free regimen as an unofficial smoking-cessation trial, reflecting growing concern about tobacco's health effects even in the submarine force.

After completing shakedown and missile testing, NATHAN HALE was assigned to Submarine Squadron 16 and on May 21, 1964, she arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, which became her initial home port with the Atlantic Fleet. From this point her regular rhythm became that of a fleet ballistic missile submarine on Polaris deterrent patrols: one crew on a roughly 60–70 day submerged patrol in the North Atlantic and adjacent waters, followed by refit and upkeep alongside a tender or at a shore facility, while the off-crew trained and prepared to relieve them. Submarine Squadron 16 maintained its main forward refit site at Rota, Spain, with the tender USS PROTEUS (AS 19) and later other support ships servicing the squadron's submarines between patrols.

Crew accounts and supporting ship histories confirm that in these years, NATHAN HALE alternated between Charleston and advanced bases such as Rota and Holy Loch. A sailor who joined during new construction later recalled making early tours "out of Rota, Spain", and another, serving from 1966 to 1971, remembered refits at Rota and a "swim call in the Caribbean", indicating that some patrols took her into warmer Atlantic waters as well.

The submarine rescue and torpedo-recovery ship USS KITTIWAKE (ASR 13), which supported Submarine Squadron 16, recorded operations from Rota in 1965 in direct support of submarines including USS ANDREW JACKSON (SSBN 619), USS WOODROW WILSON (SSBN 624), USS JAMES MADISON (SSBN 627) and USS NATHAN HALE, further anchoring her place in the early Polaris infrastructure on the Iberian Peninsula.

In these mid-1960s patrols, NATHAN HALE carried the Polaris missile system, providing a hidden, survivable component of the U.S. strategic nuclear deterrent as tensions persisted over Berlin, the evolving conflict in Vietnam, and ongoing Soviet missile deployments. Her routine was deliberately uneventful in public reporting: submerged patrols in assigned "boxes", remaining undetected while maintaining constant readiness to fire if ordered. By design, operational details such as specific patrol areas, durations, or exact schedules remain classified or only lightly documented. What is recorded is the steady pattern of patrol-refit-patrol that characterized her service.

By the later 1960s, the Navy began scheduling major overhauls and refuelings for the early LAFAYETTE-class submarines. NATHAN HALE entered such an overhaul and reactor-refueling period in 1967-1968. Official summaries note an overhaul and refueling in those years, and crew-list recollections specify that this overhaul took place at the Electric Boat yard in Groton. One sailor describes making "one patrol out of Holy Loch then into the yard", placing at least one of her last pre-overhaul patrols under Submarine Squadron 14, based at Holy Loch in Scotland, before she returned to New England for the extended shipyard period.

During the 1967-1968 overhaul, NATHAN HALE's nuclear plant was refueled and her combat, navigation and missile-handling systems were updated in line with evolving Polaris practices. When the work was complete, she again went to the Eastern Test Range to conduct a post-overhaul DASO, with crew accounts noting loading torpedoes at Charleston, missiles at Cape Kennedy, and then beginning a transit that would take her into a new phase of her career. One crewman who came aboard during the Groton refit recalled that after the DASO cruise the submarine transited through the Panama Canal to join the Pacific Fleet, with Pearl Harbor as the main support point and Guam as the forward base.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, NATHAN HALE thus shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific, joining Submarine Squadron 15. That squadron, initially headquartered at Pearl Harbor but quickly forward-based at Apra Harbor, Guam, took over the Polaris deterrent mission in the Pacific from older Regulus-armed submarines and supported its SSBNs from the tender USS PROTEUS at Polaris Point.

In this period, the Pacific SSBN force provided continuous coverage toward the Soviet Far East and Asia during the height of the Vietnam War and later the era of detente. NATHAN HALE is listed among the 616-class submarines that served with Submarine Squadron 15; by 1970 seven different SSBNs were being supported there, rotating through refits and patrols. While assigned to the Pacific SSBN force, NATHAN HALE followed the same dual-crew rotation model, with Blue and Gold crews alternating on patrols staged mainly from Guam, supported by tenders and the squadron staff. Strategic and technological change, however, soon demanded another major modernization. By the early 1970s, the Navy was converting older Polaris boats to carry the newer UGM-73A Poseidon C-3 missile, with greater range and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. In 1970, the Pacific SSBN force began a rotation in which earlier 627/640-class boats left Guam for Poseidon conversion while 616-class units like NATHAN HALE cycled in or out to balance the force. According to the official history of Submarine Squadron 15, the replacement of 616-class boats there with 598/608-class units commenced in May 1973 "when NATHAN HALE departed for conversion to the Poseidon Weapons System", her place at Guam being taken by USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (SSBN 598).

NATHAN HALE's Poseidon conversion took place at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. Poseidon program chronologies record that her conversion to POSEIDON (C-3) capability was completed there on June 27, 1975. The work lasted 24.5 months, making her the 25th SSBN to be fitted for Poseidon. During this extended yard period, the ship received extensive modifications: missile launch tubes and associated systems were adapted for the larger, more capable missiles; fire control and navigation systems were upgraded; and other maintenance and modernization work was carried out to extend her service life into the 1980s. Following completion of the conversion, NATHAN HALE again went to the Eastern Test Range to prove the new system. On September 24, 1975, her Blue Crew successfully launched a Poseidon C-3 missile in support of the ship's demonstration and shakedown operation, confirming that the boat, weapons, and crew met the standards for operational deployment with the new missile.

On March 7, 1976, she deployed on her first operational Poseidon deterrent patrol, becoming the 26th Poseidon-armed SSBN to enter patrol service. In the years after conversion, NATHAN HALE continued to operate primarily with the Atlantic SSBN force, now carrying Poseidon missiles. Official records note that she conducted deployments in the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean and, after transfer back to Atlantic command, operated from ports including Charleston and later forward sites.

Crew recollections from the mid- and late-1970s describe refits at Holy Loch in Scotland - under Submarine Squadron 14 - and port calls to locations such as Cape Canaveral, Fort Lauderdale and Faslane, indicating that after her conversion she regularly used the Holy Loch facility for refit cycles and occasionally made brief visits to U.S. and British ports between patrols.

Missile-test documentation shows that after the initial Poseidon DASO, NATHAN HALE continued to participate in follow-on operational tests. Missile chronologies note four-missile test salvos in January 1977, May 1978, October 1983 and March 1985, reflecting her role in validating the long-term reliability and accuracy of the Poseidon system even as newer TRIDENT missiles and OHIO-class submarines entered service. At Cape Canaveral, records of submarine launches note that her last Eastern Test Range missile firing took place on March 6, 1985, closing a series of test launches that had begun more than two decades earlier in 1964.

By the early 1980s, NATHAN HALE was part of an aging Poseidon force gradually being supplanted by the larger and more capable OHIO-class TRIDENT submarines. At the same time, although the SALT II treaty was never formally ratified, the United States observed its limits on strategic delivery systems, which required deactivating older launchers as new ones came into service. Contemporary naval analyses note that President Ronald Reagan agreed in the mid-1980s to dismantle additional Poseidon submarines, including NATHAN HALE, in order to remain within the agreed ceilings as TRIDENT submarines joined the fleet.

Administrative records show that in her final years NATHAN HALE fell under Submarine Squadron 18, an Atlantic Fleet SSBN squadron which, according to a 1986 command history, supported seventeen SSBNs plus attack submarines and a support ship. By April 1986, NATHAN HALE had completed 69 deterrent patrols in both the Atlantic and Pacific, illustrating the intensity of her operational life over more than two decades of Cold War service. NATHAN HALE began deactivation while still in commission in May 1986, as missiles were off-loaded and systems were prepared either for reuse or for disposal under the Navy's nuclear ship-recycling procedures. She was formally decommissioned on November 3, 1986, after approximately twenty-three years in service, and on January 31, 1987, she was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register.

The ex-NATHAN HALE was then towed to Bremerton, Washington, to enter the Navy's Ship-Submarine Recycling Program. She entered the program on October 2, 1991, and the recycling process - during which her reactor compartment was removed and disposed of in accordance with nuclear-material regulations and the remaining hull was scrapped - was completed on April 5, 1994. With that, the physical remains of NATHAN HALE disappeared from the fleet, but her operational record remained as part of the history of the "41 for Freedom" force that underpinned U.S. nuclear strategy from the early 1960s to the end of the Cold War.

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