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USS Henry L. Stimson (SSBN 655)

USS HENRY L. STIMSON was the eighth BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - class nuclear powered fleet ballistic missile submarine and the first ship in the Navy to bear the name. Generally similar to the LAFAYETTE - class, the twelve BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - class submarines had a quieter machinery design, and were thus considered a separate class.

Both decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on May 5, 1993, the HENRY L. STIMSON went through the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program in Bremerton, Washington, and finished it on August 12, 1994.

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS HENRY L. STIMSON:

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About the Ship's Name:

Henry Lewis Stimson, born in New York City 21 September 1867, graduated from Yale in 1888. After graduate work and law school at Harvard, he entered the law firm headed by Elihu Root in 1891 and two years later became a partner.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Here he made a distinguished record prosecuting antitrust cases. After defeat as Republican candidate for governor of New York in 1910, Stimson was appointed Secretary of War in 1911. He continued the reorganization of the Army begun by Root, bringing it to high efficiency prior to its vast expansion in World War I.

Following the outbreak of war, he was a leader in the American effort to aid the stricken people of Belgium. After the United States became a belligerent, he served in France as an artillery officer reaching rank of Colonel in August 1918.

His success in several important diplomatic assignments and as Governor-General of the Philippine Islands led to Stimson's appointment as Secretary of State in 1929. His management of the Nation's foreign affairs was highlighted by his strong opposition to Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the first aggressive step which led to World War II.

Returning to private life at the end of President Hoover's administration Stimson was an outspoken advocate of strong opposition to Japanese aggression. In 1941 President Roosevelt returned him to his old post at the head of the War Department and he skillfully directed the tremendous expansion of the Army to the force of over 10,000,000 men which crushed Axis ground forces in Europe and the Pacific.

Stimson retired from public office 21 September 1945 and died at Huntington, N.Y., 20 October 1950.

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USS HENRY L. STIMSON History:

USS HENRY L. STIMSON was a BENJAMIN FRANKLIN-class fleet ballistic missile submarine that spent her entire career in the Atlantic strategic deterrent force and completed seventy-six strategic deterrent patrols between 1966 and 1993, spanning the Polaris, Poseidon and Trident I ballistic-missile eras of the Cold War.

The contract to build HENRY L. STIMSON was awarded on July 29, 1963, to the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics at Groton, Connecticut, as part of the later group of "41 for Freedom" ballistic-missile submarines. Her keel was laid at Electric Boat on April 4, 1964, and she was launched at Groton on November 13, 1965, sponsored by Grace Murphy Dodd, wife of senator Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut. The boat was named for Henry Lewis Stimson, who had served as U.S. Secretary of State and twice as Secretary of War and whose later career was closely associated with the emergence of U.S. nuclear policy in the Second World War.

HENRY L. STIMSON was commissioned at Groton on August 20, 1966, with Captain Richard E. Jortberg commanding the Blue crew and Commander Robert H. Weeks in command of the Gold crew.

After initial dockside testing and reactor plant trials, she conducted builder's and acceptance trials out of New London, including intensive diving, maneuvering and weapons evaluations in the western Atlantic at a time when the United States was expanding and modernizing its undersea deterrent posture in response to the Soviet Union's growing intercontinental missile and submarine forces.

During the summer of 1966, the new submarine carried out shakedown operations in the western Atlantic and Caribbean. Crew accounts describe maneuvering watches into New London, Charleston and Kings Bay, as well as training visits to Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, St. Croix and San Juan, reflecting the pattern of work-up cruises for newly commissioned Polaris boats that combined intensive at-sea trials with port periods alongside support facilities. On August 20, 1966, both Blue and Gold crews conducted live-fire tests on the Atlantic Missile Range off Cape Kennedy, successfully launching A-3 Polaris missiles as part of their final pre-deployment test program, demonstrating the ship's missile and fire-control systems.

Assigned to Submarine Squadron 16, HENRY L. STIMSON departed Charleston, South Carolina, on February 23, 1967, with the Blue crew embarked for her first strategic deterrent patrol, armed with Polaris A-3 missiles. From this point forward, she entered the standard dual-crew Polaris operating cycle. Each crew alternated roughly seventy-day patrols at sea with turnover and refit periods in port, allowing the submarine to remain on station for much of the year while the crews rotated through rest, training and work-up phases ashore.

Through the late 1960s and into 1971, HENRY L. STIMSON conducted Polaris deterrent patrols in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, operating primarily under Submarine Squadron 16. Crew reminiscences and roster entries indicate patrols staged from Charleston and New London with forward support at Holy Loch in Scotland and Rota in Spain, both of which served as key overseas Polaris bases supporting U.S. strategic commitments to NATO. During this period the submarine also returned periodically to the Atlantic missile test ranges near Cape Canaveral for system tests and evaluation launches. Missile-launch records show additional Polaris A-3 firings from the Eastern Test Range on November 14 and November 28, 1966, associated with the boat's early test period, and a concentrated series of Follow-On Operational Test firings on September 9, 1970, reflecting the Navy's practice of periodically sampling missiles from operational submarines to confirm system reliability.

Between August 19 and September 9, 1970, HENRY L. STIMSON took part in an operation described in official history as being of "great importance to the United States", during which she received a Meritorious Unit Commendation. The same timeframe corresponds to the multiple Polaris A-3 test firings on September 9, 1970, from the Eastern Test Range, indicating that the citation was connected to a demanding operational evaluation of the Polaris system under patrol-like conditions near the end of the Polaris era.

By late 1971, the first generation of Polaris-armed submarines was rotating through major overhauls and conversions to the newer Poseidon C-3 missile. In November 1971, HENRY L. STIMSON entered Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Virginia for her first major overhaul and Poseidon conversion. During the yard period, which lasted until March 1973, she received extensive work on her reactor plant, propulsion and auxiliary systems, and her missile compartment was modified to accept Poseidon missiles and their associated electronics and navigation upgrades. At the completion of the yard overhaul, dual Blue and Gold crews were again established, marking the transition to the second phase of the submarine's career.

In June 1973 both crews carried out Demonstration and Shakedown Operations (DASO) to prove the Poseidon system at sea. On May 9, 1973, during this DASO sequence, HENRY L. STIMSON launched a Poseidon C-3 missile from the Eastern Test Range as part of the formal acceptance of the new weapon system. Following final post-conversion trials she rejoined the active deterrent force. Beginning in June 1973 the submarine made twenty-four Poseidon deterrent patrols out of Rota, Spain, where Submarine Squadron 16 maintained a major forward base for Atlantic SSBN operations. These patrols, conducted in the eastern Atlantic and Norwegian Sea under the broader framework of NATO's nuclear deterrence posture, coincided with an era of heightened superpower naval activity and evolving arms control negotiations such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

Operational records and crew recollections from the mid-1970s show that, while Rota served as her primary refit and turnaround port, HENRY L. STIMSON continued to have logistic links to U.S. East Coast bases. Sailors describe patrol cycles that included transits to and from Charleston and New London, and recall maneuvering watches into Rota, Holy Loch, Kings Bay and Cape Canaveral. One crew member recounts a visit to Faslane and Holy Loch in Scotland during the mid-1970s, reflecting the integration of the boat into the wider network of Polaris and Poseidon support facilities built up around the Clyde for U.S. and British deterrent submarines.

Like other Polaris/Poseidon boats, HENRY L. STIMSON periodically entered the floating dry dock AFDB-7 LOS ALAMOS at Holy Loch for hull and machinery maintenance while remaining forward-deployed.

On July 22, 1977, while conducting refresher training in waters off Rota, HENRY L. STIMSON fouled the fishing nets of a Spanish trawler. The event, which occurred against the background of close U.S.-Spanish defense cooperation and use of Rota as a major naval base, was recorded as an operational incident but open sources do not indicate significant damage to the submarine or casualties, and she continued in service.

By June 1979, Submarine Squadron 16 shifted its homeport from Rota to Kings Bay, Georgia, as the United States consolidated its Atlantic SSBN infrastructure on the U.S. East Coast. HENRY L. STIMSON followed this movement, completing two additional Poseidon patrols staged from Charleston, South Carolina, during the transition period, before entering another phase of modernization.

From November 1979 to March 1980, the submarine underwent further weapons-system upgrading to support the new Trident I (C-4) missile. This involved substantial modifications to her missile-control electronics, navigation suite and support systems, aligning her capabilities with the first generation of Trident-equipped boats that were then entering service. As part of the Trident I approval process she again conducted DASO firings. On March 26, 1980, HENRY L. STIMSON launched a Trident C-4 missile from the Eastern Test Range in a DASO shot, followed by a series of three operational test launches on August 27, 1980, designated OT-5, which evaluated missile performance under patrol-like conditions. Following these tests, she deployed on her first Trident I strategic deterrent patrol in May 1980, marking her transition into the third missile system of her career.

In May 1982, HENRY L. STIMSON began a second major overhaul at Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Newport News, Virginia. During this period, she received further engineering work, life-extension maintenance and updates to her combat systems. Blue and Gold crews were re-established when the yard period ended in August 1984.

To validate the refitted Trident installation, she again returned to the Eastern Test Range, where on December 15, 1984, she fired a Trident C-4 missile in another DASO launch.

From the mid-1980s until the early 1990s, HENRY L. STIMSON operated primarily out of Kings Bay, Georgia, with her crew support base at Charleston, conducting repeated Trident I deterrent patrols in the Atlantic as part of the U.S. strategic "triad" during the final decade of the Cold War. Missile-launch chronologies list a pair of Trident C-4 Follow-On Operational Test firings from the Eastern Test Range on July 28, 1986, reflecting continued surveillance of missile reliability.

By the late 1980s, she had completed twenty-eight Trident I strategic deterrent patrols, bringing her total number of patrols under all missile systems to seventy-six. In 1988, HENRY L. STIMSON received a second Meritorious Unit Commendation for service between April 25 and August 6, 1988, for participation in LANTCOOPEX 1-88. This exercise, described in official material as the first SSBN remote-site rapid redeployment and continuity-of-operations drill, tested the ability of Trident-armed submarines to shift quickly between operating areas and support sites in the Atlantic in response to crisis scenarios, anticipating changing strategic assumptions in the closing years of the Cold War.

As geopolitical conditions shifted with the end of the Cold War and implementation of new arms-control agreements, the older BENJAMIN FRANKLIN- and LAFAYETTE-class SSBNs were gradually retired in favor of the newer OHIO-class. In this context, HENRY L. STIMSON continued patrols into the early 1990s while also participating in test firings. On April 8, 1992, missile-test records show two Trident C-4 launches from the Eastern Test Range designated FCET-40, a Follow-on Commander's Evaluation Test, demonstrating missile and crew performance late in the boat's service life.

In May 1992, the separate Blue and Gold crews were combined into a single crew as a precursor to inactivation, a pattern followed by other retiring SSBNs. After completing her final operations in the Atlantic, she transited to the Pacific Northwest and entered Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Washington, for inactivation and preparation for the Navy's Ship and Submarine Recycling Program. She was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on May 5, 1993, at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, ending nearly twenty-seven years of active commissioned service.

Following decommissioning, HENRY L. STIMSON's reactor plant was defueled and the submarine entered the Nuclear-Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at Bremerton. The process, which involved dismantling the pressure hull, removing the reactor compartment for disposal and recycling usable materials, was completed on August 12, 1994, at which point the submarine formally ceased to exist as a unit of the fleet. Across her career, HENRY L. STIMSON moved through three generations of U.S. sea-based strategic missiles - Polaris A-3, Poseidon C-3 and Trident I C-4 - while shifting operating bases from New London and Charleston to Rota, Holy Loch and ultimately Kings Bay, and twice undergoing major overhauls at Newport News. Her seventy-six deterrent patrols, two Meritorious Unit Commendations and long record of test launches reflect the way in which a single submarine embodied the evolution of the U.S. Navy's ballistic-missile force from the late 1960s through the end of the Cold War and into the immediate post-Cold War drawdown.

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