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USS Queenfish (SSN 651)

One of the STURGEON - class fast attack submarines, the USS QUEENFISH was the second ship in the Navy to bear the name. Both decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on April 14, 1992, the USS QUEENFISH entered the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash., on May 1, 1992. Recycling was finished on April 7, 1993.

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Crew List:

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

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USS QUEENFISH History:

USS QUEENFISH was the second United States Navy submarine to bear the name QUEENFISH and one of the earliest STURGEON-class nuclear-powered attack submarines to enter service. Although USS STURGEON (SSN 637) was the nameship of the class, USS QUEENFISH was launched and commissioned before USS STURGEON, making her one of the first operational representatives of the type.

The contract for USS QUEENFISH was awarded on March 26, 1963, to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company at Newport News, Virginia. Her keel was laid there on May 11, 1964. She belonged to the STURGEON-class, a design developed from the earlier THRESHER/PERMIT lineage and shaped by the United States Navy's post-THRESHER (SSN 593) emphasis on submarine safety, seawater-system integrity, quality assurance, survivability, quieter operation, improved sensors, and the ability to operate beneath Arctic ice. USS QUEENFISH was launched on February 25, 1966. Her sponsor was the Honorable Julia Butler Hansen, Congresswoman from the State of Washington.

USS QUEENFISH was commissioned at Newport News, Virginia, on December 6, 1966, with Commander Jackson Bethune Richard in command. After commissioning, USS QUEENFISH departed the Virginia area and proceeded to New London, Connecticut, for refresher training. She then departed New London on January 30, 1967, and proceeded north for an under-ice operation in the Davis Strait. During this operation, she conducted work beneath the ice pack and achieved a successful surfacing through the ice off Frobisher Bay and Baffin Island. The operation is identified in Arctic submarine records as the first under-ice operation by a STURGEON-class submarine. The event was an important early test of a major feature of the class. The Arctic was central to Cold War undersea planning because Soviet submarines operated from northern bases and because under-ice operations required specialized navigation, sonar, communications, and surfacing procedures.

After completing the Davis Strait operation, USS QUEENFISH returned to Norfolk, Virginia, for a brief stay before proceeding toward the Panama Canal. On March 1, 1967, she completed the Panama Canal transit and entered the Pacific Ocean, reporting for duty with the Pacific Fleet. The month of March and the beginning of April were occupied with transit to the Seattle, Washington, area, where she conducted weapons and sound trials. After those trials she proceeded to her assigned home port, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, arriving there on April 13, 1967, as a unit of Submarine Squadron One. Her arrival placed her in the Pacific submarine force during the Vietnam War and during a period when the Soviet Pacific Fleet was becoming increasingly important. Pearl Harbor-based attack submarines supported Seventh Fleet operations, anti-submarine warfare training, surveillance, and forward deployments across the western Pacific.

On December 11, 1967, USS QUEENFISH deployed as a unit of the United States Seventh Fleet. During this deployment, she made port visits to Guam in the Mariana Islands; Yokosuka, Japan; Naha, Okinawa; and Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines. The deployment placed her within the normal Vietnam-era Pacific operating pattern: forward movement from Hawaii to the western Pacific, operations with the Seventh Fleet, port calls at major American support locations in Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Guam, and a return to Hawaii after extended operations. USS QUEENFISH returned on July 8, 1968, and resumed numerous local operations in Hawaiian waters. In May 1969, she entered Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard for a post-shakedown availability, a yard period intended to correct deficiencies and incorporate changes identified during her first operational cycles.

Commander Alfred Scott McLaren relieved Commander Richard on September 12, 1969. His command tour became one of the most publicly documented and historically distinctive periods in USS QUEENFISH's career. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States and Soviet navies were deeply engaged in undersea competition. Soviet nuclear submarines were expanding their patrol areas, and the United States Navy used attack submarines for tracking, intelligence collection, and under-ice exploration. USS QUEENFISH's record under Commander McLaren includes some details that were later discussed publicly, especially the 1970 Arctic voyage, but many specific operational tasks remain absent from the open record.

During the summer of 1970, USS QUEENFISH conducted an expedition to the Arctic Ocean. The broader purpose was both operational and scientific: to test the ability of a STURGEON-class submarine to operate under ice, to compare ice and navigation conditions with those encountered by USS NAUTILUS (SSN 571) during the 1958 transpolar voyage, and to survey parts of the Arctic basin and Siberian continental shelf that were poorly known to the United States Navy. USS QUEENFISH put to sea from Pearl Harbor on July 6, 1970, and after calling at Seattle, passed through the Bering Strait on July 30, 1970. She then operated beneath the polar ice pack, maneuvering between shallow bottom contours and deep-draft ice features. In early August 1970 she reached the geographic North Pole and surfaced there. Widely reproduced Navy material dates the surfacing to August 6, 1970.

After the North Pole surfacing, USS QUEENFISH continued the Arctic mission rather than returning directly south. She proceeded along high-latitude tracks associated with the earlier USS NAUTILUS route and then turned toward the Siberian continental shelf. On August 10, 1970, she approached the northern end of Severnaya Zemlya, sighting the area of Mys Arktichesky through the periscope, and then began surveying across the Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas while remaining outside Soviet territorial limits as understood by the United States. Later accounts of the voyage describe the seabed as irregular and the operating environment as difficult because shallow depths and ice keels created limited vertical clearance. The mission became one of the best-known publicly described Cold War Arctic submarine operations.

After the 1970 Arctic expedition, USS QUEENFISH resumed Pacific Fleet operations. On June 11, 1971, after several months of local operations, she again deployed as a unit of the Seventh Fleet. During this deployment, she made port visits to Yokosuka, Japan; Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines; Hong Kong; Naha, Okinawa; and Guam in the Mariana Islands. She also conducted operations in the Vietnam War Zone. This deployment reflected the continuing use of nuclear-powered attack submarines in support of the United States naval posture in Southeast Asia during the later phase of the Vietnam War. USS QUEENFISH returned to Pearl Harbor on December 17, 1971, and resumed local operations.

On June 22, 1972, USS QUEENFISH sailed for the Pacific Northwest to conduct Mark 48 torpedo trials. She became the third submarine in the Navy and the second Submarine Force Pacific unit to be certified to carry the Mark 48 torpedo. This was a major weapons-development milestone. The Mark 48 was intended to replace older heavyweight torpedoes and to give American submarines a weapon suited to engaging deep-diving nuclear submarines and fast surface ships. After returning to Pearl Harbor on July 31, 1972, USS QUEENFISH conducted local operations and prepared for another Seventh Fleet deployment.

That deployment began on November 4, 1972. During the cruise, USS QUEENFISH visited Sasebo, Japan; Yokosuka, Japan; Hong Kong; and Guam. She returned to Pearl Harbor in late April 1973. By this time her public history summarized the early 1970s period as including two Pacific deployments, two Vietnam War excursions, and six Cold War missions under Commander McLaren. The phrase "Cold War missions" indicates operationally significant work whose details were not published in the open chronology. On May 5, 1973, Commander George Russell Lehmberg Jr. relieved Commander McLaren. During the summer of 1973, USS QUEENFISH operated in the Hawaiian area and conducted pre-overhaul testing.

On September 4, 1973, USS QUEENFISH departed the Hawaiian Islands for her new home port of Bremerton, Washington. On September 30, 1973, she entered Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for her first major overhaul, including reactor refueling. This long shipyard period removed her from the normal deployment cycle and reflected the maintenance demands of early nuclear attack submarines after several years of high-tempo Pacific, Vietnam-era, and Arctic service. In the spring of 1975, USS QUEENFISH completed the overhaul and conducted several weeks of trials in Puget Sound. She then returned to Pearl Harbor and resumed normal operations. By that point, she had been awarded three Navy Unit Commendations, had received the Battle Efficiency "E" four times, and in 1972 had received the Golden Anchor Award, reflecting personnel retention performance in the Pacific submarine force.

During the mid-1970s, public summaries associate USS QUEENFISH with deperming work at the Magnetic Silencing Facility at Naval Base Kitsap Bangor, intended to reduce her magnetic signature. This was part of the broader attention paid to submarine quieting, detectability, and survivability. On February 14, 1977, Commander Milo Philip Daughters II relieved Commander Lehmberg. In March 1977, USS QUEENFISH participated in a joint U.S.-French anti-submarine warfare exercise with the destroyer USS COCHRANE (DDG 21), the French helicopter cruiser JEANNE D'ARC (R 97), and the French destroyer FORBIN (D 635). This type of exercise reflected the continuing importance of allied anti-submarine warfare training in the Pacific, especially as Soviet submarines became more capable and more widely deployed.

In 1978, USS QUEENFISH made one of the most politically visible port visits of her career: she visited Melbourne, Australia. On March 5, 1978, anti-nuclear demonstrators protested the arrival of USS QUEENFISH at Port Melbourne, where she was described in Australian material as the first nuclear attack submarine to visit an Australian port. The visit came during a period when nuclear-powered and potentially nuclear-armed warship visits were becoming controversial in several Pacific countries. For the United States Navy and its allies, such visits were part of alliance cooperation and forward presence. For anti-nuclear campaigners, they symbolized the risks of nuclear propulsion and the United States policy of neither confirming nor denying nuclear weapons aboard its warships. Commander Philip Albert Boyer III relieved Commander Daughters on April 3, 1980 while USS QUEENFISH remained a Pearl Harbor-based Pacific Fleet attack submarine. In 1984, USS QUEENFISH visited Auckland, New Zealand, where Peace Squadron protest craft attempted to prevent her entry into the harbor. A documented photograph dated March 23, 1984, records Peace Squadron protesters in Auckland Harbour trying to prevent the arrival of the nuclear-powered submarine. This visit occurred at a crucial moment in New Zealand's anti-nuclear politics. Opposition to nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered ship visits had grown during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and after the 1984 election the new Labour government moved toward a ban on such visits. The confrontation over later United States ship-visit requests helped transform New Zealand's role in the ANZUS alliance. USS QUEENFISH's Auckland visit therefore became part of the immediate prehistory of the New Zealand nuclear-free policy.

Commander James Raymond Harvey relieved Commander Boyer on July 23, 1984. In 1985, USS QUEENFISH returned to the Arctic. Arctic submarine records identify USS QUEENFISH, commanded by Commander Harvey, and USS ASPRO (SSN 648), commanded by Commander Michael D. Martin, as conducting a joint surfacing at the North Pole. This operation continued the under-ice tradition established by USS QUEENFISH's 1967 Davis Strait work and her 1970 Siberian shelf mission. Under-ice operations in the 1980s remained strategically significant because the Soviet Northern Fleet was central to Soviet ballistic-missile submarine operations and because Arctic navigation, communications, and weapons employment remained technically demanding.

USS QUEENFISH was also active in major fleet exercises during the mid-1980s. She took part in RIMPAC 86, the large multinational Pacific exercise series that brought together United States and allied naval forces for complex maritime training. In late July 1986, USS QUEENFISH sailed to Bangor, Washington, for an eight-week restricted availability. On December 6, 1986, she marked the twentieth anniversary of her commissioning and, on the same day, accomplished her 1,000th dive, surfacing off Diamond Head, Oahu. Crew members from the earlier USS QUEENFISH (SS 393) were present for the event, linking the World War II submarine to the nuclear-powered boat that carried the name into the Cold War.

Commander Charles Loring Joslin III relieved Commander Harvey on August 14, 1987. In 1988, USS QUEENFISH again operated in the Arctic. Arctic submarine records identify USS QUEENFISH, under Commander Joslin, as celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Operation Sunshine by retracing the 1958 USS NAUTILUS transpolar crossing. This mission again emphasized the strategic and symbolic importance of Arctic under-ice navigation. In 1988, USS QUEENFISH's anniversary transit showed that such operations had become part of the established repertoire of American submarine operations.

A public Defense Department image records USS QUEENFISH underway near Pearl Harbor on June 1, 1989, confirming continued Pacific Fleet activity late in her career. Commander Richard Louis Virgilio relieved Commander Joslin on March 7, 1990. By then, the strategic environment was changing quickly. The Berlin Wall had fallen in November 1989, the Soviet system in Eastern Europe was collapsing, and the United States Navy was beginning to face the force-structure adjustments that would follow the end of the Cold War. USS QUEENFISH's active operational service ended with deactivation on September 21, 1990. This marked the end of her active career after almost twenty-four years in commission, nearly all of it associated with the Pacific Fleet, Pearl Harbor, western Pacific deployments, Arctic operations, and Cold War undersea missions.

Her active service ended with deactivation on September 21, 1990. USS QUEENFISH was formally decommissioned and stricken on April 14, 1992. She entered the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington, on May 1, 1992, and recycling was completed on April 7, 1993. Her escape trunk was later removed and used at the United States Army Special Forces Underwater Operations School at Key West, Florida, in a submarine escape and buoyant ascent training tower.

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