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USS Birmingham (SSN 695)

USS BIRMINGHAM was the eighth submarine in the LOS ANGELES - class and the third ship in the Navy named after Birmingham, Alabama. Both decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on December 22, 1997, she was the sixth ship in her class to be retired. USS BIRMINGHAM was last homeported in Pearl Harbor, HI., and later went through the Navy's submarine recycling program at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash. Recycling was completed on May 31, 2016.

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Crew List:

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

• Click here to view the list.

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• Click here to see which USS BIRMINGHAM memorabilia are currently for sale on ebay.

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USS BIRMINGHAM Cruise Books:

• Mediterranean Cruise Book 1980-81

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USS BIRMINGHAM History:

USS BIRMINGHAM was a LOS ANGELES-class nuclear-powered attack submarine that served from her commissioning on December 16, 1978, until her inactivation and decommissioning at Pearl Harbor in 1997. Over almost two decades she shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific Fleet, took part in repeated Western Pacific and Indian Ocean deployments, operated with carrier battle groups such as that of NIMITZ (CVN 68), and collected a series of unit awards that reflected a consistently high operational tempo during the last phase of the Cold War and the immediate post-Cold War period.

The submarine's story began when the U.S. Navy awarded the construction contract on January 24, 1972, to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company at Newport News, Virginia, as part of the early group of LOS ANGELES-class boats intended to give the Navy quieter, faster, deep-diving attack submarines for anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare against the Soviet Navy.

Newport News laid BIRMINGHAM's keel on April 26, 1975, and launched her on October 29, 1977, with Maryon Pittman Allen, wife of Senator James Allen of Alabama, acting as sponsor and linking the new submarine to the city whose name she carried. After fitting out and trials, the yard delivered the boat to the Navy on December 8, 1978, and she was formally commissioned at Newport News on December 16, 1978, with Paul L. Callahan Jr. as her first commanding officer.

As with other newly commissioned nuclear attack submarines of the period, BIRMINGHAM's earliest months in service were dominated by trials, work-ups and basic training, but detailed day-by-day records of these activities are not publicly available. Available open sources indicate that she initially served with the Atlantic Fleet and operated from the East Coast. During USS BIRMINGHAM's first deployment, a Mediterranean cruise from July 1980 to February 1981, the submarine left Norfolk on July 29, 1980, and reached the Strait of Gibraltar on August 8, where she embarked the ORSE team and completed an Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination the next day with an above-average grade. After an initial upkeep period at La Maddalena, Sardinia, from August 11 to August 24, she spent early September at sea - including a Labor Day "Gong Show" and a ride by Admiral Bell - before making her first liberty stop in Cartagena, Spain, from September 6 to September 10.

BIRMINGHAM then operated around Italy, calling at Naples twice (September 15 and again from September 26 to September 30, with organized trips to Rome) before a long stretch at sea through October marked only by events such as the Chief of Naval Operations' birthday dinner on October 13 and a "Halfway Night" on October 24. A second upkeep period at La Maddalena began on November 6, 1980, followed by sea trials on November 24 and a Thanksgiving at sea on November 27. On November 29 the crew received "extension messages" that lengthened the deployment.

In December, the boat made a port visit to Lisbon, Portugal, from December 9 to December 13, then shifted to the eastern Mediterranean, arriving in Haifa, Israel, on December 24 for Christmas Eve, with organized tours to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, celebrating Christmas Day in port and finally departing Haifa on December 28 after a swim call. The new year found her still deployed, and on January 19, 1981, she returned to La Maddalena "for the last time", where on January 21 she received the Sixth Fleet "HOOK 'EM" anti-submarine warfare award.

BIRMINGHAM began her homeward transit on January 24, when she "almost" outchopped the Mediterranean and arrived at Gibraltar the same day. She formally outchopped from Sixth Fleet control on February 2 and received a farewell message from SIXTHFLT on February 6, followed by welcome-home messages from COMSUBLANT on February 8 and COMSUBRON EIGHT on February 12. The deployment ended when the submarine moored again at Norfolk, Virginia, on February 18, 1981, closing a seven-month first Med run that combined training, maintenance periods, multiple liberty ports and recognized excellence in anti-submarine warfare. By 1982, she was photographed alongside the submarine tender L. Y. SPEAR (AS 36) at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, during another ship's commissioning ceremony, confirming her presence in Norfolk at that time and her role within the Atlantic submarine force.

A former machinist's mate who reported aboard in March 1982, later recalled that he spent his first three years on BIRMINGHAM while she was based at Norfolk, before the boat shifted to a Pacific homeport via a Panama Canal transit, a recollection that fits with photographic evidence and the broader pattern of LOS ANGELES-class deployments as the Navy redistributed attack submarines toward the Pacific in the first half of the 1980s.

By the mid-1980s, BIRMINGHAM had become a Pacific Fleet boat. A Congressional tribute to one of her commanding officers notes that from April 1984 until October 1987 Bob Eichelberger commanded BIRMINGHAM and that this assignment included the submarine's first major overhaul at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. That reference makes clear that, during his tenure, the submarine was already operating from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, within the Pacific submarine organization. The overhaul at Pearl Harbor in the mid-1980s would have been a substantial maintenance and modernization period, typical for an early-build LOS ANGELES-class boat: it implied a protracted stay in dry dock and pier-side at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, during which BIRMINGHAM's reactor plant, combat systems and sonar suite were inspected, upgraded and repaired in line with evolving anti-submarine warfare requirements of the late Cold War. Although open sources do not list the exact start and end dates of this overhaul, they do confirm that it took place within Eichelberger's 1984-1987 command tour and that it was regarded as a central event of his time in command.

After that first major overhaul, BIRMINGHAM continued in the Pacific, now clearly based at Pearl Harbor as part of the submarine squadrons there. Command of the boat passed to another future flag officer, Mark W. Kenny, whose later biography states that he commanded BIRMINGHAM and that, during his tour, the submarine was nominated for the Arleigh Burke Trophy as the most improved submarine in the Pacific Fleet and earned the squadron Battle Efficiency "E" for combat readiness. A separate naval biographical note gives precise dates for this command tour, indicating that his time in command ran from September 8, 1987, to May 16, 1990, with the submarine homeported in Pearl Harbor throughout.

During these late-1980s, years BIRMINGHAM thus emerged from overhaul, returned to full operational status, and achieved measurable improvements in readiness and performance that were recognized at squadron and fleet level. Kenny's biography further records that during his command, BIRMINGHAM carried out a deployment to the western Pacific as part of the NIMITZ battle group. On that cruise, the submarine received two Meritorious Unit Commendations and the Seventh Fleet Award for Anti-Surface Warfare Excellence, reflecting her role in the carrier group's anti-surface and anti-submarine screen during a high-tempo deployment.

Although publicly accessible documents do not provide a detailed day-by-day itinerary, the award citations and the description of the deployment make it clear that by the late 1980s BIRMINGHAM was regularly deployed west of Hawaii, working in company with NIMITZ and surface combatants such as guided-missile cruiser LAKE CHAMPLAIN (CG 57) and oiler WILLAMETTE (AO 180) in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean. Contemporary command-history material produced for surface units in those battle groups lists BIRMINGHAM among the submarines assigned to the carrier task force, confirming her integration into the screening and training pattern of a Pacific carrier battle group in the closing years of the Cold War.

In 1990, BIRMINGHAM undertook another Western Pacific deployment that is unusually well documented in imagery, though still sparsely covered in text. Veteran-oriented archives and video collections preserve film labeled "USS Birmingham SSN 695 Underway WESTPAC 1990", including sequences of the submarine underway at sea and anchored off Pattaya Beach, Thailand. These materials, produced by crew families and later shared online, confirm that during a six-month WestPac cruise around 1990, BIRMINGHAM operated across the western Pacific and made at least one liberty stop at Pattaya Beach. The same veteran community places this period within the broader pattern of six-month Pearl Harbor-to-Pearl Harbor deployments common for Pacific Fleet SSNs at the time. However, official open sources do not list the exact sailing and return dates or the full sequence of ports beyond the Thai visit visible in the surviving footage.

By the early 1990s, BIRMINGHAM was part of Submarine Squadron Seven at Pearl Harbor, as recorded in the 1992 command history of Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Commanding officers continued to be drawn from officers who would later rise to flag rank. One of them, George E. Cassias, later Rear Admiral, is documented as having commanded BIRMINGHAM from April 1992 to November 1994. His official biography states that during this tour the submarine completed an Arabian Gulf deployment with the NIMITZ battle group and then a surge deployment to the western Pacific. BIRMINGHAM was awarded the 1992 Commander, Submarine Force Pacific (COMSUBPAC) Golden Anchor award, recognizing excellence in personnel programs and retention, and the 1993 Commander, Submarine Squadron Seven Battle Efficiency "E", indicating top overall performance among her Pearl Harbor squadron peers.

That early-1990s period coincided with a shift in U.S. naval focus from purely Cold War scenarios to regional crises, particularly in the Middle East after the 1990-1991 Gulf War. As Cassias's biography notes, BIRMINGHAM's Arabian Gulf deployment attached her to NIMITZ and its battle group for operations in the region. Open sources on other units in the same group describe sustained operations in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf, including presence missions and sanctions enforcement in the aftermath of the war with Iraq. A contemporary Navy blog post on submarine group photographs identifies a picture of BIRMINGHAM operating with the NIMITZ battle group in the Indian Ocean in the summer of 1993, further anchoring her role as the battle group's attack submarine during that deployment cycle and confirming her presence in those waters alongside the carrier and her escorts.

Port-visit information from this period remains fragmentary. One former crew member, writing about shore leave, recalls BIRMINGHAM pulling into Yokosuka, Japan, and describes taking advantage of liberty there to travel onward to Tokyo. His narrative does not give exact dates but matches the pattern of Western Pacific and Indian Ocean deployments that used Japanese ports as logistics and maintenance hubs. Within the same span, BIRMINGHAM continued to receive formal recognition. Under Kenny she had already been nominated for the Arleigh Burke Trophy as the most improved submarine in the Pacific Fleet and had earned a squadron Battle "E"; under Cassias she added the COMSUBPAC Golden Anchor and another squadron Battle "E" for 1993. A Navy historical summary prepared in connection with the submarine's later disposal records that, over her career, BIRMINGHAM received three Meritorious Unit Commendations, one Navy Unit Commendation and three Battle Efficiency "E" awards, confirming the cumulative effect of these deployments and performance gains.

Information on BIRMINGHAM's very last years in commission is more limited in open sources, but several strands can be pieced together. A former navigation electronics technician who served from 1992 to 1996 remembers "the shipyard, WestPac and RIMPAC, replacing the sonar dome", indicating that in the mid-1990s BIRMINGHAM underwent another significant maintenance period, took part in at least one additional Western Pacific deployment, and participated in the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise off Hawaii, all while major work was carried out on her sonar dome.

By the mid-1990s, the overall U.S. attack-submarine force was shrinking as the Cold War drawdown took hold, and early members of the LOS ANGELES-class began to be identified for early retirement rather than receiving expensive reactor refuelings and deep overhauls. BIRMINGHAM, commissioned in 1978, fell into this group. Official Navy documentation records that she was inactivated at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard on March 27, 1997, ending her operational service, and that she was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register at Pearl Harbor on December 22, 1997, with the formal striking entered on December 23, 1997.

Following decommissioning, BIRMINGHAM remained laid up at Pearl Harbor for some years as part of the inactive nuclear-powered ship inventory while the Navy scheduled her for the Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. A widely cited Navy summary states that she entered the recycling program on October 1, 2012, and open-source material on the program's completion reports that recycling of the former BIRMINGHAM was finished on May 31, 2016. By that point, her reactor had been defueled, the pressure hull cut up and disposed of under the established procedures for nuclear-powered ship recycling, and reusable components salvaged. Her last recorded homeport in Navy records is Pearl Harbor, reflecting the long Pacific Fleet association that had defined most of her active service.

One small but visible legacy of the submarine survives above water. Publicly available photographs and summaries note that BIRMINGHAM's sail was removed before or during recycling and installed as a static display at Defense Supply Center Columbus in Ohio in the mid-2010s, providing a tangible reminder of the boat and her crews in a location far from the Pacific bases from which she operated.

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USS BIRMINGHAM Patch Gallery:

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The photo below was taken by me and shows a number of decommissioned nuclear-powered attack submarines laid up at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash. The photo was taken from Port Orchard, Wash., on May 12, 2012. The submarines' names are on the photo.

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