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USS Tucson (SSN 770)

USS TUCSON is the 59^th LOS ANGELES class attack submarines and the second ship in the United States Navy to bear the name of this Arizona city. Originally, the TUCSON was scheduled to be commissioned on August 18, 1995, however, Hurricane Felix sortied numerous ships - including TUCSON - out of Norfolk, Va., and so the TUCSON was commissioned three weeks later on September 9, 1995. That's also the reason why August 18, 1995, is sometimes indicated as commissioning date - even on official publications and the Navy's Naval Vessel Register.

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS TUCSON:

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USS TUCSON History:

USS TUCSON is an improved LOS ANGELES-class nuclear-powered attack submarine of the U.S. Navy, named for the city of Tucson, Arizona. The contract for the boat was awarded to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company on June 10, 1988, and her keel was laid on August 15, 1991, at Newport News, Virginia. She was launched on March 20, 1994, with Diane C. Kent as sponsor, and completed fitting-out and trials over the following year.

The Navy originally planned to commission the submarine on August 18, 1995, but as Hurricane Felix threatened the U.S. East Coast the fleet was ordered to sea, and USS TUCSON sortied from Newport News with other units instead of holding her ceremony at the pier. When she returned to port, her commissioning was rescheduled and took place on September 19, 1995, at Norfolk, Virginia, with Commander Duane M. Baker in command. At that ceremony, Baker famously told the assembled guests that, for the next couple of hours, it would "officially" be August 18, preserving the originally intended date in the boat's internal tradition.

After commissioning, USS TUCSON conducted shakedown and post-delivery trials in the Western Atlantic, testing her propulsion plant, combat systems, and weapons, and working through the normal period of trial fixes and crew work-ups associated with a new nuclear submarine. In June 1996, while still based on the East Coast and moored at Newport News, she was involved in an unusual pier-side incident: a sudden windstorm caused the Military Sealift Command vehicle cargo ship USNS GILLILAND (T-AKR 298) to part her moorings and drift across the harbor, striking both USS TUCSON and the SPRUANCE-class destroyer USS DEYO (DD 989), moored astern. USS DEYO suffered the heaviest structural damage while TUCSON reported damage was limited mainly to her AN/BRA-34 antenna, and she returned to service after repairs.

A few months later the submarine left the Atlantic. Between September and October 1996, she shifted homeport from Norfolk to Pearl Harbor, transiting south to the Caribbean, passing through the Panama Canal into the Pacific, and then up the West Coast. She spent about five days in San Diego, California, during which VIPs from Tucson, Arizona, embarked for short orientation cruises and busloads of visitors from the city toured the boat alongside the pier. After this public-relations phase, she continued west and arrived at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to begin service with the U.S. Pacific Fleet and SUBMARINE SQUADRON 7.

From late 1996 into 1997, USS TUCSON settled into the pattern typical of a newly arrived fast-attack submarine in the Pacific: local operations out of Pearl Harbor, tactical development and certification events, and the first full inspection cycles and maintenance availabilities at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. As an improved LOS ANGELES-class boat, she combined four 533-mm torpedo tubes with a twelve-cell vertical launch system for TOMAHAWK cruise missiles, making her a flexible platform for anti-submarine, anti-surface, strike, and intelligence missions at the height of the post–Cold War "peace dividend" era.

In early 1998 she received her first major operational tasking. In February 1998, USS TUCSON departed Pearl Harbor for her first extended deployment to the Western Pacific and onward to the Persian Gulf. At that time, the confrontation between the United Nations and Iraq over weapons inspections had escalated sharply. In the month before she sailed, the Iraqi government had blocked access for UNSCOM inspectors and withdrawn cooperation from monitoring teams, contributing to a serious crisis that would culminate later that year in Operation Desert Fox.

TUCSON sailed west across the Pacific into the 7TH FLEET area, then continued through the Indian Ocean into the Persian Gulf, operating as a tasking asset for U.S. Central Command before returning eastward and arriving back in Pearl Harbor in August 1998. During this deployment, the PBS program NOVA embarked a film crew and shot material for the episode "Battlegroups" on board, illustrating how a modern nuclear submarine fit into contemporary U.S. naval task-group operations.

Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, open sources provide only fragmentary detail on USS TUCSON's day-to-day movements, but she remained assigned to the Pacific Fleet as a Pearl Harbor-based attack submarine, conducting routine training, local operations around Hawaii, and shorter patrols into the central Pacific. Like other LOS ANGELES-class units, she periodically entered maintenance availabilities where her reactor plant, sonar, combat systems, and hull were inspected and upgraded as necessary, but those dockings were generally not reported in public news releases. The next clearly documented major deployment began in mid-2004, when USS TUCSON left Pearl Harbor on May 19, 2004, for another Western Pacific cruise.

Around this time she is documented as part of the submarine element supporting CARRIER STRIKE GROUP SEVEN, which then centered on the aircraft carrier USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76) and cruiser USS LAKE CHAMPLAIN (CG 57), alongside destroyer USS McCAMPBELL (DDG 85) and oiler USNS RAINIER (T-AOE 7). Within this framework TUCSON contributed to carrier-strike-group training and presence operations across the Western Pacific, in an era defined by the early years of the Iraq War and growing U.S. focus on the Western Pacific as China's naval power increased. After returning from this deployment she resumed local operations out of Pearl Harbor.

Her next well-documented cruise began in the spring of 2006. On March 21, 2006, USS TUCSON again departed Pearl Harbor for a six-month Western Pacific deployment under U.S. 7TH FLEET. During this cruise she conducted a series of port visits that are unusually well described in Navy and local reporting. She visited Sasebo and Yokosuka in Japan and made liberty calls at Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands and at Guam. While in Saipan the crew joined local veterans to help clean a World War II bunker, linking the modern submarine force to the island's history as a Pacific battleground. In Yokosuka, USS TUCSON's port call coincided with the 106th birthday of the U.S. Submarine Force, and the crew participated in the annual submarine birthday ball with U.S. and Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force personnel.

At sea she joined other U.S. and allied ships in large-scale exercises in the Western Pacific, and she was among the submarines associated with RIMPAC 2006, the major multinational exercise held around Hawaii that year. USS TUCSON returned to Pearl Harbor in September 2006, closing out a deployment that combined forward presence, multilateral exercises, and theater-security-cooperation port visits.

The second half of the 2000s saw TUCSON continue in the same pattern: maintenance and training near Hawaii alternating with longer patrols into the Western Pacific. Detailed yard-period information is sparse, but as a Pearl Harbor-based nuclear submarine she would have used Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard for scheduled dry-dock and maintenance availabilities, where her combat systems and engineering plant were progressively modernized in line with improvements across the LOS ANGELES-class. By 2010, she was again ready for another extended deployment. On April 8, 2010, the submarine departed Pearl Harbor for a Western Pacific deployment in the U.S. 7TH FLEET area.

During this cruise, she operated from advanced bases and at sea in support of regional security operations. Crew-produced video later posted online shows liberty in Nagasaki, indicating at least one port visit in Japan during this period. On October 8, 2010, USS TUCSON returned to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam after completing this scheduled Western Pacific deployment.

Within weeks she was back at sea in Hawaiian waters: a November 2010 report on the exercise KOA KAI, a local multi-ship training event, lists USS TUCSON alongside attack submarines USS CHEYENNE (SSN 773) and USS PASADENA (SSN 752), ballistic-missile submarine USS ALABAMA (SSBN 731), and various surface ships and aircraft, supporting realistic tactical training for Hawaii-based forces.

In December 2011, USS TUCSON sailed again for an extended patrol. On December 14, 2011, she departed Pearl Harbor for a scheduled six-month Western Pacific deployment. Operating under 7TH FLEET, she conducted what Navy reporting later described as "numerous theater-level missions" and participated in demanding fleet exercises. Over the course of this deployment, she made a series of port visits that included Okinawa, Guam, Sasebo and Saipan, reflecting a pattern of moving between forward logistic hubs and liberty ports while carrying out patrols in the Philippine Sea and other Western Pacific waters. The deployment ended when USS TUCSON returned to Pearl Harbor on June 14, 2012, welcomed back by families on the submarine piers at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

Barely a year later she was sent west again. On September 5, 2013, USS TUCSON departed Pearl Harbor for another Western Pacific deployment. During this patrol she again operated in the 7TH FLEET area at a time when North Korea's nuclear and missile programs remained a central security concern and the United States was deepening cooperation with regional allies. Her port visits reflected that orientation: on November 12, 2013, she arrived in Busan, Republic of Korea, for a liberty and engagement visit during the deployment. In January 2014, she was photographed entering Fleet Activities Yokosuka. An official caption records that on January 10, 2014, her crew passed a heaving line to the LOS ANGELES-class submarine USS CITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI (SSN 705) as USS TUCSON arrived for a port visit as part of her routine Western Pacific deployment.

After additional operations at sea she headed back across the Pacific, and on March 7, 2014, she moored once more at Pearl Harbor at the conclusion of this deployment. A Navy news release noted that during these months she carried out tasking that supported U.S. regional objectives and strengthened ties with allies including Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore, and that she crossed the equator en route, marking the traditional "shellback" milestone for many crewmembers.

Shortly afterward, USS TUCSON was again noted in Japanese waters. A series of photographs from October 1, 2015, show the submarine transiting Tokyo Bay en route to a port call at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, indicating a further period of operations with 7TH FLEET that year even though the precise start and end dates of that patrol are not publicly documented.

In early 2016, Navy publicity provides a particularly clear picture of her movements during another Indo-Asia-Pacific deployment. On January 21, 2016, USS TUCSON arrived at Changi Naval Base, Singapore, for a port visit during a deployment described as part of the Indo-Asia-Pacific theater. She then continued north and, on February 8, 2016, arrived at Fleet Activities Sasebo, Japan, again explicitly as part of her deployment under 7TH FLEET. In April 2016, Navy photography from Chinhae, Republic of Korea, shows her commanding officer participating in a gift exchange with local children, confirming a port visit to Chinhae during the same deployment and underlining the emphasis on alliance-building with the Republic of Korea. After further patrols and missions she returned to Pearl Harbor. A May 24, 2016, COMSUBPAC blog post recorded her return from a scheduled Western Pacific deployment, though it did not detail the full list of ports visited.

Later that summer, she again took part in a major multinational exercise: a July 28, 2016, photo from the RIM OF THE PACIFIC (RIMPAC) 2016 exercise shows USS TUCSON transiting in close formation with other ships and submarines from 13 nations off Hawaii, one of about 40 participating vessels in what remains the world's largest recurring maritime exercise.

By 2017, the security situation around the Korean Peninsula had sharpened further, with North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests prompting a series of U.S. and allied exercises and deployments. In this context, USS TUCSON undertook another extended patrol in the Indo-Asia-Pacific. On October 7, 2017, she arrived in Chinhae, Republic of Korea, for a scheduled port visit. Navy reporting described the visit as a chance to strengthen ties with the Republic of Korea Navy and local community.

Around the same time, Japanese media highlighted the presence of USS TUCSON in the region in parallel with operations by the carrier USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76) and U.S. B-1B bombers amid heightened tensions with North Korea, reinforcing her role as part of a broader deterrence posture. On December 1, 2017, TUCSON arrived again at Fleet Activities Yokosuka for a port visit. This deployment continued into early 2018. On March 7, 2018, USS TUCSON returned to Pearl Harbor from this Indo-Asia-Pacific deployment. A Navy press release on March 8, 2018, noted that while deployed she had conducted port calls in Yokosuka, Sasebo, Busan, and Singapore, and had carried out a range of missions in support of 7TH FLEET objectives across the region.

In the later 2010s, she remained firmly oriented toward Western Pacific operations. A U.S. Navy logistics article on fuel support to Singapore recorded that USS TUCSON was the last U.S. submarine to visit Singapore before a gap of more than three years ended with a visit by USS COLUMBIA (SSN 771) in April 2023, and it dated TUCSON's most recent Singapore port call to August 2019.

That visit formed part of another Western Pacific deployment in 2019, after which she returned to Pearl Harbor. A later Navy change-of-command report described a turnover of commanding officers on board USS TUCSON at Pearl Harbor following completion of a successful deployment, reflecting the normal rhythm in which command changes are often timed to follow major patrols.

From 2020 onward, public reporting on individual submarine deployments became sparser, partly because of operational security considerations and partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which port visits and liberty were significantly curtailed across the submarine force. Nonetheless, official documents and imagery show that USS TUCSON remained active.

In 2025, publicly released photographs showed USS TUCSON arriving at Yokosuka on June 2, 2025, and later alongside at Sasebo in late June 2025, indicating continuing operations with U.S. 7TH FLEET and repeated use of Japanese ports as logistics and liberty hubs.

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