By the end of the war in 1945, American fleet subs had sunk about a third of all the Japanese warships destroyed, and over half of the merchant ships. These successes did not come without cost. Over fifty U.S. boats had their epitaph written in the words "overdue and presumed lost." Along with the boats went some of the very best of the U.S. skippers, men like "Mush" Morton of USS Wahoo, "Sam" Dealey of USS Harder, and Howard C. Gilmore of USS Growler. Overall the U.S. submarine forces had the highest percentage of losses of any branch of the U.S. Navy. The American sub forces quietly paid in blood and boats for their victory, and earned for themselves a nickname that would stick: the silent service.
The Early Cold War Years
Almost as soon as the Allies won their victory over the Axis powers, another conflict, more sinister in character, started up between the Soviet Union and its former allies in the west. During the war the Russians had built the world's largest force of submarines. With the coming of what came to be known as the Cold War, they continued to build even further. For the next forty-five years the western allies, formed into NATO, lived in deathly fear that the USSR would flood its force of over three hundred submarines into the sea lanes. This threat-that the Russians could repeat or even better the performance of the Germans during the world wars-generated the main Cold War naval mission of the NATO forces, antisubmarine warfare.
The first decade of the effort was accomplished primarily by force of numbers. Despite the hopes that a decisive submarine technology would be found, none was. Improvements in submarine and ASW technology would evolve slowly. The major bottleneck was in the area of propulsion. Simply put, none of the different propulsion technologies-diesel, hydrogen peroxide, or gasoline-had ever provided the sustained high underwater speeds needed. The answer to this problem, though, was about to be found in the United States.
The Nuclear Revolution
The American propulsion breakthrough came from an unlikely source, a diminutive U.S. Navy captain named Hyman G. Rickover. Assigned after the war to the Navy's engineering branch, he was among the first to recognize the possibilities of creating small nuclear power plants that might be installed in submarines and surface ships. With these reactors, ships might steam tens of thousands of miles without refueling. For submarines in particular, it would mean freedom from having to come to the surface to obtain air for the diesel engines. In Rickover, and his newly created office of Director, Naval Reactors (DNR), the Navy had found the perfect blend of engineer, political insider, and bureaucrat to bring the first nuclear ships to fruition.
Submarines were Rickover's first priority, and a contract was let in the early 1950s for construction of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics. Utilizing a pressurized water reactor to produce steam for turbines, the design was successful beyond the wildest dreams of now-Admiral Rickover and the Navy. Considering that she was only a proof-of-concept vessel or prototype (the U.S. Navy has always considered its submarine prototypes fleet units, not research vessels), albeit armed with a full suite of weapons and sensors, the achievements of Nautilus and her crew were staggering. They dominated virtually every NATO exercise they participated in. In addition, in 1957 Nautilus became the first ship to transit the Arctic from the Pacific to the Atlantic, opening a whole new area for submarine operations.
Following the Nautilus came a second prototype, the USS Seawolf (SSN-575), powered by a liquid sodium reactor. Designed to achieve higher power output within a smaller volume, the reactor proved troublesome and was eventually replaced with one of the pressurized water type. In addition, the United States undertook production of a small class of nuclear boats (six) based on the design of the Nautilus. Named for the first unit of the class, the USS Skate (SSN-578), they provided a vast base of experience for operating nuclear submarines, as well as being extremely useful fleet units.
Skate herself made history by being the first submarine to surface at the geographic North Pole. Other prototypes such as the USS Halibut (SSN-587) and the USS Triton (SSN-586) explored the possibilities of using nuclear submarines to launch cruise missiles, and operating as a radar picket (to extend radar coverage for aircraft carrier groups). In 1960 Triton made history by becoming the first submarine to circumnavigate the globe submerged. Under the command of one of the U.S. Navy's best-known submariners, Commander Edward Beach (best known for writing the naval classic Run Silent, Run Deep), Triton duplicated the course of navigator Ferdinand Magellan some four centuries earlier.
The early U.S. nuclear boats were limited to a top speed of about 20 knots, submerged or surfaced.[1] These early boats had been built around conventional hull forms and were thus limited by the horse-powerof their reactor plants and the drag from their hulls. By this time the United States had experimented with a teardrop-shaped prototype diesel-electric submarine, the USS Albacore, which was able to reach submerged speeds of over 30 knots.[2] Combining the hull of the Albacore with Rickover 's nuclear power plant, a new class of undersea hunter was born. USS Skipjack (SSN-585), the lead of a six-boat class, went to sea as the fastest submarine in the world. By 1960 the U.S. Navy had a fleet of nuclear submarines and a huge lead on the USSR and Great Britain, which had started their nuclear submarine programs later.
Along with the Skipjacks, another prototype boat was discreetly constructed to explore the possibility of a quiet SSN designed specifically to hunt other submarines. Named the USS Tullibee (SSN-597), she was the first SSN to have a large spherical sonar array in the bow, torpedo tubes amidships, and a quiet turboelectric drive system. And though she would have a history of engineering problems throughout her career (she was derisively known in Groton as Building 597), she introduced features that would be on every other class of SSN the United States has built.
1
To this day, the U.S. Navy will officially only admit that U.S. nuclear "submarines… operate at speeds over 20 knots, and depths over 400 feet…"