USS Silversides (SSN-679)
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | 25 June 1968 |
| Builder: | General Dynamics |
| Laid down: | 13 October 1969 |
| Launched: | 4 June 1971 |
| Commissioned: | 5 May 1972 |
| Decommissioned: | 21 July 1994 |
| Struck: | 21 July 1994 |
| Motto: | Veni Vidi Vici |
| Fate: | submarine recycling |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 4159 tons light |
| Length: | 90.8 m (298 ft) |
| Beam: | 9.7 m (32 ft) |
| Draft: | 8.8 m (29 ft) |
| Propulsion: | S5W reactor |
| Speed: | 25 kt (46 km/h) |
| Armament: | four 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes |
USS Silversides (SSN-679), a Sturgeon-class attack submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the silversides, a small fish marked with a silvery stripe along each side of its body. The contract to build her was awarded to the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation in Groton, Connecticut on 25 June 1968 and her keel was laid down on 13 October 1969. She was launched on 4 June 1971 sponsored by Mrs. John H. Chafee, wife of the then Secretary of the Navy, and commissioned on 5 May 1972, with Commander John E. Allen in command.
Following shakedown in the Atlantic and Caribbean, Silversides began operations in the Atlantic, homeported at Charleston, South Carolina.
The USS Silversides went into drydock in Norfolk Naval Shipyard in January 1977 and changed its home port to Norfolk, Virginia.
On 11 October 1981 USS "Silversides" surfaced at the North Pole for the first time.
In the Fall of 1984, the Silversides left its Norfolk Naval Base homeport for its journey to a scheduled refueling-overhaul at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, entering drydock there in late November 1984. The refueling-overhaul was completed by August 1986, and later that year the boat returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia.
In Fall 1989 USS Silversides surfaced at the North Pole for the second time, proceeded out of the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific, participated in Pacific Fleet Exercises, made port calls in Hawaii and California and proceeded back to Norfolk through the Panama Canal, becoming only the second submarine to circumnavigate the North American continent. In mid 1994, she moved from her homeport in Norfolk to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii for decommissioning on 21 July 1994.
Silversides was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 2 August 1994. Ex-Silversides entered the Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program in Bremerton, Washington, on 1 October 2000 and on 1 October 2001 ceased to exist.
[edit] References
This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
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