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USS Swordfish (SSN 579)

USS SWORDFISH was the second SKATE - class nuclear-powered attack submarine and the second ship in the Navy named after the large fish with the long, swordlike beak and the high orsal fin. Both decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on June 2, 1989, the SWORDFISH spent the following years at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Wash., awaiting to be disposed of through the Navy�s Nuclear Powered Surface Ship and Submarine Recycling Program. Recycling of the SWORDFISH was completed on September 11, 1995.

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS SWORDFISH:

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History of USS SWORDFISH:

USS SWORDFISH was laid down on 25 January 1956 by the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, N.H.; launched on 27 August 1957; sponsored by Mrs. Eugene C. Riders; and commissioned on 15 September 1958, Comdr. Shannon D. Cramer, Jr., in command.

SWORDFISH completed fitting out and held her shakedown in the Atlantic. After post-shakedown availability and subsequent sea trials along the east coast, she was assigned a home port in Pearl Harbor, T.H. effective 16 March 1959. She steamed to Hawaii in July and was the second nuclear powered submarine to join the Pacific Fleet, joining SARGO (SSN 583). Assigned to Submarine Squadron 1, Swordfish steamed over 35,000 miles during her first year in commission with over 80% of them submerged.

In January 1960, SWORDFISH deployed to the western Pacific for four months and became the first nuclear submarine in that area. During this time, President Chiang Kai-Shek, of the Republic of China, was embarked for a one-day indoctrination cruise. She deployed to WestPac again on 20 June and on this occasion took President Carlos P. Garcia of the Philippines to sea for a one-day demonstration. The submarine conducted local operations in the Hawaiian area from January to May 1961. In late May, the submarine got underway for the west coast of the United States where she operated between San Diego and San Francisco with various Pacific Fleet units. SWORDFISH returned to Pearl Harbor on 14 July and operated locally until September when she deployed to the western Pacific for two months.

SWORDFISH sailed to Mare Island in January 1962 and became the first nuclear submarine to be overhauled on the Pacific coast. She returned to Hawaii on 29 September for refresher training and local operations. On 26 October, the submarine was again deployed to WestPac. She continued operating from Pearl Harbor, on local operations and on deployments to the western Pacific, as a member of Submarine Division 71 until 30 June 1965 when she was assigned to SubDiv 11 which was also based there. In late 1965, SWORDFISH was awarded a Navy Unit Commendation for special operations from 8 October to 3 December 1963, from 22 September to 25 November 1964, and from 20 May to 23 July 1965.

SWORDFISH arrived at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard on 1 November 1965 to undergo a refueling and Sub Safe overhaul which lasted until 31 August 1967. Sea trials were held in September and weapons trials in early October. She returned to Pearl Harbor on 13 October and conducted refresher training until 31 December 1967. The period 1 January to 2 February 1968 was spent in preparation for overseas movement. SWORDFISH deployed to the western Pacific from 3 February to 5 September and, upon her return to Pearl Harbor, remained in port the remainder of the year.

SWORDFISH conducted local operations in the Hawaiian area from 1 January to 11 May 1969 at which time she again deployed until 4 November. The remainder of the year was spent in a leave and upkeep period. She was deployed on special operations from 24 February to 9 April 1970 and then entered drydock at Pearl Harbor for an availability period which lasted until 30 September. The remainder of calendar year 1970 was spent conducting a period of crew training necessitated by the yard period.

Local operations during 1971 were broken by a tour in WestPac from 24 March to 22 September. During this deployment, the submarine visited Yokosuka, Buckner Bay, Pusan, and Hong Kong. SWORDFISH continued local operations until 26 June 1972 when she entered the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard for her annual overhaul which lasted into 1974. Upon completion of the yard period, SWORDFISH resumed operations with her Pearl Harbor-based squadron in 1974.

On 16 February 1975, USS SWORDFISH ran aground near Lanai, Hawaii, while conducting post-overhaul trials. She surfaced safely and returned to Pearl Harbor for inspection and repair. Public summaries state that sensor devices mounted on the hull were damaged and that there were no breaks in the pressure hull. Contemporary reports also mentioned claims of torpedo-room flooding, which the Navy denied. The incident interrupted the post-overhaul operating cycle but did not end the submarine's service. It did, however, show the hazards of trials and training in shallow island waters, where submarines returning from long maintenance periods had to test systems and crews under controlled but still demanding conditions.

After inspection and repair, USS SWORDFISH continued Pearl Harbor-based service. On 22 June 1977, USS SWORDFISH suffered one of the more unusual publicly recorded incidents of her later career. During a torpedo exercise she launched a Mark 14 exercise torpedo that made a circular run and struck her port screw. Because it was an exercise weapon, the incident did not produce the effects of a live-warhead hit, but it damaged the submarine enough to require immediate corrective action. USS SWORDFISH returned to port for about 24 hours, changed the screw, and then went back to sea. The episode was unusual but not implausible in the context of submarine weapons training: circular torpedo runs had been a known danger since the Second World War, and even in peacetime exercise conditions a malfunctioning training weapon could create a serious hazard for the firing submarine.

After the June 1977 torpedo incident and subsequent repair, USS SWORDFISH returned to the deployment cycle. In October 1977, she began a Western Pacific deployment that lasted until March 1978. During that deployment, she stopped at Yokosuka, Japan; Pusan, South Korea; Chinhae, South Korea; Guam; ports in the Philippines; and Hong Kong. It placed the submarine in the standard Seventh Fleet operating environment of the late 1970s: Japan and Korea as northern anchor points, Guam as a central Pacific support base, the Philippines as a major U.S. naval support area through Subic Bay, and Hong Kong as a regular liberty and logistics port.

In March 1978, USS SWORDFISH returned from that Western Pacific deployment to Pearl Harbor. The following months were spent in the familiar post-deployment cycle of leave, upkeep, maintenance, training, and local operations. In September 1978, another unusual maintenance incident occurred. A small paint scraper, reportedly worth only a few cents, was accidentally dropped into a torpedo launcher and jammed the loading piston in its cylinder. Divers attempted for about a week to free the piston while the submarine remained waterborne, but those efforts failed. USS SWORDFISH had to be dry-docked, and the subsequent repairs cost far more than the value of the object that had caused the problem. The incident was not operationally dramatic in the way a collision or grounding might have been, but it showed how small foreign objects could create expensive and time-consuming problems in a tightly engineered submarine weapons system.

After the 1978 repair period, USS SWORDFISH again returned to normal Pacific Fleet service. In July 1979, she began another Western Pacific deployment. Public summaries identify Yokosuka, Pusan, and Guam as port stops. After a refit period at Guam, the submarine resumed operations but was forced to return to Guam after several days because of a diesel-engine problem. The muffler exhaust valve broke, flooding the engine and requiring repair. Once those repairs were completed, the deployment continued without further publicly recorded incident, and USS SWORDFISH returned to Pearl Harbor in December 1979.

After returning to Pearl Harbor, USS SWORDFISH carried out local operations. In the summer of 1980, she deployed again to the Western Pacific and after returning home and local operations at Pearl Harbor, USS SWORDFISH entered Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in March 1981 for overhaul and refueling. This yard period removed her from normal operational service and was a major maintenance event for an aging first-generation nuclear submarine. Refueling and overhaul work on a nuclear submarine required reactor-related work, hull and machinery maintenance, combat-system and sensor checks, preservation, testing, and certification before return to sea.

In den mid-1980s, USS SWORDFISH operated in the Philippine Sea during Fleet Exercise 1-85 from 17 November to 1 December 1984. The exercise is documented in connection with USS OMAHA (SSN 692) and included the Submarine Squadron Seven boats USS SWORDFISH, USS SARGO (SSN 583), USS SAN FRANCISCO (SSN 711), and USS BREMERTON (SSN 698). This places USS SWORDFISH in a large Pacific Fleet exercise environment involving multiple nuclear attack submarines, one of them a first-generation SKATE-class boat and others representing newer generations of the submarine force. The exercise took place at a time when U.S. Pacific submarine operations were heavily influenced by Soviet Pacific Fleet activity, Cold War tension in Northeast Asia, and the need to maintain coordinated submarine and antisubmarine readiness across the Philippine Sea and western Pacific operating areas.

By 1984 and 1985, USS SWORDFISH was still in the operating picture of the Pacific submarine force, but she was clearly approaching the end of her active career. Newer LOS ANGELES-class submarines were increasingly taking over front-line SSN roles, while the older SKATE-class boats were nearing retirement. USS SWORDFISH nevertheless remained an active Pearl Harbor-based nuclear attack submarine, still participating in fleet exercise work and local or forward operations as required.

On 23 October 1985, USS SWORDFISH experienced a serious loss-of-trim and propulsion-related emergency soon after getting underway from Pearl Harbor. The immediate problem began with a failed drain pump. A replacement pump had been obtained from USS SKATE (SSN 578), which was then in the shipyard for decommissioning, but USS SWORDFISH went to sea before the replacement had been fully connected and tested. Once at sea, the crew could not get the pump to operate. Because the engine-room bilges could not be pumped, water in the engine-room lower-level bilge rose over the deck plates by the evening of 23 October 1985. Attempts to use a portable submersible pump were unsuccessful.

As the water rose, it reached the lower parts of the motors for the main lube-oil pumps, causing electrical grounds. The commanding officer came aft, saw the situation, and decided to take the submarine shallow to permit pumping. When the planesmen put a slight up-angle on the boat, the bilge water rushed aft, greatly increasing the free-surface effect and causing a much steeper up-angle. A fire was reported in the engine-room lower level because of the water in the main lube-oil pump motors. As the angle increased, water surged toward the stern room, and the submarine came close to a dangerous loss of control. The engineer in maneuvering ordered ahead full and opened a throttle to help drive the submarine toward the surface, while in control the captain ordered the after ballast group blown. The chief of the watch reached the emergency blow controls and opened the after group valve despite the steep angle.

USS SWORDFISH surfaced successfully. The emergency did not end immediately. During the up-angle, contaminated water entered parts of the freshwater drain system, and the steam-generator water had to be checked. The nucleonics laboratory was affected by the bilge-water surge, but samples were eventually analyzed. Naval Reactors directed that the reactor be shut down and cooled down and that the steam generators be drained and refilled. The emergency diesel generator, although initially affected by water, was drained and brought online before the reactor was shut down. USS SWORDFISH was then towed back to Pearl Harbor by USS RECLAIMER (ARS 42). Later analysis found no reactor-coolant leakage into the steam generators. The event was one of the most serious known late-career incidents aboard USS SWORDFISH, and the actions taken on board prevented the emergency from becoming the loss of the boat.

USS SWORDFISH spent the remainder of 1985 in port making repairs after the October incident. She returned to sea in January 1986. Later in 1986, she made a successful Western Pacific deployment. From 1987 through 1989, USS SWORDFISH remained in her final service phase. By this time, the Navy was retiring the SKATE-class submarines and USS SWORDFISH was the last of the class to remain in commission.

USS SWORDFISH was decommissioned on 2 June 1989. Her decommissioning closed almost 31 years of commissioned service and ended the active U.S. Navy career of the SKATE-class. After decommissioning, the former USS SWORDFISH entered the Navy's nuclear-powered ship and submarine recycling process. Her disposal through the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program was completed at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington, on 11 September 1995.

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