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USS Theodore Roosevelt (SSBN 600)

USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT was the third GEORGE WASHINGTON - class nuclear-powered fleet ballistic missile submarine. Using components initially assembled for the SKIPJACK - class nuclear attack submarine SCAMP (SSN 588), the submarine was laid down as SSGN 600 and named THEODORE ROOSEVELT and redesigned SSBN 600 on November 6, 1958. Decommissioned after 20 years of service on February 28, 1981, the THEODORE ROOSEVELT was stricken from the Navy list on December 1, 1982, and spent the next years at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash., awaiting to be disposed of through the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program. Recycling of the THEODORE ROOSEVELT was finished on March 24, 1995.

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT:

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About the Submarine's Name:

• Click here to read about the submarine's namesake - Theodore Roosevelt.

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History of USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT:

Using components initially assembled for the SKIPJACK - class nuclear attack submarine SCAMP (SSN 588), SSGN 600 was laid down on 20 May 1958 by the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, named THEODORE ROOSEVELT and redesigned SSBN 600 on 6 November 1958, launched on 3 October 1959; sponsored by Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth; and commissioned on 13 February 1961, Comdr. William E. Sims (blue crew) and Comdr. Oliver H. Perry, Jr. (gold crew) in command.

Five days after commissioning, THEODORE ROOSEVELT departed Mare Island, bound for the east coast. On 7 March, she became the first fleet ballistic missile submarine (FBM) to transit the Panama Canal. Four days later, she arrived at Cape Canaveral, Fla. After successfully firing her first Polaris A1 missile on 20 March and completing her shakedown training, the submarine arrived in Groton, Conn., on 1 May for post-shakedown availability at the Electric Boat Co. yard. She completed those repairs on 24 June and departed Groton, bound for Charleston, S.C. THEODORE ROOSEVELT stopped at Norfolk, Va., along the way and arrived at Charleston on 7 July. Between 7 and 19 July, she loaded Polaris missiles at the Naval Ammunition Depot, Charleston, and made all other preparations for her first deployment. On the 19th, she stood out of Charleston on her first deterrent patrol. She concluded that patrol on 23 September at the FBM base at Holy Loch, Scotland.

Over the next three and one-half years, the submarine made 15 more deterrent patrols departing from and returning to the Holy Loch base in each instance. Late in the spring of 1965, she departed Holy Loch on her 17th and final patrol of the deployment. She concluded that patrol and the deployment when she arrived in Charleston on 15 June. She unloaded her 16 Polaris missiles and then departed Charleston for New London Conn., where she arrived on 26 June.

At New London, THEODORE ROOSEVELT entered the yard of the Electric Boat Division for an extensive overhaul. Between July 1965 and January 1967, she had her nuclear reactor "refueled" and her Polaris weapon system modified to accept the more advanced Polaris A3 missile. The FBM submarine completed overhaul on 14 January 1967 and launched into sea trials and refresher training, all of which culminated in the successful firing of a Polaris A3 missile at the Cape Kennedy (Cape Canaveral) missile range late in April. At the end of the training period, she returned to Charleston to load missiles and to prepare for another series of deterrent patrols out of Holy Loch. She embarked upon her 18th patrol on 1 June and completed that cruise at the Holy Loch base.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT's second tour of duty operating from the Scotland base proved to be very brief in comparison to her first. Between mid-June of 1967 and February of 1968, she completed her 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st patrols. On 20 March 1968 while returning to Holy Loch from her 21st patrol, the submarine ran aground off the western coast of Scotland. After drydocking for temporary correction of the damage, she departed Holy Loch on 5 April to return to the United States for permanent repairs. Between 18 and 20 April she unloaded her missiles at Charleston and then headed north to New London. On the 23rd, she arrived in the yard of the Electric Boat Division and commenced an extended repair period. Labor disputes caused delays, and THEODORE ROOSEVELT did not complete her repairs until mid-October. She spent the latter part of that month in sea trials and then departed New London on 2 November on her post-repair shakedown cruise. She visited Norfolk, Puerto Rico, and St. Croix before concluding the cruise at Charleston on 27 November. She conducted training operations out of Charleston before deploying to Holy Loch again early in 1969.

That tour of duty lasted until May 1971. During the interim, she conducted nine more deterrent patrols, returning to Holy Loch for refit after each. On 12 May 1971, she stood out of Holy Loch on the 31st patrol of her career. On 20 July, THEODORE ROOSEVELT arrived in New London completing both the patrol and the deployment. She remained in New London for three weeks, during which time members of her blue crew and her gold crew were brought together into a single overhaul crew while other members of both crews moved on to other assignments. On 10 August, the FBM submarine headed south to Charleston where she arrived on the 13th. Over the next month, she underwent refit and then departed Charleston on 11 September for special operations. THEODORE ROOSEVELT returned to Charleston on the 30th and remained there a week and a day before returning to sea for another three weeks of special operations. The ballistic missile submarine reentered Charleston on 1 November and began a preoverhaul restricted availability. Three weeks later, she officially began her refueling overhaul, which lasted for more than two years.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT completed her overhaul in January 1974. During the following two months, she conducted sea trials out of Charleston. In April and May shakedown training and nuclear weapons certification preparations occupied her time. In June, she conducted a one-week midshipman familiarization cruise out of New London, then underwent nuclear propulsion safety training before deperming at Norfolk. In mid-June, she received word of her reassignment to the Pacific Fleet with her new home port to be Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Between July and September, THEODORE ROOSEVELT conducted another midshipman training cruise; then settled into predeployment training and preparations. The submarine departed Charleston on 20 September, transited the Panama Canal on 5 October, and, after a nine-day stop for missile loadout at Bangor, Wash., continued on to Pearl Harbor, where she arrived on 4 November. Six days later, she departed Pearl Harbor, bound for the Marianas. She entered port at Guam two weeks later, underwent refit at her new advanced base there, and began her first deterrent patrol in the Pacific Ocean on 31 December. THEODORE ROOSEVELT conducted patrols out of Guam until 16 December 1977 at which time she departed on her 43rd deterrent patrol.

During the early months of 1978, THEODORE ROOSEVELT remained based on Guam and continued the established pattern of ballistic-missile operations from Apra Harbor. The public historical record does not list the exact sailing and return dates of each individual patrol in this period, but it confirms that she completed the sequence of Pacific deterrent missions that brought her career tally to 46 patrols. These patrols were conducted in the wider context of ongoing United States–Soviet strategic rivalry and the late-Cold-War arms control process that had been shaped by the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) agreements and was moving toward the signing of SALT II in 1979. As an older Polaris boat, THEODORE ROOSEVELT increasingly stood in the shadow of the emerging TRIDENT system and the OHIO-class SSBNs then entering construction, yet she continued to provide an operational sea-based nuclear deterrent while those newer assets were still being brought into service.

A key dated milestone in this closing patrol cycle came on 9 October 1978, when THEODORE ROOSEVELT sailed from Apra Harbor to begin her 46th and final deterrent patrol. She still operated with support from USS PROTEUS (AS 19), which continued to serve as the Guam-based tender for the Pacific Polaris force. The patrol ended at Pearl Harbor rather than returning to Guam, marking a geographic as well as operational turning point: she would not resume the pattern of forward-based deterrent patrols after this cruise. Contemporary open sources do not record the precise date on which she entered Pearl Harbor at the conclusion of Patrol 46, but they agree that the arrival occurred later in 1978 and that it effectively ended her career as a deployed Polaris missile carrier.

Upon arrival in Pearl Harbor in late 1978, the long-standing dual-crew arrangement that had characterized most of her service life came to an end. Members of the former Blue and Gold crews were reorganized into a single, consolidated ship's company. This new manning structure reflected the change in mission. Rather than preparing for further Polaris patrols, THEODORE ROOSEVELT was reassigned as a training and exercise platform for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) forces operating in the central Pacific. From November 1978 until October 1979 she served as a "target of opportunity" for a variety of ASW units - surface ships, maritime patrol aircraft, and submarines - providing a real nuclear-powered submarine for tracking and attack-simulation exercises instead of the purely notional targets often used in training. These activities supported the U.S. Navy's continuous effort to refine tactics against Soviet submarines, which remained a central concern of Cold War naval planning.

While based at Pearl Harbor in this ASW-training role, THEODORE ROOSEVELT also made a series of port visits within the Hawaiian Islands. During this period, she called at Lahaina on Maui, at Kona on the island of Hawaii, and at Nawiliwili on Kauai. On 16 October 1979, THEODORE ROOSEVELT left Pearl Harbor and headed east across the Pacific on what would become a multi-stage transit toward the Pacific Northwest and eventual deactivation. Her first destination was San Diego, California, then one of the principal bases for Pacific Fleet surface forces and a frequent port for submarines engaged in training with those ships. She arrived in San Diego on 25 October 1979. A few days later, between 29 and 31 October 1979, THEODORE ROOSEVELT shifted north from San Diego to Alameda, in the San Francisco Bay area. Alameda at that time hosted significant naval facilities, including piers used by carrier battle groups and other large units. On 7 November 1979, THEODORE ROOSEVELT departed Alameda and headed further north to Esquimalt, British Columbia, arriving there on 10 November 1979. Esquimalt, near Victoria on Vancouver Island, is the main base of Canada's Pacific naval forces.

On 14 November 1979, THEODORE ROOSEVELT left Esquimalt and proceeded south and east to Carr Inlet, Washington, a location used by the U.S. Navy for specialized acoustic testing. There she was suspended on cables to support detailed acoustic-measurement work. Such testing was part of a continuing effort to understand and, when possible, reduce submarine signatures, as well as to characterize them accurately for tactical purposes. For an aging SSBN that was moving out of the ballistic-missile role, this period of measurement also allowed the Navy to gather complete acoustic data before she left operational service, contributing to broader technical knowledge about the "41 for Freedom" submarines.

After completing the acoustic trials, THEODORE ROOSEVELT moved on to Bangor, Washington, arriving there on 19 November 1979. Bangor had recently been developed as a major ballistic-missile support facility on the U.S. Pacific coast and would later become the principal base for TRIDENT submarines. At the time of her arrival it was still a relatively new installation. On reaching Bangor, the submarine submitted the first official maintenance work request (2-Kilo) to the newly established Trident Refit Facility, reflecting her status as one of the early SSBNs to use the base extensively during its build-up phase.

On 1 December 1979, THEODORE ROOSEVELT carried out a historically notable ordnance evolution at Bangor. She became the first fleet ballistic missile submarine to offload Polaris A3 missiles at the base's newly constructed Explosives Handling Wharf. By doing so, she both validated the wharf's operational capability and marked the end of her long career as a ballistic-missile platform, since the offload removed the core of her strategic armament. The timing of this event reflected the larger modernization of U.S. strategic forces, as Polaris-armed SSBNs were progressively retired or converted while newer TRIDENT systems came online.

Following the missile offload, THEODORE ROOSEVELT was formally taken out of operational service and retained with a reduced crew to begin the detailed process of deactivation. On 3 January 1980 she commenced Deactivation Availability at Submarine Base Bangor. This marked the transition from an active, albeit non-deployed, submarine to a unit undergoing systematic inactivation: equipment was prepared for removal or long-term storage, documentation was updated, and the boat was made ready for shipyard work. In mid-1980, THEODORE ROOSEVELT was moved from Bangor to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS) at Bremerton, Washington, for drydocking. In drydock, the shipyard removed the reactor fuel and dismantled the missile compartment. This dismantling was carried out to comply with SALT-related limitations on strategic missile launchers and reflected the wider process of physically eliminating launch capability on older strategic systems as they left service. After the missile compartment had been removed, the forward and aft sections of the hull were re-joined around the area formerly occupied by the reactor plant, producing a shortened, non-missile-carrying hull suitable for storage pending a final disposal decision.

Once this major structural work was complete, THEODORE ROOSEVELT undocked and shifted to a pier at PSNS, where her formal decommissioning ceremony took place on 28 February 1981. This ceremony marked the end of her commissioned status in the fleet after roughly twenty years of service. The remaining deactivation crew then left for other assignments, while Puget Sound Naval Shipyard continued the technical tasks associated with inactivation, including removing remaining equipment and preparing the hull for long-term afloat storage.

Deactivation Availability officially concluded on 1 December 1982. On that date, THEODORE ROOSEVELT was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register, and her hull was placed in afloat storage at PSNS. For nearly thirteen years she remained there. The next major step in THEODORE ROOSEVELT's post-commissioning life came in 1988, when the hull was brought back into drydock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard so that her reactor compartment could be removed and prepared for land disposal. An environmental impact statement, approved in 1984, had established a permanent disposal pathway at the Department of Energy's Hanford Reservation in Washington for de-fueled submarine reactor compartments. Under this framework, the reactor compartment of THEODORE ROOSEVELT was separated from the rest of the hull, placed on a barge in the drydock, and outfitted for its journey up the Columbia River system to Hanford.

After the reactor compartment had been detached, the remaining hull sections were again re-joined, this time with the forward end connected at the aft bulkhead of the operations compartment and the aft end at the forward bulkhead of Auxiliary Machinery Space 2. Both the re-assembled hull and the loaded barge were then undocked. The hull returned to afloat storage at Bremerton, while the reactor compartment was transported to the Hanford Reservation. There it entered Burial Trench 94, a specially designed facility for long-term storage of reactor compartments from nuclear-powered ships. Numbering records at Hanford indicate that the reactor compartment of ex-THEODORE ROOSEVELT was the seventh submarine reactor compartment emplaced in Trench 94, with the placement dated 1 November 1989.

With the reactor compartment safely stored ashore, the remaining hull stayed moored at PSNS while the Navy refined its process for full material recycling of nuclear-powered submarines. That process ultimately became the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program (SRP), centered at Puget Sound and designed to recover reusable metals and components while handling remaining radioactive and hazardous materials under strict regulatory controls. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, by then designated "ex-THEODORE ROOSEVELT", entered drydock for the final time at PSNS in 1993 to undergo this recycling phase. During recycling, shipyard workers cut the hull into sections, removed remaining systems and fittings, and sorted materials for re-use or disposal. On 24 March 1995, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard reported the completion of disposal work on ex-THEODORE ROOSEVELT, bringing to an end the physical existence of the submarine.

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