Search the Site with

General Characteristics

Crew List

Memorabilia

Accidents aboard the Ship

About the Ship's Name

History

to end of page

USS James Madison (SSBN 627)

USS JAMES MADISON was the tenth LAFAYETTE - class nuclear powered fleet ballistic missile submarine and the second ship in the Navy to bear the name. Completed with the 2500-mile range Polaris A3, the JAMES MADISON was refitted with the Poseidon missiles between 1969 and 1978. In 1979-82, she received Trident I missiles.

Decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on November 20, 1992, the JAMES MADISON spent the next years at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash., awaiting to be disposed of by submarine recycling. Recycling was finished on October 24, 1997.

back to top

go to the end of the page

back to top

go to the end of the page

Crew List:

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

• Click here to view the list.

back to top

go to the end of the page

• Click here to see which USS JAMES MADISON memorabilia are currently for sale on ebay.

back to top

go to the end of the page

Accidents aboard USS JAMES MADISON:

back to top

go to the end of the page

About the Ship's Name:

James Madison was born at Port Conway, Va., 10 March 1751, and graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1771. He was a member of the Virginia Council of State, and in 1780 became a member of the Continental Congress. An early advocate of increased Federal power under the Articles of Confederation, Madison served in the Virginia House of Delegates 1784-86 and was instrumental in securing passage of Jefferson's religious freedom bill. He played an influential role in the movement which led to the Constitutional Convention, drafted the "Virginia Plan" which became the core of that document, and worked tirelessly for its adoption. A first-rate thinker and writer on political theory and practice, he was the author of 29 of the famous Federalist Papers.

Madison served in the House 1789-97 and proposed the first 10 amendments to the Constitution which became the Bill of Rights. Later, as leader of the Jeffersonian Republicans, he drew up the Virginia Resolves and condemned the Alien and Sedition Acts.

After being Secretary of State under Jefferson 1801-09, he was elected President. His first term was marred by the unpopular War of 1812 and his administration was marked by a trend toward nationalism. President James Madison, died 28 June 1836, but continues in fame as one of the Nation's most important thinkers and statesmen.

back to top

go to the end of the page

USS JAMES MADISON History:

USS JAMES MADISON was ordered on July 20, 1961, as part of the U.S. Navy's expansion of its Polaris fleet ballistic missile force, the "41 for Freedom" submarines that formed the seagoing leg of the American nuclear deterrent during the Cold War. She was built at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Newport News, Virginia, as the lead unit of what became known as the JAMES MADISON-class, a refinement of the earlier LAFAYETTE boats optimized from the outset for the Polaris A3 missile.

Her keel was laid at Newport News on March 5, 1962. She took shape with a single S5W nuclear reactor driving geared steam turbines and a single shaft, giving her a submerged speed in excess of 20 knots and providing the endurance needed for long strategic patrols. The submarine was launched on March 15, 1963, sponsored by Mary Ellen "Mellon" Monroney, wife of Senator A. S. "Mike" Monroney of Oklahoma. After fitting out and trials, she was commissioned on July 28, 1964, with two alternating crews - Blue and Gold - each of about 15 officers and 130 enlisted men, a dual-crew concept intended to keep the ship on deterrent patrol for as much of the year as possible.

From the outset, USS JAMES MADISON carried sixteen Polaris A3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles in vertical tubes amidships, supplemented by four bow torpedo tubes for self-defense. Shortly after commissioning she moved to the Atlantic Missile Range off Cape Canaveral, Florida. There, she conducted a series of Polaris A3 flight tests, with her first Cape launch recorded on September 28, 1964. Over the course of her career she would carry out a total of twelve missile firings from the Atlantic test area, later including Poseidon and Trident I missiles as those systems entered service. These tests verified missile performance, launch systems, and crew procedures before she entered the routine of operational deterrent patrols.

Following shakedown and a short period of post-shakedown repairs and modifications in November and December 1964, USS JAMES MADISON departed on her first strategic deterrent patrol on January 17, 1965. Like other Atlantic fleet Polaris submarines of the time, she operated primarily in the European area, patrolling the North Atlantic and adjacent waters under the operational control of U.S. and NATO commands. By the end of 1966, she had already completed her tenth deterrent patrol, an indication of the intense operating tempo maintained by the dual-crew system in the early years of the Polaris force.

During this period, USS JAMES MADISON was associated with the forward deployment pattern that characterized the Atlantic Polaris force. She operated with Submarine Squadron 14 at Holy Loch, Scotland, and also conducted patrols out of Rota, Spain, where she and her crews refitted alongside submarine tenders between patrols. This arrangement allowed her to spend most of her time on station in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, providing a survivable second-strike capability as NATO and the Warsaw Pact confronted each other across Europe in the mid-1960s.

Through the late 1960s, USS JAMES MADISON continued this cycle of Polaris A3 deterrent patrols, Atlantic crossings, and refits at the overseas bases and at stateside facilities such as Charleston, South Carolina, which served as an important support and loadout port for the Atlantic SSBN fleet.

Her patrols coincided with key Cold War events, including the escalation and eventual winding down of the Vietnam War and the negotiation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but her own activities remained focused on maintaining a continuous at-sea deterrent presence rather than direct involvement in regional crises.

By the end of the decade, strategic planners were preparing to move beyond Polaris. The new Poseidon C3 missile promised more warheads and better accuracy, but it required significant modifications to the existing Polaris submarines. A 1972 analysis of the Poseidon program notes that the conversion of USS JAMES MADISON to accommodate the larger Poseidon missile began in February 1969, marking her as an early candidate for the new system. The work involved changes to missile tubes, fire-control systems, navigation equipment, and associated support systems, as well as nuclear refueling, and was carried out during her first major overhaul.

By June 1970, the Navy recorded that USS JAMES MADISON had completed conversion to Poseidon missile capability. In parallel with the shipyard work, the Poseidon missile test program progressed from pad launches to at-sea trials. The first test launch of Poseidon took place in August 1968, and the first successful at-sea launch was achieved from the instrumentation ship USNS OBSERVATION ISLAND (T-AGM 23) in 1969.

The decisive step for submarine operations came on August 3, 1970, when USS JAMES MADISON, now carrying Poseidon C3 missiles, conducted the first submerged launch of the new missile from off the coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral. This production evaluation missile shot, carried out under the auspices of the Naval Ordnance Test Unit, demonstrated that Poseidon could be fired safely and accurately from a submerged SSBN. Further submerged test launches followed. On October 6, 1970, USS JAMES MADISON conducted the fifth submerged launch of a Poseidon production evaluation missile, and on October 23, 1970, she performed the first Poseidon Demonstration and Shakedown Operation (DASO) launch, validating the complete missile system in an operational configuration. These shots formed part of an extended series of exercises in the Atlantic Missile Range, linking the technical development program to the operational fleet and giving both the Blue and Gold crews experience with the new weapon.

With these tests complete and the broader Poseidon program ready to enter service, USS JAMES MADISON was selected to inaugurate operational deployment. According to the U.S. Navy's Strategic Systems Programs, Poseidon C3 became operational on March 31, 1971, when USS JAMES MADISON began her initial deterrent patrol carrying sixteen tactical Poseidon C3 missiles. A commemorative note from the Naval Undersea Museum adds that she departed Charleston, South Carolina, with those missiles on board, marking the first Poseidon deterrent patrol.

From 1971 onward, she resumed the familiar rhythm of strategic patrols, now with Poseidon rather than Polaris in her missile tubes. Operating again in the Atlantic and European areas, and forward-based at Holy Loch and other support ports, she contributed to the credibility of the U.S. second-strike capability in the era of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, when submarine-launched missiles gained increased importance as survivable platforms.

In 1974, the Navy introduced the Extended Refit Program (ERP) to lengthen the interval between major overhauls for its SSBNs by expanding selected refits into intensive sixty-day availabilities. USS JAMES MADISON was chosen to conduct Submarine Squadron 14's first ERP at Holy Loch, Scotland, between September and November 1974. The work was carried out in the large floating dry dock USS LOS ALAMOS, with technical assistance from Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and included hull inspections, repairs, and modernization work that went beyond the standard thirty-two-day refit. Shortly after this period, in November 1974, USS JAMES MADISON was involved in one of the more serious known incidents of the Cold War SSBN force. As she departed Holy Loch to take up station on another Poseidon deterrent patrol, she collided with a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine that had been waiting outside the port to trail her.

Contemporary accounts and later declassified analyses indicate that the Soviet boat was likely of the VICTOR-class attack type. The impact left a scrape roughly nine feet long on USS JAMES MADISON's hull but did not result in loss of the ship or known casualties. She and the Soviet submarine both surfaced after the collision. The Soviet boat subsequently submerged and departed. USS JAMES MADISON returned to Holy Loch for inspection and repair work before resuming service. Because the incident occurred deep within United Kingdom home waters and involved a foreign submarine tracking a U.S. SSBN near a British anchorage, it was kept secret for decades and only became widely known after declassification in the 2010s.

Following the ERP availability and the post-collision repairs, USS JAMES MADISON continued her Poseidon patrols through the mid- and late-1970s. She remained part of the Atlantic SSBN force as U.S. strategic posture adapted to the evolving Soviet missile and antisubmarine capabilities and to ongoing arms control negotiations, including SALT II. Throughout these years, she cycled between long submerged patrols and refits at overseas bases and U.S. ports, maintaining high operational availability.

Even as Poseidon reached full maturity, planning was underway for the next generation of submarine-launched missiles. The Trident I (C4) program, begun in the early 1970s, aimed to provide a longer-range missile that would allow SSBNs to patrol in more distant ocean areas. The initial focus was on the new OHIO-class submarines, but a backfit program was also developed to equip selected older boats with Trident I. In this scheme, several JAMES MADISON- and BENJAMIN FRANKLIN-class submarines would receive C4 missiles during major overhauls. USS JAMES MADISON was one of the six JAMES MADISON-class units selected for this conversion.

According to Navy and reference summaries, she entered a comprehensive overhaul at Newport News Shipbuilding in 1979, where her Poseidon system was replaced by the Trident I C4 missile and its associated equipment. This work, carried out between 1979 and 1982, included structural modifications to the missile compartment, updates to navigation and fire-control systems, and another reactor refueling to extend her service life. When the yard period ended she possessed the longer-range C4 missiles that allowed her to patrol from more distant bastions while still holding strategic targets at risk.

To certify the upgraded ship and crew, USS JAMES MADISON participated in the Trident I Demonstration and Shakedown Operation sequence. On June 5, 1982, her Gold crew successfully launched a Trident I (C4) missile from the submerged submarine during Demonstration and Shakedown Operation 13, again in the Atlantic test area near Florida under Naval Ordnance Test Unit control.

This shot, one of a series of C4 DASO launches that also involved USS OHIO (SSBN 726), USS STONEWALL JACKSON (SSBN 634), USS GEORGE BANCROFT (SSBN 643), USS VON STEUBEN (SSBN 632), USS MICHIGAN (SSBN 727), and USS CASIMIR PULASKI (SSBN 633), confirmed that the backfitted older SSBNs could employ the new missile alongside the purpose-built OHIO-class boats. With this firing, USS JAMES MADISON completed her twelfth and final Cape Canaveral launch. Her overall test-launch record at the Cape thus spanned from September 1964 to June 1982 and encompassed Polaris A3, Poseidon C3, and Trident I C4 missiles.

Following completion of Trident conversion and DASO, USS JAMES MADISON returned to operational service in the Atlantic SSBN force, now as a Trident I boat. In the early and mid-1980s, she conducted deterrent patrols with C4 missiles alongside other backfitted SSBNs and the growing number of OHIO-class units. Her patrols during these years occurred against the backdrop of renewed superpower tensions, the deployment of new Soviet ballistic missile submarines, and NATO debates over theater nuclear forces, while at the same time arms control efforts moved toward the eventual Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the original "41 for Freedom" boats were approaching the end of their planned service lives. Newer OHIO-class submarines, armed with even more capable Trident II (D5) missiles, were entering the fleet, and arms control agreements and post-Cold War force reductions allowed for a smaller SSBN force. In this environment, USS JAMES MADISON's retirement was scheduled. The U.S. Navy records that her inactivation at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California, began on February 18, 1992, marking the start of her final disposition phase.

USS JAMES MADISON was formally decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on November 20, 1992. Her inactivation work at Mare Island concluded on December 8, 1992, after which the hull was transferred to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Washington, to enter the Nuclear-Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program. There, in a controlled industrial process that removed her nuclear fuel, dismantled her reactor compartment, and recycled remaining materials, her scrapping was completed on October 24, 1997.

back to top

Back to Ballistic Submarines list.

Back to ships list.

Back to selection page.

Back to 1^st page.