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USS Lewis and Clark (SSBN 644)

USS LEWIS AND CLARK was one of the BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - class nuclear powered fleet ballistic missile submarines. Generally similar to the LAFAYETTE - class, the twelve BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - class submarines had a quieter machinery design, and were thus considered a separate class. USS LEWIS AND CLARK was the first ship in the Navy to bear the name.

Both decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on August 1, 1992, the LEWIS AND CLARK later entered the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash. Recycling was completed on September 23, 1996. However, LEWIS AND CLARK's sail, sail planes and rudder were saved and are now part of the Cold War Memorial at Patriots Point, Mount Pleasant, SC.

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Crew List:

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

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About the Ship's Name:

Meriwether Lewis was born 18 August 1774 in Albemarle County, Va. Much of his boyhood was spent learning the ways of wildlife and Indian lore. When he was 20 years old he was called to active duty during the “Whiskey Rebellion” in October 1794. After joining the Regular Army, he marched to Greenville, Ohio, the following year to view the signing of the Northwest Treaty. During this mission he was a subordinate of William Clark, his future companion in exploring the West.

Following Thomas Jefferson’s election, Lewis was offered the post of private secretary, and he became overseer of Jefferson’s domestic arrangements. In 1803, when Congress appropriated funds for exploring the West, Lewis went to Philadelphia to organize the expedition. As his companion officer he chose William Clark.

Clark was born 1 August 1770 in Caroline County, Va. Like Lewis, he was brought up in the revolutionary spirit and spent some of his early years defending against marauding Indians.

Designed to find a land route to the Pacific, the expedition mustered in Illinois in 1804 and for the next 28 months, proceeded to gain invaluable information about the unknown parts of the continent and its Indian inhabitants. The exploring party returned to St. Louis in September 1806.

For the rest of their lives, Lewis and Clark dedicated their abilities to administration of the U.S. territories and gave valuable service in Indian affairs. Meriwether Lewis died 11 October 1809 and William Clark died 1 September 1838.

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USS LEWIS AND CLARK History:

USS LEWIS AND CLARK was conceived at the height of the Cold War as part of the final group of American fleet ballistic missile submarines built for the "Forty-One for Freedom" force. The construction contract was awarded on November 1, 1962, to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company at Newport News, Virginia, a yard already deeply involved in nuclear shipbuilding. Her keel was laid on July 29, 1963, and over the next year and a half the yard assembled a 425-foot BENJAMIN FRANKLIN-class hull around a single S5W reactor and a battery of sixteen vertical ballistic-missile tubes. She was launched on November 21, 1964, sponsored by Mrs. M. F. Engman and Mrs. M. G. Sale, and on December 22, 1965 she was commissioned as USS LEWIS AND CLARK (SSBN 644), with Commander John F. Fagan Jr. in command of the Blue Crew and Commander Kenneth A. Porter in command of the Gold Crew. The new submarine took her name from the early nineteenth-century explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, whose transcontinental expedition had become a national symbol of exploration and perseverance. The submarine would carry that name into a very different frontier, beneath the oceans rather than across the continent.

Following commissioning, LEWIS AND CLARK moved into shakedown and weapons testing in 1966, working up off the Atlantic seaboard and at the Florida missile ranges. Like her sister ships, she had been designed from the outset to fire the Polaris A3 missile, the long-range solid-fuel submarine-launched ballistic missile that underpinned the U.S. sea-based nuclear deterrent of the mid-1960s. After initial machinery and navigation trials, she operated off Cape Kennedy (Cape Canaveral), where she conducted missile-handling drills and then live Polaris test launches under closely controlled conditions. Contemporary technical reporting shows senior Fleet Ballistic Missile program officials embarked during one of these 1966 test firings off Port Canaveral, reviewing telemetry and performance data from a POLARIS launch aboard LEWIS AND CLARK as part of the broader evaluation of the emerging fleet ballistic missile system. These early firings validated the integration of her fire-control, navigation and missile systems and certified the crews and ship for deterrent operations.

Once shakedown was complete, LEWIS AND CLARK joined the Atlantic Fleet ballistic missile submarine force and entered the regular pattern of Polaris A3 deterrent patrols that defined her early career. Like other BENJAMIN FRANKLIN-class boats, she operated as part of the dual-crew system: while one crew took the submarine to sea on a 60- to 70-day patrol, the other trained and prepared ashore, then relieved its counterpart during refits. As an Atlantic boat, she was tied into the network of fleet ballistic missile support facilities that included homeport infrastructure at Charleston, South Carolina, and forward refit sites such as Holy Loch in Scotland and Rota in Spain.

Operational records for individual patrols in this era remain largely classified, but the pattern of her work is clear from official summaries and crew recollections. Through the late 1960s, she conducted repeated Polaris patrols in the North Atlantic, spending the bulk of each patrol submerged and communicating only through carefully controlled secure channels. Between patrols she would moor alongside a ballistic-missile submarine tender at forward sites, where the tender's crews and her own maintenance teams performed refits, loaded provisions and missiles, and turned the ship over between Blue and Gold crews. Veterans' notes from her crew lists recall time ashore at places associated with Atlantic SSBN operations, including Rota in Spain and coastal locations near Charleston such as Isle of Palms, reinforcing the picture of a boat cycling between a southeastern U.S. support hub and forward refit ports in Europe in line with standard Atlantic-fleet deterrent operations of the period.

A somber episode punctuated this otherwise routine but demanding pattern at the end of the decade. On October 6, 1967, Commissaryman Third Class Russell Arden Schilling, a young sailor from Idaho serving aboard LEWIS AND CLARK, was shot and killed in Norfolk, Virginia. He appears in memorial rolls specifically identified with the boat, with his death recorded as a homicide while assigned to LEWIS AND CLARK. The submarine herself did not suffer a casualty at sea, but the incident illustrates the human dimension of service in this force: even while the ship's strategic patrols remained largely invisible to the public, individual sailors' lives could be abruptly and tragically cut short in port.

By the turn of the 1970s, the United States was transitioning its fleet ballistic missile force from Polaris to the more capable Poseidon C3 missile, which offered greater range and the ability to carry multiple warheads. LEWIS AND CLARK was selected for conversion as part of this modernization. She departed the routine patrol cycle and on April 30, 1971, entered the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Washington, for an extensive overhaul that converted her missile compartment, fire-control systems and associated ship's systems to support Poseidon C3. The conversion, carried out over more than a year on the U.S. West Coast, ended on July 21, 1972, at which point her sixteen missile tubes had been reconfigured for the new weapon system. The refit also provided an opportunity for broader upgrades to sensors and shipboard equipment, ensuring she could remain in front-line service into the 1980s.

With the ship back in operational configuration, attention shifted to proving the Poseidon system at sea. In December 1972, her Gold Crew embarked for a Demonstration and Shakedown Operation. On December 18, 1972, that crew successfully launched a single Poseidon C3 missile, demonstrating the integrated performance of missile, launch platform, crew, and support systems and formally qualifying LEWIS AND CLARK as a Poseidon boat. The launch was conducted from the Atlantic test ranges off Florida in accordance with standard DASO practice and was monitored closely by program evaluation organizations, just as her Polaris firings had been in 1966. With the DASO complete, she rejoined the Atlantic deterrent force as a modernized SSBN.

On April 8, 1973, LEWIS AND CLARK deployed on her first full operational Poseidon deterrent patrol. From that point through the remainder of the 1970s, she settled into a new pattern of extended submerged patrols carrying Poseidon C3 missiles, still using the dual-crew arrangement to maximize time on station. The broader geopolitical context had shifted: the United States and the Soviet Union were entering the era of detente and strategic arms limitation, but both sides maintained large nuclear arsenals, and the U.S. Navy's ballistic missile submarines remained a central element of the sea-based leg of the nuclear triad. Within that posture, LEWIS AND CLARK's patrols contributed to ensuring that several SSBNs were continuously at sea and survivable, able to respond if ever ordered. Crew reminiscences from the mid-1970s recall life aboard during this phase, mentioning Rota as a forward base and leisure time at Isle of Palms during stateside periods, and later refer to Holy Loch in Scotland and the Scottish town of Dunoon, reflecting the boat's integration into the established web of Atlantic SSBN refit and support facilities.

By the late 1970s, LEWIS AND CLARK was a mature unit in an equally mature deterrent system. She operated within an Atlantic SSBN force that relied increasingly on modern support infrastructure at places like Kings Bay, Georgia, which was developed to replace older overseas bases and to provide a consolidated hub for ballistic missile submarine operations. Sailors who served aboard her from 1977 through 1981 recall moves through Kings Bay and road trips to nearby Jacksonville from there, suggesting that as the decade closed, the ship's logistic and crew-support arrangements were evolving alongside broader changes in Atlantic SSBN basing. The patrols themselves remained classified in detail but likely followed the typical pattern of long submerged transits to patrol areas in the North Atlantic, occasional training exercises and weapons system readiness tests, and then return to refit and crew turnover.

The early 1980s brought another set of key milestones in LEWIS AND CLARK's technical life. On June 19, 1981, she fired four Poseidon C3 missiles in a Follow-on Operational Test, a demanding exercise intended to check the long-term reliability of deployed missile systems under conditions resembling an operational launch sequence. Shortly afterward, on July 23, 1981, she entered Newport News Shipbuilding for a Poseidon refueling overhaul. This major shipyard period involved refueling or replacing the reactor core, inspecting and renewing the propulsion plant and running gear, updating electronics and control systems, and overhauling the missile and torpedo systems. Such refueling overhauls were essential to extend an SSBN's service life by another decade or more and were scheduled to mesh with fleet-level plans for introducing newer OHIO-class submarines and for complying with emerging arms control constraints.

After the overhaul, LEWIS AND CLARK again had to demonstrate that her modernized systems and crews were ready for front-line service. On March 19, 1984, her Gold Crew launched a Poseidon missile in a Demonstration and Shakedown Operation, validating the ship's performance after the extensive work at Newport News. On June 22, 1984, she departed for an operational patrol, re-entering the active deterrent rotation in the Atlantic. Over the next few years, she continued to serve as a test platform within the Poseidon force as well as an operational SSBN. On June 13, 1985, she again launched four Poseidon C3 missiles in a Follow-on Operational Test, and on November 4, 1986, she conducted another four-missile FOAT, providing further data on the system's reliability and accuracy as the Poseidon era moved into its final decade. These tests took place against the backdrop of renewed Cold War tension early in the Reagan administration, followed by a gradual thaw leading to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987.

Throughout the mid- and late 1980s, LEWIS AND CLARK continued to perform deterrent patrols while newer OHIO-class SSBNs, carrying Trident missiles, entered service. Publicly available summaries and veteran accounts indicate that the boat's deployments during this period included patrols in the North Atlantic and sometimes in more northerly waters, consistent with the strategic aim of maintaining survivable launch platforms within range of potential targets while complicating Soviet anti-submarine warfare efforts. More detailed accounts describing specific operations or particular regional crises remain sparse in open sources, reflecting both the classified nature of SSBN employment and the fact that these submarines were designed specifically to deter war by their very existence rather than to engage in visible, named operations. What is documented is that LEWIS AND CLARK remained in commission and operational into the early 1990s, even as strategic arms reduction talks and the impending end of the Cold War pointed toward a reduction of the older ballistic missile submarine force.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the signing of arms control agreements such as START I, the United States began drawing down its older Polaris/Poseidon fleet. LEWIS AND CLARK was among the earlier BENJAMIN FRANKLIN-class boats selected for retirement as the strategic deterrent posture was reshaped around fewer, more capable OHIO-class SSBNs. She was deactivated while still in commission on October 1, 1991, a status change that effectively removed her from the operational deterrent force even though she remained a commissioned unit on the Navy's rolls. On June 27, 1992, she was formally decommissioned after more than twenty-six years of service, and on August 1, 1992 her name was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register.

After decommissioning, the submarine was transferred to Bremerton, Washington, to enter the U.S. Navy's Nuclear-Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program. On October 1, 1995, the controlled dismantling of LEWIS AND CLARK began at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, following established procedures for defueling the reactor, removing radioactive components, and cutting the hull into sections so that steel and other materials could be recycled. The process was completed on September 23, 1996, at which point the submarine ceased to exist as a seagoing vessel, though key parts of her structure were deliberately preserved for memorial purposes.

LEWIS AND CLARK's post-service story is closely tied to Charleston, which had supported so many of her patrols. Her sail, fairwater planes, and the top of her rudder were removed before scrapping and transported to Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. There, they became the centerpiece of the Cold War Submarine Memorial, a full-scale sculptural representation of a BENJAMIN FRANKLIN-class SSBN emerging on a homeward course into Charleston Harbor after a seventy-day patrol. The sail, mounted on a black stone base with surrounding plantings shaped to suggest a breaking bow wave and wake, stands as a tangible fragment of the submarine, while interpretive markers commemorate the service of all ballistic-missile submariners and their families during the Cold War. A former Charleston submarine group commander who had counted LEWIS AND CLARK in his formation helped lead the foundation that raised funds for the memorial, linking the physical remains of the submarine to the memories of those who had manned and supported the fleet.

Other portions of the submarine were also preserved. Her periscope was donated to the Door County Maritime Museum in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where it serves as a museum exhibit and a reminder of the technological sophistication of Cold War submarines. Together with the sail and rudder at Patriots Point, it represents the visible legacy of a ship whose operational life was deliberately hidden beneath the ocean’s surface.

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USS LEWIS AND CLARK Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by me in February 6, 2009, and show LEWIS AND CLARK's preserved sail, sail planes and rudder as part of the Cold War Memorial at Patriots Point, Mount Pleasant, SC. Following is the actual text from the Memorial regarding the submarine:

"The focus of the Memorial is a full-size replica of a BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Class Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine, typical of those that were stationed in Charleston throughout the Cold War. The submarine is depicted returning from a 70 day strategic deterrent patrol, headed fair in the Charleston channel on entry course of 299° True. The earth is sculptured and landscaped to represent the smooth water build-up over the bow of the submarine, and a frothy, persistant wake crashing to either side of the ship as it moves through the water, both typical of this type of submarine when underway. The submarine is constructed to accurate scale using segmented wall stone for the hull, and with the actual sail, sail planes and rudder from the decommissioned FBM submarine LEWIS AND CLARK (SSBN 644) mounted appropriately thereon. As is the case with an actual submarine underway, there are no openings in the hull, and it is dangerous to climb on the hull."

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