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USS Baton Rouge (SSN 689)

USS BATON ROUGE was the second LOS ANGELES-class Attack Submarine and the first ship in the Navy named after the city of Baton Rouge, La.

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents of USS BATON ROUGE:

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History of USS BATON ROUGE:

USS BATON ROUGE was a Flight I LOS ANGELES-class nuclear-powered attack submarine of the United States Navy, built at Newport News Shipbuilding for Cold War operations in the Atlantic and beyond. She was one of the earliest units of her class and, after less than eighteen years in commission, became the first LOS ANGELES-class boat to be decommissioned, her career effectively cut short by damage from a collision with a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea in 1992 and by the broader post-Cold War fleet drawdown.

The contract to build USS BATON ROUGE was awarded on January 8, 1971, to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Newport News, Virginia, as part of the first group of LOS ANGELES-class attack submarines intended to replace the earlier STURGEON-class boats. Her keel was laid down at Newport News on November 18, 1972. She was launched on April 26, 1975, with Mrs. F. Edward Hebert, wife of a long-serving member of the House Armed Services Committee, serving as sponsor. Following fitting-out and initial dockside testing, the submarine conducted builder's and acceptance sea trials in the Atlantic off the U.S. East Coast. She was commissioned at Newport News on June 25, 1977, with Commander Thomas C. Maloney in command, and was assigned to Submarine Squadron 1 at Norfolk, Virginia, although early in her career she operated administratively and operationally with later-designated Submarine Squadron 8 at the same homeport.

Immediately after commissioning, USS BATON ROUGE shifted her focus to shakedown training out of New London, Connecticut, the traditional center for U.S. Navy submarine training on the East Coast. She left Hampton Roads on July 5, 1977, spent most of July conducting drills in the waters off New England, and returned to Norfolk on July 29. For roughly the next four weeks she remained in Norfolk for post-shakedown upkeep, correcting deficiencies discovered during trials and early at-sea operations and allowing the crew to consolidate what they had learned.

In late August and the first week of September 1977, BATON ROUGE took part in the submarine antisubmarine warfare exercise SUBASWEX-77, reflecting her primary mission as an attack submarine intended to track and, if necessary, engage Soviet submarines. She returned to Norfolk on September 9, then three days later, on September 12, headed south to warmer waters for a series of acoustic and weapons trials. In Exuma Sound in the Bahamas she carried out acoustic trials designed to characterize her own noise signature and to test sonar performance under carefully measured conditions. From Port Everglades, Florida, she conducted weapons tests to qualify her torpedo and fire-control systems. She returned to Norfolk on October 7 and remained there until early November, when she again put to sea to repeat and refine test programs from Port Everglades. BATON ROUGE was back in Norfolk on November 23 but sailed again on November 29 for an extended period at sea, closing out her initial shakedown and test cycle.

This extended assignment ended at Norfolk on January 5, 1978. BATON ROUGE then moored alongside the submarine tender USS L. Y. SPEAR (AS 36) for upkeep until January 24, effectively using the tender as a forward maintenance base to complete work that did not require a full shipyard availability. After this tender-supported period, she returned to Port Everglades for more tests and weapons firings before once more heading back to Norfolk in early February. On February 20, 1978, she entered Newport News Shipbuilding for her formal post-shakedown overhaul, a repair and modification period which lasted a little more than six months. During this time the builders corrected construction-related issues and incorporated early post-commissioning improvements to equipment and systems. She returned to sea for trials on August 28, 1978, demonstrating her readiness to begin regular fleet service.

With post-shakedown work complete, BATON ROUGE prepared for her first overseas deployment. In September 1978, she again operated from New London for pre-deployment training, working up with other Atlantic Fleet units and practicing the full range of submarine missions. Returning to Norfolk in early October, she completed final preparations for deployment with the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. On October 19, 1978, she left Norfolk and began her first extended operational cruise. Her first Mediterranean port of call was La Maddalena, Sardinia, where she arrived on November 1, 1978. La Maddalena, a key U.S. submarine support site, provided logistics, maintenance and crew rest, and from there BATON ROUGE also visited La Spezia in Italy and took part in a series of antisubmarine warfare exercises with U.S. and NATO surface forces and submarines during the winter of 1978-1979. These operations took place amid ongoing Cold War naval competition with the Soviet Navy, whose own submarines operated in the Mediterranean from bases in the Black Sea and the Northern Fleet.

BATON ROUGE completed this first Mediterranean deployment and returned to Norfolk in March 1979. After a post-deployment stand-down period, during which the crew took leave and the boat underwent routine maintenance, she resumed normal operations out of her home port in the spring of 1979. Over the remainder of that year, she took part in two major antisubmarine exercises and visited Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, reflecting the pattern of alternating training, exercises, and short deployments typical of Atlantic Fleet attack submarines. In July 1979, she was formally reassigned to Submarine Squadron 8 but continued to operate from Norfolk.

In September and October 1979, BATON ROUGE crossed the Atlantic again for the large NATO maritime exercise "Ocean Safari". During this exercise she operated with multinational forces in the North Atlantic, training to respond to a major Warsaw Pact-NATO confrontation at sea. She made a port call at Rotterdam in the Netherlands before returning to Norfolk later in October 1979. The remainder of the year was spent in a restricted availability, likely at a naval shipyard or repair facility, where maintenance and minor upgrades were carried out to prepare the relatively new boat for sustained operations in the new decade.

In 1980, USS BATON ROUGE undertook what became one of the defining deployments of her career, a six-month, round-the-world cruise that took her into the Indian Ocean at a time of heightened U.S. presence there following the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. According to contemporary U.S. Naval Institute chronologies, she returned to Norfolk on August 24, 1980, after a global deployment described as a six-month circumnavigation operating in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. During this cruise she crossed the International Date Line and later transited the Panama Canal, illustrating the global reach now expected of attack submarines. Open sources characterize the deployment as one for which BATON ROUGE received a Navy Unit Commendation on her return, indicating that her performance during these long operations was judged to have been of particularly high merit.

The 1980 Indian Ocean deployment placed BATON ROUGE in a region that had suddenly become a major focus of U.S. strategy. The United States had established the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force and was maintaining increased naval forces in the area to signal support for allies and to monitor Soviet activity around the Arabian Sea and approaches to the Persian Gulf. Although the specific details of her missions remain classified, an attack submarine on such a deployment would have been responsible for long-endurance patrols, often in company with carrier battle groups and other surface forces, as well as intelligence-gathering and the tracking of Soviet submarines moving into or through the region.

In January of 1981, she was the SUBLANT nominee for the Battenburg Cup as the best Atlantic Fleet submarine. BATON ROUGE again deployed under the control of CINCPACFLT in the fall of 1981. Upon completion of the deployment, she was awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation.

Throughout the early 1980s, BATON ROUGE also made use of submarine tenders for support. Command reports from the submarine tender USS EMORY S. LAND (AS 39) show that, in 1980, the tender supported several Submarine Squadron 8 units, including USS BATON ROUGE, USS MEMPHIS (SSN 691) and USS CINCINNATI (SSN 693), providing maintenance and logistical services at Norfolk and during local operations. This tender support reduced the need for frequent shipyard availabilities and allowed the submarine to maximize her time at sea.

In the mid-1980s, USS BATON ROUGE underwent a major overhaul at Norfolk Naval Shipyard that lasted about eighteen months and concluded in the spring of 1986. During this yard period, she received significant modernization of her combat systems, including installation of the AN/BQQ-5C sonar suite, the CCS Mk-1 digital fire-control system, and the ESGN navigation system. These upgrades improved her ability to detect and track increasingly quiet Soviet submarines and to employ advanced heavyweight torpedoes and cruise missiles with greater accuracy. The overhaul also involved the usual structural inspections, maintenance of her S6G nuclear reactor and associated propulsion systems, and habitability improvements, preparing the now-midlife submarine for continued front-line service.

Her first post-overhaul deployment was her third deployment, beginning in November 1986. Operating again under Sixth Fleet control, BATON ROUGE rejoined the familiar pattern of antisubmarine exercises, surveillance patrols, and port visits in the central and western Mediterranean, during a period that saw continued U.S. and NATO attention to Libyan activities, ongoing tensions in the Middle East, and routine shadowing of Soviet surface and submarine units transiting the region. Although many operational details remain unpublished, photographic evidence shows the submarine operating near La Maddalena as late as November 1984, indicating that she had maintained a close association with that submarine support complex even before her major mid-1980s overhaul.

Following her Mediterranean deployment, BATON ROUGE shifted focus to the North Atlantic. In August 1988, she completed a deployment to the North Atlantic for which the boat was awarded a second Meritorious Unit Commendation, specifically recognizing her performance during operations in that theater. While the public record does not list the exact patrol areas or exercises involved, the period coincided with intensive NATO antisubmarine activity along the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap and the broader North Atlantic approaches, aimed at monitoring and, in wartime, containing Soviet Northern Fleet submarines attempting to reach the open ocean. For an attack submarine like BATON ROUGE, such a deployment would have emphasized covert tracking, data collection on opposing units, and participation in complex ASW exercises with allied surface ships and maritime patrol aircraft.

In January 1990, BATON ROUGE completed her fourth deployment to the Mediterranean, again operating with the Sixth Fleet. This deployment took place on the eve of the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis, at a time when U.S. naval forces in the Mediterranean were keeping watch on both traditional Soviet naval activity and emerging security issues in the Middle East. While detailed port calls are not recorded in open sources, the pattern of previous deployments suggests a mix of exercises, patrols, and visits to long-standing ports such as La Maddalena and other NATO facilities.

Even as the Cold War was drawing to a close, BATON ROUGE required ongoing maintenance to remain operational. A 1991 command operations report from USS EMORY S. LAND notes that the tender's dive locker, repair electricians and riggers successfully replaced the secondary propulsion motor on USS BATON ROUGE without the need to place the submarine in dry dock, an example of the kind of complex maintenance that could be undertaken alongside a tender. This work ensured that BATON ROUGE remained fully maneuverable and ready for continued operations at a time when U.S. submarines were still monitoring Russian naval forces despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

On February 11, 1992, USS BATON ROUGE was involved in the incident that would ultimately define the end of her career. At approximately 20:16 local time, while operating near Kildin Island off the Kola Peninsula, north of Murmansk and close to the main bases of the Russian Northern Fleet, BATON ROUGE collided underwater with the Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine K-276 KOSTROMA (at that time still named K-276 CRAB), a Project 945 SIERRA-class boat. The collision occurred slightly more than 12 nautical miles from the Russian coast, in an area the United States regarded as international waters but which Russian authorities claimed as lying within their territorial sea based on their system of straight baselines.

Contemporary analyses and later studies describe BATON ROUGE as having been engaged in a covert intelligence-gathering mission, often associated with the broader "Operation Holy Stone" effort to monitor Russian naval communications and submarine movements near their bases. Accounts differ on the exact tactical situation: some sources state that BATON ROUGE was trailing KOSTROMA, while others argue that neither submarine had firmly detected the other before they made contact. The collision reportedly occurred when KOSTROMA, whose sail and superstructure were reinforced for operations under Arctic ice, struck the forward part of BATON ROUGE's hull. Although initial U.S. statements downplayed the damage, it was later acknowledged that BATON ROUGE suffered dents, scrapes, and two significant cuts in her outer hull, which raised concerns about the integrity of her single-hull pressure structure.

Both submarines were able to return to port under their own power. Russian sources report that KOSTROMA was repaired and returned to service by June 29, 1992, and photographs of her sail later showed a painted "1" within a star, echoing Soviet wartime practice of marking claimed victories. For the United States, however, the damage to BATON ROUGE came at a moment when the Navy was already planning to reduce the size of its nuclear submarine force in light of shrinking budgets and the perceived reduction in immediate threat following the end of the Cold War. Open-source assessments suggest that the combination of required hull repairs and an approaching, costly nuclear refueling made continued operation of BATON ROUGE economically unattractive compared with retiring one of the earliest LOS ANGELES-class boats.

After the collision, USS BATON ROUGE was withdrawn from front-line operations. She was transferred to Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California for inactivation and decommissioning preparations. According to open sources summarizing naval records, she was placed in commission in reserve on November 1, 1993, marking her formal deactivation as an operational unit while she remained in the fleet list for administrative purposes. During this deactivation period, she lay pierside at Mare Island with major systems shut down or removed, and her crew was reduced to a caretaker complement. On January 13, 1995, USS BATON ROUGE was decommissioned and simultaneously stricken from the Naval Vessel Register, becoming the first LOS ANGELES-class submarine to leave service, even as other units of the class remained in front-line duty and some would eventually serve more than thirty years.

After decommissioning, the ex-BATON ROUGE was towed to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, to enter the U.S. Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship-Submarine Recycling Program, the controlled dismantling process for nuclear-powered vessels. There, her nuclear fuel was removed, her reactor compartment prepared for long-term storage, and the remainder of the hull cut up for recycling. The recycling process was completed on September 30, 1997, at which point the physical remains of the submarine ceased to exist as a commissioned or intact vessel.

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