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USS Philadelphia (SSN 690)

USS PHILADELPHIA was the third LOS ANGELES - class attack submarine and the first ship in her class built by Electric Boat. The submarine was the sixth ship in the Navy named after the city in Pennsylvania where the Continental Congress met during much of the American Revolution.

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS PHILADELPHIA:

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USS PHILADELPHIA History:

USS PHILADELPHIA was a LOS ANGELES-class nuclear-powered attack submarine that spent her entire operational life with the Atlantic Fleet, based at Groton, Connecticut, and moving repeatedly between the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean and, from the early 1990s onward, the waters of the Middle East in support of changing U.S. security priorities from the late Cold War into the post-9/11 era.

The contract for the submarine was awarded to General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division at Groton on January 8, 1971, at a time when the United States was expanding its fleet of fast attack submarines to track Soviet submarines and protect carrier and ballistic-missile groups in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Her keel was laid at Electric Boat on August 12, 1972, her hull took to the water with her launch on October 19, 1974, and she was sponsored by Marian Huntington Scott, the wife of Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, reflecting the ship's link to the city whose name she bore. After trials and fitting-out, USS PHILADELPHIA was commissioned at Naval Submarine Base New London, Groton, on June 25, 1977, at Pier 32N, with Commander Robert B. Osborne in command.

Only a few months into her service life, on September 28, 1977, PHILADELPHIA suffered a minor mooring accident at New London when the stern planes of USS ARCHERFISH (SSN 678), being eased toward State Pier by tugs, struck PHILADELPHIA's planes. Both submarines reported only minor damage and no casualties. PHILADELPHIA was inspected by divers and then towed back to Electric Boat for repairs. This early incident underlined how even routine harbor movements could be hazardous in crowded submarine bases, but it did not delay the boat's integration into Atlantic Fleet operations for long.

In 1979, PHILADELPHIA carried out her first deployment to the Mediterranean, joining the U.S. Sixth Fleet during a period of high tension with the Soviet Union and continuing instability in the Middle East following events such as the Camp David Accords and the Iranian Revolution. From her Groton homeport she moved into a cycle that would characterize much of her career: workup periods and exercises off the U.S. East Coast followed by extended deployments with carrier and task groups in European and Middle Eastern waters.

In June 1980, PHILADELPHIA left Groton on what became a world cruise, her only Western Pacific deployment. The cruise took her across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean toward the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, reflecting the growing importance of that region after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq War. During this deployment, she eventually continued into the Pacific. In December 1980, she made a notable port call to HMAS Stirling at Rockingham, Western Australia, arriving on December 23, 1980, where the crew spent Christmas ashore before departing on December 29. PHILADELPHIA then retraced her route and returned to her homeport at Groton in late January 1981.

Through the early 1980s, PHILADELPHIA alternated between deployments and Atlantic exercises. She deployed again to the Mediterranean in 1982 and undertook a Northern Atlantic deployment in 1983, operating in the cold waters that were central to NATO-Warsaw Pact undersea competition. For her 1983 performance she received a Navy Unit Commendation and a Battle Efficiency "E" ribbon, and the crew was also recognized with the Ney Memorial Award for food service, underlining that she was considered a consistently effective unit in both combat readiness and support functions during this phase of the Cold War.

In the first half of 1984, PHILADELPHIA continued operating under Submarine Force Atlantic in the western Atlantic, but the year was shaped above all by preparations for her first major yard period. By late June 1984, she left Submarine Base New London and headed north for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. A contemporary photograph and later summaries note that the image was taken in late June while the submarine was en route from New London, Connecticut, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, specifically to begin her initial full overhaul.

At Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, PHILADELPHIA commenced a regular overhaul in June 1984, her first major shipyard availability since commissioning. This regular overhaul, described in later technical and historical summaries, marked the classic mid-life deep maintenance period for an early LOS ANGELES-class boat: the hull and machinery were opened up for extended inspection and repair, combat and sonar systems were updated in line with then-current fleet standards, and the ship's overall material condition was reset for another long stretch of deployments. The work was done at a time when the U.S. Navy was executing the 600-ship strategy and keeping a very high tempo of Atlantic and Mediterranean submarine patrols, so taking a front-line attack submarine out of the line for an extended shipyard period represented a deliberate investment in long-term readiness.

PHILADELPHIA remained in overhaul through all of 1984 and most of 1985. The Naval History and Heritage Command's command history for the boat records that she finished this regular overhaul in December 1985, meaning she spent roughly a year and a half pier-side at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. By the end of that period, the submarine had been re-certified and brought back to full operational status, with her crew building up proficiency again as machinery was reassembled and tested.

With the yard period complete, PHILADELPHIA transitioned back to operational life in early 1986. She returned to New London, rejoined her squadron and entered the familiar rhythm of post-overhaul trials and training, although the detailed sequence of individual shakedown operations is not publicly documented in the surviving summaries. During the year, she prepared for and then executed a deployment to the Mediterranean Sea, part of the long-standing pattern of Sixth Fleet submarine operations in support of U.S. and NATO interests in that theater. Publicly available deployment lists note a Mediterranean deployment in 1986, and later biographical notes on crew members highlight that they were aboard for a 1986-1987 Mediterranean deployment, indicating that the cruise began in the latter part of 1986 and carried over into the winter of 1987.

This Mediterranean cruise took place against the backdrop of late-Cold War tensions in the region, including continuing U.S. naval presence operations intended to monitor Soviet activity and to assure NATO allies in the central and eastern Mediterranean. While the open sources available today do not list specific ports and exact in-port dates for PHILADELPHIA's 1986-1987 deployment, the general outlines are clear: she operated as part of the U.S. Sixth Fleet submarine contingent, conducting anti-submarine warfare training, surveillance, and presence missions typical for a LOS ANGELES-class boat in the theater. The ship's performance during this period contributed to a Meritorious Unit Commendation awarded in 1987, as well as to the award of the "A" for anti-submarine warfare excellence, reflecting the Navy's assessment of her operational effectiveness in that time frame.

Command of PHILADELPHIA also transitioned during this period. A biographical sketch from a later decommissioning booklet records that CDR John James Paulson who had previously served on the tender USS L. Y. SPEAR (AS 36) subsequently commanded USS PHILADELPHIA from September 1986 to May 1989. This tenure aligns with the boat's post-overhaul return to service, the 1986-1987 Mediterranean deployment and the subsequent Atlantic operations.

After returning from the Mediterranean, PHILADELPHIA spent the remainder of 1987 in the Atlantic, alternating between local operations from New London and at-sea periods that continued to emphasize anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and adjacent waters. The 1986-1988 combined command history notes that an INSURV inspection in June examined the material readiness of the submarine, a demanding, independent assessment of a warship's overall condition. Successfully passing an INSURV so soon after overhaul and deployment underscored that the yard work at Portsmouth and the crew's efforts to restore the boat to front-line condition had been effective.

In 1988, PHILADELPHIA reached another technological milestone. According to later summaries of her career, she became the first submarine to receive TLAM-D (Tomahawk Land-Attack Missile, conventional submunitions variant) capability in 1988. This involved modifications to her combat system and fire-control arrangements so that she could launch the then-new Tomahawk variant, reflecting the Navy's emphasis on using attack submarines not only for traditional anti-submarine roles but also for long-range land-attack strike. After receiving this upgrade, the boat continued operations in the Atlantic, including further anti-submarine warfare training that led to a repeat award of the "A" for ASW in 1988. These developments took place while broader East-West tensions were beginning to ease under the policies of glasnost and perestroika, but the U.S. Navy still maintained a high tempo of undersea operations to monitor Soviet naval activity.

The year 1989 saw PHILADELPHIA shift her focus from the Mediterranean back to the Eastern Atlantic. Technical and historical summaries describe how, in 1989, USS PHILADELPHIA completed a four-month deployment in the Eastern Atlantic. During this deployment, she participated in NATO exercises and conducted a tour of various British and French ports, underscoring her role not only as a front-line attack submarine but also as a platform for alliance cooperation and visibility. A key feature of the cruise was that she completed the first scheduled SSN upkeep in Holy Loch, Scotland, using the facilities associated with the U.S. submarine support infrastructure there. That upkeep made PHILADELPHIA something of a pathfinder for planned maintenance of LOS ANGELES-class boats at the Holy Loch forward support site, historically associated with ballistic-missile submarines of Submarine Squadron 14.

The deployment's success is reflected in the record of awards: the submarine received another Meritorious Unit Commendation in 1989, and the crew again earned the ASW "A", showing that her performance in Eastern Atlantic operations was regarded as consistently strong.

In connection with Iraq's invasion in Kuwait on August 2, 1990, USS PHILADELPHIA deployed from Groton to the Mediterranean, where she was officially listed as being on station for special operations ("SPEC OPS - MEDIT") from September 21, 1990, through March 15, 1991, in support first of Operation Desert Shield and, from January 17, 1991, of Operation Desert Storm. Throughout this period, she remained under Sixth Fleet control in the Mediterranean, providing a continuous submerged presence and carrying out tasking appropriate for a front-line attack submarine during wartime, while the detailed nature of her missions remained largely classified in open sources, before concluding her on-station commitment in mid-March 1991 and returning to her homeport at Groton.

In 1992, PHILADELPHIA again deployed to the North Atlantic, spending sixty-five days at sea in that region before arriving in a Dutch port at the end of the patrol, underscoring the continued importance of northern waters even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Later that year, on September 8, 1992, she left Groton bound for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard at Kittery, Maine, to begin a refueling overhaul. This engineering refit, completed in 1994, was particularly significant because PHILADELPHIA was the first LOS ANGELES-class submarine to complete a full refueling overhaul, extending her service life and establishing the pattern for the class's mid-life reactor refuelings.

After her extended shipyard period at Portsmouth, PHILADELPHIA returned to Groton and resumed operations in the mid-1990s. She deployed to the North Atlantic in 1996 and 1997 and conducted further operations in northern waters in 1999, reflecting NATO interest in undersea surveillance and exercises in the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap and adjacent areas. During these years, she accumulated a series of readiness awards, including Battle Efficiency "E" ribbons in 1996, 1997 and 1998, and departmental awards such as the "A" for antisubmarine warfare and anchor-related retention awards, suggesting consistently strong inspection and exercise results.

From June 12 to October 6, 1998, PHILADELPHIA underwent a conversion at Groton to carry a Dry Deck Shelter, a detachable platform aft of the sail that allows the deployment of Special Operations Forces and swimmer delivery vehicles. At the same time, she was outfitted to serve as a mother ship for a Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle. These modifications, implemented at the end of the 1990s, positioned PHILADELPHIA for roles that combined intelligence collection, special operations support and potential submarine rescue duties, aligning her capabilities with the increasing focus on littoral and special operations missions.

By the end of the decade, PHILADELPHIA returned once more to the Mediterranean in 1999 and continued to deploy to both the North Atlantic and southern theaters, as reflected in a Meritorious Unit Commendation, additional communications and tactical awards, and a further Battle Efficiency "E" that year. Her homeport remained Groton throughout this period, with the boat assigned to a Groton-based submarine squadron under Commander, Submarine Group Two.

In 2001, PHILADELPHIA again deployed to the Mediterranean, this time against the backdrop of the NATO intervention in the Balkans and, later in the year, the beginning of the global war on terror after the attacks of September 11. She earned a Battle Efficiency "E" and engineering and supply excellence awards in 2001, indicating that the ship was assessed as one of the better-performing attack submarines in the Atlantic Fleet at the time.

A particularly well-documented deployment began on June 18, 2003, when PHILADELPHIA left Naval Submarine Base New London in support of ongoing operations associated with the global war on terrorism. She operated for roughly seven months across the U.S. Fifth and Sixth Fleet areas of responsibility, which meant time both in the Mediterranean and in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea regions, at a period when naval forces were conducting presence missions, intelligence gathering and Tomahawk strike readiness in connection with operations in Afghanistan and the early stages of the Iraq War. During this deployment, on December 4, 2003, at 5:39 p.m. near the equator in warm equatorial waters, PHILADELPHIA executed her 1,000th dive, becoming the first LOS ANGELES-class submarine - and the fourth nuclear-powered submarine overall - to reach that milestone. She returned to Groton on January 18, 2004, and that period of operations is associated with a Meritorious Unit Commendation and a Battle Efficiency "E" for 2003 as well as further departmental awards.

PHILADELPHIA deployed again to the Mediterranean and Central Command theaters in 2005. During that deployment, she moored outboard the submarine tender USS EMORY S. LAND (AS 39) in La Maddalena, Italy, beginning on June 29, 2005, for a five-day Fleet Maintenance Availability, during which EMORY S. LAND provided alongside repair and logistics support before PHILADELPHIA returned to sea. The deployment continued into the northern Persian Gulf, where she was assigned to Maritime Security Operations intended to monitor shipping and deter illicit movements of people and weapons. In the early hours of September 5, 2005, while transiting on the surface toward Bahrain for a scheduled port visit, PHILADELPHIA collided with the Turkish-flagged cargo ship M/V YASO AYSEN about thirty nautical miles northeast of Bahrain. The collision occurred at approximately 2:00 a.m. local time. Subsequent personal and official accounts describe the submarine rolling sharply as the much larger merchant ship's hull came into contact with the submarine, with PHILADELPHIA's fairwater planes tearing a noticeable gash in the merchant ship's side before the vessels separated. Navy statements emphasized that there were no injuries on either vessel and that PHILADELPHIA's propulsion plant was unaffected, allowing her to continue to Bahrain under her own power for inspection, while U.S. Coast Guard personnel examined YASO AYSEN and determined that she remained seaworthy despite damage above the waterline.

PHILADELPHIA's commanding officer, Commander Steven M. Oxholm, was subsequently relieved of command following the investigation, in line with standard Navy accountability practice after such incidents. The deployment nonetheless continued, and in October 2005, PHILADELPHIA made a port visit to Souda Bay, Crete, where photographs show her alongside with the crew manning the rails, illustrating a routine liberty stop amid operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. For her overall 2005 activities she was credited with the Navy Expeditionary Medal and additional departmental awards.

In 2006, PHILADELPHIA underwent what was described as the first Pre-Inactivation Restricted Availability (PIRA) for a LOS ANGELES-class submarine at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, a shipyard period intended to prepare a submarine for eventual decommissioning while keeping her available for further service. During this time, she completed in-port assessments, including an internal basic submarining assessment and an engineering readiness review conducted by her parent squadron, and she was again recognized with engineering and supply excellence awards that year.

After her PIRA, PHILADELPHIA remained based at Groton but continued to deploy. In early 2007, she is documented alongside at Groton preparing for another deployment, and later that year she operated in the Fifth Fleet area of responsibility, with photographs showing the submarine in Manama, Bahrain, in October 2007 and at sea in the wider Fifth Fleet region in December 2007. This deployment, which again combined Mediterranean and Central Command operations in support of maritime security and broader counter-terrorism objectives, is associated with another Battle Efficiency "E" and additional communications and medical readiness awards, confirming that PHILADELPHIA continued to be evaluated as an effective frontline asset even late in her career.

Her final years in commission saw at least one more deployment to the Mediterranean in 2009, again including operations under Central Command according to open summaries of her movements. When not deployed, she was frequently photographed alongside at Groton in 2008, 2009 and early 2010, passing local landmarks such as the U.S. Coast Guard barque EAGLE in the Thames River, a reminder of her continued daily presence in the New London submarine community.

The Navy publicly announced on July 20, 2009, that PHILADELPHIA would be inactivated in June 2010, part of a broader reduction and modernization of the attack submarine force. A formal decommissioning ceremony was held at Groton on June 25, 2010, exactly thirty-three years after her commissioning. Images from that day show the commanding officer saluting on the brow with the submarine's hull number visible behind him. Shortly afterward, in July 2010, PHILADELPHIA made a final journey under tow to Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Virginia, for inactivation and preparation for recycling. Naval nuclear program records list June 30, 2011, as the end date for her nuclear service life, marking the formal completion of her operational status within the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.

Since September 1, 2019, she had been in the process of recycling under the nuclear-powered ship and submarine recycling program at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. This multi-year procedure that involved defueling, dismantling and safe disposal of reactor components while salvaging usable materials marked the end of the submarine's existance.

Over her thirty-plus years in service, USS PHILADELPHIA accumulated a substantial record of awards that trace the rhythm of her deployments: a Navy Unit Commendation in 1983, multiple Meritorious Unit Commendations across 1987, 1989, 1991, 1999, 2003 and 2004, and Battle Efficiency "E" ribbons in 1983, 1990, the mid- and late 1990s, 2001, 2003 and 2007, alongside numerous specialized departmental awards in areas such as antisubmarine warfare, communications, damage control, engineering, logistics and medical readiness.

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USS PHILADELPHIA Patch Gallery:

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USS PHILADELPHIA Image Gallery:

The photo below was taken by Michael Jenning and shows the PHILADELPHIA laid up at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash., on October 13, 2017.

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