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USS Atlanta (SSN 712)

USS ATLANTA was the 25^th LOS ANGELES - class fast attack submarine and the fifth naval vessel to carry the name. During her career she completed six deployments to the Mediterranean Sea and three deployments to the western Atlantic. USS ATLANTA was the first submarine certified to employ the MK-48 torpedo and both Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles. She was also the first nuclear-powered submarine assigned to directly support an amphibious ready group.

Decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on December 16, 1999, ATLANTA remained berthed at Norfolk Naval Shipyard for several years, awaiting a slot in the Navy's Ship-Submarine Recycling Program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. She entered the program on October 1, 2013, and was subsequently scrapped.

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS ATLANTA:

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USS ATLANTA History:

The attack submarine USS ATLANTA emerged from the last decade of the Cold War naval build-up as one of the early Flight I LOS ANGELES-class boats, ordered on August 1, 1975 from Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia at a time when the United States was expanding its nuclear-powered attack submarine force to track and, if required, counter the growing Soviet undersea fleet. Her keel was laid at Newport News on August 17, 1978, and the hull took shape over the next two years, culminating in her launch on August 16, 1980. The boat was sponsored by Colleen Nunn, wife of senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, cementing the connection to her namesake city of Atlanta and adopting the motto "Resurgens", Latin for "rise again".

Following fitting-out and reactor testing, ATLANTA was commissioned on March 6, 1982, with commander Robin J. White in command, joining the Atlantic Fleet at a moment when Soviet submarine patrols in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean were a central focus of U.S. naval planning. After commissioning, she proceeded to sea for shakedown operations along the New England coast, working up her crew and testing combat systems, propulsion, and navigation in the cold North Atlantic waters. Those initial trials were followed by a formal post-shakedown availability: on May 15, 1982 she returned to the Newport News yard for about five months of repairs, corrections, and small modifications based on her early sea experience, a standard step for a new nuclear submarine.

Late in October 1982, ATLANTA left the shipyard and began regular operations from her homeport at Norfolk, Virginia, joining Submarine Squadron 8 and the pattern of local training and short underway periods typical of a newly commissioned attack boat. She spent the remainder of 1982 and the first half of 1983 largely in the western Atlantic operating areas, exercising with surface ships and aircraft and refining the tactics of the then-new LOS ANGELES-class, which combined high speed, quieting, and advanced sensors with the latest Mark 48 heavyweight torpedoes.

On June 20, 1983, ATLANTA began her first overseas deployment, a five-month cruise that brought her into the heart of NATO's Cold War maritime theater. Sailing north from Norfolk, she operated in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea in support of allied antisubmarine warfare training and surveillance of Soviet naval movements, and over the course of the deployment visited ports in Scotland, England, and Norway, giving the crew liberty opportunities in key NATO partner nations while demonstrating U.S. undersea presence in northern waters close to the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap. She completed this initial deployment by returning to Norfolk on November 23, 1983.

In January 1984, ATLANTA shifted temporarily to warmer seas, making a cruise to the West Indies as a "school ship" for prospective commanding officers. On that voyage, she embarked officers completing the demanding Prospective Commanding Officer (PCO) course and provided them with at-sea experience handling a front-line nuclear submarine under supervised conditions in Caribbean waters. After the West Indies period, she resumed routine operations out of Norfolk through the spring and summer, participating in local and fleet exercises as the U.S. Navy continued to emphasize integrated carrier battle group and submarine tactics against potential Soviet forces.

In September 1984, ATLANTA took part in the fleet readiness exercise READEX 2-84, a large multi-ship event designed to certify carrier and amphibious groups before overseas deployments. During this phase, she operated as part of a broader task group, practicing coordinated antisubmarine warfare, strike support, and screening duties in the western Atlantic before returning once again to Norfolk for post-exercise upkeep and local training.

The beginning of 1985 found ATLANTA in port at the Norfolk Naval Base, undergoing a restricted availability that allowed for maintenance, minor upgrades, and corrective work on machinery and combat systems after her first deployment cycles. When she returned to sea in February, she headed south to the Bahamas for torpedo exercises, conducting live-fire Mark 48 shots in the instrumented ranges there, and then shifted to the waters near Port Everglades, Florida for mine warfare drills, reflecting the broader role of attack submarines in both offensive and defensive mining operations. March 1985 brought a weapons technical proficiency inspection, a formal evaluation of the crew's ability to handle weapons safely and effectively, and in April ATLANTA participated in the composite training exercise COMPTUEX 2-85, integrating with surface ships and aircraft in a full-spectrum war-at-sea scenario. Late that summer, she returned to sea for roughly two months of further operations, likely combining independent submarine training with participation in larger fleet events, before returning to her homeport in the autumn to resume local operating area duties along the U.S. East Coast.

In January 1986, the submarine again turned to preparations for a major overseas assignment. Through the first month of the year, she completed inspections, loading, and pre-deployment training, and in February she sailed eastward once more, this time toward the Mediterranean via the Strait of Gibraltar, at a moment when U.S. Sixth Fleet presence in that sea was focused on monitoring Soviet units and managing tensions in the Middle East and North Africa.

On April 29, 1986, while transiting the Strait of Gibraltar, ATLANTA ran aground with sufficient force to damage her bow-mounted sonar dome and puncture a forward ballast tank. Contemporary reporting and later summaries emphasize that there were no injuries and no release of radioactivity from the reactor. The boat was able to proceed to the port of Gibraltar under her own power. After about a week alongside, she sailed across the Atlantic, again on her own propulsion, and returned to Norfolk, where she entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard at Portsmouth, Virginia, for repairs to the bow structure and sonar gear.

Once that yard period was complete, she returned to sea and, in the early summer of 1986, operated for a time in the West Indies, regaining proficiency and validating repaired systems in the warm-water environments of the Caribbean. Later that summer, and into early autumn, in August and September 1986, ATLANTA participated in an eight-week NATO exercise that included visits to at least one Canadian and one Norwegian port, underscoring her role in alliance antisubmarine warfare training from the North Atlantic approaches down into more southerly waters. After the NATO phase she returned to Norfolk in October and again settled into local operations along the eastern seaboard for the remainder of the year.

By the beginning of 1987, ATLANTA was once more in Norfolk preparing for overseas movement. Early that year, she was involved in coordinated operations with other Atlantic Fleet submarines: the history of sister ship USS HYMAN G. RICKOVER (SSN 709) notes that on January 5, 1987, RICKOVER got underway to support operations with attack submarines ATLANTA and USS JACKSONVILLE (SSN 699), indicating multi-submarine training in the western Atlantic focused on tactics, readiness inspections, and operational reactor safeguards examinations.

On March 12, 1987, the submarine tender USS EMORY S. LAND (AS 39) anchored off Annapolis, Maryland, to support midshipmen tours of ATLANTA, bringing U.S. Naval Academy students aboard the submarine to familiarize them with nuclear attack boat operations and life at sea. After these activities, she is recorded as continuing her preparation for further deployments from Norfolk, although open sources offer few specifics on the exact dates and ports of call for her late-1980s cruises.

Through this period, the submarine's technological role was evolving. She had been selected as the first Atlantic Fleet submarine to be certified to employ the Mark 48 torpedo and both Harpoon and Tomahawk cruise missiles, and later program accounts describe how naval planners chose ATLANTA as the first LOS ANGELES-class platform to receive dedicated Tomahawk capability.

These upgrades, implemented as part of the broader introduction of Tomahawk into the fleet during the mid- to late-1980s, aligned the boat with a strategic shift in which attack submarines were expected not only to hunt other submarines but also to deliver precision strikes against land targets deep inland.

As the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, ATLANTA's deployments transitioned from strictly bipolar great-power confrontation toward regional crisis response and presence missions, particularly in the Mediterranean Sea. Official summaries later noted that over her career she completed six deployments to the Mediterranean and three deployments to the western Atlantic, an indication of repeated participation in Sixth Fleet and Atlantic battle force operations even if many of the individual cruise dates remain classified or unpublished.

In the early 1990s, secondary accounts of LOS ANGELES-class operations describe ATLANTA heading to the Mediterranean and operating alongside the aircraft carrier USS FORRESTAL (CV 59), where her antisubmarine performance in support of the carrier battle group was recognized with a "Hook 'Em" award from Sixth Fleet, reflecting excellence in undersea warfare against exercise targets and potential adversary submarines.

During this same era, she demonstrated the new Tomahawk capability in live-fire events. A U.S. Naval Institute review of the Navy's 1991 activities records that in a Mediterranean exercise, ATLANTA fired a live Tomahawk cruise missile against a target hulk, using inputs from an airborne early warning and control aircraft as the primary targeting source, an early example of networked targeting linking submarines with off-board sensors.

The geopolitical context at the time included Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf, and while ATLANTA operated primarily in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, the emphasis on long-range land-attack strike and carrier battle group integration reflected lessons being absorbed from those conflicts.

In the years immediately after the Cold War, ATLANTA remained based at Norfolk and cycled through maintenance, training, and deployment in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Summaries indicate that she underwent an upgrade in 1992, likely incorporating acoustic quieting improvements and combat system modernizations common to her class, and that she operated in the Atlantic through 1993 and 1994, where her performance contributed to formal recognition by Submarine Squadron 8 in the form of a Meritorious Unit Commendation. Although detailed port lists are not publicly available, this period would have encompassed NATO exercises, surveillance patrols, and participation in carrier battle group workups in the western Atlantic and Norwegian Sea as the U.S. Navy adapted its undersea focus to a world with fewer Soviet submarines but growing regional contingencies.

By the mid-1990s, ATLANTA was being used as a platform to explore new operational concepts. An article in the Naval Submarine League's journal later noted that in early December 1995 the boat began testing a new concept in war patrolling, suggesting experimental approaches to how attack submarines were tasked and how they integrated surveillance, strike, and antisubmarine roles on deployment, although the specifics of the concept and the patrol areas remain largely unpublicized.

In 1996, she was employed again for Prospective Commanding Officer training, with at least one invited observer accompanying several days of submarine-on-submarine exercises during a PCO deployment in ATLANTA, further emphasizing her value as a mature but still modern training and tactics development platform for the Atlantic Fleet.

Toward the end of the decade, ATLANTA's Tomahawk role came back into focus. A technical overview of the LOS ANGELES-class recorded that in 1998, two submarines conducted unusual Tomahawk exercise launches, one of them ATLANTA, which executed a dual launch comprising both a conventional land-attack TLAM-C and a nuclear-capable TLAM-N in close sequence as part of a carefully controlled test of mixed-load firing doctrine.

During the same year, Marine Corps awards documentation shows that ATLANTA received a Meritorious Unit Commendation for operations between June 10 and December 10, 1998, as a unit of Battle Force Sixth Fleet, tying her to extended Sixth Fleet operations in the Mediterranean theater during a period marked by continuing enforcement of sanctions on Iraq and growing tensions in the Balkans.

Command reports from other ships help illuminate the context of that deployment. The 1998 history of the guided missile destroyer USS MITSCHER (DDG 57), for example, describes operations in the Mediterranean with amphibious transport dock USS AUSTIN (LPD 4), dock landing ship USS TORTUGA (LSD 46), ATLANTA, and fellow submarine USS NARWHAL (SSN 671), with MITSCHER providing protective screening for the amphibious assault ship USS SAIPAN (LHA 2) and her embarked Marines as part of an amphibious ready group. In this framework ATLANTA was the dedicated attack submarine assigned to directly support the amphibious ready group, fulfilling a doctrinally significant role: official Navy releases later highlighted that she was the first nuclear-powered submarine to be assigned to directly support an amphibious ready group, integrating undersea surveillance and strike options into amphibious crisis-response operations.

Across her career ATLANTA and her crews received a series of formal recognitions. A 1999 Navy news release summarizing her service credits the boat with six deployments to the Mediterranean Sea and three to the western Atlantic, notes that she was the first submarine certified to employ the Mark 48 torpedo together with both Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles, and states that she held the distinction of being the first Atlantic Fleet submarine to have Tomahawk cruise missile capability. The same release records that ATLANTA and her crews were awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation and the Atlantic Fleet Hook'em Award for antisubmarine warfare excellence, along with various departmental awards, reflecting both operational performance and proficiency in areas such as weapons handling, engineering, and combat systems.

By late 1998, ATLANTA was nearing the end of her planned service life. On January 20, 1999, the Commander, Submarine Force Atlantic public affairs office announced that after nearly seventeen years of service, the submarine would be inactivated in ceremonies on January 22, 1999, at Naval Station Norfolk. The release emphasized her career of nine major deployments, her pioneering missile capabilities, and her role in supporting amphibious ready groups, and noted that she remained commanded at that time by commander Maurice M. Montana, a 1979 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.

Following the inactivation ceremony, ATLANTA departed the naval station waterfront for the last time on January 25, 1999, and transited the short distance to Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth to begin decommissioning preparations, which included defueling the reactor and removing classified systems. ATLANTA was formally decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on December 16, 1999, closing a commissioned career that had lasted 17 years, 9 months, and 10 days from her March 6, 1982 commissioning date. After decommissioning, she remained berthed at Norfolk Naval Shipyard for several years, awaiting a slot in the Navy's Ship-Submarine Recycling Program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. The recycling program's records show that the ex-ATLANTA entered the submarine recycling process on October 1, 2013, marking the formal start of the dismantling and materials recovery phase that ultimately reduced the hull to recycled steel and safely disposed of reactor components.

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