Jun 282011
An illustration showing the innards of the Halibut guided missile launching sub of the 1950’s. It uses both line drawings and photos of scale models to illustrate the scructure of the sub and the storage systems for the Regulas I and Regulas II cruise missiles. Subs like the Halibut would quickly be rendered obsolete with the successful development of the Polaris sea launched ballistic missile, which required far fewer monkeymotions to launch.
The diagram in higher rez:
8 Responses to “Halibut SSGN587”
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“Regulus,” named after the star α Leonis.
The diesel-electric USS Growler is a museum ship on Manhattan. It’s a wonderful visit.
Halibut was rebuilt as a special-operations (=spy) sub, using the big missile hangar as an electronic-intelligence center. I think she also could carry divers.
Yeah, she had a fake Deep Submergence Rescue Vehcile attached to the rear deck that served as a combo diver exit and decompresson chamber.
Halibut was the sub that located the sunk “Golf” class K-129 missile sub that the CIA tried to raise with the Glomar Explorer under Project Azorian.
Besides carrying intelligence gathering crew in the former Regulus hanger (called “The Batcave”), she could also release remote controlled “Fish” stored in it through a hatch in the keel, that could descend thousands of feet to the seabed to search for and photograph objects on the bottom (that’s how K-129 was located).
Along with Seawolf, Halibut was one of the subs that picked up the cable tap pods that were used to spy on Soviet cable traffic on both the east and west coast of the Soviet Union.
The tap pod sat over the underwater cable and picked up signals going through it via induction.
For the intelligence mission they welded the big missile hatch shut, which suited the crew fine…as they were always worrying about the hanger flooding and dragging the whole sub down to crush depth bow-first.
Not sure what your source is, but the hanger door was NOT welded shut! I served in Halibut 64-65, and worked on her during her stops in Guam.72-74. I also served as her Ship’s Sup’t at Mare Island for the last two years of her service. The hanger door was operational during all those times!
D.E. Kanning
You can get all the details about Halibut’s history by reading the following two books:
“Blind Man’s Bluff”
and
“Spy Sub”
…written by one of her crew who served on her while she was on the “Azorian” K-129 location mission.
Even most of the intelligence crew on her weren’t allowed to know what exactly they were hunting for, but that “they’d know it when they saw it.”
Since the live TV of the bottom from the “Fish” didn’t work, this meant sending them down, letting them take photos on the bottom, pulling them back up, developing the film, and sending them back down again.
On the day when they found their target, the developed photos went something like that this:
Mud.
Mud with a rock.
Mud.
Mud with a strange fish.
Mud.
Mud.
Mud.
Mud with a different rock.
Conning tower of submarine with number painted on side.
Oddly enough, they then knew what they were hunting for.
According to “Spy Sub”, the photo developer then went running through the sub at a full sprint, heading for the Captain’s cabin. 😀
I built a working model of this sub – at least it had the same basic design and missile launching system. It had a working electric motor, a timing mechanism and a control mechanism where you could have it dive, surface and launch a missile. It was very complex and I never did get it to work perfectly.
That’s a very famous model kit that’s quite a collector’s item nowadays:
http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php?detail=6458
You’re going to scream when you find out what a intact Halibut kit is worth.