The USS Tautog (SSN 639)
- GNM COLLECTIONS
- 5 days ago
- 1 min read
USS TAUTOG:
Length: 292 ft
Compliment: 95 enlisted
men, 15 officers
Power: Nuclear
Operating depth:
more than 400m
Commissioned:
August 17, 1968
Decommissioned:
March 31, 1997
USS Tautog was a Sturgeon-class submarine that served during the Cold War, and whose
primary objective was to monitor the Soviet Union’s operations in the Pacific. Following a
successful patrol surveilling Soviet cruise missile testing near Petropavlovsk in 1969,
Tautog was sent to monitor a Soviet submarine training for three months in 1970.
The patrol was cut two months short due to a collision with Soviet submarine Echo II
(K-108), in which the Echo II ran over the Tautog and damaged her sail. After impact, the
Echo II blew its ballast to the surface quickly, but The Tautog’s crew believed that the sound they heard was the Echo II imploding.
Thirty years after the collision, the Commander of the Echo II, Boris
Bagdasaryan, revealed in an interview with the authors of Blind Man’s Bluff:
The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, “I thought for a second, 'I have
sunk a brother submariner’”.
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