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A member of the crew of the USS Triton (SSRN-586) tells of his training and experiences.
US Navy film MN-9680
Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
USS Triton (SSRN/SSN-586), a United States Navy radar picket nuclear submarine, was the first vessel to execute a submerged circumnavigation of the Earth (Operation Sandblast), doing so in early 1960. Triton accomplished this objective during her shakedown cruise while under the command of Captain Edward L. “Ned” Beach, Jr. The only member of her class, she also had the distinction of being the only Western submarine powered by two nuclear reactors.
Triton was the second submarine and the fifth ship of the United States Navy to be named for the Greek god Triton. At the time of her commissioning in 1959, Triton was the largest, most powerful, and most expensive submarine ever built, at $109 million excluding the cost of nuclear fuel and reactors ($886 million in present-day terms).
After operating for only two years in her designed role, Triton’s mission as a radar picket submarine was made obsolete by the introduction of the carrier-based Grumman WF-2 Tracer airborne early warning aircraft. Converted to an attack submarine in 1962, she became the flagship for the Commander, Submarine Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet (COMSUBLANT) in 1964. She was decommissioned in 1969, the first U.S. nuclear submarine to be taken out of service.
Triton’s hull was moored at the St. Julien’s Creek Annex of Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia as part of the reserve fleet until 1993, though she was struck from the Naval Vessel Register in 1986. In 1993, she was towed to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to await the Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program. The former Triton landed on the keel resting blocks in the drydock basin on 1 October 2007 to begin this recycling process which was completed effective 30 November 2009…
USS Jallao (SS-368), a Balao-class submarine, was a ship of the United States Navy named for the jallao, a pearl-white haemulonid food fish of the Gulf of Mexico.
Jallao (SS-368) was launched by Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co., Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 12 March 1944; sponsored by Mrs. Oliver G. Kirk; and commissioned 8 July 1944, Lieutenant Commander Joseph B. Icenhower in command.
After spending most of July in training operations, Jallao departed Manitowoc 26 July for Chicago, where she was loaded into a floating dry dock for the long trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans. She subsequently departed New Orleans 6 August 1944, and steamed through the Panama Canal to the Pacific and arrived Pearl Harbor 22 September 1944…
