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AGSS-569 Albacore 1972-1985 - Decommission to Museum

"Slippery Water" was Albacore's final test. After frequent diesel engine failures had caused repeated delays in her operations, her deployment in support of Project SURPASS was cancelled and preparations for her deactivation were begun. After having been used for successful experiments on the tear-drop shaped hull, new diving controls, and high-yield steel for her pressure hull, plus testing sail rudders, speed brakes, drag chutes, counter-rotating propellers, and three different arrangements for her control surfaces, she was ready to retire.

Albacore was decommissioned on 9 December 1972 and placed in the Inactive Ship Facility in Philadelphia. Her name was struck from the Navy list on 1 May 1980. Ten years would pass before a volunteer group, the Portsmouth Submarine Memorial Association (PSMA), would bring Albacore home to Portsmouth, N.H. The submarine was towed 575 miles from Philadelphia to Portsmouth. USS Albacore was towed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in April 1984 and turned over to a private organization. After another year, she was towed up the Piscatiqua River and then moved a quarter mile inland from the river. This required dismantling 30 feet of a railway trestle, carving out 70 feet of a four-lane highway, and raising the boat 27 feet above the river to finally rest on dry land.

In her new role as a museum, she was opened for public visits in 1985 and remains on display to the present day. On Aug. 30, 1986 the Maritime Museum at Albacore Park opened to the public. Three years later, on April 11, 1989, Albacore was designated a National Historic Landmark, and in 2005, she was inducted into the Submarine Hall of Fame in Norfolk, Va. for her contributions to submarine engineering and tactics.

The experimental unarmed, diesel-electric submarine USS Albacore is the feature exhibit at the Port of Portsmouth Maritime Museum on the shoreline of the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She is in a permanent dry berth and is accessible at deck level through her pressure hull forward and aft. Albacore is maintained by the Portsmouth Submarine Memorial Association as she looked after her last rebuilding when she reached her peak of performance.

Albacore returned to Portsmouth and was placed in the custom designed concrete cradle in an earthen basin where she now rests. Access is across a railed walkway from the edge of the basin to openings into her forward crew's quarters and egress is by way of another walkway from the propulsion machinery space aft. Albacore remains largely unaltered from her appearance at the end of her last series of tests. Phase V modifications have been removed and some control room and engine room instruments and gauges have been defaced due to Navy security restrictions.

In retrospect, Albacore's true legacy is that it was the Navy's first design effort to stress a submarine's underwater performance over its surface performance. It was the first attempt to develop a truly submersible combat ship and Albacore's achievements - and the incorporation of revolutionary new technology - made the effort a success and ultimately set the U.S. Navy on its path towards building today's modern submarine fleet.