SSN-597 Tullibee
The Tullibee class is the world's first nuclear submarine dedicated to anti-submarine warfare. Only one SSN-597 Tullibee was built. . Initially, the new nuclear-powered vessel was classified as a “hunter” boat - SSKN-597, but in 1959 it was transferred to the SSN class of attack boats. The nuclear-powered vessel received her name in honor of the submarine SS-284 of the Gato type, sunk in the Second World War by her own torpedo, whose control system failed.
The boat was not small; although her tonnage, beam, and draft were less than the Skipjack, her length was greater. By the time the Tullibee was in operation, she was about to be superseded by the Thresher class. With the advent of submarines armed with ballistic missiles in the military fleets of the USSR and the USA, the need arose to create special anti-submarine nuclear submarines capable of detecting, tracking and destroying enemy missile submarines with greater efficiency than surface ships.
The US Navy was the first to be concerned with the issue of combating enemy submarine "strategists". In 1956 Admiral Arleigh Burke, then CNO, requested that the Committee on Undersea Warfare of the National Academy of Sciences study the effect of advanced technology on submarine warfare. The result of this study, dubbed "Project Nobska" was an increased emphasis on deeper-diving, ultraquiet designs utilizing long-range sonar.
The Nobska ASW study was performed by a high-level committee established by the Navy in 1955 and coordinated by the National Academy of Science. The programs resulted from Project Nobska (named for its location near a lighthouse near Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Cape Cod, Massachusetts) in December 1956. One conclusion was that fast homing torpedoes were both possible and needed. The development of a reliable wire-guidance capability for a submarine-launched torpedo also was given a high priority at the time. Research was carried out in the development of relatively small and very maneuverable nuclear submarines designed to protect shipping and guard aircraft carrier strike groups. With a displacement of about 1000 tons, such boats were supposed to develop a speed of 30 knots when submerged.
The Defense Science Board commented in the September 1958 "Report on Limited War Volume 3" that "The need for experimental-type submarines to explore unknowns in the fields of hydrodynamics, high-speed ship control, radiated noise, self noise and unique propulsion systems such as the primary battery has been expressed by the Navy for the past few years. Project NOBSKA has supported the argument for strictly experimental submarines. These types of submarines can provide necessary information for the development of new equipments and techniques and new submarine cbaracteristics. The ALBACOBE at present is the only new strictly experimental submarine. In addition to researching the aforementioned broad fields, the Navy needs other experimental submarines to explore hull structure at great depths, integrated controls, sound quieting of nuclear power plants, the use of direct-drive turbines, primary batteries, large-horsepower electric motors, and counterrotating propellers to increase quietness and efficiency.. "
In September 1955, after Nautilus’s initial exercises, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke declared that all further American submarines would be nuclear submarines, and the FY57 program contained five SSNs. These became the Skipjacks which first combined the Albacore hull with nuclear power and are reputed to be the first submarines to exceed 30 knots.
On 20 October 1954, the Department of Defense requested the Atomic Energy Commission to develop a small reactor for a small hunter-killer submarine. The boat was meant to be the first of a large class. The commission, wishing to broaden industrial participation in the program, assigned the project to Combustion Engineering, Incorporated. The S1C prototype achieved full power operation on 19 December 1959 at Windsor, Connecticut. Congress authorized the Tullibee in the 1958 shipbuilding program. On May 26, 1958, the world's first specialized anti-submarine nuclear submarine, USS Tullibee (SSN-597), was laid down at the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics in Groton. Electric Boat launched the boat on 27 April 1960, and the navy commissioned her on November 9 of that year.
Tullibee combined the ASW focus of the SSKs with the smallest nuclear reactor then feasible, with an eye toward a relatively cheap, dedicated ASW asset that could be deployed in the numbers still considered necessary to fully populate the forward barriers. Compared to the 15,000 SHP S5W type reactor of a Skipjack, Tullibee had a 2,500 SHP reactor and turbo-electric drive.37 She could barely make 20 knots, but she lacked the reduction gears whose loud tonals made prior SSNs so easy for SOSUS to detect at extreme range. The hull of the nuclear submarine "Tullibee" was built according to the design of Electric Boat EB-270A. The displacement of 1000 tons planned at an early stage of the program increased to 2640 tons in the submerged position and to 2317 tons in the surface position. The hull shape is "albacore" hull. A characteristic external difference of the boat is the developed "canoe" above the hull behind the wheelhouse, similar to the hump of the ballistic missile silos of the SSBN class submarines.
The USS Tullibee incorporated three design changes based on Project Nobska. First, it incorporated the first bow-mounted spherical sonar array. This required the second innovation, amidships, angled torpedo tubes. Thirdly, Tullibee was propelled by a very quiet turboelectric power plant.
A radical submarine redesign, proposed in 1956 and developed by the Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory, placed a large sonar sphere in the streamlined submarine bow. The sphere allowed three-dimensional sonar operation for greater detection range. Tullibee became the first American submarine in which the entire bow of which was given over to the installation of hydroacoustic systems. She continued the tradition established by the BQR-4 equipped SSKs by mounting a large, bow mounted, passive, low frequency array, the BQR-7. She was the first submarine of the US Navy equipped with the AN/BQQ sonar system, which was the most advanced underwater reconnaissance equipment at the time. On Tullibee, the BQR-7 was wrapped around the first spherical active sonar, the BQS-6, and together they formed the first integrated sonar system, the BQQ-1.
The BQQ-2 hydroacoustic system included two conformal antennas - an active BQS-6 and a passive BQS-7. Later, a passive hydroacoustic fire control system BQS-4 PUFFS was mounted on the submarine. Initially, two BQS-4 PUFFS systems were mounted on the nuclear submarine, one in the bow of the hull, the second - in the stern. The radomes of the BQS-4 PUFFS antennas became a characteristic external distinguishing feature of the submarine "Tullibee". Later, another antenna of the BQS-4 PUFFS system was mounted on the boat's conning tower. The BQS-4 PUFFS system was tested on the Balao and Tinch class boats upgraded under the Guppy program.
Tullibee combined the ASW focus of the SSKs with the smallest nuclear reactor then feasible with an eye toward a relatively cheap, dedicated ASW asset that could be deployed in the numbers still considered necessary to fully populate the forward barriers. Compared to the 15,000 SHP S5W type reactor of a Skipjack, Tullibee had a 2500 SHP reactor and turbo-electric drive. She could barely make 20 knots, but she lacked the reduction gears whose loud tonals made prior SSNs so easy for SOSUS to detect at extreme range.
Secondly, for the first time in the practice of underwater shipbuilding, torpedo tubes were installed not in the bow of the submarine, but on the side in the midship area of the boat - at an angle to its center plane, which made it possible to free up space in the bow for the large antenna of the new sonar. Although she had the new Albacore hull shape, USS Skipjack maintained forward firing tubes with sonar laid out above and below the tubes, similar to the Nautilus arrangement Superficially, the Tullibee appeared to be one of the blind alleys into which technological evolution occasionally wandered. Nevertheless, the boat was important. To get good reception, her sonar was placed far forward, as far away from the ship's self-generated noise as possible. Her torpedo tubes were moved aft into the midship section and were angled outward from the centerline — features that were incorporated in the Thresher submarines.
Naval Reactors' effort to develop a quiet nuclear propulsion plant began early — even before the sea trials of the Nautilus — with the hunter-killer submarine Tullibee (SSN 597). The purpose of the hunter-killer was to ambush enemy submarines. As the mission of the boat was seen in the early 1950s, speed was less important than silence. By substituting an electric-drive system for reduction gears, Rickover hoped to reduce noise. In this approach a generator ran an electric motor. Varying the speed of the motor would achieve the same result as the reduction gear, but there would be a penalty; the electric propulsion system would be larger and heavier than the components it replaced.
The electric drive worked well; the submarine was the quietest nuclear platform the Navy had. The boat was the first nuclear submarine to use a nuclear power + steam turbine + auxiliary propulsion motor propulsion system. The original pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant was to convert the water in the secondary circuit into high-temperature and high-pressure steam in the steam generator to drive the steam turbine, which drove the propeller after deceleration. The reduction gear was a considerable noise source. After the "Tullibee" adopted the auxiliary motor, it could be driven by the motor when performing tactical maneuvers, overcoming the disadvantage of the high noise of the reduction gear.
As an ASW platform her performance was unmatched, but almost as soon as the decision to deploy Tullibee was made, a further decision was made to avoid specialized platforms and pursue instead a multipurpose SSN that best combined the speed of Skipjack and the ASW capability of Tullibee into one platform. This became the USS Thresher.
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