USS Silversides (SSN-679)

USS "Silversides" (SSN-679), a "Sturgeon"-class submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the silversides, a small fish marked with a silvery stripe along each side of its body. The contract to build her was awarded to the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation in Groton, Connecticut on 25 June 1968 and her keel was laid down on 13 October 1969. She was launched on 4 June 1971 sponsored by Mrs. John H. Chafee, wife of the then Secretary of the Navy, and commissioned on 5 May 1972, with Commander John E. Allen in command.

Following shakedown in the Atlantic and Caribbean, "Silversides" began operations in the Atlantic, homeported at Charleston, South Carolina.

The USS "Silversides" went into drydock in Norfolk Naval Shipyard in January 1977 and changed its home port to Norfolk, Virginia.

In the Fall of 1984, the "Silversides" left its Norfolk Naval Base homeport for its journey to a scheduled refueling-overhaul at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, entering drydock there in late November 1984. The refueling-overhaul was completed by August 1986, and later that year the boat returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia.

In Fall 1989 USS "Silversides" surfaced at the North Pole, proceeded out of the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific, participated in Pacific Fleet Exercises, made port calls in Hawaii and California and proceeded back to Norfolk through the Panama Canal, becoming only the second submarine to circumnavigate the North American continent. In mid 1994, she moved from her homeport in Norfolk to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii for decommissioning on 21 July 1994.

"Silversides" was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 2 August 1994. Ex-"Silversides" entered the Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program in Bremerton, Washington, on 1 October 2000 and on 1 October 2001 ceased to exist.

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