Stories From the US Submarine Force
They were never built to stare at the sky. Fleet submarines were hunters, creatures of the deep that stalked their prey in silence. Yet, in the uneasy years after the Second World War, the U.S. Navy found itself short on eyes. The kamikaze had taught a brutal lesson—that fleets needed early warning, and surface radar picket ships were sitting ducks. The answer, paradoxically, was to turn the predators of the deep into guardians of the air.
The USS Daniel Boone was born into a world balanced on the edge of annihilation. When her keel was laid down on February 6, 1962, at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War that relied as much on unseen submarines as on visible missiles and soldiers. The Navy’s new fleet ballistic missile program had already begun to take shape, and the Boone was part of that second generation of boats that would carry America’s most destructive weapons into the deep. She was designed to remain hidden, to roam the world’s oceans in silence, unseen but always present, serving as a reminder that any attack on the United States would come with unbearable consequences.
In the silent world beneath the waves, few names carry the weight of history and transformation quite like USS James K. Polk. Bearing the name of the 11th President of the United States, the boat served as both a sentinel of deterrence and a pioneer of adaptation, evolving from a nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine into a stealthy platform supporting special operations. Its story spans from the tense days of the Cold War through the uncertain calm of its end, a reflection of the shifting tides of American power and naval innovation.
Patrol Reports 