Stories From the US Submarine Force
Submariners live for the sea stories, and some are colder than others. On this episode of Patrol Reports, Dave Bowman sat down with Captain Jim Harvey, former commanding officer of USS Queenfish (SSN-651), to revisit a patrol that pushed the limits of technology, seamanship, and nerves: surfacing at the North Pole in August of 1985.
In August 1958, USS Queenfish (SS-393) was back in San Diego after her WestPac deployment and quickly moved into a maintenance phase. The deck log shows that beginning on August 21 she entered an availability period, and over the following days the crew oversaw the offloading of her torpedoes. This was standard practice before any yard period, both for safety reasons and to allow overhaul work in the torpedo rooms. The log notes entries where torpedoes were struck below, removed, and transferred off the submarine, marking the transition from an operational posture to one focused on repair and upkeep .
In the shadowy chess game of the Cold War, the move that changed everything did not come from a missile silo in Kansas or a bomber base in England. It came from beneath the waves, out of sight and far beyond reach. On July 20, 1960, deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean, the USS George Washington unleashed the first Polaris ballistic missile from a submerged submarine. That launch did not just mark a technical milestone. It transformed the rules of deterrence, and in many ways, helped hold off the unthinkable, even into the 21st century.
Continue reading “The Northern Star”
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