USS Pogy (SSN-647)

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Career

Awarded:	23 March 1963
Laid down:	5 May 1964
Launched:	3 June 1967
Commissioned:	15 May 1971
Stricken:	11 June 1999
Fate:	submarine recycling
General Characteristics
Displacement:	3975 tons light, 4263 tons full, 288 tons dead
Length:	89 m (292 ft)
Beam:	9.7 m (32 ft)
Draft:	8.8 m (29 ft)
Powerplant:	S5W reactor
Speed:	15 knots surfaced, 25 knots submerged
Depth:	1300 feet
Complement:	14 officers, 95 men
Armament:	4 x 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes

USS Pogy (SSN-647), a Sturgeon-class submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for a trout found in Lake Tahoe, California.

Her keel was laid down on 5 May 1964 by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation of Camden, New Jersey. She was launched on 3 June 1967 and sponsored by Mrs. George Wales. Then, two days later, the contract for her construction was canceled, and the submarine was towed to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and laid up.

Six months later, on 7 December 1967, the contract for construction of Pogy was reassigned to Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and the incomplete submarine was towed to that yard on 8 January 1968 for completion. Pogy was commissioned on 15 May 1971.

Pogy put to sea on 22 April 1975 for local operations. Five days later, about five miles off the coast of Oahu, her lookout sighted a capsized 15-foot sailboat drifting out to sea, and the crew quickly rescued the boat's owner. He had been in the water for about an hour, and his only injuries were scrapes and bruises incurred while being hoisted up the rough side of the submarine. Meanwhile, Pogy had received orders to conduct SINKEX 1-75, a test of a warshot Mark 48 torpedo against a target submarine. On 27 April 1975, Pogy intercepted the decommissioned hulk of ex-Carbonero (SS-337), drifting on the surface and carrying a noisemaker for the torpedo to acoustically home in on. Pogy verified positions using her periscope, then dove to about 200 feet to shoot the torpedo. IC1(SS) Joseph J. Varese, who had qualified in submarines on Carbonero, and was now leading petty officer of Pogy’s IC Division, was given the honor of throwing the firing switch to shoot the torpedo. A few minutes later, Pogy transmitted the traditional message

 SIGHTED SUBMARINE SANK SAME

Having surfaced in the Arctic ice pack, crew members from the Pogy assemble a topside deck enclosure to provide protection from the elements while water samples are collected and cataloged.

On 25 August 1996, Pogy deployed in support of SCICEX-96 experiments. In October, she transited the Bering Strait and began collecting thousands of water samples from over a hundred locations under the polar ice of the Arctic Ocean. She continuously recorded ocean currents and water salinity and temperature, and surfaced 19 times through the icecap to measure surface conditions before returning to San Diego, California, on 26 November.

Pogy was decommissioned and simultaneously struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 11 June 1999, and entered the Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program (NPSSRP) at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. ex-Pogy ceased to exist on 12 April 2000.

Currently the Pogy's diving plane fins, can be seen as part of The Fin Project at Pelican Harbor Park, in Miami, Florida.

See USS Pogy for other ships of the same name.

[edit] Media

In the Tom Clancy novel The Hunt for Red October, the Pogy escorted the defecting submarine, along with the USS Dallas (SSN 700). However, it was dropped from the movie.