History | |
---|---|
United States | |
Name | USS William H. Bates (SSN-680) |
Namesake | William H. Bates (1917–1969), U.S. Representative from Massachusetts's 6th Congressional District (1950–1969) |
Ordered | 25 June 1968 |
Builder | Ingalls Shipbuilding, Pascagoula, Mississippi General Dynamics Electric Boat |
Laid down | 4 August 1969 |
Launched | 11 December 1971 |
Sponsored by | Mrs. Andrew R. Grainger |
Commissioned | 5 May 1973 |
Decommissioned | 11 February 2000 |
Stricken | 11 February 2000 |
Motto | A Spirit Unquell'd |
Fate | Scrapping via Ship and Submarine Recycling Program begun 1 October 2002, completed 30 October 2002 |
Badge | |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Sturgeon-class attack submarine |
Displacement |
|
Length | 302 ft 3 in (92.13 m) |
Beam | 31 ft 8 in (9.65 m) |
Draft | 28 ft 8 in (8.74 m) |
Installed power | 15,000 shaft horsepower (11.2 megawatts) |
Propulsion | One S5W nuclear reactor, two steam turbines, one screw |
Speed |
|
Test depth | 1,300 feet (400 meters) |
Complement | 126 (14 officers, 112 enlisted men) |
Armament | 4 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes |
USS William H. Bates (SSN-680), a Sturgeon-class attack submarine, was planned to be the second U.S. Navy ship to be named USS Redfish—for the redfish, a variety of salmon —when the contract to build her was awarded to Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on 25 June 1968. However, upon the 22 June 1969 death of William H. Bates (1917–1969), the U.S. representative from Massachusetts's 6th congressional district (1950–1969) known for his staunch support of nuclear propulsion in the U.S. Navy, she was renamed William H. Bates and was laid down on 4 August 1969 as the only ship of the U.S. Navy to have borne the name. The reason for her naming by then-Secretary of the Navy John Chafee, breaking with a long-standing Navy tradition of naming U.S. Navy attack submarines for sea creatures, was best summed up by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the then-director of the Navy's nuclear reactors program, with the pithy comment that, "Fish don't vote!"[1]