USS Oklahoma City submarine makes final voyage to Bremerton, where it will be scrapped

Josh Farley, Kitsap Sun
·3 min read
A tug boat pushes the USS Oklahoma City toward the pier, where dock workers will tie the massive vessel in place.
A tug boat pushes the USS Oklahoma City toward the pier, where dock workers will tie the massive vessel in place.

BREMERTON — The USS Oklahoma City submarine made its final voyage Monday night through the dark, cold waters of Puget Sound, where it will be scrapped following a 33-year career in the U.S. Navy.

Navy tugs maneuvered the aging sub to mooring lines tied by Puget Sound Naval Shipyard workers on a chilly evening at a Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton pier, not far from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier.

"The crew is excited to be here," said Cmdr. Sean Welsh, commanding officer of Oklahoma City's 140-man crew, as he stepped onto dry land. "It's a new adventure for us."

It's an adventure undertaken more than 130 times: every one of the nuclear-powered submarines of the Navy comes to the shipyard here for decommissioning and dismantling. The Navy is more than halfway through retiring its fleet of Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines, like the Oklahoma City, and replacing them with the newer Virginia class.

A sailor on the Oklahoma City greets his daughter after stepping onto dry land.
A sailor on the Oklahoma City greets his daughter after stepping onto dry land.

Welsh, for his part, said, there'll be some things sailors will miss about the "688s," as the Los Angeles class vessels are often called. They were built during the Cold War to hunt other subs and surface ships.

"They're just fun to drive," admitted Welsh, a native of Colonie, New York.

For around the past 10 years, the 1988-commissioned Oklahoma City has been a part of the Guam-based Submarine Squadron 15, which includes the USS Asheville and USS Key West. Welsh took command on Sept. 3, and the boat sailed east about a month later. After a stop in Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma City proceeded to a colder climate here in the Pacific Northwest.

More: Two subs, one dock: Puget Sound Naval Shipyard dismantling boats simultaneously

Demands on the Navy's shipyards continue to mount. Both the USS Connecticut, en route here after striking an underwater mountain in the South China Sea, and the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, which encountered problems in the ship's propulsion plant, are in need of urgent repairs. There's pressure to ensure ship inactivation, decommissioning and recycling goes as smoothly and swiftly as possible.

Sailors on the USS Oklahoma City work with dock workers to pull in and stabilize the 361 foot vessel.
Sailors on the USS Oklahoma City work with dock workers to pull in and stabilize the 361 foot vessel.

More: Old sub reactor leaves Puget Sound to new home where it will spend the next 1,000 years

In a first, the Navy has been using what's called an "Alternate Inactivation Construct" for the old boats that allow for a quicker process and transition of the sailors on to their next assignments. The USS Jacksonville, among the boats going through that process, completed decommissioning just 127 days after docking, the fastest ever completed.

Following decommissioning, it can be years before the subs bobbing in the shipyard return to dry dock to be cut up and fully recycled. Years from now, all that will be left of the Oklahoma City is an empty nuclear reactor compartment, which will float out of Puget Sound and up the Columbia River and to the Department of Energy's Hanford site. There it will remain for the next 1,000 years.

Josh Farley is a reporter covering the military and Bremerton for the Kitsap Sun. He can be reached at 360-792-9227, josh.farley@kitsapsun.com or on Twitter at @joshfarley.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: USS Oklahoma City submarine makes final voyage to Bremerton