USS Mackerel (SST-1)

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Career
Ordered:
Laid down:	1 April 1952
Launched:	17 July 1953
In service:	9 October 1953
Commissioned:	1971
Fate:	sunk as a target
Stricken:	31 January 1973
General Characteristics
Displacement:	303 tons surfaced, 347 tons submerged
Length:	131.25 feet
Beam:	13.6 feet
Draft:	12 feet mean
Speed:	10 knots surfaced, 10.5 knots submerged
Complement:	two officers, 12 men
Armament:	one 21-inch torpedo tube

USS Mackerel (SST-1), the lead ship of her class, was the second submarine of the United States Navy named for the mackerel, a common food and sport fish. She was planned as an auxiliary submarine (AGSS-570) and originally known as T-1. Her keel was laid down on 1 April 1952, at Electric Boat Division, General Dynamics Corporation, Groton, Connecticut. She was launched on 17 July 1953, sponsored by Mrs. Charles R. Muir, and placed in service (not commissioned) as T-1 on 9 October 1953, with Lieutenant J.M. Snyder, Jr., in command.

After completing trials in the New London, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Bay areas, T-1 departed, in February 1954, for Key West, Florida. Arriving at Key West, she commenced operations with submarine and antisubmarine forces in the southern Florida-Guantanamo Bay areas, providing services to the Fleet Training Group working up recently constructed and recently overhauled ASW-type warships. Effective 15 July (May?), 1956, T-1 was renamed Mackerel, but retained her hull number, SST-1.

Mackerel participated in fleet exercises off the east coast, mainly conducting training and target assignments, including some for the Fleet Sonar School at Key West. She made several cruises testing new equipment for submarines. On 2 April 1957, she departed Key West on a special sound-damping project, en route to Annapolis, Maryland. After more training and target cruises into the late 1950s, she tested acoustical developments for submarine hulls in waters near the British West Indies in the summer of 1963. She again operated in the West Indies in February 1964, performing similar tasks.

During May and June of 1966, special equipment was installed in Mackerel at Electric Boat. Then Mackerel transited south to Key West and arrived, there, on 26 June 1966. At Key West, the submarine conducted experimental work to acquire data to be used in the development of future Navy submarines during 1966 and 1967. She evaluated equipment intended for the NR-1 Deep Submergence Craft, including keel-mounted wheels for rolling over the ocean floor, thrusters, external television cameras, a manipulator arm, and experimental sonar. Mackerel "bottomed" some 225 times during the nine-month evaluation period. After finishing this assignment during March of 1967, the submarine had some of her special equipment removed, and she resumed operations at Key West running submerged in the operating areas for vessels assigned as "pingers" for the Fleet Sonar School.

Mackerel acted as a target for surface and air ASW forces off the Florida coast and in the Caribbean during the late 1960s and into the 1970s. Sometime in 1971, Mackerel was commissioned.

She provided target and training services for antisubmarine warfare units of the Atlantic Fleet in the Key West and the Mayport/Jacksonville operating areas in 1971 and 1972.

Mackerel made her last dive on 21 July 1972. She remained in reduced-complement status from that day until 3 January 1973, but, nevertheless, conducted junior officer and midshipmen training regularly through October 1972.

Mackerel and her sister Marlin (SST-2) were decommissioned on 31 January 1973, in a dual ceremony at the Naval Station, Key West, Florida; both were struck from the Naval Vessel Register on the same day. Mackerel was sunk as a target off Puerto Rico on 18 October 1978.

See USS Mackerel for other ships of the same name.

References

This article includes information collected from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.