USS Oklahoma City submarine heads for decommissioning at PSNS

BREMERTON — By the end of this year, about 100 sailors who've continued to serve aboard the USS Oklahoma City submarine, currently propped up in a dry dock at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, will bid farewell to the boat.

"We'll no longer need to man the watch," said Cmdr. Sean Welch, the nearly 34-year-old boat's last commanding officer.

Like the journey of more than 130 other nuclear-powered submarines that came before it, USS Oklahoma City's end of life comes here at the nation's largest public shipyard, where it will eventually be cut up and sold for scrap.

On Friday, from a deck atop the shipyard's administration building with a view of the sub, current and former sailors, their families, and dignitaries from Oklahoma City gathered to mark the sub's inactivation, a send-off as the boat is prepared to enter a watery graveyard at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton.

The 36th of 62 Los Angeles class fast attack submarines constructed, the 1988-commissioned vessel made headlines several times over the course of its career. It was among the first to make the journey from the Arctic to Pacific Oceans under the ice in 2005; its patrol also once led to the seizure of 11 metric tons of cocaine worth $1.5 billion.

For the past decade or so, the boat, part of a class of Cold War era vessels built to hunt submarines and surface ships alike, was part of the Guam-based Submarine Squadron 15.

Many sailors swapped stories of life aboard the 360-foot-long sub. Retired Adm. James Foggo, who commanded the boat in 1998, recalled being at sea when he once received an urgent encoded message. He read the heartbreaking news that his father had died. Despite the blow of the loss, he still had to lead his crew.

"I had to suck it up," he told the crowd.

Yet the boat would provide the appropriate platform to honor his father, a Canadian who fought in World War II. He cast his father's ashes from the USS Oklahoma City while underway in the Atlantic Ocean.

"It was hard to let go of my father that day," Foggo said to the crowd. "Just as it's hard to let go of the Oklahoma City today."

The boat enjoyed a special relationship with its namesake city, a place more than 500 miles from the nearest ocean. Crew members gave blood in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people in a federal building in April 1995. Other sailors have continued to participate in a memorial marathon in the years that followed the terrorist attack.

"They embraced our crew and our boat in so many ways," said Retired Navy Capt. Kevin Reardon, the first commanding officer of the ship on deployment. "We treasured that relationship."

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, it was the first ceremony for an inactivated submarine at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Other subs like the USS Bremerton — which was inactivated a year ago — have had curtailed attendance due to the virus.

Seven former commanding officers attended the ceremony. Welch, the last, praised the community in Kitsap for helping the crew adjust to life in the Pacific Northwest.

"We were embraced from day one," he said. "It was a seamless transition here."

As part of its inactivation, the sub will follow the traditions of others at their end of life. In previous work, the shipyard has cut off its mud tanks and sonar domes, at the front and back of the boat. After inactivation and decommissioning this fall, it will sit in a graveyard of fellow subs for a period of years, until it is brought back into a dry dock and dismantled entirely. That process will also pack up its nuclear reactor, which will be taken by barge to the Hanford Site in Eastern Washington. It will remain there for the next millennium or so.

Cutting up the sub may give a chance to its namesake city, too, to retain some relics, including the sail. Fundraising continues for a memorial to the boat along the Oklahoma River.

"We're going to try to bring back as much of this submarine as the Navy will allow, so people can see it and understand the story behind it," Bradley Carter, an Oklahoma City Council member, told The Oklahoman.

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 decommissioning at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard