The Cold War was fought in many places, but one of its longest, quietest, and most consequential fronts was beneath the North Atlantic. American and Soviet submarines tracked each other across the deep ocean for four decades — following each other's movements, developing countertactics, sometimes coming dangerously close and sometimes losing each other entirely in the thermal layers that the Atlantic's deep water creates. USS Memphis (SSN-691) was a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine that spent the Cold War years doing exactly this work: patrolling the waters where Soviet ballistic missile submarines transited toward their launch stations, gathering intelligence, and reminding the Soviet Navy that the American submarine force was always there, watching. The details of her patrols remain classified. The fact of them does not.
The Ship
USS Memphis (SSN-691) is a Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, commissioned on December 17, 1977, and named for Memphis, Tennessee. The Los Angeles class was the backbone of the American submarine force during the final decades of the Cold War — fast, deep-diving, capable, and quiet enough to track Soviet submarines in the open ocean without being detected. Memphis was homeported at Groton, Connecticut, home of the Navy's submarine school and the East Coast submarine force. From Groton, she had direct access to the North Atlantic patrol areas where the Cold War's underwater competition was most intense.
The Cold War Patrol
The Cold War submarine mission was simple in concept and brutally demanding in execution. American fast attack submarines — SSNs in Navy shorthand — were tasked with tracking Soviet submarines, particularly the ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) whose nuclear warheads were aimed at American cities and military installations. If deterrence failed and war came, the SSNs would need to sink those SSBNs before they could launch. In the meantime, during peacetime, the SSNs trailed them, built up knowledge of their acoustic signatures, and kept pressure on Soviet submarine operations by making clear that American submarines were always nearby.
A Cold War patrol meant weeks or months submerged, operating in communications blackout, with the crew living in the compressed space of a submarine hull that was designed for performance rather than comfort. The watch schedule ran continuously; the work never stopped. The Soviet submarines they were tracking were doing exactly the same thing in reverse — and both sides knew it, and both sides adapted, and both sides pushed the technology and the training as hard as they could for four decades without the conflict ever becoming hot.
Post-Cold War Operations
USS Memphis continued to serve after the Cold War ended, adapting to the different missions that the post-Soviet security environment required. The SSN mission broadened: intelligence collection in new areas, special operations support, cruise missile strike, and the sustained presence in regions where American submarines had rarely operated before. Memphis remained a capable and deployable asset through her service life, carrying the skills and the institutional knowledge of the Cold War submarine force into a new operational era.
If you served aboard a submarine — or want to honor someone who made those quiet, classified patrols — The Ship's Store carries collections for the boats of the Navy's submarine force.
Legacy
USS Memphis was decommissioned in 1998 after more than twenty years of service. Her career spanned the final intense years of the Cold War and the beginning of the post-Cold War transition. The sailors who served aboard her did work that the public will never fully see — work that required a specific kind of courage and a specific kind of discipline, the courage of sustained competence in isolated circumstances, with no audience and no recognition, for months at a time. The submarine force asks more of that kind of courage than almost any other community in the military. Memphis's crew delivered it, patrol after patrol, for two decades.