USS Atlanta (SSN-712) brought the proud name of Georgia's capital city beneath the waves as part of the Cold War Navy's most powerful undersea force. A Los Angeles-class attack submarine commissioned March 22, 1982, Atlanta prowled the deep Atlantic and the strategic waters of the Mediterranean, hunting Soviet submarines and keeping watch over the maritime choke points that mattered most during the final, tense decades of the Cold War. Silent, fast, and deadly — she represented the culmination of a generation of American submarine design and the determination of an all-volunteer crew who chose a life of silent service. The men who sailed aboard Atlanta carried the spirit of a great Southern city to the farthest reaches of the world's oceans, emerging only to refuel and reload before disappearing into the deep once more.