United States Barracuda-class submarine (1951)
1951 class of American prototype hunter-killer submarines
The Barracuda-class submarines (originally the K-1-class submarines) were the product of Project Kayo, a research and development effort begun immediately after World War II by the United States Navy to "solve the problem of using submarines to attack and destroy enemy submarines". They originally had the hull classification symbol SSK, for "hunter-killer submarine".
These submarines were originally named K-1 through K-3, with hull numbers SSK-1 through SSK-3. They were renamed Barracuda, Bass, and Bonita in December 1955. In 1959 Barracuda was redesignated SST-3 (SST for training submarine), and in 1964 her main sonar was removed. A final redesignation twist was SS-T3 in 1973; for some reason the Navy wished to list her as an attack submarine. Bass was decommissioned in 1957 and redesignated SS-551 in 1959. Bonita was decommissioned in 1958 and redesignated SS-552 in 1959.
Background
It was known that the Soviet Navy had acquired the German Type XXI U-boat and other advanced submarines, and was expected to rapidly put derivatives of them into production. In 1948, the US Navy prepared estimates of the number of anti-submarine warfare (ASW)-capable submarines (SSKs) that would be needed to counter the hundreds of advanced Soviet submarines that were expected to be in service by 1960.
“United States Barracuda-class submarine (1951)” enters the record as 1951 class of American prototype hunter-killer submarines. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, States and Barracuda-class can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States Barracuda-class submarine (1951)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.