USS Baton Rouge (SSN-689)

Career
insert image here insert caption here (insert link to larger image here)
Awarded:	8 January 1971
Laid down:	18 November 1972
Launched:	26 April 1975
Commissioned:	25 June 1977
Fate:	submarine recycling
Stricken:	13 January 1995
General Characteristics
Displacement:	6000 tons surfaced, 6900 tons submerged
Length:	360 feet (109.73 meters)
Beam:	33 feet (10 meters)
Draft:	32 feet (9.8 meters)
Powerplant:	S6G reactor
Speed:	15 knots surfaced, 32 knots submerged
Complement:	12 officers, 115 men
Armament:	four 21-inch torpedo tubes

USS Baton Rouge (SSN-689), a Los Angeles-class submarine, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The contract to build her was awarded on 8 January 1971 to the Newport News Shipbuilding Company of Newport News, Virginia, and her keel was laid down on 18 November 1972. She was launched on 26 April 1975 and commissioned on 25 June 1977.

14½ years of history go here.

At 2016 local time, on 11 February 1992, while on patrol off Kildin Island near Severomorsk, Baton Rouge collided with the Sierra-class attack submarine K-239. The United States Navy stated that the collision occurred more than 12 miles from the shore, in international waters. However, the Soviet Union (and now Russia) uses a different set of rules for defining the boundary between territorial and international waters, and their rules put the collision site inside their territorial waters. Both submarines were able to return to their respective bases under their own power.

Less than two years later, on 1 November 1993, Baton Rouge was placed in commission in reserve. On 13 January 1995, she became the first Los Angeles-class submarine to be decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register, after only 17½ years in commission. Many of her sister ships have served 25 years or more. ex-Baton Rouge entered the Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program and ceased to exist on 30 September 1997.

References

This article includes information collected from "Submarine Collision off Murmansk: A Look from Afar," by Eugene Miasnikov, as reprinted in The Submarine Review (April, 1993, pp. 6-14).