Deep-diving NR-1 wraps up its 40-year career

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Naval research submarine, NR-1, pulls in to Norfolk Naval Station alongside the U.S. submarine support ship MV Carolyn Chouest. NR-1 was the Navy's smallest and only research submarine, performing underwater search and recovery, oceanographic research missions and installation and maintenance of underwater equipment to a depth of almost half a mile. The submarine was retired Nov. 21.


Deep-diving NR-1 wraps up its 40-year career
By Andrew Scutro - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 1, 2008 6:17:30 EST

NORFOLK, Va. — Its oven was actually a toaster taken out of a P-3 Orion. It had no shower, and there were four racks for 11 sailors. The officer in charge slept on the deck behind the conn. And since the Nixon administration, the elite crew of the NR-1 could live on the bottom of the ocean for up to a month at a time.

National Geographic magazine called it “The Navy’s Inner Space Shuttle,” and in many ways, the now retired nuclear-powered, deep-submergence boat capable of 3,000-foot dives was just that.

“I’ve been in it for a month, and it gets a little ripe,” said Robert Ballard, sea explorer and former Navy man who, among scores of other finds, discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985 and John F. Kennedy’s PT 109 in 2003.

Although he didn’t use the NR-1 for those missions, he was aboard for countless explorations, and with its deactivation Nov. 21, he said he hates to see this one-of-a-kind ship retire.

“We’ve lost an asset, and it’s too bad,” Ballard told Navy Times.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/11/navy_nr1retires_113008w/%2e