From out of the deep to target, perfect: Polaris fires from a submerged submarine
The Navy had spent three years developing a way to put nuclear missiles somewhere no enemy could find them. On July 20, 1960, the USS George Washington, cruising submerged off the Atlantic Missile Test Range near Florida, fired a Polaris missile that arced toward the Atlantic Missile Test Range's impact area. Less than two hours later, a second missile followed, striking the impact area 1,100 nautical miles downrange. Commander James Osborn's crew radioed President Eisenhower the message: "Polaris — from out of the deep to target. Perfect."
Eisenhower got word of a weapon Moscow could not preempt with a first strike. The Polaris submarine gave the United States its first survivable nuclear deterrent, a platform that could ride out an attack and still retaliate, which changed how planners on both sides thought about striking first.
QHow many missiles could George Washington actually carry into a Cold War patrol?
Sixteen. That number came directly from the 130-foot hull section grafted into the boat, and it became the template for the class: George Washington's sister ship, Patrick Henry, was armed with the same sixteen missiles once Polaris went operational in late 1960. Sixteen tubes per boat became a standard the Navy would carry into later missile submarine classes for decades, long after Polaris itself gave way to newer missiles.
QWho rode along on the launch instead of waiting for a report back at headquarters?
Rear Admiral William Raborn, the officer who had run the Polaris development program from its start, was aboard George Washington as an observer for the July 20 launch. He had spent four years pushing the submerged-launch concept from theory to hardware, and he chose to be in the boat rather than ashore when it either proved out or failed. The gamble paid off twice that afternoon, first at 1:39 p.m. and again at 4:32 p.m.
QHow far did George Washington travel in the years after that first launch?
By 1970, a decade after leaving Groton, Connecticut, George Washington pulled into Charleston, South Carolina, to refuel after logging roughly 100,000 nautical miles at sea. She kept going for another decade and a half after that, finishing her career with fifty-five deterrent patrols split between the Atlantic and Pacific fleets over twenty-five years of service, a workload the July 1960 test was built to make possible.
