USS Blueback, Last of the Diesel Submarines

Moored along the Willamette River at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is the USS Blueback, the last diesel-electric combat submarine built by the United States Navy. Laid down in nineteen fifty-seven at Pascagoula, Mississippi, and commissioned in October of nineteen fifty-nine, the Blueback was a Barbel-class boat: teardrop-hulled, fast for a diesel submarine, and built just as nuclear propulsion was becoming the Navy's standard. She earned two battle stars for Vietnam service.

When nuclear submarines rendered diesel boats obsolete, the Blueback was decommissioned in October of nineteen ninety, after thirty-one years. She was donated to the museum in nineteen ninety-four and opened to tours. Film crews used her interior for the submarine scenes in the nineteen ninety film version of The Hunt for Red October.