Laid down on 7 September 1953 at the shipyard of the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics Corporation, Groton, Connecticut, launched on 21 July two year later while sponsored by Mrs. W. Sterling Cole, on 30 March 1957 commissioned and decommissioned on 30 March thirty years later was she stricken on 10 July. The Ship-Submarine Recycling Programme at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, WA, started not earlier as on 1 October 1996 and ended on 30 September a year later.
The source of the photo above is Navy Photo KN-26095 (courtesy Darryl Baker) showing her while leaving the San Francisco Bay in August 1977. See also the website http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08575a.htm for more photos.
With a displacement of 3,260/3,400 (surfaced)-4,140/4,280 (submerged) tons were her dimensions 102,9 x 8,4 x 6,7 metres or 337,6 x 27,56 x 22 feet. Her crew numbered 101-105 men and her armament consisted of 6-53,3 cm (21”) torpedo tubes forward. The reactor allowed with the two screws a speed of 19 (surfaced)-20 submerged) knots. The Seawolf was the first and probably the last American submarine fitted out a liquid metal cooled sodium nuclear reactor build by the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory at West Milton, NY, despite the profits while reducing the necessary machinery spaces with almost 40% and larger efficiency as the traditional water-cooled reactor. The threat of a sodium leak was too large to be ignored to use this type anymore. This caused her returning to the yard on 12 December 1958 where the reactor was replaced by a conventional one. During this conversion she was decommissioned until 30 September 1960.
See also the separate site dealing with this submarine http://www.ssn575.com/
