USS Virginia (SSN-774)
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| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
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| Name: | USS Virginia |
| Namesake: | Commonwealth of Virginia |
| Ordered: | 30 September 1998 |
| Builder: | General Dynamics Electric Boat |
| Laid down: | 2 September 1999 |
| Launched: |
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| Commissioned: | 23 October 2004 |
| Homeport: | Groton, Connecticut |
| Motto: |
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| Status: | in active service |
| Badge: |  |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Virginia-class submarine |
| Displacement: | 7,800 tons |
| Length: | 377 ft (115 m) |
| Beam: | 34 ft (10.4 m) |
| Draft: | 32 ft (9.8 m) |
| Propulsion: | S9G reactor auxiliary diesel engine |
| Speed: | 25 knots (46 km/h) |
| Test depth: | greater than 800 ft (244 m) |
| Complement: | 134 officers and men |
| Armament: | 12 VLS tubes, four 21 inch (530 mm) torpedo tubes for Mk-48 torpedoes BGM-109 Tomahawk |
USS Virginia (SSN-774) is a United States Navy attack submarine, the lead boat of her class and the tenth vessel of the Navy to be named for the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as the first US Navy attack submarine to be named after a state, a pattern that is common throughout her class.
The contract to build her was awarded to the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation in Groton, Connecticut on 30 September 1998 and her keel was laid down on 2 September 1999. She was launched on 16 August 2003 sponsored by Lynda Johnson Robb, the wife of former Virginia governor and senator Charles Robb, and daughter of President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson. She was the first U.S. Navy submarine to be completely designed on a computer. On 10 and 11 March, the prospective submarine shot 12 dummy torpedoes into the Thames River from each of the boat's four tubes.
Virginia was delivered to the Navy on 12 October 2004, the 104th anniversary of the commissioning of Holland, the Navy's second submarine. She was commissioned on 23 October 2004 under the command of David J. Kern. The commissioning ceremony was featured in the 2005 television series "Submarine: Hidden Hunter" on the Discovery Channel. This class of submarine is unique in that it features a Photonics Mast Program (PMP) that freed ship designers to place the boat's control room in a lower, less geometrically-constrained space than would be required by a standard, optical tube periscope. It is additionally unique in the U.S. Navy for featuring all-digital ship and ballast control systems that are manned by relatively senior watchstanders and a pressure chamber to deploy SEALs, divers or other special forces units while being submerged.
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