Атомная подводная лодка USS Toledo: История и операции

Los Angeles class nuclear powered attack submarine of the US Navy

USS Toledo (SSN 769), is a United States Navy, nuclear powered attack submarine and the third U. S. Naval vessel to be named for the city of Toledo, Ohio. The contract to build her was awarded to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Newport News, Virginia, on 10 June 1988, and her keel was laid down on 6 May 1991. She was launched on 28 August 1993, sponsored by Mrs. Sabra Smith, and commissioned on 24 February 1995.

Her first deployment was to the Mediterranean with the George Washington Carrier Strike Group in 1997–1998, followed by a six month tour of the North Atlantic.

Toledo and Memphis were observing Russian naval exercises in August 2000. There, the Russian cruise missile submarine Kursk suffered a catastrophic incident and sank. Russian Navy officials initially made numerous claims that the sinking of Kursk was caused by a collision with one of the US submarines, though evidence clearly disproved such a theory; the underwater seismic signals recorded matched those of an explosion and not a collision with another vessel, and the US submarines were fully operational after the incident (there is a claim Toledo would have been severely damaged or sunk by a hypothetical collision, being less than half of Kursk's displacement). The loss of Kursk was officially attributed to a faulty dummy torpedo leaking highly volatile high test peroxide, setting off a chain reaction that detonated five to seven combat ready torpedo warheads. Nonetheless, French filmmaker Jean Michel Carré, in an historical fiction movie named Kursk: A Submarine in Troubled Waters, which aired on 7 January 2005 on French TV channel France 2, alleged that Kursk sank because of a sequence of events triggered by a collision with Toledo. According to Carré, Kursk was performing tests with VA 111 Shkval torpedoes and the tests were being observed by two US submarines on duty in the region, Toledo and Memphis.

Toledo deployed to the Mediterranean again in late 2001 early 2002 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Toledo left for another six month deployment on 23 July 2010. In December 2010, she made a port call in Haifa, Israel. Commander Reckamp was received by the Haifa City Mayor Yona Yahav in the City Hall as is customary for visiting commanders of warships making port calls in Haifa. On 20 January 2011, Toledo returned to Groton, Connecticut, after a six month deployment that included port calls in Cyprus, Bahrain, and Haifa. On 12 September 2019, Toledo completed an eight month EUCOM deployment that included port calls in Faslane, Scotland and Haakonsvern, Norway. In early 2020, YouTuber and science communicator Destin Sandlin travelled aboard Toledo for 24 hours as part of a video series profiling different features and functions of the submarine. In May 2020, the crew of Toledo was awarded the Navy Unit Commendation for an eight month intelligence collection deployment.