The USS Finback (SSN-670) was a sturgeon-class attack submarine and was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named after the finback, the common whale of the Atlantic coast of the United States. Finback was one of two submarines in the Navy to test the mothership modifications for the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV) which is used to rescue downed submarines and for clandestine missions. She was decommissioned on 28th March 1997.
*History*
On 10 July 1975, Finback’s commanding officer, (a commander with the courtesy title of “captain”), permitted a topless dancer to perform on the diving plane of the sail as the vessel departed Port Canaveral, Florida. The captain had given permission for the act as a reward for performance by his crew during a major overhaul at the Naval shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, the preceding year which cut two months off of a scheduled 12-month overhaul at considerable savings to the government. On 1 August 1975, when Navy command learned of the incident, the submarine was ordered back to port and the captain was relieved of his command, “pending the investigation of an incident of a non-operational nature.”
On 2 October 1975, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James L. Holloway III found the captain of Finback “guilty of permitting an action, which could have distracted the attention of those responsible for the safe navigation of the nuclear-powered submarine maneuvering in restricted waters.” Holloway agreed with subordinates that the captain had failed to exercise good judgement and did not follow the regulations governing civilian visitors to naval vessels. An article in the February 2010 issue of Naval History, published by the United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland, categorizes this episode as “one of the most notorious incidents in the history of the Navy’s nuclear-powered submarine force.”