thumb|NR-1 Launching Cover
Deep Submergence Vessel NR-1 was a unique United States Navy nuclear-powered ocean engineering and research submarine built by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics at Groton, Connecticut. NR-1 was launched on 25 January 1969, completed initial sea trials 19 August 1969, and was home-ported at Naval Submarine Base New London. She was the smallest nuclear submarine ever put into operation, casually known as "Nerwin" and never officially named or commissioned. The U.S. Navy is allocated a specific number of warships by Congress, but Admiral Hyman Rickover avoided using one of those allocations for the construction of NR-1 in order to circumvent the oversight that a warship receives from various bureaus.
History
NR-1s missions included search, object recovery, geological survey, oceanographic research, and installation and maintenance of underwater equipment. NR-1 had the unique capability to remain at one site and completely map or search an area with a high degree of accuracy, and this was a valuable asset on several occasions.
In the 1970s and 1980s, NR-1 conducted numerous classified missions involving recovery of objects from the floor of the deep sea. These missions remain classified and few details have been made public. One publicly acknowledged mission in 1976 was to recover parts of an F-14 that were lost from the deck of an aircraft carrier and sank with at least one AIM-54A Phoenix air-to-air missile. The secrecy typical of USN submarine operations was heightened by Rickover's personal involvement, and he shared details of NR-1 operations only on a need-to-know basis. Rickover envisioned building a small fleet of NR-1 type submarines, but only one was built due to budget restrictions.
Following the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986, NR-1 was used to search for, identify, and recover critical parts of the Challenger craft.
In 1995, Robert Ballard used the NR-1 and its support ship to explore the wreck of , the sister ship of , which sank off the coast of Greece while serving as a hospital ship during World War I.
On 25 February 2007, NR-1 arrived in Galveston, Texas, towed by Carolyn Chouest, in preparation for an expedition to survey the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary and other sites in the Gulf of Mexico.
NR-1 was deactivated on 21 November 2008 at the U.S. Navy submarine base at Groton, Connecticut, defuelled at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, then sent to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to be scrapped. On 13 November 2013, the U.S. Navy announced that salvaged pieces of the sub would be put on display at the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton.
NR-1 was generally towed to and from remote mission locations by an accompanying surface tender, which was also capable of conducting research in conjunction with the submarine. NR-1s last mother ship was MV Carolyn Chouest, which provided towing, communications, berthing, and direct mission support for all NR-1 operations—a versatile platform and an indispensable member of the NR-1 deep submergence team. NR-1 command was crewed with thirty-five Navy personnel and ten civilian contractor personnel. NR-1 carried as many as thirteen persons (crew and specialists) at one time, including three of the four assigned officers. (The operations officer rode on Carolyn Chouest). All personnel who crewed NR-1 were nuclear-trained and specifically screened and interviewed by the Director, Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program.
Awards
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|Navy Unit Commendation
|Meritorious Unit Commendation<br/>with five award stars
|Navy E Ribbon<br/>with Battle "E" device (6 awards)
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|National Defense Service Medal<br/> with two stars
|Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
|Sea Service Deployment Ribbon
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See also
- Russian submarine Losharik
- Deep-submergence rescue vehicle
- Fire Ice, a Clive Cussler novel which includes NR-1 as a major plot element