Word: sargo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Soviet navy (which apparently still has no atom subs) SSGN 587 was only the latest of a series of unpleasant undersea developments. Fortnight ago the Mare Island yards began work on Sargo, the U.S. Navy's fifth nuclear-powered submarine, and the first to be built on the West Coast. Shorter (257 ft.) and lighter (2,300 tons displacement) than Nautilus, Sargo will combine Nautilus' endurance with greater speed and maneuverability, and when she is commissioned in 1958, she should be the world's most effective submarine. Sargo's pre-eminence promises to be short-lived...
...They tell of how Pharmacist's Mate Wheeler B. Lipes of the Seadragon performed the first submerged appendectomy, a success "with the help of God and a long-handled spoon"; of how the Barb's commandos landed in Japan and blew up a train; of how the Sargo heartbreakingly fired 13 torpedoes at fat targets, only to have all 13 prove duds (flaws in the exploder mechanism plagued U.S. subs for two years); of how the Gato fetched up with an unexploded depth charge on its deck, and gingerly set it adrift in a leaky rubber boat...