688-Class Flights and Stuff

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  • Davjacva
    Lieutenant Commander
    • Nov 2022
    • 233

    688-Class Flights and Stuff


    THE 688-CLASS FLIGHTS AND OTHER 688 INFO

    FOR THOSE WHO CARE


    Since I was on subs, hell, maybe even at Sub-school you’d hear people spouting off about what flight of 688 a particular boat was, and it never was consistent, and this was just prior to the advent of VLS. Today, you can go on the internet and go to paragons of correct information like (Wikipedia) (sic), and they’ll tell you about first, second, and third flight 688’s. Some of these sites are pseudo government ones, but none of them are official Last week I was watching the old Subreggatta- Subcommittee videos and it’s to a person spouting off Flights I, II, and III, but at least they were consistent. . I do tanks, and there’s something kind of similar, where they’ll assign production monikers to a particular vehicle such as INITIAL PRODUCTION, MID-PRODUCTION, and LATE PRODUCTION, whereas in reality modifications/ advancements came out each month of production. The thing with 688’s in not like this, and sometimes just flat wrong. When I got off a boomer and became an inspector for NAVSEA and worked daily on boats of sub squadron’s 6 and 8, it continued, and you understood that it was almost made up to one’s understanding. Some people did have it right, but in the plethora of a sea of disinformation you couldn’t tell. When I got onto my next boat, the PCU Charlotte (SSN-766) we were told it was a 5th Flight 688, this was pretty close, but later find it was not accurate at all. It was the first of the Mod 25 boats, of which there were 4 (Charlotte, Tuscon, Columbia, and Greenville). Anyway, time went on and I retired and went to work for the design yard of 688’s (Newport News Shipbuilding) at Test Engineering, doing both Fleet Support (existing hulls) and Virginia Class. Being so positioned you become privy to a lot of info and some contractual with the government. One of the things we had was a master guide on all the 688’s. It had what flight a particular hull was, and what mods were installed to the hull. The Greenville had the most modifications, and the Charlotte the second-most.
    Now for flights: First flight 688’s were from 688-699 (Los Angeles to Jacksonville), and there’s nothing different except sometimes with the Memphis (691) as it was an R&D hull. It almost got a 30” torpedo tube and ejection system on the port side, but the Cold War was over and the funding was canned (along with a lot of the first flight 688’s). The second flight was 700-718 (Dallas to Honolulu), now exteriorly, there was really nothing different with the 2nd flight with the exceptions of 710 (Augusta) which has the WAA and the 718 which has inner/ outer stern planes. Now how many times have you all seen a VLS-equipped 688 model that had 700 on it. One that I saw was RC and the other I saw was model at an IPMS show. Great laugh at that. So for third flight, it’s only the 719-720 (Providence-Pittsburg), these two hulls were unique as they were laid down and VLS was added to the design afterwards. Their VLS tube configuration is different and some of the details. The also had their drain valves for VLS up in the bathtub area which was a problem when freezing occurred, so on the later hulls they moved them into the ballast tanks (Virginia Class for some reason reversed this). The Fourth flight 688’s arranged their VLS tubes differently and they would remain this way for the remainder of hull construction. These hulls were 721-725, and the 750 (Chicago-Helena, and the Newport News). Fifth flight has a lot of changes, you’ll start seeing shrouded screw, dihedrals, and all submarines will have SHT installed. The Fifth flight are 751-773 sans 766, 769, 771, and 772 which are the Sixth flight and have the SEAWOLF Mod 25 propulsion plant changes. These last four were the quietest of all the 688’s, the only exterior differences were seawater ports back aft. Another thing, all the 688-I’s got dihedrals, this was solely to install countermeasure launchers, but a bi-product was the big change in the ship’s SOE while at high speeds. So driving a sub from Alpha trials up to PSA was very different than post-PSA. All the 688-I’s except for the last couple hulls got their dihedrals during PSA. PSA is when all the government contract obligations that came out after the initial contract are conducted.I've been on almost all of the 688's, except for most of those in New London, as I hated going up there, so I'd usually trade inspections with someone else who didn't like Kings Bay, or go on a longer trip out West. Anyway, I wrote this at 2am when I'm trying to wake up after getting to work and tried to stay coherent.
  • SubICman
    Lieutenant
    • Jun 2022
    • 87

    #2
    Also, There are no less than 6 patterns for the flood grates on the bottom of the boats.

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