Equipment aboard the ship will enable it to receive data from orbiting TRANSIT satellites, giving it a position fix once every four hours. The Lafayette will be the first Polaris submarine equipped with the TRANSIT navigation system. She is one of the fastest reacting and most comfortable warships afloat. She is of the Fleet Ballistic Missile type, is 425 feet long, displaces 7,000 tons, and is capable of firing the 2,500 mile A3 Polaris missile. The USS Lafayette was the first ship of the third-generation Polaris submarines and embodies more sophisticated systems than its predecessors. When the two states became part of the United States his citizenship was automatic. Lafayette was voted honorary citizenship by the legislatures of Virginia and Maryland. For his services to the colonies during the Revolution Lafayette and Sir Winston Churchill are the only men to whom honorary American citizenship has been extended. Atomic Energy Commission (Published 1964) In part, his generous youthful spirit was stirred at seeing the American Colonies put into effect the ideas of the Enlightenment. In part, he was motivated by an ardent desire to hit back at England for the humiliation She had inflicted on France in the Seven Years’ War, in which his father had lost his life (at the Battle of Minden, 1759). “At the first news of this quarrel, ”he later wrote in his memoirs, “my heart was enrolled in it.” He instantly decided to make America’s cause his own. He was 18 and by now a captain when he heard of the revolt of the American Colonies against Britain and read the Declaration of Independence. Scion of ancient and illustrious French families, he was born in the Chateau de Chavaniac in Auvergne, France, and educated at the College du Plessis in Paris, entering the King’s Musketeers at the age of 14. NAMED IN HONOR of the best foreign friend the United States ever had, Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834). USS Lafayette (SSBN-616), the lead ship of her class of ballistic missile submarine, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named to honor Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a French military hero who fought alongside and significantly aided the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.Īdmiral Rickover wrote of Lafayette in his book Eminent Americans: (In comparison, the later Ohio class boat would grow to 560 feet long) The George Washington Class was 385 feet in length compared to the 425 feet of the Lafayette. But the advances in technology and weapons systems required a new design. Many of the lessons of the first boomers were learned the old fashioned way by trial and error. Habitability was much improved over the diesel boats that fought in the war, but for extended deployments, crew morale was becoming an issue. Not only that, but the presence of a reactor ensured the true conversion to a submarine capable of operating of operating under the surface for months at a time.īut the early boats were filled with machinery and equipment that had been shoved into every available inch of space. This class of Fast Attacks included the sleek rounded hulls that enabled them to dive deeper and faster than their older cousins. Gone were the days of modifying World War 2 submarines to have a nuclear reactor. In fact, the George Washington was a strange creature that evolved from the world of Fast Attacks that in and of themselves were revolutionary. Neither did the submarine platforms that would need to carry the new weapons. When the Polaris program was first conceived, the technology to make it all work did not exist.
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