Posted on 08/14/2005 2:48:09 PM PDT by presidio9
Former President Jimmy Carter today completed his first submarine dive since he left the Navy in 1953, but this time it was in a new nuclear vessel bearing his name.
The USS Jimmy Carter pulled into this Navy submarine base after a night of cruising below the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off the Georgia coast.
Carter was accompanied by his wife, Rosalynn, and a crew of 151. For Mrs. Carter, the boat's sponsor, it was her first submarine dive.
The submarine is the first named after a living ex-president. Carter was a submariner during his time in the Navy after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy.
Carter called it "the finest ship in this Navy or in any Navy."
The USS Jimmy Carter is the most heavily armed submarine ever built, and is the last of the Seawolf class of attack subs that the Pentagon ordered during the Cold War's final years. It is 453 feet long, weighs 12,000 tons and carries 50 torpedoes. It cost $3.2 billion.
I just wanted to be post #101
102 BUMP
"Former President Jimmy Carter today completed his first submarine dive since he left the Navy in 1953"
I remember he went aboard a nuclear sub with Admiral Rickover right after he was inaugurated in 1977. They didn't dive the boat?
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