U.S.S. Snook — SS(N) 592

U . S . S . S n o o k — S S ( N ) 5 9 2

by Theodore C. Wyman

PERHAPS THE STORY starts with the fact that, once upon a time, there was a Nantucket man named John Walling, who was lost at sea during World War II while skipper of the submarine Snook, when that ship did not come back from a patrol in the Pacific. And so the years passed until one of the new nuclear submarines being built was to be given the name Snook and John Walling's mother, Mrs. Georgie L. Walling of Nantucket, was asked to christen her. She in turn asked me to go to the christening and so the U.S.S. Snook came into my life. She was built by the Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation at Pascagoula, Mississippi and was launched there on Sunday, 31 October, 1960.

There had been the heart attack in August of 1959, and now my heart started acting up. It looked as though I would miss the launching, but I was able to fly to Mobile, to be met there and to be driven to the Longfellow House in Pascagoula. And I shall include here just a little of what I wrote at the time.

"It was a tremendous moment when that great ship slowly gathered speed in her rush to the sea, a moment that seemed to have in it something of the past and the future as well as of the present. There were the dreams and work of all who created her and the unknown future that would unfold and reveal her life and the lives of the men who would sail her. I could not help hoping that those lives would have many great achievements, but that it would not be necessary for them to hold the one for which she was designed."

I could not help wondering at the time how men so young could carry the responsibility of operating a submarine like the Snook, yet I remembered how men even younger and less experienced had taken out the LST 197 and done all that was required of them.

U.S.S. S n o o k SS-279 Built by Portsmouth Navy Yard, New Hampshire. Commissioned 24 October, 1942. The U.S.S. S n o o k SS-279 was lost while conducting her ninth war patrol. She reported her position to Tigrone on 8 April, 1945 as 80 degrees - 40' N., Ill degrees - 39' E. She did not acknowledge signals the n e x t d a y from T i g r o n e .