USS Tullibee (SSN-597)

USS Tullibee (SSN-597) was a one-off nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine of the United States Navy, and at 273 feet and 2,640 tons the smallest nuclear attack submarine in the fleet. She grew out of Project Nobska, a 1956 study that called for deeper-diving, ultraquiet boats, and introduced the first bow-mounted spherical sonar array, angled midships torpedo tubes and a quiet turbo-electric transmission driven by an S2C reactor. The Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics received the contract on 15 November 1957; she was launched on 27 April 1960 and commissioned on 9 November 1960. High cost and modest performance against the Thresher-class attack boats meant she was not repeated. She was decommissioned on 25 June 1988 and recycled by 1 April 1996.