USS Jacksonville (SSN-699)

USS Jacksonville (SSN-699), a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, is the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for Jacksonville, Florida. The ship is nicknamed "The Bold One". The contract to build her was awarded to the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation in Groton, Connecticut on 24 January 1972 and her keel was laid down on 21 February 1976. She was launched on 18 November 1978 using the pontoon system designed for the launching of the Ohio Class Trident Submarines. The Jacksonville was sponsored by Mrs. Charles E. Bennett, and commissioned on 16 May 1981, with Captain Robert B. Wilkinson in command.

Jacksonville’s operations have included a variety of fleet exercises and deployments including two around-the-world cruises in 1982 and 1985, deployments to the western Atlantic Ocean in 1983, 1986, 1993 and 1994, and deployments to the Mediterranean Sea in 1987 and 1993. In 1988, Jacksonville participated in a shock trials test program for Los Angeles class submarines, which was followed by a three-year major modernization overhaul in Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

Jacksonville has been involved in several collisions with other vessels during her over 30 years of operation:


 * (1) While outbound with the inbound Turkish merchant vessel General Z. Dogan in the vicinity of Norfolk, Virginia on 22 March 1982,


 * (2) with a barge positioned across Chesapeake Bay's Thimble Shoal Channel, requiring the replacement of the submarine's sonar dome, on 21 September 1984,


 * (3) with the container ship Saudi Makkah near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, requiring repairs to the submarine's fairwater planes and rudder, on 17 May 1996,  and


 * (4) with an unnamed fishing vessel while on regular patrol in the Persian Gulf on 10 January 2013.  The ship's main periscope was sheared off in the collision.

On 20 December 2004 a small fire broke out aboard Jacksonville while she was undergoing a refueling overhaul at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The fire was immediately extinguished and the reactor was never in danger, though a shipyard firefighter and a sailor were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.