The USS Silversides (SSN-679) was a Sturgeon-class attack submarine, the second ship of the U. S. Navy to be named after a small fish marked with a silvery stripe along its body. The submarine was laid down in 1969, launched in 1971, and commissioned in 1972. After shakedown in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean, the ship homeported to Naval Station Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, and began operations in the Atlantic. She went into drydock in 1977 and changed homeport to Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, VA. In 1981, the submarine surfaced at the North Pole for the first time and repeated the mission in 1989. She sailed out of the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean to participate in U. S. Pacific Fleet exercises, followed by port calls in Hawaii and California. Upon returning to Norfolk via the Panama Canal, the ship became the second submarine to circumnavigate North America. The USS Silversides was decommissioned and stricken from the Register in 1994. The heat resistance of asbestos made it attractive to various industries, including shipbuilding. Consequently, shipyard workers and naval personnel were at a high risk of developing severe diseases due to exposure to the toxic fibers.
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