Meet the Barracuda-Class Submarine - The First and Second World Wars saw a major rise in submarine use among navies. The German U-Boats proved the viability of using submarines for Guerre de Course, or commerce raiding to great effect. In this role, submarines were designed mainly as surface ships with the ability to submerge to carry out an attack. The U.S. Navy called these vessels fleet submarines. 

On February 9th, 1945, a British and German submarine became tangled in an action that would spell a new paradigm for submarines. Lieutenant Jimmy Launders, captain of the British sub HMS Venturer detected the German U-boat, U-864, while the latter was snorkeling – running just below the surface with a tube extended above the waves to enable recharging of her batteries. After observing the U-boat’s zig-zag course for 45 minutes, LT Launders fired a spread of four torpedoes, sinking his opponent. This was the first and, to date, the only sinking of a submarine by another submarine. 

This account, coupled with the capture of sleek Type XXI U-boats after the fall of Nazi Germany at the end of the Second World War, ushered in the concept of hunter-killer (HK) submarines. Boats were designed for the express purpose of sinking other submarines. 

Introducing SSKs

In the late 1940s, the U.S. Navy began retrofitting its Gato and Tench-class boats around discoveries from reverse engineering the Type XXI boats in a program known as GUPPY for Greater Underwater Propulsion Power. These boats would become “attack” boats, charged with striking enemy shipping and surface combatants. 

Around the same time, the U.S. Navy realized that the Soviets had also acquired Type XXI U-Boats at the end of the war and would likely begin fielding an advanced sub fleet of their own. Optimistic estimates assumed the Soviets would retrofit or rebuild their existing sub force of approximately 360 boats while the conservative scenario imagined Soviet industry churning out subs at a rate on par with the Germans during the war eventually acquiring 2,000 of them. 

To counter this hypothetical force, the U.S. Navy realized surface and airborne assets would not be enough and instead set to developing dedicated HK submarines, designated SSKs. With the projections for the Soviet sub force in hand, the Navy estimated they would need between 250 and nearly 1,000 SSKs to counter the Soviet threat. As such, they set about designing a purpose-built SSK that was economical and easy to produce. The result was the Barracuda-class.

Barracuda-Class Submarine

Project Kayo was begun by the U.S. Navy in the aftermath of the Second World War to begin the process of designing HKs. The result was the K-1-class of submarines, eventually renamed the Barracuda-class. The design process took into account several considerations, mainly a desire for simplicity. The resulting boats were smaller than their peers and simpler to construct. The hope was that should production need to be scaled up, shipyards with no experience in constructing subs would be able to produce the boat. Additionally, it was hoped that due to the straightforward design, aircraft manufacturers who had not built ships but knew how to produce complex aircraft would be able to pick up some of the slack. 

The most notable contribution of Project Kayo to the HK concept was the bow-mounted BQR-4 passive sonar. Originally, plans called for this piece of equipment to wrap around the front of the sail, however testing on the USS Grampus, a Tench-class boat, had shown that this placement caused undue interference from the noise of the boat itself. This sonar allowed the boats to quietly hunt other subs and its location in the bow was a prescient design choice that was later shown to be highly effective. 

Obsolescence

By the early 1950s, the only three Barracudas to be built were in service and had been joined by seven Gato-class boats reconfigured in the HK format. Ultimately, HKs were a short-lived concept. By the end of the decade, the USS Nautilus had proven the viability of nuclear power, negating many advantages of the GUPPY retrofits. Furthermore, this technology allowed adversaries to maintain high speeds at depth for far longer than any conventionally powered sub could hope to match. In simulated trials, the USS Nautilus sank conventionally powered boats 300 times to only 3 losses herself. 

As planners realized the true potential of nuclear-powered subs, technology such as sonar and torpedo upgrades were also progressing apace. The result was folding the HK role back into the attack role to create subs that could carry out a wide variety of missions. This spelled the end for the Barracudas and by the end of the 1950s, two of the three were decommissioned. The third, USS Barracuda, served for several more decades as a training ship before her own retirement. 

About the Author 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.