It was a big deal when the first American nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarine sailed into Sydney Harbour for the first time on 1st May 1960.
In this special report on that visit, we feature an edited extract from the 2024 Walkley Award winning book, ‘Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty’, by Andrew Fowler, published in July by Melbourne University Press.
And we include a photographic feature of this deeply forgotten but significant event in Australia’s history.
In May 1960, at the height of the Cold War, the submarine USS Halibut sailed into Sydney Harbour.
The crowds who lined the shores were there to mark the anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, where Australian and US forces had turned back a major Japanese advance in the South Pacific during World War II. Eighteen years later it was still viewed as a defining moment when the United States had helped ‘save’ Australia from the Japanese.
On its maiden voyage, the Halibut sailed from the United States to New Zealand before heading for Australia. It carried five Regulus 1 cruise missiles. At the time they were state-of-the-art weapons that could be steered remotely, able to hit a target 800 kilometres away.
To the delight of the estimated 5,000 people gathered on the Domain overlooking the main naval fleet base at Garden Island, the captain of the US sub opened the dome on its deck and hoisted a Regulus onto the launch ramp.
The missile on display wisely had no warhead attached. The missiles below deck were able to carry nuclear warheads, the world’s first lightweight strategic nuclear bomb. The Regulus could carry either a W27 or W5 warhead; the W5 had an explosive power three times greater than the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
A 2023 Australian Sea Power Centre report did hail the USS Halibut as the US Navy’s first “nuclear-powered cruise missile armed submarine”, and added that the Regulus was the forerunner of the Polaris nuclear missile. But it left out the fact that the Regulus I, like the Polaris missile, carried a nuclear payload.
In its efforts to make nuclear-powered submarine visits seem normal, Sea Power had drawn attention to an example when the United States had indeed brought nuclear weapons into Australia in the past.
Along with the USS Halibut on that autumn day in 1960, the USS Canberra also sailed into Sydney Harbour. All US cruisers were named after a US state capital, but the USS Canberra was an exception—a tribute from the United States for HMAS Canberra’s role in the Pacific War, and its loss to lethal US ‘friendly fire’ in 1942.
Eighty-one years later, on 21 July 2023, another USS Canberra sailed into Sydney Harbour to be commissioned, continuing the historical connection.
On it the RAN bolted a sign carrying the emblem of a kangaroo with the US stars that they called the ‘star-spangled kangaroo’.
History was repeating itself as the United States prepared for a new war. What the Halibut had helped create with a nuclear-tipped cruise missile might also be new again.
The USS Halibut – a photographic feature
In sourcing photographs for the above article, Declassified Australia made contact with one of the American Navy submariners who had sailed into Sydney on the USS Halibut.
Gary Flynn was a young Missile Technician on this the Halibut’s shakedown cruise to Auckland, Wellington, Sydney and Melbourne. He now runs the USS Halibut history website dedicated to remembering the first US nuclear-armed nuclear-powered submarine.
He recalls that the occasion of the visit of the newly constructed high-tech submarine to Sydney attracted large crowds.
“My visit to Sydney was nothing but positive. The people were more than welcoming. We couldn’t pay for a beer in the pubs,” he recalls.
The goodwill visit was in fact a major public relations event for the Americans. It was attended by the US Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Hopwood.
According to the official RAN News at the time, the Admiral spoke highly of the alliance of the United States and Australia in the Pacific, and stressed that it must remain active “to ensure peace and freedom in the Pacific”. The personnel may change, but 64 years later the messaging remains the same.
Flynn says people he met in Sydney during the visit seemed little concerned having a nuclear armed and powered submarine in the harbour.
“While some may have been uneasy with the idea of nucs in the harbour, I only heard concern over the crew’s radiation exposure living with a nuclear reactor,” he told Declassified Australia. “I had a cheeky little gal ask me, ‘Do you glow in the dark?’, to which I replied, ‘Maybe just a bit, let’s go to your place and see’.”
During the visit a fashion parade was held on board the boat, featuring a number of glamorously dressed fashion models strutting on the deck in front of a group of snapping photographers.
In another PR stunt that may give present-day Defence Minister Richard Marles ideas, the then Minister for the Navy, and future Liberal Prime Minister, John Gorton travelled on board the submarine on the 700 kilometre trip from Sydney to Melbourne. He must have been impressed as he later approved the purchase for Australia’s submarine fleet of six British-designed Oberon-class submarines.
The American submarine visit to Australia was part of a public relations wave to wash over Australia, in an earlier iteration of a ‘pivot to Asia’. Just three years after the visit the Liberal government gave approval for the construction of a highly secret US nuclear submarine communications base to be built at North West Cape in Western Australia.
Just two years after that, Australian military cooperation with the United States extended further when the Liberal government agreed to requests for the US to build a top secret satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap, and to send thousands of Australian troops to fight in the American war in Vietnam.
But putting the PR of the goodwill visit aside, the real business of the Halibut was war. It was the first nuclear cruise missile-armed, nuclear-powered submarine in the US submarine fleet.
In March 1960 while cruising to Australia, the USS Halibut successfully slid one of its test Regulus missiles up onto the launcher, and fired it. This successful launch was the first ever firing of a nuclear-capable cruise missile from the deck of a nuclear submarine.
Built to fight a nuclear war against Russia, the submarine, after its Australia visit, went on ‘nuclear deterrent patrols‘ off the Russian coast in the Western Pacific, in rotation with four other non-nuclear powered submarines. As tensions rose between the US and Russia over the Cuban missile crisis, these nuclear submarines were primed to fire their nuclear missiles into Russia.
The US Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet had just entered the nuclear missile age – and Australia was along for the ride.
Thanks to Gary Flynn for kind permission to publish his photographs from the 1960 USS Halibut visit to Sydney.
PETER CRONAU
Before you go…
If you appreciate Declassified Australia’s investigations, remember that it costs both time and money. Join almost 10,000 followers and get our Newsletter for updates.
We’d really appreciate if you could subscribe to Declassified Australia to support our ongoing investigations. Thank you.
