As a kid, I built the old Aurora plastic model of the USS Skipjack and played with it for hours. The kit is still around, repackaged by Revell Germany, but these days the kit is likely bought by adults instead of children.
Skipjack was the first submarine with both a nuclear powerplant and a tear-drop hull. It's the hull that made a difference in this revolutionary craft. Previous submarines, including the first nuke boat - Nautilus - used hulls shaped like the hulls of surface ships. Skipjack was different. Her hull worked best underwater and her nuclear reactor gave Skipjack the ability to stay submerged under crew or food supply was exhausted.
Here's a newsreel from the time. [Update: a link for those who might not be getting the embedded video.]
While on the slipways, one of her sister ships was cut open, and a length of new hull was added to turn her into the the first American ballistic missile submarine, USS George Washington.
No small irony here. In later years, as the Washingtons and follow-on boomers reached the end of their service life the missile compartments were removed and the subs turned into attack boats as they had originally started life.
This picture - of the 1950s and early 1960s vintage submarines awaiting disposal is remarkable for a whole bunch of reasons.
It includes the first of a class of operational nuke boats in history, for example, the USS Skate. She's the first blunt nosed submarine, two to the left as you look at the photo. Skipjack, incidentally, is second from the left of that entire section.
The longer conventional hull is USS Seawolf. She's the second nuclear powered submarine, after Nautilus and the only boat to carry an experimental reactor cooled by liquid metal. At this newsreel, you'll find a short segment on the Seawolf and her reactor problems.
Look closely and you can also see the de-evolution of some of the hulls back to training ships for attack subs.
All the boats in this picture are now buried in the desert, their entire reactor and associated bits stored in metal canisters.
-srbp-
