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Photo # NH 98381-KN:  USS Los Alamos at Holy Loch, Scotland, circa the 1980s

Online Library of Selected Images:
-- U.S. NAVY SHIPS --

USS Los Alamos (AFDB-7), 1945-1996.
Originally ABSD-7

USS Los Alamos, made up of four advance base section dock elements, was originally the seven-section floating drydock ABSD-7. These seven sections (ABD-37, ABD-38, ABD-39, ABD-40, ABD-51, ABD-52 and ABD-58) were completed between October 1944 and March 1945 at Morgan City, Louisiana, Stockton, California, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were assembled into one unit at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, in March 1945 and were active there until March 1946. Reclassified AFDB-7 in August of that year, the drydock was disassembled and towed to the East Coast, where its sections were laid up at Green Cove Springs, Florida, early in 1947.

In 1961 four sections of AFDB-7 were reactivated and towed to Holy Loch, Scotland, where they were assembled as part of a maintenance facility for the Navy's then-new force of fleet ballistic missile submarines (SSBN). Placed in service under the name Los Alamos in November 1961, she was kept at Holy Loch for more than three decades as an important part of the Nation's strategic retaliatory force. Annually drydocking up to seventeen ballistic missile submarines and attack submarines (SSN), she permitted the forward deployment of these essential warships, thus acting as an important "force multiplier". With the elimination of the Poseidon ballistic missile system in the early 1990s, the need for the Holy Loch facility came to an end. Los Alamos was then disassembled and its sections returned to the United States. In 1996 six of the original AFDB-7 sections were transferred to the Brownsville Navigation District, in Texas. Another had been turned over to the U.S. Army in 1968.

This page features the only views we have related to USS Los Alamos (AFDB-7).


If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."

Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.

Photo #: NH 98381-KN (color)

USS Los Alamos (AFDB-7)

At Holy Loch, Scotland, with a ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) inside, circa the 1980s.
USS Simon Lake (AS-33) is in the left distance.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center.

Online Image: 97KB; 740 x 595 pixels

 



Note: For a black & white version of this image, see Photo # NH 98381.

Photo #: NH 98425

USS Los Alamos (AFDB-7)


A section of floating drydock Los Alamos under tow by the fleet tug Salinan (ATF-161), 1976.
In July-August 1976 Salinan and USS Shakori (ATF-162) towed a dry dock section from Charleston, South Carolina, to Holy Loch, Scotland. Salinan and USS Papago (ATF-160) towed other Los Alamos sections back to the U.S. from Holy Loch in October-November 1976.

Photograph received from USS Salinan in 1978.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center.

Online Image: 100KB; 740 x 590 pixels

 
Photo #: NH 65597-KN (color)

Insignia: USS Los Alamos (AFDB-7)

Artwork of the ship's emblem, received in 1968.

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Online Image: 88KB; 580 x 765 pixels

 


If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."


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Page made 26 March 2003