This Auxiliary General Submarine (AGSS) was the third United States Navy vessel to be named after the albacore, and holds a special place in history as the first Navy-designed vessel with a true underwater hull of cylindrical shape that has become the standard for today's submarines worldwide.

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Designed, built, and maintained by the skilled engineers and craftsmen of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Albacore was launched on August 1st, 1953 and served as a research submarine until 1972. Used for testing control and propulsion systems, sonar equipment, dive brakes, escape mechanisms, and various innovative theories and equipment, Albacore was truly a unique Navy floating laboratory.

 

Albacore's teardrop-shaped hull was the prototype for the Navy's nuclear powered submarine force and was the first boat built specifically to operate underwater. Prior to Albacore, submarines had been characterized as surface vessels that could submerge. With her revolutionary hull design and state-of-the-art systems, Albacore provided the Navy with an engineering platform to evaluate systems and design features before including them in future classes of submarines. Her motto was Praenuntius Futuri (Forerunner of the Future) and her mission was experimental.

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Albacore was only two-thirds the length of a World War II Fleet Boat and, when outfitted with her special high capacity silver-zinc battery, could outrun a contemporary nuclear submarine. In 1966, she set the record as the world's fastest submarine having attained an underwater speed of nearly 40 miles per hour.

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In 1972, Albacore was decommissioned and placed in reserve at the Inactive Ship Facility in Philadelphia. Ten years later, Portsmouth City Council member, Bill Keefe, began an effort to return Albacore to her place of birth as a permanent display. It would take two more years before Albacore was towed from Philadelphia back to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. In May of 1985, Albacore began the process of being maneuvered through a dismantled railroad bridge and a cutout section of four lane highway toward her new home. On October 3rd, 1985 she was settled on a concrete cradle at Albacore Park.

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August 30th, 1986 marked the grand opening of the USS Albacore to the public, and on April 11th, 1986 she was designated as a National Historic Landmark.