USS Laffey (DD-724)

USS Clamagore (SS-343) is a Balao-class submarine, presently a museum ship at the Patriot's Point Naval & Maritime Museum outside Charleston, South Carolina. Built in 1945 for the United States Navy, she was still in training when World War II ended. She was named for the clamagore. A National Historic Landmark, she is the only known surviving example of a GUPPY type submarine. Clamagore was built by Electric Boat Co. in Groton, Connecticut near the end of World War II. She was launched on 25 February 1945 and sponsored by Miss Mary Jane Jacobs, daughter of Vice Admiral Randall Jacobs and commissioned on 28 June 1945, with Commander S.C. Loomis, Jr., taking command. Clamagore was decommissioned on 12 June 1975 and stricken on 27 June 1975 after having served in the Navy for thirty years. She was donated as a museum ship on 6 August 1979. Clamagore arrived at Patriot's Point Naval & Maritime Museum, Charleston, South Carolina in May 1981, where she was moored as a museum ship along with aircraft carrier Yorktown and destroyer Laffey. Clamagore was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark on 29 June 1989. According to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Clamagore "is now the only surviving GUPPY type III submarine in the United States. She represents the continued adaptation and use of war-built diesel submarines by the Navy for the first two decades after the war." The GUPPY conversion submarines constituted the bulk of the nation's submarine force through the mid-1960s. On January 10, 2017 the Palm Beach County Commissioners voted unanimously to approve funds for the vessel to be sunk as an artificial reef. On 16 April 2019 a group of retired submariners sued the State of South Carolina to save the Clamagore. In early 2020, the museum formed a plan to sink Clamagore at the Vermilion Reef site before the 2021 hurricane season. (Source: Wikipedia)