The Mystery of the USS Jimmy Carter and "Mission 7"

On Jan. 20, 2013, the Seawolf-class attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter left her homeport in Bangor, Washington. Less than two months later, the submarine appeared at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for repairs.

It was all quite mysterious. During her time at sea, we don’t know where Jimmy Carter was or what her crew of nearly 150 were precisely doing. The Seawolf-class is one of the most secretive weapons in America’s arsenal, and information about the Navy’s “Silent Service” is difficult to discover … by design.

We know Jimmy Carter was on some kind of mission, which the ship’s official annual history vaguely referred to as Mission 7. “Performed under a wide range of adverse and extremely stressful conditions without external support, this deployment continued USS Jimmy Carter‘s tradition of excellence in pursuit of vital national security goals,” the history stated