By Jared Ebersole in Video — 02 Jul 2026

The Nuclear-Missile Submarine You Can Walk Through in Manhattan

USS Growler was built to hide nuclear cruise missiles at sea. Now the diesel-electric Cold War submarine sits in plain view beside the Intrepid Museum.

USS Growler was built to disappear.

Now it is parked beside a museum ship on the Hudson, where tourists squeeze through its hatches with cameras and backpacks.

That reversal is what makes Growler so strange. It was not a nuclear-powered submarine, but it was a nuclear-missile submarine: a diesel-electric boat built to carry Regulus nuclear cruise missiles as part of America's early Cold War deterrent. Its job was to hide at sea, wait for orders no one wanted to give, then surface long enough to launch a nuclear weapon.

Where to see it

USS Growler at the Intrepid Museum, Pier 86, West 46th Street and 12th Avenue, New York, NY 10036

Growler was commissioned in 1958, one of two Grayback-class guided-missile submarines built around the Regulus missile system. The Intrepid Museum describes it as one of America's first nuclear-missile submarines and the only American guided-missile submarine open to the public.

The design came from an awkward technological moment.

The Navy wanted a sea-based nuclear deterrent before modern ballistic-missile submarines were ready. The Polaris system would later allow nuclear-powered submarines to launch ballistic missiles from underwater, while staying hidden. Regulus was earlier and much clumsier. It was a jet-powered cruise missile that had to be launched from the surface.

That created a brutal contradiction.

The whole point of a submarine is to hide. But to fire a Regulus missile, Growler had to surface, open its missile hangars, move the missile onto a launcher, and prepare the shot while exposed on the ocean. Educational material from the Intrepid notes that launching a Regulus missile took about 15 minutes. During that time, the submarine was visible to aircraft, ships, radar, and anything else hunting for it.

Then the missile had to be guided.

Regulus did not fly with the autonomous precision people now expect from modern cruise missiles. It required radio-command guidance from a submarine, ship, or aircraft along the flight path. That meant the launching submarine could be forced to keep transmitting after firing, turning a hidden deterrent platform into something dangerously close to a beacon.

For the crew, the technology meant long patrols inside a very small steel world.

Intrepid Museum material says Growler was operated by a crew of about 90 men who volunteered for deterrent patrols near the Soviet Union's Pacific coast. Patrols could last more than two months. The submarine carried the anxiety of nuclear war in cramped bunks, narrow passageways, diesel machinery, missile handling spaces, control rooms, and the ordinary discomforts of submarine life.

The men were waiting for an order they hoped never came.

That is the moral tension inside Growler. It was part of deterrence, meaning its purpose was not to fight a conventional battle but to make nuclear war less likely by making retaliation possible. The submarine's value came from the possibility of launch, not the launch itself.

But the Regulus system was obsolete almost as soon as it became operational.

Polaris changed everything. A submarine that could remain submerged and launch ballistic missiles from underwater was far safer, stealthier, and more credible than a diesel boat forced to surface before firing. Growler's active career was short. It was decommissioned in 1964 after only a few years of deterrent service.

Then it nearly disappeared for good.

After years in reserve, Growler was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 1980 and was slated to become a torpedo target. Congress intervened in 1988, transferring the submarine to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. It opened to the public in 1989 and later underwent major restoration work before reopening again after the museum's renovation.

That is why walking through Growler feels so different from looking at a missile behind glass.

The submarine is the weapon's living space. It shows the cost of hiding deterrence inside human bodies: the bunks, valves, pipes, control stations, torpedo room, missile control spaces, and tight doors that made Cold War strategy physical. The missile on display outside is dramatic. The inside of the boat is more claustrophobic and more revealing.

Growler was built to make itself unseen.

Its second life depends on the opposite: letting people finally see what nuclear deterrence looked like before it became sleek, silent, and ballistic.