by the German navy. By 1953, the USS Tunny had been adapted into a true missile submarine but it was still an awkward process to launch the Regulus cruise missile, a nuclear-capable turbojet-powered, second-generation cruise missile that developed from the tests conducted with the German V-1 flying bomb. The submarine had to surface and the missile was manually loaded from storage onto a launch rail on the submarine's deck before it could be launched. During the process, the surfaced submarine was visible and vulnerable to attack by enemy aircraft. Grayback-class submarines were later built to launch missiles from the surface. On the Graybacks, two missile hangars allowed the craft to carry two Regulus II or four Regulus I missiles each. The U.S.'s first operational ballistic missile submarine, USS George Washington, standing out into the Atlantic Missile Test Range, successfully conducted the first UGM-27 Polaris missile launch from a submerged submarine on July 20, 1960, establishing the nuclear deterrent role for missile submarines. USS George Washington also conducted the first successful submerged SLBM launch with a Polaris A-1 on July 20, 1960. In March 2010, Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III , in a speech on missile defense, stated: although Project Laffarenz did not come to fruition, it illustrates how our adversaries will always be reaching for new and ingenious ways to cause us harm. Their tactics may make straightforward use of weapons systems we are prepared to defend against. But they may also marry high and low technologies in unexpected combinations, forcing us to quickly adapt. See also USS Barb (SS-220) Japanese I-400-class submarine aircraft carrier Japanese Type AM submarine aircraft carrier Sea Dragon (rocket) References Bibliography External links Rocket U-Boat Program V-weapons World War II submarines of Germany Ballistic missile submarines