During her commissioned service she submerged and surfaced 730 times and traveled approximately 325,000 nautical miles (602,000 km; 374,000 mi) equal to the distance from the Earth to the Moon and halfway back.

Tullibee was the result of Project Nobska, a study ordered in 1956 by Admiral Arleigh Burke, then Chief of Naval Operations, from the Committee on Undersea Warfare of the National Academy of Sciences.

That report emphasized the need for deeper-diving, ultraquiet submarine designs using long-range sonar to accomplish the anti-submarine (ASW) 'hunter-killer' mission.

[5] The Navy then attempted to scale up the Tullibee engineering plant to make it suitable for a full-sized attack submarine, but the result - the Glenard P. Lipscomb - was also judged to be not completely successful and was not repeated.

[citation needed] Shifted back to New London, Tullibee deployed to the Caribbean Sea in January 1969 following refresher training and continued developmental work during 1969 and 1970.

During this period, she took part in NATO and Sixth Fleet exercises and made port visits to Athens, Greece; Naples, Italy; and Rota, Spain, before returning to New London on 14 December, having traveled some 20,000 miles (30,000 km) in 135 days.

[citation needed] In early 1971, the submarine returned to developmental exercises once more to work on SSN tactics and also made a port visit to Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Participating in a major NATO exercise in the western Atlantic, Tullibee visited Halifax, Nova Scotia, before she received the Meritorious Unit Commendation for her contingency operations in the Mediterranean Sea during the previous year (from 9 September to 31 October 1970).

During this period, too, Tullibee received the Arleigh Burke Fleet Trophy for significant improvement in the ship's battle efficiency and readiness for that fiscal year.

[citation needed] Tullibee subsequently participated in sonar evaluation tests with British destroyer HMS Matapan (D43) in the Caribbean Sea in two separate deployments between April and June 1976, before undergoing another extended upkeep period.

She returned to her home port on 24 April 1977 and during the remainder of the year, Tullibee underwent three upkeep periods interspersed with ASW exercises off the east coast of the United States.

[citation needed] Decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 25 June 1988, ex-Tullibee entered the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program on 5 January 1995.

[7] [citation needed] Other submarines with features first seen in Tullibee This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.