Pfishy (Submarine) Stuff

Intelligence matters. Where links have not been provided, please consider using your own intelligence on a rainy day perhaps.
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What really happened to USS Halibut's (SSGN-587), NavSource Submarine Photo Archive? Halibut was never considered a slack submarine and it has been decommissioned since 1976.
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Doubt that it had anything to do with this record catch:
How many realize that submariners (volunteers in the Silent Service) may not answer direct questions because they have been bound to secrecy, or even kept in the dark due to their individual needs to know ( So Silent it is The Mute Service? )?
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When a submariner denies certain things, it could be due to a required oath of secrecy, compartmentalization of secret facts to which he has not been made privy based on need-to-know, or simple honesty. Nothing is wrong with any of these possibilities.
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November 24, 2010 WIRED.com/DANGER ROOM Super-Silent Jimmy Carter Ready to Spy on North Korea

It carries Navy SEALs to slip into enemy ports undetected. And its class of subs have 26-and-a-half-inch-diameter torpedo tubes, wider than the rest of the submarine fleet, in case the Carter has to take out rival ships. “That’s a Seawolf, the most powerful attack sub in the world,” says Robert Farley, a maritime and international-relations scholar at the University of Kentucky.

According to Norman Polmar in The Naval Institute guide to the ships and aircraft of the U.S. fleet, Though the class carries the 21-inch Mk 48 ADCAP (Advanced Capability) torpedo, the [5-inch] larger-diameter tubes permit quiet, 'swim out' launch. Dr. Polmar also notes that Soviet-Russian attack submarines have both 21-inch diameter torpedo tubes and 26 1/2 -inch torpedo tubes---plus in some units (SSG/SSGN)---large diameter missile launching tubes.

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Which brings up the next question: Have you heard about the MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator)? Now you have.
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Have you heard about the supercavitating mine fields? You have now. UPDATE (2009): Transitioning Mine Warfare to Network-centric Sensor Analysis. It was only a matter of time.
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Finally, what else could 26 1/2-inch torpedo tubes be used for these days? Suppose there were an underwater (torpedo) version of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) ordnance. What could several underwater EMP bursts do to any detected or undetected submarines within their activation range? Very few people actually know, including M.E. ... Related science and technology, as far as the public knows, has involved airbursts. Seawater conducts as well as attenuates, much better than air, however.
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Submarines are always silent and strange.