High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! USS Bass (SSK-2/SS-551), a Barracuda-class submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the bass, an edible, spiny-finned fish. Bass was laid down by the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. She was launched on 2 May 1951 as K-2 sponsored by Mrs. John J. Crane, widow of Commander Crane, and commissioned on 16 November 1951 with Lieutenant Commander D.E. Bunting in command. The three SSK boats, Barracuda (SSK-1), Bass (SSK-2), and Bonita (SSK-3), were built around the large BQR-4 bow-mounted sonar array as part of Project Kayo, which experimented in the use of passive acoustics with low-frequency, bow sonar arrays. When the boat was rigged for silent running, these arrays gave greatly-improved convergence zone detection ranges against snorkeling submarines. The SSKs themselves were limited in their anti-submarine warfare abilities by their low speed and their need to snorkel periodically, but the advances in sonar technology they pioneered were invaluable to later nuclear-powered submarines.