GROTON, Conn. – The USS Indiana returned to its homeport in Connecticut on Sept. 25 following six months at sea.

The submarine and its crew, which left its port mere weeks into the early stages of COVID-19 in the United States, has had no contact with the outside world since March, aside from two pier-side port visits in Spain.

The crew was made up of 33 sailors in submarine warfare and more than 80 crew members out of 130 were first-time deployers.

The mission of the submarine was to train sailors assigned to fast attack submarines for combat.

The biggest challenges during the deployment were keeping the Indiana crew motivated in addition to dealing with the uncertainty the pandemic brought to the crew’s families, said Master Chief Charles Simonds.

“We hoped that our families were going to handle it, and they did exactly that,” Simonds, Chief of the Boat (COB), said.

Indiana was commissioned in Sept. 2018 as the third U.S. warship named after the state of Indiana.