A few things changed in the decade or so after the Langley was destroyed. Nuclear weapons were invented, for one. The Cold War got underway, and these weapons found their way onto turbojet-powered cruise missiles like the Regulus. Along with nuclear weapons came nuclear power, which could allow a submarine essentially infinite fuel and range when compared to their diesel-electric counterparts.
These varying pieces of technology came together in the form of the USS Halibut, a nuclear-powered submarine that carried up to five Regulus missiles. The missiles themselves were limited to a range of about 1,000 miles though, and there are a lot of inland targets more than 1,000 miles from open water.
However, it didn’t take long for the Navy to notice that the Regulus missiles were roughly the same size as a fighter aircraft. So, at least in theory, if the Halibut could carry one, it could carry the other. Engineers began work on the AN-1, a submarine that would have two internal hangers housing a total of eight fighters. The ship would surface for the fighters to launch, and they would do so vertically, pointing straight up, and all eight could be launched in under eight minutes.
In the end, the AN-1 was never built. In addition to advances in ballistic missile technology that quickly made the idea obsolete, the design relied on pilots performing vertical landings — noses to the sky! — a technique that only recently has become feasible with modern technology. In retrospect, maybe it would have been easier to make the aircraft themselves submersible.
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