Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay

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Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay is a base of the United States Navy in Camden County, in southeast Georgia. It is the Atlantic homeport for US ballistic missile submarines. The base encompasses about 16,000 acres (64 km²), of which 4,000 acres (16 km²) are protected wetlands.

1 The early years
2 The Army Years
3 The Navy Years
4 Homeported ships
5 External links

[edit] The early years

Archeological research has revealed a pre-Columbian Indian presence throughout the area, dating back thousands of years.

Early in the 19th century, much of what is now the submarine base was the site of several plantations, including Cherry Point, Harmony Hall, New Canaan, Marianna and Kings Bay. Beginning in the 1790s, Thomas King built a plantation along the bay. John Houston McIntosh built a considerably larger plantation known as New Canaan, where he grew cotton and sugar cane.

The plantation system declined following the Civil War, and the land broken up into smaller holdings. Residents harvested abundant fish and other seafood, and trapped and hunted to supplement small-scale farming of corn, rice, sugar and other vegetables.

[edit] The Army Years

The US Army began to acquire land at Kings Bay in 1954 to build a military ocean terminal to ship ammunition in case of a national emergency. Construction actively began in 1956 and was completed in 1958. Since there was no immediate operational need for the installation, however, it was placed in an inactive ready status.

The most prominent feature of the terminal was its 2,000-foot-long, 87-foot-wide concrete and steel wharf (600 by 26 m). It had three parallel railroad tracks, enabling the simultaneous loading of several ammunition ships from rail cars and trucks.

Elsewhere aboard the base, the Army built 47 miles of railroad tracks. Spurs off the main line ran into temporary storage areas protected by earthen barricades. These mounds of dirt, still prominent features in many areas of the base, were designed to localize damage in case of explosive accidents.

Although the Army base was never activated to serve its primary purpose, it was used twice for other missions. In 1964, as Hurricane Dora hammered the area, nearly 100 area residents were sheltered aboard base. Also, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an Army Transportation Battalion of 1,100 personnel and 70 small boats took up position at Kings Bay.

[edit] The Navy Years

The chain of events that led to today’s combination of high-tempo submarine operations at Kings Bay and the complex construction project that reshaped the face of thousands of acres of land began in 1975. At that time, treaty negotiations between Spain and the United States were in progress. A proposed change to the U.S. base agreement with Spain was the withdrawal of the fleet ballistic-missile submarine squadron, Submarine Squadron 16, from its operational base at Rota, Spain. Anticipating that this would take place, the Chief of Naval Operations ordered studies to select a new refit site on the East Coast.

In January 1976, the negotiators initialed a draft treaty between Spain and the U.S.; it called for withdrawal of the squadron from Rota by July 1979. The U.S. Congress ratified the treaty in June 1976.

After careful review, Kings Bay was selected in January 1978. That same month, the first Navy personnel arrived in the Kings Bay area and started preparations for the orderly transfer of property from the Army to the Navy. Naval Submarine Support Base Kings Bay was established in a developmental status 1 July 1978. The base—now Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, not only occupies the former Army terminal land, but several thousand additional acres.

Preparations for the arrival of the submarine squadron went forward with haste throughout the remainder of 1978 and into 1979. Commander Submarine Squadron 16 greeted the submarine tender USS Simon Lake (AS-33), when it arrived at Kings Bay on 2 July 1979. Four days later, USS James Monroe (SSBN-622) entered Kings Bay and moored alongside Simon Lake’s starboard side to begin a routine refit in preparation for another deterrent patrol. Kings Bay has been an operating submarine base since that day.

In May 1979, the Navy selected Kings Bay as the preferred East Coast site for the Ohio-class submarine. On 23 October 1980, after a one-year environmental impact study was completed and with Congressional approval, the Secretary of the Navy announced Kings Bay as the future home of the new Trident-missile submarine.

The Trident-basing decision touched off the largest peacetime construction program ever undertaken by the U.S. Navy. The program took nine years to complete at a cost of $1.3 billion. The building project included the construction of three major commands: Trident Training Facility (TTF), Trident Refit Facility (TRF), and Strategic Weapons Facility, Atlantic (SWFLANT).

On 15 January 1989, the first Trident submarine, Tennessee, arrived at Kings Bay. It was followed by Pennsylvania later that same year. West Virginia was commissioned at Kings Bay in October 1990 and was followed by Kentucky’s arrival in July 1991; Maryland, June 1992; Nebraska, July 1993; Rhode Island, July 1994; Maine, August 1995, and Wyoming in July 1996. The commissioning of Louisiana in September 1997 gave Kings Bay its full complement of 10 Trident submarines.

Sail of USS George Bancroft on display at main gate,
dedicated 7 April 2000, as part of Kings Bay's celebration
of the submarine forces' 100th anniversary.

The enormous effort put forth by all the commands at Kings Bay reached fruition in late March 1990, when the Trident II (D-5) missile made its first deterrent patrol on board Tennessee.

The end of the Cold War and the reorganization of military forces in the 1990s affected Kings Bay. A nuclear policy review recommended the Navy reduce the Ohio-class fleet ballistic-missile submarines from 18 to 14 by 2005.

The decision was made to decommission the four oldest Ohio-class submarines and convert them to conventional (SSGN) platforms. Pennsylvania departed 4 August 2003 and Kentucky departed 24 August for SubBase Bangor, Washington, as part of balancing the Trident fleet. Additionally, the Louisiana and Maine have relocated to the Pacific Fleet. Two SSGNs are slated to for NSB Kings Bay and arrive in 2006. The USS Florida has arrived, and the USS Georgia is still in testing.