page_title: Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay
section_title: The Navy years
hierarchical_section_title: Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay / History / The Navy years
caption_attribution_description: USS_Bancroft_sail; http://www.subasekb.navy.mil/bancroft2.htm
context_page_description: Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay is a base of the United States Navy located adjacent to the city of St. Marys in Camden County, Georgia, on the North River in southeastern Georgia, and 38 miles from Jacksonville, Florida. The Submarine Base is the U.S. Atlantic Fleet's home port for U.S. Navy Fleet ballistic missile nuclear submarines capable of being armed with Trident missile nuclear weapons. This submarine base covers about 16,000 acres of land, of which 4,000 acres are protected wetlands.
context_section_description: 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 United States naval basing agreement with Spain included the withdrawal of the fleet ballistic-missile submarine squadron, Submarine Squadron 16, from its operational base at Rota, Spain, north-west of Gibraltar, giving easy access to Atlantic Ocean patrol areas. 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 United States. It called for withdrawal of the submarine squadron from Rota by July 1979. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in June 1976.
  After careful review, Kings Bay was selected in November 1976, shortly after the election of the Georgian Jimmy Carter as the President. Soon afterward, 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 Simon Lake, when it arrived at Kings Bay on 2 July 1979. Four days later, USS James Monroe entered Kings Bay and moored alongside Simon Lake's starboard side to begin a routine refit in preparation for another nuclear weapons deterrence patrol. Kings Bay has been an operating submarine base ever since that time.
  In May 1979, the U.S. Navy selected Kings Bay as its preferred East Coast site for the new Ohio-class Trident submarines. On 23 October 1980, after a one-year environmental impact study was completed, and with Congressional approval, the Secretary of the Navy announced that Kings Bay would be the future home port for the new Trident-missile submarines in the Atlantic Ocean.
  The decision to base the Trident submarines at Kings Bay started the largest peacetime construction program ever undertaken by the U.S. Navy. The program took nine years to complete at a cost of about $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. She was followed by Pennsylvania later that same year. West Virginia was commissioned at Kings Bay in October 1990, and she was followed by Kentucky in July 1991; Maryland in June 1992; Nebraska in July 1993; Rhode Island in July 1994; Maine in August 1995, and Wyoming in July 1996. The commissioning of Louisiana in September 1997 gave Kings Bay its maximum number of ten Trident submarines.
  The enormous construction and organizational effort put forth by all the commands at Kings Bay reached their first goal in late March 1990, when the Trident II (D-5) missile made its first deterrent patrol on board the USS Tennessee.
caption: 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.
exif: {}