Naval Base Kitsap

Naval Base Kitsap
Type	U.S. naval base
Coordinates	Latitude: Longitude:
Current commander	Capt. Pete Dawson
Occupants	13,000 active-duty personnel 13,000 DoD civilian employees 10,000 contractors

Naval Base Kitsap is a U.S. Navy base located on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state. It was created in 2004 by merging the former Naval Station Bremerton with Naval Submarine Base Bangor. The Mission of Naval Base Kitsap is to serve as the home base for the Navy's fleet throughout West Puget Sound and to provide base operating services, including support for both surface ships and Fleet Ballistic Missile and other nuclear submarines having their home ports at Bremerton and Bangor.

Naval Base Kitsap also provides service, programs, and facilities to meet the needs of their hosted combat commands, tenant activities, ships' crews, and civilian employees. Naval Base Kitsap is the largest naval organization in Navy Region Northwest, and it is composed of installations at Bremerton, Bangor, and Keyport, Washington. Naval Base Kitsap was the recipient of the 2005 Commander in Chief's Award for Installation Excellence - the Best Base in the U.S. Navy.

Naval Base Kitsap is the third-largest Navy base in the U.S. It features one of the U.S. Navy's "four nuclear shipyards, one of two nuclear-weapons facilities, the only West Coast dry dock capable of handling a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and the Navy's largest fuel depot."

History

Bangor

The Naval Support Base Bangor's naval history began in 1942 when it became a site for shipping ammunition to the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. For an expansion and to establish a permanent naval base, the U.S. Navy purchased 7,676 acres (3100 hectares) of land on the Hood Canal near the town of Bangor for approximately $18.7 million. The U.S. Naval ammunition magazine was established on June 5, 1944, for its construction, and it began operations in January 1945.

Beginning in World War II, and through the Korean War and the Vietnam War, until January 1973, the Bangor Annex continued its service as a U.S. Navy Ammunition Depot responsible for shipping conventional weapons abroad.

In 1973, the Navy announced the selection of the Bangor base as the home port for the first squadron of Ohio-class Trident Fleet Ballistic Missile submarines. On February 1, 1977, the Trident Submarine Base was officially activated. Naval Base Kitsap includes the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific which provides maintenance, spare parts, and spare nuclear warhead storage the Trident ballistic missiles that are carried by the nuclear submarines.

This Trident submarine base is the sole one for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, with the Trident submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia, for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet being the only other one.

Recent history

In 2010, after purchasing the base's first hybrid bus on April 29, 2010, Naval Base Kitsap purchased two additional hybrid buses, with five others to be delivered by the end of July. The diesel-electric vehicles are the Navy's first hybrids and were funded through the GSA American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Replacement/Exchange Program and are overseen by NAVFAC, the Navy's non-tactical vehicle program manager.

On Nov. 2, 2009, five protesters, including 82 year-old priest William J. Bichsel, S.J., cut through two fences to reach an area near where nuclear warheads are stored in bunkers. The protesters put up banners, sprinkled blood on the ground, scattered sunflower seeds and prayed until they were arrested; all faced prison sentences. Bichsel was released from federal prison on February 9, 2012.

Units, warships and submarines

(as of November 2010)^{[citation needed]}

• Commander, Carrier Strike Group Three

Bangor

• USS Henry M. Jackson (SSBN-730)
• USS Alabama (SSBN-731)
• USS Nevada (SSBN-733)
• USS Pennsylvania (SSBN-735)
• USS Kentucky (SSBN-737)
• USS Nebraska (SSBN-739)
• USS Maine (SSBN-741)
• USS Louisiana (SSBN-743)
• USS Ohio (SSGN-726)
• USS Michigan (SSGN-727)
• USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23)

Bremerton

• USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74)
• USS Seawolf (SSN-21)
• USS Connecticut (SSN-22)

External links

• NB Official website
• globalsecurity.org: Bangor
• globalsecurity.org: Bremerton
• Post-Vietnam: Non-Violence at Bangor, a multimedia history of protests at the Bangor Military Base from the Pacific Northwest Antiwar and Radical History Project.