Arctic Submarine Reporting Stirs Memories at SSC Pacific
Navy NewsStand
Story Number: NNS091028-07
Release Date: 10/28/2009 12:08:00 PM
By Tom LaPuzza, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific Public Affairs
SAN DIEGO (NNS) -- When USS Annapolis (SSN-760) surfaced in the Arctic earlier this month, it brought back fond memories for some employees at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific).
The Navy's capability to operate its submarines in the Arctic is the direct result of pioneering work more than 60 years ago at SSC Pacific, then called the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory (NEL).
NEL's Dr. Waldo Lyon, during his lifetime the world's foremost Arctic expert, made the sensational, and generally disbelieved, claim in 1948, "The reality of a polar submarine that can navigate the entire Arctic Ocean is not only admissible, but may be an immediate practicality."
In less than 10 years, with Lyon aboard as ice pilot, USS Nautilus (SSN-571) steamed from the Pacific to the Atlantic, passing not only underwater but under ice through the geographic North Pole on August 3, 1958. That was possible because Lyon and his associates at the NEL Arctic Submarine Laboratory designed and built an under-ice sonar and an upside-down fathometer (basically the standard model, but inverted and placed on the submarine's sail to determine how close the ice canopy was overhead).
The team also built a sea-ice cryostat, where they could grow "true" sea ice with appropriate brine content and practice surfacing a one-quarter scale model submarine sail through the ice. That led, a year later in 1959, to Lyon's return to the Arctic aboard USS Skate (SSN 578) and its surfacing through the ice at the North Pole, and to many subsequent under-ice operations. The "ice camps" run by Lyon's lab every year gathered the scientific data that was his real interest.
Several current SSC employees are ice camp veterans. Diane Seltzer, Lyon's administrative assistant for 10 years, who now works in the SSC Pacific Public Affairs Office, provided ground-crew support to the 1994 ICEX, but only spent a few hours on the ice.
In 1999, she was asked if she'd like to do the cooking for the camp crew; she jumped at the opportunity. "You don't turn down those kinds of life experiences," she said, despite facing the challenge of feeding as many as 40. She gathered appropriate recipes and with assistance from the camp support contractor did all the "shopping" required. She was soon standing in the ice camp mess hall in front of the stove, where the temperature at boot level was 32 degrees, and at head level 72. She spent 18 days on the ice.
All in all, she said, it was "fabulous. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. How many people can say they were standing on an ice floe, feeling it move underfoot as the submarine USS Hawkbill surfaced through the ice a few feet away?"
Another ice camp veteran is Gary Wang, who as a young Navy scientist participated in the 1985 ICEX. He is now a Senior Executive Service (SES) manager, serving as SSC Pacific's director of Science, Technology and Engineering.
Ken Register, who currently heads a division that develops tactical data links, was an engineer working on anti-submarine torpedos when he participated in ICEX 1-86. High point of that exercise was the first rendezvous of three submarines at the North Pole—USS Ray (SSN-653), USS Hawkbill (SSN-666) and USS Archerfish (SSN-678). Register, who tested torpedo performance in the frigid water, was one of 17 SSC Pacific employees who earned the Meritorious Unit Commendation for that effort.
The arctic lab, still operating in San Diego and located near SSC Pacific, is now part of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Keyport Division.
For more news from Space and Naval Warfare Systems, visit www.navy.mil/local/spawar/.
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