Memorial to Honor Cold War Subs

They were once a common sight in Charleston Harbor - submarines streaming out to sea. Bound for the depths of oceans around the world, the crews of these black killing machines served in a silent, secret war with no battles, few casualties, and no clear beginning or end.

The submarines are gone now, the naval base shut down and the Cold War over. This period in Charleston's history is fading from memory.

But organizers of a new Cold War submarine memorial at Patriot's Point in Mount Pleasant hope to change that.

"The people who live here, it's part of their history," said Albert Baciocco, a retired admiral and former commander of the Charleston Naval Base. "I want to remind them that they played a major role, whether they know it or not." Baciocco (pronounced Bo-choke-o) and other volunteers have raised money for the memorial during the past six years. After a two-year delay because of a lack of money, the memorial is now under construction just a stone's throw away from the Patriot's Point Naval Museum. At a cost of nearly $1 million, a fourth of which was provided by the state Legislature, the memorial will feature a submarine sail and hull burrowed in the earth, with white pampas grass around its bow to create the illusion of a foamy wake.

While there's been talk of a Cold War museum in Virginia, and other memorials around the country pay tribute to individual submarines, this is the first memorial dedicated to the submariners of the Cold War, their families and those who supported them, Baciocco said. But Baciocco, whose crew cut is now gray, said it wasn't easy to raise money for a memorial to a weapon that few people saw in a war that saw no battles. "I couldn't do it as a Cold War memorial. As a Cold War submarine memorial, I had half a chance," he said.

In Charleston, the conflict was perhaps more evident than anywhere else in the country, with the subs in the harbor serving as an almost daily reminder. The harbor was too shallow for them to submerge completely, so submarines often could be spotted heading for or returning from the Atlantic. Few Charlestonians, including the sailors' families, knew what took place in between. "We never advertised what we were doing," Baciocco said. "We were the silent service."
But after Nov. 15, 1960, there was no doubt of the city's role in the nation's defense. James B. Osborne, a retired rear admiral, remembers that it was a pleasant day. He was the commander of the USS George Washington, the first U.S. submarine equipped with nuclear warheads, which was deployed from Charleston for its first mission. Hundreds of sailors on shore and nearby ships saluted the men aboard the George Washington as the sub cruised down the Cooper River. The men on the George Washington returned the salutes. As the sub left the base, anti-nuclear protestors jumped into the Cooper River and swam toward the sub. Navy wives, who had gathered on the beach at Sullivan's Island, waved as the submarine headed out to sea. "Even the guys who were making history didn't know they were making history," said Osborne, now 84 and a resident of Summerville. "I didn't have any doubt about it. I lived it."

According to Osborne, the 66-day mission in the Norwegian Sea was uneventful, other than the intense interest before and after by the national media, the military brass, and President Dwight Eisenhower. But the mission marked the beginning of rapid improvements to the nation's submarine fleet. The George Washington carried 16 warheads, each hundreds of times more powerful than the combined destructive force of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Later missiles carried even more destructive power, from Polaris to Poseidon to Trident, each with multiple warheads, and each warhead thousands of times more explosive power than the World War II atomic bombs. New generations of subs were bigger and stealthier - quieter than the engine of an idling car. Being mobile, hidden and ready, they were arguably the most potent deterrent against a country armed to the teeth with warheads trained on the U.S.
Charleston didn't build the subs, but it manned them and assembled and installed the nuclear missiles. At one point, the bustling Navy facilities were servicing 34 "Boomers," so-named because of the ballistic missiles they carried, and 15 fast attack subs. The submarine crews included 7,500 sailors backed by the Polaris missile facility, the Naval weapons station, two sub tenders, a ballistic missile training center, and the staff of two submarine squadrons. All told, as many as 20,000 military and civilians had a role in Charleston's submarine force, which peaked from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, according to Baciocco.

George Hopkins, a College of Charleston history professor, said that the Cold War, to a large degree, drove the area's economy. "Certainly, this city and this area played a significant role in the Cold War. So much of the prosperity of the area was subsidized by military expenditures," he said. Charleston's prominent role in the Cold War also put it on the map - Soviet map. Hopkins said Charleston reportedly was on the Soviet Union's top five or top 10 list for nuclear destruction.

The Cold War was never officially declared a war and was never declared over. Fought by proxy, as in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, it was largely a test of political ideology and economic stamina. The war ended, arguably, with Mikhail Gorbachev's renunciation of past Soviet policy to crush rebellion in breakaway Eastern bloc republics, Hopkins said.