Effort underway to save USS Bremerton sail as monument

BREMERTON — Former Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent is spearheading an effort by the local chapter of the Navy League to save the sail and rudder of the city's namesake submarine.

The USS Bremerton, a fast-attack submarine that came to Sinclair Inlet in 2018 following a 37-year career at sea, awaits inactivation and decommissioning at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Lent and others hope there's time to lobby Navy leaders to preserve its sail and rudder as a point of pride for the city.

"We want people to see it — we think it's a pretty important legacy for the city," said Lent, mayor from 2009 to 2017 and a longtime member of the Bremerton-Olympic Peninsula Council of the Navy League. "We can get it, and it will be a big celebration."

But the effort is only in its infancy. The league will have to get permission from the Navy to attain the sail and rudder, find a spot in the community and raise what is likely to be millions of dollars to pull it off.

"This will take the efforts of many people and government agencies beyond the Navy League to make this happen," said David Ellingson, the league chapter's incoming president, in his installation remarks.

Lent points out the local Navy League, which advocates for and provides education to the public about the nation's sea services, successfully raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to place a Lone Sailor statue on the Bremerton Marina's breakwater. But not every effort to save a sub's sails have been successful. For instance, while $500,000 was raised for a museum to house the USS Narwhal on the Ohio River in Newport, Kentucky, the effort needed $2 million and was abandoned in 2006, according to The Cincinnati Post. The Narwhal is currently being recycled at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

Kitsap County already has three submarine sails preserved. The sail of the USS Parche, famous for its secret missions during the Cold War, sits outside the Puget Sound Navy Museum. The sail of the USS Woodrow Wilson is positioned at Deterrent Park on Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. The sail of the USS Sturgeon, an early nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, is permanently stationed at the Naval Undersea Museum at Keyport.

Should it get the money and the Navy's blessing for another, the Navy League will have to find a spot. Evergreen-Rotary Park, the city's most popular green space, has been floated as a possibility and was mentioned in Ellingson's remarks. But Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler doesn't believe Evergreen-Rotary Park is the right place for the sub sail.

"I think it's wonderful they want to create another monument that has a specific tie to Bremerton," he said. "We just don't see a spot at Evergreen where that would work. We're hesitant to put anything else in that park."

The mayor said he's supportive of finding an alternative.

It may be a while before the vessel would even be available to become a landmark. A lengthy queue of some 20 submarines await their final fates at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton — and the USS Bremerton, which just arrived in spring 2018, is at the back of the line.

The 360-foot-long Bremerton, known by its crew as the Badfish, was the 11th fast-attack submarine built in the Los Angeles class, which is now being retired. Little more than half of the class, which is being replaced by the Virginia class, has been retired. Among its missions, the 130-sailor fast attack submarines chase and destroy enemy subs and surface vessels, gather intelligence and perform surveillance and reconnaissance.

How long the Bremerton remains in line to be decommissioned and recycled at the shipyard — the only place in the world for such work on nuclear submarines — remains to be seen. It could be decades. The Bremerton is one of five subs awaiting or undergoing inactivation; ahead of that, there are 14 subs awaiting recycling. Currently, the USS Narwhal, which was decommissioned in 1999, is being recycled, according to shipyard staff.

Even when it begins the process of inactivation and decommissioning, it will take time and tens of millions of dollars. Ultimately, its nuclear reactor compartment will be hauled by barge to the Department of Energy's Hanford site and the sub itself will be recycled — with the sail and rudder saved, the Navy League hopes.

The submarine has more ties to the local area than just its name. Its klaxon, or horn, was named Annie after the daughter of the late Henry "Scoop" Jackson, longtime Washington senator and military advocate. It was Helen, Jackson's wife, that was the boat's sponsor when it was commissioned on March 28, 1981. The crew's mess area included faux stained glass windows that showed the Seattle waterfront and the Space Needle.

The Bremerton deployed 17 times in oceans all across the world, including its final mission in late 2017 and early 2018 to the western Pacific Ocean.

The USS Bremerton is the second Navy vessel named for the city; the first, a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser, was launched just after World War II. Competition over the name was won by Puget Sound Naval Shipyard workers, who sold more war bonds than employees at the Mare Island Shipyard in Vallejo, California. Though it was built in New Jersey, a ceremonial ship's bell — built by the shipyard and paid for by the Bremerton Chamber of Commerce — was transported and installed on the ship, which saw combat action in the Korean War.

When the ship was decommissioned in 1960 and scrapped 13 years later, the bell was saved, and it is now located at Bremerton City Hall inside the Norm Dicks Government Center.

No plans have been announced by the Navy for a third vessel bearing the name Bremerton.