Sub Center Gives Tours Bayview Acoustical Testing Unit Briefly Lifts Curtain Of Secrecy

Succumbing to her longtime curiosity, Katherine von Hagen once pulled up to the guard station at the Navy’s Research Acoustic Detachment and asked if she might take a tour.

“No ma’am,” the Coeur d’Alene woman was brusquely told. “Would you turn your car around, please?”

But on Saturday, the place where top-secret research goes on threw open its doors for a 50th anniversary celebration. Von Hagen and several hundred others listened to politicians and Navy brass, watched demonstrations and looked at historical photos. Brilliant sunlight bounced off Lake Pend Oreille, as if ordered for the occasion.

The detachment’s mission is to make nuclear submarines as quiet as possible. Secrecy has been a priority.

Visiting photographers are still told where not to aim their cameras. But security has been less of an issue since 1989, when the Soviet Union crumbled.

These days, said base commander Rick Schulz, America’s potential enemies are Third-World countries with diesel-powered fleets.

Besides, the Navy is keenly aware that it’s competing for fewer defense dollars.

“We want to let the people who pay taxes to know - as much as we can without compromising security - about what we do,” Schulz said.

Saturday’s keynote speaker was Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho, who chairs the U.S. Senate’s strategic force subcommittee. He touted the additional $60 million in submarine research money that Congress put into next year’s budget. That means an additional $3 million funneled into the operation at Bayview.

Rear Adm. John Shipway, the Navy’s deputy commander for submarines, told of taking the USS Los Angeles all over the globe without being detected, thanks to the work done at Bayview.

Lake Pend Oreille’s deep, still water, its cold temperature and lack of obstructions make it “a remarkably difficult place to be stealthy in,” Shipway said.

“There’s no place on Earth that we in the United States can use that has the attributes of this site,” he said.

The scenic attributes of Lake Pend Oreille have come as a stunning, and delightful, surprise to those from around the country who work at Bayview.

Today, 150 people - all civilians, except for the commander - work in its quiet splendor.

William Greenfield, who twice served as commander, recalled how he decided to retire in Bayview upon seeing it for the first time in 1962.

“When I drove down that highway with my wife, I said ‘This is heaven.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ON-LINE The Internet address for information about the Acoustic Research Detachment is: http:/ /www.dt.navy.mil/sites/ bayview.html