Bagpipe, Kilt and Caber (Holy Dirt and Boomers – February 2012)

Today, if you were to sail northeasterly up the Firth of Clyde enroute to Glasgow from the  Atlantic Ocean, the Isles of Arran and Butte would slip by on your port (left) side. At the point  where the Clyde makes a sharp turn to the right and heads southwesterly, several sea lochs join  the Clyde on the portside from the north. The town of Dunoon on the Cowal Peninsula can be  seen to the left. Two miles north of Dunoon, one of these lochs cuts two to three miles into the  Cowal Peninsula, depending upon the tides. As the crow flies, this loch is about a dozen miles  across the Peninsula from Castle Lachlan. This small, unassuming mile-wide loch is familiar to thousands of Americans.

There are a number of standing stones around the loch, giving rise to theories about prehistoric  Sun worship. Saint Mungo (also known as St. Kentigern), the patron saint and founder of  Glasgow, is sometimes associated with this small loch as is the Irish Saint Munn who landed  there in 579 and began his religious teachings. Another story holds that a ship bound for  Glasgow carrying a cargo of soil from the Holy Land for use in the Glasgow Cathedral was  blown off course and sank in this loch. In these, as in so many stories in Scotland’s history, there are some facts, some myth, and a lot of mixing of the two. Whatever the real reason, this  small loch was named Holy Loch.

A village on Holy Loch known as Sandbank became the home of one of the foremost boat  builders in the world. Alexander Roberson and Sons, Ltd., was founded in 1876 and continued through the World Wars and the Great Depression. A couple of their boats were challengers  for the America’s Cup in 1958 and again in 1964. Over the course of its 104-year history, the  yard built at least 500 boats. The factory was sold and subsequently torn down in 1980.

Holy Loch was used by the Royal Navy as a submarine base during World War II. As the Cold  War heated up, the United States government began looking for suitable overseas sites from  which it could forward deploy its ballistic missile submarine forces. In March 1959, President

Eisenhower mentioned this possibility to the British Prime Minister during a meeting at Camp  David. By the end of 1960, an agreement had been reached that allowed the U.S. Navy to

establish a home base for a Submarine Squadron (SUBRON-14) at Holy Loch. The first ship,  the submarine tender USS Proteus (AS-19) arrived in Holy Loch in March 1961. For security  purposes, the base at Sandbank was known simply as Site One.

A natural outgrowth of a having a facility in Scotland was having a unique tartan designed.  It’s called the Polaris Tartan, making the Polaris submarine the first ship in history to have its  own tartan.

Polaris Tartan

Over the years, several submarine tenders were rotated through Holy Loch as well as a floating  dry dock, the USS Los Alamos (AFDB-7), and dozens of “Boomers” as Ballistic Missile submarines are called. The term boomer is Navy slang for these nuclear-powered, ballistic  missile-carrying submarines. It derives from the letters B and M in the acronym FBM, which

stands for Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine. It’s kinda like calling a BMW automobile a  Beemer. Boomers exist for a single purpose: to patrol silently within striking distance of a hostile nation in preparation for launching an attack. Each boat carries 24 nuclear weapon-  equipped intercontinental missiles in their arsenal. Surely, a BIG Boom!!

Logo of Submarine Squadron 14

A Fleet Ballistic Missile

Submarine (FBM)

Besides the boomers, there is another type of submarine: “attack submarines,” whose missions  include reconnaissance, covert operations, hunting and killing hostile surface and subsurface  shipping, and rescue operations. These submarines were not stationed at Holy Loch.

Thousands of ballistic missile deterrent patrols originated from Holy Loch over the course of  the base’s existence. With the demise of the Soviet Union and tensions easing in Europe, the  decision was made in 1991 to close the Holy Loch facility. In March 1992, the last U.S. Navy  ship departed, ending thirty-one years of American presence in the Dunoon area. With the  Navy’s departure, some 5,000 people, nearly half the population, left Dunoon.

In the wake of the America departure, the Royal Navy reestablished itself in Holy Loch and  renamed the base Her Majesty’s Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde. From here the United Kingdom  deploys Trident missile-armed nuclear submarines as part of the allied strategic nuclear  deterrence.