If a submarine is surfaced at the Point Loma piers when you pass, you will notice how little of it shows above the water. A Virginia-class or Los Angeles-class nuclear fast-attack boat sits almost flush with the surface — barely any freeboard, barely any profile. What you see is less than what is there. That is, in most respects, the point.
The Navy formally established a Submarine Support Facility at Point Loma in November 1963, and in 1981 designated it Naval Submarine Base San Diego. Today it is home to Submarine Squadron 11. The fast-attack submarines based here are nuclear-powered and carry weapons capable of striking targets hundreds of miles inland from below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
The military presence on Point Loma predates the submarine base by nearly a century. Army coastal defense installations occupied the peninsula from the 1870s onward, using the high ground to command the bay entrance. The Navy arrived in force during World War II, when the protected waters of San Diego Bay made it one of the most important Pacific staging grounds in the fleet.
The submarine mission at Point Loma grew directly from wartime experience. Pacific submarine operations against Japanese shipping in World War II were run partly from San Diego. The infrastructure built for that war — piers, dry docks, support facilities — formed the foundation of what became the permanent base.
From JADA's deck, the Point Loma shoreline is visible on the western side of the bay as you approach the bay entrance. Low concrete piers, submarine tenders, and the security fence that marks the perimeter of the installation are the visible signs. The submarines themselves may or may not be at the pier on any given day.
A submarine tender — a large support ship that acts as a floating machine shop and supply depot for the submarine force — is often moored at the facility. The tender can service multiple submarines simultaneously, handling everything from crew provisions to weapons maintenance, which allows the fast-attack boats to return to sea quickly after each patrol.
The submarines departing from this base transit the same channel JADA sails. They leave on the surface, pass through the bay entrance, and submerge somewhere in the Pacific approaches off Point Loma. After that, their position is known only to the Navy. A boat that left this pier last week could be anywhere in the Pacific basin today — off Hokkaido, in the South China Sea, in the Bering Sea. The ocean is large and submarines are designed to be unfindable inside it.
Somewhere past that point, a nuclear submarine left port this month. No one outside the Navy knows exactly where it is.
Sources: Wikipedia, "Naval Base Point Loma"; Commander, Navy Region Southwest, Naval Base Point Loma History page.
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