USS Holland (AS 32)

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS HOLLAND. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

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Accidents aboard USS HOLLAND:

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USS HOLLAND History:

USS HOLLAND originated in the early 1960s out of the United States Navy's decision to build a new generation of submarine tenders designed from the keel up to support fleet ballistic missile submarines and the Polaris strategic deterrent. The contract for the second ship of the HUNLEY-class was awarded to Ingalls Shipbuilding at Pascagoula, Mississippi, on August 31, 1961, and her keel was laid there on March 5, 1962, as Hull 487. Ingalls built her with extensive workshops, electronics repair spaces, nuclear-support facilities and a missile magazine specifically arranged for Polaris missiles, reflecting the shift from conventional submarine support to sustained nuclear-armed deterrent patrols.

HOLLAND was launched at Pascagoula on January 19, 1963, sponsored by the wife of senator John C. Stennis, and then delivered to Charleston Naval Shipyard for fitting out. After completion of trials and final installation work, she was commissioned at Charleston on September 7, 1963, with Captain Charles W. Styer Jr. in command. From the outset, she was organized to act as an afloat industrial complex rather than a combatant ship: her machine shops could perform almost any repair short of full overhaul, and her engineering departments were equipped to maintain nuclear propulsion systems as well as the missile systems of Polaris-armed submarines.

On October 14, 1963, HOLLAND departed Charleston for shakedown training at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, conducting the usual series of drills and equipment tests that accompanied the introduction of a complex auxiliary ship into service. She returned to Charleston on November 19, 1963, and entered post-shakedown availability on November 25, when the shipyard and crew corrected deficiencies discovered during the training period and completed additional work. By the beginning of 1964, the ship was back in full commission at Charleston, preparing for her first forward deployment in support of the Polaris force.

The opening months of 1964 were spent loading stores, ammunition and spare parts and training the crew for extended operations away from any major shipyard. Early in the ballistic-missile submarine program, the United States had decided to base tenders overseas at so-called fleet ballistic missile (FBM) replenishment sites, allowing submarines to swap crews and reload missiles without long transatlantic voyages. In that context, HOLLAND sailed from the United States and arrived at the Polaris replenishment anchorage at Rota, Spain, on April 1, 1964, where she relieved PROTEUS (AS 19) as the resident FBM submarine tender.

From her anchorage off Rota, she provided repair, logistics, weapons handling and nuclear-support services to the Polaris submarines of the Atlantic Fleet, turning around boats on a regular cycle that matched the tempo of Cold War deterrent patrols aimed primarily at the Soviet Union. HOLLAND remained at Rota for more than two and a half years. During that period, she served as the industrial and administrative hub for the forward-deployed submarine force, supporting not only routine refits but also unscheduled repairs, system upgrades and periodic inspections. Her workshops and nuclear-support sections worked continuously on the succession of Polaris boats rotating between patrols and maintenance, while her crew and embarked squadron staffs handled personnel transfers, training and supply. On November 4, 1966, a relief tender arrived, and HOLLAND turned over the anchorage and FBM support responsibilities, then sailed west. She reached Charleston on November 22, 1966, marking the end of her first extended overseas deployment.

Back in the United States, HOLLAND took up duty at Fleet Ballistic Missile Replenishment Site Four at Naval Weapons Station Charleston, South Carolina. In June 1967, she formally relieved HUNLEY (AS 31) as the resident tender at Site Four, assuming routine responsibility for refit and maintenance of the ballistic-missile submarines operating from Charleston. For roughly a year, she remained pierside there, supporting both operational SSBNs and other Atlantic Fleet submarines. In 1968, she entered Charleston Naval Shipyard for her first major overhaul, during which machinery was refurbished and systems were updated after several intense years of continuous FBM service. That overhaul concluded in January 1969.

Shortly after this work, in March 1969, HOLLAND again deployed across the Atlantic, returning to Rota for a second tour as a forward-based Polaris tender. Once back in Spain, she resumed the familiar pattern of servicing submarines rotating through the FBM site while providing logistics and repair support to visiting surface and auxiliary units when required. This second European assignment continued through the early 1970s. In early 1973, after nearly four years on station, HOLLAND completed her second Rota tour and sailed back to the United States, arriving at Charleston in January 1973 and once more taking up duties at Site Four.

By this time, the Navy was already moving from early-generation Polaris missiles to the longer-ranged and more capable Poseidon system. To support that transition, HOLLAND was selected for a major conversion. In August 1974, she departed Charleston, transited the Panama Canal and proceeded to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Washington, where she entered a lengthy conversion and overhaul period that ran from November 1974 to June 1975. During this work, her original Polaris missile magazine was removed and replaced with a prefabricated 250-ton Poseidon magazine module, similar to the one already fitted in HUNLEY, while other systems were upgraded to handle the newer submarines and their weapons. On March 26, 1975, while still in overhaul at Puget Sound, a small Class Alpha fire broke out in a sanding room due to spontaneous combustion of fiberglass dust, but it was quickly contained without major damage. After completion of the conversion in mid-1975, HOLLAND transited the Panama Canal once more and headed across the Atlantic to her new duty station in the United Kingdom.

Arriving at Site One in Holy Loch, Scotland, in November 1975, HOLLAND relieved CANOPUS (AS 34) as tender for Submarine Squadron 14. From November 1975 to January 1982, she served as the forward-based support platform for the Atlantic Fleet's Polaris and Poseidon ballistic-missile submarines operating from Holy Loch. There, she provided continuous upkeep for successive submarines conducting deterrent patrols in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, while also maintaining smaller craft and coordinating logistics with shore facilities. The tempo of operations was high, and during this seven-year period HOLLAND earned multiple Battle Efficiency "E" awards and Golden Anchor retention awards, reflecting consistently strong performance in maintenance and personnel management. In 1978, HOLLAND received the Battenberg Cup, an award presented annually to the most outstanding ship in the Atlantic Fleet, marking the first and so far only time an auxiliary ship rather than a combatant won the competition.

That recognition reflected her role at the center of the Holy Loch complex, where she not only supported the submarines but also hosted squadron staffs and handled a wide range of industrial and administrative functions for the FBM community. The following year brought a very different sort of mission when, during the 1979 Fastnet Race disaster in August 1979, HOLLAND joined British, Irish and other naval units in search and rescue operations as a severe storm struck the Irish Sea and North Atlantic yacht fleet.

From Holy Loch, she contributed personnel, communications and logistic support to the multinational effort that recovered survivors and assisted damaged yachts, illustrating how a submarine tender could be repurposed in an emergency.

HOLLAND's Holy Loch years also included a notable nuclear-weapons incident. On November 2, 1981, while the ship was at Site One, a Poseidon ballistic missile being moved aboard accidentally dropped roughly 13 to 15 feet when its handling equipment failed. The built-in safety mechanisms functioned as designed, the missile was caught by its safety device, and there was no release of radioactive material, no explosion and no injuries, but the event drew attention to handling procedures for strategic weapons afloat.

By early 1982, the Navy was beginning to consolidate its FBM support infrastructure, and in January 1982, HOLLAND was relieved at Holy Loch by HUNLEY and ordered back to the United States.

Later in 1982, HOLLAND arrived once again at Charleston. According to post-deployment accounts, she entered another overhaul and then undertook intensive training and loadout for a new mission far from the Atlantic ballistic-missile fields.

In the spring of 1983, she departed Charleston and headed east across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean. On May 22, 1983, she transited the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, continuing on to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where she arrived in June and remained at anchor for about 85 days as a forward support platform. Her presence there coincided with a period of heightened U.S. naval activity related to the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War and broader Indian Ocean stability operations, and she provided repair and logistics services to submarines and surface ships using Diego Garcia as a remote base. In early October 1983, she weighed anchor, crossed back into the Atlantic via the Cape of Good Hope before returning to Charleston later that month.

From late 1983 through the early 1990s, HOLLAND was again based at Charleston's Site Four, this time in an era when the Navy's strategic submarine force was largely standardized on POSEIDON and the early TRIDENT submarines, and when the ship also supported fast-attack submarines assigned to Atlantic commands. In 1989, she carried out what is recorded as the first open-ocean mooring of a ballistic-missile submarine, conducting the evolution at sea rather than in a sheltered anchorage, which demonstrated the flexibility of tender-based support in more dispersed operating patterns. That same year, HOLLAND and her crew were directly involved in disaster relief after Hurricane Hugo struck South Carolina. On September 21, 1989, the hurricane made landfall near Charleston as a strong Category 4 storm, causing heavy damage in the city, at the naval base and across the region.

HOLLAND, with the staff of Commander Submarine Squadron 18 embarked, had to secure her own systems against the storm and then supported recovery efforts. Crew members assisted with debris clearance, repairs and community support in and around Charleston and Goose Creek. For those actions, the ship and crew received the Humanitarian Service Medal, linking the tender's history not just to strategic deterrence but also to local recovery from a major natural disaster.

Throughout the 1980s, HOLLAND accumulated a substantial list of unit awards and departmental excellence citations, including Meritorious Unit Commendations for periods in 1978-1979, 1981 and 1990, repeated Battle Efficiency "E" awards, and multiple departmental awards for engineering, repair, supply, deck, medical and other functions, reflecting the expectations placed on a large tender operating at the center of a submarine support complex.

By the turn of the decade, she was an established element of the Charleston submarine community, but both geopolitical change and base-closure processes were starting to reshape that environment as the Cold War ended. In the early 1990s, the Navy decided to reconfigure HOLLAND for a different role and shift her to the Pacific. In 1992, she underwent a conversion overhaul to adapt her facilities from primarily FBM support to a focus on fast-attack submarines (SSNs), updating workshops, stores and weapons-handling equipment accordingly. After this work, she left Charleston for the last time, once more transited the Panama Canal and sailed west across the Pacific. Her new homeport was Apra Harbor, Guam, where she was to relieve PROTEUS at Polaris Point, known as Site Three, in support of forward-deployed submarines in the Western Pacific.

HOLLAND arrived at Guam in time to participate in a combined "hail and farewell" event around July 4, 1992, marking both her arrival and the impending departure of PROTEUS, which had been associated with Guam since the mid-1960s. PROTEUS was deactivated on July 11, 1992, and on July 17, 1992, HOLLAND formally assumed full duties as the Site Three tender, becoming the principal afloat support platform for submarines and other units operating from Guam. Her homeport change also reflected a broader post-Cold War reorientation of U.S. forces toward the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.

During the next four years, HOLLAND combined her pier-side tender role with frequent underway operations. From Polaris Point she supported submarines and other fleet units both in Guam and during forward deployments to ports such as Yokosuka and Sasebo in Japan, Chinhae in South Korea, Manila in the Philippines, Darwin in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. A U.S. Navy photograph places her in Apra Harbor in 1993, and another shows her moored in Hong Kong that same year, illustrating the pattern of regional port visits and support missions she undertook in the Western Pacific.

Unlike her earlier years as a largely stationary SSBN tender, in Guam she more often went to sea, including full-power trials for the first time in about a decade, an underway replenishment evolution in which she received roughly 300 tons of fuel, and certification of her flight deck for helicopter operations. She even carried two helicopters for squadron HC-5 from Guam to Japan to meet operational requirements, a task unusual for a tender but illustrative of her flexibility late in her career. The Guam period also involved repeated responses to natural disasters in the region. In August 1992, super Typhoon Omar passed directly over Guam, causing extensive damage across the island.

HOLLAND's crew contributed to restoration efforts ashore, assisting base and civil authorities in recovery work. The following year, on August 8, 1993, a major earthquake with a moment magnitude of about 7.8 struck near Guam, again causing infrastructure damage but relatively limited casualties. According to the ship's reconstructed history and association accounts, HOLLAND's crew responded to both events, helping stabilize base operations and local services; combined with her Charleston experience, this service led to a second award of the Humanitarian Service Medal associated with Guam in 1992.

Operationally, HOLLAND in Guam supported a mix of ballistic-missile and attack submarines rotating through the Western Pacific at a time when the U.S. Navy was restructuring in response to the end of the Cold War, maintaining presence missions and regional exercises in cooperation with allies in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and elsewhere. While individual refits and availabilities are recorded in unit histories of the submarines she serviced, the tender's own record concentrates on her role as a mobile industrial and logistics base connecting those deployments with shore facilities at Guam and other ports.

By 1996, the Navy had decided to consolidate submarine support in the Pacific on newer tenders. FRANK CABLE (AS 40) was assigned to relieve HOLLAND at Guam. In April 1996, HOLLAND was relieved at Site Three by FRANK CABLE, bringing her thirty-three years of active service toward a close. On April 13, 1996, in Apra Harbor, Captain J. William Winney Jr. read the decommissioning directive on board HOLLAND, during a decommissioning ceremony attended by crew members, families and local officials. After the ceremony in Guam, HOLLAND began her final voyage. She made ports of call at Hong Kong, Pearl Harbor and Vancouver, British Columbia, before arriving at Bremerton, Washington, where she was officially decommissioned on September 30, 1996. Later, she was transferred to the reserve fleet anchorage in Suisun Bay near San Francisco, joining other inactive ships laid up there. Official records indicate that her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on May 12, 2000.

On July 10, 2013, she was removed from the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet and entered dry dock at Mare Island for cleaning and preparation for a towing voyage to a scrapping facility in Texas. There she was dismantled, ending the physical existence of the ship.

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USS HOLLAND Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by me and show the HOLLAND laid-up at Suisun Bay, Calif., on March 27, 2010.

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