Sub makes home in isles

The USS North Carolina became the third Virginia-class submarine to be homeported at Pearl Harbor yesterday as the U.S. builds up its fleet of the advanced attack submarines in the Pacific.

The 377-foot sub, with a crew of about 135, pulled up to pier Sierra 8 about 3:45 p.m. yesterday with a big red, white and blue lei adorning its sail and 33 crew members topside as other subs in the harbor blew their horns in a welcome.

Commissioned in 2008, North Carolina left Groton, Conn., on July 22 bound for Hawaii, but spent about three months in tests and trials off Florida and Georgia and at an acoustic evaluation range operated by the Navy in the Bahamas area, said Cmdr. Wes Schlauder, the sub’s commanding officer.

"It’s been a good run for us," Schlauder said. "We left Groton in July, (and) started through a series of tests and trials coming around down the East Coast, really operating there through about the beginning of October."

The submarine passed through the Panama Canal on Oct. 30, he said.

The North Carolina "has features and capabilities that are really intended for the theater of operation that we’re operating in now — the littoral environments closer to shore," Schlauder said.

Virginia-class submarines are capable of very precise slow-speed ship control, he said.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Raymond Debolt, a 23-year-old machinist mate from Long Island, N.Y., got the first kiss off the ship as he was greeted by his wife, Cristine, and their daughters, Farah, 7, and Nina, 1.

"Long underway. It was a tough time. We were very busy," Debolt said.

Carrie Sitz, an ombudsman for families whose husband, Petty Officer 1st Class Tyson Sitz, 31, is on the North Carolina, said about 50 new families are moving to Hawaii with the sub stationing.

Jessica Kestranek was pier-side with her 3-month-old son, Michael Jr., who was wearing a sun hat and an "I love Daddy" bib.

"It was hard because I had to move back home to Ohio to be with my parents, because when (the sub) left, I was eight months pregnant," she said.

Her husband, Michael Sr., a 23-year-old fire control technician, was allowed to go home for the birth, but then had to return to the sub when his son was 5 days old, she said.

The North Carolina joins the Hawaii and Texas, which are already homeported here. Pearl Harbor is the sole Pacific home for Virginia-class subs, which cost between $2.3 billion and $2.7 billion. Pearl Harbor also has 15 Los Angeles-class subs.

A problem with a rubber-like exterior coating sloughing off Virginia-class submarines at sea was noticeable on the North Carolina, but was not as bad as the loss on the Texas, which was tied up on the opposite side of the pier.

The Texas returned to Pearl Harbor on Aug. 23 from a three-month deployment to the eastern Pacific with its urethane coating, used to reduce sound, in tatters.

The Hawaii is in Busan at the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula, officials said.

In early September, the Hawaii transited Tokyo Bay in the first visit of a Virginia-class submarine to the region. Later that month, the submarine stopped in Guam.

Armed with torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles, Virginia-class submarines are the Navy’s first major combat ship designed for a post-Cold War environment.

The subs have six side-mounted sonar arrays, plus arrays in the bow, sail and nose, improving capabilities for eavesdropping and mapping the ocean floor and minefields.

Traditional hull-penetrating periscopes have been replaced by cameras and sensors mounted on masts, allowing command and control to be moved to larger quarters.

Greater modularity means space can be filled with torpedoes or berthing for 30 SEAL commandos.