Stalking
the Sea Shadow
Photographing the Navy’s “Stealth Ship”
Overview
An attempt to photograph the Navy's "stealth
ship" inside its floating drydock in the San Diego Bay.
The story of the HMB-1 and the Sea Shadow are interesting
because they demonstrate how massive, highly unusual infrastructures
can be "hidden in plain sight." In this case, the
stealth ship has been hidden in plain sight for over 20 years
in Redwood City, Long Beach, San Francisco, and San Diego.
History
On November 4, 1982, the Associated Press reported that “the
world's first fully submersible drydock, built as part of
a CIA plan to raise a sunken Soviet sub, [was] being claimed
by the Navy for a new secret project.” The submersible
drydock that the article referred to, called the HMB-1, for
Hughes Mining Barge 1, was to be moved from the Todd Shipyards
in San Francisco to Redwood City for a “Lockheed Missiles
and Space Co. project ‘in which the Navy has an interest.’”
The entire career of the HMB-1 had been synonymous
with secret programs: it had been built through the Howard
Hughes Company for the CIA to use in a top-secret mission
to raise a Soviet Submarine that had sunk off the coast of
Hawaii. Working in tandem with the Glomar Explorer ship, the
HMB-1 housed a giant claw to raise the ill-fated sub, and
the remains of the sub would stay hidden in the HMB-1 once
it had been raised (note: the Speculative Archive’s
film refers to these events). When the CIA mission was over,
the HMB-1 was given to the National Park Service, who hoped
to raise funds by leasing the barge out. But in 1982, the
Department of the Interior ordered the barge handed over to
the Navy for a new secret project.
We now know what that project was: a bizarre-looking
stealth ship whose existence wouldn't’t be revealed
by the Navy until 1993. In the late 70s, Lockheed had developed
a computer program called “ECHO 1” that could
calculate radar-cross-sections (radar returns) for simple
shapes. They’d used ECHO 1 to design a secret “stealth
fighter” for the Air Force, and planned to do the same
for the Navy. Lockheed and the Navy determined that the HMB-1
was the perfect place to assemble the secret stealth ship
because it was totally enclosed and mobile. It would serve
as a giant, floating, “secret base” for the ship
that they’d call the Sea Shadow.
Once the Sea Shadow was assembled, it was
taken inside the HMB-1 to Long Beach, where it was tested
nightly off the coast of San Nicolas island. Each day, the
Sea Shadow sat inside the HMB-1 in the Long Beach harbor.
The ship was deactivated from 1986 to 1993, when the Navy
revealed the existence of the ship because they wanted to
conduct daylight tests.
The Sea Shadow is now docked in San
Diego, still housed in the HMB-1.
Photographing the Sea Shadow
In order to photograph the Sea Shadow, the HMB-1’s exact
location had to be determined. This was done with the help
of publicly-available satellite imagery. Next was the problem
of identifying an appropriate viewing spot from public land.
After studying a map of San Diego, a number of potential viewing
sites were identified. What appeared to be the most promising
site was a sliver of land squashed between a nature preserve
and a navy base.
When we arrived at the spot, we attached
a camera to a high-powered spotting scope. Across the bay,
we could see the HMB-1, and its front door was open. Nevertheless,
we could not identify the Sea Shadow in the darkness of the
drydock. By overexposing some of the shots, however, we were
able to capture the outline of the Sea Shadow inside the open
door of the HMB-1.
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