This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Eugene Claude Ipox, Jr., TM1
to remember
Ghormley, Ralph M., RADM USN(Ret).
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Died on October 7, 2012 in Northern, VA. He was born 10 July 1927 in Boston, MA. After graduation with the US Naval Academy class of 1949, he held several commands including USS Scorpion, and US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay. Upon retirement, Ralph served in; Saint Andrew's Society; American Legion; USN Class of 1949; Order of the Carabao; Returned Services League; and docent at USN National Museum. He is survived by his wife Marlene; sister Betty Baker; daughter Ruth Hieneman; and son Ralph Ghormley. A celebration of life service to be announced. In lieu of flowers memorials may be made to the charity of your choice.
Other Comments:
Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret). Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1949.
Raised in Rochester, MN, Ralph entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1945, graduated with the Class of 1949 in June, received a Bachelor of Science degree, and was commissioned as an Ensign in the U.S. Navy. He served aboard USS ORLECK (DD-866) for 18 months before attending Submarine School.
From 1951-55, he served in the submarines SEA FOX and HARDHEAD. In 1957 after completing post graduate education in Command Communications, he served on the Staff of Commander Submarine Squadron Five and in the submarines RATON, and SEA FOX. After completing Nuclear Power Training in 1961, he reported to the BARB (SSN-596) as Executive Officer. In 1963 he assumed command of the nuclear attack submarine SCORPION (SSN-589) and while so serving, he was twice awarded the Navy Commendation Medal for outstanding performance of duty. In August 1965 he assumed command of the Polaris submarine SAM RAYBURN (SSBN-636), after which he commanded Submarine Division Fifty-Three for one year before his assignment as PCO, L.Y. SPEAR (AS-36).
In 1971, he was assigned as Deputy Chief of Staff, Logistics Management on the staff of Commander, Submarine Force, U. S. Atlantic Fleet. In June 1973, he was designated as Rear Admiral while providing Naval Control of Shipping support for the Commander, U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In 1975, he was assigned as the Deputy Commander, Planning, Programming and Resources Management Directorate of the Naval Electronic Systems Command in Washington, DC.
In 1976, RADM Ghormley was assigned as Deputy Director, Operations for the Defense Communications Agency in Washington. Following this tour, he briefly served as an Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, before assignment as the Commander, Naval Telecommunications Command, Washington, DC. He retired from the Navy on 1 October 1983.
RADM Ghormley's awards include the Legion of Merit with Gold Star (in lieu of second award), the Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal with one Gold Star (in lieu of the second award), the Navy Expeditionary Medal, the China Service Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the Navy Occupation Service Medal with "ASIA" Clasp, the National Defense Medal with one Bronze Star (in lieu of second award), the Korean Service Medal, and the United Nations Service Medal. He also received various other awards, letters of commendation and appreciation.
After retiring from Naval Service in 1983, RADM Ghormley pursued interests in the Defense Industry around Washington, DC, until his final retirement in 1994.
At the time of his death from a heart attack, he lived in Mc Lean, VA.
Rear Admiral Ghormley was predeceased by his first wife, Sara (McKnight). He later married, and is survived by his wife, Marlene, the widow of his USNA classmate, Frank Sherman. Also surviving are: sister, Betty Baker; children of his first marriage, daughter Ruth Hienerman, son Ralph; and two grandchildren.
Ralph's retirement years were spent in service to the Class of 1949 as President for 5 years and the last 14 years as Class Secretary, in addition to associated tasks. His other service was in: St Andrews Society, American Legion, Order of the Carabao, Returned Services League, and as a Docent at the U.S. Navy Museum.
A celebration of life will be held at a time to be announced. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Ralph's memory to a charity of your choice.
Deployment - SSBN Deterrent Patrol #1
From Month/Year
January / 1961
To Month/Year
December / 3000
Description An SSBN deterrent patrol is an extended operational deployment during part of which the submarine covers its assigned target package in support of the strategic war plan. Each Ohio-class patrol typically lasts 60-90 days, but one submarine in late 2008 conducted an extended patrol of 98 day and patrols have occasionally exceeded 100 days. Occasionally a patrol is cut short by technical problems, in which case another SSBN can be deployed on short notice. As a result, patrols today in average last about 72 days.
Being on patrol does not mean the submarine is continuously submerged on-station and holding targets at risk. In fact, when the submarine is not on Hard Alert holding targets at risk in Russia, China, or regional states, much of the patrol time is spent on cruising between homeport, patrol areas, exercising with other naval forces, undergoing inspections and certifications, performing Weapon System Readiness Tests (WSRTs), conducting retargeting exercises, and Command and Control exercises.
Another activity involves so-called SCOOP exercises (SSBN Continuity of Operations Program) where the SSBN will practice replenishment or refit in forward ports in case the homeport is annihilated in wartime. In the Pacific, the SCOOP ports include Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (see Figure 5), Guam, Seaward, Alaska, Astoria, Oregon, and San Diego, California. In the Atlantic they include Port Canaveral and Mayport, Florida, Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, and Halifax, Canada. The SSBN may even return to its homeport and redeploy a day or two later on the same patrol.
Although patrols normally end at the base where they started, this is not always the case. An SSBN that departs Naval Submarine Base Bangor, Washington, might go on-station for several weeks in alert operational areas, conduct various training and exercises, and then arrive at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. After a brief port visit and replenishment the submarine typically resumes its patrol and eventually returns to Bangor. But sometimes the patrol will end in Hawaii, a new crew be flown in to replace the old, and the submarine undergo refit at the forward location as part of a SCOOP exercise. The SSBN then departs Hawaii on a new patrol, goes on-station in alert operational areas, conducts more exercises and inspections, and eventually returns to Bangor where the new patrol ends.
This type of broken up patrol where the submarine is allowed to do more than on-station operations is sometimes described as “modified alert” and said to be different from the Cold War. But SSBNs have never been on-station all the time, with most deployed submarines being in transit between on-station alert areas and other non-alert operations. In fact, “modified alert” patrols date back to the early 1970s.
Of the 14 SSBNs currently in the fleet, two are normally in overhaul at any given time. Of the remaining operational 12 submarines, 8-9 are deployed on patrol at any given time. Four of these (two in each ocean) are on “Hard Alert” while the 4-5 non-alert SSBNs can be brought to alert level within a relatively short time if necessary. One to three SSBNs are in refit at the home base in preparation for their next patrol.
The SSBNs on Hard Alert continuously hold at risk facilities in Russia, China and regional states with an estimated 384 nuclear warheads on 96 Trident II D5 missiles that can be launched within “a few minutes” after receiving the launch order. The targets in the “target packages” are selected based on the taskings of the strategic war plan, known today as Operations Plan (OPLAN) 8010.
What is the Mission?
But why, nearly two decades after the Cold War ended, are 28 crews ordered to sail 14 SSBNs with more than 1,000 nuclear warheads on 30-plus patrols each year at an operational tempo comparable to that of the Cold War?
The official line is, as stated last month by Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter during the celebration of the 1,000th Ohio-class deterrent patrol, that “the ability of our Trident fleet to [be ready to launch its missiles] 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, has promoted the interests of peace and freedom around the world….Since the beginning of the nuclear age, the world has seen a drastic reduction in wartime deaths.”
Chilton and Roughead
STRATCOM commander General Kevin Chilton (left) and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead. General Chilton says SSBNs deter not only nuclear conflict but “conflict in general” and are “as equally important today, as they ever were during the height of the Cold War.”
The warfighters add more nuances, including Commander Jeff Grimes of the Trident submarine USS Maryland (SSBN-738) who at the start of a recent deterrent patrol explained it to Navy Times: “There are nuclear weapons in the world today. Many nations have them. Proliferation is possible in the growing technologies societies have. The power of the deterrent is the knowledge that the capability exists in the hands of controlled people. So on a global scale, deterrence is showing how it’s working every day. We haven’t had a global, world war, in a long time,” he said. “Intelligence is different, the threats are different, so we do adjust the planning and contingencies for strategic operations continually to face the threats that may or may not be seen….We’re there on the front line, ready to go,” Grimes declared.
STRATCOM commander General Kevin Chilton, who in a war would advise the president on which nuclear strike options to use, said recently that although some people thought the Trident mission would end with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the SSBNs “are as equally important today, as they ever were during the height of the Cold War….The application of deterrence can actually be more complicated in the 21st century, but some fundamentals don’t change,” he said and added: “And it is not just to deter nuclear conflict. These forces have served to deter conflict in general, writ large, since they’ve been fielded.”
These are strong and diverse claims that are also made in some of the command histories that each SSBN produces. Some of them state that the mission is to “maintain world peace,” which has certainly not been the case in the post-Cold War era. Others describe the mission as “providing strategic deterrence to prevent nuclear war” (my emphasis), which sounds more credible. But even in that case, can we really tell whether it is the SSBNs that prevent nuclear war and not the ICBMs or bombers?
The enormous differences between maintaining world peace, preventing wars, and preventing nuclear war demand that officials articulate the SSBN mission much more clearly. To that end, it would be good to hear why it takes 12 operational SSBNs with more than 1,100 nuclear warheads on 30-plus patrols per year to deter nuclear attack against the United States, but only three operational SSBNs with less than 160 warheads on six patrols per year to safeguard the United Kingdom.
A ballistic missile submarine is a submarine deploying submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with nuclear warheads. The United States Navy's hull classification symbols for ballistic missile submarines are SSB and SSBN – the SS denotes submarine (or submersible ship), the B denotes ballistic missile, and the N denotes that the submarine is nuclear powered. These submarines became a major weapon system in the Cold War because of their nuclear deterrence capability. They can fire missiles thousands of kilometers from their targets, and acoustic quieting makes them difficult to detect (see acoustic signature), thus making them a survivable deterrent in the event of a first strike and a key element of the mutual assured destruction policy of nuclear deterrence.
The annual number of patrols has fluctuated considerably over the years, peaking at 131 patrols in 1967. Declines occurred mainly due to retirement of SSBNs rather than changes in the mission. The retirement of the early classes of SSBNs in 1979-1981 almost eliminated patrols in the Pacific, but the new Ohio-class gradually rebuilt the posture. The stand-down of Poseidon SSBNs in October 1991 and the retirement of all non-Ohio-class SSBNs by 1993 reduced Atlantic patrols by nearly 60 percent. The patrols increased again in the second half of the 1990s and more Ohio-class SSBNs were added to the fleet, but started dropping from 2000 as four Ohio-class SSBNs were withdrawn from nuclear missions and four others underwent lengthy backfits from the Trident I C4 to the Trident II D5 Trident missile.
World SSBN Patrols 2008
The United States conducts more SSBN patrols than all other nuclear powers combined. China’s SSBNs have yet to conduct a deterrent patrol.
During the Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union, the vast majority of patrols were done in the Atlantic Ocean. Since the early 1990s, patrols in the Atlantic have plummeted and the SSBN force been concentrated on the west coast. The majority of U.S. SSBN patrols today occur in the Pacific.
The current number of patrols is significantly greater than the patrol levels of other countries with sea-based nuclear weapon systems. In fact, the U.S. navy conducted three times the number of SSBN patrols that the Russian navy did in 2008, and more patrols than Russia, France, Britain and China combined.
High Operational Tempo
Although the total annual number of SSBN patrols has decreased significantly since the end of the Cold War, the operational tempo of each submarine has not. Each Ohio-class SSBNs today conducts about the same number of patrols per year as during the Cold War, but the duration of each patrol has increased, with each submarine spending approximately 50-60 percent of its time on patrol.
The high operational tempo is made possibly by each SSBN having two crews, Blue and Gold. Each time a submarine returns from a patrol, the other crew takes over, spends a few weeks repairing and replenishing the boat, and takes the SSBN out for its next patrol.
The data also reveals a couple of interesting spikes of increased patrols in 1963/1965 and 1991. The reasons for this increased activity is not known but the periods coincide with the Cuban missile crisis and the failed coup attempt in the final days of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Another way to examine the data is to see how may patrol days each submarine and the fleet accumulate each year. During the Cold War the larger submarine fleet averaged approximately 6,000 patrol days each year, with a peak of 8,515 patrol days in 1967. That performance declined to an average of 3,400 days in the post-Cold War era as the size of the SSBN fleet was reduced. With the removal of four SSBNs from nuclear operations and four others undergoing lengthy missile backfits, the fleet’s total patrol days has now dropped to a little over 2,200.
Yet total patrol day numbers can be deceiving because they can obscure how each submarine is doing. Because the Ohio-class SSBN design was optimized for lengthy deterrent patrols, the average number of days each submarine spends on patrol has been higher in the post-Cold War period than during the Cold War itself. Patrols can be shortened by technical problems, but many Ohio-class submarines today stay on patrol for more than 80 days. Last year, the USS Maine (SSBN-741) conducted a 98-day patrol in the Pacific.