11 June 2003
Source of photos and maps: Mapquest
(color) and Terraserver
(monochrome and topos).
http://5yrplan.nfesc.navy.mil/
Skaggs Island Naval Security Group Activity, CA
Provides receiving facilities for point-to-point, ship to shore, local harbor
and inter/intra-district communicators; provides high frequency direction
finding for use in search and rescue operations and provides communications
support.
http://www.flysfo.com/about/runway/docs/Supplemental-Airport-Options.pdf
Skaggs Island Naval Security Group Activity
In 1941, the United States Navy purchased 3,310 acres of the island for military
use, and developed 60 acres on the north end of the island as a cryptologic
communications installation known as the Skaggs Island Naval Security Group
Activity. The facility was self-sufficient, with its own domestic water and
sewer systems. When the base was closed in 1993 under the Defense Base Closure
and Realignment Act, the Navy left behind facilities including over 100,000
square feet of office and classroom space, 80 duplex family residential units,
a dormitory and food service facilities, and several dozen maintenance or
recreation structures. Even though the base is officially closed, the Navy
continues to operate a high frequency, direction-finding antenna facility
and communications and training facility for the Department of Defense.
![[Image]](skaggs-map.jpg)
Source
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/navsecgru/skaggs_island/
Skaggs Island, CA
Naval Security Group Activity
The Naval Security Group Activity Skaggs Island performed cryptologic functions
in accordance with operational and technical guidance and instructions from
the CNO, CINCPACFLT, DIRNSA, and CONMAVSECGRU. These include instructional
activities of the
BULLSEYE
Net Control System (NCS) school. NSGA Skaggs Island was also a node in the
TACINTEL
subsystem used for transmission of special-intelligence communications. TACINTEL
is a computerized message processing installation that makes it possible
to transmit and receive message traffic via satellite in a controlled
environment. Skaggs Island, off Route 37 in Sonoma County, has been voluntarily
phased out by the Navy.
The TACINTEL subsystem at the facility is used for transmission of
special-intelligence communications. The subsystem is essentially a computerized
message processing installation that makes it possible to transmit and receive
message traffic via satellite in a controlled environment.
Skaggs Island is a drained area of San Pablo Bay tidelands forty miles northeast
of San Francisco. The Navy developed the northern sixty acres of Skaggs Island
as a self sufficient communications base with it's own domestic water and
sewer systems. Facilities include over one hundred thousand square feet of
office and classroom space, eighty duplex family residential units, a dormitory
and food service facilities, and several dozen maintenance or recreation
structures. In response to the closure of Skaggs Island a consortium of public
and private environmental, educational, and cultural institutions formed
the non-profit Skaggs Island Foundation to plan the reuse of Skaggs Island
and to serve as the lead agency in the acquisition and management of Skaggs
Island for public use. The model for this foundation is the Ft. Mason Foundation
which manages the facilities at Ft. Mason in San Francisco.
http://www.troikamagazine.com/network/13days.html
It was Christmas, 1960, when I finally found the lost Soviet submarines.
It happened by accident. I had been hearing a “scratchy” sound
for some time on various monitored circuits, but had passed it over as some
kind of an anomaly, a spurious emission ... whatever. It was sort of like
a burst of static ... but not quite. Then, one day, I made a sonograph-enlarged
picture of another signal that happened to have one of these scratchy sounds
almost on top of it.
Years earlier at Skaggs island what we did primarily was to record and analyze
Soviet radio transmissions. Everything was signal coded, naturally, so the
trick was to break the signal codes in order to “read” the Soviet
military or diplomatic or whatever type of correspondence. In the process
we used what was called a sonograph machine, which utilized a large drum
around which a photographic type of paper was hand wound by the operator
for each signal to be analyzed. On playback of a recorded signal, the structure
or positive-negative bauds of the signal was imprinted and enlarged for
inspection by the analyst. That work required 20/20 vision and the patience
of Job. Once we broke a signal code, which entailed figuring out from the
baud formations their equivalent letters in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet,
we sent this information to the National Security Agency. NSA engineers were
then able to construct machines that could read out these messages just as
did the Soviet machines. When NSA began to read Soviet traffic in volume,
they passed on relevant excerpts to military or political end users. Good
information could not be obtained over long periods of time. Like ourselves,
the Soviets changed signal codes frequently. Then it was back to the drawing
board and start all over again; vital, boring work.
It was the sonograph machine that enabled me to locate and analyze the
“scratchy” signal. I spread it out and took a closer look. I’ll
be damned! It had bauds! Tiny bauds; the most compressed signal that I had
ever encountered ... but bauds. It was a man-made signal, and it obviously
was not one of ours. Gotcha! It was a burst signal, and it had to be a Russian
sub. It just had to be!
We fired the recording directly to the National Security Agency, and they
were ecstatic! All was forgiven. NSA put their best analysts on it and instructed
us to concentrate on obtaining as many recordings of this new signal as possible.
And suddenly we (and other Naval Security Group intercept stations) began
to find them all over the spectrum. Scratchy signals were music to our ears
... now that we knew what to listen for. As we obtained better recordings,
I measured them carefully and deduced that the signal had a “trigger”
heading, probably meant to activate a Soviet recording device. The trigger
was a series of bauds at 345 cycles per second, followed by a series of bauds
at 142 cps. Next came the obvious text of the message. NSA confirmed our
suspicions shortly. The subs were back! They had, of course, been there all
the time.
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