Crete Naval Base (Souda Bay)

Crete Naval Base (Ναύσταθμος Κρήτης) is a Hellenic Navy installation at Souda Bay on the north coast of Crete, Greece. Known within NATO as Naval Support Activity Souda Bay and in Greek usage as the Souda Naval Base, it is the second largest Hellenic Navy base by number of warships harboured and NATO's principal naval base in the eastern Mediterranean. The bay is a deep, naturally protected anchorage formed between peninsulas and enclosed by hills.

The base is commanded by a Commodore or Captain of the Hellenic Navy and falls under the 2nd Branch, DDMN, of the Hellenic Navy General Staff. The Forward Logistics Site Souda Bay was under the operational control of Allied Naval Forces Southern Europe (COMNAVSOUTH) until 2013, and since then under Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM). Since 2007 the base has hosted the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operational Training Centre (NMIOTC) in the northern sector at Marathi. The United States Navy expeditionary mobile base USS Hershel "Woody" Williams, of the Lewis B. Puller class, has been deployed to the base since 2020.

The installation covers about 500 hectares, incorporating the former artillery barracks of the Hellenic Army's 5th Infantry Division and later land acquisitions. Facilities comprise a dry dock, workshops, a fuel depot and an ammunition depot. Quay K-14, a deep-water berth, is the only one in the Mediterranean able to take supercarriers; comparable berthing for the US Navy exists only at Naval Air Station North Island, Norfolk Naval Station, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Port of Jebel Ali. The Hellenic Navy radio communications station SXH has been sited at Mournies, near Souda, since 1929.

Souda Bay had served as a military harbour under successive administrations, and the Great Powers maintained a presence there in the late nineteenth century. The naval base itself was established by the Greek government in 1951, at about the time of Greece's accession to NATO, and has been in use since.