SUBMARINEMUSEUMS.ORG Forum
General Boards => Museum Submarine Discussion => Topic started by: Lance Dean on July 18, 2008, 10:34:42 AM
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Hey Paul Farace, I'm stealing your question from Rontini's BBS (http://www.messdeck.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8061). ::)
If you could have ONE submarine (any submarine ever built in the USA) on display as a museum, which one would it be and why?
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WAHOO or TANG...mostly because O'Kane was on them.
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It can't be done. Do you go with development, fame, or class. Every boat is unique, special, part of our history. Nautilus as it started the nucler age. Albacore because of it's hull design (tear drop). Turtle first used as a weapon. Washington because it was the first FBM. Wahoo, Tang, or Razorback because of their WWII heroics and their skippers. Push all of this aside and I'd say my first boat - because it was my first boat (Picuda). I think anyone would agree that their first boat was special and deserves a place in history.
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As I replied on the Messdeck BBS, knowing that there is a whole world of submarines prior to the Gato class that are long gone, I'd love to see some of those.
#1 USS Tambor (SS-198) - The USS Tambor (SS-198) was the flagship of the Tambor class, the first class to have 6 torpedo tubes forward and the class that the Gato, Balao, Tench, etc were built upon! All are long gone now though.
#2 V-4/USS Argonaut (SM-1) - Talk about unique!
#3 USS Flasher (SS-249) - and yes, I do plan on seeing her conning tower at Nautilus Park someday
#4 USS Barb (SS-220) - The Barb ties with so many others that I'd like to see from that era, like the Wahoo and the Tang.
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It would have been cool to have one of each class of boat that served in WWII preserved for history. Instead, the Old S, P, Salmon/Sargo, V , and T class boats are long gone. At least Marlin is still around.
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Well if the quesiton is ONE sub, it would have to be a fleet boat since they conducted the world's most successful submarine campaign in history -- the US Navy's embargo of Japan (yes, waaay more successful than the U-boat campaign of WWII) ... (if there were no other subs on display), but there are -- so my answer is one of the POLARIS BOATS --- USS JOHN C. CALHOUN or DANIEL WEBSTER!
PF
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It would be awesome to have one of the remaining 41 for Freedom on display! The Navy should give this some serious consideration.
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Awwww Come on Chief..... Ya know that the bow's of BOTH of the remaining 41's have been gutted out for class room space..... Jayesus there AREN'T parts for rebuilding those, you and I have both put in enough time in JRRF to know that and honestly I don't think that I have enough pull with my contacts to get the parts back.... I may have a new vol coming up with me and he is a cross between Jim and Doc and Me..... ;) May there be mercy on your soul for this one ;D
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Doesn't matter what shape she's in, it would be awesome to wander around in one of the 41 for old times sake. Besides, think of the dark, hot, sweaty, bone tiring adventures we could have finding parts for her.
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I'd sure hate to try and manufacture a missile tube from scratch. Now rebuild an old "O" boat might be fun.
Off topic, but somewhat related: Ford Motor company set out to re-produce six brand new 1914 Model T's, which they called T-100 to celebrate the centenary of the Ford Motor Company in 2003, six very special Model Ts were built that replicate in true fashion the original 1914 Model T. The six 2003 Model T-100s were all donated to museums with four of the cars going to the Henry Ford Museum.
Can we get General Dynamics to build us a boomer?
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I know the guidelines are to name one US submarine on display. I definitely think it should be a fleet boat since they are the ones that wiped the Japanese Navy and merchant marine off the oceans, and provided us with some of our first opportunities to strike back at the Japanese in those dark, uncertain early days.
But if it's ANY submarine, I'd suggest one of the Japanese I-400 or I-13/I-14 boats, the ones carrying at least two floatplanes. As we know, the I-400s were absolute monsters and the largest submarines built before the advent of nuclear power. Lots of rooms for visitors.
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Chief,
you know for a fact that I would love to walk around a 41 for freedom one more time and try to beg borrow or steal the parts for it but you and I both know that JRRF or Philly don't have parts for them and the only place that may or may not still have parts is in Bremerton and even with my ID card it would be hell getting in and then getting the parts back across the country. Hell Trout hasn't been cut up yet and she would make a good museum boat or get Ned Beach's USS Triton, the ONLY two reactor submarine in the US Navy. She from what I have been told is setting on keel blocks awaiting her fate to be scraped, starting to believe that they waited for Capt Beach to pass before they put her on the hit list for her final move in life and intact. Besides Triton STILL has ALL of her gear onboard and from the reports it wouldn't be hard to scrape the paint and open her up and wax the floors and plug shore power back in and run her as a museum.
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Triton would be a good choice. I saw her a couple of time when she was in Norfork. What a monster. I could not believe how long that boat was - just coming from the Picuda. It was amazing. And if all her parts are still there - it wouldn't take much. If they can do it with the Nautilus why not the Triton.
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the Triton may or may not be hot :-\ if'n ya catch my meaning on that one... Her service life was very small and from what I have heard or been told over the years she was a pig to handle at sea and it wasn't worth the cost of making her and keeping both reactors online :idiot2:
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Why 2 reactors?
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Because Rickover COULD..... BTW there was a class of Cruisers that had 2 reactors onboard starting with the USS Long Beach (IF I remember correctly) and there were only 3 or 4 made and the rumor behind the construction of those was that Rickover had BTW just completed Triton and had the Long Beach and the California were being built and the Navy thought that they were getting two more submarines and when they went to the Shipyard to see their new submarines being built they saw a CRUISER hull and Rickover smiling and he shoved it down their throats to finish them..
BUT that was only a rumor and that was told to me when they DECOMMED the USS California in Pearl back in the early '90s and once decommed she stayed there for a couple of months for the Reservists to train on and then when I came back from a run at sea she was gone and the last pic that I saw from her was her superstructor had been removed and she was going to the chopping blocks and that was a few years ago
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According to Ned Beach, the TRITON needed two reactors because of her size and the relatively low power output of the water-cooled reactor, mark 1. She was a biiiiiig boat (although Beach said he hated the tiny conning tower!). Also, not sure how much turbo-electric power was needed to light up that friggen massive radar she was built with inside that huge sail. CVA(N) 65 needed 8 friggen nuke steam kettles when built! Not sure, but I think she was refitted with fewer, but newer, plants.
PF
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Paul,
the sad part is we have bigger boats then the Triton running on 1 reactor..... Personally I think that Rickover just wanted to show the world that we could do it, if you look at how long the Triton was commissioned it wasn't very long at all 6-8 years total if I remember that right because she wasn't commissioned a decade before she was decommed and layed at Bremerton for decades waiting to be scraped. But what the heck she still had most if not all of her gear onboard and when they scrap (if they haven't done so already) her all of the usefull pieces that so many need will be sold for next to nothing and made into a honda or some other crap.
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Triton had the power plant of a nuclear destroyer/cruiser. It had one reactor plant and maint turbine per shaft (Yep, a nuke sub with two shafts. Rickover couldn't get Congress to budget money for a nuclear destroyer (eventually they did allow Bainbridge and several others) so, to prove the power plant would work, he built it into a submarine without making anyone the wiser. It had features that just didn't fly on submarines, but were standard fare for targets.
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If I could have one sub for a museum I would have 2 picks. And I would leave both of them at there current locations:
The Hunley.
The Bowfin.
With the money from those places I could then get any boat I wanted it seems.
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Ah, the bowfin.....
Remember that they are in HI, In Pearl, Next to the AZ, and across from the MI an Ok memorial. What more could you want..... ;D
Good job for the guys at the Bowfin...
Rick
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Don't forget when she needs a shipyard period the Navy and PNSY are more then happy to bring her in and give her a shave and a haircut and fix her hull and paint her.
Of all of the museum boats out there you will not find one better then the one that you work on, and if you do that means that you might want to work a little harder or refocus your energies to make her something that you are infinetly proud of. 10 years ago Torsk was a dead steel tube with little of anything working on her and the volunteer crew has brought her back to life inch by inch piece by piece, this weekend I was back onboard and while she still needs a lot of love she feels alive down below more then ever before... How many of you have heard Morse Code coming through your submarine's radio shack and have it be live and not on tape?? let alone on the correct radio's and antennae's?? a lot of our systems are alive now and there are more coming back online here in the near future and the best part is that MOST of the work was done by volunteers and by donated money and not by the "owners" of the boat. Countless strip ships in the last 10 years and the countless donations of money and parts by those whom are just happy to see her being worked on again have saved her from a scrap pile or the bottom of the ocean as a reef.
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DOES JAPAN HAVE ANY OF THE I-CLASS BOATS STILL AROUND,ALSO WHAT ABOUT THE BRITISH.
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I think the British do have one or two
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DOES JAPAN HAVE ANY OF THE I-CLASS BOATS STILL AROUND,ALSO WHAT ABOUT THE BRITISH.
All caps means your yelling mate. ;)
Here no one really cares, but if you ever went to others sites they are picky on that stuff. Just a tip...
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MAYBE THEY NEED A LIFE.CAPS ARE BETTER ON MY EYES!
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It's cool with me. :) I was just giving a FYI so you don't get bashed on other sites. Alot of the sites I go to are pretty strict on the all caps thing. But they are also on grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. And also don't allow "leet speak". ( It would look like L33T $P3@K saying leet speak.)
I wasn't bashing you man so I hope it didn't come across that way.
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No it's o.k.I have heard about the caps thing before.
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Don't feel bad, Chris. My dad always emails me in caps for the same reason.
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Caps - no caps - handy tip
Shift + F3 will shift your text from all caps to no caps, and to only the first word of a sentence in caps. Just highlight the text string you want to change
This does not work in these BBS window fields, it works in word, and almost any other program.
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Responding to Darrin's post about the work being done by the volunteers and donors: Problem is at some boats is that unless the management or "owners" as Darrin puts it have a VISION and a CORRECT vision for a submarine, volunteer efforts can go for naught. If the owners are or become short sighted or even, yes, JEALOUS of the volunteers who work harder, do more research and even forge friendships with former crewmembers, the volunteers can be and are driven off. Even in those organizations with volunteers, they still have to put up with short-sighted management. How long have the Torsk volunteers wanted to paint over those silly-looking teeth but can't because of the greek fisherman-cap wearing managers like them?
And while Darrin may believe Torsk "still needs a lot of love," I think that fails to take into account the tremendous amount of love and extremely hard work the Torsk Volunteer Association has done for at least the past 10 years, including more work weekends than I can count.
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Trust me Fred,
I have seen all of the love and hard work put into torsk and she was in bad shape when TVA was allowed to come onboard and I do remember the first call for a work weekend to save her and at that time I was in the 101st ABN and couldn't take the time off and had it not been for my current duty assignment and TorskDoc finally telling me to put up or shut up (NBF vs DBF) that I took the challange and before I went I made sure that I reviewed ALL of the work weekend stuff that had been posted and read all of the bbs traffic and when I first got onboard in '04 to today is a HUGE improvement of what she used to look and feel like. While she will always need love and attention she has come a LONG way in the last 10 years and I am extremely proud of her volunteers and to be called a "local" volunteer by those onboard because I have been able to come up more then a couple of times a year. Hell in the last 4 years I have done 20 or so strip ships and numerous site surveys for the volunteers coming down and each time finding more stuff that we needed, the last 2 or 3 strip ships we have been on we have actually become picky to what we needed out of the dead fleet and it was nice to know that we didn't need everything that we could get our hands onto to make her more liveable and more workable. While TVA walks on egg shells with BMM and now the Constellation maritime administration (they took over BMM) we don't want to step on their toes and be told not to come back after all of the years of hard work and dedication that has been put in by so many volunteers.
Darrin
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...How long have the Torsk volunteers wanted to paint over those silly-looking teeth but can't because of the greek fisherman-cap wearing managers like them?...
While the shark's teeth paint isn't historically accurate or whatever, I do think it's "cool". One thing for sure, when you see those teeth you KNOW it's the Torsk. And I must mention that when running the convention slideshow DVD by some family members, the 5 to 9 year old kids that were there went CRAZY when they saw the Torsk. They like the shark teeth! :)
Eh, it's just paint (not permanent). At least it's not rust. ;D
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I have argued the point about those sharks teeth and lost more then a few times, IF they wanted teeth on the boat that is fine with me because the USS Baya had them on her during WWII and I have volunteered to paint them on and they are nothing like the "digitized" version of the teeth that Baya had on her bow while in service. There are a number of tourists that have come onboard because of those teeth and the kids have seen them and asked to go see the "shark" submarine. Heck he USS Von Stueben had them painted on her during the early 70's and I do have pics of her and the Baya and the teeth that are on Torsk while it has brought tourist's to us isn't historically accurate in any way shape or form and while we may dislike them we aren't allowed to paint over them. BTW TorskDoc a few weeks ago brought the Bow Planes back to their correct position using come alongs and then blocked them in place so they won't move back down to where they had been before, so a lot of pictures from the bow of the boat have to be retaken to get her back to be correct, that and painting the area where the bow planes had set for many years. Down the line... way down the line is to extend the bow planes and then clean/chip/paint that whole area and get it back up to snuff.
Darrin
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I think the shark teeth are cool and add a lot of character to it, and it is acceptable for the time period. Win win situation.
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I guess you are referring to this shot of the Von Steuben (SSBN 632). Beside the Picuda, I made two patrols on the Von Steuben.
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What years did you serve on the Von Stueben?? because ETC (SS) Mike Eacho of Torsk fame also did time on the Von Stueben and i am sure that if you two served in the same time frame that he would be happy to swap sea stories with you about her. And yes that is the pic that I was referring to.
Darrin
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Guys:
First, the Torsk never wore teeth in service. I don't know how the word "digitized" is being used for the Baya's teeth but I think they're at least a much better job. Besides they were painted on by a crew exuberant over having just won the greatest struggle for freedom and democracy in our history. Finally, while Torsk's teeth may "look cool" to some and that some may consider them a draw to visitors, I would suggest that Torsk will draw people ANYWAY to her because she stands out in the harbor and is a submarine, which subconsciously (no pun intended) inspires a sense of wonder and adventure among people who've never had much, if any, exposure to them.
If people want to go around painting sharks mouths on our museum boats because "it looks cool," then the historic ship preservation movement just took several massive steps backward.
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More on USS Baya:
http://www.ussbaya.com/image53.html
http://www.ussbaya.com/image37.html
Very interesting.
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I was on the Von Steuben around 1966-67
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More on USS Baya:
Interesting, but very visible from the air and that topside didn't look like a traditional paint job either. Didn't boats have certain camouflage schemes? Was this after hostilities?
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The teeth that are on Torsk are the digitized version that I was talking about and it would be great to honor the USS Baya by painting her teeth on Torsk but again she never had them during her time while she was commissioned so would it be a step forward or a step backwards on that one?? Fred is right, Torsk will draw visitors no matter what is painted on her bow because the fact that they are in the Inner Harbor and that we do get a good bit of over flow traffic of tourist's waiting to get into the acquarium and honestly those teeth while awful to look at has brought a number of families over the years because the kids see it and want to go onboard.