Turning our back on allies to make a museum seems like a bad choice at this stage in the game.
Submarine Bowfin in drydock
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You're right.. not like we have an open border, massive inflation, high energy prices and people struggling here. But it's our job to spend our money on another nations border.
I'd much rather spend 9 million on a ww2 era submarine that represents American exceptionalism from a period when we were actually exceptional than I would send billions to Ukraine or leave 80+ billion behind to the Taliban.
I visited the Alabama and Drum many times when I lived on Dauphin Island, Alabama. The Alabama was not one of the largest classes of battleship but was still huge. The Drum made me really appreciate what the submariners went through, the interior is really cramped for space. I think I would have a real problem with claustrophobia if I were submerged in the Drum for more than 30 minutes!
When I joined the Navy it was my desire to serve in a sub, until I saw one.
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You raise and interesting point there are some big pros and cons regarding “dry berthing” a museum ship. Anyone with interest in this thread should check out the USS New Jersey’s YouTube channel. Curator does lots of great videos about their ships history and visits other museum ships around the country, also gives a lot of insight into what it takes to run a museum ship. Shocker it’s pretty expensive and often difficult to find people capable of much of the work needed.
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Did those guys standing on the bow of U-505 think that was a safe place to be? Lol
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Given the way things are developing in the South China Sea, and the Navy's fading ability to keep the ships it has running - much less properly bulk-up for new geopolitical challenges - they might think about refurbishing some of these old boats, not scrapping or making museums out of them.
View attachment 4021893
Maybe not ones that old.
pic is small, but looks like the Hunley,
had the honor of attending the funeral for the crew back in the early 2000's ,
the folks that manned that boat had big brass ones,
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I think there were other guys telling them to stand there, presumably backed by 20mms and .50 cals on the DD parked alongside, so that seemed the safest thing to do. ;-)
Seriously, the order had been given to "abandon ship" on the surrounded and sinking U-boat about to go down any moment, and the bow was the only place they could go while waiting for the U.S. whaleboats to pick them up.
Meanwhile, a team of crazy Americans had scrambled down the hatch and into the sloshing bowels seeking to locate the water cock they suspected the Germans had opened - and grab the Enigma machine and code books.
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The painting is even better; I couldn't find it last night:
(gorgeous)
June 4, 1944, 150 miles out from west Africa.
The escort carrier in background was named the Guadalcanal. Coincidentally, 80 years ago right this minute, the fearful Pacific battle that ship was named for still roared, six weeks after the Aug. 7, 1942 Marine landings.
My great step uncle was on the USS Cod for all of WWII, Lt Frank Kimball (the pirate). On one of his Junk boarding parties they were left behind as a Japanese navy destroyer closed in. The Bowfish and Blenny were searching for the crew while he and his crew of pirates destroyed junks full of rice and rubber intended for the Japanese war effort. The Blenny finally took them on board. Two 'silent service' episodes and 2 or 3 'war at sea' episodes were filmed in color with him in it. One hell of a guy!
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ETA on the U-505 adventure: Task force commander Daniel Gallery was quite a man and apparently quite a character; post-war he wrote some entertaining navy-based humor books ("Captain Fatso" is one I read and remember, about a colorful Chief).
In June 1944 his task force set out on their most famous Atlantic sub-hunting cruise with the explicit goal of capturing one.
In looking up that painting I tripped across two articles of Gallery's in the Naval Institute publication, one on grabbing the U-boat and the other on his pioneering work with night-time escort-carrier flight operations, in the cruises just before the capture. I have not read the U-505 piece yet, but Gallery hints these night ops were a factor in locating that sub (new to me).
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No surprise, but by 1944 U-boats in the Atlantic were highly allergic to surfacing during the day, and did all their battery charges etc. after dark, so flying at night was critical to finding them.
One dirty little secret: To bring their babies in safe on moonless nights, Gallery's team was not averse to lighting up the flat-top like Times Square at New Years. He describes the crew as more than willing to accept the risk of a midnight torpedo as the price of bringing their precious flight crews home safe - and of having a chance a bagging a U-boat. (Something like: Planes locate the sub on the surface at night, and a destroyer rushes over to drive and hold it under while the task force maneuvers into range and position.)
Also in those early night ops, sometimes the carrier's radio controller would notice a plane (mainly Avengers I think) that was no longer responding on the radio, and the ship would beam a giant spotlight straight up into the sky to guide them home, visible over hundreds of square miles of sea. (I've read of similar episodes in the Pacific.)
Gallery was doing all this in the spring of 1944, soon before the war's most famous "light 'em up" incident, on the other side of the world, which he refers to in this passage:
'A bench mark on the state of the art in 1944 (carrier ops at night) is that wild night in June, right after the Marianas Turkey Shoot, when Admiral Marc Mitscher gave the order to, “Turn on the lights.” Two hundred planes got caught out after dark that night. Nearly half of them wound up in the water. In 1944, flying off even the big Essex-class carriers was still very much a daytime job.'
ETA: Nighttime flight ops were not a factor in the U-505 capture.
In June 1944 his task force set out on their most famous Atlantic sub-hunting cruise with the explicit goal of capturing one.
In looking up that painting I tripped across two articles of Gallery's in the Naval Institute publication, one on grabbing the U-boat and the other on his pioneering work with night-time escort-carrier flight operations, in the cruises just before the capture. I have not read the U-505 piece yet, but Gallery hints these night ops were a factor in locating that sub (new to me).
No surprise, but by 1944 U-boats in the Atlantic were highly allergic to surfacing during the day, and did all their battery charges etc. after dark, so flying at night was critical to finding them.
One dirty little secret: To bring their babies in safe on moonless nights, Gallery's team was not averse to lighting up the flat-top like Times Square at New Years. He describes the crew as more than willing to accept the risk of a midnight torpedo as the price of bringing their precious flight crews home safe - and of having a chance a bagging a U-boat. (Something like: Planes locate the sub on the surface at night, and a destroyer rushes over to drive and hold it under while the task force maneuvers into range and position.)
Also in those early night ops, sometimes the carrier's radio controller would notice a plane (mainly Avengers I think) that was no longer responding on the radio, and the ship would beam a giant spotlight straight up into the sky to guide them home, visible over hundreds of square miles of sea. (I've read of similar episodes in the Pacific.)
Gallery was doing all this in the spring of 1944, soon before the war's most famous "light 'em up" incident, on the other side of the world, which he refers to in this passage:
'A bench mark on the state of the art in 1944 (carrier ops at night) is that wild night in June, right after the Marianas Turkey Shoot, when Admiral Marc Mitscher gave the order to, “Turn on the lights.” Two hundred planes got caught out after dark that night. Nearly half of them wound up in the water. In 1944, flying off even the big Essex-class carriers was still very much a daytime job.'
ETA: Nighttime flight ops were not a factor in the U-505 capture.
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The piccie I saw left me with the perception of (rather blurred, poorly focused) props. I've looked again and nope, those bronze castings aren't there. Curse the thieves.
There's a good read about the Bowfin and her deployments. My dad had a cousin, LT Smith, who served on the Bowfin and is mentioned a lot concerning his good eyesight and spotting targets. Dad had 2 brothers on B-17s in the Pacific. A third brother was on the USS New Orleans when she was torpedoed, lost 200' of bow. He told about how they ran out of chow while anchored out near an island while doing repairs. The Navy tried to get him into the early version of Seals. He didn't like all the exercise so he flunked the eye chart on purpose to get out.
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UDT: Underwater Demolition Team
Under the circumstances, that is exactly where I would want to be.
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If you look closer, you will see that the American flag was already flying from the conning tower, and the men on the bow are actually handling a line from the US ship the photo was taken from... they were getting her ready to be towed.
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Right. I think there are photos of both groups out on the bow, first the Germans awaiting rescue/capture, then the yanks preparing to take a tow (the scene in the painting).
In one of the items I looked at to check details, maybe Admiral Gallery's words but I'm not sure, it was noted that the task force's DEs (destroyer-escorts, not fast DDs) lacked the power to tow the semi-submerged sub, which was why the 9,000 ton escort carrier was given the job.
(It had two "unaflow" engines, but I can't tell if they were 9,000 HP each or combined; I think "each.")
(By semi-coincidence, I currently have out a library book, "Hunter-Killers: U.S. Escort Carriers In The Battle Of The Atlantic," which opens with the development and details of the various CVE classes. The Guadalcanal was of the most numerous class, built by Henry Kaiser using the same "assembly line" merchant ship construction he pioneered, who successfully lobbied FDR to approve assembling 50 mass-produced CVEs. Admiral Gallery said, "They were barely good enough, but they were good enough." <quote corrected> They were the first CVEs to be retired post-war.
)Lucky U-boat crewman:
Interesting duty for USN members:
1944: June 4: Capture of German Submarine U-505
1944 June 4: Capture of German U-boat: U-505 Task Group 22.3, commanded by Captain Daniel V. Gallery, USN, captured German (Type IXC) U-boat, U-505, on June 4, 1944. The Task Group consisted of USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60), USS Pillsbury (DE-133), USS Pope (DE-134), USS Flaherty (DE-135), USS...
*Highly recommended, Freedom's Forge by Arthur Herman, which tells the real story of how the US cranked-out all those weapons and materiel in WW2, including a lot about Kaiser's pre-fab merchant ship construction. At it's peak, kind of as a stunt but not by much, they built one in one week.
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Posts #27 & #32 have the photo (not painting) I am referring to... #32 also has a photo of the German crew on the bow (no flag visible, launch not quite to the sub yet).
They are hauling a light "lead" line, to pull over the heavy towing line.
You can see the line in the crews' hands in the photo I am referring to if you right-click on it then open and enlarge it:
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