A Visit to a Submarine Museum–or Remembering Old Friends

We visited the submarine museum in Pearl Harbor recently.

For my young adult daughter, it was fun to see the boats.

For me, it was like old home week as I saw many submarines I knew in person, fact and fiction.

That’s what happens when you spend 20 years of your life linked to one submarine or another.

The World War II submarine fleet

The diesel subs from WWII are not part of my personal experience.

However, when we attended chapel services at the Pearl Harbor Subase (that’s shorthand for “submarine base.”), services always concluded with the name of a WWII era boat, “still on patrol.”

A friend’s father, whom I met frequently in Hawai’i, served on “pigboats” during WWII out of Hawai’i.

Chet also helped overhaul the USS Pampanito (SS-383) when the Navy put it on permanent display in San Francisco.

The Snook

After completing SOBC (Submarine Officers Basic Course), the Navy assigned my husband to the USS Snook (SSN-592) then undergoing overhaul in Mare Island.

(He got the job because he’s an excellent engineer).

The work consumed him for 18 months before the boat returned to the fleet.

While we lived there, the Navy decommissioned the USS Nautilus (Our friend Rick’s hair turned white within six months of reporting aboard her).

The museum hosts a photo of the Nautilus decommissioning ceremony, which I searched for a very young version of myself!

(As it happened, I was in Groton, Connecticut several years later when the Nautilus made its final trip up the Thames River–to be moored as part of the submarine museum at the Subase.)

My daughter found the Snook’s bell, and we took a photo for her father.

The Michigan

From the Snook, my husband moved to the USS Michigan (SSBN-727) then being built at Electric Boat in Groton.

He went from one of the oldest submarines in the fleet to the newest one–the second Trident class submarine.

I found its plaque and a model of the USS Ohio (SSN-726), the original boat.

For my daughter, a Trident submarine was a big sub her father worked on.

For me, it was people I knew and love–along with two years of my life catering to its whims and needs.

We’ve known COs of the Ohio as well as the initial engineer for all the Trident submarines.

The Skipjack

My most intimate experience was with the USS Skipjack (SSN-585).

It consumed 42 months of my life as that smart engineer became the chief engineer of the oldest submarine in the Atlantic Ocean.

She’d call in the middle of the night, that HY-80 steel mistress, demanding my husband’s attention–pretty much all the time.

Her teardrop shaped hull was famous and high-tech when she took to the fleet–two years after my husband’s birth!

The Pearl Harbor submarine museum has a big model of her.

I surveyed with mixed–extremely mixed–emotions.

Long ago, I won the unofficial prize, “wife with worst deployment,” three times in a row while my husband served on that submarine.

The Skipjack forced me to grow up. My husband started balding.

Other submarine treasures

It didn’t take me long to visit all my old friends in the Pearl Harbor museum.

I saw a shirt donated by someone who served on the USS Thresher--which made me gape in surprise.

The USS Boston plaque reminded me of my horror reading Tom Clancy’s book Red Storm Rising. He sank the Boston. A friend’s husband was on that boat!

I knew the CO. I couldn’t bear the thought Clancy killed him–even if it was fiction.

The “Louisville slugger bats,” given to a friend who served on the USS Louisville during the first Iraq war reminded me of the shot fired and his wife’s experience.

My daughter took longer to tour the museum–she needed to read all the information and stories.

They’re written on my heart.

Tweetables

A Navy wife visits her submarine history. Click to Tweet

Visiting Pearl Harbor’s submarine museum. Click to Tweet

A submarine to you is personal memory to me. Click to Tweet