[Milsurplus] A Visit to Battleship Cove

Mike Morrow kk5f at earthlink.net
Sun Oct 28 12:09:38 EST 2007


John wrote:

>USS Lionfish:
>
>I'd never been aboard a WW II sub before and was quite surprised at the
>headroom and just how crammed the ship was with machinery. There were
>valves, levers, pipes, and cables everywhere and the watertight doors
>were a bit difficult for a tall person to get through.  All in all a
>remarkable place.

The modern boats are still the same, but just with more people room.  Watertight doors are still the same size too, but the doors are much heavier on a modern boat, in order to withstand deeper flooding pressure.

>The receivers appeared to be a pair of RALs, similar to this:
>http://home.earthlink.net/~navyradio/id3.html

One of the receivers would have been a LF/MF RAK.  Although HF (RAL) played a much more significant role in WWII-era US submarines than later, still some LF/MF receive capablity would have been installed.  BTW, submarines have always been exempt from requirements to monitor 500 kHz, although on my missile submarine 30 years ago we had a AN/WRR-3 (the best and last all-vacuum-tube VLF/LF/MF receiver used by the USN) which could be used if desired.

>I wish there had been more explanatory placards on things. For example,
>the fuzing of the torpedo warhead was described, but the method of
>propulsion was not.

That would be the Mark 14 steam-driven torpedo.  Along with the Mark 6 magnetic fuse, it started the war with a disasterous record of failures due to criminally inadequate pre-war testing.  But by 1943, it had become the workhorse of the US submarine fleet.  It was the main weapon (assisted late in the war by the Mark 18 electric torpedo) by which the US submarine force was able, as only two percent of the USN, to account for 55 percent of enemy merchant and naval shipping losses.  The Mark 14 was fielded in 1931, and was still in service along side later Mark 37 electric and Mark 45 atomic warhead units on US nuclear subs a full *45* years later.  Amazing to think about any military device having that service lifetime in front line units! 

>In retrospect, I did not see any SONAR or crypto gear which is odd, but
>the sub did have the smallest head I've ever seen....  well under 3 feet
>square!!

WWII US crypto gear (other than the M-209) is rare indeed due to intentional destruction upon removal from service, and likely few museum ships will ever be able to acquire real surviving examples.  The Lionfish likely had a CSP-889 (ECM Mark II) crypto machine in the radio room.  This was an excellent cryptograph for its day, and it was used into the 1950s.  There is an wonderfully detailed explaination of it at:  http://www.maritime.org/ecm2.htm .

>USS Joseph P. Kennedy:
>
>This was by far the most interesting to me as it had the most
>electronics by far. The equipment all appeared to be mid fifties to
>early 60s.

There should have been radio gear as late as the R-1051 and T-827 on board, since this ship served on active duty until 1973.  It was part of an experimental anti-submarine carrier group that operated north of the Soviet Union in the Barents Sea in Summer 1971.  I was on board the carrier, USS Intrepid, at the time, and saw the Kennedy nearby many times.  I still carry the Bluenose card I got for this operation (above the Arctic Circle).  This ship missed WWII service by several months.

----

It sounds as if Battleship Cove would be an interesting visit, a place surprising to find in the predominantly anti-US, anti-military sub-culture of Massachusetts.  Another great collection of US naval vessels and aircraft is Patriot's Point in Charleston, SC.  There one finds the carrier USS Yorktown, destroyer USS Laffey, submarine USS Claymagore, and cutter Ingham, along with many different US military aircraft and other displays, including a Cold War Memorial that features a superstructure (sail) from a decommissioned missile submarine.  Unfortunately, the NS Savannah was removed 13 years ago.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot's_Point for a quick summary.

My first ship, the carrier USS Intrepid, has been a museum near NYC for a couple of decades.  I'd like to see it again, but not at the trouble of traveling to NY, another also notoriously anti-US, anti-military sub-culture.

Mike / KK5F


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