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Three eight-inch guns sit on the deck of he USS Salem, which is docked at the former Quincy Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Mass. The USS Salem, now a floating museum, served a 10-year career as flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and the Second Fleet in the Atlantic without ever firing her guns in a military conflict. (CHARLES KRUPA / AP)
U.S. cruiser sits dockside as museum
Former flagship hosted royalty
By PHIL CANNADAY The Associated Press
QUINCY, Mass. When you step aboard the USS Salem, you won't have to give way to presidents or kings and queens or the like. They've already been there.
The onetime flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and the Second Fleet in the Atlantic has served host to the former shah of Iran, the king and queen of Greece, the president of Lebanon and other notables.
Built at the former Bethlehem Steel Co.'s Quincy Yard, launched March 25, 1947, and commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on May 14, 1949, the Salem now is a museum moored near her birthplace.
Visitors to the heavy cruiser get the feeling right away that the warship is not so much restored as preserved, and they are right. The Salem came out of its 35-year stint in "mothballs" in October 1994 in good shape, still bearing much of its original paint. Volunteers now keep the vessel shipshape, painting where needed and making repairs.
"I had a flashback," said John F. Connors, 68, of South Attleboro, who served in the U.S. marine detachment to the Salem from 1956 to '58 and now is a volunteer guide and archivist. "I knew right where to go."
A visit to the Salem could easily be a two-trip event, because there is a lot to see. You could join in a guided tour, during which you will learn the history surrounding the well-traveled vessel. On another trip, you can take a self-guided tour using a map that shows the deck plans on the 219-metre ship. And you can do a lot of walking.
"If you stood the ship on end, it's taller than the (60-storey) John Hancock building downtown Boston," says Michael Condon, 46, of Cohasset, executive director of the United States Naval Shipbuilding Museum and USS Salem.
You can poke around the Salem from stem to stern, and up to the bridge and the pilot house, with only certain areas or rooms not open to visitors such as the archives room or the still-in-operation machine shop. Check out the restored barber shop and dentist office.
Of special interest to lovers of history are the four Memorial Rooms, filled with pictures, old military uniforms, swords, pistols and rifles and other memorabilia. Then there's the Model Exhibit Display Room with a 3 1/2 meter shiny brass model of the USS St. Paul and dozens of models, small and large, of other ships.
Stop by the brig, where miscreants aboard the ship were put for breaking rules. Prisoners only slept in one of the two cells, and joined work crews during the day.
Note the garbage grinder which mashed the remains of meals until they were liquid, so that enemy ships would have nothing to follow when it was disposed of overboard.
After seeing where the crew ate and slept, the captain's and admiral's rooms above the main deck are quite a contrast.
Peek inside the turrets of the eight-inch (20-centimetre) guns forward or aft on the main deck. The ship also carries smaller cannon, including anti-aircraft batteries - none of which ever have been fired in anger.
The Salem offers an Overnight Adventure for boy scout troops or groups of students. Besides spending the night in a former crew berth and eating in the crew's mess deck, activities include radar tracking, simulated fire fighting, first aid lessons and scavenger hunts. The ship's mess rooms also are available for birthday parties and other events.
On display outside next to the gangplank is a grey, two-person German sub captured during the Second World War.
Bearing the number 075 and a black German cross, Connors said it is one of two still existing the other is at a Chicago museum, which gave the Salem its sub.
Leave U-boat where it is, sailor's sister says
By CHRIS LAMBIE Staff Reporter - Halifax Chronicle Herald
A Halifax woman who lost her older brother
to a U-boat attack wants to sink a proposal to raise a Second World War German
submarine lying on the ocean floor off Chebucto Head.
Gloria Brown s brother, Roy Gillespie, was a 22-year-old sailor on Montrolite, a
Canadian Imperial Oil tanker sunk by a German U-boat off Bermuda in 1942 as it
was heading north to Halifax with a cargo of diesel fuel from Venezuela.
"He was one of the lucky ones to be picked up," Mrs. Brown said Thursday.
"Unfortunately, that ship was torpedoed, too. So he was lost completely. We
never heard another word, just that he was lost at sea."
An Alberta marine archeologist plans to hunt this spring for U-190, a German sub
the Canadian navy sank for target practice just off Halifax Harbour in 1947. A
local amateur historian wants the sub salvaged and put on display at a Halifax
waterfront museum.
"Leave it where it is," said Mrs. Brown, now 82.
"I wouldn't want that brought up for anything. There's no reason for it to be
brought up, as far as I'm concerned."
Her husband, Walter (Buster) Brown, has reasons of his own for opposing the
raising of U-190. He spent most of the war as a sergeant on a troop ship that
ferried soldiers from Halifax to the battlefields of Europe.
"I was only hit once," said Mr. Brown, adding his ship struck a mine that had
been laid by a U-boat.
"It blew us out of the water and did some damage, but we limped into Scotland
and got patched up. I think the Lord was with me that I survived the Battle of
the Atlantic. But there were an awful lot of lives lost."
Sailors and soldiers were terrified of U-boats, he said.
"You were on edge all the time. It was an awful feeling."
Mr. Brown, 84, also wants U-190 to remain on the sea floor.
"It s a nerve-racking thought to me to have something like that raised to the
surface. Leave it on the bottom where it belongs," he said.
"Why bring back old memories of something like a U-boat? If they could bring
back all those ships the U-boats sank in the Atlantic during the Second World
War, it would be nice. But why bring back something like that? Look at the
sorrow and heartache it would bring to other people."
New Democrat MLA Bill Estabrooks (Timberlea-Prospect) has fielded lots of
complaints about the proposal to raise U-190.
"That sub should be left exactly where it is," Mr. Estabrooks said. "Those sort
of U-boats have put enough of our men in their graves down under that water. To
even give the recognition to float it is just an insult to those many veterans
who lost their lives."
Local U-boat enthusiast Wayne Cookson believes U-190 should be brought to the
surface.
"As terrible as that time period was, history is history," Mr. Cookson said.
"If you try to hide and bury history, all of a sudden it will repeat itself."
U-190 is infamous for sinking the last Canadian warship lost in the Second World
War. It fired the torpedo that sank HMCS Esquimalt off Halifax. Of the
minesweeper s 70-man crew, 44 sailors died in the frigid water on April 16,
1945.
The sub surrendered to Canadian warships nearly a month later. The navy used it
for training for two years before sinking it near Esquimalt s wreck at the
approaches to Halifax Harbour.
Local history enthusiast David Brown has proposed U-190 be raised and displayed
at a $200-million project that the Waterfront Development Corp. and the Armour
Group want to build on the Halifax waterfront. Queen s Landing is slated to hold
a three-storey naval museum with the corvette HMCS Sackville as its centrepiece.
The idea of raising a U-boat and displaying it at Queen s Landing alongside its
former Canadian foe is "intriguing," said Scott McCrea, president of the Armour
Group Ltd.
"I don t think it takes a great leap to see that there s a thematic alignment,"
Mr. McCrea said.
But the price tag on such a project would likely be daunting.
"Really, we re far from a point of determining whether this could or should be a
part of (Queen s Landing)," Mr. McCrea said.
One scientist argues it would be "foolish" to try raising the sub.
The millions of dollars it would take to get U-190 to the surface "would pale
into insignificance compared to the costs of stabilizing the steel after 60
years in sea water," said Trevor Kenchington, a marine biologist based in
Musquodoboit Harbour.
The wreck would decay rapidly into rust if it were brought into contact with
air, he said.
"The outer casing . . . is made of thin steel and typically does not survive
well," Mr. Kenchington said.
"The interior, which would be the major attraction for visitors, was once a mass
of piping and wiring, all made of a variety of metals. Immerse those in sea
water and electrolytic corrosion would be rapid. Whether anything remains that
might be recognizable must be doubtful."
The hunt for U-190
Team wants to find sub, raise it, create museum
By CHRIS LAMBIE - Halifax Chronicle Herald
The hunt is
on for a sunken U-boat off Chebucto Head.
A marine archeologist wants to find U-190, the German sub that the Canadian navy
sent to the bottom nearly 60 years ago just outside Halifax Harbour.
"We have to find it, determine its depth and get a picture of what it looks like
on the bottom," said Rob Rondeau, an Alberta wreck-diving expert who arrived
Wednesday in Halifax.
In the spring, a team of underwater investigators will use an 18-metre vessel
equipped with side-scan sonar to search for the U-boat's remains.
U-190 is infamous for sinking the last Canadian warship lost in the Second World
War. It fired the torpedo that sank HMCS Esquimalt nine kilometres off Halifax.
Of the minesweeper s 70-man crew, 44 sailors died in the frigid water on April
16, 1945.
The sub surrendered to Canadian warships nearly a month later. The navy used it
for training for two years before sinking it near Esquimalt's wreck at the
approaches to Halifax Harbour.
"So they should be lying in relatively close proximity to one another," said Mr.
Rondeau.
Locating the narrow 60-metre sub might be difficult, he said.
"It's like finding a pen on the floor; it s a very small target. But we can find
something as small as a lunch box, so it s not impossible."
Divers will eventually descend to search for the wreck, suspected to be lying
under about 90 metres of water.
"Essentially what we do is called mowing the lawn," said Mr. Rondeau. "We create
a box and then we swim a grid pattern over top of that box, and hopefully we ll
find the submarine." "We're using the same methodology that was used to find the
Titanic and the Bismarck."
Sailors stripped U-190 before sinking it, he said.
"Its periscope, for example, is at the legion in St. John s," Mr. Rondeau said.
"I would bet you there's a lot of homes in Halifax that have artifacts from
U-190. Maybe grandpa was part of the crew looking after it and took a
searchlight."
Mr. Rondeau plans to film the sub wreck for an upcoming documentary he s trying
to sell to the Discovery Channel. He s also hoping to hunt for U-520, sunk by a
Canadian plane Oct. 30, 1942, off Newfoundland.
"Anything that we do recover would go on public display in a museum."
Local history enthusiast David Brown has proposed U-190 be raised and displayed
at a proposed $200-million project that the Waterfront Development Corp. and the
Armour Group want to build on the Halifax waterfront. Queen's Landing is slated
to hold a three-storey naval museum with the corvette HMCS Sackville as its
centrepiece. The plan even calls for live recreations of late-night U-boat
attacks.
U-190 was sunk out of "stupidity," said Mr. Brown, a geologist with the
Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board.
"There's only four U-boats on display in the world today and we would have had
the fifth one," he said.
Raising and restoring the sub would be expensive. But a similar U-boat on
display in Chicago attracts millions of visitors each year, Mr. Brown said.
If it was brought to the surface, he said U-190 could be set up beside
Sackville, the last of more than 120 corvettes used to escort convoys and attack
subs.
"It's bringing a piece of history back," Mr. Brown said. "You could have the two
protagonists during the Second World War: the hunter and the hunter-killer."
He proposed the U-boat raising last fall but hasn't heard back from the Queen s
Landing developers.
There are several other U-boats reputedly sunk off the East Coast.
"Most U-boats are war graves because of the dead in them," Mr. Brown said. "This
one is not, so it's one of the few you could actually get."
Werner Hirschmann was chief engineer aboard U-190.
Now 82 and living in Toronto, Mr. Hirschmann didn't seem at all surprised when
contacted Wednesday about the plan to search for and possibly raise his former
sub.
"I've been waiting for that for 10 or 15 years," he said with a chuckle.
"I would be most enthusiastic about that project. . . . I thought somebody might
have that brilliant idea a little bit earlier on."
Mr. Hirschmann said he never understood why the Canadian navy sank U-190.
"It makes me think about that U-505 which is sitting at a museum in Chicago.
Thousands of people walk by it every day," he said. "If we had kept the U-190,
we probably could have financed half of the Department of Defence with it."
After his sub surrendered at Bay Bulls, N.L., Mr. Hirschmann spent the next year
in an Ontario prisoner-of-war camp. He returned to Canada in 1962 to teach
computer science at the University of Toronto.
The former submariner hasn't laid eyes on his old U-boat since May 13, 1945.
"I would love to see my boat being brought to the surface," Mr. Hirschmann said.
"It's nostalgia; she was very much part of my life."
Toledo Blade - June 21, 2004
WW II Sub On the Way to New Duty As Museum
NEW ORLEANS -- The USS Razorback, a World War II submarine that is the world's longest-serving sub, is back in U.S. waters, starting a voyage up the Mississippi River via tugboat to become an inland museum in Arkansas.
The Navy decommissioned the 312-foot vessel on Nov. 30, 1970, and handed it over to the Turkish navy, which recently agreed to sell it to North Little Rock, Ark. for $1.
The Razorback, also known as SS-394, was launched in 1944 and took part in the surrender of Japan on Sept. 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay. It was awarded five battle stars during World War II and four during the Vietnam War.
Toledo Blade - February 26, 2004
Effort to raise scuttled German warship fails
Toledo Blade - Feb 10, 2004
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay— Tricky winds and river currents stymied salvage experts’ repeated attempts yesterday to raise a piece of the submerged wreckage of a German battleship scuttled off Uruguay in the opening days of World War II.
The ship—the Admiral Graf Spee — was a symbol of German naval might early in the war. The vessel prowled the South Atlantic, sinking as many as nine allied merchant ships before warships from Britain and New Zealand crippled it in December, 1939.
The Graf Spee’s captain scuttled the ship before committing suicide, and it has remained in waters less than 25 feet deep only miles outside the port of Montevideo ever since. (NOTE: The Admiral Graf Spee was not a battleship but was in fact rated as an Armoured Ship (Panzerschiffe).)
'Bad moon rising' blamed for worst WW II Navy disaster
By Jenni Ladiman, Toledo Blade Science Writer
It was a fatal moon that rose above the Philippine Sea the night of July 29, 1945.
One astronomer says its position marked hundreds of American sailors for death in what was to become the Navy's greatest loss of life from a single ship at sea.
Twelve hundred men were on the ship when it was struck by Japanese torpedoes. An estimated 900 made it off alive. But when rescuers finally arrived 4 1/2 days later, only 317 remained. The rest had fallen victim to relentless shark attacks, fatigue, exposure, dehydration, and madness induced by drinking seawater.
Among the dead was Toledoan Bertrand F Michael, who had been in the Navy 26 months. He lived in Fremont before moving to Toledo 10 years before his death. Dr. Dons Olson, a Toledo native who explores art and history through a astronomy at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, says the moon played a pivotal role in the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.
"To call it bad luck just trivializes it. It was a cosmic alignment," Dr.Olson says. The configuration of moon, ship, and submarine put the Indianapolis directly in the moon’s spotlight just moments after moonrise on July 29.
Capt. Charles McVay who commanded the Indianapolis was court martialed for the sinking. He was found guilty of failing to steer the ship on a zigzag course. He lost 100 points in permanent rank and 100 points in temporary rank. The sentence was soon remanded, last year the Navy exonerated Captain McVay who committed suicide in 1968.
Dr Olson says his findings show how clearly that the captain should be held blameless. Instead, the moon is to blame for the deaths 880 sailors and marines that night.
The Indianapolis was destined to win a footnote in history for the mission that preceded the sinking. It had just delivered key components, including uranium, to Tinian Island for the atomic bomb that the Enola Gay would drop on Hiroshima on Aug. 6.
But on July 29,the ship’s top secret mission was complete, and it sailed for Leyte in the Philippines to take part in the planned assault on the Japanese mainland.
It never arrived.
"I was sleeping up on the bow, on the deck. IT was too hot below. A lot of people slept up on the bow;" said Dick Thelan, a Lansing resident who, at 18, was a gunner’s mate on the 610-foot-long heavy cruiser.
"When the torpedoes hit, I was sleeping eight, maybe 12 feet from the edge," Mr. Thelan said. The impact of two torpedoes "blew me up and over 10 feet."
Now perilously close to the edge, he gripped the cable that ran along the outside of the deck to pull himself to his feet.
He wasn’t far from the heart of the impact. He ran forward. Eighteen to 20 feet of the bow was gone, and the ship was still moving.
When Japanese Lt. Cmdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto ordered his submarine to surface earlier that night he saw nothing. It was inky dark. Sailors on the deck of the Indianapolis reported they couldn’t recognize one another, so deep was the darkness.
The Japanese captain testified later that after this first, useless look, he submerged, with plans to resurface at moonrise.
This is where Dr. Olson’s interest lies.
The astronomy professor has written on the role of the moon and tides in the World War II battle of Tarawa in 1943, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944.
Accounts of the sinking of the Indianapolis present a confused picture of what the moon was like that night.
"If you look at the existing books and articles, you will find a wide range of lunar phases," Dr. Olson said. Reports claim everything from a full moon to a quarter moon hung in the sky.
"We wanted to establish moon phase, time, and direction of the moon rise, and how high the moon was above the horizon."
The tricky chore proved to be establishing the date and time of the attack, Dr Olson said.
Using records from both the ship and the submarine, Dr Olson established that, according to the submarine’s clock, the Japanese crew first saw the Indianapolis at 11:05 p.m. on July 29. The American ship’s clocks were set to time in Hawaii, which maintained a fractional time zone. On the ship it would have been 11:35 p.m.
With date and time fixed, a simple computer program pro vided the moon’s phase, direction, and height above the horizon.
What lit the sky, he found, was a waning gibbous moon, which means the moon was three-quarters lit.
When the Japanese sub surfaced at 11:35PM ship's time, the moon was low in the sky, 15 degrees above the horizon, almost due east.
Just in front of the moon, some 10.25 miles from the sub, was the Indianapolis, steaming at 17 knots toward the Japanese submarine. The submarine crept forward at 3 knots.
Dr. Olson checked this data against navigation tables that show how much of a ship can be seen above the horizon at varying distances. Considering the height of the Indianapolis, and the height of a person on the submarine looking with binoculars, he concluded the sighting was possible "in that one direction, for just a brief period, while the moon was near the horizon, back lighting the ship.
Within minutes of surfacing, a lookout on the submarine noted a black silhouette in the path of the glittering moon.
"Once that cosmic alignment occurred, the ship was doomed," Dr. Olson said.
"The ship is coming almost directly at them. They wait until the ship is almost 5,000 feet away. I’m told they couldn’t miss," Dr Olson said.
When you fire a spread of six torpedoes at that range, that’s considered point blank"
On board the Indianapolis, all was pandemonium as two torpedoes tore through the starboard side of the hull. Mr. Thelan ran aft to his assigned action station, but was cut off by flame.
Returning to the bow he cut down life rafts and life jackets with ether men as the ship, still moving forward, scooped up water like a giant shovel.
"We thought the boat was going to sink. I was up in the bow; and the bow went down first. I was one of the first ones to go off. I didn’t leave the ship. The ship left me," Mr. Thelan said.
Doug Stanton, author of the bestseller, In Harm’s Way, recounts that Captain McVay was never warned that Japanese sub marines were active in the area. To compound the disaster, no one paid attention when the Indianapolis did not arrive at Leyte. Nor were distress signals sent from the sinking ship heeded, he said. The men were rescued only after a pilot happened to notice them.
Mr. Thelan floated with a group of 75 or 80 other men. They never caught up with the life rafts they threw over the side. Instead, he spent the 4 1/2 days in a life jacket.
"We tried to help each other. There isn’t much you can do out there," Mt Thelan said.
"Anybody who swam outside the group was likely to be attacked by shark. I’ve seen men taken an arm’s-length away."
"It’s a hell of temptation to drink the water" Mt Thelan said. "I’ve seen guys that drink it. You gulp salt water, and three or four hours later, foam comes out of your mouth, and you go out of your head."
When he was rescued, only 10 men remained in his group.
"I’m a very lucky person," he said.
He returned borne to Lansing married, and had six children and 11 grandchildren. His wife of 50 years, Joanne, died last January. The 75-year-old drove a truck for 44 years.
These days, he often speaks to school groups about his ordeal. "It bothers me, but I do it mostly for the school kids, because I think they should know that what they got today, a lot of people died for.
But for years, he told no one. "My wife and I got married in 1951. The first book was out in ‘58. That book, that was the first time she knew what happened to me. I didn’t tell her in seven years of marriage. I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t talk about it. And I wasn’t the only one that way. I have a good friend who still won’t talk about it. He won’t talk about it to this day."
As much as the survivors of the Indianapolis believed that Captain
McVay was not responsible for the sinking, the captain never asked for his case to be reconsidered. In fact, he discouraged any action on his behalf.
His court martial came down to whether the captain and the ship’s crew were following an order to steer a zigzag course during the day and on clear nights. The Indianapolis was not steering a zigzag when she was hit. Many testifying at the captain’s court martial said zigzagging would not have saved the Indianapolis.
But there is a question about whether the night was clear enough to demand a zigzag course. Dr. Olson says, despite the position of the moon, its appearance was at best intermittent.
Crew members reported the moon was in and out of the clouds on a solidly overcast night.
But Jack Green, a naval historian at the Naval Historical Center in Washington, says, if anything, Dr. Olson’s evidence increases Captain McVay’s culpability in the sinking.
"It would appear the sky conditions were clearer than the accounts given by the survivors," Mr. Green said. "If what (Dr. Olson) says is true, and the submarine could see the Indianapolis far sooner than we were led to believe, and if the visibility was that clear, then the officer of the deck was not following the captains orders."
Author Doug Stanton maintains the court martial was damaging.
"When you’re the captain involved in the worst disaster in naval history at sea, and the whole country; because you’ve been convicted of this, points its finger squarely at you because you’ve been court martialed, that doesn’t seem like a slap in the wrist," he said.
"I fully understand the Navy’s need. So did McVay. He did not complain," Mr. Stanton said.
1945 U-boat attack survivors to gather in Quincy
by Jules Crittenden - Boston Herald - June 3, 2002
When Harold Petersen left the USS Eagle 56’s engine room on the afternoon of April 23, 1945, going up to wash the grime off his face, he had no reason to think anything was wrong He had checked’ the gauges and Fred Nicholson was now on duty down below.
Minutes later, a horrific blast tore the ship apart. Petersen found himself among the lucky few swimming for their lives in the frigid waters off Portland, Maine.
Some assumed their small sub chaser had hit a mine. Others swore they saw a-U-boat’s conning tower. Weeks later, the survivors couldn’t believe the official Navy ruling — a boiler explosion had killed Nicholson and 48 others.
You carry that on your shoulders for years, Petersen now 79, said last week. "Did I do some thing? Were we negligent? Did we kill all those men?"
More than half a century later, his burden has been lifted. On Saturday, the three living survivors and families of the dead will gather aboard the USS Salem in Quincy to commemorate the Navy’s historic reversal.
Thanks to the dogged efforts of Paul Lawton, a Brockton lawyer and naval historian, the Navy agreed last year its own archives prove the Eagle 56 was torpedoed by German sub U-853, which was itself sunk two weeks later off Rhode Island. Its status as an enemy kill entitles the dead and injured to Purple Hearts.
"These boys died as heroes at war, not as a result of some negligence," Petersen said.
George Vanderheiden, 56, of Andover, never knew the father who was killed seven months before he was born. Growing up in Portland, Vanderheiden read yellowed news clips on the Eagle 56’s boiler explosion. Two weeks ago, Lt. Ambrose G. Vanderheiden’s new Purple Heart arrived in the mail.
"Knowing now he was killed by enemy fire and the government concealed it makes me angry," he said. "Im sorry my mother isn’t alive to share in this experience." Lawton and Navy archivist Bernard Cavalcante say the 1945 board of inquiry in Portland was not aware of U.S. intelligence that U-853 was off Maine. The Navy’s ability to read German radio codes was a closely held secret. Survivors' reports of a conning tower with a yellow shield and red horse — U-853's crest — were dismissed as the Eagle 56’s own sinking bow.
The subchaser went out that day on what was considered safe duty, towing a target for Navy pilots. Victory in Europe was days away.
Engineering officer Jack Scagnelli, now 81, was in his stateroom after lunch. He recalls "a godawful explosion that picked me up, threw me against the bulkhead and split my scalp open."
Later hospitalized with a head wound, he was stunned by the Navy’s ruling. His engines had just been overhauled, and the crew had tested the boiler.
I knew that couldn’t be. It weighed on me," said Scagnelli. "I'm extremely happy that it was not a mechanical failure. I feel sad for the families that lost sons. I hope it gives them some comfort that it was enemy action and not someone’s mistake."
Theory surfaces on Hunley sinking
Open bulkhead found on rebel craft
ASSOCIATED PRESS -- CHARLESTON, S.C. - Scientists excavating the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley found an open bulkhead at the rear of the sub, leading to another possible explanation for historic submarine's sinking.
The Hunley foundered off Charleston in February, 1864, after ramming explosives into the Union blockade ship Housatonic, becoming the first submarine to sink an enemy warship.
Immediately following the attack, the Hunley signaled to shore with a blue lantern, according to both Union and Confederate accounts.
"That at least leads me to conclude that the Hunley had circumstances under control and something more than likely happened after that," State Sen. Glenn McConnell, the chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission, said. The theory, after the discovery of the 10-inch opening at the top of the bulkhead, is that water from the ballast tank - which holds water to keep the vessel buoyant - rushed through the open bulkhead and flooded the inside of the submarine when it was shaken during battle.
"It does present the possibility that if the boat is rocked significantly, water could have come out of the flood tank into the crew compartment," Mr. McConnell said.
When the Hunley sank, Union lookouts reported it was last seen about five ship-lengths in front of the USS Canandaigua, which rushed to the Housatonic's rescue.
That ship might have grazed the Hunley. Or the Hunley might have been rocked by the concussion when the hot boiler of the sinking Housatonic contacted the cold ocean water, Mr. McConnell said.
Another theory is that the glass in the front conning tower shattered during battle, allowing water to flood in.
The Hunley was raised last year and taken to a conservation center at the old Charleston Naval Base. Scientists began removing sediment, remains of the nine-man crew, and artifacts earlier this year.
Scientists have excavated the silt that's collected beneath the tower, but it may be a week or two before they-can analyze the material.
Coast Guard Orders Multipurpose Icebreaker
The Blade TOLEDO, OHIO October 18, 2001
It won’t be as big, and it will have a smaller crew; but the vessel the Coast Guard has ordered to replace its legendary icebreaker Mackinaw is expected to do the same job — and then some.
The 240-foot vessel to be built in Wisconsin for $82.5 million, will keep the Mackinaw name and is to launched in October, 2005.
Unlike the existing "Big Mack," the vessel will be designed for service beyond icebreaking.
During the warmer months, it will be assigned to buoy maintenance, search and rescue, law enforcement, and other missions, the transportation department said.
The contract award "ensures that Great Lakes carriers will be able to reliably deliver cargo during periods of ice cover." said Daniel L Smith, the district vice president of the American Maritime Officers union and chairman of the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority’s seaport committee.
Marinette Marine Corp., the firm hired to build the icebreaker, is owned by the Manitowoc Marine which also owns the Toledo Shiprepair Co. on Front Street. On several projects, Manitowoc has had component work done in Toledo for ships built at its other yards, but spokesman Steve Khail said yesterday that it is too soon to know if that will occur with the new Mackinaw. "The greater portion of next year we’re going to be spending in engineering for that particular contract," Mr. Khail said.
Construction is to get under way either late next year or early in 2003, Mr. Khail said, and it is possible that some work will be done in Toledo "depending upon the mix of work we have" throughout the yards.
The original 290-foot Mackinaw, built in Toledo, was commissioned in 1944. The Mackinaw was charged with keeping the Great Lakes open throughout the year for wartime shipments of iron ore and coal.
WW II Battleship Opens in Museum in Norfolk
Blade TOLEDO, OHIO - April 2001
NORFOLK, Va. -- The battleship Wisconsin which saw action in World War II, Korea and the Persian Gulf, opened to the public yesterday as a floating museum.
Norfolk, home of the world's largest Navy base, was the Wisconsin's home port during much of the ship's service. The ship will remain in Norfolk for five years. The Navy the will either donate or sell the ship, probably to the city.
Yesterday was the 57th anniversary of the ship's commissioning for World War II service. The 887-foot Wisconsin was launched in 1943, two years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was the last of the four Iowa-class battleships, the largest and last built by the Navy.
The Wisconsin supported landings at Iwo Jima in 1945. During the Persian Gulf War, it fired Tomahawk missiles into Iraq.
Scientists excavating H.L Hunley find bones
Blade TOLEDO, OHIO
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Scientists excavating the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley found the first remains of its nine-man crew, a conservation group said yesterday.
The researchers on Tuesday found three ribs, as well as part of a belt and bits of clothing, said Kellen Butler, spokeswoman for the nonprofit group Friends of the Hunley. More information will be released tomorrow, she said
Also discovered this week was a ballast tank valve that could help explain what happened in the craft's final moments.
The Hunley disappeared on Feb. 17,1864, after becoming the first sub ever to sink an enemy warship, the Union ship Housatonic.
If researchers who are removing the heavy crust of sediment from the newly discovered valve find that it is open, it will suggest that the Hunley crew was trying to surface or trying to dive when the sub sank.
Destroyer to leave tradition in its wake
Newest warship to cost, carry less
Blade TOLEDO, OHIO WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 2000
NEW YORK (AP) — In appearance, it hearkens back to the USS Monitor the ironclad "cheesebox on a raft" of the Civil War — but in every major respect
the Navy’s newest class of destroyer represents a revolution in modern war ship design.
So radically different is the ship that the choice of its namesake, Admiral Elmo M. Zumwalt, is almost poetic. Admiral Zumwalt, chief of naval opera tions in the Vietnam war was known for bucking naval tradition.
The warship was announced yesterday by President Clinton during Operation Sail 2000 in New York harbor. The Navy hopes the Zumwalt-class destroyer, known as DD-21, will cost less than today’s ships, be operated by a crew one-third the size, and fire shells accurately three times as far.
Two companies, General Dynamics and Litton Industries, are in a Navy sponsored competition to design and build 32 of the ships, with the first three to be delivered in 2010.
The Navy has two basic roles for the ships: To support forces on shore and to hit targets far inland.
Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig said it will be the first ship designed "with the ability to influence events on land." It extends the idea behind using sea-fired Tomahawk cruise missiles against land targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo.
"We recognize that as U.S. interests abroad have strengthened in a global world. . . then frequently we want to use military power to protect those inter ests, and the most obvious choice is naval power," he said.
Artists’ renderings of the Zumwalt show a low flat, sharply pointed hull with a pyramid-shaped superstructure near the stern. The deck is empty but for two guns and a missile launcher. The low silhouette appears to be part of a radar-thwarting "stealth" concept.
The ship’s main features are unprecedented: an all-electric propulsion system, twin 155-millimeter guns that can hit a tennis court 60 miles away with a 250 pound shell, and an operating system that cuts crew size from 320 on a conventional destroyer to about 95.
The smaller crew will allow each sailor to have stateroom-type living space instead of shared, cramped quarters and reduce the number of Americans at risk.
That directly reflects the Zumwalt philosophy of "taking care of his sailors," Mr. Danzig said, noting the admiral had rankled Navy traditionalists with his concern for sailors' living conditions when he was chief of operations in 1970-74.
Mr. Danzig said standard gas turbine engines will power the ship's "electric drive" system, greatly reducing the amount of machinery needed and saving interior space.
The Navy estimates each Zumwalt-class ship will cost $750 million in 1996 dollars.
