When we saw the USS Arizona memorial, we were on tour time, with Patrick the short bus driver (see previous post), and didn't have time to tour the USS Bowfin, a submarine launched exactly one year after the Pearl Harbor attacks. She was nicknamed the Pearl Harbor Avenger, and saw duty in the South Pacific. Up to 85 men were crammed aboard this 311 ft. tube for up to two months at a time. We took the far less cramped, air conditioned tour.
The submarine is not wheelchair friendly. You are required to crawl through the manholes (?) as you work you way through. Steven and I demonstrate the technique here.
If you weren't an officer (about 70 men weren't), then you got a "hot bunk" in the middle of the submarine. It was hot because it was next to the batteries (the size of hot water heaters) and because your bunkmate had just exited. The crew ran in three shifts, so a single bunk would be used by three men. And they were unwashed, stinky men, because water was at a premium. Showering was "nonessential." I tried to play pretend get in the middle bunk and honestly, don't think it's possible.
Crew also slept in the torpodeo rooms, forward and aft. The Bowfin sunk 39 Japanese ships during WWII.
The saddest exhibit for me was the manned Kaiten submarine, which was used by Japan at the end of WWII as a torpedo. Steven stands next to one. It was a one way mission. Once the soldier entered the submarine, he could not exit as the porthole could not be opened from the inside. It was a suicide mission.
Directly behind the Kaiten was a happier exhibit of a submersible that rescued 33 men trapped in the damaged USS Squalus submarine in 1939. The men were raised in shifts in this submersible, and all 33 men lived to tell the tale.
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