Torpedo girl: Take me down below!

Just had to share where I spent part of my weekend… sleeping on top of a Mark 14 torpedo below the water level.

What?

My son’s Cub Scout pack took an overnight trip to the USS Cobia, a decommissioned WWII Gato class submarine. It floats in the Manitowoc River in Wisconsin, adjacent to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. And it was amazing! Going aboard the Cobia was truly like time traveling through history, and we enjoyed exploring the submarine, hearing many stories about its history, and of course — spending the night on board the sub too.

Here are some photos from our night aboard the Cobia:

My son on the gangway, with the USS Cobia in the water below…

The forward torpedo room of the Cobia. While there was a larger crew bunk room aboard the sub, THIS is where my son and his friends wanted to sleep… with an incredibly minimal amount of head room, each bunk resting above a Mark 14 torpedo! The boys of course wanted to know if the torpedos are still active. They’re not — the explosives in the torpedos have been removed. Our tour guide added, “Due to our treaty with Canada, any American war ships or boats residing in Great Lakes waters cannot contain live ammunition.” Hee.

Here’s my son, after climbing through a small hatch in the floor that leads to the pump room below the main living and working areas of the Cobia. The boys loved exploring all the “nooks and crannies” of the sub!

My son and a friend bunking down for the night. Not much room up there, is there..!

You really appreciate how LITTLE room our navy men had on these subs. Sitting up too fast in any direction would equal a big bump on the head!

My son, standing on the deck of the Cobia the next morning.

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We learned so many fun facts about the Cobia, and submarine life during WWII in general. Among them:

• 28 Gato-class submarines were built in Wisconsin for the war. To get them to our naval base in Australia, the submarines were floated from the Manitowoc River to Lake Michigan. Then, they moved them to the Missisippi River via the Illinois Waterway, sailing them down all the way to New Orleans! Finally, the submarines would enter the ocean and travel to Australia.
• There wasn’t much entertainment aboard the submarine. When the sub was at the surface, the crew could listen to the radio, but there was also a movie projector in the crew’s mess room. They’d only get three movies for a 2-3 month mission, so they’d watch them over and over. But whenever another American submarine was in the vicinity, they’d pull alongside each other, then send someone from each sub to the surface — so they could trade movie reels!
• Once, the Cobia became stuck in the mud on the ocean floor. It had gone all the way to the bottom to avoid a depth charge attack, but when it was time to surface, the sub would not rise. There are three “blasts” of compressed air that force the water out of the sub’s tanks so that it can float to the surface. After two blasts, the sub still would not move, and the crew knew they had just one more blast of air left. If they couldn’t dislodge the sub, the crew would have died at the bottom of the sea. So, the 90-man crew ran back and forth, side to side, rocking the submarine out of the mud! Once it was free, the third blast of air took it back to the surface.
• Incredibly, the sub travels much more slowly than anyone in our group guessed. On the surface, under diesel power, it can go 10 nautical miles per hour. Submerged and under battery power, it can go 2 nautical miles per hour! While it has been decommissioned by the Navy, the submarine’s diesel engines still run and are maintained, as is its radio shack and radar systems. We were told that it is our nation’s most completely restored WWII submarine.

If you’re interested in spending the night aboard the Cobia, anyone can..! It’s open not only to tour groups but to families as well. (You can also tour the sub and not sleep on board, of course.) Learn more at https://www.wisconsinmaritime.org.