Friday, August 13, 2010


Drove to Muskegon today to visit the USS Silversides, a WWII submarine. When we got there, there was a memorial service going on for the crewmembers of the USS Flier, a submarine that went down in WWII and that was found recently 66 years after it went missing. There were 8 survivors who swam 19 hours to rescue and one of them had spent his life looking for the sub, unfortunately he died just before it was discovered. We stayed and watched a little of the service and it was quite emotional as family members of the lost crew remembered them, and the bugle played.
Afterwards we got to tour the submarine; I don’t know how the crews of the subs survived having to be on those things for months at a time, they are so cramped and hot and claustrophobic feeling. Just walking up and down the steps and getting through the doors was difficult and I got to take my time doing it, it must have been a whole lot more difficult to do with the siren wailing through the boat. I don’t know how anyone ever figures out how to operate these machines there are so many dials and levers and buttons and gauges. Actually maybe it’s not so difficult since it was all labeled maybe just about anyone could do it! It was pretty amazing though to see how they functioned and lived day to day. Hopefully you liked the rest of the crew you were serving with since there was no way to escape them, even going to the bathroom wasn’t done alone. The sub probably smelled quite badly too since they only got to shower about once a fortnight. The sub was well armed with torpedoes back and front and guns mounted on the deck. There were flags painted on the side of the sub and where the crew ate showing the enemy vessels it had destroyed during the war.
We also got to tour a coaster guard cutter which was a little more spacious than the sub but it seems that the crew still lived in pretty close quarters particularly when they were sleeping; I guess at least they got to have fresh air whenever they wanted it.

Mike: It’s OK, the officers got to shower every 3-5 days.














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