Retired U.S. Navy Captain Robert K. R. Worthington raised his glass and invited the friends around him to join in a toast to his beloved old boat, the famous fleet submarine USS Silversides (SS-236): “To the Silver Lady and her kids!”
The occasion was the 1988 U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II Convention in Milwaukee. Worthington, the Silversides’s former executive officer, his close friend and former shipmate, retired Captain Eugene I. Malone, and their wives stood out in a sea of former enlisted men. They had traveled to Muskegon, Michigan, for a reunion visit with the Silversides, on display in Muskegon since 1987, following 40 years in Chicago.
Commissioned 15 December 1941, eight days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Silversides completed 14 war patrols between 30 April 1942 and 30 July 1945 and was decorated with four Presidential Unit Citations, 12 Battle Stars, the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with 2 Silver Stars and 2 Bronze Stars. Her second and only surviving skipper, retired Rear Admiral John S. Coye, Jr., of Coronado, California, ranked tenth among U.S. submarine skippers for his leadership during patrols 6 through 11. Other submarine force legends serving on board the Silversides include Creed C. Burlingame, Roy M. Davenport, Frank G. Selby, and Cyrus C. Cole.
The Silversides, the nation’s most famous surviving submarine of World War II, is perhaps the best preserved and restored member of the Gato (SS-212) class on display today. Virtually unmodified since last refitted at Pearl Harbor in May 1945, the submarine is part of a fledgling museum in Pere Marquette Park along the Muskegon Lake Channel. Today, the venerable raider offers a view of a working ship that appears as if the crew just went ashore for coffee—allowing her guests a glimpse of her illustrious past.
Few of the 250 or so submarines that prowled the far reaches of the war-torn Pacific were able to equal the Silversides's record. John D. Alden’s recent work, U.S. Submarine Attacks of World War II, credits the Silversides with sinking 31 ships totaling 100,685 tons—possibly marines—and damaging another nine ships for 27,187 tons. She was originally credited by the Joint Army Navy Assessment Committee with sinking 23 ships totaling 90,080 tons, ranking her third in number of ships sunk and fifth in tonnage destroyed.
The Silversides's war exploits are the source of legend. An emergency appendectomy was performed on a crew member in the officers’ wardroom on 24 December 1942, while the submarine was submerged in enemy- controlled waters off the Solomon Islands. The pharmacist’s mate who performed the operation, Thomas Moore of Grand Junction, Colorado, then 22 years old, had witnessed many operations during his training, but never performed one. The operation lasted four hours but was successful; the crew member was standing watch six days later. It was featured in the movie Destination Tokyo starring Cary Grant and written up in the British medical journal Lancet. Moore was honored on board the Silversides during 1990 Memorial Day ceremonies.
During that same patrol, her fourth, the Silversides fired a spread of six torpedoes at a convoy of overlapping targets, sinking three of them, only to discover that one of the armed torpedoes was stuck in the firing tube. After several harrowing hours of evading enemy depth charges and attempting to defuse the “fish,” it was successfully refired.
After being decommissioned in 1946, the Silversides was brought up the Mississippi River to Chicago in 1947. There she served as a reserve training vessel for the Ninth Naval District until her name was stricken from the Naval Register on 30 June 1969. She was backed down the pier and lay idle until 1973. Vandals broke in occasionally, and the forward end of the ship flooded. The submarine’s title was transferred to the Combined Great Lakes Navy Association, later Great Lakes Naval and Maritime Museum, in July 1973. She was berthed behind Chicago’s Naval Armory until 1979, when she was moved to Chicago’s Navy Pier.
For years, the submarine was tended to by a small crew of dedicated volunteers, drawn to her illustrious history and technical marvels. They donated tens of thousands of man-hours to restore her, maintained her at their own expense, and served as docents and chaperones.
The Silversides was a mere shadow of her former grandeur when volunteers first came on board—paint was peeling inside and out, below decks was musty and mildewed, junk was scattered everywhere. They immediately set about halting the decay. Electricity was brought on board and considerable wiring was done to bring light and power to all areas. In December 1983, 480-volt heaters were installed.
A “snipes” crew surveyed the ship’s Fairbanks-Morse nine-cylinder opposed- piston diesel engines and brought the seven-cylinder auxiliary to life in 1975. In July 1979, the nine-cylinder, 1,535- horsepower #3 main engine was run for the first time since 1946. The #4 main was restored in time for the 1984 Sub Vets convention and the Silversides reunion in Chicago. By Labor Day 1991, the #1 and #2 mains also were brought online.
Disputes within her own organization and with the city of Chicago eventually led to the submarine sailing for Muskegon in 1987. When the city council sought rent from all vessels at the Navy Pier in 1983, the Silversides’s operators refused, citing an informal $l-a- year agreement supposedly worked out with previous administrations. On 30 April 1985, an eviction notice requesting more than $30,000 in back rent for pier space was stuck to her hull. Museum operators threatened to accept an offer by Muskegon. The late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, himself a World War II Navy veteran, said the Silversides could “go to the moon.”
Watching these developments was the U.S. Navy, which initially put the brakes on any move but reversed itself in April 1987, when the Silversides’s operators were unable to find a new berth or improve relations with the city. The city announced plans to refurbish the Navy Pier, buoyed by a $150 million state bond issue, while the Chicago Maritime Society revealed it would build a new museum nearby. Both plans were sans the Silversides. Partially at the Navy’s insistence, the submarine was towed to Muskegon on 7 August 1987.
The Silversides has seen considerable improvement since her arrival in Muskegon. Parts and equipment salvaged from scrapped fleet submarines and stored beneath the weather deck and inside her below decks compartments were removed to storage sites on shore. The familiar dark-green linoleum was replaced throughout below decks. Crew’s bunks in the after battery compartment were fitted with new vinyl covers.
Guests now enter the Silversides via a new teak deck, installed with reinforced supports in 1988-90. They walk alongside a 4-inch/50-caliber deck gun and the conning tower fairwater, originally a large, streamlined structure that was trimmed down during the war to make room for guns—giving the Silversides the “covered wagon” appearance of older fleet submarines.
After passing the escape hatch and a T-shaped JP hydrophone topside, they enter through an opening cut into the port side of the forward torpedo room. One is immediately struck by the familiar “submarine smell.”
Inside the submarine, docents lead guests past the restored radio room, galley, and crew’s mess—complete with ice cream machine. Visitors get a feel for the closeness of submarine life in the crew’s berthing compartment, which houses a nearly complete set of 36 bunks. Crew members used the mess for recreation and could go aft into the crew’s head to shower every so often, a luxury not enjoyed by their counterparts in many Allied and Axis submarines.
Overnight programs, initiated in October 1979, while the submarine was berthed in Chicago, continue in Muskegon. Groups learn about the history, equipment, and operation of the submarine and get to sample life on board— sleeping in the crew’s berthing compartment and eating in the crew’s mess. Historical movies are shown, and tours and explanations are given.
Since arriving in her new home, the Silversides has attracted considerable public and private support. Her directors eventually hope to construct a maritime museum to educate guests about the city’s rich logging and maritime history. In the meantime, the Silversides is still serving with distinction—giving her guests a taste of the “Silent Service” as experienced by one of its most famous members.