God sometimes creates perfect weather and occasionally does so two days in a row. Such was the case when I made a midsummer visit to Puget Sound. The sun was bright, and snow-topped Mount Rainier towered majestically in the distance. Millions of evergreens stood as silent sentinels along the shores of various bodies of water, all of which were as blue as the sky. The temperature was around 80, and only a few puffy white clouds hovered overhead. A few locals grumped about the heat, but to someone accustomed to humid Annapolis summers, the days were delightful.
The Navy has a long heritage in the area, going back to the founding of the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington, in 1891. One of the newest facilities is the submarine base at Bangor, opened in the late 1970s. And an even newer one is at nearby Keyport, where the Naval Undersea Museum opened its first exhibits in 1993. Keyport had been the site of a naval torpedo station since 1914 and still serves as the home of a division of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. Among other things, the center manufactures and tests torpedoes for both U.S. and foreign use.
The new museum’s charter includes submarine warfare, antisubmarine warfare, diving, salvage, mines, torpedoes, oceanography, underwater demolition teams, special warfare SEALs, and unmanned underwater vehicles. The specialty of the house, though, is torpedoes, including many in storage areas as the still-new facility works a step at a time in developing its permanent exhibits.
Visitors are greeted in the entrance lobby by a cutaway specimen of the Mark 18 wakeless electric torpedo of the type Lieutenant Commander Eli Reich used when his submarine, the Sealion (SS-315), sank the Japanese battleship Kongo in 1944. A bust of Reich, now a retired vice admiral, commemorates his role as president of the foundation that raised the money to build and equip the 68,000-square-foot museum building.
Once inside the display areas, recordings of whale noises provide the background for a walk past a deep-sea diver’s suit, a model showing the recovery of a test torpedo, and interactive displays that invite children to put their hands to work as they learn about such things as buoyancy and water resistance. Elsewhere is a drone antisubmarine helicopter (DASH) used in the 1960s, a swimmer delivery vehicle for commando operations, and a half-size model of a deep- submergence rescue vehicle that was used as a prop in the filming of The Hunt for Red October. Throughout the building the equipment spans a wide range of years and technological innovations.
The director of the Naval Undersea Museum is Bill Galvani, who until recently headed the Submarine Force Library and Museum, across the country in Groton, Connecticut. That museum, on the heavily traveled route between Boston and Washington, draws more than a quarter-million visitors a year, compared with 40,000 annually at Keyport. As Galvani puts it, Keyport is in the “upper left-hand comer of the country.” People don’t just stumble across it; they have to be going there on purpose.
With its new building, computerized systems, and professionally designed exhibits, the undersea museum is a state-of- the-art operation, run by a man with professional education in the museum field. A few dozen miles away, Helen Devine is director of the Bremerton Naval Museum, housed in an old storefront building considerably smaller and less elegant than the sparkling facility at Keyport. The Bremerton museum has 6,000 square feet of display area and enough artifacts in storage to occupy triple that space.
Whereas Galvani runs his operation with his head, Mrs. Devine’s work is done with her heart. Widowed in 1943, when her husband was lost in a submarine, she has made all Navy men part of her extended family. The building in downtown Bremerton is filled with a collection that has a delightfully helter-skelter atmosphere, sort of like poking through your grandparents’ attic.
Here are pieces of equipment salvaged from the bridge of the city’s namesake, the heavy cruiser Bremerton (CA-130). In one corner are a chair and sofa from Admiral George Dewey’s cabin in the cruiser Olympia, named for Washington’s state capital. Across the room is another relic from the Spanish-American War, a deck plate from the battleship Indiana, showing penetration by a Spanish cruiser’s projectile in 1898. In another corner is a special display that pays tribute to the greatest of all aircraft carriers, the USS Enterprise (CV-6). The nearby shipyard also gets it share of recognition, with a collection of photos, posters, and other memorabilia from its long history.
The items are varied, ranging from a 14th-century Korean cannon made of wood to a tompion from a 16-inch gun of the battleship Washington (BB-56). Other displays depict the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the surrender ceremony that ended the Pacific war in 1945. Ship models are everywhere. As an old sailor makes his way among the various displays, more than once he is likely to pause in front of a particular item and say, “I remember this.”
More memories abound down the hill from the museum. An inviting waterfront plaza has plaques honoring a number of carriers, particularly the USS Franklin (CV-13), which was devastated by Japanese bombs in early 1945. The blades of a large propeller are etched with pictures of scenes from the history of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Nearby a bird-spattered sculpture depicts an overall-clad yard worker presenting a model of a large-deck carrier to a grinning youngster. Nearby, sea birds sit on the water with innocent looks on their faces. If they know anything about the statue-spattering, they certainly aren’t admitting it.
The plaza leads to a ship that has been preserved intact, the destroyer Turner Joy (DD-951), built across Puget Sound in Seattle as the last ship of the Forrest Sherman (DD-931) class. Thirty summers ago she was involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident that kicked off official U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. Although she is certainly smaller than the behemoths of the Spruance (DD-963) class, the 4,200-ton Turner Joy is still huge when compared with the 2,100- and 2,220-ton vessels that so many tin can sailors recall from the period of the 1940s to the 1970s.
The old destroyer is also the starting point for a harbor tour on board a boat piloted by a loquacious guide. As the craft makes its way past the piers and dry docks comprising the shipyard, one of the most arresting sights is a collection of perhaps a dozen of the early Polaris submarines, including such ships as the George Washington (SSBN-598) and the Theodore Roosevelt (SSBN-600). Only they don’t look like themselves anymore. To comply with international arms reduction agreements, made several years ago when the Soviet Union was still in business, the decommissioned “boomers” were demilitarized. Their missile sections and reactor compartments were cut out, and then the bows and sterns welded back together. They now appear to be only about half as long as they were originally. The running rust to be seen on some of the hulls completes the picture of humiliation for ships that were the last word in nuclear deterrence when they joined the fleet three decades or more ago.
Indeed, a trip past mothball row provides many other examples of once-modern naval technology now considered outmoded. From the 1940s are the battleships New Jersey (BB-62) and Missouri (BB-63), several Essex (CV-9)-class carriers, and the carrier Midway (CV-41). The Essexes are so weather-beaten and bird-dunged that one cringes at the contrast between now and when their gray paint was ready for admiral’s inspection.
I remember being on the quarterdeck of the Hornet (CVS-12) a quarter-century earlier, about the time when she was the recovery vessel for the first group of astronauts to set foot on the moon. Gone now are the crisp white uniforms, the punctual sounding of bells every half hour, and the 1MC announcements that regulated the ship’s days. All that remains are the empty steel compartments, flaking paint, plus the pieces of the old ship that still linger in the memories of the thousands of men who served on board or flew planes from her decks. In those memories she is still alive and vibrant, far different from the sight she presents at Bremerton.
Left over as examples of 1950s naval construction are some non-magnetic wooden minesweepers, and from the 1960s one sees a collection of Knox (FF-105 2)-class frigates. From the 1970s, surprisingly, is the hull of what was once the nuclear-powered cruiser Texas (CGN-39), which was commissioned only 17 years ago. Part way through an overhaul came a decision from Washington, D.C., to scrap the ship, rather than pay for her continuing operation or even maintenance in mothballs. The superstructure has been cut away already, leaving only the hull, with its fine lines, yet to be dismantled.
The ship about which local residents express the greatest dismay is the Missouri, site of the Japanese surrender in 1945. From her decommissioning in 1955 until she was towed away to be reactivated in 1984, the “Mighty Mo” was a great tourist attraction. People could go aboard, walk her teakwood decks, and touch the plaque marking the site of the surrender. Since her decommissioning in 1992, however, the battleship has been off-limits to the public because the Navy is unwilling to pay the added costs that would be involved in opening her for visitors. Maybe minds will change so the ship can be reopened in time for next year’s 50th anniversary of the surrender.
Despite their locations, both Keyport and Bremerton are well worth a visit, in part because of the magnificent scenery of the region. The only thing the local residents ask—with tongue in check, of course—is that you go home afterward so they won’t have to share their comer of the country with the urban-sprawl congestion found in so many other places.
As for the weather, on the third day I rode a bus to the airport. The driver looked heavenward through the windshield and announced, “Well, I see our friends are back.” The “friends” were gray clouds, forming a complete overcast. Perfection can last only so long.