The first thing that greets visitors to Patriots Point Naval &. Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, is a submarine that appears to be cruising through a beautifully landscaped park.
It’s not a mirage. It’s the Cold War Submarine Memorial, a full-size recreation of a Benjamin Franklin (SSBN-640)-class vessel. Close inspection reveals that the hull is made of black concrete blocks. The sail and rudder, however, are authentic, having been taken from the USS Lewis and Clark (SSBN-644).
The memorial isn’t the only submarine at Patriots Point. Visitors can tour the diesel-powered USS Clamagore (SS-343). The sound of pinging sonar adds a sense of verisimilitude to her tight confines. Commissioned in 1945, the Clamagore served until her decommissioning 30 years later. The feeling of claustrophobia inside her narrow quarters may increase for visitors at low tide, when the submarine rests on the uneven harbor bottom and lists slightly to starboard.
The main attraction here is much more spacious. Known affectionately as “The Fighting Lady,” the Essex (CV-9)-class USS Yorktown (CV-10) was commissioned in 1943 and named after her predecessor sunk at Midway. The carrier saw plenty of action during World War II, and in 1968 she recovered the astronauts of Apollo 8, the first men to circle the moon.
When she was decommissioned two years later, Yorktown differed significantly from her World War II configuration. She had bulked up, going from a displacement of 27,100 tons to 41,000. She gained an angled flight deck, and her profile changed following the enclosure of her open bow and the removal of the 5-inch gun mounts that once flanked her island fore and aft.
On boarding the 888-foot vessel, visitors enter the cavernous hangar deck, now filled with exhibits, aircraft, and the Congressional Medal of Honor Museum, a huge wall of stainless-steel panels engraved with the names of all the medal recipients. In front of it is an F-9F Cougar; children like to sit in its cockpit. Nearby, a Navy flight simulator gives visitors a sense of what life in a fighter cockpit is like. Toward the stem, a B-25 Mitchell similar to those that flew off the USS Hornet (CV- 8) on the Doolittle Raid against Tokyo in April 1942 hangs above the snack bar.
The hangar deck is home to other mainstays of World War II naval aviation—everything from a tubby F4F- 3A Wildcat to a sleek, gull-wing FG-1D Corsair. There are also replicas of the Mercury Friendship 7 and Apollo 8 space capsules. More modem aircraft, an A-6 Intruder, F-4 Phantom, and F-14 Tomcat among them, endure the elements on the flight deck.
The ship’s six tours pass through a plethora of modest museum exhibits about other carriers, wars, and naval actions. By the end of tour six, visitors have climbed up and down steep ladders and walked through a dizzying maze of passages. People with disabilities or health problems should be prepared.
Tour one begins near the snack bar and winds through berthing sections, washrooms, sculleries, a dental clinic, the machine shop—all necessary parts of this floating city. A battle dressing station, one of many throughout the ship to care for casualties, is a reminder that the Yorktown’s real purpose was to wage war. A sign in the bakery with the recipe for the daily output of 1,000 chocolate chip cookies (requiring 112 pounds of chips, 500 eggs, and 165 pounds of flour) indicates that war wasn’t always hell.
Tour three climbs up to the windswept flight deck and into the command centers in the ship’s island. The ship does show signs of her age, but she comes by them naturally. Even some of her newer equipment seems marvelously antiquated. The navigator’s chart room has a relative bearing plotter that tracked the Apollo 8 capsule. Its operators used tracing paper placed on a lighted surface to pencil in the contacts. It seems like Stone Age technology today, when the global positioning system is not unknown in the family car.
Sharing a dock at the Yorktown’s stern are the USS Laffey (DD-724) and the Coast Guard cutter Ingham (WHEC-35). The destroyer, commissioned in February 1944, supported the D-Day landings in France that June and survived hits by five Japanese kamikazes and three bombs during a single day off Okinawa.
The Ingham experienced combat too, sinking a U-boat in 1942. She was commissioned in 1936 and served in World War II and Vietnam before being decommissioned in 1988.
On shore, the museum has a re-creation of a naval support base “somewhere in South Vietnam” that includes a river patrol boat, a pair of Army Huey helicopters, a Navy Sea Cobra helicopter, and various buildings and bunkers. Visit on a sweltering South Carolina afternoon and the experience will be even more realistic—at least in terms of climate.
Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum is in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, just across the Cooper River from Charleston. It’s open daily except Christmas. Tickets are sold from 0900 to 1700, and the ships close at 1830. Admission is $14 for adults, $12 for seniors and active-duty military with ID, $7 for children 6 to 11, and free for children under 6. For more information go to www. patriotspoint.org or call (843) 884-2727.