Anchors Aweigh! (Part 3)

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The final stop on the long tour at Battleship Park in Mobile was a tour of a submarine, the USS Drum. That is a tour that will open your eyes VERY wide! No, the submarine is not below water. The entire vessel is above the waterline (and pieces of the outside bulkhead are missing, so it can’t be submerged). You don’t have to worry about the Drum sinking. (It actually was in the water [thought not submerged], but a couple of hurricanes did enough damage to take her out of the water.) The Drum, like the Alabama, was a Pacific theater vessel during the Second World War. It is the oldest submarine of its class still in existence, and it’s a treasure to have it as a museum piece. Could you imagine fitting 80 men into something about the width of an RV....then putting it a few hundred feet underwater? That’s a submarine for you. It’s narrow, compact, and quite limited. I used to think the barracks were confining. It’s all the space in Alaska compared to living on a submarine. Needless to say, it takes a special kind of person to be a submariner. It’s strictly volunteer duty, and a lot of training beforehand. Anyone with claustrophobia or a fear of being underwater shouldn’t even think about it. That’s what is so eye-opening about the tour of the Drum. While the battleship (comparatively small placed next to an aircraft carrier) has a number of “luxuries” such as a gedunk store, separate galleys for enlisted, officers, chiefs, and even separate quarters for the Marines, you won’t find any of that on a sub. There were no “living quarters,” per se, only bunks stacked three high, suspended from the overhead by chains (and incredibly uncomfortable-looking, ahem, “mattresses”). The passageways are much smaller (with higher knee-knockers) than on the ship. It isn’t for the faint of heart. That’s why submarine sailors are a special breed. The tour of the USS Drum showed that.