Final Patrol Read Free Page B

wondered if their captain was bulletproof . . . or if maybe his luck was about to run out on this new boat. But the Batfish went on to accomplish one of the most amazing feats of the war—sinking three enemy submarines in three days.
    The USS Cavalla was almost out of fuel and a long way from home, but she stayed on station as ordered to report the location of a massive enemy armada that was forming. Then, when she finally left and headed for port, she coincidentally ran across one of the war’s true prizes, the enemy aircraft carrier Shokaku . The Japanese carrier was one of the ships that had launched the planes that attacked Pearl Harbor. She was also a veteran of the Battle of the Coral Sea. Later, the Cavalla ’s skipper, Commander Herman Kossler, happily radioed back to Pearl, “Hit Shokaku -class carrier with three out of six torpedoes . . . believe that baby sank!”
    One of the other American submarines now open to visitors once steamed right into an enemy-held harbor and torpedoed a cargo ship tied up at the wharf. Then, for good measure, she blasted a busload of enemy soldiers that happened to be sitting nearby.
    Another skipper torpedoed a train as it sat on the tracks near a pier. Then he had to risk running aground or being bombed from the air as he backed his submarine out of the tight, shallow confines of the harbor.
    The USS Torsk was named after a Norwegian fish because, by that time, all the more common fish names had been claimed by other vessels. She and her crew were credited with firing the last torpedo and sinking the last ship of World War II, only hours before the cease-fire was ordered.
    Today each of these historic vessels has been preserved and is open to visitors at various memorial sites and museums around the United States. They serve as monuments to all submariners, and especially to those who gave their lives in defense of their country. In all, there are currently sixteen U.S. Navy World War II submarines that can be visited and toured by the public. They are in places like Honolulu and Philadelphia, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, Cleveland, Galveston, Pittsburgh, the Inner Harbor at Baltimore, and in Hackensack, New Jersey. A couple more are resting on the shores of Lake Michigan. You will even find one in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in the middle of the Cherokee Indian nation, and one in Little Rock, Arkansas, over five hundred miles from the nearest salt water.
    Most have been lovingly restored and authentically equipped and are usually maintained in part by volunteers. Each allows visitors to see for themselves the claustrophobic conditions under which these men lived and fought and, in many cases, died. Some of the submarines are listed as National Historic Landmarks. Most are in excellent shape, properly equipped with either original or period fixtures and gear.
    Others struggle to keep from rusting away.
    All of them are bona fide treasures.
    In addition to those sixteen boats, there is one more World War II submarine in this country that has been restored and opened to the public. It is the U-505 , one of the legendary German U-boats, on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Millions of people have visited the exhibit over the past fifty years.
    The story of the U-505 ’s capture, of the bravery of the American boarding party who risked their lives to disarm charges set to scuttle her, and of the fifty-eight German crew members who were taken into custody and held as POWs reads like the treatment for a Hollywood movie. But it is all true, and visitors can relive it for themselves at the beautiful exhibit in Chicago.
    Some of the boats in this book had distinguished Cold War service as well; their lives extended several decades, simply because they had a job to do. And in several cases, the story of how the submarines came to the end of their “final patrol,” how they came to be where they are today, is just as absorbing as the