USS Cobia

Mary mentioned the U505 in the comments yesterday. That was the sub that had the Enigma codes for WWII. Actually the whole Enigma Code thing is interesting as we had cracked Enigma way back in the late 1930s. But the Germans kept changing the way they used the codes.It was an excellent machine used stupidly.

ANYWAY - the U505 was mentioned a lot in the book "Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson . . one of the longest titles I had ever seen. Excellent book (I skipped past the personal "how we got to this point" section).

ANYWAY,  the USS Cobia was pretty interesting but was NOT built in Wisconsin but is "like" the 28 subs which were built in Manitowoc during World War II

The USS Cobia was a Gato-class submarine which formed the core of the submarine service that was largely responsible for the destruction of the Japanese merchant marine and a large portion of the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II.

USS Cobia 

Her first war patrol was bound for the Bonin Islands where she sank 3 ships one of them the Nisshu Maru, a troop transport carrying a Japanese tank regiment to Iwo Jima. Only two tank crewmen of the 26th Tank Regiment died but all of the regiment's 28 tanks went to the bottom of the sea.

Main gangway leading to the bow. Opening about 2x3 feet.

Second and third patrols were pretty non-eventful . .well OK I suppose it was pretty eventful for THEM at the time, attacked by Japanese aircraft and she rescued two Japanese sailors who had been adrift for 40 days.

 The Cobia carried 80 personal and patrols were normally about 2 months.  Of those 80 only 15 EVER got to go topside for fresh air - the other 65 never saw the outdoors for 2 months and stayed below in 80-90 degrees and 80-90 % humidity.  Showers were few and you COULD smoke on board!  Awesome!

Christmas Tree panel showing what hatches were open or closed

Her fourth patrol she sank two sea trucks. One of the targets resisted with machine gun fire which damaged Cobia's radar equipment and killed Ralph Clark Huston Jr., a 20 mm gun loader and the submarine's only casualty of the war.

The radar on the Cobia at the Museum is still operational and is the oldest working radar in the world. She also rescued seven surviving crewmembers of a downed Army bomber. One of the crewmembers, Jean Vandruff. You can read his account of the story here.  Here is a photo of him being rescued by the Cobia. 

After Engine Room (DJ in the middle).

Fifth and sixth patrols had some bad luck. She attacked a cargo ship, but was driven deep by depth charges hurled by minelayer Hatsutaka. I did not realize that depth charges were not meant not SINK a sub but to push it to the surface for capture. Sinking was just a plan "B". She could go to a depth of 300 feet.

Bow torpedo tubes

What got me about being inside was there was that like the above photo - not one part of the sub would have been nice to bounce off of in an attack.  STUFF everywhere and the above photo looks much more roomy then it really was.

There are parts of the ship I could not get into as they were too small for a tour.  The conning tower the actual engine room and many rooms were smaller then a bathroom stall.  The actual toilets, of which there were 5(?) had a process of 9 actions to flush.  Miss one of those things and the next guy got "freckled".    Showers were used to store food so no showers.

So that is my story - I'm hoping to get up close and personal at some point on the USS Cobia.

Have a great rest of the week, turning HOT and then turning COLD.  Your typical late summer heat up, violent weather, and then cool down. 

Thursday the Packers play, the Badgers play and the Brewers play, lets make it a trifecta!

Cheers!

Rod