UPDATED 10 MAY 2014
I was browsing about the interwebs the other day, looking for submarine photos of interest for the SSN-680.org Pinterest page. (What? You didn't realize that ssn-680.org has been collecting tons of submarine related photos and pinning them on Pinterest? Well, click the "See On Pinterest" link in the right column of every page and head over to to the SSN-680.org Pinterset Account and check it out, shipmate!
Anyhoo, I came across an interesting image taken at the Mare Island Navy Shipyard (MINSY, to us sailors!). It shows submarines USS Spot (SS-413) to be, on the left, and USS Springer (SS-414), to be, under construction on Way #2 at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California, on January 3, 1944.
Now those that served on the Bates during 1983 remember at least two things. First, that nothing ever happened somewhere near somewhere where we have never been that caused absolutely nothing to happen on a date that no one can remember. Second, we spent some time in a drydock at MINSY having absolutely nothing done for no reason at all! We liked to call it training!
For those of you that were there, like myself, you can probably remember walking past Way #2 a couple of hundred times, since the Ways were located between the shipyard gate proper, and the graving docks where the Bates was parked. And like myself you probably never gave it a moments thought regarding what had happened in that very location 40 years previous. I knew that MINSY did build a few dozen boats during the WWII days, but it never crossed my mind that I was literally walking through history. Maybe you have to get old before you start to appreciate that sort of thing.
Regardless, I looked into Google Earth to see if the old shipyard was still there, and was again surprised by the oddest thing. Below, I've included a screen shot from Google Earth of Ways #1 and #2, with #2 being on the bottom. If you compare this photo with the one above, you can see that the bridge crane structure is the same one ferrying iron to the 413 and 414 almost 70 years ago! Look closely in Way #2, and you'll see the same surprise I saw, the sail of a submarine, fairwater planes attached, masts and antennas missing, sitting timelessly on the concrete.
Time marches on, gentlemen, with or without us! All too soon, we will be nothing more than a part of history. Don't waste the time you have...
UPDATE: 10 May, 2014
In the course of research to support the ssn-680.org website, I ran across the image to the right. It reports to be the sail of the USS Mariano G. Vallejo (SSBN-658) at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Everything I can see correlates precisely to the Google Earth image above, answering the question we were all asking regarding a stray submarine sail sitting by itself in a decommissioned naval shipyard.
Even boats come to the end of their time, and there is precious little to remember them by...
Click to view full-size Intersections in History gallery
Click to view full-size Intersections in History gallery
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