by Don Keith
Many of her sister diesel boats had long since met ignoble fates. Some of them were scrapped—“cut up and made into razor blades,” as the old sub sailors like to describe their inglorious fate.
Many more were parked at docks around the country, placed into “reserve fleet” status, just in case they might be needed for some other kind of duty. There, many of them had their equipment stripped for use on other vessels as they simply rusted away.
Others were used for target practice, simulating enemy submersibles so that young trainees could hone their antisubmarine warfare skills. Though this was a valuable sacrifice, the navy was still sending gallant historical artifacts to the bottom of the sea each time they sank one of the diesel submarines.
A few boats were retained as training vessels. No longer rigged or seaworthy enough to steam out of port, they were parked at piers around the country, where reserve sailors could come aboard and learn to operate their systems and get other important training.
A few others, as we have seen, were saved from the scrap heap and set up as memorials to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
That did not seem to be an option for the Razorback.
A precious few of the diesel subs were destined to continue their service. They were allowed to switch their loyalty to the navy of a new country. Some ended up in South America. Others went to Europe and Asia.
That was the Razorback’s destiny. Just after being stricken from the list of active vessels in late 1970, simultaneously with her decommissioning, she was transferred to the Turkish navy. She steamed away to the far side of the world one more time, this time to ply the ancient Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black seas, most likely until the end of her days.
“North Little Rock now has a navy.” Those were the words of North Little Rock, Arkansas, mayor Patrick Hays just after returning from a trip to Turkey in September 2002. His declaration came as part of the news conference at which the mayor announced the official acquisition by his city of an old diesel boat that had once been named the Razorback. It was their intent to bring her back home after her stint with the Turkish navy, steaming back to Arkansas across the Atlantic and up the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers.
But the story begins a year before that, and all the way across the North American continent from Arkansas, with the casual comments of a salesman to one of his customers.
It was November 2001. Bob Opple, a former sub sailor, was in his office at a heavy-equipment company near Seattle, Washington. On that day, he was talking with a visiting salesman named Len Schutt. Schutt also happened to be a former sub sailor, having served on the USS Ronquil (SS-396).
As they swapped sea stories, Schutt kept looking at some photos on Opple’s office wall.
“That’s the Razorback, right?” Schutt asked, eyeing the “394” visible on the submarine’s sail in one of the photos.
“Sure is. I went to sea on her when I was nineteen years old,” Opple confirmed. “She was a great boat.”
“Well, you may not believe this, but I was aboard her a while back,” the salesman declared. “Only she’s called the Murat Reis now. Too bad, but they’ve probably scrapped her by now, though.”
Opple couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His old boat was still around. Or at least she had been when Schutt saw her several months before. Opple had assumed that she had been scrapped or sunk long before, just like many of the other boats.
He quickly got on the horn to some of his sub veteran buddies, Maurice Barksdale, a real estate consultant in Texas, and Max Bassett, who had remained in the navy until he retired to Florida. They, too, were amazed that the Razorback was still in existence. They discussed the idea of climbing on an airplane and visiting the submarine before it was too late. If it wasn’t too late already, of course.
But along the way, someone proposed—half kidding—the idea of trying to buy the boat and bring her back to the States. The more they talked about it, though, the more it intrigued the sub vets. What at first seemed like a wild and crazy idea blossomed into a full-blown plan when they discovered that the boat had indeed been decommissioned by the Turks, but at last report she was still afloat and in decent condition.
“We’re just a bunch of old submarine vets who have found ourselves a toy,” Opple told a newspaper reporter.
But the sub sailors were smart enough to know they needed help with a project of this magnitude, even if their mission was a worthy one. And they also knew, from the experiences of other groups who had attempted such a task, that they would need money. Lots of money.
Then someone made a natural connection. Razorback? Arkansas!
The razorback hog is the mascot of the University of Arkansas athletic teams. Maybe someone in that great state would be interested in helping bring a true fighting razorback home.
Contacts with sub vet groups in Arkansas led to conversations with Patrick Hays, the mayor of North Little Rock. Hays already had big plans to capitalize on recent development that was planned along the Arkansas River waterfront of his town and that of Little Rock, the neighboring city across the river to the south. President Bill Clinton’s library was already under construction and there had been talk of some kind of veterans’ memorial park or maritime museum in the vicinity.
Thus it was that the mayor was more than willing to listen to what the sub veterans had to say. He bought into the plan immediately when he heard the details and, with the help of the Arkansas sub vet group, and especially Greg Zonner, who handled much of the considerable paperwork, they set a course to get themselves a diesel submarine to park on the river at North Little Rock.
Soon the U.S. State Department and the Turkish government were involved in serious talks. Over a roller-coaster nine months, a plan was hatched and myriad paper trails were hiked. Then, in September, Mayor Hays led a delegation to Ankara, Turkey, to see what it would take to finally secure the boat for his city.
Hays got surprising news when he and his group arrived.
Instead of having the Americans reimburse Turkey for what it had cost them to store the old submarine since negotiations had begun, or asking them to come up with money for some kind of exaggerated purchase price, the Turkish government said they would be most happy to simply give the aging vessel to the mayor and his group, gratis.
Well, that was a bargain!
Of course, the rest of the plan would not be so easy to carry out. Who was going to pay to prepare the vessel for a transoceanic transit? She was in no shape for such a trip. Could they plan on steaming across the Atlantic under the Razorback’s own power or would they have to settle for a tow? Her engines worked, but could they last for such a long journey? Could they actually get her floated up the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers without running aground?
There were more questions than answers, now that they had the sub, but it seemed that there was one solution to most of the anticipated difficulties. That was money.
A few weeks after the mayor’s visit, Opple and some of his fellow sub sailors went to Turkey for a look-see. They were pleased with the boat’s condition, considering the miles on her odometer. But there were still a lot of things that would have to be done to get her ready and secured for such a long voyage. Each of those things carried a price tag.
The first estimate to make her seaworthy and ready to propel herself home was $1.5 million. Even if they did not need her to be capable of making a dive along the way, it would take about a fifth that much money, $300,000.
The sub vets scratched their heads and thought about it for a while. It would have been fun to make a flank-speed run across the open sea, taking the occasional dive just for old times’ sake, but that seemed out of the question when the bids started to come in.
There were other expenses to consider, too, as time went on. The Turks originally agreed to sell her to the city of North Little Rock for a nominal sum of one dollar, but government red tape inevitably muddied that beautiful deal. The city and vet groups would eventually hav
e to pony up nearly $40,000 in salvage reimbursement money before they could take the boat home. They still considered it a fine bargain, but that was $40,000 they had not anticipated needing.
Somehow they found it. Most of the money came from local businesses that saw the value in the publicity and tourist dollars the submarine would bring to their city. Other contributions gathered up by the submarine veterans paid for the long tow through the Mediterranean Sea and across the Atlantic.
On May 5, 2004, the Razorback began her eight-thousand-mile journey from the Gulf of Izmit, with plans to arrive in Little Rock in mid- to late July. Max Bassett, Bob Opple, Greg Zonner, and Mayor Patrick Hays rode along for portions of the trip, either in the tug that was pulling the boat or aboard the old girl herself. A couple of retired Turkish sub sailors were along for the ride, too, excited about seeing the boat saved.
There were no Japanese dive-bombers, no enemy destroyers, no depth-charge attacks along the way. They made good progress despite some minor mechanical and weather glitches, easing down through the Dardanelles. There were some thoughts of taking the boat down for a dive in the vicinity of an old World War II German gunboat, sunk by the Allies in World War II, but the weather did not cooperate.
Next was the Aegean Sea and a short stopover in Greece to drop off some passengers. The Mediterranean was rough and several of the men on board got seasick. Sub sailors do get seasick, but back in the day the boat simply submerged, looking for a smoother ride. The Razorback had no such option on this trip. They could have dived, but it would have been a risky procedure in those rough seas.
British sailors at Gibraltar warmly greeted the submarine and her crew before she left the Mediterranean. The sub vets who were traveling along with their boat gave the Brits extensive tours and answered their many questions about the old vessel. And the hosts reciprocated with a party for one and all. A reporter from Stars and Stripes was there for an interview, and so were several television crews, documenting their progress.
Seas calmed considerably once they left Gibraltar and entered the Atlantic Ocean. There was one somber observation along the way. The boat paused near the spot south of the Azores where the USS Scorpion (SSN-589), a nuclear submarine, was lost under mysterious circumstances in May 1968. A brief memorial service was held there for the ninety-nine crewmen who perished in that incident. Max Bassett, one of the sub vets riding the boat, tossed overboard a special plaque that had been given to them by the Scorpion Association.
For most of the ride, the sub sailors were aboard the Rhea, the sea tug that was towing the Razorback. But every three or four days they would climb aboard their submarine and take a tour, making sure everything was okay, that she was not taking on water. They also stayed busy returning e-mail messages from people all over the world who were following the old boat’s progress across the Atlantic.
The Razorback got a warm reception when she arrived in Key West, Florida, the former home port for many of her sister boats. There had been a great deal of coverage in the news media about the boat and her journey. Word had been passed along among submarine veteran groups on the Internet, via e-mail, and through their newsletters. A large contingent of sub vets was in the welcoming crowd at Key West, eager to go aboard and take a closer look at the Razorback. The crew managed to accommodate many tours during the stopover, taking an estimated five hundred visitors down her ladders and through her narrow passageways.
A couple of former Razorback sailors came aboard for the next leg of the trip.
After a trip across the Gulf of Mexico, the boat pulled into New Orleans on June 19, greeted by a city fireboat, spraying water high into the air in salute. The submarine was about to leave salt water forever, and that called for a formal welcome ceremony. Many of those who had worked so hard to get the boat this far were there to welcome her, including a large contingent of vets from USSVI, the United States Submarine Veterans organization.
Jim Barnes, commander of the Razorback Base of the USSVI, recalls, “We had people standing in line for hours in the hot sun with no shade or water, all just to take a tour.”
He estimated that between fifteen hundred and two thousand people went through the boat while she was tied up at the Julia Street Wharf in New Orleans. There were plenty more television and newspaper representatives there, too.
Next came the really tricky part of the journey. Before reaching New Orleans, the crew had already had to lash the sub to the hip of the tugboat and use the sub’s ancient engines to fight the current of the Mississippi. Now they had to buck the flow all the way up from New Orleans, past Baton Rouge, to north of Greenville, Mississippi, where they would enter the Arkansas at Rosedale. At one point on the Arkansas River, two barges, heavily ballasted on their outsides, were strapped to the Razorback ’s flanks in order to lift her higher and get her through shallow water.
She made it, but with little room to spare.
On August 3, 2004, the Razorback arrived at the Little Rock Harbor Services facility so she could rest awhile and be prepared for her debut to the citizens of her new hometown. Mayor Hays and a group of representatives put on work clothes and gave the old girl a new coat of paint so she would look her best.
On August 29, she was officially tied up at North Little Rock and a ceremony welcomed her. As many as 150 submarine veterans were there to greet her. Even though she had had a long trip and many years of abuse, even though she had some rust streaks along her sides that were showing through the hurried paint job, and even though most of the signs inside the boat were written in indecipherable Turkish, the old sub sailors vowed to anyone who would listen that she was about the most beautiful thing they had ever seen.
Jim Barnes may have summed it up best when he was quoted as saying, “If the [school] children can go aboard and see the engineering, the cramped living space, learn of the fifty-two submarines and the thirty-five hundred men that were lost in World War Two to maintain our freedom, then this has all been worthwhile.”
No one disagreed.
The Razorback is officially an exhibit in the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum at North Little Rock. The museum has also made moves to acquire the USS Hoga (YT-146), a tugboat that valiantly helped fight fires during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Construction continues on the museum building, and the submarine is occasionally moved to a different location on the river to accommodate modifications to her berthing point along the riverbank. She does, however, remain open to visitors during the construction phase.
USS TORSK (SS-423)
Courtesy of the U.S. Navy
USS TORSK (SS-423)
Class: Tench
Launched: September 6, 1944
Named for: the Norwegian name of a fish, related to the codfish, that is found in the North Atlantic
Where: Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, New Hampshire
Sponsor: Mrs. Allen B. Reed, the wife of the captain of the USS New Orleans (CA-32), a heavy cruiser
Commissioned: December 16, 1944
Where is she today?
Baltimore Maritime Museum
802 South Caroline Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
(410) 396-3453
www.baltomaritimemuseum.org
www.usstorsk.org
Claim to fame: She fired the last torpedo and sank the last combatant ship of World War II, set the all-time career record for number of dives by a submarine . . . and, of course, the record for the number of times surfacing from a dive.
It was difficult for Bafford Lewellen to believe the war was so near to being over. Standing there on the bridge of the submarine he commanded, the USS Torsk, he surveyed the Sea of Japan with an odd mix of feelings. He and the men with whom he had sailed so far during this war had carried out the good fight.
With his previous boat, the USS Pollack (SS-180), he and his crew guided the old boat to a series of spectacular sinkings. Now, with this relatively new boat, he had been on the bridge for a total of two war patrols. Though targets were much harder
to find by the summer of 1945, he and the crew had done what had to be done when they encountered enemy vessels.
Now something so spectacularly awesome that it was hard to even contemplate had happened. And because of that, the end of this awful conflict was suddenly imminent.
“What are you thinking, Skip?” his exec asked, noting the contemplative look on his captain’s face.
“Just wondering how those boys on the other side feel now,” he answered, dropping the binoculars from his eyes. “They know it’s over. Are they going to lay down or will they fight on as long as they can?”
It was a true concern. The Japanese were known to be fanatical in their pursuit of the war. What other nation had ever had suicide pilots and mini-submarine drivers willing to drive their craft into anything flying the Stars and Stripes?
But only three days before, the Torsk had pulled seven Japanese seamen from the drink, survivors of a ship sent to the bottom by an American airplane. Granted, they weren’t combatants, but they seemed more thankful than defiant when the Torsk showed up to pull them out of their lifeboat.
Then the next day they fired two torpedoes at a freighter. She was damaged, no doubt about it, but they were unable to determine if she went down or not. The very next day, they sent the cargo vessel Kaiho Maru to the bottom. They continued to keep a sharp eye from the shears and bridge and to man the radarscopes, looking for targets and approaching threats, just as they had done since leaving Portsmouth. It was no time to get lackadaisical.
“Radar contact, zero-seven-zero, twelve thousand yards!” came the sudden strident call up the hatch from the radar operator, interrupting the conversation between the skipper and his executive officer.
It was August 14, 1945. Everything about this war had changed eight days before. Yet, oddly, for a Tench-class submarine named the Torsk, now riding gently on the surface of the Sea of Japan, nothing had changed.