In our last Sunday feature I shared with Berangere and Jean the hope that some reader would respond with explanations for the largely mysterious – for us – submarines that we included there. We were blessed with just such from Bill Hoeller. Now we will print out his explanations beneath the subs they apply to. And we will introduce this with the introduction to his first letter to us. Thanks much Bill.
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Dear Paul,
Having been born and raised in Seattle I always look forward to your Seattle Now & Then feature every Sunday. In 1940 when I was born I lived in the Rainier Valley. My wife and I currently live in Wallingford. I saw you had some questions concerning submarines, which I know a little about, so I thought I would respond. I’m also anxious to see additional posts about submarines.
All the best,
Bill Hoeller
Regarding the mystery boat moored across from the Continental Can Company, I belong to the United State Submarine Veterans, Inc. (USSVI) so I asked a friend of mine, Patrick Householder, who lives here and who once was the National Commander of the organization. The USSVI has over 13, 000 members, so the pool of knowledge within the group about U.S. submarines is infinite. Patrick knows more than most about U.S. diesel submarines.
Patrick said the boat was either the USS Salmon (SS-573) or the USS Sailfish (SS-572), and now that he said it I agree. Since the Salmon was a west coast boat and the Sailfish was an east coast boat, the boat in the picture is the undoubtedly the Salmon. I should have thought of Salmon because she was in our flotilla in San Diego when I was on Sea Devil (SS-400).
Salmon and Sailfish were purpose built as radar picket boats and both were 350’ long, which at the time was huge. The standard Gato, Balao and Tench class fleet submarines at the time were 312’ long. The boats carried a huge radar antenna on deck aft of the sail, and another huge antenna on top of the sail when they operated as picket boats, but when they were re-classified as regular diesel attack submarines their huge radar antennas were removed. [Here I asked Bill Hoeller to explain the meaning of “picket boats” in his passage above. His answer follows.] Don’t hold my feet to the fire on this, but the term “picket” would be likened to a picket fence around a house to act as a barrier to keep dogs in the yard (or perhaps outside the yard.) During the battle for Okinawa destroyers formed a picket barrier away from the main battle fleet to give early warning of Japanese aircraft Kamikaze attacks, and although the destroyers performed their job well many of them naturally became targets of the Kamikaze and many were sunk. The notion came up that perhaps a submarine could better do the job by submerging before the aircraft attacked, but nothing was done until shortly after the war. Perhaps eight or so conventional fleet diesel submarines were configured with huge search radars that allowed them to determine the range, distance and altitude of an aircraft. Here on the west coast I remember there were the Spinax, the Rock, the Raton and the Rasher. The Salmon and the Sailfish were purpose built as radar picket boats, as was the nuclear powered submarine USS Triton (SSRN-586). She was the boat that sailed around the world submerged. The whole program of using submarines as radar picket boats didn’t last long, perhaps for a year or a bit longer. Radars on long range aircraft performed the job much better.
Puffer holds a special place for me. I enlisted in the Navy aboard her in 1957 when she was the training boat for Submarine Reserve Division 13-16 here in Seattle at the Naval Armory. I spent a lot of time aboard her, and spent a lot of time marching around inside the Armory.
You mentioned you lived for a time in a houseboat along Fairview, and told the story of the Puffer going adrift. When I was fourteen I worked for a commercial diver as his tender. He had a moorage for his diving barge at the north end of Lake Union, just east of the Gas Works. He managed to corral a lot of galvanized barrels. We filled the barrels with water, placed them under houseboats between the cedar logs upon which the houses were built, and blew the water out using compressed air, which helped to raise the houseboat up a bit. The cedar logs over the years would become waterlogged and slowly sink. We worked on houseboats all around Lake Union and Portage Bay.
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HOPEFULLY – if we can find it – we intend to return to this SUBMARINE SECTION of our blog with something on THE PRINCESS ANGELINE, the “first atomic submarine built for Puget Sound commuter service.” We doubt that it was ever built. Were we not quoting we would have preferred to write “planned for Puget Sound commuter service.” Please check for it later.
Very nice follow-up! To submariners, posts like these two are just gold. I dove once with the S646 Galatée (French navy, submarine base of Toulon :)) (and I live in Wallingford too mate! :)).