Two Floating WWII Museums in a Single Day
Four “fish” proudly displayed at the front of the USS Silversides Museum in Muskegon, Michigan.
For the past few days I’ve been accompanying my father-in-law on a business trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Yesterday we didn’t have much to do, so we started perusing sites of interest in the area. There wasn’t much that caught our eye, not, at least, until we scrolled our maps over to the eastern shoreline of Lake Michigan. There, in Muskegon, a harbor town of about 40,000, we happened across two incredible remnants of American naval history.
LST 393
A side view of LST 393.
The first was a very real and restored Landing Ship Tank (LST), LST 393. The vessel earned three battle stars throughout its illustrious wartime career—one at Sicily (yes, I was geeking out from the second I stared into the gaping maw of its hulking 24-foot bow doors), one at Salerno, and one in Normandy.
We climbed over every inch of that ship. You get to see a warren of smaller antechambers, troop quarters, galleys, and ward rooms chalk-full of displays and artifacts. You can meander through all five decks at your own pace. We heard the creaking superstructure from the bowels of the ship as water slapped up against the hull; experienced the acrid smell of diesel fumes as we spent time in the lower-levels; inspected the deck guns and the davits that could hold LCVPs on either side of the bridge. (From the bridge I took a minute to envision myself beaching the lumbering craft at full tilt. It must have been quite the experience).
Each ship’s crew meticulously adjusted the ballast so the trim of the ship’s hull matched the angle and draft conditions of a particular landing beach. That way the raised bow ramp never took on water. I never knew. I also never realized how vehicles were offloaded from the top deck—via a steam-powered elevator near the bow, much like that found on an aircraft carrier. Pretty cool.
A view from the bridge overlooking the top deck of LST 393.
I was so impressed by the care with which eager volunteers brought LST 393 back from the dead in the 2000s, saving an incredible piece of history.1 The vessel epitomizes the changing nature of amphibious warfare in the twentieth century; the LST and other shallow draft landing craft made modern shore-to-shore operations possible for the first time, enabling invasion forces to proceed straight to beach landing objectives rather than stopping offshore, offloading into smaller boats, and ferrying men, vehicles, and materiel back and forth to the beaches (or, barring that, relying entirely on captured ports of sufficient size for offloading).
Of the thousands built, only two remain. We were fortunate to see one in person.
USS Silversides
The Gato class USS Silversides, moored in Muskegon, Michigan.
If that weren’t enough history for one day, just down Muskegon’s coastal road lay another vestige of American naval history, the USS Silversides. This Gato Class U.S. submarine was among the most decorated to serve in the Pacific War. It sunk thirty Japanese vessels and damaged fourteen more across fourteen intense combat patrols.
Before we got there, I did not connect the dots that this was in fact one of the three submarines profiled in James Scott’s fantastic book, The War Below. I’d read it years back. Yet it was only when I realized the ship’s crew performed an emergency appendectomy in the submarine’s cramped ward room (a memorable passage in the book—they were underwater and thousands of miles from any port) did it dawn on me. This is the real deal, I thought.
Exploring the Silversides was amazing. We took our sweet time inspecting every gauge cluster, every compartment, stern to bow.
We were in for an even bigger treat: Lingering around in the forward torpedo room, a wonderful couple from North Carolina came down the stairs. As it turned out, the man served on the exact same type of submarine (his being commissioned in 1946) as an electrician in the late 1960s. As only his second time back on one, the memories came flooding back. We were fortunate he was willing to share.2
A view of the forward torpedo room. Behind me were a dozen cramped bunks. Can you imagine sleeping soundly next to a giant torpedo?
If anyone ever happens to find themselves in or around Grand Rapids, the trip to Muskegon is well worth the drive.
Submariner for a day—and a happy one at that.
If you’re as curious as we were, LST 393 was decomissioned in the Philippines after the war. It got to the Great Lakes via the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, and was employed as a ferry (known as Highway 16) shuttling new cars between Detroit and Milwaukee until the 1970s. By the 1990s/2000s, she was in rough shape!↩︎
We were told emptying the torpedo room latrine at sea required a complicated twelve step routine. Failing to adhere to the steps in perfect order yielded an “explosive and unpleasant outcome.” John affirmed this observation. “I had the unfortunate experience of messing up the process one night while everyone in here was asleep,” he said. “The poor guy over there,” he added, pointing to an adjacent lower bunk, “yeah, he got it all over his feet. I was horrified.”↩︎