Another American Adventure: The USS Requin (SS 481)

Saturday, September 4, 2010

The USS Requin (SS 481)

The USS Requin, a submarine docked just outside the Carnegie Science Center, was also interesting. I had never before been on a submarine - it was a lot longer inside that I expected.

The USS Requin (SS 481) is a cold war, early warning radar picket and attack submarine. It was used from 1945 to 1968. From the sign outside:

Come aboard to learn how 80 men used their expertise, humor and sheer ingenuity to carve out a rough and adventurous life during Requin's lengthy defense and scientific missions, some of which are still classified today!

State-of-the-art and battle ready when she set out just days before the end of WWII, the USS Requin holds the distinction of being the US Navy's first Radar Picket Submarine.

That's the torpedo!

2 comments:

BarbaraSeptember 4, 2010 at 6:37 PM
I just checked it and I was right: requin is French for shark. I wonder how this submarine was named. Fascinating to see its innards. The only ideas I had about submarines were from Das Boot.
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beth cioffolettiSeptember 5, 2010 at 4:50 AM
It is so similar of a word to Requiem - I'm glad to know that Requin means shark. Yes, it was much like Das Boot inside! Long, narrow, no windows, lots of piping and valves everywhere. One would have to really discipline his mind to overcome the claustrophobia, I would think. It could travel at a depth of 800 feet. That's pretty deep. I was surprised at how large the torpedo was.
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.