I dropped off my friend at the airport at 3:45pm, and in the name of killing time and going on adventures I decided to go to the USS Bowfin submarine museum. It was AWESOME. It was recently re-done and re-opened in February, it looks like. I decided to make us members there… Brian doesn’t get in for free. You’ll find that military rates are weird… Anyway, I only had an hour, so I went into the submarine first.
It was HOT inside. Thankfully there were fans. Here are the infamous beds on top of the torpedo tubes.
Old school submerge check list and CPR instructions.
Here’s a dump of fun gauges and rooms. Can’t forget the old school mixer!
The great thing about Hawaii is that tourists with real cameras aren’t usually very far. I snagged one to take a picture of me to show the size of the holes. So small!
Coming back outside, from the bow you can see the USS Missouri and Arizona Memorial
The other side.
I was running out of time, so when I got to the actual museum part the exhibit guide told me to go right to the WWII stuff. It was amazing, and I learned a lot.
They used to have flags indicating how many targets they hit
They had a thing to look through that mimic’d a periscope. You were supposed to identify what ship you see. The mini models are there to show you the differences. There’s a running joke about submariners and how they can pick out what type of war ship is in front of them from a blurry profile through a periscope but can’t find the ketchup in the fridge. And if that isn’t true about Brian I don’t know what is. I guess he’s skilled where it counts.
Please, God, let there be no WWIII.
There was lots to see outside as well! I was running out of time, though.
I thought they did an AMAZING job on this display. The one problem was there was a display exhibit in front of it… so you can’t really get a good dead on picture.
I think this is the size of the biggest submarine hull in operation. As I was walking out I caught another tourist with a big camera and she took this. She thanked me and Brian for our service. I said honestly it feels like I serve sometimes. Also, people, help a girl out and tell me I’m not in the middle.
I emailed Brian to tell him it kinda felt like I was at work with him. He said he has it a little roomier and cooler, but similar 😉
Will have to go back to really absorb the museum part fully.