Hysterical Journey to Historic Places

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WE HAVE RUN AGROUND, CAPTAIN RANEY

The Arkansas and Colorado Rivers originate only a few miles apart in the Rocky Mountains near Leadville, Colorado. They are, however, on opposite sides of the Continental Divide. Snowmelt in the Arkansas River drainage bounds merrily along until it flows into the Mississippi River and empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Snowmelt that finds its way into the Colorado River drainage maunders off jauntily through the Grand Canyon and finally empties into the Gulf of California. Sometimes vagaries of the wind are all that determine which snowflakes go where. Other vagaries were at work to determine the final destination of the USS Batfish.

The Batfish, SS310, is a Bilao class submarine that was commissioned in August of 1943 and saw action in the Pacific during WWII. It is best known for having sunk three Jap subs within 76 hours in February of 1945. After the war it languished in the mothball fleet for a few years and then retrofitted with Guppy II modifications and returned to service at Key West. Her cold war service was unremarkable and she was decommissioned and struck in 1969. By then the good folks of Muskogee, Oklahoma, on the banks of the Arkansas River took an interest in her. They wanted to build a war memorial to honor our veterans. After procurement negotiations with the Navy they acquired ownership of the Batfish. It took six river barges to lift her draft clear of the river bottom and two tug boats to tow it upstream. At Fort Smith the procession encountered a bridge that was built too low for them to squeeze the Batfish under. The Army Corps pf Engineers had to lower the river level by three feet to admit passage. A lot of water had to go under the bridge at taxpayer’s expense, and those taxpayers all lived in Muskogee. In the meantime riverfront property was acquired for the war memorial, again at taxpayer expense. A canal had to be dug between the river and the park in order to float the Batfish into position. A lock was needed, and the river levee needed to be breached in order for water to enter the canal. That work was not quite done when the Batfish arrived. While the whole procession was in moorage on the river bank, high flows in the river caused the steel straps holding the Batfish in place between the barges slipped and the Batfish nearly dropped into the mud. Repair was an additional expense that the overburdened taxpayers were not prepared to pay. They tried to cut their losses and back out of the deal, but the Navy would not renegotiate. The War Memorial was finally completed in 1972 and opened for business. The canal had to be filled in, the lock had to be removed and the levee rebuilt. The whole thing was a hugely expensive proposition. When I made my visit to war memorial in August of 2019 it had still not been fully paid for. High flows down the river earlier in the year had eroded the footings beneath the Batfish and it was in danger of fetching loose and making its way back out to sea. The Batfish was closed to public entry but no admission was charged. I did purchase a hat from the gift shop. Far as I can figure a batfish is a creature better known as an ordinary stingray.

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Photos

USS BATFISH IN MUSKOGEE
My pal, Russell Raney, enlisted in the navy in the late 50s and entertained hopes of serving as what he called a sewer pipe sailor in the elite submarine service. Instead he wound up aboard a radar picket ship in the North Pacific. He was opposed to Vietnam and finally given a General Discharge after going AWOL from Mare Island. This story is dedicated to his memory.