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Happy Summer! Well it has been a very crazy, busy last few months here at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum! We opened our new exhibit “USS
Cobia Below the Surface” and hosted our first SubFest! And thanks to our awesome volunteers, work still got done aboard
Cobia.
Volunteer Report• In May, Greg Miller reinstalled the bow plane rigging indicator prior to the annual Navy Inspection. At our Annual Meeting a few weeks later he was awarded the 2014
Cobia Volunteer of the Year award! Congratulations Greg and thanks for all your hard work!
• Paul Kryanek installed the lube oil transfer pump in the aft engine room and has been learning how to run the engines and the high pressure air compressor. He also lent a hand with some of the rewiring in the new
Cobia sub simulator.
• Jud Bly and Lenny Kleinmark spent a few days cleaning and polishing the boat before July 4th and SubFest to make sure the old girl looked good for the big weekends.
• Pat Habel and Phil Walters, with the help of a few others, did general engine maintenance to get them ready for all the engine starts.
Special EventsUSS Lagarto Ceremony, May 2nd: This year we honored the crew of USS
Lagarto on the 70th Anniversary of her loss (May 3, 1945). The ceremony, which was held on deck of
Cobia, also celebrated 10 years since the wreck was discovered. We had hoped to have a special visit from Jamie MacLeod, the diver who discovered the wreck in May 2005, but he was unable to make it due to health reasons. Sadly he passed just a few weeks later. He was a dear friend of the museum.
July 4th: The city once again hosted a “Fourth on the Shore” Celebration. We offered $4.00 admission and held our “rigged for red” tours. Tour guides were stationed throughout the boat and visitors were able to tour at their own pace. Beautiful weather and WW II music blasting on deck made it a fun weekend for all!
SubFest 2015!Our inaugural SubFest was a busy, fun, successful weekend! For three days downtown Manitowoc celebrated submarines, with a special emphasis on
Cobia and the 28 Manitowoc-built submarines. The Capitol Civic Centre showed Run Silent, Run Deep, Destination Tokyo, and Operation Petticoat. The Rahr-West Art Museum had a Navy Art Exhibit on display “A View from the Periscope” and downtown stores held sidewalk sales. The city shut down the street in front of the museum which allowed us to set up a band shell, food and craft vendors, a boat pond with radio controlled submarines, and a children’s area. We brought back our rigged for red tours and several submarine veterans volunteered their time to sit on board and talk to the hundreds of visitors that passed through the boat during the event. On Sunday,
Cobia hosted a Tolling of the Boats ceremony with help from the USSVI-Wisconsin Base, the Capitol Civic Centre Community Chorale, and Lakeshore Wind Ensemble. After the ceremony, we had a perfect Sunday afternoon for a water skiing show in the river. A huge thank you to all the sub vets and volunteers that helped make this weekend possible!
U.S. Navy Reserve Centennial: This past weekend,
Cobia was yet again the host of another ceremony as we celebrated 100 years of the Navy Reserve.
Cobia was a training vessel for the Reserve unit in Milwaukee from 1959-1970 and the local reserve units have been a tremendous support aboard
Cobia over the years while she’s been in Manitowoc, from restoring the engines, to annual inspections, and ceremony support.
USS COBIA Below the Surface: Submarine Simulation ExperienceThis summer we opened a new permanent exhibit dedicated to
Cobia and her crew. The exhibit tells the story of what life was like aboard
Cobia from the everyday mundane jobs to the moments of sheer terror. We can now display artifacts from the sub and the crew and with the use of technology display quotes, photographs, and documents. The existing simulator was redesigned and you can experience an actual battle from July 18th, 1944 when
Cobia sank a ship carrying a tank division headed for Iwo Jima and was then depth charged.
To connect the new exhibit to the submarine tour we now have
Cobia Crew ID cards. These cards highlight 40 crew members and allow people to “become a member of the crew.” They will learn what their job was, where they were from, and other interesting facts about their crew member.
“Cobette” Karen Duvalle
Submarine Curator
