A 1,526-ton submarine sat on blocks in a drained Wisconsin dry dock all summer, out of the water for the first time in 72 years, and gave up a flood valve stamped for her sister sub, lost with all hands in the war, before her tow back across Lake Michigan this month
USS Silversides just gave up a secret she'd been hiding underwater for 72 years, and it belonged to a submarine that never came home. //
Silversides is kind of a big deal. She was commissioned a week after the US declared war on Japan, and a joint Army-Navy committee credited her after the war with 23 enemy vessels sunk, according to the Navy’s history of the boat. Scott Hardin, the museum’s vessel curator, told WXYZ in July that the two subs ranked above her are both gone.
The weirdest find of the summer, and arguably the best, came out of main ballast tank 2D. Ballast tanks are how a submarine sinks on purpose. Let water in, and she gets heavy enough to dive. Blow it back out with compressed air, and she comes back up. The flood valves at the bottom of those tanks are where the water gets in.
That tank’s aft flood valve had USS Trigger stamped on it. Trigger and Silversides were sister boats, built side by side at Mare Island Navy Yard in California, and Trigger hit the water about two months later, according to the museum and the Navy’s official history of Trigger. Nobody seems to know how one of Trigger’s valves ended up on Silversides, including the museum.
Trigger never made it home. The museum says she was sunk with all hands on March 28, 1945, and the Navy’s history has Japanese planes and ships spending two hours attacking a submarine that day. Silversides was one of four American subs close enough to hear it.
Hardin sounded pretty thrilled about the valve, writing that it “could be the only surviving ‘Trigger’ submarine part.” It’s been pulled out and set aside for a display at the museum once the dry dock work wraps up, and I’d argue that exhibit’s worth the drive to Muskegon on its own.
