A Deep Affection : Groups Seek to Save Submarine From Cutters’ Torches

For three decades, one of the Navy’s last diesel-powered submarines, the Barbel, performed important if not particularly glorious duty in the Pacific. Now, as it sits in the mud at a berth on Terminal Island, the Barbel is facing two very different prospects in its old age.

It could become a floating museum. Or, more likely, it could be cut up and turned into 3,000 tons of razor blades, faucets and other metal products.

At least three groups would like to save the Barbel, or a big piece of it, from the ship-breakers’ torches. And the company that bought it from the U.S. government, Southwest Recycling, would be happy to oblige them. But all of the save-the-Barbel groups are facing the world’s oldest and most common problem: lack of money.

“It’d be nice if we could save her,” says Paul Schneider, a 26-year-old Los Angeles County firefighter and founder of American Military Vessels Preservation Society, which is working to preserve and put on public display old Navy warships that otherwise would be scrapped. “Submarines are easier than a lot of other ships to display, and people are fascinated by them. There’s just something about a submarine.”

“We’d love to have a sub like that,” says Mike Schroeder, vice president of Washington state-based Bremerton Historic Ships Assn., which is considering buying the Barbel and taking it up to Bremerton for public display.

“We’d like to have the sail for our memorial,” says Dennis Kelly of the U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II, which maintains a memorial to lost World War II submariners at the Naval Weapons Station at Seal Beach. (The “sail” on a post-World War II submarine is the superstructure that protrudes above the deck; non-sailors often inaccurately call it the “conning tower.”)

Unfortunately for all the groups, the estimated cost of saving the Barbel ranges from at least $500,000 to restore the entire ship to about $6,000 just to buy the sail. And not everyone is convinced that the old Barbel is worth saving.

The Barbel was built in the late 1950s for about $25 million; it was formally commissioned in 1959. Slightly more than 220 feet long and 29 feet wide, it carried 21 torpedoes and had six tubes to launch them. Like all Navy submarines, it bore the name of a fish; a barbel is a European freshwater minnow. The vessel was named after a World War II submarine that was lost in action in the Pacific with all hands in 1945. The latter-day Barbel and two sister subs, the Bonefish and the Blueback--affectionately known to submariners as “the B-Girls”--were the last diesel subs built for the Navy. Thereafter, the Navy built nuclear-powered subs.

(Diesel engines require air to operate, which means the sub has to be on the surface or at low depth with a snorkel breathing device when using the engines; the sub also can operate deep underwater on battery power for limited periods. Nuclear submarines, by contrast, can stay submerged at great depths for extended periods.)

The Barbel spent its entire working life in the Pacific, patrolling in the Far East and training for a naval war that never came. It never provoked a conflict by firing a torpedo, and like most submarines, played no role in the Vietnam War.

For the 80 or 90 people who manned the Barbel-class submarines, life aboard was a mixture of the bitter and the sweet. There were memorable port calls in Japan, Hong Kong and elsewhere, and the camaraderie aboard the subs was exceptional.

But the diesels were cramped and dirty compared to the “nukes.” Crew members slept in coffin-like bunks or “racks” stacked three high; already-narrow passageways were lined with crates of food and other supplies; a wrong move could result in a bumped head.

“You stuff 90 guys into one of those things, with all their gear, all the food they’ll need, all the spare parts, well, it gets a little tight,” says Fred Tredy, a Los Angeles Police Protective League director who spent four years as a young enlisted man aboard the Bonefish in the late 1960s.

It got a little rank, too, Tredy remembers. Because of water restrictions, diesel submariners showered about once a week. And diesel fumes were unavoidable. It is said one could spot--or, rather, smell--a diesel submariner from 10 feet away simply by the smell of diesel that lingered on him.

Nevertheless, Tredy said service aboard the diesel boats was “great duty.”

It could be dangerous duty as well. In 1988 a fire and explosion aboard the Bonefish killed three crew members and extensively damaged the submarine, which was subsequently scrapped. In 1989 three Barbel crew members were washed overboard off Japan; only one was rescued. Also in 1988, a fire aboard the Blueback temporarily disabled the ship; it had to be towed into San Diego.

The Barbel was decommissioned in 1989 and put into mothballs in Hawaii. In 1990 the Blueback, the last of the “B-Girls” to see active service--was decommissioned in San Diego. The diesel sub era was over.

The Navy stripped much of the equipment from the Barbel and put the ship up for sale at an appraised value of $70,000. Southwest Recycling, which specializes in cutting up former Navy ships (the company is disassembling the World War II-era aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard) bought the Barbel and towed it to Terminal Island last year.

The Barbel’s worth as scrap is unknown, according to Dan Cotter, business manager for Southwest Recycling. The sub contains about 3,000 tons of metal, which at the average world market price of about $100 a ton would come to $300,000. Also, the diesel engines and some other components are still usable, and could be sold intact. But breaking down the sub into scrap metal is expensive.

Southwest Recycling is willing to turn the sub over to preservationists, Cotter said, as long as the Navy approves and the company’s costs are reimbursed.

“If an organization was interested in preserving her, we’d be willing to work it out with them,” Cotter said. “But it would mean raising a lot of money. The cost (of restoring the sub) probably would be prohibitive.”

Tredy, who toured the Barbel last year, agrees that the costs probably would be too high.

“It would be nice to save her,” Tredy says. “You hate to see any of them go. But she’s in pretty bad shape--her periscopes are gone, all her electronics are gone. She was gutted. It broke my heart looking at her.”

But even if the Barbel winds up as scrap, its sister sub, the Blueback, probably will still be around. Plans call for that sub to be put on permanent display at a marine museum in Keyport, Ore.