Battleship Cove
(Page One)
Fall River, Massachusetts
visited December, 2001
Renovation Information - February, 2002
PT 617, PT 796, LCM, USS Fall River (CA-131) DANFS
Battleship Cove had been a target for some time when an opportunity presented itself on a business trip to Hartford, Connecticut. Having arranged to have a free Sunday, we were all set except for Mother Nature, who arranged a 4" snowfall north of Long Island Sound the previous evening. By the time we got to Fall River much of it had melted, but it made for dangerously slippery decks. A harsh wind off the Sound didn't help.
The custodians of Battleship Cove have as their main exhibits USS Jos. P. Kennedy Jr., a Gearing-class destroyer, and the submarine Lionfish along with BB-59, USS Massachusetts. Battleship Cove has a number of unique exhibits, among them two of the small number of PT boats known to be on display in the United States, and a Soviet-built missile corvette that came into the U.S. Navy after the fall of East Germany. The PT boats (thankfully, that day) are displayed indoors away from the weather. Also in the PT pavilion is a captured Japanese suicide boat. Another exhibit, an LCM, is just inside the fence past the gift shop.
This page illustrates the PT boats, the bow of USS Fall River (CA-131) and the LCM. The PT boats are "walk-by" exhibits, but you still get a sense of the boats and their crews who went up against major Japanese combatants in the Pacific. Of course, the exhibit includes information and a video on the most famous PT boat, PT-109. While examining the LCM, it was impossible not to think about the opening 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan". Tucked safely underneath the I-195 bridge in Fall River, it seems a long way from the shores of Normandy.
The Photos
(click on thumbnails to show the larger image)
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