Battleship Cove
(Page Three)
Fall River, Massachusetts
visited December, 2001
USS Lionfish (SS-298) DANFS
Hiddensee (ex-Rudolf Engelhofer)
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Coming back to the Kennedy's stern, a right turn placed us on a brow leading to USS Lionfish, a Balao-class submarine. The Lionfish is in very good condition, and has a unique exhibit: You can climb up the ladder from the control room to the conning tower, there to see it crammed with equipment through a Plexiglas box over the hatch. Many submarines have the hatch closed for safety reasons; the Cobia in Manitowoc, WI has mirrors that allow you to indirectly see the conning tower; and the Bowfin in Honolulu, HI has a shore-based conning tower from USS Parche that you can walk through. Still, there is nothing like the thrill of seeing one like this.
The Lionfish custodians are converting the after crew berth to a museum and have begun to assemble a collection of artifacts and memorabilia from the Silent Service.
After exiting through the aft torpedo hatch, yet another brow took us on board the Hiddensee. The Hiddensee is a Soviet-built coast defense vessel (also referred to as a missile corvette) that was purchased by the East German Navy and commissioned as the Rudolf Engelhofer. After the reunification, she was recommissioned as Hiddensee, and eventually found her way to the United States as a test vessel for the U.S. Navy. She joined the squadron at Battleship Cove in 1996. The Hiddensee's main features are the oversized missile launchers amidships port and starboard. A real treat was seeing the original equipment labeled in Cyrillic, and what passed for the best of Soviet electronics in 1984.
The Photos
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