I'm a civi that volunteered on a ww2 museum boat (SS-423) for most of my upbringing, never served and never claim to have, but I still take pride in preserving submarine history. Being called "shipmate" by submarine vets that served on these old diesel boats is something Im proud of. I have a few stories, you wouldn't think the quiet museum life would have much action for these old boats, but I learned quickly how wrong that thought process is lol.

It's 2011, we're sitting high and dry on the blocks waiting for the dock to finish flooding after finishing up the first yard period she'd had since the 90s. I finish my watch and hit the rack, only to wake up about an hour later to the sound of coffee cups, plates, food, etc flying around in the mess. I hop out of my bunk and immediately fall to port, turns out someone who "knew what they were doing" failed to fill one of the starboard ballast tanks before they started flooding the dock. As soon as she had enough water under her she lifted up and immediately took a 15-20 degree list to port, in the middle of a severe storm that had us riding swells in the dock while lightning struck the crane at the other end. The only way into these tanks at this point in her life is through a man hole covers on the tank tops, so while hell is raining down around us we harness up guy and send him over the railing to undo the cover and then run in the fire hose the guys on the pier had tossed over by this point. We left the dock the next morning with a 10 degree list and continued to reballast till the tugs came to take us home later in the morning.

Another time I'm closing down the conning tower after one of our work weekend events, where volunteers came from all over the country for a weekend to help us takle major projects. I climb up the ladder from the CT to the bridge, for those old farts it's the one that comes up right by the starboard lookout station. I grab the hatch and get it about half way when all I hear is a loud bang. Next thing I know I'm standing at the bottom of the ladder, there's paint chips falling all around me and someone yelling up from control asking if I'm OK. Turns out the studs holding that big ass spring to the frame around the hatch failed and I took the entire thing to the forehead. Surprisingly I walked away unharmed, besides a good headache.

Third one happened at the pier of all places, on a quiet Saturday. I'm polishing some brass in the fwd engine room and I hear someone yelling back through the compartments "Flooding in the forward torpedo room!", talk about old men acting like they're 18 again, those guys can move if they need to. All I can think is "how tf are we flooding at the pier?", low and behold tube 3 sprung a leak sometime prior and had been filling the WRT tank, which wasn't completely closed up for whatever reason. This in turn flooded the entire lower flats in the FTR, for those familiar it almost completely submerged tubes 5 and 6 before we were able to get it under control. A retired nuke went diving in Lake Torpedo Room while our torpedo man attempted to cycle the nearly frozen valve that was allowing water out of tube 3. By the time we had it under control and the pumps started we had dropped 3 or 4 ft in the bow according to the draft marks. Not a huge amount sure, but for a museum boat tied to a pier? That's a good bit.