Please do more of the under main deck video’s. The majority of us don’t know what those spaces look like. We always see the usual main deck videos. What’s interesting is the difference between Electric Boat Subs and the Government Yard boats, maybe you could do a video on that sometime. Thanks for this video Paul.
Thanks for the great little tour. I was not aware of the fact that most countries did not have refrigeration on their subs. Before the Gato class, did U.S. subs have refrigeration? I think Dr. P. Dantic needs to have a class on ice cube use, I bet there are thousands of younger viewers that have not used those old metal ice trays, or even the plastic ones for that matter.
@@klsc8510The handle is missing. You pulled the handle up straight to break the cubes apart. It was all aluminum because of being lightweight and aluminum is an excellent heat (and cold) conductor.
@@dfirth224 My parents have a pair of those, they have a noticeable 2-piece spine for the ice cube dividers to transfer motion from the handle to the ribs that break the cubes apart. these trays are different, I think that feature on the end has something to do with breaking the cubes loose.
Thank you for the excellent tour of a rarely seen area of the boat. When the sub was submerged did they switch off the refrigeration to conserve battery power?
Cooks are the bravest people in any service; they’re the most dangerous, they're in contact with the enemy 3-4 times per day and often take incoming fire.
"Anchors Aweigh," way to start this wonderful segment. Like what you did, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Valentine's Day, and of course, Ash Wednesday. Thanks, Paul!
That refrigerator and freezer doesn't seem like it's going to be big enough to carry enough food for 90 men for 75 days. Is there another place for bulk storage of canned food?
On LPD11 our refers were on the 4th deck below our engineering berthing (3 deck) compartment. In 1974 on a Med cruise we picked up a floating dead fisherman, the deck guys loaded him in a body bag & brought him down thru our compartment to the freezer. A couple of days later we pulled into port and they took a very frozen dead guy out of the freezer and turned him over to the authorities.
What a very interesting and informative video. This would be the first time for a lot of us to have ever seen this compartment on a Fleet Boat. Thank you for sharing this excellent information.
From my reading, on the surface almost everywhere inside. No smoking outside at night. The after gun mount on the island was refered to as the cigarette deck. Sometimes submerged the smoking lamp would be out to conserve oxygen. If the boat was down a long time, the air would be so bad you couldn't light one anyways
So cool (pun intended) to see this out-of-the-way area of the boat. I've always been fascinated with the WWII fleet boats and enjoy your videos. Subscribed!
I've been on a few fleet boat museums in my time. Frozen food storage was never covered on these tours, and I never thought about it. Thanks for taking us into this space.
These boats are like Tardis, way bigger on the inside than what they look like on the outside. Additionally: I'm of age to remember my grandparents having that ice trigger tray... and the awful experience of having that tray slice my hand when using it without any direction. (My grandmother and her sister laughed at my misfortune - a very generational experience)
Given that one of the missions the subs did was rescuing downed pilots, I wonder how much ice cream they were able to store when getting their "ransom?"
Fortunately for me I never had to go down into Ranger's reefers when we were taking on food. (Thanks to the Navy for developing the refrigerated stores ships that brought fresh food out to us.) Every time we took on food stores I was working on the hangar deck, or the flight deck during my first cruise.) I knew some guys who had to stow the food in the reefers. Break out the foul weather gear. But, ours were big enough to almost put Cod into them. Of course, we were serving something like 17,000 meals a day. The galley was open 23 hours a day. Closed from 0100-0200 for cleaning. I have a number of books on WWII submarine warfare. There was a section that dealt with stowing of food. It was an art. Every spare cubic inch on the boat, and there wasn't much, was used to stow food. The cooks had to be careful about how they stowed it, and that includes in the reefers. They couldn't just stow all the steaks first, hamburger next, and so on. If they did, the crew would have the same thing day after day until they had finished what was on top. The cooks actually planned out the meals for the entire deployment before beginning stowing it away.
I remember packing milk onto an freight elevator to strike down to the reefer decks. We packed the elevator to its max capacity ant then sent it down off the aft mess deck level. (On the Ranger in 1979). on the Bainbridge, i stood at the bottom of one of the ladders going down from the main deck, and caught meat boxes all morning and part of the afternoon. There was another ladder going down to the reefer deck itself. Meat boxes are about 50 to 55 pounds each. I was sore afterwards. On a sub like the Cod. the provisions came down vertically and then got passed to the storeroom. The messman in the chill box there had only to lift it through the hatch and onto the deck. You can see some of the ways they prevented the frozen meat from shifting underway. And there were no bottles of Freon and other gas cylinders littering the inside of the freezer.
@@steveschulte8696 I was on the hangar deck one time putting the boxes of food on the rollers down to the mess decks. I caught my finger on the steel band. I didn't see anything when I looked at it, so I kept working. Then, I noticed some dark spots appearing on the deck under my hand. I went below in white light and found I'd cut my finger pretty bad. The red light in the hangar bay was exactly the color of blood.
@@henrycarlson7514 The forward mess decks were not used for eating while I was aboard. Weapons would put all of the bombs for a strike together, less the fuses, and load them on the bomb carts. That was all we had on the forward mess decks. I understand that they did use the forward galley to prepare rations for all of the forward GQ stations. I couldn't attest to this of my own knowledge. My S-7 berthing was just off the forward mess decks. Every time I'd come up from my compartment I'd see nothing but bomb carts all over the place. It was just empty when we weren't on the line.
That articulated air duct in the officers refrigerator is just what I needed in about 1974. I was supply PO for the sheet metal shop on the sub tender USS Simon Lake. A boomer had sent us a work order for a new one of those elbows. I went to Engineering and looked up the specification and found that they were shipyard built with no part number I could order. Our shop did not have the tools to make a new one so the sub went without. How could a sub lose a ventilation elbow?
Thank you! That was a really good video. I've always wondered about the refrigerator on a submarine, but its not like you would ever get to go in there on a tour.
Great episode, I had no idea COD was so luxurious. Was there ever anything where the navy "over reached" IE tried something and it just didn't really work for the crew?
I know it's "the movies" but in Destination Tokyo Alan Hale Sr. is the head cook of the boat and during a depth charge episode hides in what appears to be a similar entrance to a food locker (although it's a much smaller entry). Were earlier boat classes different? Thanks Paul for the tour!
The Type VII had a small fridge in the petty officers' quarters, only a few feet by a few feet, tiny! The Type IX had a bigger one in the galley, but still small by fleet boat standards!
Ah, aluminum ice trays...takes me back to my childhood. 😎 The old subs were also known as 'pig boats'. Prior to the comforts of the fleet boats, that had a very literal meaning...
I've been listening to the channel WW2 Tales. They said that in earlier Japanese submarines. Some of the crew would come back from patrol with scurvy and malnourished. They didn't have the food storage that US subs had.
Paul-- love your tours and especially you asides and jokes. "War is hell, but it doesn't mean you can't have a cold one". One of the best lines ever! laugh out loud funny. Speaking of a cold one... we know that U.S. Navy ships are nominally dry, but did the Captain ever bring aboard beer or something stronger for the men for special occasions? sort of against regs but the brass looking the other way? can you speak to that? It's obvious the the old girl is well loved and well looked after by you and your "crew". Thank you for all you do in keeping history alive and helping people remember the sacrifice and bravery of the men and women of the World War II generation.
Dick O'Kane fell through an open hatch while doing an inspection tour on TANG, and badly injured his ankle and foot. Sadly, it was on TANGs last patrol, and consequently did not heal properly as shortly afterwards the circular run of that fateful torpedo took her down, and threw him off the bridge, after which he was captured...
That is the ice tray I remember when growing up. And by the way, I have some ocean front property in Winnemucca, Nevada. I actually do want to sell that property
As a Corpsman my only contact with Mess Duty was a week in Recrute Training. After that I did lots og Galley Health inpections, but in much larger Galleys. The Freezers and Refigerated spaces were always gone over very thoroughly. There are some real nasty bacteria and molds that can grow in them.
The "trigger tray" appears to be missing the handle that likely would have flexed the dividers to break up the ice. I recall using similar trays in my childhood.
On a Carrier, the frozen food hold were like small warehouses. I had the Honor to clean those when I was mess cooking...lol. In foul weather gear! The cleaning was tough. But the dry food holds were as big. Of course a carrier was way larger than a sub, and fed 5k crew. Was interesting to see n work.
What a fun video, thats a cramped little freezer and fridge space but I can imagine what having fresh produce and meats did for moral especially in the Pacific where you're so far away from any friendly reaupply.
Really happy to see videos showing the parts of the boat we can't see on the tour--every time I walk over the grates in Cod, I wonder about what's in those lower spaces. Nice to not have to wonder about one space anymore! I'd love to see more "hidden Cod" videos!
Nice presentation! When I was mess cooking (1960) we had to periodically defrost the freezer..This involved pulling all the frozen food out, putting it on the tables above, running heated refrigerant through the freezer coils t o melt the accumulated ice and frost, drying down the interior, reloading all the frozen food from the crew's dinette and restarting the refrigeration cycle. This was done every month to six weeks as I remember and was quite a job. In WWII I guess the relief crew had this task, but by then most of the frozen items had probably been depleted.
Another tidbit from the last war patrol, in 1945, of the USS Finback, SS230, courtesy of my dad, a quartermaster. Finback was in stormy weather for a week, and they hadn't been able to get a star sight. So they didn't know exactly where they were. When the sky cleared, Finback found herself way too close to the mouth of the Yangtze river. She was spotted, and depth charged throughly. The depth charging drove her into the mud. She freed herself, the captain said, "Knock the governors off and let's go!" So they did. Eluded the sub chasers, repaired their damage, checked in at Guam (Have to verify the sequence of events here; not sure about this). Some hidden damage to the refrigerators from the depth charging revealed itself as Finback made for Midway. The crew took rotting meat out, and went fishing. They caught a few sharks. They were already low on food, and for the last ten days they ate nothing but canned fruit and baked shark. My dad could never look canned fruit in the eye again.
@@USSCod I interviewed him and another QM from the same boat, at the same time (They were both a bit deaf and talked over each other, so it got loud). My son transcribed the interview. My grandmother saved all of Dad's letters from training and a few from Pearl Harbor after the war. She only lost one page. The transcript and the original letters are in the Wisconsin Veterans Museum archive. There's a website that has ship's logs, and I will need to look that up to get the correct sequence of events from this patrol.
As I understand it ice cream machines were not part of the original equipment, but could be added at the discretion of the captain. Is that what you have found to be true, Paul?
Some U-Boats did have a small amount of refrigerated storage. They were much smaller than the walk-in spaces of the Cod, more like two of the pantry fridges shown at the 19:30 mark of this video. Had the opportunity to tour the U-505 at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry last year and could not imagine spending any amount of time in such cramped quarters.
I had to fix equipment like that. Wish you would have shown the compressors. I laughed to see how much R-12 they carried with them. I suppose that was the refrigerant used in the AC system too.
@@JoshuaTootell Hi Josh. That's interesting. Thank you. Was the R-12 used in both the AC system as well as the refrigeration systems? And, did they keep the spare refrigerant cylinders in the freezer?
Glad to see the intro again, but I like the original longer version better,with the more dramatic music. I'm not sure why, but I think this is the most interesting video yet... 🤔🤷😂 I think part of the reason may be because it appears to be in the lower most part of the boat following the curvature of the pressure hull. Just a very interesting subject overall. I am curious about what that big valve above the dish drainer controls though. Great video! 😃👏👏👏👏
"Mess Crank". It's been a long time since I have heard that. I rode the boats back in the early 70s out of the Loch. Good memories. "Twin Screws, Four Knots" to all my shipmates of the past.
That was a cool video. Some follow up questions if i may? Were those R-12 drums leftovers from the system's working days? Did they leave the plant running after all the contents had been eaten? If so, did it have to be defrosted between patrols? Maybe ideas for another video 🤔
"If you're planning on committing a capital crime..." Well, I wasn't planning to, but now I'm worried that a stray hair of mine might somehow be accessory to one! Break out the hair clippers!
It would have been kept in the refrigerator and not the freezer and in a tiny metal cabinet marked "biologicals" ... according to blueprints. The space below the ice trays was for an ice holding box!
I'm sure they ran when submerged. If you were running silent they likely shut them down. Remember there is inherent cold in the box... like our home reefers when the power goes out.
Ever sailor worked in the galley and mess deck at one point or another in their careers. But to your point you had a cooknin the galley and two mess attendants serving food and handling dishes.
When my uncle Buck who lived in Conneaut, Ohio was on the ore freighters on the great lakes. By the time that he retired, the freighters got away from fresh meat to meat in pre-prepared aluminum serving trays that could be popped into the oven.
Hmmm. I think we stumbled upon the next pedantic topic. New Jersey may have fired off this week with clocks, Cod will see that and raise them WWII ice cube trays! Like to see if Ryan has one of those.
As always, these videos are a real treat. i spend a fair amount of time on fleet boats in my imagination, and it's great to be able to see more and more of the boat in the mind's eye. Keep 'em coming!
In that smaller refrigerated hatch in the main galley, the lowermost slot that is larger than the ice cube tray slots, maybe that was for the Penicillin storage? Easier and faster to grab it from there than going down the ladder.
