Submarine slips into Key West
on voyage from Istanbul to Arkansas
BY LAURIE KARNATZ - Citizen Staff Writer - lkarnatz@keysnews.com
This story published on Mon, Jun 14, 2004

After more than 30 years, the USS Razorback is once again in American waters.

And on Sunday (13 June 2004), former crew members, the public, local dignitaries and the mayor of North Little Rock, Ark., were on hand to pay tribute to the only submarine to have won battle ribbons in both World War II and the Vietnam War. In fact, the 1,500-ton diesel-powered submarine, commissioned in 1944, is the longest serving submarine anywhere in the world.

Click for full image   Photo: MIKE HENTZ/The Citizen
The USS Razorback tied-up to the East Quay Wall in Key West , Florida June 13, 2004. The USS Razorback made a stop in Key West en route from Istanbul, Turkey, to North Little Rock, Arkansas. The retired submarine was the only sub to win battle ribbons in both Word War II and Vietnam.

"This is a true, living historical relic," North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Henry Hays told the group assembled at Truman Annex.

The sub was decommissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1970 and transferred to the Turkish navy, where it spent 30 years as the TCG Murat Reis before being decommissioned once again. Rather than scrapping the ship, a move was undertaken to bring it back to the U.S., specifically to Arkansas, where it will serve as the centerpiece of a planned museum.

But long before its new life as a museum centerpiece, residents and visitors to Key West were given the first tours of the sub on Sunday. Some of those tours were conducted by former crew members.

Moored in the former submarine pen at Truman Annex, the submarine showed signs of its age: Patches of blue and red paint peeked through the black exterior. Rust appeared to run in rivulets down the sides. But the sub, flying the American, Turkish and Arkansas flags, along with flags of the cities of Key West and North Little Rock, looked good to Gene Haley, a crew member from 1945 though 1948.

Haley wasn't yet 17 when he falsified his papers to join the U.S. Navy in 1945. He became the youngest member of the then-new submarine's crew.

Haley, of Ogunquit, Maine, took a private tour of the sub before the festivities began on Sunday.

When he went into the sub, Haley said it was "just emotional. I went by myself and wandered fore to aft. Everything looked just like it did when I left."

The exterior of the submarine, though, is completely different, Haley said. After World War II, the Navy removed deck guns from its subs, streamlined the outer hulls and replaced the conning tower with a so-called sail, he said.

He "didn't even know she was still afloat" until he ran across an article about it while Web surfing.

During World War II, Haley said the sub's territory consisted of "Australia, New Zealand, China and all the islands in the Pacific.

"We had a designated area that we patrolled," he said. "If you went out of your area, you were fair game."

According to the U.S. Navy's Centennial Web site, "the submarine force was the most effective anti-ship and anti-submarine weapon in the entire American arsenal."

The submarine fleet "carried the war to the enemy," and while it accounted for only about 2 percent of the U.S. Navy, destroyed more than 30 percent of the Japanese navy and more than 60 percent of the Japanese merchant fleet.

For Haley, the hardships of the war paled in comparison to his love of the sea. After the war — while in his first year of medical school — he was supposed to become a doctor like his father, but offered himself up as a navigation officer on a merchant ship out of New Zealand.

"I never looked back," he said. He retired after 47 years in the Merchant Marines.

Several Turkish sailors accompanied the sub on its five-week journey from Istanbul to Key West. Haley and several other former crew members plan to accompany the ship to New Orleans. Others plan to meet the sub when it arrives in North Little Rock after a trip up the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers. There, it will be the centerpiece of the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum.