Apparently, the Navy has decided to take the bow off the USS Honolulu and weld it onto the San Francisco, even though the San Francisco is four years older than the Honolulu. Their reasoning behind this is that the San Francisco had just undergone a $170-million nuclear refueling, while the Honolulu has not. The estimated cost of repairing the San Francisco is currently sitting at $79-million.
That being said, you couldn't pay me enough money to get on the San Francisco after she rejoins the fleet, sometime in late 2008 or early 2009.
One of the History Channel shows was about a WWI era sub, the O-9, that was reactivated for training purposes in the early days of WWII.
At some point in its history, it was struck amidships, and repaired. Any way, it, along with two other O-class boats, was supposed to do a "deep" test dive off of Portsmouth, NH. It was last in line to go, and it didn't come back up.
I had an old neighbor that was in the Coast Guard back then, and he claimed to have been involved in the search a sub. I said the "Squalus", and he said, "no, another one".
So I guess he just wasn't telling a tale.
Then he tells me that the Squalus sank because the captain didn't give enough notice before diving the boat.
He claimed to have talked with one of the sailors from the Squalus and what really happened was that the cook opened a hatch to go out and dump the garbage. "They never found his body..."