On Fourth of July weekend, (I know that was a long time ago) Lance and I went to the lake to dive with some friends. Unfortunately and for some reason we didn't really take any pictures at the lake. Our friend did so I will have to get them from him, but on the way home, Lance and I stopped at the USS Batfish. It is a submarine in Oklahoma. How did it get here you ask? Well all the plaques and stuff inside say that it was a "gift" from the United States to the people of Oklahoma. The story that Lance and I had heard through the grapevine was that in the 70's she was decommissioned because she did have nuclear weapons. She was going to be scrapped. Instead of  letting their ship be torn apart the crew commandeered her and brought her up the Navigation Channel where she ran aground at the Port of Muskogee. I think that is when the US decided to 'gift' her to the people of Oklahoma rather than try to pull her all the way back to the gulf just to scrap her out. Anyway its a cool story. I didn't even know there was access to the ocean from Oklahoma. Shows how much I pay attention in school huh. 

I was amazed by the size of everything. I thought everything was going to be small. But this is one of the guns they shot off it.

This is the deck. They are redoing it to make it safer I guess. I never realized that submarines had wooden decks. They were selling 5 inch pieces of the original deck in the gift shop. I thought that would be kind of cool for someone who had served on the Batfish to have.

Every inch of every wall was covered in controls. It was crazy. It would take forever to figure out what everything was for. I am not kidding I mean every inch of every wall. No spare space at all!

You know in all those undersea movies where they are running and jumping through the hatches full speed. That would take some skill. The hatches between rooms were tiny! Like if I put a leg on each side and sat half in one room half in another, my head could touch the top of the hatch.

There were alot of small spaces. There was an open area down the middle or along the side of each room, but there were some places that were really tight fits kind of off the the side. And you know they had to go back into those spots cause remember how I said every inch of every wall had controls. Yep even in the tiny spaces behind huge pieces of equipment there were controls.

Here is the bunk house (room) There were 39 folding beds stacked three high. Lance is on the middle bunk and you can see that if he laid on his side, he was touching the top bunk. Hope your not claustrophobic. Plus, if you think that is tight, you should see the potty and the shower.

Here is the HUGE torpedo! I had no clue that torpedos were that huge! 

I have a picture of me standing beside the Batfish but it was so huge that we had to take three photos and then I photoshopped them together. I look like a little ant in the picture because is it so big. But because of the photoshopping I can't find a format to save it in that it will allow me to post on this blog. I will keep trying though. Anyway, that is the USS Batfish. It was a fun learning expieriance. I kind of want to go back to it with someone that actually knows something about submarines so that they could explain some about each room. It was cool. If you happen to be driving by with some free time. Check is out.