Fast Attacks and Boomers: Submarines in the Cold War, The National Museum of American History

Tucked away on the upper floor of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Fast Attacks and Boomers, curated by Barton Hacker with Paul Johnston and Margaret Vining, offers a truly special view of the secret world of undersea warfare. Although the handsome color brochure and the long time line on the introductory wall panel present a brief overview of the history of American submarines before 1945, this exhibit dwells on the cold war and the submarines that continued their deterrent patrols even after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The cold war theme becomes apparent immediately upon entering the exhibit. The visitor passes a reproduction of the sail from a modern fast-attack submarine (fig. 1), built to scale but rendered slightly smaller to fit the museum space. Its dive planes are at a down-angle and it leans forward, as though the vessel were about to submerge beneath the floor, underscoring the fact that the natural element of these very potent warships is the deep sea, and that they travel through it faster, venture deeper, and stay longer than even their inventor, John Holland, could have imagined at the turn of the last century.

Until a few years ago most of the hardware in this exhibit—which displays critical submarine technology, illustrates the duties and on-board lifestyle of the crew, and describes the capabilities of these vessels—would never have appeared in a museum. Submariners survive and prosper in the depths and in the shadows. Personal silence and technical quiet have ensured their survival for roughly one hundred years, and most of those who now go to sea in submarines would keep it that way. However, with changing technologies and new and more difficult Third World targets, this warfare community needed to make the American people, especially those on Capitol Hill, understand the submarine's role both in winning the cold war and in the current national defense equation. The exhibit thus serves two essential purposes, educational and political.

With the celebration of the centennial of the American submarine force in 2000, the resources to create this exhibit and the willingness of the retired and active submarine community to tell their story finally coincided. The general public now has a chance to view firsthand what heretofore they could only imagine through Hollywood films and Tom Clancy novels.

Passing the reproduction sail, the visitor moves across the room to a time line, replete with excellent still photographs and complemented by a historical video narrated by Walter Cronkite. This brief chronological treatment reaches back to David Bushnell's 1775 Turtle and brings the visitor up to the conclusion of World War II via Robert Fulton's Nautilus (1800) and the inventive Irish-immigrant teacher John Holland, who sold the U.S. Navy its first submarine: his Holland VI joined the American fleet in 1900 as the SS-1. (Panels throughout the exhibit as well as the available guest literature introduce the visitor to the many acronyms and cryptic names that have become second nature in the world of undersea warfare—thus, for example, SS is the naval ship designation for submarine, SSN for the nuclear attack submarines, the "fast attacks" of the exhibit's title, and SSBN for their much larger, ballistic-missile-carrying siblings, the "boomers.")

Beyond the time line, visitors move with very little transition into the cold war era of Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines and Ohio-class ballistic missile boats. The decade from 1945 through 1955, which concluded with the first nuclear submarine going to sea, witnessed an amazing series of changes, but the exhibit does not convey a vivid sense of that revolutionary decade. Critical German experiments with high-power batteries for speed, design changes that altered the hull configuration to its sleek present appearance, hydrogen peroxide propulsion, "Guppy" conversions of American...