January 14, 2022

BATTLESHIP MEMORIAL PARK

Spanish Fort, AL 36527

“Battleship Memorial Park is a military history park and museum on the western shore of Mobile Bay in Mobile, Alabama. It has a collection of notable aircraft and museum ships including the South Dakota-class battleship USS Alabama and Gato-class submarine USS Drum.” Wikipedia

I’m not sure what I was expecting before going to tour the USS Alabama, but I know I got more than I had anticipated. There are three huge components to Memorial Park, the USS Alabama battleship, the USS Drum submarine, and then other military vehicles and aircraft. Each could be a separate museum.

Let’s start with the battleship. When going to a site I usually compare it to a similar site I’ve visited in the past. I have visited a couple other battleships, but the USS Alabama was the largest I’ve toured. Other battleships restrict where one can go, not so much with the Alabama. The self-guided tour allowed me to visit five or six different levels both above and below the main deck. I’ve been told before a battleship is like a mini-city on the seas, and here I got to see exactly why they say that. I mean the ship had a butcher shop, a bakery, a soda fountain, and a barber shop. I got to see the laundry, the officer’s galley, and the work shops (both metal and wood). Being 6’5” tall I worried about having to duck while below the deck, but with a few exceptions, I could usually stand tall. In fact, I’m proud to say I never hit my head on anything. If I had any complaints they would be 1) the three different tour routes were sometimes difficult to follow, and 2) the window into the navigation bridge were so cloudy you couldn’t see inside. Other than those two minor criticisms I really enjoyed looking around the ship.

Next I went to the USS Drum, a 311’ 8” long and 27’ 4’ wide submarine which was commissioned in 1941. Having never toured a submarine before this was exciting. Here again I worried about my height, but other than crawling (literally crawling) through the hatches between rooms, I was fine. To start you enter the front torpedo room and then follow a linear path through the submarine ending the in the rear torpedo room. Along the way you see the control room, the galley, then the room where sailors ate and played games to entertain themselves, the sleeping areas, and the engine rooms (there are two). It seemed like there were guages and valve control wheels everywhere. And though even I didn’t feel claustrophobic, I can’t imagine living in there for any length of time.

The rest of the park has quite a collection of fighter jets, planes, helicopters, jeeps and other military vehicles. Some of them are inside the Aircraft Pavilion and others are outside. As most people, including myself, came to see the battleship and found the submarine to be a bonus, it didn’t appear that people were spending a lot of time looking at the rest of these vehicles. I also thought the park could have have had more signage giving more history of these fine military vehicles.

My research had said to plan 1.5 hours, I ended up spending a little over 2.5 hours exploring everything. It was a great stop.

The USS Alabama

The USS Drum

Other Vehicles