Uel W. Smith Interviewer: Matt Costantino Date of Interview

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Narrator: Uel W. Smith Interviewer: Matt Costantino Date of Interview: 09.14.16 Location: Growler Reunion at the Charleston Airport Hotel in North Charleston, SC Transcriber: Audio Transcription.Org Date Transcript Approved: 04.05.17 Project ID: OHP 113

Note: Text enclosed in brackets [ ] indicates information and edits that were added by the narrator after reviewing the transcript. Therefore, this information is not present in the interview’s video format.

(0:00:11 – 0:00:27) Matt Costantino: It’s September 14th. We're down here in Charleston, South Carolina. This is Matt Costantino from the Intrepid Museum, and I'm sitting here with Uel Smith who's a Growler former crew member. So, Uel, thank you for joining us. Could you introduce yourself?

(0:00:28 – 0:06:44) Uel Smith: My name is Uel Smith. I boarded the Growler . . . about November the 1st, 1958. And, Growler was passing through Norfolk, Virginia, where I was stationed on a fast attack submarine. I was a cook striker, and I was getting ready for my third-class exam, but when the Growler pulled into Norfolk, it was tied up across from my ship. And should I tell you the story about . . . ? But anyway, so one of my buddies came in down to the boat and said, "You got to see this, come look at this. This is -- you'll never believe it, come look at . . ." So I went up topside, went up through the hatch and looked over and there was the Growler, and it was the ugliest thing I ever seen, I thought, wow, what is that, and we was all laughing about it, you know, because we were used to speed and getting going, that one wasn’t going to go anyplace. So, a little later, we were talking about what was going on and the word got out that, well, they were going to the Caribbean. I’d been there before, but they were going to the Caribbean and France and Belgium. That was the rumor. That was a rumor (laughs) I found out. They came in Thursday, and it was going to leave on Saturday. Well on Friday night, I was sitting in the local bar, the Navy bar, submarine bar, where we used to, hung out, and was talking to a couple of my buddies, and one of them said, “Up there, sitting up at the bar is the squadron yeoman.” He said, "Go up there and talk to him." Because I said -- I told him that I'd like to – sure would like to go on the Growler, where they're going. So I went up and bought him a beer, and talked to him. He said, "Well, the Growler's leaving tomorrow at noon and they're looking for a seaman.” Somebody to stand lookout and work the helms and the bow and the stern planes, and

I’d done that for years, so I knew all about it, so, he said, "Well, come in at eight o'clock in the morning, to the Orion,” which is the sub tender for Squadron 6, “and Mr. Burkart, the executive officer, would talk to you and interview you." So I said, "Okay, I’ll be in at eight o'clock.” Come on in at eight o'clock, they said, "Well, he won't be in till nine, but they're leaving at noon.” And I (laughed) I hadn’t packed or anything, you know, I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I . . . nine o'clock I talked to him and he said, "Yeah, I think we can get you; you qualify, we need a seaman." So, he said, "Go back and pack because I'm sure we’re going to get you on."

(0:03:38) So eleven o'clock, I got my orders, and I had already started packing, and we didn’t have any barracks on the boat, we got all of our clothes on the boat or at the YMCA. All the single guys had to get a locker at the YMCA to put their civilian clothes. You couldn’t have civilian clothes on board. So the YMCA was just our hangout, you know, that’s where our barracks, you know, more or less, but you had to take a bus every time you wanted to go in. I went aboard, I get everything set up and went aboard and it was like two different navies, to me. I mean, because I was on a fast attack; we was ASW warfare out of Norfolk in the Chesapeake Bay. We were looking for Russian submarines out, they were always out there you know, so we had ASW group, Task Force Alpha, which had a carrier, two submarines, and seven destroyers. We were always doing maneuvers, always up and down, you know, diving, and they were looking for us, so they'd practice looking for us . . . we found some Russian submarines and just kind of hassled them a little bit, and as far as I’m . . . I didn’t know exactly what happened, but I know one time one of them went [under us.] I was sitting in the forward torpedo room and the sonar shack was right there, and the sonarman was hollering, "He's going under us, he’s going under us, he’s going under us!" He said that three times, and that’s when I was going, "Ooo, I hope he makes it." (laughs) And, so that’s just another story there, but then when I got aboard the Growler, their MO was different, where we didn’t have to do all the diving and surfacing. Our main object was shoot, fire missiles. And so that’s what we did when we got down to the Caribbean off of Roosevelt Roads. We'd fire the red birds. Had the red birds, blue birds, blue birds are the atomic, the live shots, and we didn’t mess around with them at that time. We had the red birds aboard and we'd shoot them, practice firing them off, and then, I'm sure you’ve heard this before but the jets come along, and fly them in and land them. About half of them made it . . . if that many. (laughs) But it was interesting, and you could hear them shoot off, you know, our area’s all locked up down below but whenever they fire them off you could hear it, it would shake the boat, you know, with the boosters on it, and when they took off and then the boosters fall in the water and we’d pick them up.

(0:06:45 – 0:06:52) Matt Costantino: For someone who's not familiar with the Cold War and what was going on at that time, can you describe what Growler's mission was?

(0:06:55 – 0:08:38) Uel Smith: Well, at that time, I just knew it was important, very important. I was . . . excited. And I was going to be part of something that, knew, that I was . . . I love America, I love the Navy, I love what I was doing, and I just felt so lucky. At that time I was 19. Yeah, I was 19 at that time, when I came in, when I went in the Navy I was 17, and . . . everything was an adventure, everything. Everything I did just seemed like it was an adventure because I kind of looked forward to everything that’s going to happen next. And when we got to the . . . Puerto Rico, Roosevelt Roads, beautiful, beautiful down there, it was beautiful. And I connected with the crew very well, and we had some great officers, and the tension wasn’t there that we had when we were out ASW, looking for Russian submarines . . . that was pretty hairy there a few times, you know, it was adventurous, but this was different. This was a boat that was going to go someplace that . . . they'd be looking for us, but . . . you got another question or . . . ?

(0:08:38 – 0:08:45) Matt Costantino: Did that make you scared knowing that you were out hunting submarines before and now you are being hunted?

(0:08:45 – 0:09:21) Uel Smith: Yeah, well, you know, it didn’t, I still considered it an adventure. I didn’t think about the . . . I just didn’t think about, to be afraid. There wasn’t any point that I felt that I was afraid. I don’t know of anybody, nobody ever said to me that they were afraid of anything, you know, when we had some close calls and whatever. And they were all, all the submariners, most of them all were pretty brave men. They were the best.

(0:09:22 – 0:09:30) Matt Costantino: I want to go back and talk about how you got into submarines in the first place. (Uel Smith: Oh.) When did you join the Navy? (Uel Smith: Yeah.) What inspired you to join the Navy?

(0:09:30 – 0:16:13) Uel Smith: Well, I had quit school, and I was 17 years old, and I had some buddies that I ran around with, you know, some of them went to school and some didn’t. And, some of them got together and somebody was going to join the Navy, then all of a sudden another one go with him, another one, and they had came to me and they said, "Hey, come and join the Navy with us. We're all going to go to boot camp together, Bainbridge, Maryland." I said, "That sounds like fun. I'd do that." And so, there was eleven of us from Jefferson City. And some people from Columbia, 30 miles

away, okay, Columbia was our archenemy, you know, from high school, to their high school, and we got on the train together, see. We all went to St. Louis. Then when we left St. Louis, we had to go to Bainbridge, Maryland. And we rode the train together and they had one whole car – they’re called the Missouri – Heart of Missouri Company. Okay, well, Colombia’s side, got one side of the car; we got the other side. They had these old pillows, you know these old . . . you all don’t remember but in the old days they had these old pillows, and they're hard. I don’t know what they were for, they were about so big around and about that long. And we were yelling at each other, you know, by the time we got halfway to (laughs) to Washington. We had to go to Washington D.C. to get to Bainbridge. So, we started throwing things at each other and they threw a pillow and broke a window out, right by my seat. And so, I pulled the blind down and swept the glass under, and everybody got real quiet, I mean real still, and the . . . what do they call them, the, on the train, the . . . (Matt Costantino: Conductor?) Conductor, yeah – come through and said, "Okay, I know something's going on here." He jumped all over us, we say he had us in real boot camp. He'd been there before us.

(0:11:52) But then, we got to Bainbridge, we did all the things, you know, we went through all the shots, and then we did, they rushed us through – I mean it was, we got there ten o'clock at night and they got us up at 4:30 the next morning. I was lucky. I was lucky. Things just went my way for some reason; I was blessed, I really believe [I was blessed]. They had a tryout for a drill team, the base drill team, and I made the drill team, and so I got out of having to clean the barracks, but I was out marching, you know, and every morning we get up at, had to meet at 5:30 every morning to start and march, five or 5:30. Then, I went to classification. After you're there three weeks, you go to classification. And that’s where they determine – you had your exams already, about, see how smart you were, you know, and what you’re qualified for. And I don’t think I qualified for a whole lot since I hadn’t finished school. (laughs) But I was willing, whatever, you know, and they said, "Well, what’d you like to do?" I said, "I'd like to do something adventurous." And he said, "Would you like to be on a submarine?" I said, "I can be on a submarine?” He said, “Yeah.” “Yeah, that'd be fun. I’d like that." He said, "Well, you got to take one more exam, physical, and then if you pass that, you're in." I passed everything and then when we left Bainbridge, they gave me $14 for a bus to New London. But I went home, everybody went home, and I had to go back to Missouri and I spent all my money going to Missouri. By the time I got ready to leave Missouri, my folks had no money whatsoever. And when I left there I had five dollars, on a bus, I took a bus to, and the bus had a 10-hour layover in New York City, stopped in New York City. See, I'm 17 years old. And so, so I’m sitting, I got there, when we got to New York City I had a quarter; I had 25 cents left. I had a 10-hour layover. And like I say, I’ve got this

guardian angel or something, I'm not sure, but I'm sitting there and this guy walks up, young, and he had a uniform on; he noticed mine, so he sat down, and he's going to New London, Connecticut, sub school. And he had some money. (laughs) So we went to a late night movie because this was an all-night thing and we didn’t want to sit, so we went to an all-night movie and he bought me a hotdog, and I put my quarter in on that or whatever it was. (laughs) So, I got to live another day. (laughs) I, you know, I survived another day. And we got to New London, and when we got there, my sea bag, all my clothes, everything, not everything because I had a little carry-on. I had one set of whites and I was wearing my white uniform, it was summer. I had an extra white set. When we got there, they had took my sea bag off and put something else on, we had no priority, military, if they need room, they'd pull the military off at that time, that was a shame, I mean, that really hurt to know that they did that. And my bag didn’t come for a couple weeks, so I had two uniforms, and that school didn’t start for another month, three weeks or something like that. And so they put me on duties, and one of them was cutting grass up by the main office, the submarine office at the entrance, you know, into the base. And I got my whites dirty every day, I had to wear my whites, and I had to wash them every night. Every night I had to wash and hang them out and wear the other set the next day and, you know, just keep doing that.

(0:16:13 – 0:16:18) Matt Costantino: They made you work while you’re in sub school, or just the . . . ?

(0:16:18 – 0:18:18) Uel Smith: Just at this times, yeah, at this time, not during sub school. I don’t think we even had to stand a watch. We just had to study. And I . . . I lucked out there too, sub school. I passed everything, you know, and it was fairly simple. You walk into the, at this time, I've talked to some of the other guys and they didn’t have this, but we did, where we walk in, go in at eight o'clock in the morning to class, and they had a blackboard on the port side; on the left side was a big blackboard, and in the front was another blackboard. We had to copy down everything they wrote, these guys, the instructors, a chief and a first class, and they wrote on the blackboard, and we had to copy down everything they wrote on this blackboard. We had no textbooks, nothing except picture, we’d have a picture of a submarine and compartment-wise and what's in each compartment, the pictures. Then we had to color the lines for the water, you know, green for water and red for hydraulics and that kind of stuff all through, and we did all this during all this time. But a lot of stuff, they would draw on the board, and we had to draw it off the board, like pumps, different pumps and things like that. I brought it with me, it's in there if you all want to look at it, but I don’t think anybody . . . it’s, you had to write fast. I started writing, writing it in my

notebook, but it was . . . I couldn’t read it, you know, I had to write so fast I couldn’t read it, so I started printing, so I printed the whole . . . because I could short cut some of the words I print, what I could understand. But I printed the whole book for the eight weeks we were there. It was . . .

(0:18:19 – 0:18:22) Matt Costantino: Was there specific training at sub school?

(0:18:23 – 0:23:25) Uel Smith: Well, yeah. Well, we had to go in the pressure chamber. And there was – I think there were about ten of us in there at one time, and we went in and they said, "If you can't pop your ears, if you can't adjust to the pressure, let us know if the pain gets bad," and said that, probably, it could happen. So, okay, we were fine, you know, and they start putting pressure in, and I started to feel it a little bit, and a little bit more, and I stared feeling, it started hurting, you know, my ears started hurting, and I couldn’t equalize. But I stayed in. Then this one guy raised his hand, "That’s enough, I can't take no more." So, they let him out, and I should’ve got out then but I said, no, I'm not giving up, because I was afraid that if I didn’t pass, I couldn’t finish school. So, finally, he looked at me and said, you know, after they started putting more pressure in, he looked at me and he said, because I was really, really – like sticking icepicks in my ears. He said, "You're going to get out of here because it can pop -- bust your eardrums." I said, "Okay." So I got out. After that, I thought, well, I was in trouble, you know, I was going to have trouble, but never heard any more about it, never hear any more about it. I don’t know what happened but I never heard any more about it. We had the escape tank, which was, that was fun. That was fun, you know because, I mean, you know it’s safe, they’re not going to let you do it if it wasn’t safe. And so we went from 25, 15 foot . . . we went from, I just remember 25 feet and 50 feet. That’s what I remember. And at that time, they just started the blow and go – you know what I'm talking about? (Matt Costantino: Describe it.) Okay, well, you put a life jacket on. The tower is a hundred foot tower, okay, a hundred ten feet, water or something like that, and you walk outside, and there’s a chamber at 25 feet and 50 feet and 100 feet. Well we went to start at the 25-foot chamber, and there would be about six or eight of us at one time, you would go in the chamber, and the chamber would equalize pressure. They shut the hatch, and then they put pressure into this tank. They'd let water in from (laughs) the tower, I guess, because we were equalizing pressure. Water came in, and the short guys they'd be floating around there, you know, (laughs) but I could stand up. And then they had a hatch, they opened a hatch up going into the tank. When they opened the hatch up, you got to step out and there’s a ledge, you step out on this ledge, and it’s like, you got your eyes open, you have to have your eyes open, you can't do it, because, you just have to. So, you just look out, and it’s real clear, you know, the water

is real clear. So you step out, and you look down, it’s, you see for a long ways and these divers are out there, so, there’s at least two of them waiting for you to step out. And then, so, I stepped out, and you blow your air, you start blowing your air out and they punch you in the stomach and . . . then you let go, you let go and you float up. As you're going up you keep blowing. And I, we got to the 50-foot, and when we did the 50-foot, I was so confident. You know, “Blow all your air out.” So I blew it all out. Well, I shouldn’t have blew it all out, because when I got (mimics running out of air), you know, it didn’t fill up fast enough. (laughs) So, you know (again mimics running out of air) and I didn’t panic, I didn’t panic because they were there. But I said, well, I better, so I just waved at them. They came over and took me, and they had these little bubbles alongside the tank, inside, air bubbles, you know . . . I don’t know what, I know, but I can't think of them. With that ledge, you went and stand on the ledge, and stood up and you had air. And they asked me, the diver went in there, come in there with me, and I said, "Oh, I'm all right. I just stopped blowing, and you said you got to blow all the way.” So they took me, they let me go back up, you know, going up. I said, “I'm fine.” But I went on up and they checked me off when I got there, but I knew I’d stopped before I could’ve got in trouble, but that was, you know, that was an adventure too; that was a neat, you know, they have something like that.

(0:23:25 – 0:23:30) Matt Francis: I’m going to have to pause it for two seconds. You’re doing awesome. I got to change the battery real quick.

(0:23:30 – 0:23:31) Uel Smith: Am I talking too much?

(0:23:32 – 0:23:32) Matt Francis, Matt Costantino, Jessica Williams: No.

(unrelated comments not transcribed)

(0:24:27 – 0:24:33) Matt Costantino: All right. So, we’re going to go, out of sub school, okay?

(0:24:33 – 0:24:41) Uel Smith: I went to the USS Cubera, 347, out of Norfolk. They give you another $14 dollars to go down there. (laughs)

(0:24:42 – 0:24:46) Matt Costantino: Did you have any specialized training for a specific job or . . . ?

(0:24:46 – 0:25:08) Uel Smith: No. I had none. I was just right out of boot camp, 17 years old. And, they sent me down, I was going to be a lookout and helms and, you know, then I could strike for anything, whatever, whatever, you know, I qualified for or whatever, but that was the, what I understood, so.

(0:25:08 – 0:25:14) Matt Costantino: So then when you got on Growler, then were you able to start?

(0:25:15 – 0:25:54) Uel Smith: Right. Well when I got on the Growler I had already been trained; I had already been qualified. I qualified on the Cubera, but I had to requalify on the Growler. But most of the stuff that was there, I didn’t have to go through all the strict – like sonar room or whatever, I didn’t have to go through the sonar process or the radars process and the torpedo because all that I knew, you know, they knew if I qualified that – whatever. But I had to learn about the Growler, so I did what I had to do there, and I requalified.

(0:25:55 – 0:25:56) Matt Costantino: And what was your job on the boat?

(0:26:02 – 0:27:26) Uel Smith: The reason I got on there was I was a cook on the other boat, cook striker. I was getting ready for my third class test, but I told you about – didn’t I tell you about going aboard the – I told you about going aboard the Growler, right? Yeah, okay. But, after I was on for . . . I was a seaman all the way to Hawaii. And that took six, nine months, our first nine months, whatever it took; it took us quite a while to get over there. We had problems on the Growler. The launcher, they had to rebuild it completely, and that took them quite a while and then there’s some other things that wasn’t working right. They worked on, and . . . I didn’t have anything to do with that. Most of the time, at that time, I mess cooked, and that worked out pretty well for me because I had cook training, and when we were in the barracks they put me in charge of the salad bar. They had like a 20-foot salad bar. I mean we had the best food in the world; we really did. And I had to prepare the . . . and I had another mess cook that helped me, you know, but I enjoyed that too.

(0:27:27 – 0:27:29) Matt Costantino: How long was that journey over to Hawaii?

(0:27:32 – 0:28:39) Uel Smith: How long did it take? (Matt Costantino: Yeah.) It took 44 days from Portsmouth to Hawaii. We made some stops, quite a few stops, and we stopped off in Norfolk again, and that was when I really – it made me kind of happy I got to walk off the ship . . . this is the only submarine I ever seen that you could wear your

civilian clothes off the boat. In Norfolk that’s just a no-no. And there was a destroyer tender that didn’t like submarines, you know, because, they were our targets, and they would report anybody, anything that submariners do, they’d put us on report if they see something wrong. And we just kind of “Nyeh-nyeh-nyeh,” you know, when we walked by, because we knew that we were pulling out, we were heading for Hawaii (laughs), and they were coming back, so, it made me feel good because two years I had this, these destroyer sailors that, you know the, ah, that’s minor stuff but.

(0:28:40 – 0:28:44) Matt Costantino: So when you go off of the boat, you're supposed to be in your uniform?

(0:28:45 – 0:28:45) Uel Smith: Normally.

(0:28:45 – 0:28:46) Matt Costantino: Can you wear . . .

(0:28:47 – 0:29:16) Uel Smith: Normally, yeah. Normally you are, you just . . . but we had our civilian clothes aboard because we were going to another port, and everything you had that you could, that you can, you put in your sea bag and take it with you. Now the married guys, they shipped their families over and their cars and all that stuff. I don’t know how that worked but I know they were there when we got there.

(0:29:17 – 0:29:19) Matt Costantino: Growler was still a new boat at the time right, correct?

(0:29:19 – 0:29:33) Uel Smith: Oh yeah. Yeah, brand new. I mean it was, it smelled good. You didn’t have any of the diesel – not for a while (Matt Costantino: Was there a . . . ) till our first trip (laughs) (Matt Costantino: Was there any . . . ) or patrol.

(0:29:33 – 0:29:37) Matt Costantino: . . . sense of the crew about trying to figure out a new boat, that they were trying to figure things out?

(0:29:38 – 0:31:01) Uel Smith: Yeah, it was. It was different because it stepped up, you know, everything is stepped up, modernized or, you know, more modern, whatever. Every time a new boat comes out, they got something new on them. And I know there was, it was different for me, look out. The difference was, I was on the old boats where we were . . . the GUPPY, where they had the GUPPY sail, where the sail comes up and up, and where the periscope and everything comes out up here. Well, we had a bubble out here, I mean the area where all the, it was down below, you know, where you're

close to the water. (laughs) When the weather gets too bad, you got a lot of showers, you know, but the Growler was, it was straight up, and you’re like, it took you forever to get up top. When you're going to dive, it would be tough. We used to do a lot of emergency dives because on the fast attacks, and this one here, when you dropped down, the ladder was quite a ways down, you had to be really careful. It was . . . interesting, let's put it that way. (laughs)

(0:31:03 – 0:31:12) Matt Costantino: What was your typical day like on the submarine? Get a sense for the work schedule, and the hours?

(0:31:13 – 0:33:48) Uel Smith: Yeah, yeah, it was – you know, that part, it just is hard to remember because it’s just what you did every day, you know, and it's hard to say whether it’s anything special. I went to the, at this time I was assigned to the torpedo department, okay, and so I got a bunk in the after torpedo room and I became a torpedoman, I mean, just on the job training and charge the batteries and cleaning, you know, keeping the torpedo shined (laughs) and all, and whatever had to be done, you know, there wasn’t a lot to do, because you got to be ready all the time so. But there wasn’t a lot of preparation there. They did put me in charge of the small arms, the pistols, and “Tommy guns,” Thompson machine guns, and M1s. And I shouldn’t tell this, but the chief came back, torpedoman, said, "You're in charge of the small arms." And I said, "What?" He said, "Well, you got to take care of cleaning the small arms." I said, "I can't. I don’t have no idea how to clean. I don’t know how to take one apart." I carried a .45, you know, for years, for a couple years, on lookout on the other boat. We had a clip in, but we never fired it. We fired them at sea; they’d throw a can out in the water, you know, take the wrapping off and throw it, so it’s silver, and say, “Shoot at that.” You get to shoot the pistol six times, bang-bang-bang, six times at it, and then they take the gun away from you and (laughs) and then they give you a Thompson and say, “Shoot that six times,” and bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, you know, and that was our qualification. That’s the closest I ever got to . . . but I assumed that they never planned on ever using these, and I can understand, what were we going to do, I mean, if we ever got that close to anything on the (inaudible) submarine, it’s (laughs) not one of the things we’re going to be doing. [intended to say, if we ever got that close to anything that threatened us, small weapons wouldn’t help us.]

(0:33:48 – 0:33:50) Matt Costantino: Do you remember where the weapons were kept?

(0:33:51 – 0:34:44) Uel Smith: They were kept in the . . . I believe it was around the executive officer. He's got the keys. The executive officer’s quarters, some place

around there, I didn’t know exactly. I knew then, but I don’t know now; I can't remember. I don’t know if that doesn’t, that’s not a big deal, but they’d bring them back and I’d shine them up, but I couldn’t take them apart. I would never have got them back together. I’d go, man, I don’t even know where to, what to turn or what to take off. But they . . . it didn’t make any difference, it just . . . I shouldn’t be telling this because it makes us look pretty silly, doesn’t it?

(0:34:45 – 0:34:51) Matt Costantino: No, it’s fine. What sort of tasks did you have to do in the after torpedo room?

(0:34:53 – 0:37:28) Uel Smith: Mostly we would keep the batteries charged in the torpedoes. They were batteries; they had to be in top shape at all times. I just took orders from the first class torpedoman back there, so I had no opinions, or when to do it or knowledge of when to do it because I just walked in the compartment, you know, as far as torpedoman. But what had happened, I was supposed to get out on February the seventh, my birthday, [I joined when I was 17 years and 4 months old. On my 21st birthday] I was on the Kiddie Cruise, and the Growler was going on their first patrol, northern patrol, starting March, to May, sometime in May. I wanted to go on that trip, you know, the patrol, because I was adventurous, and so I went up to the executive officer, at that time was Mr. Ekelund. Really nice guy, really smart, he was . . . very smart fellow. And I asked him, I told him I’d like to go on that patrol but I was supposed to get out in February the seventh, and this was like in December, January, probably January. I’d like to go on that patrol. And he looked at me and said, “What?” I said, “I'm supposed to get out on February seventh, I’d like to go on the patrol because this is what we train for and I would really like to go.” And he said, “Well, if you really want to, I can get you extended for four months.” And I said, “Yeah I want to do it.” So he, how he did it I don’t know, but he extended me four months, and so I got to go on the patrol, as a lookout on the bow and stern planes, and also with the torpedo department. But they didn’t need . . . we had plenty of people, you know, in that, we had good people for every position, so it worked out.

(0:37:28 – 0:37:35) Matt Costantino: How did the rest of the crew feel about – did they know that you were getting out and that you chose to go on this . . . ?

(0:37:36 – 0:38:04) Uel Smith: I don’t know. I suppose so, I don’t, nobody, we didn’t, as far as I know it wasn’t discussed or maybe they – I could tell you these guys were brave guys, they expect it, you know, I mean they were going, they volunteered, you know, so,

it’s just another thing. Things like that you don’t – you just assume that . . . their bravery and whatever, you know.

(0:38:07 – 0:38:12) Matt Costantino: What about the relationship of the crew to each other? Everyone get along pretty well?

(0:38:12 – 0:39:44) Uel Smith: Oh yeah, yeah. It was a good crew, we’re a good crew. I don’t know of any . . . we had good liberties together, had some good stories, you know, but . . . we had our own place we hung out at, the young guys, you know, in a bar, and we kind of made it our home. It wasn’t to go get drunk; it was just a gathering place to go. And the girls, the people that worked at the bar, they’d have birthday parties for our boys, and there'd be 30, 40 people there at a birthday party, you know, from the crew and friends, and they’d pay for it. But they had like seven women there and they’d bring cakes and bring food and . . . we were just lucky we found a good place to hang out and be friends with them. It wasn’t a sexual thing or anything, that I know of, any of them. By the way, one of the guys, Horseman, a third-class torpedoman, married one of the girls. And I think it lasted for quite a while; he’d stay there in Hawaii. And I'm not sure what happened to him because I got out, you know, right after, soon.

(0:39:45 – 0:39:51) Matt Costantino: Did he get married there on the base at that time or was this later that he got married?

(0:39:51 – 0:40:02) Uel Smith: He got married at that time. He got married before I left. You know, sometime – probably January of '60.

(0:40:02 – 0:40:05) Matt Costantino: Were you all invited to the wedding?

(0:40:06 – 0:40:27) Uel Smith: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was nice and they had it at the bar. (laughs) That’s why I remember it. That’s why I remember it. I know the party was at the bar. (laughs) And they were happy. They were nice, she was a really nice person, Hawaiian.

(0:40:28 – 0:40:40) Matt Costantino: We’re always curious about shore leaves. Do you have any more specific memories or shore leave incidences that happened?

(0:40:41 – 0:43:28) Uel Smith: Liberties? (Matt Costantino: Yeah.) Liberties, you want me to tell you some? One time I went in by myself, for some reason, normally I’m with, you know, a couple of my buddies, one or two of them, we’d go in town, go to Sad

Sam’s or, you know, around town, go to Waikiki, did a lot of Waikiki. And one of my friends had a TR3, a Triumph car, you know, TR3, this little – with a back seat about so wide. And we ended up, Jack Harrison and I, we ran around together, you know, and he got a date, he met a girl that worked for a dime-a-dance place, and so happens that I met one that worked there, and we weren’t in together but all – how this happened, but they knew each other because they worked together. But I met my – this girl, walking down the street, just, you know, say hey, you know, started talking to her, and I was a timid guy, I’m not aggressive, you know, with women; I appreciate them. And so, we double-dated in that TR3. (laughs) She didn’t know – she knew we was going to go on a date, okay, I called her and said we’ll pick her up, and we didn’t tell her it was a TR3, you know, how big, what kind of car it was. So we went by and picked up his girlfriend, and then I got in the back, you know, like I say, it was a seat about like that, about that big, and about that wide. And so, I was sitting in the back and I had my feet (laughs) out the car, and it was a convertible, you know. And drove up to her, and she had on a hoop dress. You know at that time this hoop dress come out like that, and she looked and she said, “No way! You didn’t tell me.” I say, “Well, I didn’t think about it.” She said, “Weeellll, okay.” So she just come over and turned around, and flopped back into the seat and we took off. And we went driving around and went to restaurants and . . . whatever we did; I don’t remember, recall that too much, but, it was just another one of my stories. Another time I was in town by myself, and went to Hotel Street where the bars are, and I went to Sad Sam’s [intended to say, and I went to a bar on Hotel St. in Honolulu], it was right there. And, maybe I was probably with some other guys and they left or something, I can’t remember, recall, except that I started talking to this destroyer sailor, and he was off of a destroyer right there in Pearl. And so, we got . . .

(0:43:28 – 0:43:32) Matt Francis: I’m going to pause you for a second, there’s, your chair’s gotten a hamster squeak suddenly.

(0:43:32 – 0:43:37) Uel Smith: Oh, really . . . (Matt Costantino: There’s a, shoe I think was against the . . .) (Matt Francis: Oh.), oh, sorry about that. I can’t hear a thing.

(0:43:37 – 0:43:40) Matt Francis: No. I’m sorry. Can we start that again, that story right there?

(0:43:41 – 0:43:42) Uel Smit: From where?

(0:43:43 – 0:43:46) Matt Costantino: You were saying there was another story when you guys were at . . .

(0:43:45 – 0:48:06) Uel Smith: Oh okay. Okay. Well, there’s another story, was when I went on liberty, by myself or with somebody, I can’t remember, but we went to – I went to [a bar on Hotel St.] Sad Sam's, and I think they left or they went to do something else. This destroyer sailor come in. He’s sitting there and I talked to him, and we got, you know, be friends, you know, friendly. And so, getting time to go back to the base, and on the walk, he was going to get on the same bus. So going back we, and we’d been drinking a little bit, and he was half tight, pretty – at least half tight. (laughs) And so we stop at a bar, and they had these big Polynesians, big guys, three to four hundred pound these guys, you know, for bouncers. So we went into one bar and had a beer and then we worked our way up to the bus stop and there was another bar, we started to go in there, and this big Polynesian said, “We’re closing. You can’t come in.” So, “We just want one more beer,” this other fellow, this destroyer sailor said, “One more beer.” And he said, “No, you can’t get in.” He said, “Aw, come on, let us in.” “No, no.” Well, I said, “Come on let’s go.” So we go down, there’s another bar, so he tries to get in there and the same thing that, and he said, and he started getting, cussing them, you know, and I was like, “Wow! You shouldn’t be doing that. Come on, let’s go.” So finally I got him away and he’s talking about how he was going back and whip that guy, you know. And I said, “You’re not going – you can’t whip him.” “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” By the time we got up to the corner where the bus was at, and they had a cut in there for a store, you know, and we were standing there. And he kept telling how he’s going to go back there, how tough he was. And I got so tired of that, I was like, good gosh. I said, and I looked at him, and I stood right in front him, and I said, and I was watching, I kept my eye on him because I wasn’t that drunk, you know, or anything, and I said, “You can’t whip him, you can’t even whip me.” And I’m watching him, you know, I’m watching his right hand. And all of a sudden, pow! He’s left-handed. (laughs) Bam, I never did see it coming. But he never really got another lick in. And so I had him (laughs) I had him down, and all of a sudden somebody grabbed me by my shoulders, and I couldn’t see him because I was on top of this guy, and he grabbed me, and pulled me up like that, and turned me around and run me over here to the HASP, the Hawaiian Armed Service Police. They had a paddy wagon back there (laughs), and they didn’t say anything, they just grabbed me, took me, and threw me in the back of the paddy wagon. (laughs) And him in right behind me. And he was still mouthing; he kept mouthing when we got back to the, when they took us to the cell, the jail. The Hawaiian Armed Service Police is all the Air Force, Navy, Marines and Army. They all work together because they’re all on the beaches and in the town, you know, so they work together and it works out really

fine, it worked really fine; they were real nice guys. So they put me in one cell, put him in another cell. He’s down there just bellyaching and crying, you know . . . I guess I must’ve hurt him. (laughs) Anyway, he’s telling them how bad I was and they come up to me and they say, “What happened?” I said, “It’s just two drunk sailors fighting on a corner. That’s all there was to it. We just had our disagreements and we started fighting and . . . that’s all.” And (laughs) he kind of laughed. And, then about two o’clock in the morning, they put us both in the same paddy wagon and took us back to our ships. (laughs) He sat over in the corner, back in the corner there, he never did say anything. But, that’s – I don’t know if you ought to put that on.

(0:48:07 – 0:48:16) Matt Costantino: No, that’s great. We’re always interested to hear how shore leave went. (Uel Smith: Yeah.) Did you have much interaction with . . .?

(0:48:16 – 0:48:17) Uel Smith: I got another one if you want to hear it.

(0:48:18 – 0:48:18) Matt Costantino: Go ahead.

(0:48:18 – 0:51:02) Uel Smith: Okay. We’re walking down the street and we’re in our whites. I can’t remember, there’s four of us, all the young guys, you know we’re young ones, and . . . we’re walking along and here this guy walks by with two women, and good-looking women. And he was, you know, nice-looking people. And all of a sudden, he yells at us . . . after they passed us. We turned around, I turned around, and looked at him and said, “What? What? What?” He come at us, come towards us and he said, “What’d you say? You can’t talk to my sister like that.” And they said, “What? We didn’t say anything.” At first, I knew we didn’t, you know, but I was wrong. But I didn’t realize it at the time. And I said, “Did any of you guys say anything?” They said, “No, we didn’t say anything.” I said, “Okay, just leave us alone.” And then he come at us, and then he kind of pushed – he pushed one of the other guys, and I guess he knew that this was the guy that said, I don’t know for sure, because he never admitted it. And when he did, I pushed him away, I said, “Leave him alone.” Then he come after me, and we started fighting right there. I mean, he was, he wasn’t real, real . . . he was kind of upset, so he come after me and I, so we start fighting and we fell. And when we did, his two sisters, they had purses, you know, and they started hitting me with their purse, bang, bang, and they were hitting me in the back and he was hitting me in the front. (laughs) And then finally, I tripped down – we tripped, fall on the sidewalk and I’m laying down there, and I remember I’ve got my head over the curb like this and he’s choking me and the girls are hitting me in the face with their purse, and these guys was standing there watching us. “Yeah, come on.” (laughs) At least the guy that got me in trouble

could’ve helped, you know, but he didn’t. And I reached out and grabbed those women, shaking, and he was choking me here and bang, bang, bang. Finally, I don’t remember exactly what happened, but this girl left, I think because when I jumped up I grabbed, something gave in here when I, anyway she backed off, and then, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know exactly what ended it, but . . . I was glad. (laughs) And I shouldn’t have been in that, I should’ve kept my mouth shut, I should’ve stayed away, but I didn’t think we’d done anything, you know, so I like to stand up for our people, our guys, and I did.

(0:51:02 – 0:51:04) Matt Costantino: You were with crew members . . . ?

(0:51:04 – 0:51:11) Uel Smith: Yeah, yeah. And I still can’t get anybody to admit that, who they were. I can’t remember many of them anymore but.

(0:51:12 – 0:51:16) Matt Costantino: Did you often hang out with the Growler crew or did you mingle with other ships?

(0:51:14 – 0:51:29) Uel Smith: Yeah, mostly, almost all, almost all. The deal with the destroyer sailor, that’s rare, that’s very rare. But, we, we had some good times.

(0:51:30 – 0:51:30) Matt Costantino: Sounds like it.

(0:51:31 – 0:51:31) Uel Smith: Yeah.

(0:51:33 – 0:51:40) Matt Costantino: So, when you went on your first patrol, you left from Hawaii and went up to Adak, (Uel Smith: Yeah.) Alaska?

(0:51:41 – 0:52:20) Uel Smith: Yeah. What I remember about that, the way I remember was we submerged early. Now later on, I think they stayed on the surface all the way up to Adak, I think, later on, but we submerged like a couple days out. We submerged so they could not, nobody ever see us. And then they said later on that they, when they pick them up on radar, then they’d dive, but I remember it seemed like we were in water almost all that 68 days we were gone. And I remember that 68 days, some people might remember it different (laughs) days, you know, because it’s been a lot of time ago, a lot of time.

(0:52:21 – 0:57:22) Matt Costantino: What did you do to pass the time?

(0:52:23 – 0:53:41) Uel Smith: I read a lot. I did a lot of reading, and we had movies. We took along 60 movies. And every night there’d be a different movie, and some of them were pretty old. Some of the better ones we’d show, they showed a couple times a day because people on watch didn’t get to see the movie so they watched, they’d show them at least twice a day in the mess hall. And that was good; that broke a lot of monotony. We didn’t have television . . . couldn’t use it, couldn’t pick anything up anyway. I don’t remember. We had a television but I don’t know if they ever turned it on. When I was on the Cubera, 1957, we got to see Elvis Presley on there. We had a black and white; well, there’s very little color, you know, at that time, black and white, and Ed Sullivan Show come on; we heard about it so we turned it on, and back then it didn’t come in very clear, you know; it had snow but, well, you could see Elvis up there strumming and it was – exciting for us at that time, you know, because he was big, he was big, he was very big.

(0:53:41 – 0:53:44) Matt Costantino: Was this while you’re in port or were you out at sea?

(0:53:44 – 0:56:30) Uel Smith: The TV is always in port. We never pick that up outside, that was, couldn’t pick up anything. We couldn’t hardly get it in port. It was never clear, always jumping whether, so nobody ever watched it. When I first went aboard, I was 17. I went aboard, and I left Missouri, took a bus into Norfolk, and I had to report on Monday morning. I got in Sunday, probably about four o’clock, and I was hungry. I was so hungry. I didn’t have any money to buy any food, you know. So whenever I got there . . . it had to be after dinner, it had to be probably about six o’clock because after they ate, when I got aboard. And they were watching a movie at that time, when I came aboard, and I reported to one of the enlisted men who’s in charge of down below, you know, on duty, duty officer, petty officer. And I reported to him, he told me, “Hot bunk. You’ll be hot bunking on this bunk right here.” You know right there in front of everything, you know, and he said, “You won’t get a bunk at least for three months. So you just sleep on this, this guy’s not in, he’s not here tonight anyway.” Because we were in port. And so, they was watching a movie, and I was hungry, so hungry, and they had a pan of fried chicken sitting there on the – they always cooked more than what they really needed for, you know, made snacks later, like fried chicken wings. And they had, Sundays, we had fried chicken almost every Sunday, with asparagus, and I never ever had asparagus before, but it’s (inaudible). Anyway, so I’m sitting there, and I’m sitting right next to the pan. And I’m, you know, I’m timid; I’m just a kid, I was so, my ego, you know. Anyway, I, my mouth said, why don’t I, I’m about to die of starvation and it’s right there. And finally somebody said, “Hey, why don’t you have some chicken?” I

said, “Well, okay.” (laughs) And I started eating that chicken, and it was the best I ever had. But that’s just another story. That was my first day on the submarine, first night. And they were all good, good people.

(0:56:32 – 0:56:44) Matt Costantino: When you were out on patrol with Growler, (Uel Smith: Yeah.) were there any close calls with being found or any . . . ?

(0:56:44 – 0:58:02) Uel Smith: No, not that I know of. We had some banging around, you know, when we was under water; we was up and down, you know, but, you know, you’re bubbling, you know, where we could, kept broaching, kept coming up, but I don’t recall that happening when we were right near our target, our area. I’m not sure what anybody’s told you about that; I’m not sure what I should tell you about that. But, I had to stand watch on the, I stood watch on the periscope whenever we were in there, our area. When we was under water at all times, we had to have somebody on the periscope at all times. And what’s really spooky about that was when you get close to the shore, you got these seagulls flying around your periscope, (laughs) and, you know, there might’ve been ten or fifteen of them out there just, you know, because they go to things like that, and you just hope that nobody’s noticing from shore, you know, that you’re out there. That could be hairy, you know, but we were lucky. Where we were far enough from a city, the city was in the area there but we – I don’t know if I should say anymore.

(0:58:02 – 0:58:04) Matt Costantino: So you were on periscope watch you said?

(0:58:04 – 0:58:04) Uel Smith: Yeah.

(0:58:05 – 0:58:08) Matt Costantino: Who is authorized to look through the periscopes?

(0:58:09 – 0:59:52) Uel Smith: Normally it’s the officers, but they can’t be there 24 hours a day. So there were . . . Lance, another guy, a fellow in here, I don’t know if you talked to him, but he was one of my reliefs, you know; I’d be on 30 minutes. And we were just talking a while ago that my prominent eye was my left. I could see a lot better, you know, out of my left eye. And, but you could switch, but I wanted to use my best eye and I was always using my best eye, and where we was watching, it was – there’s bright. When we were there, a lot of the time, in April, it was, the sun was shining, you know, and bright, and it’d be shining off of the seagulls. They’d be floating around there and sun shining on them, and we’re looking for anything like a red buoy, you know, a sonar buoy. We have those in our Navy too, you know, they drop them

when there’s a submarine in the area and they can ping and pick you up. So we watched for that and we watched for aircraft and we watched for boats, ships. And, so you’re constantly, looked in the air, looking at the sea, and looking for a buoy. And every once in a while, those seagulls, the sun would shine on them, shine red. You know, wohhh, you know, and so that’s when. But my left eye, I really believe that I almost ruined it just by keeping the, you know, constantly, and looking at, snow, the area we were at had snow and . . .

(0:59:53 – 0:59:57) Matt Costantino: Were you that close to shore, that you could see the . . .

(0:59:57 – 1:01:37) Uel Smith: I guess. (laughs) It was pretty close. Yeah it’s . . . but it was . . . adventure, another adventure, that was good. We weren’t worried too much, we knew, we all knew what we were doing, and we knew what was going to happen, possibly happen, what was going to happen if they gave us the order – that it was over. You know, that if we were going to do our job, that we were going to surface, shoot the missiles as many times as we could. We also knew that we’d never get that fourth one off. Probably wouldn’t get the third one off, before they caught us, you know. But, that's – we didn’t think it was going to happen, I would say, that’s what I . . . but we were prepared. We were all, all the guys, every one of them, I don't know of any of them . . . we just didn’t talk, well, we talked about that, you know, “Well, we probably won't make it.” But, yeah, these guys are brave, I'm telling you. And if they could do it, I just felt like I could do it. They brought me along as a, you know, their courage . . . encouraged me.

(1:01:38 – 1:01:40) Matt Costantino: Did you guys have any kind of secret clearance?

(1:01:41 – 1:01:42) Uel Smith: Yeah.

(1:01:42 – 1:01:43) Matt Costantino: That you're on this boat?

(1:01:43 – 1:02:24) Uel Smith: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think we were cleared for, I think, I can't remember exactly. When we went to submarines we were cleared for secret . . . or confidential maybe, its confidential maybe. Yeah. You ever heard of that? Okay, I think we may have been cleared for confidential and then when we went to Growler we were cleared for secret. And some of them were cleared for top secret or ultra top secret. I think I might’ve just cleared for secret. It might’ve been top secret, I don’t . . .

(1:02:24 – 1:02:26) Matt Costantino: What was the process for that to happen?

(1:02:26 – 1:02:45) Uel Smith: Well, the FBI check you out, your home life and stuff out. They would go check your school, your history, and the police and all that, you know, in your home town. That's what I understood. I had some people comment on it when I got home.

(1:02:46 – 1:02:50) Matt Costantino: I was going to say, how much did your family (inaudible) about you being in the submarine . . . ?

(1:02:52 – 1:03:28) Uel Smith: We were pretty simple people, our family’s, you know, and that's great. You know, they had no idea, you know, so much about what a submarine. I said, “We go under water. It’s no big deal.” You know and so, so I just, as far as I know, they didn’t worry about me. My mother, I'm sure did, you know, because she was my mom, you know, and, my dad, he’s a pretty tough guy, so. But my, I had a sister and brothers and they just, like me they just assumed that everything’s all right.

(1:03:31 – 1:03:43) Matt Costantino: Looking back on it, is there anything that you would tell your younger self before you’re getting into the Navy? Things you've thought about over the years, advice?

(1:03:43 – 0:04:12) Uel Smith: You know what, about that? I have no regrets. I can't think of anything better than what I did. I don't know, I just enjoyed it . . . (begins to cry) Excuse me.

(1:04:12 – 1:04:13) Matt Costantino: Take your time.

(1:04:26 – 1:08:01) Uel Smith: Hope that doesn’t make me a coward, soft hearted though I am, because I love those guys. We’re having our meeting now, you know. Sorry about that. Good memories. I miss them. (begins to cry) Excuse me. My time . . . I got to get this right because I want you to know that my captain, Priest, was probably the best man . . . could possibly be. My memories are . . . Anyway, all my captains were, I respected them very much, and Captain Priest, there was nobody better, and executive officer, Mr. Ekelund was, he became a captain later, on the Grayback, became an admiral. And every one of them was, great people, great people, I mean just so, I had so much respect for them, and all our crew did. All our crew just -- we knew we were lucky. We just had a good, everybody was . . . I enjoyed going on watch especially with some of the officers that, you know . . . I learned a lot, because we had one officer that,

Mr. Murphy, that talked. He liked to talk, and we’d be, a four-hour watch, you know, like underway, we did a lot of, you know, underway, like when we were in the Atlantic, we didn’t submerge that much. We were going from Portsmouth to the Caribbean and back and forth a few times, and yeah, he would, he didn’t pay much attention to where we were going. (laughs) He’d turn around and talk to us, and he was so smart. He graduated from Harvard, and he had a photographic memory. He remembered everything, and the sky, you know, and he had studied the stars, and so he would tell us all about the stars, and he kept us awake too also, you know, because you’re standing up there and you're looking. We did our job, you know, we were looking out, but he was telling us about these, the places and, you know, the stars and everything and different things and, it was interesting. But whenever we went north, there wasn’t much of that, you know. It was all business. Interesting time. Didn’t have to shower. (laughs) Everybody smelled alike so you couldn’t tell the difference. (laughs)

(1:08:03 – 1:08:08) Matt Costantino: I’m going to turn around . . . Jessica has any . . . thoughts or questions?

(1:08:08 – 1:08:29) Jessica Williams: Interestingly, as you’ve been talking, I've been writing down a bunch of questions to ask (inaudible) who’s following you because I – some of the things you said I want to ask other people. (Uel Smith: Oh, okay.) But the one just, teeny little detail question I had for you is, how long would you have been on the periscope watch? How long were you (inaudible) that thing at a given time?

(1:08:30 – 1:08:31) Uel Smith: Thirty minutes.

(1:08:33 – 1:08:39) Jessica Williams: It seems like you would have a short ability, the attention (inaudible) short. Did you ever see anything that was . . . ?

(1:08:39 – 1:08:49) Uel Smith: No. I never seen anything that – no, I didn’t see . . . anything except birds, birds and . . . birds, let’s just say birds. (laughs)

(1:08:52 – 1:08:57) Jessica Williams: Yes, and you sparked a lot of questions for me, but because you talked about things that I’ll ask (inaudible). (Uel Smith: Yeah.) Yeah.

(1:08:58 – 1:09:07) Matt Costantino: When you would see land, how much would you talk about with the crew, what you saw through the periscope?

(1:09:08 – 1:09:38) Uel Smith: We didn’t talk about that. Never talked about that. No, you just, didn’t talk about it . . . that I remember, maybe somebody else did. I probably shouldn’t be talking about it now, but that’s 55 years ago, you know, so, it’s in the books. I mean they wrote about our trip, you know, what we did.

(1:09:40 – 1:09:43) Jessica Williams: Your targets have already been revealed, so it . . . (laughs)

(1:09:43 – 1:10:41) Uel Smith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They know what – they knew we were there. We knew they were on our shore, and then they know we were there, and we've had – some of our boats have had, you know, personal contact (laughs) with them, with the other side. But we kind of felt there was a mutual, you don’t bother us and we won't bother you, you know. We might let you know that we know you’re there. When I was on the attack boat, we would just let them know that we know they’re there. Because we didn’t want to start anything, you know. We didn’t want to be the start, you know, (laughs) of anything. And, I'm sure our orders were not to harass them or whatever, but . . . follow them.

(1:10:44 – 1:10:48) Matt Costantino: Well, I don’t have any other questions. That was . . . (Uel Smith: Good.) . . . great.

(1:10:48 – 1:12:15) Uel Smith: Well, I'm sorry, I broke down there but it brought back some memories and some feelings I had for some of the people that have passed on, you know, that I wish were here, and I’m just . . . I’ve outlived most of them; I was younger than most of them. But I . . . the officers, we really did, and Captain Priest, I really – remember I told you about the article in our Elephant Express? Try to get his story out of there if you can, because he’s got a lot of information on how many hours we spent under water during the time he was on, he was the captain, from the time . . . when they started. He goes, on his story, what happened, how he appreciates all this and all, this is what we did all this time, and it’s really a good story. It’s one of the best I, I would like to read that at one of our meetings here, but it’s hard for me to get on here. It’s hard for me to get in front of people to talk – maybe after I've had a beer or two. (laughs)

(1:12:16 – 1:12:24) Matt Costantino: What’s one message, for guests walking through the Growler today, what would you like them to come away with?

(1:12:24 – 1:15:35) Uel Smith: Well, you know, right now it’s different, you know, it’s really different, and . . . I can remember it as new, you know, I went aboard, it was new. And I go through it now and I say, oh, man, this needs to be cleaned up, you know, shined and whatever, and – I don’t want to put this against you guys or anything, but maybe somebody could – there’s a lot of patriots around, Fisher, you know, look at him. He’s responsible for all this right? And look what he put out there. Somebody with money, or you’re a patriot, should step up and say – maybe he was an ex-submariner. There’s a lot of millionaire ex-submariners. Why don’t we all step up and say, “I’ll take care of that.” It might cost a hundred thousand to clean it up, it might cost half a million; I mean, they got it. I know I would; if I had it, I would. I’d say, let’s put the money to something that -- Because the people go through – there’s people from all over the world going through there, I mean not just Americans but all over the world going through there, and we need to show off. You know, and I was a little embarrassed, the last time I went through it, honestly. I hate to say this but I was a little embarrassed. And, I hope it gets to – I know you got a grant. Maybe they can do something inside that’s -- I know they had to move some stuff, like the radar and all that stuff, torpedo room, and they had to take my bunk out of the after torpedo room (laughs) to make steps back there. (laughs) But, I can get over that, because they -- what you did, I mean – you know how I found out about the Growler? I was reading, I think it was a Tom Clancy book, and there’s spies, you know, and they were going to meet on the Growler. Yeah. And when I read that, and I read it and I – the Growler! You know I didn’t know where it was at, I thought it was already . . . razor blades, you know. And, I heard that and I jumped up and went in to my wife and said, “Hey, the Growler’s in New York City (laughs) in the museum.” And, so then I got on the internet and I contacted people and called Bob Harmuth, and he’s the guy that’s doing all, kept it going, kept us together. He couldn’t make the meeting this time. He’s getting older and having health problems. But he loves it, he’s just, he’s another one of those guys that’s just dedicated.

(1:15:37 – 1:15:38) Matt Costantino: Yes, he definitely is.

(1:15:39 – 1:16:07) Uel Smith: Mr. Sloan, he’ll have you, he is coming on, he’s pretty sharp. I just barely remember him. But, he went through the canal and everything with us, and that was fun. It was another one of those adventure things, you know, going through it. That’s what I liked the most of it was adventure – fun, fun, fun.

(1:16:07 – 1:16:08) Matt Costantino: (to Jessica Williams) Anything else?

(1:16:08 – 1:16:16) Jessica Williams: I think we’re good. Thanks Uel, just hang for one second because we’re going to take a quick close-up of you just for future, yeah, you’re good, you’re good.

(1:16:16 – 1:16:17) Matt Costantino: You look great, it’s fine.

(unrelated conversation not transcribed)

(1:17:16 – 1:17:19) Matt Costantino: So you served at the same time as . . .

(1:17:21 – 1:17:22) Uel Smith: Mr. Sloan?

(1:17:22 – 1:17:22) Matt Costantino: Yes.

(1:17:23 – 1:18:06) Uel Smith: Yes, I did. Yeah, he was, I didn’t know him that well, you know, because, at this time – I should have, but I can’t remember him too well. There’s just too many of them. The officers that I really remember was, Captain Priest and Ekelund and Mr. Murphy and Mr. Duke. Mr. Duke, he was the partier. He was the guy, you know that . . . he was a fun guy, you know, but . . . that’s . . . most I remember, you know, were the officers. Mr. Sloan, I remember him a little bit now, since I’ve seen him, and, yeah, he’s pretty sharp.

(End of interview)