Charles M. Stewart is a true American war hero. He led the last part of our tour of the USS Cobia. He is here in the stern torpedo room of the very submarine where he served and lived and even slept during World War II.
We got chills as he described the fateful Mother's Day when the sub sat on the bottom of the Gulf of Siam waiting out 8 hours of depth charges. The charges were so powerful they drove the sub into the muck on the bottom and resulted in even more tense moments of trying to free the sub after the attack had subsided.
He also told of the day he was loading ammunition for the deck gun when the Cobia was in battle with two ships and his crewmate was killed by machine gun fire in the only casualty to occur on the Cobia in the course of its war missions. I didn't know that although many ships were sunk by torpedoes the smaller ones were sunk using the deck gun to conserve torpedoes for the larger ships.
More stories from Charles can be found here. More information can be found at the Wisconson Maritime Museum website.
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Visitors from The Sub Report will be interested in more pictures of the USS Cobia at the links below. I took pictures of the outside of the submarine and the deck gun mentioned by Charles. These images of the inside compartments help the imagination while you think about Charles 8 hour depth charging ordeal.
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