Bruce
October 18th Presentation
On the 18th of October the Abele brothers put on a presentation originally intended for a few local residents. It sort of got out of hand. Attending were 32 relatives of the crew from as far away as Texas and Arizona and the room was filled in spite of completion from a Red Sox do or die playoff game.
Models & Mosiacs
Almost everybody who has been studying the photos has recognized the importance of getting things put in prospective. Hopefully we can get some software that will help us put together a mosaic of the sub. We are planning to try PTGui and am interested whether anybody has had experience with this or other photo merge software.
In addition Andrew Eckard has put together a 52 in model of a Gato class sub which should help in understanding what has happened. See the photo below
Yutaka in Boston
Yutaka, who we all know has been critical to this entire project is planning to visit Boston January 6th thru the 9th. High on his list is to see the video of the sub.
Commander of the Sub Chasers SC 25, 26 and 27
The TV branch of the Japanese newspaper Asahi-Shinbun has located the son of the commander of the three sub chasers SC25, 26 & 27. Needless to say there are many ramifications to this very important discovery.
Bruce, Somewhere on this blog was a post (which I cannot now find) from a Historian which suggested that a retranslation of original documents would be his first step. When Yutaka is visiting this would be a fine time to do that. Face to face would be excellent, and maybe clear up a lot of the ‘bubble’ / ‘wake’ questions. There may be a lot more information in the written Japanese Charactors that we haven’t been able to appreciate.
Dear Bruce,
Just wanted to say that we thoroughly enjoyed the “family reunion” before the presentation of October 18. My grandmother, Goldie Caroline Ferguson “Surofchek” Colson, the widow of Steven Surofchek, one of the 70 crewmen on the Grunion, was so pleased with everything. Her daughter, Mary Patricia “Surofchek” Stokes, was only three years old as we have shared before, in 1942 when the Grunion was classified as “missing.” The events that you planned were so special to our family. We actually were able to meet a relative that we had never seen before. Thank you so much for all that you have done and continue to do. The Garcia family is really neat and it was a blessing to meet them as well. Let your brother John know how much we appreciate ALL that he has done to make this possible. We will be praying for your brother Brad. Let him know that we are sorry we did not have the opportunity to meet him.
Sincerely,
Teresa S. Baker
Terry Terrass comment #1 of 26 October
Ed Walston’s comment of 22 October included his analysis of damage related to GRUNION periscopes. I am not sure how this comment might affect his analysis but he is NOT correct in at least two respects.
He attributes certain damage to the “hydraulic system / rams”. Hydraulic periscope hoists were an innovation later in the war. GRUNION and other boats of her era would have had electric motor periscope hoists. Each periscope had a motor and pulleys in the overhead of the conning tower which pulled up two cables, one either side of the periscope. I am not sure about how the motors were controlled for lowering but the periscopes went down because of their own weight. Hydraulic hoists were faster and may have had other advantages as well.
Ed indicated that the force with which the periscope would have been forced down into the boat would vary with the amount of periscope extended. Not so. The force pushing the periscope into the boat would have been a function of the cross-sectional area of the periscope barrel and the ambient sea pressure regardless of how much the scope was extended.
END