For hundreds of retired sailors and naval officers around this country, Cincinnati is not a place, but a time. A time when they were young and eager and willing to take on the challenge of living on a nuclear-powered submarine, spending months beneath the waves of the north Atlantic in cramped quarters. They were Cold Warriors in search of Soviet subs in the USS Cincinnati.

A group's vision of the USS Cincinnati on the riverfront. | ZOOM |

        “It was a great old sub, the "Cincyfish,'” said Chris Becker, of Delhi Township. He walked onto the deck of the USS Cincinnati in July 1989 a 25-year-old ensign, and walked off three years later as a lieutenant. “People grew up fast there.”

        But, a year from now, there may be nothing left of the USS Cincinnati but memories.

        The submarine was decommissioned in 1995 — a victim of the post-Cold War military build-down — and now sits in a naval depot in Puget Sound, awaiting October 2002. That's when the Navy's scrapping process is to begin.

Joseph Jaap is heading the Submarine Cincinnati Museum Foundation. | ZOOM |

        But in the city the sub was named for, there are those who are determined to make sure that does not happen.

        “It would be an awful waste,” said Joseph Jaap, a Cincinnati lawyer and former Navy officer who is heading the Submarine Cincinnati Museum Foundation. The group hopes to raise the $10 million to $15 million needed — all from private sources, no government money — to restore the sub and bring it to its namesake city's riverfront as a tourist and educational attraction.

        Because of the events of Sept. 11 — the upsurge in patriotism, the renewed interest in the military, and the nightly video clips of fighters taking off from Naval vessels in the Arabian Sea — organizers are hoping that fund-raising for the USS Cincinnati will be somewhat easier.

        “People are more attuned to things military now,” Mr. Jaap said. “Maybe they are more willing to do something to honor those who served.”

        The U.S. Navy is willing to donate the sub, but the local organization would have to pay the costs of restoring her and bringing her here.

        “It would cost the Navy about $25 million to scrap her, but it would only cost us about $10 million to save her,” Mr. Jaap said.

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www.usscincinnati.org

        If the dream of Mr. Jaap and other Navy veterans in the area becomes a reality, Cincinnati would become the only city to have a decommissioned nuclear-powered submarine on permanent display.

        Most of them are still riding under the waves. In Puget Sound, there are several decommissioned subs of the USS Cincinnati's class, all named after U.S. cities.

        The USS Cincinnati — known to crewmen as “the Cincyfish” — would probably still be in action, if the end of the Cold War had not seen a scaling back of U.S. military muscle.

        “It's a good thing in one way,” said Mr. Jaap, who was an engineer in the Navy's nuclear program. “At least it means the U.S. and the Soviets didn't annihilate each other.”

Decommissioned early

               It is 360 feet long, 33 feet wide, 50 feet tall from the keel to topsail.

        The sub's keel was laid in April 1974 in the Newport News, Va., shipbuilding yard and was commissioned four years later.

        The USS Cincinnati was built to last 30 years on the seas, but was decommissioned in 1994 — halfway into its life expectancy.

        Most of the submariners who served on board the USS Cincinnati won't talk about what the sub did during its Cold War service; much of it is still classified.

        But it is common knowledge that nuclear subs of the Cincinnati's class, armed with Tomahawk missiles, spent much of their time playing an elaborate cat-and-mouse game with Soviet subs that ventured close to North American shores.

        Mr. Becker said that during his years on board, missions would last 75 to 90 days. At one time, he said, the USS Cincinnati was submerged for 60 days.

        “That's a long time under water in a small place,” said Mr. Becker, a nuclear engineer who now runs a research laboratory at the University of Michigan.

        Sailors slept in shifts in stacked-up bunks in the crew quarters, he said, breathing oxygen that was created on board from sea water.

        “We used to call it the "hot bed,'” Mr. Becker said of the bunk system. “You'd jump in and the bunk would still be warm from the last guy who slept there.”

Touches of home

        And, although the crew came from all parts of the U.S., the submarine took on a flavor of the city it represented.

        The back-up engine — the same kind of engine used in locomotives — was painted a bright red and called “The Big Red Machine,” in honor of the Cincinnati Reds.

        David Plageman, an Anderson Township resident who served on board from 1987 to 1991, said there was a “huge” celebration when the Reds won the World Series in four straight games in 1990.

        “There was a bat signed by the Big Red Machine on the mess deck, a plaque from Cincinnati City Council, all sorts of things like that,” said Mr. Plageman. “It was Cincinnati's ship.”

        Now, it might become Cincinnati's ship again.

Returning home

        If the Submarine Cincinnati Museum Foundation can find the financial backing, the plan would be to moor it on a barge on the riverfront, near the new Great American Ball Park, with a three-story museum on the Cold War and submarine warfare.

        To Mr. Jaap, the submarine's potential as a tourist attraction is obvious. But he is more interested in the USS Cincinnati as an educational tool, a part of the nation's history that students could touch and explore.

        “Whole classrooms of kids could spend the night on a sub; get a feel for what it was like; and have some appreciation of what the people on board sacrificed for their country,” Mr. Jaap said.

        The foundation, Mr. Jaap said, plans to hire a professional fund-raiser to put together a minimum of $10 million for the restoration and transportation of the submarine to Cincinnati.

        The initial goal is to raise about $800,000 to $900,000 to hire museum consultants and pay the Navy for engineering studies that would tell them what it would take to make the project work.

        The submarine's nuclear reactor core — a 30-foot section of the boat — would have to be lifted out and disposed of before the boat could come here.

        The trip to Cincinnati, Mr. Jaap said, would probably cost about $1 million.

        The USS Cincinnati would be towed from Seattle down the Pacific Coast, through the Panama Canal, and up to the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans.

        There, Mr. Jaap said, the foundation would have to secure a barge to carry the submarine up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, because neither river is deep enough for the sub to float.

        So far, the nonprofit foundation has only one corporate sponsor - Penn Station sub shops. It has a Web site, www.usscincinnati.org, that is generating interest in the project, Mr. Jaap said.

        “Once people understand how unique this would be,” Mr. Jaap said, “they'll get on board.”

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