Friends of the Muskogee War Memorial Park

08/21/2026

08/21/2026

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08/20/2026

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From the Archives: Remembering Clarence Coggins of Poteau, OK. In August 1944, Coggins was captured by a German patrol. After his capture, rather than spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, he convinced 942 enlisted men and 17 officers from the German Army to surrender. Sadly, Coggins died January 7, 1945, in Wingen-sur-Moder, France.

08/13/2026

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The 2,000-Ton Submarine Parked in an Oklahoma Soyabean Field

It is one of the odder sights in the American heartland: a full-size World War II submarine sitting on dry land in Muskogee, Oklahoma, hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, on ground that was once farm field. USS Batfish (SS-310) got there through sheer determination. When the Balao-class boat was saved from the scrappers, a group of Oklahoma submarine veterans set out to bring her home in the early 1970s, floating the roughly 300-foot submarine up the Arkansas and Verdigris river system on a high-water cycle, then easing her into a specially dug berth on the low-lying land that became the Muskogee War Memorial Park. There she was settled for good, a genuine Pacific war submarine marooned on purpose in the middle of Oklahoma, a memorial to the state's submariners far from any sea.

She earned that place of honor. Commissioned in 1943, Batfish made seven war patrols and is best remembered for one astonishing stretch in February 1945, when she hunted down and sank three Japanese submarines in just 76 hours, a feat no other American submarine has ever matched, which brought her the Presidential Unit Citation. But the same low ground that made her berth possible has become her greatest threat. In 2019 historic Arkansas River flooding lifted her off her foundation and left her damaged and closed to visitors, and she has stayed shut since. Because the site could flood again, the plan now is to move her about two miles to higher ground at Three Forks Harbor, where a new museum is being built around her. Oklahoma lawmakers approved $4 million toward the move in 2025, and the "submarine killer" now waits for the funding and the engineering to carry her the last stretch to safety.

07/26/2026

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The Landlocked Submarine That Nearly Sailed Off in a Flood
USS Batfish (SS-310) has not taken a visitor aboard since 2019, when the Arkansas River rose far enough to lift a 2,000-ton submarine clean off her foundation at Muskogee War Memorial Park in Oklahoma. She floated for the first time in decades, and with a real chance she would drift away downriver, crews flooded her ballast tanks while the National Guard ran an extra line to hold her. When the water fell she settled beside her old berth, damaged and closed to the public, and she has stayed shut ever since. Now a flood mitigation project means she has to leave the site entirely. The plan is to move her a short distance downriver to Three Forks Harbor, either by lifting her onto a computer-controlled flatbed or by flooding her pit and floating her out between barges. Oklahoma lawmakers approved $4 million toward the move in May 2025, roughly a third of what is needed, and in July that year the museum's exhibits were packed up and shifted to a temporary home at the new site, though the submarine herself remains where the flood left her.
She is worth the trouble, because no other American submarine did what she did. A Balao-class boat commissioned in August 1943, Batfish made seven war patrols in the Philippine Sea, the Luzon Strait, and the South China Sea. Then, over 76 hours in February 1945, she hunted down and sank three Japanese submarines, a feat no other US submarine has ever matched, earning her a Presidential Unit Citation. Brought to landlocked Oklahoma as a memorial in February 1972, she drew around 50,000 visitors a year until the water came. Her curator, James Erb, has spent years insisting the rumours of scrapping are false. For now she waits in her pit, needing a move nobody has yet fully paid for

07/18/2026

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A $3.5 Million Overhaul to Buy Her Another Thirty Years

USS Silversides (SS-236) is out of the water for the first time in over fifty years. The 311-foot Gato-class submarine arrived at Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, on 14 July 2026, the nearest yard able to take a boat her size. The job is badly overdue. Submarines like her need dry docking every 15 to 20 years, and as museum executive director Veronica Campbell put it, she has gone about twice as long as she should have, with rust plainly visible on her hull. Crews will scrape away the invasive zebra and quagga mussels colonising her, inspect the structure that could never be checked while she floated, renew wasted steel, then sandblast and repaint her from the top down with protective coatings designed to last 25 to 30 years. The roughly three-month, $3.5 million project is managed by Valkor Energy Services, the same firm behind the Battleship Texas restoration, with $750,000 from the National Park Service and the rest largely from private donations. She is expected home in Muskegon by October.

The boat is worth the trouble. Commissioned on 15 December 1941, eight days after Pearl Harbor, Silversides ran 14 war patrols, sank 23 Japanese ships, destroyed 16 sea mines, and plucked two downed pilots from the sea. Her curator notes that of the roughly 250 submarines America built for that war, she sank the third most ships, and both boats ranked above her are long gone. She came home with 12 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation, later served as a training vessel in Chicago, and has been a museum in Muskegon since 1987. Her only other trip onto the lake in recent decades came in 2001, when she was towed out for the filming of the submarine movie Below.