Staff Reports
Step aboard the USS Torsk at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and you are met with the stubborn, unapologetic reality of American sea power — a cramped, steel-walled testament to what it took to win the greatest war the world has known. The submarine sits where generations of Americans can walk her narrow decks, hear the diesel echoes, and remember that freedom was paid for in grit and sacrifice by ordinary men pressing through extraordinary danger.
The passageways are narrow enough that you can feel how every inch of space counted; low ceilings, stacked bunks and the smell of oil and metal remind you that our sailors lived and fought in conditions modern politicians would never stomach. Visiting the Torsk is a humbling lesson: liberty is not comfortable, and the men who protected it did not expect medals for suffering through hardship.
On August 14, 1945, in the waning hours of a brutal global struggle, USS Torsk fired what has been credited as the last U.S. torpedo of World War II and sank the final Japanese warships engaged by American submarines — an exacting, somber capstone to an otherwise unrelenting campaign, coming the day before Japan announced its surrender. That hard fact should silence any who would rewrite or soften the history of what our Navy accomplished.
Built at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard late in 1944 and classed a Tench‑class submarine, Torsk earned its stripes in the Pacific by sinking multiple enemy vessels and bringing two battle stars home to its crew. Today she is preserved as a museum ship so Americans can see with their own eyes the small, claustrophobic spaces where victory was forged and understand the real cost of securing the seas.
There is a lesson for our country in every steel bulkhead and teak deck of the Torsk: men who were willing to endure hardship and face mortal danger to keep America free deserve more than platitudes. We should teach our kids this history, celebrate these veterans loudly, and demand leaders who respect and rebuild the force that keeps our nation safe instead of hollowing it out to chase political fashion.
This year’s Sail250 Maryland and Airshow Baltimore brought the Torsk and other historic vessels back into America’s sightlines, offering living-history exhibits that let families connect to the real, unvarnished story of service. If we let these ships disappear into indifference, we let the memory of sacrifice be erased; instead, we should use events like Sail250 to renew national pride and recommit to a strong Navy.
Hardworking Americans owe these sailors a debt that can never be fully repaid, but it can be honored: visit the Torsk, listen to the stories, and teach your children why those narrow corridors matter. Patriotism is not a slogan; it is a willingness to remember, to defend, and to stand tall for the freedoms others fought and bled to secure.
