Chicago Submarine Memorial

A memorial modeled on a World War Two submarine watertight bulkhead grew from a challenge by World War Two submarine combat veterans to not forget Pearl Harbor and is dedicated to all U.S. Navy submariners, past, present, and future, who defend the nation. It stands here because twenty-eight submarines built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, passed this spot on their way to war after Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, traveling through the Lake Shore Drive Drawbridge and into the Chicago River en route to Lockport, Illinois, where they were placed on barges for transport down the Mississippi River to New Orleans before going to war in the Pacific. The west side bears the Submariners' Dolphins insignia, signifying qualification in submarines, while the east side lists the twenty-eight Manitowoc-built submarines and marks the four lost in combat with all hands, beneath a World War Two Submarine Combat Patrol insignia awarded after a successful war patrol. A real watertight door salvaged from the USS Trout (SS-566), though made nonfunctional for safety, allows visitors to step through the bulkhead, and teak bench seating shaped like submarine superstructures, complete with limber holes, evokes the boats of that era while framing a view of the Lake Shore Drive Bridge. The circular base is thirty-three feet wide to represent the approximate outer hull diameter of Gato and Balao class submarines built during the war, and one bench bears Admiral Chester Nimitz's words on Pearl Harbor: "We shall never forget that it was our submarines that held the lines against the enemy while our fleets replaced losses and repaired wounds."

Chicago, Illinois · United States