Groton ― Retired Navy Capt. William A. Gaines, a sonar operator when the USS Nautilus made its 1958 trip to the geographic North Pole, said every crew member on board the nuclear-powered submarine con.
The USS Croaker helped win World War II, sinking 11 enemy ships. But unlike its contemporaries, immortalized by their Pacific adventures, this submarine was defined by what happened to it later. In Croaker’s biggest battles, it didn’t launch torpedoes but was a bystander to clashes over its fate as a museum ship.
Editor's note: This story was drawn mostly from the files of the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton and the archives of The Day.
On a crisp December day in 1987, a decaying submarine wa.