Route of Submarines from Manitowoc Shipyard - Chicago, IL
Posted by: 
libbykc
N 41° 53.273 W 087° 37.077
16T E 448733 N 4637512
This small monument on the Chicago Riverwalk commemorates the place where submarines built in Wisconsin entered the inland waterways that would carry them to the Gulf of Mexico where they would depart for the war.
Waymark Code: WM11WQ6
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 12/30/2019
Views: 2
During the war, the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, built 28 submarines for the United States Navy. In order for them to get to the war, they had to travel through Chicago, entering the Chicago River from Lake Michigan at this spot. A small monument has been erected to designated the place where the submarines passed through Chicago on their way to the war.
Here’s some history I found about the route and Chicago’s involvement:
Shipyard President Charles C. West contacted the Bureau of Construction and Repair in 1939 to propose building destroyers at Manitowoc and transporting them through the Chicago River, Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, Illinois River, and Mississippi River in a floating drydock towed by the tugboat Minnesota. After evaluating the plan and surveying the shipyard, the Navy suggested building submarines instead. A contract for ten submarines was awarded on 9 September 1940. The Navy paid for lift machinery on Chicago's Western Avenue railroad bridge to clear a submarine. The 15-foot-draft submarines entered the floating drydock on the Illinois River to get through the 9-foot-deep Chain of Rocks Channel near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Submarines left the drydock at New Orleans and reinstalled periscope shears, periscopes, and radar masts which had been removed to clear bridges over the river.
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