A project in the works for more than two decades is finally underway. Organizers broke ground Wednesday on the USS Cincinnati Cold War Memorial Peace Pavilion, a Cold War-era memorial featuring the conning tower, or sail, from the former USS Cincinnati submarine in West Chester's Voice of America MetroPark.
"I'm just glad we were able to do it," said Joe Japp, president of the Cincinnati Submarine Memorial Association. Japp envisioned the project and has been working on it for 24 years. "This is a wonderful addition to the whole community. The USS Cincinnati — it's our namesake city submarine — we've been working on this for a long time."
The USS Cincinnati was a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine that was commissioned in 1978 and decommissioned in 1996. Cincinnati-native Nancy Keating christened the ship on February 19, 1977. Her daughter, Susie Keating Lame, was a maid of honor for that ceremony and brought the broken remains of the champagne bottle her mother used to Wednesday's groundbreaking.
"Mom practiced for weeks," Lame recounted, describing her mother breaking bottles against pillars in their basement and garage. "When Mom christened the sub, she forgot to let go of her end of the bottle that was tied to the ship and she almost went out to sea with the USS Cincinnati."
RELATED: USS Cincinnati Cold War-era memorial will set sail in Butler County
The memorial has been planned since the mid-2000s. A group headed by Navy veteran Joe Japp, with support from the late Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune, acquired the tower-like structure that sat on top of the sub from the Navy in 2013. Organizers initially hoped to build the memorial somewhere on Cincinnati's central riverfront along the Ohio River.
It's now being built near the VOA Park soccer fields along Tylersville Road near the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting. The design calls for recreating the experience of seeing a submarine in dry dock.
The memorial will be 360-feet long and include about 100 tons of material from the former submarine. Along with the conning tower, the group acquired the rudder, which is about 17-feet tall and 13-feet wide, and the back-up diesel engine, which was painted red and referred to as the "Big Red Machine" in homage to the Reds' baseball team lineup in the '70s.
Japp anticipates the memorial will be completed by summer 2025.
RELATED: Where should USS Cincinnati Cold War memorial be placed?
The Navy League plans call for an educational component to the memorial, focusing on history and STEM elements directed at children. Since the memorial and pavilion will be built next to the soccer fields, they anticipate large numbers of young visitors, especially during tournament seasons.
You can view additional renderings at SubCincy.org.
Jerry Reynolds was a Navy Machinist Mate 1st class. He served on the USS Cincinnati from 1971-1979, and was a "plank owner," meaning he was an original crew member with the ship in the shipyard as it was being finished and made seaworthy. He came from Florida for the groundbreaking.
"I'm feeling excited; I feel really good about the whole thing," he told WVXU. He thinks the site near the VOA Museum is a fitting location.
He recalled a visit to Norway where the crew were eagerly anticipating shore liberty.
"We almost didn't get to go ashore because we required so much shore-power and they didn't have a generator big enough to do it so they ordered one in," he remembers. "The captain was starting to get tired of waiting for it and was about to take the ship back out to sea and leave when somebody spotted (the generator) coming down the pier."
Reynolds says they were able to go ashore and tour Bergen, Norway. "It was beautiful."
USS Cincinnati history
Five Navy vessels have carried the name "Cincinnati." The most recent, commissioned in October 2019, is an Independence-variant littoral combat ship. As WVXU previously reported, the ship includes two LM2500 marine, gas turbine engines built at the GE Aviation (now GE Aerospace) in Evendale. "Each LM2500 engine produces over 29,500 horsepower, propelling the ship to speeds in excess of 40 knots, or 46 miles per hour," GE says.
RELATED: USS Cincinnati Arrives Home At San Diego
The other four (plus one USS Queen City) include:
- USS Cincinnati (1861) was an ironclad river gunboat commissioned in 1862 that sunk twice in battle and raised each time. It was sold in 1866.
- USS Cincinnati (C-7) was a protected cruiser in service from 1894 to 1919.
- USS Cincinnati (CL-6) was a light cruiser commissioned in 1924, on patrols in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II, and scrapped in 1946.
- USS Cincinnati (SSN-693) was a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine in service from 1978 to 1996.
- USS Queen City (Tinclad #26) commissioned in April 1863 and ultimately blown up and destroyed by Confederate forces.
(Information courtesy of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and the city of Cincinnati.)
