About USS Cod
The USS Cod (SS-224) is a World War II Gato-class submarine moored along Cleveland's downtown lakefront, a National Historic Landmark that has remained in essentially unaltered 1945 configuration since her decommissioning. She is one of the most intact surviving American WWII submarines and one of only a handful on public display in the Great Lakes region.
History
Seven War Patrols
The Cod was built at the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut, and commissioned June 21, 1943. Over the next two years she conducted seven war patrols in the Pacific Theater, sinking twelve Japanese vessels totaling over 27,000 tons — a record that earned her seven battle stars.
Her most celebrated action was the July 1945 rescue of the crew of the Dutch submarine O-19, grounded on a reef in the Karimata Strait. The Cod took off the entire 56-man O-19 crew, then fired torpedoes at the stranded boat to prevent her capture. It remains the only recorded submarine-to-submarine rescue in the history of the US Navy.
Preservation
A Training Submarine, Then a Museum
After the war, the Cod served as a Naval Reserve training vessel on the Great Lakes, moored at Cleveland from 1959 until her final decommissioning in 1971. A preservation campaign led by Cleveland-area submarine veterans acquired the ship in 1976 and opened her to the public as a museum the same year.
She was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 14, 1986. Unlike most surviving WWII submarines that have been modified for easier public tours, the Cod has been preserved in her original 1945 configuration — visitors still enter and exit via the original ladder-access hatches. The experience is unusually faithful to what submarine service actually felt like.
Nearby on the Shoreline