USS Drum (SS-228)

USS Drum (SS-228), berthed at Battleship Memorial Park along the Mobile waterfront, represents early-war American submarine design at a pivotal moment in naval history. As the first Gato-class boat to be completed and the first of the class to enter World War II combat, Drum offers an intact example of the hull form, internal layout, and systems that underpinned the U.S. Navy’s submarine offensive in the Pacific. Laid down in 1940 at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and commissioned in November 1941, she transitioned almost immediately from peacetime trials into wartime operations, including her early combat patrols from Pearl Harbor and Midway. Surviving wartime depth charging, long Pacific transits, and postwar obsolescence, she now serves as a preserved artifact instead of scrapping material—a rarity among her contemporaries and the oldest Gato-class submarine still in existence. Set opposite USS Alabama, Drum anchors the undersea dimension of the park’s narrative, allowing close study of pressure hull constraints, torpedo armament arrangements, and crew spaces that defined U.S. undersea warfare doctrine during the conflict.