95 Years Ago:
Check out this great shot of the V-class/Barracuda-class diesel-electric submarine USS V-3 (SF-6) at the Boston Navy Yard, most likely in June/July 1926, shortly after her commissioning at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine.
Note her big 5″/51 on deck, impressive for a submarine deck gun, and the signalmen atop her fairweather. Photo courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection
The most impressive part of this shot, in my opinion, is the ships in the background. Note the historic frigate USS Constitution, at least one cruiser, and the lattice masts of at least one battleship.
For the record, V-3 would be one of the few U.S. Navy submarines to pick up a name instead of a number (most in the 1910s-20s lost theirs rather such as Warship Wednesday alumni USS Salmon, err USS D-3). She was renamed USS Bonita, 9 March 1931, and reclassified (SS-165), 1 July 1931.
An older boat taken out of mothballs in 1940 as war loomed, Bonita patrolled in the Pacific off Panama until after the U.S. entered World War II, then transitioned to patrolling the East Coast then, later, training duty out of New London and was decommissioned even before WWII ended, on 3 March 1945, sold for scrap seven months later.
However, “Old Ironsides” remains.