Saluting the Silent Service: Archie Chester's Submarine News Archive
The late Archibald J.A. Chester, Jr., a long-time supporter and trustee of the Maritime Society, had a special interest in the McGuire Library. Among his donations were newspaper stories and special supplements published on the occasion of launchings at the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, where he had been employed.
A choice example is the front page of The Day for January 22, 1954 (below), after America's first "atom" submarine, USS Nautilus, entered the waters of the Thames River. She was christened by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, and after years of service was berthed at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton as a museum ship where she attracts a quarter of a million visitors annually.
The inauguration of our nuclear submarine fleet in 1954 led to many years of news about the Electric Boat Co. reported in New London's newspaper, The Day. Whether launchings, concerns over government funding, strikes by shipyard workers, or controveries involving larger-than-life figures like Admiral Hyman Rickover, "Father of the Nuclear Navy," or EB's General Manager, P. Takis Veliotis (who escaped into exile in Greece before being indicted for fraud by a grand jury), there was always plenty of news.
Before the years of retrenchment, The Day was able to publish a beautifully designed tabloid supplement for the latest nuclear sub launching, and Archie collected them all. Launchings were accompanied with great fanfare as the Silent Service grew in strength and capability during the Cold War.
Below is a view of the newspaper-sized album preserving Archie's collection of front page stories and in-depth reporting, as well as features at the dawn of the atomic age published in popular magazines such as Collier's, a once-popular rival to Life. Gene MacMullan assembled the album over a period of weeks, placing each page in a sealed mylar sleeve which allows both sides of a page to be read.
