Hello and welcome to episode 218 of the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast.

My name is Seth Parrottin, historian and deputy director of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum here at Camp Shelby. And with me, as always, is my esteemed co-host, retired Navy Captain Bill Toaddy, former skipper of the Fast Tech submarine USS, Indianapolis, Commodore of Submarine, Central Harbor, and many other postings. How are you this afternoon, Bill?

Doing great and excited to get into this week's episode, Seth.

Yep. We have a special guest with us, Bill, one who's never been here before, and seeing as how you know him far better than I do, I'm going to pass the baton to you to introduce our guest.

Sounds good, Seth. Thank you. So we've had a lot of requests about submarines in general as we're airing this, or as we're recording this today, our episode on USS Barb and Gene Flucky just went live today. And submarine episodes in general seem to be very popular with our listening audience. And one of the requests we got was to cover the seven Medal of Honor recipients of the submarine force in World War II. And I could think of no better person to help us cover that than my old friend, retired Navy captain, Charles Merkel, Chuck Merkel.

Now, I think Chuck is also a Pearl Harbor sailor like I was,

but he took command of USS QS, I think maybe a year or two.

After I left command of Indianapolis, Chuck, I don't remember if that's right or not.

You can correct me in a second

year. That's about right. November of 2000s when I took command. Yeah, and I left command in

1999. So you did, you are a little younger than I am, I guess. And so Chuck is a 30-year-nated

veteran commanded Key West, as I said, which is very ironic because he grew up in Key West.

So I did not grow up in Indianapolis.

It's very unusual for a CO to get command of a ship named after the city he grew up in.

Chuck is one of those exceptions.

And in the last seven years, Chuck has been executive director of

the Pacific submarine force museum that operates the, I got that wrong, Chuck, you'll correct me a second,

that operates the USS Bof in, which is a wonderful, wonderful ship and museum that's right next to the USS, Arizona in Pearl Harbor.

So, Chuck, welcome to our podcast, and we're really excited to have you here.

And can you tell us a little bit more about the Pacific Submarine Forest Museum and the Bowfin.

Oh, sure.

Thanks Bill and Seth for this opportunity.

...