Welland Canal (Submarine)

Submarine Ojibwa retires with atypical fanfare

11/8 - HMCS Ojibwa, the last of Canada’s Cold War-era submarines, has been resting in Hamilton Harbour since May being prepared for her final duty as a museum in the Lake Erie tow of Port Burwell.

Weather permitting, the HMCS Ojibwa will leave a Hamilton dry dock on Thursday and be towed by tugboats all the way to Port Burwell, where it will retire as a museum on the shores of Lake Erie.

During the final leg of her journey, Heddle Marine, in collaboration with Hamilton-based tug and barge company McKeil Marine and Nadro Marine Services, and heavy lift and transport company Mammoet Canada Eastern Ltd. will combine forces to undertake the engineering feat of transporting her.

"The sub is a long as a football field, is five stories high and weighs 2.8 million pounds," said Kathy McKeil, director of corporate communications for McKeil Marine Limited in a news release.

"Moving the sub through the Welland canal will require a combination of detailed planning, specialized equipment and highly-skilled operators. With water levels at a 60-year low, the trip through Lake Erie is expected to be a nail biting experience. Our team will assess weather conditions to ensure a safe 18 hour transit from Port Colborne to Port Burwell. Weather will play a critical role in her journey as the waters of Lake Erie can be treacherous with rapidly changing conditions.”

It’s a conspicuous end to a storied career spent avoiding detection while tracking Soviet nuclear subs in the Atlantic Ocean, one that once saw sailors fly a broom from the mast — a symbol of the clean sweep they made of enemy targets during naval exercises.

Three Canadian Oberon-class subs formed the backbone of NATO’s Anti-Submarine Warfare force from the 1960s until the 1990s.

“We were the quietest submarines in the world,” said retired Chief Petty Officer 1st Class Jim “Lucky” Gordon, who served as a sonar man aboard the Ojibwa for more than 20 years.

“The stealth we could provide was quieter than the Americans,” he said.

The 90-metre-long, five-story-high diesel-powered sub was built to endure underwater for months at a time, said retired Rear Admiral Dan McNeil, who has volunteered as an adviser for the museum project.

McNeil says the Oberon class submarines were specially designed as Russian nuclear submarine hunters, which, unlike their prey, had the ability to shut down completely and go silent.

“The Russian subs were quite noisy at the time,” he said.

Being a silent stalker meant the submarine didn’t have a high profile during service. Its biggest moment in the public eye came during the filming of Harrison Ford’s 2002 historical submarine film, K-19 the Widowmaker, in which it filled in for the Soviet Whiskey-class submarine S-270.

The film, based on near-catastrophic events aboard an ill-fated Russian nuclear submarine, couldn’t have been farther from the real history of the Ojibwa.

Known as the “Go boat” within the submarine ranks of the Canadian Navy, the Ojibwa had a reputation as one of the most reliable craft in the fleet, McNeil said.

Commissioned in 1965 as the first submarine built for the Canadian Navy, the Ojibwa proved itself early, submerging immediately and completing a trans-Atlantic voyage from England to Halifax without surfacing once.

It was a first for a Canadian sub, said Gordon. But the Ojibwa’s exploits didn’t end there.

“We once embarrassed the Americans by coming up under a carrier,” Gordon said of an incident during naval exercises in the Atlantic in the 1970s.

With ships set up in a protective formation around the carrier actively looking for submarines, the Ojibwa penetrated the screen and scored a direct hit.

“We didn’t have to surface to attack,” he said. “We used sonar to find the enemy and close in,” he said.

The move will cap off a three-year effort by the Elgin Military Museum in St. Thomas, Ont., to save the sub, which was once destined to be sold off for scrap metal by the navy.

“What excites submariners of that era is exposure,” said Gordon. “At the time we were unknown. The Ojibwa being up there is our chance to be seen at last.”

The Hamilton Spectator

Welland Canal Submarine

Time lapse of sub in canal.
Ojibwa attracts crowds to canal | Local | News | St. Catharines Standard