May is National Preservation Month, and the effort to protect history extends well beyond old buildings to historic warships — including the USS Drum at Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile.
But there is another submarine museum that many locals may not know about, and it is the subject of a new documentary by filmmaker John Russell. His film focuses on the USS Batfish, whose final resting place is in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
It is an unlikely home for a historic submarine museum. Several years ago, a group of devoted former submariners floated the vessel up the Arkansas River to its permanent home. Russell, who passed the boat often while living in Oklahoma, decided to make a documentary about it.
The project highlights the broader challenge of keeping public interest alive in these pieces of naval history, even when the submarines are far from the waters where they served.