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EDITED: 9/23/2024
ROBERT LINK MEMORIAL SUBMARINE ARCHIVE PROJECT


WEBMASTER NOTE - AS OF FEBRUARY 15, 2021 THE LINKS FOR THESE FILES ARE SCREWED UP. I WILL TRY TO SORT THINGS OUT, BUT IN THE MEANTIME NOTHING APPEARS TO BE WORKING THE WAY IT WAS ORIGINALLY DESIGNED, ALTHOUGH YOU SHOULD STILL BE ABLE TO VIEW ALL PHOTOS. SORRY 'BOUT THAT!

In May of 2003 a new member of USS Virginia Base, Keith Link, delivered a box of miscellaneous photos and memorabilia he had received from his WWII sub vet father, for the Base to maintain. Vice Commander Roger Warden volunteered to take custody of that box to inventory and scan the contents. He completed an initial cataloging of the materials in the collection and began digitally scanning each item.

NOTE: Keith's father, Robert Link, was the first National President of United States Submarine Veterans of World War II and he was also the first National Commander of United States Submarine Veterans, Incorporated. The USSVI "Robert Link National Commander's Award" is named in his honor.  

On August 11, 2003 Roger provided an inventory listing of 239 items to Webmaster Kenn McDermott, which Kenn then inserted into an HTML table he had created on the Base website we had running at that time. Roger scaned 71 of these items, which he forwarded to Kenn, who then designed a method that would allow thumbnail sized images to be inserted into the website table which visitors could then click on to view larger, higher resolution versions of the images.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, including Roger's relocation to North Carolina, this effort stalled and the archive 'box' bounced around for many years among several Base members without any further scanning work being accomplished. After learning about Keith's concern regarding the status of his father's memorbilia, Roger volunteered to restart this project and the "box" was shipped back to him during the week of March 20th, 2017 so he could resume his digitizing efforts of these historic submarine service related items. Kenn at that time removed the remnants of the earlier website postings related to this project.

UPDATE! Roger Warden reported to Kenn McDermott that he completed his scanning effort and they met on April 23, 2018 to transfer the Link Archives Box and a USB Flash Drive continaing all 371 image files in 50 folders totaling 636MB. Now the onus is on Kenn, who has completed a redesign of this section of the USSVB web site to accomodate the graphic image folders that Roger created.

This is a labor of love and we thank Keith Link for allowing our Base to steward and share his father's submarine archival collection - and we thank Roger Warden for starting this cataloging and scanning project to begin with, and for once again taking it up and finally completing it.

PLEASE NOTE THAT KENN WILL BE POSTING LINK ARCHIVE COLLECTION IMAGES IN GROUPS AS DEFINED IN THE "HOW TO VIEW" SECTION. THEY WILL BE UPDATED LIVE AS THIS WORK PROGRESSES, AND AN E-MAIL WILL BE SENT TO ALL MEMBERS ANNOUNCING FINAL COMPLETION (WHENEVER THAT MAY OCCUR).

P.S. Thanks to member Robert Mayfield for forwarding the great digital rendering, which is being used at the top of this page, of a submerged Gato Class diesel boat being hunted by a destroyer on the surface.
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