00:01 - A church displays the second largest collection

00:05 - of religious relics in the world.

00:08 - A wounded Pennsylvania soldier completes

00:11 - an important task that earns him the Medal of Honor,

00:17 - and an authentic World War Two submarine

00:21 - provides an unlikely place for a popular diversion.

00:27 - Pennsylvania's neighborhood

00:29 - visits Pittsburgh.

00:34 - Today.

00:37 - If you go in the church, you have certain expectations

00:42 - like stained glass and altar and architecture.

00:47 - That's good for the soul.

00:49 - Saint Anthony's Chapel has all that and much more

00:54 - kind of hidden in plain sight.

00:56 - Behind the altar is an ornate box that dates back centuries

01:01 - upon close inspection.

01:03 - It turns out to be a sarcophagus.

01:06 - Look even closer then you can see, mounted on velvet behind glass

01:12 - fragments of human bone that make up the complete skeleton of Saint Demetrius.

01:19 - Second only

01:21 - to the Vatican in Rome, Saint Anthony's Chapel in Pittsburgh

01:25 - has the largest collection of religious relics in the world.

01:30 - Each relic here is put into a class.

01:33 - For instance, a piece of a saint's body, such as hair,

01:38 - bone, or teeth, is considered a first class relic.

01:43 - An object that belonged to a saint, like a piece of

01:46 - clothing, is a second class relic.

01:50 - A rosary or a prayer card falls into the third class.

01:55 - Saint Anthony's has all three.

01:58 - There are over 5000 Saint relics

02:01 - available for veneration in Saint Anthony's Chapel,

02:04 - which is the largest collection that you can see in one place

02:07 - anywhere in the world.

02:09 - And the only place that would have more relics would be the Vatican.

02:12 - So the first relics were obtained in the late 1870s.

02:15 - The pastor here at the time, Father Superette Mullingar,

02:19 - came from Belgium,

02:22 - and became the pastor here on Troy Hill where the chapel is located.

02:27 - And started getting relics from friends

02:30 - over in Europe who that were being safeguarded.

02:33 - There was a movement.

02:35 - People didn't care so much about the relic.

02:37 - They wanted the reliquary,

02:38 - the thing that holds the relic to sell for its gold value.

02:42 - The jewels in it.

02:43 - And so people were safeguarding relics in order

02:46 - that they wouldn't be taken advantage of.

02:49 - And they started sending them over to Father Bollinger in the late 1870s.

02:53 - So in 1880, he began construction on the first part

02:57 - of the chapel as a place to house these relics.

03:00 - And it was really meant to be a private chapel for him.

03:03 - He had some independent wealth and pretty much spent his entire wealth

03:07 - on the building, this chapel.

03:10 - And so from 1880 to 1883, the chapel was constructed.

03:16 - And during that time, more and more relics were being sent.

03:19 - And they were all housed

03:20 - in the first part of the chapel, which contains all of the relics.

03:24 - Saint Anthony was a saint who lived in the 13th century.

03:27 - He was a Franciscan priest.

03:29 - So a follower of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

03:32 - Not long after his death.

03:34 - In fact, and Saint Anthony lived in Padua in northern Italy.

03:38 - And became known as, sort of a miraculous saint,

03:42 - particularly for for things that are lost.

03:45 - People would go to him asking his help to find things that are lost.

03:49 - But also, he was known to be a great preacher and a great teacher of the faith.

03:54 - And just became sort of a model for Christian living.

03:57 - You go to his sanctuary in Padua today.

04:00 - You have his tomb,

04:00 - and there's always flocks of people who were there to go visit him.

04:05 - Saint Anthony was of great meaning to Father Mullingar, who built the chapel,

04:09 - which is why they named the chapel after him.

04:11 - And his most prized relic of Saint Anthony is one of Saint Anthony's molars.

04:16 - Which is probably the largest relic

04:19 - of Saint Anthony that is not in his tomb in Padua.

04:23 - And so it's on display underneath the statue of Saint

04:26 - Anthony here in the chapel.

04:28 - And a lot of people again, come to Saint Anthony

04:31 - and pray for his help, for things that are lost for

04:34 - for maybe something within them that is lost for healing, for strength.

04:38 - And so there's always, a great deal of interest around that relic here.

04:43 - We also have, every Tuesday in the chapel, prayers to Saint Anthony.

04:47 - And we have people that come throughout the day, to pray those prayers,

04:51 - asking his help, because this is his home here in Pittsburgh.

04:55 - Father, why the molar?

04:57 - How or why did that survive?

04:59 - I don't know why it was the molar.

05:02 - Saint Anthony was known to be a great preacher.

05:04 - And so I think that there's something about a piece from his mouth,

05:08 - that is on display here.

05:10 - And to venerate, to say maybe we can go out and preach in a like way.

05:15 - In the chapel, we have one of the thorns from the crown of thorns

05:18 - that Jesus wore as part of his passion and crucifixion.

05:23 - Your viewers may remember from a few years ago,

05:26 - when there was the

05:27 - fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, one of the relics

05:31 - that was safeguarded in that fire was the crown itself.

05:35 - And it doesn't have any thorns in it.

05:37 - It's just the the woven part of the crown that would have been around Jesus's head.

05:42 - The thorns from the crown are in churches throughout the world.

05:45 - And one of the relics that Father Mullingar obtained here

05:48 - was one of those thorns.

05:50 - And so it again reminds us of what

05:53 - Jesus did for his people to suffer and die for us.

05:56 - And, again, just becomes a great meditation for us,

06:00 - knowing our sufferings to, that we can turn to Jesus and seek his help.

06:05 - So we have bones of the bodies, pieces of bone from the bodies

06:09 - of each of the three wise men.

06:11 - Their names traditionally are known as Caspar, Malka, and Balthasar.

06:15 - And their remains are in the cathedral in Cologne, Germany.

06:19 - But again, like so many of the relics, little pieces of their body, they may take

06:23 - one bone and distribute it as relics in for other places in the world.

06:28 - And so we have one reliquary

06:30 - that contains small pieces of each of the three of them.

06:34 - And we know the wise men are important part of the story of the birth of Jesus,

06:38 - who came from afar to bring their gifts before him.

06:41 - And recognize him as as a king.

06:44 - And then they would go back and begin to tell others about him.

06:48 - It's an important moment in Christian history because he or Jesus,

06:51 - who was born in Bethlehem, is now being made known beyond Bethlehem.

06:55 - Tell me more about the reliquary.

06:57 - That's a new word for me, and it has to do with being a container

07:01 - that can display remembrances of a person or an event.

07:04 - Correct.

07:05 - So connected to the word relic.

07:07 - And again, a relic is just a small piece.

07:09 - It can sometimes be larger, but usually a small piece of bone or hair.

07:14 - And that's always contained

07:15 - within a little glass vial that usually has a velvet background.

07:18 - So the piece of bone stands out.

07:22 - The reliquary is something that that small piece

07:25 - can go into so that it can be displayed for people to look at.

07:28 - There are other relics in the chapel that we just have hung

07:31 - on, a velvet background on a wall, and lots of little relics.

07:35 - But the reliquary is usually a larger container made of metal.

07:39 - Sometimes it's decorated with

07:40 - glass or jewels or things just to show its prominence.

07:44 - But they're all different kinds of reliquaries in the chapel

07:47 - to display the different relics.

07:49 - This particular reliquary I contains lots of relics,

07:52 - but in the center is a splinter of the cross upon which Jesus died.

07:57 - It's within a reliquary that Father Mullingar himself had created.

08:01 - And contains another piece of Saint Anthony.

08:04 - Saint Nicholas, other well known saints.

08:07 - And and in the middle is the cross.

08:10 - When people come to visit, the chapel will bring this reliquary out

08:13 - for people to venerate so they can see up close that splinter of the cross.

08:17 - There's about 24 relics of the cross in the chapel,

08:20 - but many of them in the permanent displays are hard to see.

08:23 - And so to be able to make that available for people,

08:26 - and relics of the cross again or around the world.

08:29 - The cross itself was when, was recovered

08:32 - from the Holy Land by Saint Helen, the mother of Constantine.

08:37 - She went to Jerusalem and brought back many relics

08:40 - related to the life and the passion of Jesus.

08:44 - And so then, it began to be sent throughout the world as a way

08:48 - for people to make that connection with the cross of Christ.

08:51 - So the cross was broken up into parts and splinters finally,

08:55 - and distributed to churches around the world.

08:57 - I wonder how many is there any estimate?

08:59 - There's no estimate.

09:00 - No, there's no I we have no idea where they all are and how many there are.

09:05 - But the cross was thought to be pretty sizable.

09:08 - And, you know, one splinter can go a long way.

09:12 - So, they are certainly, probably in every corner of the world.

09:15 - You can find pieces of the cross.

09:18 - There are skeptics who say it's unlikely

09:21 - that the cross survived for 300 years before it was discovered.

09:27 - One theologian said, if you collected all the wooden fragments

09:31 - scattered all over the world that are allegedly from the cross.

09:36 - You'd have enough wood to build a large ship.

09:40 - And we we take things on faith.

09:41 - And again, why authentication is important because anyone can go

09:45 - and take a piece of wood and age it and make it look like a splinter of,

09:49 - of the cross.

09:50 - But, when we believe in faith and we have some record,

09:55 - that this is what we say it is.

09:57 - Then we can truly believe that it is.

10:00 - What has the

10:01 - church done to authenticate these relics, father?

10:04 - So every relic, in order for us to be able to displayed in

10:07 - the chapel, has to be authenticated in some way.

10:11 - So when relics are distributed, they are distributed with,

10:15 - an authentication paper.

10:16 - And that explains what the relic is.

10:19 - And then as well as a wax seal on the back of the relic

10:23 - that corresponds to that authentication, so that if for some reason

10:27 - paperwork is lost, we can look at the seal and say, okay, this is authentic.

10:31 - This is an authentic seal of someone who was distributing

10:34 - relics for the church over any number of centuries.

10:38 - And so for us to be able

10:39 - to display the relic, we have to have that authentication paper.

10:43 - And then we keep them safe,

10:46 - you know, in a fireproof safe in order that we don't lose them.

10:49 - Because, again, it helps us to say to people, these are real.

10:52 - These aren't just something that is made up, but but these are really

10:55 - and truly, the saints who walked this earth.

10:59 - Father Mullingar was known for being not only a spiritual healer,

11:03 - but his medical training made him a physical one as well.

11:08 - When his collection of religious relics needed a home.

11:12 - He spent his own money to complete Saint Anthony's

11:15 - Chapel in 1883.

11:18 - It probably couldn't happen again today, anywhere in the world.

11:22 - But it was the circumstance of his life where he was,

11:25 - the fact that he had some familial wealth,

11:29 - and had this opportunity to bring the relics here to safeguard them.

11:33 - And so now we have a place of people come to pray.

11:36 - People walk in and they are in awe of what they see.

11:40 - Because you don't expect to be able to see this anywhere.

11:43 - I love witnessing the reactions of visitors who come from all over.

11:46 - The chapel, maybe better known outside of Pittsburgh than it is in Pittsburgh.

11:50 - People are discovering their their faith, learning about relics.

11:54 - And it's wonderful to be able to see their reaction when they first walk in.

11:58 - And then as they're learning about different relics and things.

12:01 - People often ask for blessings.

12:03 - You know, they

12:04 - they're seeking healing or strength for particular ailments or illnesses.

12:07 - And, so people come with faith, trusting that,

12:10 - you know, through the intercession of the saints, God will heal them.

12:13 - Right?

12:14 - We don't believe that it's the saints that healed us.

12:16 - We believe it's God who heals us.

12:18 - But we believe we can pray to the saints, that they can ask God on our behalf,

12:22 - to affect our lives.

12:23 - And so that's why they come here.

12:25 - Some people come out of curiosity.

12:27 - They want to see. They've heard about this.

12:29 - They want to see it.

12:30 - Some people come for art and architect. Sure.

12:32 - And then when they're here,

12:33 - they start learning about the saints,

12:34 - and they just have a wonderful reaction to that.

12:36 - So we know people come for many different reasons.

12:39 - But to witness their experience here.

12:43 - To help educate in some way.

12:45 - And also just, to be here to, to pray with them and support them.

12:49 - It's a great gift to me.

12:54 - When you're

12:54 - in downtown Pittsburgh, the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall

12:58 - is one of those buildings that can make you stop in your tracks.

13:03 - Its design is based on an ancient mausoleum

13:07 - that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

13:11 - Here you can walk a timeline from the Civil War

13:14 - up to Iraq and Afghanistan.

13:17 - You can look at uniforms, medals, flags, fire arms, and even artwork.

13:23 - The whole idea here is to honor the men and women

13:25 - from all branches of military service.

13:28 - The building was built in 1910, and,

13:30 - it was originally built as a Civil War memorial.

13:33 - And the architect they hired was a gentleman by the name of Henry Horne.

13:36 - Basil.

13:36 - And, his fingerprints are all over the city of Pittsburgh.

13:39 - But I would call this one of his, you know, special projects.

13:42 - I mean, he definitely put a lot of effort into this.

13:44 - And one of the things he did that you mentioned, you know, Fifth Avenue

13:47 - and that in the view you'll get when you approach our building.

13:50 - The building was not originally supposed to face that way.

13:53 - It was supposed to face the street to the side of us here,

13:55 - which would have gone straight down the street level steps from the door,

13:59 - straight to street level. And he did not like that.

14:01 - He wanted more of a grand entrance way.

14:03 - So as the story goes, he changed the orientation

14:05 - and forced them to buy up the the other plot of land.

14:08 - That created our walkway, that, it creates that great entry way up to our front.

14:13 - Front entrance here. It's on to our building here.

14:15 - And then the building was designed

14:17 - after one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

14:19 - The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus that inspired Horncastle

14:22 - with the pyramid roof and the columns that go around the outside of our building.

14:26 - Yeah.

14:26 - So, the museum covers the Civil War to present day.

14:29 - And, the focus is highlighting

14:30 - all the men and women who have served in our military during those conflicts.

14:34 - And, it just so happens that through the years, many veterans from this area

14:38 - have donated things that they brought home from the war with them.

14:41 - And, or their families have donated those things to us.

14:44 - So we have all these artifacts, that are telling the story

14:46 - of these individuals that served during that time period.

14:49 - Give me some examples, Tim.

14:51 - I imagine you have helmets, uniforms, ammunition coming.

14:55 - Yeah, you hit on a lot of it there. The basic equipment of a soldier.

14:57 - Uniforms, you know, equipment.

15:00 - They carried weapons. Ammunition.

15:02 - But then there's also personal items, you know, diaries, letters,

15:06 - and, captured items that soldiers brought home from the enemy.

15:10 - And then there's, you know, we have paintings in our collection.

15:12 - Our collection really does run a pretty wide gamut of of

15:16 - different types of artifacts.

15:18 - One of the more

15:19 - unusual artifacts here is a life mask.

15:23 - This one of President Abraham Lincoln

15:26 - shows, physical toll of holding our nation's

15:30 - highest elected office at different times in Lincoln's life.

15:33 - He had these masks made, and it was a process

15:36 - where they would use plaster to make a mold of his face.

15:39 - And then after that would dry, you could take that mold off

15:42 - and you could use that to create a mask of the individual.

15:45 - The particular one that we have was made in February of 1865.

15:49 - So he did not know it at the time,

15:51 - but he was going to be assassinated a few months after that.

15:54 - And ours is a, not the original mask.

15:57 - It was made in 1917 from the original mold.

16:01 - But it really gives you an amazing insight of what

16:03 - Lincoln look like because it was made from this mold of his face.

16:07 - You really see what he looked like?

16:08 - Yeah, the features down to the wrinkles on his face

16:10 - and the aging that he went through during the Civil War.

16:13 - You can see that in this particular light mask.

16:15 - This mask was made only months before his assassination.

16:19 - Is it fair to say this was the last life mask made of Lincoln?

16:22 - Yes, yes.

16:23 - And the last one that. And they did have a death mask made as well.

16:25 - But this is the the last life mask.

16:30 - From the world of

16:31 - aviation come the Tuskegee Airmen who broke down racial barriers

16:37 - in the military and pioneering female pilot,

16:41 - Teresa West.

16:44 - She's very important for a couple reasons.

16:46 - First of all, she's in Pittsburgh.

16:48 - She grew up in an area here called Wilkinsburg,

16:50 - which is a little area here in Pittsburgh.

16:52 - And, she was, fascinated with flying.

16:54 - Her brother was a pilot, and, she was a little scared of it at first.

16:58 - But after, you know, going up with her brother, she really fell in love with it.

17:02 - And then when World War Two comes around, the need for, women in the military

17:06 - started to arise.

17:07 - This idea of the auxiliary units, the Women's Army corps, the waves.

17:11 - And then there was this unit called the wasps.

17:13 - The women Air Service pilots.

17:15 - And Theresa served as one of those, service pilots during the war.

17:19 - So truly, she's, you know, a pioneer for for women in the military.

17:23 - These are the first women in uniform serving in the military.

17:26 - And I think it's safe to say a pioneer for women in aviation.

17:29 - When you talk about the Army Air Corps, the Tuskegee

17:31 - Airmen are a very familiar name that you hear about them.

17:33 - That was the African American pilots,

17:36 - who flew fighter planes protecting bombers on the way to their missions.

17:39 - And there were quite a few of them from the Pittsburgh area.

17:42 - Exhibit in there has a uniform that's representative of the type

17:45 - that they would have worn.

17:46 - But we do have several, signatures of some of the local Tuskegee

17:50 - Airmen in that exhibit as well.

17:51 - When did the Tuskegee Airmen start to get their due in history?

17:57 - It took time.

17:58 - As always.

17:59 - Same with Theresa James.

18:00 - I think both, you know,

18:02 - they think that's why those two stories can kind of be similar in a way.

18:05 - Teresa James fought for years for veteran benefits

18:08 - because the female pilots did not get veteran benefits.

18:11 - Now, the Tuskegee Airmen did get their veteran benefits

18:13 - for to the point of the true recognition they deserved.

18:17 - Some of that did not come until much more recently.

18:19 - I mean, I think of the movie Red tails, which came out a few years ago,

18:22 - that certainly shed a lot of light on them.

18:24 - But, you know, it took time for sure that for them to receive the credit

18:28 - they deserved, the military's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor,

18:33 - was awarded to Pennsylvanian John Pender

18:37 - for completing a critical task before he succumbed to his injuries.

18:43 - So, John was a radio man, and,

18:45 - he was a part of the invasion on D-Day of Omaha Beach.

18:48 - And, he was responsible for getting a working radio on the beaches.

18:53 - He gets on the beach.

18:55 - But his radio is not working.

18:56 - So he has to get out of his protected position, make multiple trips,

19:00 - looking for parts, whatever he could find to get his radio working.

19:04 - He's wounded pretty severely.

19:05 - As eyewitness reports say, he's

19:07 - crawling, kind of holding his face on from some of the wounds he has.

19:11 - But he finally gets the first working radio on Omaha Beach, which, of course,

19:14 - allows you to communicate with the ships in the channel, direct,

19:17 - you know, their gunfire and

19:19 - and contribute greatly to the significance and the success of of D-Day.

19:23 - Right after he gets his radio up and running,

19:26 - he is shot and killed by a German sniper.

19:28 - So really, when I take that story and I try to tell it to people,

19:31 - I say, you can really boil it down to he gave his life for that radio.

19:35 - When he is killed in action on D-Day.

19:38 - His brother is, a prisoner of war in Germany.

19:41 - And the parents don't know that.

19:42 - The parents know that, you know,

19:44 - his brother had been shot down, but they don't know that he's still alive.

19:47 - So when they find out about John dying at D-Day, they for,

19:51 - you know, several months, believe they've lost both their sons.

19:54 - But the little silver lining there, that is how survives his time

19:57 - as a prisoner of war and, returns home.

20:01 - Some stories of valor don't

20:03 - even involve a human being.

20:06 - This one starts with a stray dog

20:09 - wandering into a Pittsburgh firehouse during the Civil War.

20:13 - Who was dog Jack and.

20:16 - And how did he get pressed into military service?

20:18 - Yeah. So he is certainly one of our more popular stories.

20:20 - And, he was a mascot for a firehouse here in Pittsburgh.

20:24 - The Niagara Fire Company and, and when the firemen decided to go to war,

20:28 - he went with them and served alongside the 102nd Pennsylvania Regiment.

20:31 - Now, this was common.

20:32 - Mascots were a thing in the Civil War.

20:34 - And it was a way to just like a mascot would be for a sports team to boost

20:37 - morale.

20:38 - You know, know sense of togetherness, all that good stuff.

20:41 - So dog Jack wasn't unique that way, but he was unique

20:44 - because he actually got captured, by the Confederates.

20:47 - And after, some months in, as a prisoner of war, the 102nd

20:52 - Pennsylvania traded a Confederate prisoner to get dog Jack back.

20:56 - So he was a part of a prisoner exchange and returned to his regiment.

21:00 - And, he was, captured a second time.

21:02 - The second time he escaped on his own and found his men on his own.

21:05 - And he was even wounded, during his time in New York.

21:07 - So, very much, you know, a big part of 102nd Pennsylvania, so much

21:12 - so that they had the beautiful painting done of him that hangs in our museum

21:15 - that has really brought his, story to life all these years later.

21:19 - It's almost hard to believe that the enemy took the trouble to capture

21:23 - dog Jack, isn't it? Yeah.

21:24 - Or maybe they.

21:25 - Maybe I'm underestimating the impact on morale when your mascot is taken away.

21:29 - Yeah.

21:30 - And I think, you know, I think he was captured probably with some of the men.

21:33 - You know, I don't think he was captured on his own.

21:35 - You said that, dog Jack was wounded in battle.

21:38 - Are there any details known to that story?

21:40 - How bad was the injury?

21:41 - What got him? Was that a mini?

21:43 - I'm not sure what the injury was.

21:45 - I do know he just spent several months in the hospital.

21:48 - When Tim meets veterans

21:50 - at the museum, he sometimes notices a tendency

21:54 - for them to deflect attention from their achievements.

21:59 - I met a gentleman by the name of Mitchell Page, who's a medal of honor recipient.

22:03 - And, was, visiting the museum.

22:06 - He was from Pittsburgh, but had moved away and

22:08 - but he had come back to, to visit the museum.

22:10 - And I remember, you know, being very excited to meet

22:13 - somebody who had received the Medal of Honor.

22:14 - And I got to speak with him for a while.

22:17 - And after I walked away, I realized

22:19 - all he did was ask me about how did I get my job here?

22:23 - What do I do here?

22:24 - What's the museum like when I'm talking to these veterans?

22:27 - You know, none of them, you know, consider themselves heroes.

22:30 - They'll tell you the real heroes or the guys that did not come home.

22:34 - So that's really the always a striking to me is how humble our veterans are.

22:38 - And, this room here, which we call our Hall of Valor, is filled

22:42 - with individuals who have done some pretty amazing things in the military.

22:45 - And I've had the opportunity to meet just a handful of them.

22:48 - And I'm always just impressed with how humble they are and, grateful.

22:53 - And it's it's really left in a print, in print on me that way.

22:58 - But we're free for veterans.

22:59 - So that's,

22:59 - we want to make sure that they get complete access to our museum

23:02 - because we're here for them, of course.

23:04 - And yes, we do have quite a few, veterans visit the museum.

23:07 - But I think the best

23:08 - and most exciting thing to see is when a veteran comes with their family.

23:12 - And then that gets them talking about their service a little bit.

23:14 - As we know, a lot of veterans don't like talking about their, their service.

23:18 - And and they might hold back sometimes.

23:21 - But, I have seen and come here, see familiar items, open up a little bit

23:25 - and maybe tell their family something they've never heard before.

23:31 - In 1945, the newly

23:34 - constructed USS Raekwon set off for Hawaii to join the Pacific Fleet

23:40 - just days before the end of World War Two.

23:43 - Well, now this submarine has a home here at the Caiman

23:47 - Science Center in Pittsburgh.

23:49 - As a very unusual tourist attraction.

23:52 - Visitors get to solve puzzles and crack the mystery

23:55 - of a B-25 bomber that crashed in a nearby river.

23:59 - What does it all mean?

24:01 - It means this submarine has an escape room on board.

24:06 - USS Reagan was commissioned

24:08 - in April of 1945, which was towards the end of World War two.

24:13 - She was literally on her way to Guam to fight when they got word

24:16 - that Japan surrendered.

24:18 - So they made a U-turn, went back to Pearl Harbor.

24:22 - The Navy then had a brand new state of the art submarine.

24:27 - So what they decided

24:28 - to do was convert her into the world's first radar picket submarine.

24:32 - Her radar pick, it goes out in front of a fleet, leads the vessel

24:35 - about a mile or two miles ahead, and it sends a radar signal out.

24:39 - It can locate any boats

24:40 - or aircraft that can pose a threat, and then it would sink down and hide.

24:44 - She served as that until the mid 50s, when,

24:47 - radar equipment had gotten small enough to go on aircraft instead of submarines.

24:52 - And then she was converted to a fleet small submarine,

24:55 - which is just a general submarine in the Navy.

24:59 - And she was in service until 1968.

25:01 - She spent a lot of her career patrolling the East Coast during the cold War,

25:06 - looking for Soviet submarines and patrolling the northern Atlantic.

25:10 - So the sub is 311ft, six inches long.

25:13 - She's 27ft wide on the outside.

25:17 - On the inside, where we are here, it's about 11 to 12ft wide.

25:22 - There's about 5.5ft of space on each side of us

25:25 - that's filled with ballast tanks

25:26 - and air tanks that fill up when the sub dives and resurfaces.

25:30 - She's about 45ft tall from the very bottom of the keel to the very top of the sail.

25:36 - There were, six torpedo tubes up forward.

25:39 - There were four torpedo tubes aft, but they removed those four

25:43 - torpedo tubes in 1946 when she became a radar picket submarine.

25:47 - And they fill that aft torpedo compartment with radar equipment.

25:50 - A radar picket submarine goes out with a fleet,

25:54 - and the submarine goes in the front and sends a radar signal out in the front

25:59 - like a big picket fence of radar, and it locates any boats or any aircraft

26:03 - and it can send the information back to the fleet

26:05 - and let them know if there's anything that's a threat ahead of them.

26:08 - And it can sit down and hide while they prepare

26:12 - to defend themselves if they need to.

26:14 - There was a lot of psychological testing that went into deciding

26:18 - if you were fit to be a submarine or during World War Two.

26:22 - One out of every five people that started the training made it through.

26:26 - That's how difficult it was.

26:28 - People always assume that claustrophobia was the first thing that they test for.

26:32 - But I've had veterans tell me no, the first thing that they did was

26:37 - put them in a room for an interview and said, okay, we'll be right back.

26:40 - And then they just left them there and they watched them

26:45 - for hours to see what they did.

26:47 - And if they were calm and if they just waited patiently,

26:50 - then they moved on to the next phase.

26:52 - Submarine crews were very close because you can't get away from each other.

26:57 - So you had to be, you know,

27:01 - very reconcilable to each other, you know, no arguments very,

27:08 - friendly, calm, levelheaded.

27:10 - Well, that was a very interesting, even a passive way to administer a test to see.

27:15 - Just leave someone alone and then observe them.

27:17 - Exactly, exactly.

27:19 - Yeah. So,

27:21 - submarine crews were also very close, because if there was an emergency

27:26 - and you were stuck in a room that you didn't usually work in,

27:30 - you had to know what to do.

27:32 - So before you could qualify to be a submarine or to what they do,

27:39 - it's called earning your dolphins is when you finally

27:41 - officially become a submarine.

27:42 - Or they would blindfold you and put you in a room

27:45 - and put your hand on something and say, what is this?

27:48 - And you had to be able to identify it.

27:50 - So every single person from the, the guys who were the cooks, who had just

27:55 - come on board to the captain, knew every single thing about the submarine.

28:00 - So it was a very unique society inside compared to a surface ship.

28:05 - What do you suppose was the Reagan's

28:07 - most distinguished achievement before she was taken out of service?

28:11 - Being the first radar pick at submarine, the radar pick it program

28:15 - really opened up a lot of technology for,

28:20 - that went on to to be used in nuclear submarines

28:23 - during the nuclear age in the 60s, when submarines really kind

28:27 - of exploded and became what we know them to be today.

28:34 - It was almost like a spy submarine.

28:37 - Soon after the Reagan was decommissioned in 1968,

28:41 - she was towed to Florida, where she was used

28:44 - for training and eventually as a tourist attraction.

28:48 - But then abandonment came for four years,

28:52 - along with an uncertain future.

28:56 - So Reagan was,

28:58 - in service to 1968, from 1968 until 1972.

29:02 - She was a training submarine down in Tampa, Florida.

29:05 - In 1972, she was officially stricken from the Navy record,

29:09 - which means she was removed from service completely.

29:12 - A group down there

29:15 - got custody of the submarine, and she became a museum,

29:19 - but after a while, they were unable to take care of her.

29:23 - Submarines take a lot of work to to keep them floating,

29:27 - to keep them safe, for the public.

29:30 - And when that happens, the Navy steps in and says, you know,

29:37 - summary

29:37 - is not being treated with respect anymore.

29:40 - You need to give it back to us.

29:43 - And usually what happens is they're taken away and they become diving

29:48 - scenarios.

29:49 - They're sunk to become diving scenarios or artificial coral reefs.

29:54 - In the late 1980s, when they were building the then Carnegie

29:59 - Science Center, somebody on our museum board heard about it and said, hey,

30:03 - we'll building a science center on a river.

30:05 - We'll take your submarine.

30:06 - So we got her, and she arrived in Pittsburgh in 1990.

30:10 - She came through the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River to the Ohio.

30:14 - And after a few decades, then along came the idea, the unorthodox idea

30:19 - of having an escape room, on the submarine.

30:22 - And who came up with that idea?

30:24 - That was my idea.

30:25 - That was I did an escape room, my first escape room.

30:29 - And the entire time, all I could think was,

30:33 - this would be perfect on the submarine.

30:37 - So it took

30:38 - it took several years before we were able to actually

30:42 - implement it.

30:45 - Why did it take so long? Several years.

30:46 - It was.

30:47 - It was a matter of getting

30:49 - the right people at the right time, with the right ideas.

30:53 - How do you reconcile the idea of an escape room with a serious wartime vessel?

30:59 - Well, we, we make sure we we delineate

31:02 - between during the day.

31:05 - We do still give tours.

31:07 - We we educate the public on the history

31:11 - and the importance and the science and the technology of the submarine.

31:14 - And then in the evenings, we wanted to have something,

31:18 - you know, a little more fun, a little more casual.

31:21 - What happens to a warship

31:23 - when it reaches the end of its usefulness?

31:26 - Some share their illustrious history

31:29 - by welcoming tourists on board.

31:32 - Some are dismantled for scrap,

31:35 - but an escape room on board

31:38 - the crew of the Raekwon could never have seen that coming.

31:43 - So the theme that we have done

31:45 - since 2023 is called

31:49 - escape.

31:49 - USS frequent Pittsburgh Legends, and it is based on the lost

31:55 - B-25 Mitchell bomber in the Monongahela River.

31:58 - It's a local legend.

32:01 - It really did happen in, I believe was 1954.

32:05 - Where is that crash site in relation to where we are right

32:07 - now, in relation to where we are right now?

32:09 - It was near homestead, so it was about

32:13 - three miles away. Pretty close. Yeah.

32:16 - Pretty close at 3 to 5 miles away.

32:20 - It really did crash.

32:21 - And supposedly it was never recovered.

32:24 - The people who were on board, a

32:27 - large aircraft crashed into a river and they couldn't find it.

32:30 - And they couldn't find it.

32:32 - So the goal of Pittsburgh

32:36 - legends is locate the coordinates of the Lost bomber.

32:39 - Our escape room is designed for ages 13 and up.

32:43 - So it's a teenage and adult experience.

32:46 - We hope to, you know, someday do a kids version of it.

32:50 - I don't want to give too much away.

32:53 - It's a lot of observation of your surroundings.

32:56 - Just like submariners would have to do.

33:00 - To pick up clues around you.

33:03 - To move on through different zones of the submarine.

33:06 - So once you solve a certain amount of puzzles, you can move on to another set.

33:10 - Now, when the visitors come here for the escape room,

33:12 - just how much of the sub did they have access to?

33:16 - The entire submarine that is normally open to the public is involved in the game.

33:20 - Yeah.

33:20 - So we have, we set it up into some different zones.

33:24 - So forward torpedo is one section with the,

33:27 - officer's country and then another one is a control room.

33:31 - And then this room that we're in now is a very important one.

33:35 - Because it's so open, we usually have a lot of activities in here.

33:38 - And you go all the way through, and if you make it to the end

33:41 - and you could figure out the coordinates from the clues that we've given you,

33:45 - you went

33:46 - despite the fact the win is as long as a football field.

33:51 - Being on board is not like relaxing on your couch at home.

33:56 - No windows.

33:57 - Not a lot of elbow room and hatches instead of doors.

34:03 - Well, just so our viewers at home know that this room is, relatively

34:06 - speaking, it's like large,

34:08 - like a gymnasium compared to some of the other spaces on this vessel.

34:11 - And I bet that surprises some of your visitors

34:14 - and some of them, find out they have muscles

34:16 - they didn't know they had in order to get through this.

34:18 - It does? Yeah.

34:19 - The crew, you needed at least 81 to run the submarine.

34:23 - A crew of 80 and a captain.

34:24 - So Raekwon had anywhere from 81 to 105 people on board the submarine at all times.

34:31 - This room that we're in would

34:33 - usually hold about 24 to 26 for meals, and then it would rotate.

34:37 - So 25 ish would come in and eat breakfast, get up and leave,

34:40 - 25 would come in and eat breakfast.

34:42 - They get up and leave, 25 would come in and eat breakfast.

34:44 - They get up and leave the first 25 or back for lunch again.

34:48 - So it was a constant rotation of people in here.

34:51 - So we are four people in here right now and it's comfortable.

34:54 - But imagine that times five.

34:57 - It occurs to me the escape room might be more fun

35:00 - if the visitors had a time limit in order to solve the puzzle.

35:03 - Is that the case in.

35:04 - It is.

35:05 - It is.

35:05 - They have 60 minutes to find the coordinates of our lost,

35:08 - B-25 Mitchell bomber.

35:09 - And they will have 60 minutes for the next iteration in the springtime.

35:14 - Did some of your visitors fail to solve the puzzles?

35:16 - I mean, did they leave disappointed?

35:18 - We have a success rate of about 75 to 80%.

35:22 - That was our goal when we initially started the the escape rooms.

35:26 - And even if you don't make it through, it's still fun.

35:28 - You still get to play, you still get to to solve puzzles and play games

35:33 - inside of the submarine, which isn't something that people get to do every day.