June 2025

Soon after SLATER arrived in Albany, volunteers set out to get the “K” Guns/Depth Charges and their racks and roller loaders back in top display. In September 1998, repainting the "K" Guns and roller loaders, the racks that hold the reload depth charges for the "K" Guns, began. By July 1999, Dutch Hannmann, Bob Dawson, George Erwin, Dick Smith, and Earl Gillette finally completed the depth charge rack.

Fast forward to 2002 when work is beginning to replace the missing roller loader racks for the depth charge projectors and missing depth charges themselves. Roy Gunther began working drawings for the missing racks and DESA came to our rescue in a big way! A big expense we have pending is depth charges. Sam Saylor worked with Dr. Rod Speer of Naval Sea Systems Command, and the Navy agreed to surplus thirty-six inert MK9 depth charges to the SLATER. This was great because these are probably the last depth charges to be had in the world and gave enough depth charges to fill all the K gun roller loaders and the fantail racks.

In July of 2005, Don Martin spray painted all the depth charge racks, roller loaders, "K" Guns and depth charges and nearly a year later, in June 2006, while working with the industrial technology students at Colonie High School where he teaches, Barry Witte and his students began designing and fabricating the missing depth charge roller loaders.

August 2007 Barry Witte and Doug Tanner’s shipfitters continued work on the depth charges. Gene Jackey and Clark Farnsworth also got out the depth charge projector bases that Doug had fabricated five years ago and began drilling the bolt holes through the 1" thick circular plates.

2008 was a pivotal year for “K” Gun restoration. In 2008, the crew did the bulk of the work of fabricating the missing depth charge rack and the missing roller loaders for the depth charge projectors that the Greeks removed.

By June 2008, the port depth charge track was all welded up and ready for painting and a load of depth charges. The combined team of Karl Herchenroder, Gene Jackey, Chris Fedden and Bill Siebert freed up the release gear on the starboard depth charge track. Barry Witte's students at Colonie High School completed all the pieces for the last starboard "K" gun roller loader and also fabricated two of the depth charge trolleys for the roller loaders they built. Hal Hatfield's shop drilled out the bolt holes on four depth charge projector bases that were missing. Doug Tanner had cut the steel circles around 2002, and they will be welded to the deck with "K" guns mounted on them. Racks were also repainted. The following month, in July, the port depth charge rack was complete, all welded out, painted out and loaded with Mark 6 ashcan type depth charges. “Super” Dave Mardon was on that job from start to finish, fire watching and corrosealing to help get the job done. When he finished that, Dave went to work on the starboard depth charge rack. He had some help from Earl Herchenroder, Don Miller, Chris Fedden and Peter Jez. They unloaded all the depth charges, chipped the whole thing down to bare metal and corrosealed it. Kevin Sage did the final painting. The release gear is fully operational so now one can actually roll depth charges off the fantail. Karl Herchenroder, Gene Jackey and Bill Siebert had a major role in that, but Dave Mardon was hammering on the release gear with them. The starboard roller loaders for the "K" Guns were also completed. Again, Dave Mardon was fire watch as Bill Siebert fabricated the two missing "K" gun bases. Bob Bareis welded them to the deck, and with the help of Barry Witte, Chris Dennis and Gene Jackey completed fabrication of the number seven roller loader and welded down the base for number six depth charge projector on the port side. Greg Kehrer, a student at Colonie High School, delivered the last starboard side depth charge trolley needed, a semester-long project in metal fabrication for him. By December of 2008, all of the SLATER’s depth charge racks, all the "K" guns and roller loaders on the starboard side are now properly mounted

In January 2009, Stuart Scace, who owned a plastics company and offered to help SLATER out. The previous year, SLATER had a Japanese film crew aboard to film a movie. The Japanese film crew had fabricated simple exterior depth charge pistol parts for the movie. Erik Collins thought maybe if SLATER loaned the one and only depth charge pistol to Stuart he could make a casting of the exterior parts and produce 120 authentic reproductions to replace the steel plates covering the holes where the original pistols used to be for our collection of sixty MK6 and MK9 charges. Stuart was excited to do it and in addition, he fabricated, in brass, the three pieces of the original pistol we were missing. By March, Stuart showed up with the newly-fabricated pistol parts along with a depth setting wrench his machine shop had produced. The inert depth charges now look totally authentic.

Since 2009, touch ups continue on the “K” guns, with countless volunteers scaling, priming, and painting the depth charges and their racks. Thank you to all who have contributed over the years to the project!