And that's why Galvani, director of the Naval Undersea Museum, and fellow museum employees and volunteers were excited Wednesday morning to help unload and store the latest addition to the facility's considerable stores of undersea-war lore: 13 MK-14 torpedoes, all 60 years old or more and all thought at one time to no longer be in existence.

"In the 1940s and 1950s, these were the buffalo nickels of the submarine fleet," Galvani said as the crated torpedoes were unloaded one by one off a flatbed truck in the museum parking lot. "They were the principal weapons employed by U.S. submarines throughout World War II. It played a major role in defeating Japanese naval and merchant fleets, and it became the single most destructive weapon used by the U.S. Navy during the war.

"Now, these are the last 13."

That the Keyport museum has the historically invaluable relics at all is due to the persistence and vision of Wallace "Dusty" Rhodes, a civilian worker at Keyport's Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division and a museum volunteer.

"It took 11 years of dogged persistence to make this happen," Galvani said. "If it had been anybody else but Dusty heading this, I don't think it would have happened."

Rhodes came upon the torpedoes unexpectedly in 1994, during a tour of munitions stores at an Army depot in Hawthorne, Nev. The retired Navy chief torpedoman's mate immediately grasped how rare and historically significant they were and set about the bureaucratically cumbersome task of saving them.

"I thought, I hate like hell to see these go to the chopping block when there's museums that want them," said Rhodes, who was on hand for the torpedoes' arrival Wednesday.

It wasn't easy, however. First, Rhodes and others he enlisted to the cause had to convince Army officials that the weapons were worth saving from their scheduled demolition — and that it was worth finding and spending extra money to do so.

"We put it to the colonel this way: Pretend you walked into a warehouse somewhere and found 13 Sherman tanks," Rhodes said. "This is the Navy counterpart."

Another obstacle was in figuring out how to properly remove all explosive and contaminated materials from the aging MK-14s, Galvani and Rhodes said. No active-duty Navy personnel had working knowledge of the long-retired weapon, so a few years were invested in rounding up retirees who were willing and able to help.

One, Terry Pheabus, a retired senior chief torpedoman's mate who is currently a civilian worker at the Keyport base, researched and wrote the procedures for safely dissembling the MK-14s, and supervised the work.

In doing so, Rhodes, Pheabus and others figured a way to make the costly salvage process pay for itself. The warheads contained 643 pounds of explosive that could be sold to local mines for blasting, and also held several thousand pounds of phosphor bronze with moderate commercial value.

The "safing" and reassembly of the torpedoes was completed in October in Nevada, and all that remained was arranging for the delivery — which was completed three months before Rhodes' retirement date, a goal he had set all along.

"Dusty is the guy who had the interest and desire to care for these torpedoes," Galvani said. "He had all the expertise and the contacts. ... He had to reconstruct things that were common knowledge 50 years ago, but nobody knows now."

The torpedoes — the 11 MK-14s found in 1994 plus two "maverick" weapons without warheads found at Hawthorne in 2003 — will be cleaned up at the Keyport base and readied for public display. Galvani hopes that will happen within three to four months.

Only one — an MK-14 manufactured at Keyport — will be on display at the Naval Undersea Museum, said the museum's Jennifer Heinzelmann. The others will be permanently loaned to other naval heritage facilities around the world that asked for them — Galveston, Texas; Manitowoc, Wis.; Baltimore; Vermillion, Ohio; and South Brisbane, Australia, are locales that have been approved for loan so far.

It's a sure sign of the monumental historical importance of Rhodes' find, Galvani said.

"Over the years, the museum received frequent requests for the loan of a weapon," Galvani said.

But there are few places in the world where the MK-14's historic value hits home more.

"This means a lot to our World War II veterans around here," Galvani said. "And it especially means a lot to the guys in the submarine fleet."

MK-14 torpedo facts

First built: 1931

Length: 20 feet, 6 inches

Weight: 3,209 pounds

Explosive weight: 643 pounds of HBX-1 explosive

Traveling speed: 31 to 46 knots

Where built: the Naval Torpedo Station at Keyport was one of five Navy facilities to manufacture the MK-14 in the 1930s and 1940s

How many built: About 12,500

How many at Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport: 13

When they'll be ready for public exhibit: August or September

Source: Bill Galvani,Naval Undersea Museum, Keyport