We previously posted about the Royal Navy installing Windows on submarines. We were relieved to learn that the  reference was to an a computer operating system and not panes of glass.    Then again, it appears that the late Ivar Haglund, owner of the Seattle restaurant chain, Ivar’s Seafood, expected submarine viewers when he installed underwater billboards for submarines in Puget Sound over fifty years ago.  On the other hand, some suggest that it may all be a hoax.

Is there something fishy about Ivar’s latest stunt?

There apparently were plans for seven underwater billboards.

In the past month, the company has had divers bring up three of the billboards — about 7 by 22 feet and made of stainless steel — using a map found in their founder’s immense collection of artifacts stored on the top floor of the chain’s headquarters at Pier 54.

Seattle historian Paul Dorpat also says he doesn’t believe the billboards are hoaxes.

If anyone should know about Ivar Haglund, it is Dorpat. He is writing a book about Haglund, and interviewed him a number of times. Dorpat also has been granted access to all of Haglund’s archives.

“As far as I can tell, it’s the real thing,” says Dorpat about the papers documenting Ivar’s plans for the billboards. It was Dorpat who found the documents.

Dorpat says Haglund would be very proud that more than a half-century after he — allegedly — dreamed up the underwater billboards, they were making news.

“This is the ghost of Ivar Haglund,” says Dorpat. “The greatest self-promoter in the history of Seattle. He will not die.”