This is the USS Squalus prior to her sinking in the Atlantic. Public domain
Most normal guys are fascinated by submarines. Had my life been just a little bit different, I might have aspired to service on a nuclear sub. I wanted to be a pilot, so I went into Army aviation.
However, had I just wanted to taste life in uniform, an enlistment as a submariner would have been an exceptionally cool way to do it. The very idea of a nuclear-powered machine that can cruise underwater indefinitely is mesmerizing. However, that’s really only if everything is going well.
Slowly dying of suffocation or hypothermia while trapped in a giant steel tube on the floor of the ocean is the stuff of nightmares. The Confederate CSS Hunley, the first military submarine to destroy a ship in combat, sank three times in its short period of service. Twenty-one men perished in those sinkings. Those practicalities are horrifying.
This is the Squalus during her rebuild prior to recommissioning as the USS Sailfish. Public domain.
USS Squalus
On May 23, 1939, the new submarine USS Squalus undertook her 19th test dive. The first 18 had been unremarkable. However, 60 feet below the surface at a point 12 miles off the coast of New Hampshire, an air induction valve failed to close completely during a high-speed dive. Water flowed into the 310-foot vessel with terrifying rapidity.
Lt. Oliver Naquin, the skipper of the boat, directed that the watertight doors be dogged and sealed, but it was too late. The engine room and rear portions of the sub had already flooded, killing 26 of the 59-man crew almost instantly. The remaining 33 were saved because of the quick action of L. Naquin. Now dead in the water, the Squalus descended to the seabed at a depth of 240 feet.
Submarining was still in its relative infancy, and rescue equipment was rudimentary at best. There had never been a successful crew transfer below 60 feet prior to this time. The survivors of the Squalus knew this. However, Lt. Naquin remained upbeat and hopeful. His encouragement was later credited as being key to the men’s ultimate survival.
Hope
Submarines of the day had deployable buoys that could be released to produce a cloud of smoke and fire signal rockets. Naquin ordered these measures to be deployed emergently. The very last rocket was miraculously spotted by a sister sub, the USS Sculpin. The U.S. Navy then came alive.
These guys were figuring this out as they went along. The USS Falcon was one of the first ships on the scene. The Falcon carried an experimental rescue chamber designed by Lt. Cmdr. Charles Momsen. Momsen was a legendary submariner who also developed the Momsen Lung, an emergency breathing device used to help sailors escape a stricken boat. However, at 240 feet, this was far too deep for an unassisted ascent.
This steel chamber was 10 feet tall and 8 feet wide. It was designed to descend as deep as 300 feet on a cable and then seal on the deck of a stricken submarine by means of a rubber gasket. This exercise was dependent upon the sunken boat remaining upright. Fortunately, Lt. Naquin had landed his dead sub conning tower up.
Hard hat divers descended to the inert boat and affixed a cable to the railing alongside the sub’s forward hatch. As they walked across the submerged decking, they could hear the trapped crewmen banging with tools on the hull.
Two sailors named John Milakowski and Walter Harman crewed the experimental chamber down to the sunken submarine and effected a seal. The chamber could carry nine sailors in addition to the two operators.
The Rescue
This was the Atlantic, and the water was cold. With the sub’s systems disabled, there was no heat. By the time they got to the sunken vessel, the surviving crewmembers were suffering mightily from hypothermia. Harman and Milakowski distributed hot coffee and pea soup before loading up the first nine survivors for the long trek to the surface.
Each trip took at least two hours. Rescuing all 33 survivors required four cycles. The entire operation spanned two days, but Momsen and Company successfully rescued all the sub’s survivors.
A Grateful Nation
In recognition of their heroic, revolutionary accomplishment, four Navy divers were awarded the Medal of Honor. Forty-six other sailors earned the Navy Cross. Lt. Naquin eventually retired as a rear admiral. Of his crew, he said, “My officers and men acted instinctively and calmly. There were no expressions of fear and no complaints of the bitter cold. Never in my remaining life do I expect to witness so true an exemplification of comradeship and brotherly love. No fuller meaning could possibly be given the word ‘shipmate’ than was reflected by their acts.”
The conning tower of the USS Sailfish is on display today at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Public domain.
The Rest of the Story
The Squalus represented a $100 million investment in today’s money, and the Navy was slow to write her off. Miraculously, they raised the vessel over the course of four months. It took 628 deep dives to pull that off.
After a complete refit, the Squalus was recommissioned as the USS Sailfish. The Sailfish served throughout World War II, earned nine battle stars, sank 12 Japanese ships, and received a Presidential Unit Citation. Some of the original Squalus sailors remained on the boat during the war.
One of those 12 Japanese ships was the escort carrier Chūyō. At the time of its sinking, this carrier had 21 American sailors onboard who had been recovered from the sinking in combat of the USS Sculpin, the sub that had originally been so instrumental in the Squalus’ recovery.
Tragically, only one of these American submariners survived. The Sailfish was decommissioned after the war, the only American submarine to have been sunk, raised, recommissioned, and fought in combat during WWII.