subject: The U.s.s. Squalus-39 Hours At The Bottom Of The Sea [print this page] In September of 1939, the U.S.SIn September of 1939, the U.S.S. Squalus, a submarine with a crew of 59, was undergoing sea trials off the coast of Portsmouth. Everything seemed ready and the submarine began to dive. Somehow water began to flood in the aft compartments and the ship sank 243 feet and landed upright on the bottom. The 26 sailors in the aft compartments drowned, while 33 remained alive in the front portions of the ship behind the safety of a watertight door.
No one had ever survived in such circumstances before, but Lieutenant Commander Charles Momsen had made it his life's work to see to it that submariners would get a second chance. Despite the bureaucratic resistance of the Navy for what was considered a hopeless quest, Momsen had created a rescue chamber just for this purpose, a supplement to the Momsen lung he had also developed to enable trapped submariners to rise to the surface and then carried on all submarines. In this instance, the commander of the Squalus, Lt. Oliver F. Naquin, decided against the use of the lung because he feared his men would die of exposure once they reached the surface.
Newly acquired safety features, like a rescue buoy with a phone attached, plus signal flares, allowed the sister ship of the Squalus, U.S.S. Sculpin, to locate it and arrange for the arrival of the rescue ship, U.S.S. Falcon. Fortunately, the Squalus landed upright, and made the rescue possible using the McCann rescue chamber, co-developed by him and Momsen.
In the Squalus, meanwhile, Commander Naquin had made the atmosphere with the submarine slightly toxic to keep the men sleepy and less prone to panic. His preternatural cool, ably described by the author Peter Maas in a book about this tragedy, "The Terrible Hours", set the table for the successful rescue that followed. In groups of ten, the surviving sailors were taken to the surface in the rescue chamber, but it was the last trip that was the most harrowing of them all.
The captain and several others were the last to be hoisted, but the cable snagged and was in bad shape from the previous lifts. The chamber had been raised half way up, when it had to be dropped once again to the bottom of the sea while repairs took place. Those on board the chamber remained in remarkable good spirits, and were overheard singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" during the final lift upwards. After they were brought on board, it was determined that the cable would have snapped had another lift been required. The final official report of the event said the following: "The appearance and bearing of all SQUALUS officers and men as they stepped out of the rescue chamber to the deck of the FALCON indicated a high state of discipline and morale under the most trying conditions."
In an ironic turn of events, the U.S.S. Squalus was salvaged and renamed the U.S.S. Sailfish. In that capacity, it later sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Chuyo towards the end of the war that was carrying half of the survivors from the U.S.S. Sculpin, the sister submarine that had been instrumental in locating the Squalus when it first sank. Only one of these men survived the carrier's sinking, and he spent the balance of the war as a slave laborer in Japan.
The U.S.S. Sailfish survived numerous patrols, sank its share of Japanese shipping, and ended up being scrapped in 1948. A poem written in commemoration perhaps sums it up best: "59 Men on the ocean's floor, 26 Men who are no more. 26 Men who gave their lives, Protecting our homes, our kids, our wives."
