Under gray skies at dawn, the Squalus appeared as an enormous sea creature at rest in the cove off Seavey’s Island. Only her teakwood deck and the black conning tower were visible along her 310-foot length. In the distance, the North Atlantic seethed with white-caps, pushed by cold winds blowing in from the Isles of Shoals six miles out. Waves burst with a steady slap against the hull, occasionally sending spindrift over the submarine’s deck, as lobstermen in small boats made for safe haven in Portsmouth in anticipation of a storm. To them, the subs were a familiar sight, so they paid little heed motoring by on the morning of the Squalus’s last dive.
By 0700, many in the boat’s crew of fifty-nine—five officers, fifty-one enlisted men, and three civilian inspectors—climbed on deck to catch a last smoke after breakfast while drinking in the spectacular hills and precipitous coastline of New Hampshire and Maine dipping down to the narrow channel of the Piscataqua. Dressed in blue dungarees, Carol Nathan Pierce (MM2c) peered through binoculars borrowed from the quartermaster and waved to his wife who fluttered a handkerchief from the Maine shore a halfmile to the north. After two days at sea, he was eager to be home that night for supper. Turning to one of his buddies, he invited him along. “I’ll bring over some beer,” enthused Eugene Hoffman (MMlc).
Aft of the conn, Harold Preble also enjoyed a cigarette while trading pleasantries with those on deck. As the yard’s senior naval architect, he had come aboard to observe the crew and the vessel during the trial period. For 22 years, he had ridden every new sub sent down the Piscataqua since the launch of the old L-8. To him, the Squalus was the finest. From a deck hatch the captain emerged, wearing a gray jacket to ward off the morning chill. Preble congratulated him on the progress of the boat, confiding that the Squalus rated a notch above the Sculpin in his opinion. “Take it from me, captain, the crew’s in excellent spirits this morning. We ought to have a fine run today.” Naquin, typically stern, nodded and conceded that, yes, “everything seems right” for the upcoming dive.
Spirits were high on the boat. She had performed flawlessly through the eighteen trial dives. Admiral Cole, the yard commander, was so impressed with the precision of the previous day’s three dives that he sent congratulations that now were posted on bulletin boards throughout the vessel. There was absolutely no reason to doubt the crucial nineteenth dive, an exact rehearsal of what the Squalus would do before the Naval Board of Inspection in early June in order to qualify for the operational fleet. The crew’s objective was to make an emergency running dive at 16 knots and be completely submerged in 60 seconds, which the Navy had deemed the safety margin in avoiding attack by enemy planes in wartime. With morale buoyed by Cole’s citation, Naquin and his crew were confident they could do it. For them, it would be supremely satisfying to beat the mark set by the rival crew of the Sculpin, then preparing to embark from Portsmouth on her shakedown cruise to Panama.
Aboard the Squalus, there wasn’t a hint of concern at 0730 as she left her mooring and swiftly parted the Atlantic to a point 13 miles southeast of Portsmouth near White Island, the southernmost of the desolate Isles of Shoals. Passing within a mile of the White lighthouse, Naquin directed the boat four miles further out, where a planned hour-long dive would occur. From the bridge, he passed orders to “rig for dive” as crewmen assumed their posts in the eight compartments of the Squalus.
In the forward torpedo room, Lt. (jg) John C. Nichols personally inspected the escape hatch in the overhead to assure it was tightly sealed. In the forward battery, Bryson put on a set of headphones as the talker for the compartment during the dive. Meanwhile, chief electrician Gainor checked a row of voltmeters in the passageway near the captain’s quarters while his assistant, McLees, prepared to descend through a deck hatch into the darkened keel where half of the sub’s 252 six-foot-high battery cells would power the boat’s motors during submergence. McLees was to take readings on the batteries during the dive while Gainor monitored electrical flow measured by the voltmeters.
In the control room, directly beneath the conning tower, diving officer Lt. William T. Doyle, the second in command, surveyed the array of gauges, valves, and levers that would control the descent. Yeoman Charles Kuney (Y2c) was at his side as the control-room talker, wearing earphones to receive and relay messages throughout the boat. Pierce, operator of the high-pressure air manifold, was seated below him. In all, ten men were in the control room to begin the dive. Preble stood behind Doyle, bracing himself against the ladder to the conning tower. In each hand he clutched a stopwatch to time the trial.
In the after battery, ship’s cook William Isaacs (SC2c), assisted by Roland Blanchard (F2c), prepared a meatball lunch in the galley as breakfast cook Robert Thompson (SC3c) slept on one of the many bunks stacked in rows in the compartment. On his way through, torpedoman Sherman Shirley (TMlc) paused momentarily to chat with Lloyd Maness (EM3c), who was to be his best man at his wedding the following Sunday. Shirley then headed back to his post in the after torpedo room. Maness, like Gainor, was to monitor voltmeters in the after battery during the dive. Two other men—-John Batick (EMlc) and Arthur Booth (RMlc)—climbed down to the keel to check the cells during the dive. In a tiny cubicle containing medical lockers, pharmacist’s mate Raymond O’Hara (PMlc) was preparing to examine Robert Washburn (Sea2c) who had contracted a cold.
Aft of the galley, a narrow corridor led to a heavy, watertight door with a glass eyeport. Beyond were the two engine rooms, the door closed to keep the intense heat of the powerful diesels confined to the stern. An inspector from General Motors observed the black gang (motormacs, or diesel mechanics) push the four units at full speed while awaiting instructions from Doyle. The diesels gulped huge quantities of air, funneled down to them through twin, overhead pipes, 27 inches wide. The tremendous suction in each created a roaring wind tunnel where they opened above the engines. These pipes, known as the main inductions, joined a slightly larger tube which ran up through the boat’s superstructure where it yawed to the sky. Parallel to it was a smaller tube linked to a network of pipes running the length of the boat and used to ventilate every compartment during surface running. On submergence, a mushroom-shaped valve in the superstructure—the high induction valve—would slide hydraulically over the air passages of both inductions to seal them from the sea. As a safety backup prior to diving, valves in the engine rooms could be cranked shut by hand wheels located just below each of the induction openings. But the practice on the Squalus, like other boats, was not to do so; the valves were difficult to close quickly.
The engine rooms and the after torpedo room were the responsibility of Ens. Joseph Patterson, youngest officer on the boat, popular with the men and a talented Naval Academy runner who finished fourth in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He, like Nichols in the forward compartments, made a careful inspection of the compartments. Satisfied that all was well, he went to the control room to inform Doyle and then returned.
At 0835, with the submarine speeding at 16 knots, Naquin ordered “stand by to dive.” Doyle replied that all was ready. Then at 0840, the captain gave the final command. “All ahead emergency!”
He quickly left the bridge, climbing down the vertical ladder to the control room as the quartermaster closed the bridge hatch and spun a hand wheel to seal it from the ocean. The loud “ah-ooo-gah” of the Klaxon diving alarm sounded throughout the boat. Simultaneously, the location of the sub was radioed to Portsmouth. Unfortunately, it arrived garbled. A radioman recorded the Squalus at longitude 70°31’ rather than 70°36’—an error of five miles.
In the control room, Doyle ordered hydraulically controlled vent valves opened to begin flooding ballast tanks girdling the crew compartments just beneath the hull. The weight of the water would quickly drag the Squalus under as two sailors manning the diving planes put the boat into a steep dive. The descent required in quick succession that the diesels shut down, the main induction valve close, and battery-powered motors take over. If anything went wrong, Pierce on the air manifold could, on command, blow the water out of the ballast tanks with compressed air, forcing the boat to rise. Naquin, Preble, and Doyle studied the indicator board. One by one, the red lights of the Christmas Tree turned green, signaling that all hull openings, including the critically important induction valves, the largest openings in the boat, were closed. As a backup safety test, Pierce jettisoned a blast of high pressure air into the sub to check for leaks. The ship’s barometer rose slightly, assuring the boat was airtight. “Pressure in the boat, sir!” he reported to Doyle.
The dive seemed perfect as the submarine nosed beneath the waves. “You are going to make it,” raved Preble to the captain who agreed, “This is going to be a beauty.” At 30 feet, both men studied their stopwatches, clicking off the seconds as the submarine sank deeper. At 50 feet, with the boat completely submerged, they simultaneously shouted “Mark!” All watches read 62 seconds. “Extra good,” noted Preble.
Suddenly Naquin sensed a fluttering of air pressure in his ears as the Squalus passed 65 feet and began leveling off. In an instant, yeoman Kuney on the headphones stiffened, horrified by frantic voices on the party line: “After engine room flooding!” “Forward engine room flooding!” Ashen, he turned to Doyle, terror fringing his voice. “The engine rooms are flooding, sir!” Clamping the earphones tight to his head, he then heard a scream on the line: “Take ‘er up! The inductions are open!”
In disbelief, Naquin, Preble, and Doyle stood transfixed, staring at the green lights of the Christmas Tree, which insisted the inductions were closed. Yet, two Niagaras of saltwater poured unrestricted through the induction pipes into the engine rooms.
In one breath, both Naquin and Doyle shouted, “Blow the main ballast!”
“Blow safety tanks!”
“Blow bow buoyancy!”
In the commotion, Preble screamed, “For God’s sake, close off bulkhead ventilation valves and doors.”
They all knew the Squalus was doomed unless she got back to the surface immediately.
Pierce, assisted by Preble, desperately slammed every lever on the air manifold wide open, releasing compressed air with a deafening roar into the ballast tanks to force the water out and lift the submarine upward. For a brief moment, it seemed she might make it. The bare tip of her bow broke surface. But there was no stemming the thundering cascade in the engine rooms. The weight of the ocean was too much to overcome. The Squalus cantilevered backwards and began sliding into the inky depths. There was nothing anyone could do. Some, like Bland, believed the boat was out over the continental shelf and would be crushed by water pressure.
In the engine rooms, crewmen reaching to close the hull stop valves under the induction pipes were blasted aside by the torrent of frigid ocean water. Most retreated to the after torpedo room, their only hope if they could only get inside and close the watertight door in time. But as the angle of the Squalus increased, they were overwhelmed by the flood. Seventeen drowned, including Ensign Patterson, Shirley who was to be married that weekend, and Hoffman, whom Pierce had invited to dinner that evening.
The ocean surged with enormous pressure through the boat’s ventilation lines, spewing furiously into the forward compartments where men fought to stop the leaks. As the talker in the forward battery, Bryson heard the scream to “take ‘er up” from the engine rooms, and shouted the news to McLees, who quickly scrambled out of the battery well and into the narrow passageway between the officers’ quarters. As the Squalus rose by the bow, Gainor, standing next to the voltmeters, glanced through the compartment doorway into the control room where he heard Preble’s plea to close watertight doors. “The lights were still on with water pouring in from the overhead. It looked like it was following the round contour of the hull, forming a huge water suction hole, a dark green color. I grabbed the watertight door and was nearly swept off my feet by water hitting me in the chest. As I got the door closed, I noted water hitting the glass eyeport at the top of the door. Others were closing off the ventilation valves at the bulkhead. I felt the control room was flooded full. Knowing we were in deep water, I expected the end.”
For Gainor, there was no time to dwell on such thoughts. The voltmeters were going wild. Grabbing a hand lantern, he pulled himself up the steepening incline of the deck to the hatch where he peered down in shock. Steam was pouring off the cells, whose caps bobbed on boiling acid inside. He realized immediately that the cells were shorting and that an explosion was imminent unless they were disconnected. Leaping into the narrow crawl space on the keel, he quickly located one of two large disconnect switches. When he disengaged it, a miniature lightning storm of 70,000 amps erupted, sizzling blue-white and melting insulation on the hull. Half-blinded and sure he would be electrocuted, Gainor reached for the other switch and broke the circuit just in time, blacking out the entire boat and miraculously leaving him untouched. “Got it!” he exulted.
In the forward torpedo room as the boat tilted precariously, a 1,000-pound practice torpedo broke loose, threatening to crush anyone in its path. Three men, including Nichols, jumped on it, jockeying it back in place and strapping it down. Meanwhile, torpedoman Leonard de Medeiros (TM3c) closed the watertight door to the forward battery.
Back in the control room, men tumbled about, grasping for footing as a dozen pencil-thin jets of pressurized water spewed from the ventilation pipes. Preble was knocked flat. Others were doused to the skin as they worked frantically to close off all the lines. On the awkward 50-degree incline of the deck, they held onto anything they could to stay upright. The overhead lights flickered and went out, replaced by emergency lights, which also went out 10 seconds later. Naquin, clutching the ears of one of the boat’s two periscopes, ordered Maness to close the watertight door to the after battery.
There, a life-and-death struggle had begun.
Through the open control room door, Maness had heard yeoman Kuney’s cry that the engine rooms were flooding just as sheets of water burst into the after battery from overhead pipes. Soaked, he hustled to his emergency station in the control room where he prepared to shut the oval, 300-pound steel door between the compartments. It would require a superhuman effort since it opened to the stern, which was sinking fast. As water swirled up toward the bulkhead coaming, Maness heard frantic cries. “Keep it open! Keep it open! We’re coming!!” Six men half crawled and swam uphill out of the compartment. Basilio Galvan, a mess attendant, was first, Maness urging him to hurry. William Boulton (Sealc) was right behind, followed quickly by Booth, Blanchard, Washburn, and O’Hara.
A seventh man, Isaacs, the ship’s cook, was far behind. When the Squalus first lurched upward, a curtain of water splattered down on him. Instinctively, he stepped into the corridor to secure the nearby door to the engine rooms. Although it was closed, water was spilling out around the curved door frame. Spinning the door’s wheel to lock it, he peered with awe through the glass eyeport. Two torrents roared furiously from the inductions above the four diesels, burying them in foaming saltwater. He could see no survivors. With the sea waist-high around him, Isaacs tried to make his way forward but slipped on the incline of the deck. Fully engulfed, he swam desperately toward the safety of the control room, colliding with a submerged mess table and grappling with underwater objects to pull himself upward. Struggling to close the door, Maness saw the cook and let the door swing open again. In seconds, Isaacs lurched through, falling to the deck out of breath. Maness, summoning all his strength, then pulled, his muscles quivering in the exertion that moved the door ever so slowly until it finally closed with a metallic click.
Behind it, no one would survive.
Unbeknownst to Maness, ship’s cook Thompson who had gone to sleep in his bunk was still alive. He had floated to the top of the compartment, where he was trapped in an air bubble on the underside of a deck hatch. But as he cranked it open in an attempt to swim to the surface, the life-sustaining air leaked out ahead of him and he drowned.
The Squalus settled gently on the green mud of the ocean floor, 240 feet down. With the boat’s stern mired in the mud, she rested upright, with a slight up angle toward the bow. Fortunately she was not on her side, which would have made rescue more difficult.
On the bottom, the survivors wondered if others were trapped in the after torpedo room. It had been less than five minutes since the dive began. “Everyone was thinking about it,” recalled Danny Persico (Sealc), in the forward torpedo room. “We tapped on air lines leading back through the hull. We all took turns. If they had heard it, they would have acknowledged. We knew then that aft of the control room, all the compartments were flooded.”
In the control room, Naquin assessed the situation as hand lanterns were passed down from a shelf. With a pocket flashlight, he moved about, checking for leaks. Several feet of water had collected aft of the periscope well. The men were soaked; water had drenched everything. The captain asked Kuney, still with his headset on, if he had heard any word from aft. He replied he hadn’t. Naquin took the phones and mouthpiece and listened for himself.
“Hello, engine rooms. Hello, after torpedo room . . . hello . . . hello,” he repeated.
When there was no reply, he called out to the talkers in the forward compartments. Immediately, voices on the line assured him that the bow chambers were reasonably dry and secure. Naquin then instructed Eugene Cravens, the first-class gunner’s mate, to fire one of the ship’s forty distress rockets from the control room overhead. At 0845 it zipped to the surface and exploded 80 feet above the waves in a cloud of red smoke, but no one was there to see it.
On instruction from Naquin, Nichols released the boat’s marker buoy attached to the deck of the boat near the forward escape hatch. The bright yellow float, three feet across, trailed a telephone line from the submarine to the surface. In large letters on the buoy was the message, “Submarine Sunk Here. Telephone Inside.” As the buoy broke through to the surface, a valve gave way in the control room, spurting a powerful blast of oil followed by saltwater at the already drenched Isaacs, knocking him down. Men scrambled to tighten hull stops to stem the leak as others assisted the frightened cook.
In the dim light, Naquin asked the quartermaster to make a head count, confirming that four officers, twenty-eight enlisted men, and one civilian were alive. Twenty-three were in the control room; ten others in the two forward compartments. Steadying his nerves in the knowledge that twenty-six others had most certainly drowned, Naquin addressed those in the control room, packed around him so closely that he could feel their labored breaths.
“Attention, men. You all know where we are. The boat cannot surface by herself. We have released the forward marker buoy and we will continue to send up smoke rockets at regular intervals. It is only a matter of time before help comes. All hands are to be commended on their conduct. I expect no change.”
A short time later, Gainor reported that saltwater was seeping into the keel of the forward battery. Fearful it would mix with battery acid to create deadly chlorine gas or that a fire could erupt from the heat of the shorted cells, Naquin told Bryson and others to gather stored blankets, food from the officers’ pantry, extra clothing, and even door curtains and retreat to the torpedo room, where temperatures had dropped below freezing. Meanwhile, the door from the warmer control room was cracked long enough for others to fetch food, mattresses from bunks in the officers’ quarters, additional blankets, and Momsen escape lungs. Naquin explained how to use the lungs to Preble and a few others unfamiliar with them.
In view of the crowded floor space in the control room, the captain sent five crewmen to the torpedo room. The forward battery then was sealed tight as a precaution against gas leakage. The compartment now served as a barrier between the survivors—fifteen in the torpedo room and eighteen in the control room.
Many were confident the Momsen lungs would save them. Some in the control room conceived a plan to use them in an ascent from the higher conning tower. However, Gainor said he was positive an external eyebolt from which the ascending line would be attached on the bridge was missing, thereby foiling any mass exodus. In addition, an escape from the torpedo room was very risky due to the depth, the frigid water, and the possibility of ruptured lungs if the men rose too fast by losing their grip on the line to the buoy. Still, many drew comfort from their training at New London in the escape tank. “Nobody had given much thought to dying,” recalled Bryson. “We had Momsen lungs. We knew we had a chance. The escape was planned by lung. In fact, we had decided to grease down to protect from the cold of the water.”
Nichols had already chosen de Medeiros, the muscular torpedoman, to lead the way—but only as a last resort. The captain realized that Preble and a few others, like Isaacs, bruised and cold from his drenching, probably wouldn’t make it. He decided rather to await rescue. After all, everyone knew the Sculpin would be sailing through the area in two hours en route to Panama. Certainly by then the Squalus would be reported overdue and the search begun.
Naquin ordered the survivors to stay calm and to nap to conserve air, which he calculated might last 48 hours if used sparingly. Each compartment contained two flasks of oxygen with bleeder valves, which he would control. Carbon-dioxide absorbent powder was spread on the decks of the two compartments to avoid CO2 poisoning. Meanwhile, a bucket was passed among the men in the control room so they wouldn’t have to exert themselves going to the head.
In the dark, one sailor passed the beam of his flashlight over the door to the after battery where an oily, rainbow hue shimmered in the water-filled eyeport. Naquin ordered all lights extinguished to conserve the batteries. Later, he overhead one man discussing the fate of those in the engine rooms. “That’s enough of that! There’ll be no discussion of the men aft,” the captain snapped.
For the survivors, it wasn’t easy, lying still as temperatures dropped into the low 30s in the forward torpedo room where ice formed on the bulkheads. “The worst part was that we were so cold,” recalled machinist’s mate Charles Yuhas. “You’d take your hand from under a blanket for a minute and it would get numb.” Crewmen whistled softly to keep up their courage. “What kept flashing through my mind,” reminisced Persico, “was the fact my mother had taken out an insurance policy on me. And there was a clause that it would be null and void if I died in a submarine or diving accident.”
In the control room, Naquin heard teeth chattering in the dark. Flipping on his flashlight, he located the shuddering seaman. Stripping off his own coat, the skipper wrapped the man in it. As the morning wore on, the captain decided to make an inspection of the forward compartments. Entering the torpedo room, he promised expectant faces that “we should be getting help soon. You must stay quiet. Don’t talk. Try to sleep.” He then huddled with Nichols. “Buzz me as soon as anyone makes contact,” the captain said, referring to the rescue buoy bobbing overhead. “Tell them I think the high induction is open. Also that the after battery and both engine rooms are flooded. Say we’re not certain about the after torpedo room.” Before returning to the control room, Naquin whispered encouragement to the young lieutenant. “You’re doing just fine,” he said.
Back in Portsmouth, Admiral Cole became concerned when the Squalus had not reported surfacing as scheduled at 0940. The White lighthouse reported no trace of the missing submarine. By 1100, Cole was impatient for news and headed off at a brisk pace for the dock where the Sculpin was to cast off in 30 minutes. He took Captain Wilkin by surprise. “I want you to shove off immediately. The Squalus may be in trouble. We’re not sure. Here’s her diving point,” he said, handing Wilkin the fix radioed from the Squalus. “I want you to pass over it and let me know what you find without delay.”
As the Sculpin embarked, Cole returned hurriedly to his office and called New London, where the converted World War I minesweeper Falcon was stationed. Now serving as a naval rescue and salvage tug, the ship carried one of five experimental submarine rescue bells spread over the fleet. Since the one at New London was the closest, Cole alerted officials that the bell might be needed at a moment’s notice.
Meanwhile, the Sculpin arrived off the Isles of Shoals to search for the Squalus. A half-dozen lookouts scanned the surface, not knowing they were five miles off the true bearing because of the faulty coordinates. But one officer, Lt. (jg) Ned Denby, happened to be looking in the opposite direction of the search area and noticed what he thought was the smudge of a distress rocket. Wilkin confirmed it with his binoculars, just as the smoke evaporated. The Sculpin swung around and headed quickly for the site as Wilkin radioed to Portsmouth, “Believe sighted smoke bomb.”
Ten minutes later, at 1255, spirits soared on the stricken Squalus as the unmistakable cavitation of submarine propellers was clearly heard. The survivors knew it was the Sculpin. The boat slowed as it came upon the telephone buoy and dropped anchor, the splash heard clearly below. Sculpin crewmen pulled the buoy on deck and Wilkin got on the phone. “Hello Squalus. This is Sculpin. What’s your trouble?”
Nichols, containing his excitement, described conditions as Naquin had directed. He then asked Wilkin to hold the line while he got the captain. Thirty seconds later, Naquin spoke calmly into the phone, “Hello, Wilkin.” But just as Wilkin replied, “Hello, Oliver,” the ocean heaved, stretching the telephone cable and snapping it. The phone went dead.
Helplessly, the Sculpin stood by as Wilkin radioed what he knew to Portsmouth. Cole didn’t waste a minute. He phoned the chief of naval operations in Washington, D.C., asking him to round up the Navy’s best deepsea diving experts at the Washington Navy Yard and fly them to Portsmouth at once. Cole also phoned New London, where the slow-going Falcon got under way for the 200-mile voyage north with the rescue bell on her fantail. Naval and Coast Guard bases up and down the coast were put on alert in case additional vessels were needed.
As the greatest underseas rescue operation in naval history got under way, news of the unfolding drama spread with lightning effect. Reporters descended on Portsmouth. Anxious wives and families gathered at the shipyard gates. Others kept a tense vigil in front of radios in homes across the nation. With the memories of the S-4 and S-51 disasters so fresh in mind, a doubtful public wondered if the Squalus crew had any real hope of rescue. In fact, few knew of the Navy’s revolutionary rescue bell.
In the icy tomb of the Squalus on the floor of the Atlantic, Naquin maintained hope and calm while rationing air supplies. Although more than five hours had passed since the dive began, the captain was confident the rescue bell was on the way from New London. Like a large, white, inverted tumbler twice the height of a man, the device would be put to the do-or-die attempt to save a submarine crew for the first time in history.
But would the Falcon arrive in time?
And perhaps even more important, would the capricious New England weather, which had calmed overhead, hold long enough to make rescue possible?