On the morning of the Squalus’s last dive, Lt. Cdr. Charles B. Momsen and a group of the Navy’s best deepsea experts were winding up decompression tests at the Experimental Diving Unit of the Washington Navy Yard. They had been using a breathing mixture of helium and oxygen, designed to eliminate some of the dangers of diving to great depth. Suddenly the phone rang. It was Cdr. Charles A. Lockwood in Operations at the Navy Department. The message was terse: “Squalus is down off the Isles of Shoals, depth between 200 and 400 feet. Have your divers and equipment ready to leave immediately.”
Within two hours, the survivors’ best hope—Momsen, lieutenants O. D. Yarbrough and Albert R. Behnke of the Medical Corps, and Chief Metalsmith James H. McDonald, master diver and coholder of the world’s deep diving record of 500 feet—were air-borne, en route to Portsmouth 500 miles to the north. Two planes followed, one with Cdr. Allen R. McCann, codesigner of the rescue bell, and the other with William Badders (CMM), the other holder of the deep-dive record. More than a dozen divers in all raced for the scene, prepared to sacrifice their lives to save those trapped on the Squalus.
With evening closing under a gray overcast, the twin-motored amphibious plane containing Momsen banked into a turn and prepared to land on the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth. During the four-hour flight, the implications of the tragedy gnawed at Momsen in the silence of the passenger cabin. He and the Navy had planned for this eventuality for years and were confident their equipment would work. But would something go wrong, as it did with the S-4 when gale-force winds stymied rescuers? “I shall never be able to record the various thoughts that flashed through my mind during the 150-mile-per-hour ride,” Momsen, a husky, good-humored man in his forties, recalled later that year in an address at Harvard University. “My memory went back to the first lung experiments, thrills of 10 years ago, to the long and tedious years spent in training submarine officers and enlisted men of the submarine service to use the lung; to the first diving bell, the cranky open bell that would dump and fall and half drown us if we were not careful, of the final design produced by Commander Allen R. McCann and the comfort that it was to operate. I recalled the hundreds of thrills encountered in training and developing this device.
“Now the dreaded hour was here! Would the dreams of the experimenter come true or would some quirk of fate cross up the plans and thus destroy all of this work? How many shipmates were waiting for the answer? What were they thinking? Were they too deep?”
In many ways, the fate of the Squalus survivors rested in this man’s hands. Had it not been for him, they wouldn’t even have a chance. He had designed the Momsen lung, on which the survivors depended. He and McCann had invented the rescue bell out of the remains of the only submarine airplane hangar in the Navy, once affixed to the deck of the submarine S1 in 1926. And it was Momsen who, with Behnke and Yarbrough, had successfully experimented with a helium-oxygen breathing air mixture that might come into play in the rescue. Momsen insisted on personally testing each invention—a method that put him at great risk but made him confident of each advance.
Out on the Atlantic above the Squalus, the scene was surreal. In the storm-tossed darkness, spotlights illuminated the ocean beneath two naval tugs, the Penacook (YT-6) and the Wandank, which were at anchor. Men peered over the railing of both ships, as if expecting the Squalus or her survivors to surface at any moment. The two tugs had spent hours dragging the area with grappling hooks, trying to relocate the sunken vessel, whose precise location had been lost when the telephone line snapped. With the use of a heavier anchor from the Sculpin, the Penacook finally latched hold of something at 1930. Amid jubilant cries from rescuers, one Penacook rate muttered, “God help us, and them, too, if it isn’t the Squalus we’ve hooked.” Nesting alongside the two tugs was a Portsmouth commercial tug, which had arrived with a medical corps doctor, three pharmacist’s mates, and a shipment of fifty blankets—just in case any of the survivors made a swim for the surface. Nearby sat the ominous silhouette of the Sculpin where Cole was inside, organizing the rescue effort after pacing the deck nervously through most of the afternoon. He and the others could only wait. Wait for the Falcon with her rescue chamber from New London. Wait for the deepsea divers from Washington. And wait for Momsen, whose expertise would be crucial. The rescuers also worried about the weather, as a cold, wicked chop roiled the surface over the Squalus.
Skimming to a landing on the Piscataqua, Momsen’s plane was met by Admiral Cole’s personal barge, which promptly ferried the passengers to the navy yard for a briefing. Then the four men boarded a Coast Guard patrol boat that steamed into the Atlantic, arriving alongside the Sculpin at 2145 off the Isles of Shoals.
Because of fog, the second plane, containing McCann and most of the divers, was forced to land in Newport, Rhode Island, 125 miles short of Portsmouth. State and local police in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire blocked intersections and flagged drivers off the road to clear the main highways as the men, jammed into three cars, roared north. The pace was so furious that one police escort couldn’t keep up as the caravan sped through Boston. Still, it was 0415 on the following day before McCann and the divers reached the site. Said one, wiping his forehead, “After that trip, the terrors of deepsea diving are nothing.”
Radio electrified the nation with hour-by-hour reports from Portsmouth. A banner headline across the front page of the New York Times proclaimed: “59 Await Rescue on Sunken Submarine.” Later editions announced, “Rescue Ships Huddle Helplessly Over Spot Where Squalus Lies.” Some newspapers speculated on possible sabotage, based on second-hand reports that one Squalus crewman predicted to a friend before the dive that the boat would sink.
Families of the crewmen, who came from twenty-eight states, Hawaii, and the Philippines, feared the worst. In Washington, D.C., the wife of torpedoman Alfred Priester (TM2c) prayed for his safety while quieting her two-year-old son. “All I can do is pray,” she repeated over and over to reporters. “I’ve never been through anything like this. I pray God Al is safe. This waiting is horrible.” Across town, the parents of William Isaacs, the Squalus cook, hung on every word from the radio. His mother clasped a picture of her son to her breast and rocked slowly in a chair. Occasionally, she paced nervously, back and forth, from her front porch to her kitchen.
The Rumanian-born wife of Robert Gibbs (TMlc), traveling by train to Portsmouth from Lexington, South Carolina, was unaware of the tragedy because she didn’t speak English. Her husband’s uncle met the train at Union Station in Washington, D.C. Through much hand signaling, he made her understand that Gibbs was on the sunken Squalus. The train began to move ahead and he had to get off, hoping passengers would console the now distraught bride. In Dover, New Hampshire, crewman Sherman Shirley’s fiancée waited and prayed. “He’s too good to be trapped like that,” she said, fingering the wedding ring he had given her for safe-keeping. “Keep it,” he had told her. “It will be safer in your possession than in mine.”
At the base in Portsmouth, wives and relatives gathered at a makeshift pressroom in the yard’s administration building where reporters worked elbow to elbow, monitoring events and pounding out stories. Periodically, officers rushed in to read bulletins and answer questions. Outside, the wife of Carlton Powell (MM2c) nervously walked the navy yard docks, tears in her eyes, pleading for news from workers. Also in anguish, the wife of John Chestnutt (CMM) paced nervously along the roadways of the base, clutching the hand of her young son who walked beside her.
With news that the Sculpin had made contact with the Squalus, many presumed all hands were safe. After all, there were no reports of casualties. Said Mrs. Lawrence Gainor of her husband, “He’s been in scrapes before. He’ll be all right.” Likewise, Captain Naquin’s wife, Frances, put on a brave face in a statement released to the press, voicing confidence “the whole thing will be over tomorrow.” Still, rescue of the men depended on the arrival of the Falcon. Broadcasters kept reminding the nation of that. “Everything depends on her,” said one.
All through the night, the tiny ship steamed north with the McCann Rescue Chamber firmly strapped to her fantail. It was an agonizingly slow voyage. Indeed, there was plenty of time for the Falcon’s own divers to overhaul their equipment and prepare mooring hawsers. Like a hare passing a tortoise, the destroyer Semmes (DD-189) sped by, as did the 10,000-ton cruiser Brooklyn (CL-40) up from the New York Navy Yard and loaded with thousands of feet of high-pressure diving hose. Finally at 0430, the Falcon arrived off the Isles of Shoals and by 0650 she moored over the suspected position of the Squalus—21 hours after the sinking.
Down below, conditions had steadily worsened. The captain had ordered all lights extinguished to save the batteries. There was nothing the men could do but lie quietly in the dark. Naquin worried about the effect of the bad air and freezing conditions on them, certain an escape by Momsen lung was becoming more remote with each passing hour. At such depth, it would be necessary for each man to ascend slowly for at least 25 minutes to avoid rupturing his lungs. Being exposed to 29° ocean water for that long, the skipper reasoned, would certainly kill some of them. By his estimation, the rescue force assembling overhead could either attach pneumatic hoses to the flooded after-section of the boat and blow the water out to refloat the Squalus, or the rescue bell could come for the survivors. Either way was preferable to making a swim for it. Thus, Naquin stretched the air supply, purposely allowing for higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the boat in order to induce the crew to sleep and avoid unnecessary exertion. The captain was concerned about the weather. It could delay the rescue; there was no alternative but to ration the air to the very limit of endurance.
The survivors lay on the linoleum floor, on mattresses, or in bunks, some huddled together under blankets in an attempt to stay warm. Others sat at the edges of the compartments, their backs resting against bulkheads and their knees drawn up under their chins. Among them was Maness, the crewman who had closed the watertight door between the control room and the stern. In torment, he rocked back and forth, chewing on his hand while thinking about those trapped in the after-section, particularly his pal Sherman Shirley, who had chosen him to be his best man.
In the control room, valves occasionally hissed from the pressure buildup throughout the boat. There was little talk. The crew’s labored breathing added to the condensation that hung in the air like a thick fog. Some were nauseated from lack of oxygen, soaked clothing, and fear, becoming sick and vomiting. Their shipmates calmed them, holding them in their arms. Someone produced a five-cent bar of chocolate-covered peanut butter which was shared, the captain commenting on how good it was.
In the forward torpedo room, the survivors shivered in the cold. “We were packed in like sardines,” said Persico. “I thought back to the time I left a heavy cruiser for sub duty. As I was going down the gangway, a fellow I knew said, ‘You know, those things are going to have a sinking.’ And I kidded him back, ‘Yeah, it would just be my luck I’ll be aboard it.’ A year later, here I was on the Squalus. But at age 19 you take things in stride. We just cuddled up to stay warm and waited.” Nearby, de Medeiros chased thoughts of the shipmate who suggested the two trade places before the fateful dive. Arrangements were made at the anchorage, with de Medeiros moving to the forward torpedo room while his pal moved aft, where he drowned.
When the marker buoy cable to the Sculpin separated, Naquin had directed the boat’s radiomen and signalmen to relay Morse code messages to the surface from the conning tower. They had cleared cork insulation from the steel hull and, in rotation, wielded a hammer with all their might to sound out messages they hoped could be deciphered by the Sculpin. Certainly, she would be listening, trying to get a fix on the Squalus’s position. The noise was deafening in the conning tower, but barely audible on the surface where the Sculpin stood by, unable to decipher the taps. The exertion of the hammer-blows in the stale air quickly exhausted the men, making one sick to his stomach. In the forward torpedo room, Lieutenant Nichols and others tapped out Morse code with hammer blows of their own. Still, there was no answer. But the survivors did hear propellers overhead, correctly guessing it was the Penacook drawing near to begin dragging for the Squalus.
At 1600, eight hours after the sinking, the signal watch finally made out a reply from the Sculpin: “Divers on way. Answer with four hammer taps.” Energized by the contact, one signalman swung his three-pound sledge with all his might to reply with four loud bangs against the conning tower wall.
Naquin made another inspection of overhead valves that continued to hold back the sea. Canned pineapple, peaches, and tomatoes were passed out to the survivors, as well as oil-skinned raincoats from a locker. Then at 1721, the penetrating sound of an oscillator jolted the men. The coded message made it clear the Wandank had arrived to join the hunt for the Squalus. Naquin, through his signalmen, answered questions from the surface: No, the boat was not taking on water. There were thirty-three known survivors. Conditions were satisfactory but cold. The boat had an 11-degree up angle but no list.
At 2110, the Wandank indicated the Falcon would arrive about 0300 the next morning, and that a grappling line apparently had caught the Squalus. Naquin hoped it had, for he and his men had neither heard nor felt anything make contact with the boat.
In Portsmouth, reporters speculated on possible deaths on the Squalus. Four Boston reporters decided to find out. They hired a lobster boat, which took them to the site after midnight. Battling a six-foot chop for three hours left the reporters drenched and seasick. But as they came upon the Wandank, Harry Crockett of the Associated Press asked over a megaphone to someone standing on the Wandank’s deck, “How many are dead down below?” The reply indicated twenty-six unaccounted for in the flooded after section of the Squalus. On returning to shore, Crockett phoned in his dispatch. Within moments, wives, friends, and families of the Squalus crew knew for certain some would not be coming back. But which ones?
As dawn broke on the second day, fortune took a dramatic turn for the survivors. The wind abated. The sun shone brightly over gentle swells. Admiral Cole had decided during the night not to send divers down to the submarine to attach air hoses in an attempt to refloat the Squalus. The extreme depth would make the effort time-consuming and time was precious if the survivors were to be spared before their air ran out. After Momsen joined him on the Sculpin, the two plotted details of a rescue by the Falcon’s bell. Arriving divers also boarded the Sculpin to familiarize themselves with the layout of the Squalus.
After the Falcon’s arrival at 0430, the ship’s captain sent a warning by oscillator to the Squalus—“Fire no more smoke rockets. I am mooring over you”—a message that sent spirits soaring on the submarine. The rescue vessel eased in close to the drag line from the Penacook. Then, four mooring lines were dropped spread-eagle from the four corners of the ship to keep her in position. Immediately, boatswain’s mate Martin C. Sibitzky, who had been selected to make the initial descent, climbed onto a small diving platform rigged to a hoist, where he was outfitted in 200 pounds of rubber diving gear, including weighted shoes, 40 pounds of extra lead ballast on a belt around his waist, and a large metal helmet with thick glass view plates. The bulbous suit made Sibitzky look monstrously alien, more than a foot taller than the crewmen who worked around him. Hoses to supply him with air during the descent were attached to the top of his helmet. He also wore newly developed electric underwear, which would protect him from the cold.
At 1015, the platform and Sibitzky were uphoisted and lowered into the sea. The diver disappeared from view, guiding himself into the black depths along the cable from the Penacook. With him went a shackle to another line, the downhaul cable from a winch inside the rescue chamber. Three minutes into the dive Sibitzky landed with a thud on the forward deck of the Squalus where the anchor from the Sculpin had hooked her sister ship. Miraculously, it was only six feet aft of the forward escape hatch. As he made his way along the deck to the hatch, Sibitzky could hear the hammer taps of those inside.
The sounds of the diver’s metal shoes clunking along the deck were exhilarating. “I was up in the escape trunk when he landed,” recounted Persico. “I could hear every word that he was communicating to the surface. Every other word was a cuss word as he grappled with the line. I was so elated I wanted to holler up to him. The only thing that separated us was the thickness of the hull.”
With 60-foot visibility, Sibitzky stooped to view the escape hatch and noticed the severed telephone cable. With one end coiled on the hatch, it snaked across the hull to where if fell away to the ocean floor. Immediately, the diver cut it free so that it wouldn’t interfere with the rescue bell. Sibitzky looked up toward the surface, sensing the loneliness of his situation. The sun was barely visible, a dim star twinkling through an incredible gulf of blackness which stretched endlessly away from him. It took him 20 minutes to connect the loose end of the downhaul cable to a bail in the center of the escape hatch trunk, shaped like a donut to accommodate the rescue chamber. Sibitzky returned to the surface at 1124. All was in readiness to attempt the unprecedented rescue.
With anticipation mounting, Momsen, Cole, McCann, and others watched from the Falcon as the rescue chamber was hoisted at McCann’s signal over the side. Scores of small boats circled the area at a distance, and airplanes manned by photographers, reporters, and sightseers buzzed overhead as the moment of truth neared. The light gray, pear-shaped steel apparatus—seven feet wide and ten feet high, and weighing 18,000 pounds—was divided into an upper closed compartment able to seat at least seven of the survivors at one time, and a lower open compartment separated by a horizontal bulkhead with a watertight hatch in its center. Surrounding the lower compartment was a ballast tank to control the buoyancy, and inside the compartment was a reel with 400 feet of half-inch steel wire—the downhaul cable now attached to the Squalus. A motorized, air-driven control shaft from the winch ran through the bulkhead into the upper compartment where two operators would control the descent. The lip of the lower chamber, open to the sea, was lined by a rubber gasket to create a watertight seal when the chamber finally made contact with the escape hatch on the Squalus. Attached to the top of the rescue bell were two air hoses, plus electric cables for the chamber’s telephone and bright interior lights. A heavy wire used to retrieve the chamber in an emergency was shackled to the very top of the bell.
Inside were two operators, John Mihalowski (TMlc) and his assistant, Walter E. Harman (GMlc), both experienced divers. With McCann on the telephone to them, they blew the ballast in the lower chamber of the bell and began the descent. Mihalowski closely watched the winch in the lower chamber through a glass eyeport as it pulled the bell down along the downhaul cable. Meanwhile, another winch on the Falcon played out the uphaul cable attached to the roof of the chamber. Frequently, the bell was halted so that Harman and Mihalowski could check to make sure the downhaul cable was being wound properly on the winch. At 1202, Harman reported passing 150 feet. And then 200 feet. With Harman at the controls, Mihalowski squatted over the eye-port, looking for the Squalus but only seeing the ripple of ocean water reflected in the chamber’s lights. At last the gray form of the submarine came into view, becoming brown and then black. Mihalowski saw the deck grate and then the rescue hatch, including the center ring where the downhaul cable came to an end.
The chamber came to rest over the hatch, pulled there by the winch. Blowing air into the lower chamber, Harman forced the water out except for a few inches just above the submarine’s escape hatch. The great pressure of the surrounding sea pressed down on the now dry chamber, making a watertight seal between the rescue bell and the Squalus. With Harman watching, Mihalowski lowered himself below where he landed on the hatch, water covering his feet to ankle depth. After attaching four bolts between the bell and the sub to ensure the chamber would stay put, he slackened the downhaul cable so he could open the hatch.
He had practiced the routine many times. But now history was being made as he prepared to free the crew of a stranded submarine for the first time.
With a heave, he lifted the hatch against the weight of the residual seawater that quickly drained into the Squalus. Poking his head down under the hatch, he and Harman shouted “Hello!” in unison but there was no reply. Mihalowski then realized a lower hatch had been closed by the survivors as a safety measure.
Lowering himself further down the hatch, he tapped several times and then opened the cover. Light from the rescue bell beamed down into the darkness below, illuminating the wide grins of the bedraggled survivors who were witnessing what seemed like a miracle.
Matter-of-factly, Mihalowski returned the grin. “Hello, fellows, here we are!”
Persico, who had gotten doused when the hatch was opened, was ecstatic when he saw the diver’s shoes. “They were black, torn sneakers which were wet. To me, they were the prettiest sight in the world.” Mihalowski passed down a pot of hot coffee, a five-gallon milkcan filled with hot pea soup, and several cans of carbon dioxide absorbent. Relieved, some of the survivors began to joke with the diver. “Why the delay?” “Where in hell are the napkins?”
The fresh air flowing into the submarine revived the men, most of whom were suffering from severe headaches, especially the captain. Without delay, the operators prepared to take a group of them back to the surface. The captain divvied up the crew into groups of seven, making sure the least fit of the survivors, including Preble, made the first trip. There were no complaints, with Naquin assuring his men, “We’ll be out soon.”
Preble was the first to climb up into the bell, followed by the others including Nichols, the officer Naquin designated to give a full report on conditions aboard the Squalus. At 1313, the chamber lifted off and made a methodical, 30-minute ascent, regulated by the downhaul cable. The operators carefully controlled the ballast, fearful of making the capsule too buoyant, and thereby possibly snapping the downhaul cable and causing the bell to crash through the keel of the Falcon, sinking both her and the rescue chamber.
On the Falcon, Momsen waited anxiously. “We tried to appear calm and maybe others were,” he recalled. “But to me this was the most exciting moment of my life. Eleven years of preparation, combating skepticism and constructing imaginary disasters, all telescoped into one moment. Who could remain calm?”
The bell came into view as a greenish splotch and in moments was hauled alongside the Falcon where the hatch was opened. With Falcon crewmen standing on top of the bell, a haggard face appeared. It was Nichols, blinking into the intense sun. Helping hands eased him up to the deck of the Falcon where a blanket was thrown around his shoulders. Movie cameras recorded the historic event as a sense of incredible triumph swept the flotilla. One by one, the other six survivors emerged into the light of day. The fresh air was so intoxicating that one weakened man fell backwards in a faint and was carried to the deck. As the rescue chamber prepared to return for a new cargo, the survivors were given more hot coffee and first aid, including warm towels placed around their abdomens. They also were placed for a short time in the Falcon’s decompression tank as a precaution against bends. News of the Navy’s amazing rescue flashed around the world. The names of the seven were posted at the navy yard where relatives rejoiced, giving others new hope.
On the way back down for another group of survivors, Badders, the operator on the second descent, decided to change the rescue plans. “I got to thinking that I had operated this chamber probably more than anyone else in the Navy, and I knew it could handle more than seven passengers and two operators,” he recalled years later. “I decided I was going to bring more men up. The weather was fair when we started the rescue, but I knew how quickly squalls could spring up, and the havoc they would wreak on this operation. Also, there was the danger of a bulkhead giving way in the submarine and flooding the area where the men were.”
With Badders at the controls, the rescue chamber brought up nine survivors at 1600. “I hadn’t said a word to anybody topside about this, I just came up—with no difficulty—with nine men,” said Badders. “Lt. Cdr. Swede Momsen was on the deck when I came up. He said, ‘You brought out too many men on this trip, but do it again,’ which I did.”
At 1850, the third bell rescued nine more, including Jud Bland. Later, McLees who made the first trip up, nuzzled up to him, reminding him that Bland had sold an old car to him on the installment plan. But the car was wrecked. “When I saw you come up in that bell,” he laughed, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to have to pay for that car.’”
With Nichols’s help, Admiral Cole prepared a list of all the survivors, unaware that William D. Boulton (Sea 1 c) had been omitted. The names were radioed to Portsmouth where they were released to the public. Boulton’s wife Rita in New York City collapsed twice, first when she was told her husband was missing, then a few hours later when the Navy announced he had been rescued. Jeanette Priester, wife of Squalus torpedoman Alfred Charles Priester, broke down at her home in Washington, D.C., when his name wasn’t among the survivors. “Al is gone. I know it. He is gone and my baby and I are alone,” she wailed. Across town, William Isaacs’s parents got the news he had survived. His father passed out and was put to bed. Weeping tears of joy, his mother told reporters, “They’ve taken my boy to the hospital. I don’t know how badly he is hurt, but I do thank God for answering my prayers and bringing him out of that dreadful thing alive.”
At the navy yard in Portsmouth, Mrs. Eugene Hoffman broke into uncontrollable sobs. Having maintained an around-the-clock vigil in the pressroom, she had just been informed her husband would not be coming back. Likewise, Mrs. John Chestnutt, who had paced the yard with her young son, broke down when news arrived. “It can’t be so!” she shrieked. “Last night I could see John’s body floating around in that water out there. I prayed and prayed that it wasn’t so.” Robert Gibbs’s wife, just arrived in Portsmouth after her long train ride, simply stared into space when her husband’s death was confirmed.
Nearby, Mary Jane Pierce, the young bride of Carol Nathan Pierce, rejoiced. “When he left me to go on this trip, I told him I wasn’t worried—that he was too ornery to die. Please don’t misunderstand,” she told reporters. “That’s just a kidding expression we use around my home town of Kansas City.” Mrs. Evelyn Powell, the attractive wife of Carlton Powell, beamed through her tears when he was listed among the rescued. “I had almost given up hope. This is the most wonderful thing in the world,” she sobbed in the pressroom.
At sea, the survivors of the first two bells gathered on the Coast Guard cutter Harriet Lane, which headed for the navy hospital in Portsmouth. All sixteen appeared to be in relatively good condition, though exhausted. When they arrived at dockside after an hour-long voyage, a guard of marines stood by as 150 spectators watched in silence. The men stepped ashore to awaiting ambulances, although two were carried on stretchers. The wife of one rushed to his side, sobbing, “Oh, you poor kid.” Two other women broke through the crowd and kissed one haggard-looking sailor as tears poured down their cheeks.
In the Atlantic, the McCann Rescue Chamber prepared to descend a fourth time to the deck of the Squalus for the last group—Naquin and seven others. At 1945, Lieutenant Doyle, Bryson, Persico, and others boarded quickly, Naquin following as the last to leave the ship. The two operators—Mihalowski and James H. McDonald—flooded the lower compartment and then blew the main ballast to give the bell upward buoyancy, which broke its seal with the Squalus. At 2014, the bell began its crawl up the downhaul cable. But at the 160-foot level, the chamber inexplicably slowed. “Something’s wrong,” McDonald reported to the surface. Reversing the motorized winch, the bell moved a few feet down and then stalled, stuck fast. All attempts to budge it failed.
On the Falcon, Momsen and McCann exchanged grave expressions, realizing the chamber would have to be pulled up from the Falcon. However, the downhaul cable to the Squalus held the bell in place. The nine men would have to be lowered to the ocean bottom long enough for a diver to descend to the Squalus to cut the cable. “Flood main ballast,” McCann ordered over the phone to McDonald. The bell started down with the survivors staring helplessly at the depth gauge. Amid assurances of their safety from the two operators, Naquin and his men said nothing. Clearly, they all were worried as the bell came to a halt, suspended off to the side of the Squalus and listing from the sideways tug of the downhaul cable.
On the Falcon, Walter H. Squire (CT) prepared to make the dangerous dive. The depth and darkness posed an incredible risk; Squire would have to concentrate amid the mind-numbing sea pressure. Down the grappling line from the Penacook he slid until he landed heavily on the submarine three minutes later. He could see the dull light of the rescue chamber nearby, and walked slowly under the beam of a head lamp to the escape hatch where, with difficulty, he managed to break the cable with wire cutters. The rescue chamber swung free like a pendulum, bouncing heavily off the side of the Squalus.
McDonald turned to the rattled survivors. “You fellows have really got something to talk about now. A collision between a rescue bell and a submarine at more than 200 feet! It isn’t everybody that can tell a story like that.”
The crewmen returned his smile but were worried nonetheless. “I was real scared,” recounted Persico. “We all were. I remember Bryson mumbling, ‘I should have followed my old man’s advice when he said to use a mule’s ass for a compass and you won’t get lost.’” But lost they seemed now, at the end of the Falcon’s uphaul cable. McCann ordered the ship’s winch to begin bringing up the chamber—slowly. The uphaul proceeded normally until a dozen men on the Falcon cried out, “Hold it!” The weight of the rescue chamber on the cable began snapping the steel strands, making them pop like firecrackers until just a single strand remained. Quickly, the chamber was lowered back to the bottom to prevent the cable from breaking altogether, thereby ripping out the air, light, and telephone hoses and thus suffocating the men inside. The bell landed with a thud on the green clay beside the Squalus.
Despite the gravity of the situation, the two operators seemed unconcerned, chatting with the survivors on a variety of subjects to take their minds off their predicament. “Here we are nice and steady on the bottom and we’ve got plenty of good air and lots of light and everything,” enthused Mihalowski. As they waited, the survivors laughed about Cravens’s crack to McDonald when the first bell arrived. “Say, Mac,” he said, “tell them topside to send us down a quart and I don’t care whether it’s a quart of soup, ice cream, coffee, or whisky.” To which another survivor had replied, “Make mine a blonde.”
Mihalowski divided some bars of chocolate and passed them around to the survivors. “You know what I want when I get up out of here? I want a steak,” said Bryson. McDonald repeated the request to the surface over the phone line as laughter broke out in the rescue bell. “Be sure and have it well done,” McDonald instructed over the Falcon loudspeaker. Another survivor quickly added, “I’ll have mine rare.” McDonald kept the conversation going, smacking his lips in exaggeration. “You fellows just think of that juicy steak waiting up there for you. Any particular cut of steak you want?”
Cravens broke into a grin, chuckling, “Just cripple a big, fat steer and let him run past me. I’ll get the part I want as he goes by.”
Up above, the rescue divers marveled at the merriment piped over the loudspeaker. Rescue chamber operator Orson Crandall commented, “That’s the kind of stuff that makes this navy go.”
Meanwhile, Cole, Momsen, and McCann discussed what to do. At 2149, diver Jesse E. Duncan (TMlc) was sent over the side with a new cable to attach to the top of the bell. On the way down, his suit caught on the frayed wire. He worked himself free and landed on top of the chamber six minutes into the dive. There his lines became entangled with those to the bell. Duncan struggled frantically to free himself. In the exertion, he nearly slipped off the bell, which would have caused him to plunge head-first onto the ocean floor. That would have killed him instantly, the enormous sea pressure forcing his entire body into his helmet. Now almost incoherent, Duncan was hoisted back to the surface and another diver was sent over the side. He, too, landed on the roof of the rescue bell but became fouled in the various lines. For 33 minutes, Edward Clayton squirmed to get free and then attempted to attach the new uphaul cable. But again, he got entangled in the lines. The subsequent exertion to free himself caused him to nearly black out. Immediately, Momsen ordered him back to the surface, and called off further attempts to attach the new cable.
There now remained only one possibility of rescuing the rescue bell. By carefully controlling the ballast, the operators could give the chamber just enough buoyancy that it would rise slowly, allowing the frayed cable to be pulled up by hand on the Falcon. As McCann relayed orders to blow ballast at 15-second intervals, six men on the Falcon gripped the uphaul line and eased it aboard. Ever so slowly, the bell moved higher until it surfaced at 0038 on Thursday May 25, 39 hours after the Squalus sinking.
The men, relieved and laughing, were greeted with handshakes from their rescuers plus plenty of hot towels and warm food. Naquin, the last out of the rescue bell, looked up at the beaming face of Momsen. “Welcome aboard, Oliver!” “I am damn glad to be aboard,” replied the captain. The survivors later fell into a deep sleep in the Falcon’s recompression chamber and were transported the following morning by the Harriet Lane to Portsmouth.
The rescue chamber made one more trip to the Squalus in the remote chance survivors still were alive in the after torpedo room. For Lt. Hal-ford R. Greenlee, industrial manager of the Portsmouth yard who stood by Cole throughout the rescue operations, it was his only hope that his son-in-law, Ensign Patterson, the Squalus’s assistant engineering officer and track star, might still be alive.
A diver was sent back down to the Squalus, carrying with him a new downhaul cable. Making his way along the deck, he finally reached the after torpedo room escape hatch and attached the cable. Badders and Mihalowski were chosen to make the descent in the bell, aware that it could be the most perilous of all: If the after torpedo room were dry, would poisonous CO2 trapped inside swiftly overcome Badders and Mihalowski? Or, if the room was flooded, would the seawater inside surge into the rescue chamber, drowning the two operators? The chamber made a normal descent, with Badders attaching the four bolts to hold the bell to the submarine. He then prepared to open the hatch.
“Well, Skee, stand by for anything,” Badders said to Mihalowski. “Here she goes.”
Turning the hand wheel on the hatch cover, Badders loosened it. It began to tremble from compressed air in the interior. A blast of air rushed into the bell before the hatch was entirely unsealed, followed by a geyser of water that quickly buried Badders to waist deep. Mihalowski reacted instantaneously, venting more compressed air into the bell from the surface to push the seawater back into the Squalus. It saved Badders’s life.
The two operators were certain now that the entire torpedo room was flooded. Yet, orders came down from the Falcon for Badders to lift the hatch cover and look inside—just to be sure. As the hatch was undogged, Badders stared down at the sight of a completely water-filled hold, thus confirming the death toll. There was nothing left to do now but return despondently to the surface.
In Portsmouth, a large crowd greeted the last group of survivors. Naquin, who reminded many of the stereotypical Hollywood sub captain with his tall, erect stature, waved but wouldn’t repeat the gesture at the urging of photographers. He insisted his men go ashore first. Then he stepped onto the gang plank and started toward his wife. The mother of two young children, she had been very tense, verging on collapse. Now, she worried that photographers would spoil what she felt should be a private moment. Motioning to the cameramen, she mouthed to him as he approached, “Don’t kiss me, don’t kiss me.” But he did so anyway. The captain waved off the ambulance ride, preferring instead to travel with his wife by sedan to the hospital.
There, the survivors, dressed in pajamas and bathrobes, faced reporters. Maness told of his heroics in closing the control room door which saved the 33 survivors. But in the end, all insisted each man had acted in accordance with his training. “There were no heroes,” said Nat Pierce. “A guy is trained to do something. And he does it or he dies.” Lieutenant Nichols said, “It was a living hell, but nobody made any dramatic speeches.” Naquin, dressed in a bathrobe like the others, unshaven and his hair disheveled, quietly discussed the rescue. “My officers and men performed 100 per cent. There was never any doubt in my mind at all that we would come up, especially after we heard from the Sculpin that the Falcon was under way. The Sculpin was over us first and did some grand work.” He added that, in his opinion, he and all the others owed their lives to Maness.
To honor twenty-six men entombed in the Squalus, the Brooklyn and Semmes sent up a twenty-one-gun salute which roared over the waters hiding the boat on May 30, Memorial Day. Simultaneously, the thirty-three survivors gathered at a tiny hillside cemetery in Kittery to pay homage. The navy yard chaplain led them in prayer as a shaft of sunlight broke through gray clouds, illuminating the spring greenery. A marine detachment fired three traditional volleys that echoed down the Piscataqua. A plaintive bugle played “Taps.”
Out on the Atlantic, Ruth De Sautel, 20, laid a wreath on the ocean above the Squalus in memory of Sherman Shirley of Little Rock, Arkansas.
It was the day they were to have been married.