How the Men on a Navy Submarine Survived After Sinking 240 Feet in the Atlantic

Trapped 240 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, Lt. Oliver Naquin could not ensure the crew of the USS Squalus that they would survive this catastrophe.

Instead, Naquin -- commander of the Squalus, one of the most advanced submarines the U.S. Navy had produced at that time -- worked to save his men. Blankets were provided for the shivering service members as Naquin instructed them to move as little as possible to conserve air. Naquin also directed that a distress rocket and telephone buoy be launched to the surface, hopefully to attract the attention of nearby ships.

The commander stayed calm during those frantic moments when it was so easy to think the worst.

“What kept flashing through my mind was the fact my mother had taken out an insurance policy on me,” Danny Persico, one of the trapped submariners, recalled in a 1988 article by the U.S. Naval Institute. “And there was a clause that it would be null and void if I died in a submarine or diving accident.”

How the Squalus Flooded

As chronicled in the documentary “Saga of the Submarine Squalus,” the Squalus had undergone 18 previous test dives without incident. There was no reason to expect the 19th on May 23, 1939, to be any different.

Conducted roughly 12 miles off the coast of New Hampshire, the trial was intended to gauge the Squalus’ ability to submerge at high speeds. When the sub leveled off at roughly 60 feet below the surface, it started to flood because an air induction valve failed to close entirely, according to the documentary. As water entered the 310-foot-long, 27-foot-wide sub, Naquin commanded that all watertight hatches be closed. It was too late, though, to prevent the engine room and other rear compartments from flooding.

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Twenty-six of the 59 men onboard were located in those areas and died. A quick-thinking sailor prevented a greater tragedy, at least for the time being, by closing a door against the impending waters, The New York Times reported at the time. For the 33 still alive, however, their chances of survival remained, at best, uncertain.

“No submarine crew had ever been rescued beyond 60 feet,” the narrator of “Saga of the Submarine Squalus” noted.

When the Squalus was reported overdue to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Rear Adm. Cyrus Cole dispatched its sister submarine, the Sculpin, to its last known site to investigate. A coordinating error, though, placed the Sculpin five miles off its intended destination. With every second precious, the rescuers needed a bit of good fortune to compensate for lost time.

Good fortune arrived when the Squalus released five more red smoke distress rockets. A crew member on the Sculpin fortuitously saw the final rocket, allowing them to redirect the sub in that direction.

How the Squalus’ Crew Was Saved

The Sculpin was not the only Navy or Coast Guard vessel involved in the rescue mission, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The USS Falcon was among the others, and it played a pivotal role because it carried onboard a device that would save the trapped submariners.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Momsen first conceived of a rescue chamber in 1925 when a submarine accident killed 34, the U.S. Naval Undersea Museum reported. Lt. Cmdr. Allan McCann refined Momsen’s design, and what became known as the McCann rescue chamber, or diving bell, was brought to where the Squalus sank.

The steel chamber was 8 feet wide, 10 feet tall and could accommodate two operators and up to nine other people at a time. The chamber could descend at least 300 feet, where a diver could link a cable to a submarine’s access hatch. A rubber gasket beneath the rescue chamber allowed for an airtight seal over that hatch before it returned to the surface.

The Squalus disaster gave the Navy its first chance to test the McCann rescue chamber live.

After a tugboat borrowed an anchor from the Sculpin to hook a railing near the Squalus’ forward access hatch, a diver was sent down to hook the chamber’s cable to the distressed submarine. As the diver walked along the Squalus’ deck, several men -- who, at that point, had been confined inside the hull for more than a day -- struck the hull with hammers to alert him that they were alive, the documentary recounted.

With Momsen overseeing the rescue effort on-site, the chamber was now ready to descend. When operators John Milakowski and Walter Harman reached and then entered the Squalus, a group of relieved and appreciative submariners greeted them and willingly accepted hot coffee and pea soup, along with other items.

Retrieving all 33 survivors required the chamber to make four trips between the Squalus and the Falcon, each one taking about two hours. The rescue operation lasted two days, but in the end, the beleaguered survivors couldn’t be more thankful.

“Boy, was I weak,” machinist Gavin Coyne told The New York Times for a story published three days after the incident. “I couldn’t talk when someone asked me my name, and I almost couldn’t walk. Well, I got out [of the chamber] and was feeling tough, and somebody gave me a cup of coffee. There wasn’t no sugar or cream, but boy, was that nectar!”

Medals of Honor Awarded to the Squalus Rescuers

Many of those involved in rescuing and salvaging the Squalus were recognized for their efforts. While Navy divers William Badders, Orson Crandall, James McDonald and John Mihalowski received the Medal of Honor, 46 others were awarded the Navy Cross, and Cole earned the Distinguished Service Medal for leading the whole operation.

Naquin didn’t need any outside recognition. It was enough that the Squalus survivors credited him for his outstanding leadership during such disastrous circumstances, and in return, Naquin deflected praise back to his crew in media reports from the time.

His words about his men became so synonymous with Naquin that what he told accident investigators about the Squalus’ crew is immortalized on his tombstone at Arlington National Cemetery.

“My officers and men acted instinctively and calmly,” said Naquin, who rose to become a rear admiral during a 30-year Navy career. “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.”

What Became of the Squalus?

After spending an estimated $4.3 million (nearly $100 million in today’s dollars) to build the Squalus, the War Department decided to raise the sub. The four-stage process started on May 26, 1939, and was not completed until Sept. 13.

The Squalus went on to be recommissioned as the USS Sailfish, with some submariners serving on both vessels. The Sailfish served during World War II and is credited with sinking 12 Japanese ships, including an escort carrier that was carrying 20 prisoners from a destroyed U.S. sub, as told in “Saga of the Submarine Squalus.”

That sub was the Sculpin, the sister sub of the Squalus, the documentary reported.

The Sailfish was decommissioned in December 1945 after receiving nine battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation during its time in the Pacific, according to the Pacific War Museum.

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