Heroes: Dead Dogfish

• Share

A dozen years ago submarine disasters were a nightmare to the Navy. Between 1919 and 1927 eight U. S. submarines went to the bottom and in few cases were any of the crew rescued. Last week the nightmare returned but in not quite so bad a form: more than half the men were saved.

Men on the Bottom. Promptly at 7:30 one clear, crisp morning last week the U. S. submarine Squalus, (rhymes with jail us), Lieutenant Oliver F. Naquin commanding, put out from the Navy yard at Portsmouth, N. H., to practice fast dives. Besides her commander she carried four other officers, three civilian observers and 51 enlisted men. None of the 59 was unusually nervous, although the Squalus had not passed the testing stage and only two weeks before had been stranded under water for an hour with a fouled blowout valve. Newest and one of the finest of the Navy's submarines (she was commissioned in March, cost $5,000,000 to build), the Squalus was named for the dogfish, which dives fast and swims deep.

At 8:40, five miles off the tiny Isles of Shoals, the Squalus, driving ahead on her Diesel engines, prepared to dive. Machinist's Mate Alfred G. Prien was at the controls.

The diving signal came. Prien began spinning his controls. Air roared from opened ballast tank vents, water rushed in to take its place. On the control board—called "the Christmas tree" because of its numerous red and green lights—lights flashed, showing Prien that the air induction valves, which carried air to the engine rooms, were closed and watertight. Down planed the Squalus. As the depth gauge showed nearly 50 ft., she began to level off.

Through the telephone a voice barked into Lieutenant Naquin's ear that water was pouring into the engine room. The lights, all green, indicated that the air valves were shut. They were not all shut. Under the weight of water rushing in astern, the Squalus tilted bow up at a 45-degree angle, hesitated, shivered, slowly sank stern-first toward the bottom. The lights went out.

At the bulkhead door between control and after-battery rooms stood Electrician's Mate Lloyd Maness, whom his shipmates called "a swell little guy." As the Squalus sank Maness tugged at the heavy door, which, because of the ship's angle, had to be swung uphill. His job was to shut that door. He had it almost closed when voices from the rapidly filling battery room screamed: "Keep it open! Keep it open!" Maness let the door fall back, counted five men who struggled through. Then as the water rushed toward the door, he swung it shut, clamped down the watertight screw, and turned his back. He had done his duty, had locked 26 men in the flooded compartments. One of them was Sherman Shirley, who was to have been married the next Sunday, with Maness as best man.