National Affairs: Whole Truth

In a long, bare room in the Portsmouth Navy Yard Administration Building last week, four white-gloved officers of the U. S. Navy inquired into the sinking of the U. S. submarine Squalus (TIME, June 5). Before the board of inquiry sat the 33 survivors, including the lost boat's square-chinned, grave-eyed commander, Lieut. Oliver F. Naquin. Absent: the 26 who died.

Why did she sink? Oliver Naquin as well as the board tried to get at the answer as fast and finally as possible. By Navy practice, he was recorded as the defendant. This technical procedure was very real to him, for any evidence or finding that misconduct or negligence had sunk the Squalus would sink him.

Luckily for Oliver Naquin, the Navy already knew that: 1) sea water pouring through an open air-intake valve flooded the submarine's rear compartments, and 2) signal lights indicated that this valve was properly closed when the Squalus' last dive began.

Should Lieut. Naquin and his fellow officers have known that something was wrong in time to halt the dive?

Ten seconds after the first diving signal was given, officers at key posts throughout the boat reported all rigged for diving. The Squalus was 50 feet under the surface before "a hazy voice" from the engine room telephoned: "Take her up. The induction [main air valve] is open," and seconds later: "The engine room is flooded."

Weeks before the Squalus went down, the guilty valve failed to open properly but had never failed to close. It was disassembled, supposedly put in perfect order. On the Squalus and her sister boats, this valve is outside the hull, near the conning tower and invisible to those inside, who must depend on signal lights to know whether it is open or closed. The electrical signal system could have lied "if the mechanism was out of order."

Should anyone have anticipated such an accident, devised means to prevent it?

In September 1920, the 5-5 sank off the Delaware Capes. Evidence was that she, too, was flooded through the pipes which supply a subrftarine's Diesel engines and crew with air when on the surface. (Undersea, battery-driven motors propel a submarine, stored air supplies the crew.) A Board of Inquiry thereafter recommended steps to find out whether an automatic, interlocking control could be developed so that when air valves were open, the ballast tanks which weight a submarine with water and make it dive could not be filled.

Last week Captain William R. Munroe of the Squalus board asked Witness Naquin what would have happened if such a device had been in use. Slowly and damningly, Oliver Naquin replied: "I believe such a device could have prevented this tragedy."

Just whom he damned was not made clear last week. Naval specialists lay down the specifications for submarines. The prosperous and secretive Electric Boat Co. builds some in its yards at Groton, Conn., consults closely on the construction of others in Navy Yards. The Navy found that operations of the air valve and ballast tanks could be interlocked for safety. But it also found that the machinery would be so bulky as to decrease a submarine's combat value, therefore decided (as usual in submarine designing) that military necessity came first.