The Terrible Hours

by Peter Maas

  Never was the fact that the Penacook had hooked the Squalus so close to the forward escape hatch more crucial. Guided by a small battery-run light on his helmet, he bent to his task. He tried to unshackle the cable from the ring on the hatch. And failed. He tried again in vain. Momsen could hear his labored breathing. “I can’t unshackle the wire,” Squire gasped. “It’s too taut.”

  “Stay where you are,” Momsen instructed. “We will send you wire cutters.”

  Once armed with the big shears, Squire groped for the cable and found it. Staving off nitrogen narcosis, he kept repeating, “I must cut the wire.” On the surface, Momsen listened to him grunt with exertion. “I have the cutters around the wire,” he was saying to himself. The seconds passed. Then, with his strength ebbing, Squire chopped through the cable. “I have cut the wire,” he announced.

  “That is fine,” Momsen said. “We are bringing you up.”

  As Squire was lifted off the deck, he could see the chamber swinging free, actually brushing the side of the sub’s conning tower.

  On the Falcon, Momsen allowed himself his first easy breath since the reel had jammed. With the chamber unshackled, it could be hoisted to the surface on the retrieving-cable winch. From inside the chamber, McDonald sang out their progress, “We are at two hundred and ten feet. Going up smoothly.”

  The ascent continued at a steady five feet per minute.

  On the crowded fantail of the Falcon, everyone watched as the cable came out of the sea. Suddenly, before their horrified eyes, its individual steel strands began to unravel. The strain was too great. Somewhere along the line, they had parted.

  Momsen was dumbfounded. But unbeknownst to him, he was not working with a single length of cable. It had been too short and an extra piece had been spliced on. Overall, the cable still should have been strong enough, but it was actually made up of a bunch of separate strands that were wound together. Clamps used in the splicing had slipped, and this in turn produced an uneven pull on the strands. Under the tension they were now being subjected to, Momsen thought, they must have popped like firecrackers down below.

  As soon as he spotted the cable unraveling, he issued a stop order for the winch hoisting the chamber. While he had been apprehensive about a breakdown of some sort, he had not counted on one mishap after another. But there was no time to spare fretting over this. McDonald had last placed the chamber at a depth of 195 feet. To save what was left of the cable, Momsen ordered him to flood his main ballast tank.

  The chamber slowly dropped to the bottom.

  “What’s your depth?” Momsen asked.

  “The gauge reads two hundred and thirty-two feet,” McDonald replied.

  Momsen and Allen McCann were in instant and absolute agreement as to the next step. A diver would have to go down to attach a new retrieving cable.

  It was now nine-thirty. And the eight remaining survivors of the Squalus disaster, instead being readied for their transfer back to Portsmouth, were right back where they started—on the ocean floor.

  They sat in a tight circle on the auxiliary ballast cans. Besides the two officers, Naquin and Doyle, there were Charles Kuney, who had manned the control room battle phone, and Allen Bryson, the forward battery talker, neither of whom would ever forget the awful plea to surface they had heard from the after compartments. In the chamber with them were Donny Persico, the seaman who just missed being crushed by the dummy torpedo that went wild as the sub was sinking, and Carol Pierce, who had futilely sent thousands of pounds of pressurized air into the ballast tanks. There were, finally, Gene Cravens, who had fired off rocket after rocket during their long wait, and Charles Powell, the radioman whom Naquin had kept with him till the end in case additional hammered messages on the hull became necessary between rescue trips.

  They were in no immediate physical danger. The chamber was unheated and they still suffered cruelly from the cold. But they had light and a continuous flow of fresh air, and communications with the Falcon were excellent.

  Even signs of psychological stress were absent. All through the early phase of the ascent and the subsequent attempts to unsnarl the jammed reel, they had remained silent. Now, as they waited for deliverance from the bottom, Momsen caught snatches of banter.

  When the chamber, free of the down-haul cable, bumped into the side of the conning tower, McDonald had said, “Hey, that’s a Ripley Believe It or Not. A collision between a rescue chamber and a sub more than two hundred feet down. Can’t beat that.”

  Mihalowski broke off pieces from a couple of chocolate bars he had and passed them around.

  “How about a steak?” Kuney said.

  “That’s for topside. I’ll call up your order. How do you want it?”

  “Well done.”

  “I want mine rare,” Pierce said.

  “You got it,” McDonald said. Then, to Momsen’s amazement, he heard him lead them in a rendition of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

  ONCE SQUIRE WAS back on board, another diver, Torpedoman First Class Jesse Duncan, was lowered into the pitch-black sea to hook up a new retrieving cable. But as he followed the stranded cable down, he ran into major trouble. When he was just above the chamber, the lines from it and his own became fouled. The effort to untangle himself took every ounce of energy he could muster. Every time he tried, the new cable he was clutching in his right hand would jerk him up. Now his whole arm seemed paralyzed.

  “I have a problem,” he said. Duncan was exhaling more carbon dioxide—“smoke,” the divers called it—than the ventilating system in his helmet could handle.

  “Talk to me,” Momsen quietly said.

  “I . . . I . . . I don’t . . . I,” he mumbled. On the verge of passing out, he had become incoherent.

  He had to be hauled up—and fast. He was rushed into the Falcon’s recompression chamber where he would be put under the same ocean pressure he faced below and then brought out of it in easy stages.

  But first he managed to pass on hair-raising news. The break in the cable was worse than anyone imagined. All that remained intact was a single strand of steel about the thickness of ordinary string.

  The prospect of sending down another diver who might end up the same way was harrowing. But the condition of the retrieving cable made it imperative. “We’re just going to have to risk it,” Momsen told Cole.

  The assignment went to Metalsmith First Class Ed Clayton. To give him a fighting chance, Momsen ordered a thousand-watt underwater lamp lowered separately. During Clayton’s descent, however, the lamp got caught in the stranded section of the old cable. He kept going down anyhow until he arrived on top of the rescue chamber. Time after time, he attempted to attach the new cable. There was light coming from the chamber’s eyeports, but not enough to really see what he was doing.

  Still, in an extraordinary display of determination, Clayton refused to give up. Squire, for instance, had spent a total of eight minutes on the bottom cutting the down-haul cable. Squire was down fifteen minutes trying to do what Clayton was now attempting. Finally, after thirty-three minutes, Clayton’s own lines were tangling. His hands encased in rubberized canvas gloves were so cold that he had no feeling in them. The despair in his voice was increasingly evident. He spoke haltingly. Momsen sensed that he was near to blacking out.

  “I’m bringing you up,” he said.

  For Momsen, to send down still a third diver was out of the question. As it was, there had been two dangerously close calls with men of matchless ability trying to connect a new cable. If they couldn’t do it, nobody could. Yet somehow those cornered in the rescue chamber had to be saved. Nor was there any time to lose. There was a limit to what their nerves could withstand. The weather, while not getting worse, wasn’t getting any better.

  After discussing the foreboding situation with Cole and McCann, Momsen decided on a last-ditch, all-or-nothing strategy. “It’s a gamble, but we don’t have any choice,” he told Cole. The plan he unfolded was breathtaking.

  They could no longer
use the Falcon’s unyielding winch to hoist the chamber. A sudden swell that sent the ship rolling despite her five-point mooring could instantly snap that one remaining strand of wire. What had happened to the marker-buoy line was a stark reminder to them all. If that occurred again, the chamber with its human cargo and operators would be irretrievably lost.

  So Momsen instead would direct the chamber’s operators to blow ballast so that it remained ever so slightly below neutral buoyancy. That way, the strain on the cable would be minimal and, despite its damaged state, it could be used to haul the chamber up. The catch was that the hauling had to be done by hands sensitive to the Falcon’s stability.

  And it would require exquisite timing.

  Once Cole’s consent was obtained, Momsen got on the phone to McDonald. He explained the scenario and told him, “Whenever you get the word, I want you to blow ballast exactly as long as I tell you. If you gain positive buoyancy, let us know immediately.”

  It was, literally, down to the wire. Ten men took hold of the cable, Momsen in front, McCann right behind him. Tensely watching officers and sailors crowded the starboard side of the Falcon. Binoculars were at a premium aboard the cruiser Brooklyn and the other ships in the rescue fleet.

  At precisely midnight, Momsen had the slack in the retrieving cable drawn tight. He ordered McDonald to blow ballast for fifteen seconds.

  There was no response from the chamber.

  He called for fifteen seconds more.

  Still, there was nothing.

  It was absolutely silent on the Falcon’s deck save for the sound of Momsen’s voice. His only guide was the strain on the cable that he felt through his fingers. If he miscalculated and the chamber blew too much ballast, it would hurtle to the surface with every likelihood of splitting itself wide open as it smashed into the hull of the Falcon. And if he did not lighten it sufficiently, the single strand holding the chamber would part, sending it tumbling back down, its fragile air hoses broken, the lives of the men inside snuffed out.

  For the third time, Momsen told McDonald, “Blow ballast fifteen seconds.” He knew he was edging perilously close to positive buoyancy. But the chamber still did not move when he ordered a tentative tug on the cable. Another fifteen seconds of blowing main ballast would leave it half-empty.

  He ordered it. Afterward, the strain on the cable seemed to ease. At Momsens command, everyone in the hauling crew braced himself on the deck and heaved up. The cable slowly came over the side. The chamber at last had begun to rise. One minute later, it had risen four feet. It was now off the bottom, suspended at 228 feet.

  The silence within the chamber was punctuated only by McDonald’s acknowledgment of each order from Momsen to blow ballast and then the rush of air as it was done. He and John Mihalowski, his usual broad grin gone, worked in swift, cool tandem in the cramped space of the chamber’s upper compartment as they operated the levers controlling its buoyancy—and their fate.

  After four minutes had gone by, McDonald reported, “Depth gauge reads two hundred feet.”

  “What’s your buoyancy?” Momsen wanted to know.

  “For some reason, we’re a little heavy,” McDonald said.

  Momsen ordered ten seconds of blowing ballast.

  On the surface the swells were running six feet. The men hauling in the cable always went with the motion of the Falcon, letting it out a bit whenever she rose, pulling in when she dipped. Foot by foot the chamber continued up.

  It was bitingly cold on deck, but Momsen could feel the sweat trickling down his back as again and again he and his men brought in more cable.

  Suddenly a rogue swell swept in. A lookout spotted it just in time. If the chamber had been connected to the winch, that would have been the end of everything.

  “We are at seventy-five feet,” McDonald reported.

  Then the moment arrived that Momsen had been waiting for. Out of the ocean came the break in the cable, the water dripping from it glistening in the Falcon’s floodlights. He watched it inch toward him. Squire had been right. Only a single strand of wire was left. The temptation to give one last yank, to get this all over with, was almost irresistible. And then at last it was over. A deckhand was able to get a clamp around the cable below the break.

  The rest was simple. Steadily now they hauled the cable up and saw the chamber bob to the surface right next to the Falcon. The long journey home had been completed.

  The time was 0038, May 25. Almost to the minute, it was thirty-nine hours since the Squalus had begun her test dive.

  The last survivor of the disaster to climb out of the chamber was Naquin. Momsen stood by as he was helped onto the Falcon’s deck.

  “Welcome aboard, Oliver,” Momsen delightedly said.

  “I’m damned glad to be aboard, believe me,” Naquin replied, shaking his hand.

  Admiral Cole took Momsen aside and told him in an emotion-filled voice, “Swede, a ‘well done’ doesn’t begin to express my feelings.”

  IN PORTSMOUTH, HANSON W. Baldwin, covering the story for the New York Times, filed his lead for the late city edition. An Annapolis graduate himself, Baldwin wrote, “Man won a victory from the sea early this morning.”

  16

  IT APPEARED UNLIKELY that anyone was still alive in the after compartments. Naquin had reiterated his belief to Admiral Cole that all the compartments aft of the control room were flooded, save for the possible exception of the after torpedo room. And every attempt to establish communications with men who might have taken refuge there had failed.

  Still, an attempt had to be made to resolve the question. When Captain William Amsden, whom Cole had placed in charge at Portsmouth, announced that rescue operations had been called off for the night after the chamber’s fourth trip, outcries of protest from the wives and relatives were immediate. Amsden hastily denied that this meant the Navy officially considered the men lost.

  After discussing the situation with Momsen, Cole dispatched a message to Portsmouth: “Will resume rescue operations on after part of Squalus.” New down-haul and retrieving cables had been installed overnight on the rescue chamber. Then the Falcon had to pick up and relay her moorings to position herself over the sub’s after torpedo room. This time, though, there was little wind, the sun was shining brightly and the ocean surface was glassy smooth.

  Momsen had yet to send down officers as divers or chamber operators because he wanted to demonstrate that enlisted personnel were fully capable of doing the job. But the procedure would be different for this operation. It was perilous beyond the call of duty with no certainty that there was anybody left to rescue. For the same reason, whether officers or men, he would only accept volunteers.

  The first step was to move the descending line aft so that it could be used to hook up the chamber’s new down-haul cable. It would be a long, hard dive for Lieutenant Julian Morrison, who headed up the Falcon’s hard hats. Morrison was a particular favorite of Momsen’s. As a measure of his regard, he had nicknamed Morrison “Joe Boats” because of the way he took to the sea.

  Morrison went into the water in the early afternoon. It took him three minutes to land on the deck of the Squalus. He cut the heavy manila line from the sub’s port railing, wrapped several turns around one arm and started walking toward the stern. As he passed the conning tower, he reported good visibility in his silent world, perhaps as much as fifty feet. His voice was surprisingly clear and calm despite the 108 pounds of pressure per square inch to which he was being subjected. He notified Momsen that he had located the after torpedo-room hatch. He also observed that the marker buoy there had remained nestled in place. He retraced his steps some fifteen feet forward to tie the descending line to the railing.

  It had been going so well that Momsen planned to send the down-haul cable directly to Morrison for shackling to eliminate another dive. But the pressure on the young officer was beginning to affect him faster than he realized. Morrison, under the impression that he was securing the line, suddenly realized that he was simp
ly waving his arms up and down, accomplishing nothing. He pulled himself together on sheer willpower and began to knot what he believed to be two half-hitches.

  “I have tied the line,” he said.

  Then Morrison momentarily blacked out. When he came to, he was astonished to see that instead of the two half-hitches he intended, he had made turn after turn on the railing and followed them with a series of clove hitches before tying the half-hitches. As he puzzled over this, he vaguely heard Momsen saying to him, “Joe Boats, stand by to come up. We are bringing you up.”

  But in his confusion Morrison went under the deck railing before he mounted the descending line and waited to be lifted up.

  “You are fouled,” Momsen urgently told him. “Get back on the submarine.”

  Morrison somehow sensed what was wrong, ducked back under the railing and as he later dictated to a recording yeoman on the Falcon, “faintly remembered starting up again.”

  The next attempt to hook up the down-haul cable was a complete washout. A warrant officer, Gunner William Baron, reached the Squalus, but when Momsen tried to speak to him there was no answer. He was hauled up forthwith. Anyone whose ears have failed to adjust to atmospheric change during an airplane landing has some conception of the agonizing pain that Baron, at about eight times surface pressure, was experiencing when he could not clear them.

  The third dive, by Boatswain’s Mate First Class James Baker, left everyone’s nerves ragged. On the Squalus, once he got his bearings, he called for the down-haul cable. As soon as he had the shackle in hand, he pulled it aft with him. But Baker did not notice that the cable had looped around the descending line just above the railing, and the shackle was jerked from his grasp. He tried to follow it back to the descending line, but when he got there it had disappeared. As he had done with Sibitsky the day before, Momsen quickly reassured him: “Don’t worry, we’ll send it right back to you. Make sure there is no obstruction over the hatch.”