The message received by the Flier indicated a southbound convoy in the South China Sea. In an attempt to intercept the convoy, the Flier cranked up to fifteen knots, transiting Balabac Strait on the surface. Crowley stationed himself on the bridge, along with an increased number of lookouts.
At 3:00 P.M., 13 August, the Flier passed the heavily wooded island of Bancoran, some nineteen miles to the northeast, and entered the recommended route to Nasubata Channel. After sunset the sky became totally overcast, and the crew was unable to get a fix on any stars; instead, bearings were taken on the peaks of Balabac Island and Palawan Island to determine the Flier’s position. At 6:00 P.M. the submarine appeared to be on course about fifty miles from Balabac Island. The crew began taking depth soundings, and these coincided with their chart. At 9:00 P.M. they made radar contact with Comiran Island, some 16,000 yards away, and then sighted the island half an hour later. The Flier throttled back to five knots to confirm its position relative to the surrounding islands of Balabac, Comiran, and Roughton.
With its position apparently confirmed, the Flier picked up speed to seventeen knots. Crowley ordered Lieutenant William Reynolds and Ensign Phil Mayer to the bridge as extra lookouts. There were now nine men topside, including the skipper.7 In normal circumstances there would be three lookouts (in addition to the skipper, officer of the deck, and junior officer of the deck). The navigator might also come topside from time to time to take sightings of their position.8
At 10:00 P.M., with Comiran Island believed to be approximately 6,700 yards away, things fell apart. As Crowley later described the events, he heard a “terrific explosion” that seemed to come from the Flier’s starboard side near the forward battery compartment. The force of the blast “dazed” Crowley, and when he “came to,” he was clinging to the target bearing transmitter rail on the after part of the bridge. Crowley's first impulse was to move forward to sound the collision alarm, located above the conning tower hatch, but he never reached the alarm. Water swept over the bridge, and the submarine sank with “astounding rapidity.” Crowley estimated that within twenty to thirty seconds the submarine was totally submerged. When Crowley later relived the horror of those moments, various sensations colored his memory. There was the overpowering smell of fuel oil and the fierce sound of air venting through the conning tower hatch. Worst of all were the screams of men from below as the vessel flooded.9
James Liddell, the executive officer, was in the conning tower when he heard a “muffled” explosion. He had just moved under the conning tower hatch so that he could talk to Crowley on the bridge. An eruption of air hurled him from the conning tower to the bridge with enough force to rip his shirt off. The sudden burst of air had presumably been caused by the massive ingress of seawater through the submarine's breached hull. As Liddell tried to move aft to the cigarette deck, he was in water up to his waist; then, before he knew it, he was swimming for his life. In hindsight, he was surprised that he had not been dragged under as the submarine sank.10
Earl Baumgart was sucked underwater as the submarine sank. He had been standing lookout above the Flier’s A-frame, with about twenty minutes of his watch left, when disaster struck. Suddenly he was in the water being pulled down into the vortex of the sinking submarine.11
Ensign Alvin E. Jacobson was also pulled fifteen or twenty feet underwater by the sinking craft. He struggled to the surface, imagining that the submarine's screws were coming straight at him. Only an hour earlier he had replaced Ensign Teddy Baehr as junior officer of the deck. From his station on the after-cigarette deck, Jacobson had been admiring the silhouette of the surrounding mountains when he got the first inkling of disaster. A tremendous gush of air burst through the conning tower hatch, and Lieutenant William Reynolds was blown back into him; Reynolds complained of a pain in his side. Jacobson's initial impression was that an air bank had let loose, but then the boat started to sink. He remembered seeing Ensign Phil Mayer dive over the side. Mayer had been in the conning tower manning the torpedo data computer, and Charles Pope was at the sonar. They both pulled themselves up by the periscope to escape. The air thrusting up from beneath the control room pushed them free of the submarine, and the next thing they knew, they were in the water. Others trying to exit the submarine apparently got caught up on the guardrail of the signal bridge.12
Miraculously, fourteen men made it into the water, mainly those who had been topside at the time of the explosion. This was consistent with similar submarine disasters caused by collisions or open hatches and valves. At the time, the most recent documented case was the sinking of the USS R-12, which went down on 12 June 1943. The vintage submarine, originally commissioned in 1919, was being used mainly for training purposes. While operating on the surface off Key West in the Florida Keys, the forward battery compartment began to flood. The submarine sank in less than a minute, taking most of the forty-eight-man crew with it, 600 feet to the bottom. There were only six survivors, and they had all been on the bridge, including the skipper, Edward L. Shelby.13
Although captains going down with their ships is part of naval tradition, in the case of the sinking of a surfaced submarine, the skipper was likely to survive, simply because he would probably be directing operations from the bridge. When the British submarine Umpire went down on 19 July 1941 after being rammed at night by a trawler, the commander was among the few survivors. Similarly, after the S-26 collided in the dark with an escort in January 1942, the commander, Earl C. Hawk, was one of only three survivors. Later in the war the skipper of USS Tang, Richard O’Kane, was among the small number of survivors after his submarine was sunk by a torpedo.14
The last moments of the seventy-two men who rode the Flier to the bottom are unknown. It may be that most, if not all, drowned immediately after the submarine began flooding. Although Crowley's initial account is ambiguous on this point, it seems unlikely that he managed to sound the collision alarm. The steady “bong, bong” of the alarm signaled the closing of all watertight doors between the submarine's compartments. In December 1944 he told journalists that after the explosion he recalled “thinking that I should rush forward and sound the collision alarm. But water was pouring up my ankles and I knew there wasn't time.”15 Of course, even without the alarm, the men were trained to react instinctively and seal their compartments in the event of such an emergency. Depending on the angle of the boat, though, the solid steel doors could be difficult to pull shut.16
Back in 1925 the S-51 was accidentally rammed by the coastal steamer City of Rome while running on the surface of Long Island Sound. The collision tore a huge hole in the submarine at the level of the battery room, and the S-51 sank in less than sixty seconds. Only three men, all on the bridge at the time of the collision, were eventually rescued. Charles “Swede” Momsen, skipper of the S-1, arrived on the scene to assist, but it proved to be a futile effort. Momsen consoled himself that those on S-51 had died quickly, but regrettably, Momsen would be proved wrong after the S-51 was salvaged and taken to the New York Navy Yard dry dock the following year. When the bodies were exhumed, it became apparent that some of the men had died under horrific circumstances, trying to claw their way through the submarine's steel hull.17
The helplessness of men trapped in a sunken submarine was underlined a few years later with the loss of the S-4. In 1928 the submarine collided with a Coast Guard ship near Provincetown and sank in 100 feet of water. Divers could hear the tapping of survivors on the inside of the hull, but they were unable to raise the submarine or pump in fresh air. The entire crew was lost.18
Incidents such as these inspired Momsen's efforts to develop submarine rescue techniques. As noted earlier, the Momsen lung was used for training at the Submarine School at New London. Much later, in 1959, it would be proved that men could make a “buoyant ascent” of more than 300 feet without the use of a breathing apparatus, but at the time, Momsen's contraption was considered a submariner's best chance of making it to the surface. Momsen and Allan McCann also developed the McCann r
escue chamber for men trapped below the surface. In a much publicized rescue in May 1939, Momsen personally supervised the retrieval of thirty-three survivors from the USS Squalus after it sank in 240 feet of water off Portsmouth, New Hampshire.19
Momsen continued to be an active force in the submarine service during World War II. At the time of the Japanese attack he was serving as an operations officer at Pearl Harbor. He worked on improving American torpedoes under Charles Lockwood and was awarded a Legion of Merit for his efforts. As commander of Submarine Squadron Two, he led the first American submarine wolf pack in late 1943. The wolf pack, a coordinated attack group, sank three enemy ships and garnered Momsen a Navy Cross.20
Although men were trained to use the Momsen lung at Submarine School, many did not take it seriously. William Godfrey Jr. thought that the idea of escaping a sunken submarine was “for the birds.”21 Decorated skipper Slade Cutter stated that training with the Momsen lung may have provided “a little sense of security,” but “out there in the Pacific with the bottom at 2,000 fathoms, you don't worry much about Momsen lungs.”22
A fatalistic attitude often prevailed in the submarine service: if a submarine went down, the chance of survival was remote. Many men apparently shared the attitude of British admiral Max Horton: “There is no margin for mistakes in submarines. You are either alive or dead.”23 To an extent, this could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the USS Razorback, for example, the submarine's escape trunk, designed to allow four men at a time to exit the submarine using Momsen lungs, was used to store potatoes.24
When the USS Tang sank by the stern in 180 feet of water on 25 October 1944, it became apparent that many of the trapped survivors had no idea how to use a Momsen lung. In the push to provide crews for the burgeoning submarine force, standards at the Submarine School had slipped. Some of the sailors on the Tang had made training escapes from a depth of only 10 feet; they also wasted valuable time debating how to operate the escape trunk. Despite these handicaps, five crewmen proved that escape from a sunken submarine was possible. They joined the four survivors who had been topside when the Tang sank, and they were all picked up by the Japanese and remained prisoners until the end of the war.25
It is doubtful that any of those on the Flier had the opportunity to use the lifesaving measures that Momsen dedicated so much of his career to developing. If Crowley was correct about the depth of the water where the Flier sank, those on board would have died before it hit the bottom. Any of the submarine's compartments that were sealed would have imploded under the tremendous pressure of the sea.
Assuming that the Flier sank in shallower water, survival for any significant time was still unlikely. The speed with which the Flier sank suggests that the flooding was widespread and catastrophic. If any of the Flier crew did manage to close the watertight doors of their compartments, however, they faced slow atmospheric poisoning. Flooding in the submarine compressed the already restricted air supply, and with each man exhaling the equivalent of a cubic foot of carbon dioxide every hour, it would not take long before the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded the critical level of 3 percent.26 As the concentration of carbon dioxide increased, the men would experience symptoms of blurred vision, dizziness, headaches, and spasms. Their ability to concentrate and reason would quickly be compromised.
The presence of chlorine gas from the submarine's batteries further minimized the chances of survival. If Crowley was correct that the initial explosion occurred near the forward battery compartment, chlorine gas may have been released immediately. The gas, with a bleach-like odor, affected respiration and, in heavy concentrations, caused tissue damage and suffocation.27 So although it is unknown whether there was anyone left alive on the Flier to attempt an escape, the odds were heavily stacked against him.
10
Cause and Effect
Why did the Flier sink with such destructive force? The extent to which John Crowley pondered this question in the desperate hours and days that followed is unknown, but by the time he filed his “survival report,” he stated: “It is my opinion that a mine was in contact with the hull just below the waterline at the time of the explosion.”1 There were, of course, other possibilities. It is intriguing that neither Earl Baumgart nor Alvin Jacobson specifically mentioned an explosion in their firsthand narratives. Jacobson referred only to “a terrific gush of air” coming through the conning tower.2 Baumgart stated vaguely, “I guess we hit a mine in that strait.”3
Given the Flier’s mishap at Midway, it is tempting to speculate that the submarine may have hit a reef or other submerged hazard. The waters in the vicinity of Balabac Strait and Palawan Island were notorious for their shoals and coral heads, and the often deficient navigational charts supplied to American submarines magnified the hazards.4 In addition, visibility was poor the night the Flier went down. Taken together, these factors make running aground a feasible explanation, and during the course of the war, four U.S. submarines ended their careers that way.
One of the most spectacular submarine groundings occurred later in the year, on 24 October 1944, when the USS Darter ran on to a half-mile-wide reef known as Bombay Shoal. The Darter was pursuing a Japanese convoy through the treacherous waters west of Palawan Island, appropriately called Dangerous Ground. Besides being hazardous to traverse, much of the area was not properly charted, so the Japanese frequently sent convoys through the Palawan passage in the belief that no American submarine would venture there. That assumption proved costly. On 23 October the Darter sank Admiral Kurita's flagship, the heavy cruiser Atago, and damaged another heavy cruiser; its sister submarine the Dace sank a third. Those losses proved to be an ill omen for the Japanese in the lead-up to the titanic battle for Leyte Gulf following the U.S. invasion of the Philippines.
The next day the Darter suffered a mishap of it own. Running in overcast weather that prevented obtaining a navigational fix from the stars, the Darter slammed into a reef at full speed. Initially the crew thought they had been torpedoed. The force of the collision reared the Darter’s bow out of the water and left the entire submarine stranded like a beached whale. In the aftermath, Admiral Ralph Christie did not consider the Darter’s skipper, David Hayward McClintock, at fault. Christie believed that McClintock's gamble had been justified: he took a chance on pursuing a wounded Japanese ship in dangerous waters, and he lost.5
Crowley was apparently aware that grounding might be raised as a possible explanation for the Flier’s loss. He noted in his survival report that at the fatal moment there had been no tendency for the craft to lift, and its back was not broken.6 In any case, there was no precedent for a submarine holed by coral or some other navigational hazard to sink so quickly. Another possible explanation was that the Flier had been hit by an enemy torpedo or, for that matter, a torpedo from a “friendly” sub. The records, however, show no evidence of any attacks by enemy or Allied vessels in the area.
Yet another possibility was that the explosion came from inside the submarine. The very batteries that allowed a submarine to propel itself underwater also posed a significant risk. Every fleet submarine had a forward and an after battery compartment, each carrying 126 lead acid cells for storing electricity. Each battery was six feet high and weighed more than 1,000 pounds. The batteries’ endurance was critical to the submarine's survival, since the ship could maneuver underwater only as long as the batteries provided power. Typically the batteries would be recharged at night while the submarine was on the surface. One of the by-products of this process was highly flammable hydrogen gas. The lower the batteries’ power, the longer it took to recharge them and the greater the production of hydrogen. Even with scrupulous ventilation, pockets of hydrogen sometimes accumulated, and battery overheating or a spark could trigger a powerful explosion.7
The Philippines
Shortly after the war began, the S-38 experienced a battery compartment explosion that injured three crewmen; one later died. Battery explosions had been implicated in other su
bmarine disasters but had never been documented as the cause of a submarine's sinking.8 In the postwar era, the USS Cochino (SS-345) was lost due to a battery explosion and fire. As the last submarine commissioned during the war, the Cochino’s batteries had a greater capacity compared with other World War II boats. On 25 August 1949 the submarine shuddered from an initial muffled explosion. Then, as the batteries burned, more explosions followed, and flooding began. The submarine sank in 950 feet of water off the coast of Norway.9
The most catastrophic submarine disaster associated with the batteries took place when the Soviet B-37 blew up at its pier in 1961. A massive explosion erupted after the crew brought the electrical systems online, apparently igniting an accumulation of hydrogen. The blast killed fifty-nine crew members and another seventy-three people on adjacent submarines and on shore. Most of the damage, though, was done when the torpedoes detonated as a result of the fire.10
Alvin Jacobson recalled that in the immediate aftermath of the Flier disaster, the crew believed that the submarine had been sunk by a battery explosion. This was partly due to the assumed location of the damage to the submarine's hull. However, the experience of the similarly designed Cochino suggests that a battery explosion alone would not have sunk the Flier so quickly. Despite multiple explosions, the Cochino stayed afloat for fifteen hours. That incident claimed the lives of six men, and the remaining crew were lost during rescue operations in horrific sea conditions.11
The USS Flier Page 7