Hanging by a Thread Voyages of Discovery


Hanging by a Thread

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In May 1939, the crew of the submarine USS Squalus

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was struck by disaster, deep below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

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They were trapped on the ocean floor with their air running out and no means of escape...

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the latest victims of what the US Navy dubbed the coffin service.

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Their fate depended on one man, naval inventor Charles "Swede" Momsen.

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Momsen's attempt to rescue the men of the Squalus would become one

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of the most celebrated rescue missions in maritime history.

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It kick-started a whole new area of underwater technology and revolutionised our understanding

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of what can be achieved in the dangerous and alien world deep beneath the waves.

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On May 23rd 1939, a prototype American submarine was preparing for a routine dive.

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The exercise was taking place 25 kilometres off New Hampshire on the east coast of America.

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-Are you ready for diving, crew?

-Aye, sir.

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This was the USS Squalus' 19th test dive -

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a timed crash dive for use in emergencies.

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-First officer, prepare to dive the boat!

-Prepare to dive the boat!

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Under the command of Lt Oliver Naquin...

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-Dive the boat.

-Dive the boat.

-The Squalus had to dive to periscope depth - 15 metres - in 60 seconds.

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-Mark.

-That's one, two and three, OK?

-A series of levers closed the valves that fed air to the diesel engines.

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Green signalled that the sub was watertight.

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At 7.40am, the dive began.

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Mark.

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62 seconds.

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Well done, gentlemen.

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It seemed a textbook dive, but within seconds it went disastrously wrong.

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SCREAMING

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Unbelievably, water was pouring through the main induction valves in the rear of the sub.

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FRANTIC SHOUTING

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Main valve's not working!

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We've hit bottom, sir.

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Somehow, despite the all-clear on the control panel, a valve was open

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and hundreds of tonnes of water were pouring in the sub.

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They lost control of her and she went down to the bottom.

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Now I'm a professional diver and I know what it's like

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when things go wrong, but I've benefited from immediate backup.

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These men were on their own.

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What was going to happen to them?

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Bearing in mind that in the previous 20 years worldwide,

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22 subs had been lost, along with the lives of over a thousand men.

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They didn't call it the coffin service for nothing.

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In the 1930s, submariners like the crew of the Squalus were taking their lives in their hands.

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Underwater technology was in its infancy and, in the history

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of submarines, no crew had ever been rescued from the ocean depths.

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The disaster of the Squalus would become a pivotal event that would change underwater safety forever.

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Even today, flooding is a danger that terrifies every submariner

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and recruits are trained how to react to any breach of their boat.

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In this simulator, the sheer force of a wall of water pouring through

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at 14 lbs-per-square-inch pressure is a terrifying experience.

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This is really hard work

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but of course I knew it was going to happen.

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For those men on the Squalus it would just have been a sudden, tremendous shock.

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Freezing cold water under high pressure.

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We're here at the surface, but even at periscope depth

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it's twice what the pressure is at the surface

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and the water just comes pouring in under ever increasing pressure.

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It wasn't long, despite their best efforts, before

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the men in the rear of the sub were completely overwhelmed.

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Within a few minutes, water was flooding from the rear to the front of the sub.

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As men struggled desperately forwards, the crew who had already

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made it into the control room faced an agonising decision.

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Either wait for their crew mates to come through and risk the whole sub flooding,

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or shut the watertight bulkhead doors and condemn them to certain death.

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They were ordered to seal the control room.

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SCREAMING

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26 men died in those first few minutes.

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33 survivors were entombed in what was now a watery coffin stranded on the bottom of the ocean.

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89-year-old Carl Bryson is the last living survivor from the Squalus.

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Carl joined the Navy as a teenager in 1936.

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By the summer of 1939,

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he was a 22-year-old machinist's mate serving aboard his second sub.

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He was in the forward battery when the Squalus went down.

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I never really thought about dying there, that would never have crossed my mind.

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When the water first started to come in, I didn't have time to think about

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anything except how to shut the water off.

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Everybody said, "What did you think?"

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I didn't think anything except how can we stop the water from coming in?

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This is the main induction valve - all the water would have come in here.

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-Massive volumes of water pouring in this.

-Tremendous volume.

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And it went into both engine rooms.

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The crew in the forward section of the Squalus had survived the initial flooding,

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but now they were trapped with only enough air to survive for 48 hours...

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and a new danger was already upon them.

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Water was seeping into the forward battery compartment,

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threatening to short-circuit the huge batteries that powered the sub's electric motors.

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This is the forward battery, of course.

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This is the battery hatch.

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Luke opened the hatch and the acid was bubbling and the caps

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on the batteries were coming out, so the battery was overheating, we were pulling several thousand amps.

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As the batteries heated to a critical level, the chief electrician shut off her power.

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Another 30 seconds, probably, and we would have had a battery explosion.

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Nobody in the battery compartment would have stayed alive,

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the people in the control room would have been lost...

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somebody may just possibly have made it out of the forward torpedo room. I doubt it.

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With no power, there was no heating,

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no light and no hope of raising the sub.

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For Captain Naquin, it was time to make a harrowing assessment.

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-Take a roll call.

-Yes, Sir.

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-Bryson!

-Aye, sir.

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CALLS NAMES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

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Aft torpedo, do you copy?

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FAINT BUZZING

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Aft torpedo, do you copy?

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FAINT BUZZING

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Forward battery, do you copy?

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FAINT BUZZING

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Forward torpedo, do you copy?

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FAINT BUZZING

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With almost half her crew dead, a dwindling air supply, no power and

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no way of reaching the surface, this was a submariner's worst nightmare.

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Ever since the sinking of the Lusitania in World War I

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by a German U-boat, naval commanders knew they needed submarines.

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But the early models produced on both sides of the Atlantic, some of which were even powered by steam,

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were often a greater danger to their own crews than enemy shipping - they were steel death traps.

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Submarine design had moved on by the '30s, but despite the image portrayed in recruitment films,

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service under water was still cramped, noisy and highly dangerous.

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The men who served in them had a reputation as mavericks, kind of naval pirates.

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It's said the admirals of the day saw these crews as expendable.

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But despite the dangers, there was pressing reasons

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why young Americans of the 1930s signed up for the coffin service.

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'Millions of Americans, men, women and children wait in the cold on bread lines, in soup kitchens.'

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The Great Depression of 1929 threw America into turmoil.

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By 1932, the economy had virtually collapsed.

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'..Construction virtually ceases, mills and factories shut down,

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'railroads come to a virtual standstill.'

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There were 15 million unemployed

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and the wealth of the average American had dropped to the level of 25 years earlier.

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-'..The ranks of the unemployed are...'

-But the submarine service

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provided an escape from the hunger and uncertainty of the times.

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While the rest of the US was gripped by poverty and unemployment, young sailors were guaranteed

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roofs over their heads, three square meals a day and a weekly pay packet.

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'Here's one place where mess call means all hands on deck to stow cargo

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and there's plenty of room in the hold for seconds.

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'After this man stows his gear in his new locker, he hangs up a picture of

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'his old schoolteacher and makes himself at home in the comfortable barrack accommodation.'

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Submariners got an added bonus - an extra 25 or 30 a month in their pay.

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It was called submarine pay but this extra cash was actually danger money.

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The submarine service was still the riskiest branch of the Navy.

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For the crew of the stricken Squalus trapped on the ocean floor, things were going from bad to worse.

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MEN SHOUT

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In the forward battery of the sub, seawater was reacting with acid

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to produce poisonous chlorine gas, which was beginning to spread.

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We weren't to the point of gasping or anything like that, but, er...

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we could smell chlorine gas and that certainly was an indicator we wanted out.

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But there was no way out.

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The stricken sub was on the ocean floor at a depth of 74 metres.

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Radio communication was impossible that far down and the last message to base had been garbled.

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The sub was actually eight kilometres from where base understood her to be.

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Well and truly lost.

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The crew released a marker buoy and some rocket flares, but the chances of rescue were remote.

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Trapped in America's newest submarine, all the men could do was pray.

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In the '30s and '40s, subs built here at Portsmouth naval yard were at the forefront of submarine design

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and 20,000 men built virtually half of America's submarine fleet for World War II.

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Squalus was at the cutting edge of these developments and yet still the sea took her.

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Now the race was on to find her, but even if she was found,

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the big question remained - could those men be saved?

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The answer to that lay with one man, Lieutenant Charles Momsen, nicknamed "Swede" Momsen.

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In 1925, 14 years before the Squalus disaster,

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Momsen was a sub commander and was badly shaken by the tragic sinking of his vessel's sister submarine.

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Stranded on the bottom of the ocean, several of Momsen's friends lost their lives

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while the Navy stood by helplessly.

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Momsen was determined things had to change.

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Submarines had to become safer.

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Helen Hart Momsen is Charles Momsen's granddaughter.

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Swede Momsen is her hero and she knows his story inside out.

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He had lost friends, people he went to the naval academy with had

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been lost in submarine disasters, people that he actually knew.

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One of the men, when they opened the submarine after they salvaged it,

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his fingers were all torn to stubs because he had tried to open the hatch, which would have been

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impossible even without the water on top of it,

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but I guess people just do terrible things in their final hours

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and he was just overwhelmed because, at first he thought, "Well, it wouldn't be so bad -

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"they probably just went to sleep, they probably just died a simple death."

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But when they opened the hatch and he realised the agony they had

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gone through, he said, "It can't be this way, it just can't be this way."

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The year after the S51 went down, Momsen submitted plans to the Navy's

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bureau of construction for a device that could rescue trapped submariners.

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Over a year later, he discovered that they hadn't even been opened.

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He conceived of the notion of the bell, the rescue chamber and

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they just ignored him.

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It's always difficult to try and prove a point or make your way when

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you're going against the stream or when you're going against the brass

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and, of course, back in those days the Navy was more or less run by what they called surface admirals.

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They had all served on surface vessels and they weren't sympathetic with the submarine service,

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they saw it as a bunch of mavericks and my grandfather was the biggest maverick of all.

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Momsen lobbied the bureau to take his ideas on board, but again and again he was turned down.

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Then in 1927, another sub, the S4, was lost with all hands.

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Determined not to be thwarted by Navy bureaucracy a second time, Momsen began developing rescue ideas

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without the knowledge of his commanding officers.

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15 years before Cousteau invented the aqualung, Momsen set to work on

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something small-scale that he could design and test himself.

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A remarkable breathing device that gave submariners a chance of reaching the surface from 100m down.

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He had a plan for the Momsen lung and they gathered together pieces of

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hose and metal and inner tubes and put together the Momsen lung

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and then he tested it in a swimming pool

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and risked his own life, so it was his own money, his own life, his own time.

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'The lung resembles and works in rough principle like a gas mask.

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'Air exhaled into the device passes through soda lime which

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'removes the waste carbon dioxide and replaces it with fresh oxygen.

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'When each student has mastered the use of the lung,

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'he is then ready for the first attempt at underwater breathing.

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'The preliminary ascent is made from a very shallow level.'

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Crikey, it looks like a hot-water bottle.

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Doesn't it? It does. It does.

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OK, how does it work?

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-I met a man who actually was saved with this from the Tang.

-This one?

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-Yeah, out in the Formosa Straits.

-Oh, I'd better be careful with this.

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He ascended from a submarine with this.

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And this is what goes in your mouth.

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Right, that looks like a modern-day...

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-Right.

-..regulator mouthpiece.

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Hold that up.

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'Charging their lungs with oxygen, the men pass up through the escape hatch,

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'one at a time, holding securely to the

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'marker line and taking particular care to pause at the designated intervals for decompression.'

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The Momsen lung was the first truly successful underwater breathing device for a submariner.

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Filled with pure oxygen that recycled during breathing, it didn't allow you to stay

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under water for long, but it could save the life of a stranded sailor.

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'This man has safely reached the surface from a depth of 100 feet.'

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Wow. You've got the same pressure as on me, the water pushing on here, so equal pressure.

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-Right.

-Fantastic. It just seems incredibly simple.

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-Yeah, it does.

-I mean there's no diving gear, no diving suit.

-No.

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Get that escape-hatch pressure equalised.

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-Mmm.

-Open it, put this in, goggles on, make a run for it.

-Right.

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Wow.

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'At the submarine base in Pearl Harbor...'

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This time the top brass couldn't ignore Momsen and, begrudgingly, they came round to his idea.

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'Under the supervision of Admiral Momsen, inventor of the famous Momsen lung, the future submariners

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-'are ready for the 100-foot tower which holds...'

-The Navy adopted the Momsen lung, as it became known.

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Thousands were ordered to equip every sub in the fleet.

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Floyd Matthews worked with Momsen, training submariners to use the lung.

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He's now 103.

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That's 100 feet, you know, we had three different positions -

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the bottom - that's 100 feet, one at 18 feet, one at 50.

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You see, we gradually worked them up to 100 feet.

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-You could do 100 foot, no problem?

-Oh, yeah.

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I could jump overboard and go along the bottom.

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Yeah.

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You exhale and you just keep on going down but you've got

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to have something to breathe when you get there, though.

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You're empty.

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Yeah.

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So what are your memories of Momsen?

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He was an innovator, you know.

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The man was just nothing less than a genius

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and he could do anything, just about, yes.

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The Squalus was equipped with Momsen lungs for all its crew.

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The men had been trained how to use them, but Captain Naquin was deeply concerned.

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The Atlantic was freezing cold and the chances of getting all 33 men out were remote.

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We had planned an escape using a Momsen lung.

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We had the grease, we had the lungs, the water was cold, of course,

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and we were going to grease down and the captain had selected Greek Medeiros to be the first man out to

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let the buoy out with the line on it because we had to have a line to keep us from shooting up to the surface.

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We could have gotten...the first group could have gotten out of the boat, no question, but whether he

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could keep going or not, that was questionable.

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Anyhow, we had used up a lot of oxygen and the old man decided that

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it was safer to wait than it was to try and escape, so...he decided to wait.

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But Captain Naquin had no idea that his last location radioed back to base had been garbled.

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They were lost.

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With the Squalus now out of radio contact for several hours, a second submarine from the

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Portsmouth navy yard had been sent to her last reported position...

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not realising it was looking in the wrong place.

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There was no sign of the Squalus' marker buoy and no trace of any flares.

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The search dragged on and on.

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In the sub below, cold and hunger were taking hold.

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With surface contact long overdue, tinned food was given out to keep up morale.

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Pineapple seemed to be a favourite.

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Man, it was cold.

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Every place that you had condensation in the torpedo room from your breathing...

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a skim of ice.

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But cold and hunger weren't the only dangers.

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With every breath they took, the men were using up vital oxygen,

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and with each passing hour, the chances of survival became ever slimmer.

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Yet four hours after the Squalus went missing, nobody even knew where she was.

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Off the coast of New Hampshire, Squalus' sister ship, the Sculpin,

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was desperately searching for the downed sub.

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Finally at 12.40 on the 23rd May, the lookout spotted Squalus' marker buoy

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and inside was the telephone connected to the submarine.

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NAQUIN: 'This is the USS Squalus, over.'

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This is the USS Squalus.

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Is there anybody up there? Over.

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'USS Sculpin. Are you receiving?

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-'Over.'

-Yes...

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Hello?

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This is the USS Squalus.

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Just as Captain Naquin said a few words, a big swell came up

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and broke the cable.

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Communication was lost with the submarine,

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but the men on the top did know that some of those men were alive.

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They could do nothing to help them and the whole world was watching.

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'May 23rd 1939, the submarine Squalus lies on the ocean bottom off Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

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'59 men are trapped inside...'

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As a fleet assembled above the Squalus, the world knew there were survivors below.

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Papers rushed to print the story.

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The plight of the crew became front-page news.

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The pressure was on to do something for the men,

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but so far no crew had even been rescued from a sunken sub - it was simply too difficult a challenge.

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For wives and families waiting in the town of Portsmouth, it was an agonising time.

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The whole of the town here at Portsmouth was looking at the navy base over there for answers.

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The whole town would have just been waiting and hoping for news.

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In the sub itself, the precious air was becoming fouler by the minute.

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Each time the men breathed out, oxygen was being replaced with

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poisonous carbon dioxide which had to be mopped up with soda lime.

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In desperation, the Navy at last turned to the man they had once ignored...Charles Momsen.

0:28:370:28:45

Still unrelenting in his drive to improve safety,

0:28:480:28:51

he was quietly tucked away in research and development.

0:28:510:28:55

Following his success with the lung, Momsen had dusted off his plans for

0:28:550:28:59

the rescue chamber, which had originally been scorned by the top brass.

0:28:590:29:03

This is a submarine rescue bell based on Momsen's design.

0:29:090:29:15

It's an incredible simple bit of kit, hardly any moving parts at all.

0:29:150:29:20

It was counted on as being something that would rescue 30-plus men.

0:29:200:29:25

And yet it was just completely unproven.

0:29:250:29:29

Just countless gauges and valves in here.

0:29:290:29:32

Some of them are to control buoyancy,

0:29:320:29:35

some are to control winches,

0:29:350:29:38

and I can't believe you'd get two operators in here and up

0:29:390:29:42

to seven rescued men - there's absolutely no room whatsoever.

0:29:420:29:47

The trick to it is sending it down to the bottom

0:29:500:29:53

and accurately locating it over the submarine escape hatch,

0:29:530:29:57

and the key to that is this thing here.

0:29:570:30:01

There's a rubber gasket under there and that provides a perfect seal over the hatch.

0:30:010:30:06

When this reaches the submarine,

0:30:060:30:09

the water is blown out of it and the water pressure itself,

0:30:090:30:13

which at the Squalus' depth was about 120 lbs per square inch,

0:30:130:30:17

pushes this on to the submarine and squeezes it in place.

0:30:170:30:22

It provides a perfect seal, the men can open up the hatch from inside and enter into here.

0:30:220:30:29

The problem, though, is if this isn't sat absolutely level,

0:30:300:30:36

you get an imperfect seal, the whole of the sea can just rush in - complete disaster.

0:30:360:30:43

'Rescue vessels, led by the Falcon, locate the sub and prepare to send down a newly developed rescue bell.'

0:30:470:30:53

It was Momsen's big moment.

0:30:530:30:55

With 33 lives at stake and time running out, the Navy had

0:30:550:30:59

to take a chance with the maverick inventor and his innovative chamber.

0:30:590:31:03

'Never before has a diving bell like that been used for actual rescue.

0:31:050:31:10

'Will it work, and at that depth?

0:31:100:31:12

'Aboard the rescue fleet, they can only hope.'

0:31:120:31:15

For the chamber seal to work it had to fit precisely over the sub's escape hatch.

0:31:150:31:21

This meant a diver had to go down first to attach a guide cable to the hatch handle.

0:31:240:31:30

The divers who took on this challenge were the astronauts of their day.

0:31:330:31:38

Tough and determined, they risked their lives to push the

0:31:380:31:42

boundaries of human knowledge, with only the most primitive equipment.

0:31:420:31:47

And this is the kind of kit they had to use.

0:31:470:31:51

It's called hard-hat gear and it's very heavy and cumbersome.

0:31:510:31:56

One boot alone, this weighs about ten kilos.

0:31:560:32:00

So some real problems with it. Firstly, you can only dive very, very close to the ship

0:32:000:32:05

because the diver is lowered down from the boat on the surface.

0:32:050:32:08

Secondly, they're pulling a long air hose behind them and that air hose in Momsen's case

0:32:080:32:14

would have been 75 metres long so it would have weighed a ton, making the dive almost impossible.

0:32:140:32:19

But it wasn't just the diving gear that was primitive.

0:32:210:32:24

At the time, we only had a very basic understanding of how our bodies react to being at pressure.

0:32:240:32:32

So Momsen dedicated himself to learning how that happened

0:32:320:32:36

and he developed diving tanks, just like this one used by the Royal Navy here at Gosport.

0:32:360:32:42

What Momsen and his team were beginning to discover was that as a diver descends, water pressure

0:32:520:32:57

squeezes nitrogen from the air being breathed into a diver's bloodstream and body tissues.

0:32:570:33:03

At high pressure, like there are right here,

0:33:150:33:19

at 30 metres, at high pressure, this nitrogen affects our thinking.

0:33:200:33:27

It's a very pleasant feeling, let me tell you,

0:33:270:33:30

but it can lead to problems because it feels like a mildly drunken state

0:33:300:33:38

and it means that, as pleasant as it feels to me, and I've had it,

0:33:380:33:43

and I guess I must be experiencing it right now,

0:33:430:33:47

it means that on a deep work dive, it could lead to fatal mistakes.

0:33:470:33:51

24 hours after the Squalus went down, the first diver was ready

0:34:040:34:09

to be lowered into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.

0:34:090:34:13

'Deep in the sea there, 33 men are alive, in danger of dying for lack of air.

0:34:130:34:19

'"Get the living out!" is the cry as down goes the diver.'

0:34:190:34:23

The diver was Martin Sibitzky.

0:34:250:34:27

His task was crucial to the rescue - he had to fasten the cable which

0:34:360:34:40

would guide the bell down to the sub's escape hatch.

0:34:400:34:44

With the concentration of carbon dioxide rising with every breath,

0:35:010:35:05

the air in the sub was becoming more poisonous by the minute.

0:35:050:35:09

Sibitzky had to succeed, and quickly.

0:35:180:35:21

On this mission there was no room for error.

0:35:210:35:25

When Sibitzky got down there and started to work really hard

0:36:040:36:08

dragging that heavy cable around,

0:36:080:36:10

he was breathing more air, which meant that he got nitrogen narcosis.

0:36:100:36:16

He became physically fatigued and very confused, almost drunk.

0:36:160:36:21

The rescue was on the verge of collapse when, back on deck, Momsen stepped in.

0:36:240:36:30

Momsen knew exactly what Sibitzky was going through, so he talked him through it, step by careful step.

0:36:340:36:42

Momsen helped Sibitzky gather his thoughts and overcome the effects of nitrogen narcosis.

0:36:450:36:53

At last he was able to clip the cable on.

0:36:530:36:57

The first stage of the operation was complete,

0:37:040:37:07

but the hardest part was still to come.

0:37:090:37:12

Now it was time for Momsen's chamber to be put to the test.

0:37:120:37:17

'The crew of the rescue chamber climb in for their risky adventure.

0:37:170:37:20

'The idea is to lower it onto the sunken sub, make it fast to a hatch,

0:37:200:37:24

'open the hatch and bring the survivors up into the rescue chamber.

0:37:240:37:28

'So beneath the surface it sinks, for life saving without precedent.

0:37:280:37:32

'This occurs a little more than 24 hours

0:37:320:37:34

'after the US Submarine Squalus sank while making a practice dive off Portsmouth.'

0:37:340:37:39

Lowered by a support cable, the chamber began its descent.

0:37:410:37:45

Though it had never been tested in a real rescue situation,

0:37:480:37:52

it was the only hope for the men in the Squalus.

0:37:520:37:55

But would it work? Would the seal hold?

0:38:020:38:05

At 12 noon, the chamber landed over the escape hatch.

0:38:150:38:20

The seal held.

0:38:410:38:44

Yeah!

0:38:490:38:50

30 hours after the Squalus first hit the bottom, the unbelievable had happened.

0:38:530:38:59

A rescue mission had reached the submarine.

0:38:590:39:02

Carl Bryson watched the first eight men get into the bell.

0:39:060:39:10

They were the crew members most affected by the cold and poor air.

0:39:100:39:15

It was essential to get the weakest to the surface first.

0:39:200:39:24

No-one knew how long the rescue would last, if the weather would hold

0:39:240:39:28

or indeed if the bell could actually manage the four journeys needed to lift the survivors to safety.

0:39:280:39:35

Under Momsen's orders, the bell was raised carrying the first survivors.

0:39:410:39:46

Valves let in air to the ballast tanks,

0:39:490:39:53

and inch by inch, the chamber rose...

0:39:530:39:57

..guided by the cable to the ship above.

0:39:570:40:00

For now, everything seemed to be working perfectly.

0:40:080:40:12

At last, the bell made it to the surface.

0:40:180:40:22

'There is it bubbling and breaking the water,

0:40:280:40:30

'the dramatic sight, the sudden appearance of the diving bell.

0:40:300:40:34

'All the rescue power of the Navy mobilised and here is the climax,

0:40:340:40:38

'the rescue chamber coming up from its first descent.

0:40:380:40:41

'Hoisted up. What's in it?

0:40:450:40:47

'There are anxious wives and family waiting tensely.

0:40:470:40:50

'Open it up and then out they climb, survivors, the first one.

0:40:500:40:56

'So weak he has to be helped after being entombed for 24 hours at the bottom of the sea.

0:40:560:41:01

'One after the other, seven in all are brought up in this first trip of the rescue chamber.'

0:41:010:41:08

It was a historic moment.

0:41:080:41:10

For the first time ever, men had been rescued from a submarine on the sea floor

0:41:100:41:14

'and in that instant everything Momsen had worked for was validated.

0:41:140:41:20

But it was far from over. There were still 25 men to be brought up.

0:41:200:41:24

The sub was freezing and the air was getting fouler by the minute.

0:41:240:41:29

There was no time to waste.

0:41:290:41:31

The next two dives went without a hitch, with 18 more men being brought up safely to the surface.

0:41:330:41:40

The chamber was sent back down to the Squalus for the final time, a little before 8pm.

0:41:420:41:49

For Carl Bryson and the last few survivors, struggling against rising carbon dioxide

0:41:490:41:54

and the constant threat of chlorine gas, it seemed to be the end of their ordeal.

0:41:540:42:01

So we were all up there and...waiting.

0:42:010:42:05

Seemed like it took hours.

0:42:070:42:09

Man, it was cold and the air was horrible.

0:42:090:42:13

It was getting worse all the time.

0:42:130:42:15

How did it feel getting in that bell?

0:42:250:42:28

Well, it felt good to get in the bell, but when it jammed, it didn't feel so good.

0:42:280:42:33

The bell had only risen about ten metres when it stuck fast.

0:42:430:42:47

The main cable running down from the bell to the sub below had jammed.

0:42:500:42:55

Diver Walter Squire was sent down into the water to free the stuck cable.

0:43:040:43:10

He made his way down tentatively.

0:43:100:43:12

Squire fumbled around for the cable a few metres below the bell,

0:43:240:43:27

he tried to free it but it wouldn't budge.

0:43:270:43:30

So on Momsen's orders, he cut it.

0:43:300:43:34

Now the full weight of the nine-and-a-half-tonne chamber was

0:43:380:43:41

hanging from a single support cable running to the ship above.

0:43:410:43:47

Just when it seemed the worst was over,

0:43:510:43:53

the diver returning to the surface noticed something disastrous.

0:43:530:43:57

The cable left holding the chamber had begun to unravel and snap

0:43:570:44:02

and the bell was now dangling from a last single strand.

0:44:020:44:07

The men's lives were literally hanging by a thread.

0:44:070:44:12

Afraid that this last strand would break, Momsen had to order the chamber gently lowered back down to

0:44:120:44:17

the sea bed, so just moments from triumph, the rescue had stalled.

0:44:170:44:23

Momsen had them drop us back down in the mud, we were up to 150 foot level then.

0:44:370:44:42

They dropped us back down because if that cable had parted

0:44:500:44:55

and the exhaust cable and the air cable, then we would be lost.

0:44:550:45:01

With the last of the survivors trapped inside the bell, Momsen came up with an all-or-nothing plan.

0:45:050:45:11

It was highly risky, but it was their only hope.

0:45:110:45:14

He reckoned if the operators inside the bell could carefully open the

0:45:160:45:20

valves and blow more compressed air in, they could control its buoyancy,

0:45:200:45:25

and his gamble was that they could make it weightless - neither rising nor sinking.

0:45:250:45:30

If it worked, it would be light enough that it could be carefully hauled up, hand over hand.

0:45:300:45:37

If it didn't, the cable would break and the men would be lost.

0:45:370:45:42

He told McDonald to blow for ten seconds, you know.

0:45:500:45:56

So McDonald blow the lower compartment.

0:45:560:45:59

Then blow 20 seconds...

0:46:060:46:08

Then he blow 10 seconds.

0:46:110:46:14

Finally, they pulled us clear of the mud

0:46:240:46:28

and they had all these people up on the deck,

0:46:280:46:33

pulling this thing by hand and we got up to about 150 feet and

0:46:330:46:39

we went right to the surface like that.

0:46:390:46:41

'One of the greatest rescues in the annals of the sea, men saved

0:46:410:46:45

'from the sunken submarine Squalus off Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

0:46:450:46:49

'Every one of the living brought out alive.

0:46:490:46:51

'In the history of the sea, a sunken submarine represents the depth of terror and horror.

0:46:510:46:56

'This rescue represents a height of glory.'

0:46:560:46:59

We got to the surface...

0:47:010:47:03

and I was frozen, man, oh, man.

0:47:050:47:09

I tell you, we were lucky, really lucky.

0:47:120:47:14

And we had the right people in the right place at the right time.

0:47:170:47:22

That makes the difference.

0:47:260:47:27

Momsen had done it, he'd saved the lives of 33 men.

0:47:340:47:39

The rescue of the crew from the Squalus showed for the first time

0:47:390:47:43

that something really could be done for men trapped on the ocean floor.

0:47:430:47:48

It was a pivotal moment in the history of undersea exploration.

0:47:490:47:54

The Squalus rescue, carried out under the glare of the world's press, had put submarine

0:47:540:48:00

safety firmly on the agenda, and within six months of the Squalus sinking, the US Navy

0:48:000:48:07

had offered the diving bell plans to 13 other countries

0:48:070:48:11

in a bid to make submarines safer round the world.

0:48:110:48:15

As a proven success, it was adopted by other navies.

0:48:190:48:22

And even today, a version of the rescue chamber is still in use.

0:48:270:48:32

It's called the McCann chamber.

0:48:350:48:37

Named after Momsen's successor in the development programme.

0:48:370:48:40

Thanks, mate. I'm here, courtesy of the Italian Navy,

0:48:480:48:51

to take part in a submarine rescue training exercise and I'm going to go down here in a McCann bell, which

0:48:510:48:56

is essentially the same piece of kit that was used in the Squalus rescue,

0:48:560:49:00

to go down to a submarine at 40 metres,

0:49:000:49:02

to see what it was really like for those rescuers and for those men from the Squalus.

0:49:020:49:07

Thanks very much.

0:49:070:49:09

Thank you.

0:49:090:49:11

Very good.

0:49:270:49:29

HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

0:49:380:49:42

I can feel the pressure

0:49:420:49:44

increasing now.

0:49:440:49:46

That's because the water is coming

0:49:460:49:48

in the lower part of the bell and squeezing all the air into this part of the chamber.

0:49:480:49:53

Yeah.

0:49:530:49:55

The bell is noisy, it looks primitive,

0:49:580:50:01

the air pressure varies wildly as you go up and down, but it works.

0:50:010:50:05

The Italians see it almost as an elevator that can run

0:50:050:50:08

back and forth from the surface to the sea bed.

0:50:080:50:11

We've just landed on a submarine!

0:50:180:50:20

It's fantastic to think that a design which is essentially from the '30s is still used today.

0:50:270:50:34

And it's not just the Italians.

0:50:340:50:37

The Turks, Indians and the US still use essentially the same design

0:50:370:50:42

as Momsen's original bell that triumphed in the Squalus rescue.

0:50:420:50:48

It's really surreal, actually, because there's the submarine,

0:50:480:50:51

that's the top of the submarine,

0:50:510:50:54

we're 40 metres in the bottom of the sea.

0:50:540:50:56

It's just amazing... going down to a submarine

0:51:070:51:11

whilst on the bottom of the sea.

0:51:110:51:12

Oh, wow.

0:51:180:51:22

Hey, thanks for this, guys.

0:51:220:51:24

Thanks very much.

0:51:240:51:26

Good Italian espresso served at 40 metres on the bottom of the Med.

0:51:280:51:33

I'm going to remember this next time I'm scuba diving at 40 metres and freezing.

0:51:330:51:38

Dry, good coffee, good company...

0:51:380:51:42

Here we go.

0:51:420:51:44

The Squalus rescue was a turning point in the development of underwater technology.

0:51:490:51:54

New devices were pioneered that led to some remarkable equipment like this one-atmosphere diving suit.

0:51:560:52:03

In one of these, a diver can work hundreds of metres down on the ocean floor, allowing the construction

0:52:060:52:11

and maintenance of many of today's most ambitious engineering projects,

0:52:110:52:16

like North Sea oil platforms and the undersea pipelines leading from them

0:52:160:52:21

which run hundreds of miles along the ocean floor.

0:52:210:52:24

These developments would have seemed impossible before Momsen's triumph.

0:52:240:52:29

After the Squalus rescue, Momsen was promoted to Commander and his prestige in the Navy just rocketed.

0:52:310:52:37

He used his influence to launch a whole new era

0:52:370:52:40

of underwater technology and he became the father of modern diving.

0:52:400:52:44

One of his most significant contributions was the development of new mixed gasses for deep diving.

0:52:440:52:51

By replacing the nitrogen in the air with helium, he completely eliminated nitrogen narcosis.

0:52:510:52:58

That meant that professional divers like myself can dive deeper, we can

0:52:580:53:02

have shorter decompression times and underwater work is just safer.

0:53:020:53:07

In the '60s, Momsen's son, also called Charles, was a real chip off the old block.

0:53:090:53:15

He carried on the family tradition by developing the mini-sub Alvin,

0:53:150:53:19

seen here looking for a hydrogen bomb lost at sea after a mid-air collision involving a B52 bomber.

0:53:190:53:26

Since Alvin was first designed, mini-subs have become lighter

0:53:300:53:34

and more manoeuvrable, with ever more specialised functions.

0:53:340:53:39

Nowadays they're used all over the world, both by navies and civilian contractors.

0:53:390:53:45

As well as submarine rescue and training, they're used for things like investigating wrecks, searching

0:53:490:53:55

for lost aircraft, inspecting marine structures and even filming the secret habits of deep-sea creatures.

0:53:550:54:02

And one man's vision of what was possible beneath the sea helped pave the way for technology like this.

0:54:050:54:12

Momsen was a true pioneer.

0:54:140:54:17

He revealed to the world that hugely complex diving operations can take place deep below the surface.

0:54:170:54:24

The rescue of the Squalus gave people confidence as they dived ever deeper into this alien world.

0:54:240:54:31

Momsen gave hope.

0:54:340:54:36

So should things go wrong down here in the abyss, we know that help can be on its way.

0:54:360:54:42

After a lifetime dedicated to the safety of men at sea, Momsen died in 1967.

0:54:450:54:53

In 2004, the Navy paid him its highest honour and named a destroyer after him.

0:54:540:55:00

As for the Squalus itself, it was salvaged from the deep in the months after it sank.

0:55:050:55:10

Recommissioned as the Sailfish, it fought through the Second World War.

0:55:140:55:19

Her conning tower is still preserved at Portsmouth Navy Yard

0:55:230:55:27

as a lasting tribute to the men who served on her.

0:55:270:55:30

How does it feel to be on here now, Carl?

0:55:340:55:37

Well, brings back a lot of memories.

0:55:370:55:40

I lost some very close friends on this boat.

0:55:400:55:44

It...

0:55:530:55:54

It was a sad thing, it was a heavy price to pay.

0:55:560:56:00

Do you think it gave you a unique perspective on life itself?

0:56:020:56:06

Oh, yes, oh, yes. Well...

0:56:060:56:09

let's say I was always lucky.

0:56:090:56:11

I was lucky since then.

0:56:110:56:13

I was very lucky, I married a wonderful woman and I got

0:56:130:56:17

three wonderful children and six wonderful grandchildren.

0:56:170:56:22

Can't get much luckier than that!

0:56:220:56:25

If Swede Momsen was here today, what would you say to him?

0:56:250:56:28

Thank you, Swede.

0:56:280:56:30

You betcha.

0:56:310:56:33

I...I couldn't emphasise my gratitude enough, believe me.

0:56:340:56:40

I have a medication that I take in my room

0:56:400:56:45

and I have a picture of Swede about so big up on my bookcase

0:56:450:56:50

and when I take the medication I always say, "Thank you, God,"

0:56:500:56:55

and "Thank you Swede."

0:56:550:56:58

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:57:200:57:22

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0:57:220:57:24

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