Speaker 1: Hey, everybody happy Saturday. I hope it's going grandly Today.
Speaker 1: We are going back to our November episode on the
Speaker 1: sinking of the submarine known as S five, which happened
Speaker 1: during the vessel's first mission and involves some very dramatic
Speaker 1: and heroic efforts by the crew to keep themselves alive
Speaker 1: while they awaited rescue. If you're thinking on hearing this
Speaker 1: episode of sending us a note to let us know
Speaker 1: that traditionally submarines are called boats instead of ships, We've
Speaker 1: got it. There, you go, enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson. Him, I'm Holly Fry And you know, uh,
Speaker 1: people sending it seemed to love the stories about shipwrecks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of maritime history fans. Yes, that
Speaker 1: lots of people who love the shipwreck stories and who
Speaker 1: want to hear more shipwreck stories, and we haven't really
Speaker 1: talked a lot of about submarine disasters. After looking through
Speaker 1: our archive and also polling on Facebook and Twitter, I
Speaker 1: think the only submarine disaster that has been on the
Speaker 1: podcast ever in its history is a brief part about
Speaker 1: the Huntley, which was a Civil War submarine from an
Speaker 1: episode on five Battleship Shipwrecks. So, uh, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about a submarine disaster today, and there been bigger submarine
Speaker 1: disasters in history than this one. Also maybe even actually
Speaker 1: I've put this in my notes before I got to
Speaker 1: the end of doing my research. It says, maybe some
Speaker 1: more dramatic submarine rescues, but this one's actually pretty dramatic. Uh.
Speaker 1: The reason that I wanted to start with this one,
Speaker 1: Number one, it's a listener request from listener Stephen. Number two,
Speaker 1: I personally find the idea of being trapped in a
Speaker 1: submarine at the bottom of the ocean. The second most
Speaker 1: terrifying thing in the world surrounding is my big death fear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first most terrifying thing is floating into outer space
Speaker 1: with no hope of rescue. The second most terrifying thing
Speaker 1: is being trapped in a submarine on the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean. Um. So the reason we're doing this one
Speaker 1: is spoiler alert, everyone gets out okay, which is I
Speaker 1: think the only way that I would be able to
Speaker 1: tolerate recording this episode of being trapped in a submarine. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the submarine S five And as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: it is a listener request from Stephen. So today, when
Speaker 1: something goes wrong aboard a submarine, most developed countries navies
Speaker 1: have these tools on hand to try to rescue the crew.
Speaker 1: And relatively shallow water, it could be a matter of
Speaker 1: the crew just putting on a suit that will let
Speaker 1: them breathe and keep warm while they ascend, and in
Speaker 1: deeper water, a rescue vessel can descend down to the
Speaker 1: submarine and then carry the survivors back up to the surface.
Speaker 1: And during peacetime, rescuing a sunken submarine crew is usually
Speaker 1: an international effort, So whoever's closest and has the technology
Speaker 1: to handle the situation is who goes. This is not
Speaker 1: a case in at that point the United States Submarine
Speaker 1: Force had only been officially established for about twenty years,
Speaker 1: and even the submarines themselves had really limited means of
Speaker 1: escape if they were in any depth of water because
Speaker 1: the pressure of the water would hold all of the
Speaker 1: hatches closed. So if your submarine sank, really the only
Speaker 1: way to get out was through the torpedo tubes, and
Speaker 1: that was a maybe maybe the torpedo tubes could be
Speaker 1: used as an emergency exhibit. Maybe not. But even if
Speaker 1: you could get out the torpedo tubes and most depths,
Speaker 1: it would be impossible to swim to the surface before
Speaker 1: you either succumbed to the bends or drowned. Your odds
Speaker 1: are survival were they were extremely low, almost zero. But
Speaker 1: even so, by the time this story takes place, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Submarine Force had a relatively good track record as far
Speaker 1: as crew safety, and prior to that year, the United
Speaker 1: States had only seen two major accidents. One of them
Speaker 1: was in nineteen fifteen and the other one was in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. And to be clear, this is that was
Speaker 1: those numbers for once the Submarine Force was officially established,
Speaker 1: because there were some other submarine issues before that and
Speaker 1: the extremely limited limited tinkering with submarines that went on
Speaker 1: before that point. So the ship from today's episode was
Speaker 1: part of the S class, and these were U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy submarines from World War One. The S five was
Speaker 1: just like its name suggests, the fifth and its class,
Speaker 1: and it was launched in November nineteen nineteen and commissioned
Speaker 1: the following March. On Monday August nineteen twenty, the S
Speaker 1: five left the Boston Navy Yard on its first mission
Speaker 1: with the crew of thirty six officers and enlisted men.
Speaker 1: The vessel was expected to reach Baltimore, Maryland, on September three.
Speaker 1: The ship and crew had by then spent six months
Speaker 1: in testing and training. This mission was part of a
Speaker 1: longer voyage to the southeastern United States, and they were
Speaker 1: going to be making stops at all these Navy ports
Speaker 1: along the way with the hope of recruiting X servicemen
Speaker 1: to be part of the submarine fleet. This was really
Speaker 1: a pretty posh assignment, and Lieutenant Commander Charles M. Cook Jr.
Speaker 1: Also known as Savvy, who was in command of the
Speaker 1: S five, was extremely pleased with both the skill and
Speaker 1: the demeanor of his crew. They all worked really hard,
Speaker 1: they could learn to do their jobs really well, and
Speaker 1: for the most part, they all got along and we're
Speaker 1: my skies to be around. And in addition to these
Speaker 1: recruitment stops, the S five was also to undergo a
Speaker 1: number of speed and endurance trials as part of a
Speaker 1: performance evaluation. After all these months of training and tests,
Speaker 1: the performance evaluation was, for the most part kind of
Speaker 1: a cake walk. As Tracy just said, this crew was
Speaker 1: they worked well together, they all worked hard, they knew
Speaker 1: their stuff, they had just been through six months of
Speaker 1: intensive training. It was just sort of a happy coincidence
Speaker 1: that their performance evaluation immediately followed all that. But the
Speaker 1: big exception was the crash dive. So other than during
Speaker 1: trainings and this evaluation, crash dives normally took place only
Speaker 1: during wartime and when done perfectly. They took a submarine
Speaker 1: from the surface of the ocean to periscope depth, which
Speaker 1: is about forty ft and under a minute, and the
Speaker 1: first time the crew of the S five tried it,
Speaker 1: so this is when they were learning how to all
Speaker 1: do it. It had taken them more than four minutes,
Speaker 1: and they had steadily reduced that time during training. And
Speaker 1: the reason that this particular maneuver was the outlier and
Speaker 1: their performance evaluation wasn't just the level of difficulty involved.
Speaker 1: These evaluations were scored and used as a competition among
Speaker 1: the submarines in the fleet. Every extra second would incur
Speaker 1: a penalty in the overall scores, and they all wanted
Speaker 1: to break that one minute record, during which time they
Speaker 1: had a highly orchestrated series of jobs to do in
Speaker 1: order to make the vessel watertight and then dive very rapidly.
Speaker 1: So before we get to the crash dive and how
Speaker 1: it went wrong, a brief about submarines for those who
Speaker 1: may not know. A submarine rises and falls through the
Speaker 1: water depending in part on how much ballast it has
Speaker 1: in its tanks, and the ballast mostly comes in the
Speaker 1: form of sea water, and as class submarines, the ballast level,
Speaker 1: so how much water was in the ballast tanks, was
Speaker 1: regulated by valves called Kingston valves. Uh. These valves were
Speaker 1: controlled using waste high levels which connected directly to the
Speaker 1: valves through a system of rods which opened and closed
Speaker 1: the ballast tanks, and they were incredibly difficult to move.
Speaker 1: It took multiple men to open and close each of
Speaker 1: them because the Kingston valves were so temperamental. When preparing
Speaker 1: for a crash dive, what the crew would do would
Speaker 1: be to seal off all the events that let air
Speaker 1: in and out of the compartments, and then they would
Speaker 1: open the Kingston valves. So because the air couldn't get out,
Speaker 1: the water couldn't get in, and that meant that the
Speaker 1: level of ballast in the tanks to stay the same,
Speaker 1: so the air vants were just a lot easier to
Speaker 1: deal with, and that meant that they could deal with
Speaker 1: the easier job when it was time to dive. Opening
Speaker 1: the vents was faster than opening the valves, so they
Speaker 1: were basically getting a little ahead of the game, and
Speaker 1: when it was time to dive, they'd open those vents
Speaker 1: and the air would flow out and the water would
Speaker 1: flow in from the already opened Kingston valves. So when
Speaker 1: it came time to do their crash dive test on
Speaker 1: September one, this didn't go as planned. The crew closed
Speaker 1: all of the air vents and they opened the Kingston valves,
Speaker 1: and it turned out that one of the air valves
Speaker 1: hadn't sealed properly, so water started seeping into one of
Speaker 1: the ballast tanks, and that meant that the submarine almost
Speaker 1: immediately started to list to the starboard, which means to
Speaker 1: the right for non maritime people. Uh. This was something
Speaker 1: that could cause some pretty serious problems if it wasn't corrected,
Speaker 1: so the crew immediately got to work opening and closing
Speaker 1: other Kingston valves to get things back on an even keel.
Speaker 1: One of the people who helped out was Percy Fox,
Speaker 1: the gunner mate and the senior most man on the
Speaker 1: ship except for the lieutenant commander. They probably could not
Speaker 1: have gotten the Kingston valves taken care of without Fox's help.
Speaker 1: It was. There was a lot of opening and closing
Speaker 1: that had to be done to level things out, but
Speaker 1: Fox had his own job to do when it was
Speaker 1: really critical. Both he and Lieutenant Commander Cook had major
Speaker 1: sources of ventilation to the submarine that they personally had
Speaker 1: to close before diving. Cook had to close the hatch
Speaker 1: at the top of the conning tower and Fox had
Speaker 1: to close the main induction valve, which was the valve
Speaker 1: that diverted air to all the parts of the ship
Speaker 1: from the outside. So these two men had these two
Speaker 1: jobs because they were the two most senior men on
Speaker 1: the ship, and these jobs were the two most important
Speaker 1: when it came to making the ship uh watertight so
Speaker 1: that it could dive, plus when it came to the
Speaker 1: induction valve itself. It had proved to be a little
Speaker 1: temperamental on the S five as well as on her
Speaker 1: sister ships. Cook had some trouble getting the conning tower
Speaker 1: hatch to close. It was caught on something but Fox
Speaker 1: overlooked his task entirely because he was trying to handle
Speaker 1: this other stuff that was going awry. Right, So, when
Speaker 1: it was time to dive, Cook sounded the diving Clackson
Speaker 1: and the crew did all their tasks to get the
Speaker 1: ship to dive, and because Fox had overlooked his part
Speaker 1: while wrangling with another crisis, water started pouring into the submarine.
Speaker 1: I know how this ends, and I'm even kind of
Speaker 1: scared already, So let's take a brief moment for a
Speaker 1: word from a sponsor that sounds grand. With water pouring
Speaker 1: into the submarine from outside, Fox immediately realized his mistake
Speaker 1: and started trying to close the main induction valve, while
Speaker 1: Cook gave the order to blow the ballast tanks to
Speaker 1: try to clear them of the water that they were
Speaker 1: taking in. But Fox couldn't get the main induction valve
Speaker 1: to move, so the rest of the crew started manually
Speaker 1: closing all of the smaller events that led to the outside,
Speaker 1: while sea water was literally pummeling them in the face
Speaker 1: as they did. The torpedo room, which had been the
Speaker 1: first compartment of the ship to part to start taking
Speaker 1: on water, was really too far gone for them to
Speaker 1: try to save. So they evacuated it and then sealed
Speaker 1: it behind a watertight door. I can't imagine trying to
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't change the temperature in the shower
Speaker 1: if it's hitting me in the face, like I can't
Speaker 1: imagine a much higher pressure situation and the stress situation, Yes,
Speaker 1: it would be intense. So with the torpedo room essentially
Speaker 1: open to the sea at that point, it filled with
Speaker 1: water and the S five sank to the sea floor.
Speaker 1: Knows first. When it came to rest four minutes later,
Speaker 1: it was under about a hundred and eighty feet of water,
Speaker 1: more or less upright. So a running theme and then
Speaker 1: this whole story is that they keep having some good
Speaker 1: news and some bad news. So the good news was
Speaker 1: everyone had survived this initial sinking of the ship. The
Speaker 1: only injuries at this point we're pretty minor. The hull
Speaker 1: was still intact, they still had emergency power provided by batteries,
Speaker 1: and they still had about half of their supply of
Speaker 1: compressed air. The bad news was the torpedo room was
Speaker 1: about two thirds full of water, and the bilges also
Speaker 1: had water in them. All in all, the submarine had
Speaker 1: about seventy five tons of extra ballast thanks to all
Speaker 1: the water, which meant that unless they figured out a solution,
Speaker 1: they were basically completely stuck. There was no way for
Speaker 1: them to get out of the sub and even if
Speaker 1: they could, it would have been virtually impossible for any
Speaker 1: of them to survive a swim to the surface from
Speaker 1: that depth. So Cook blew the red the residual ballast
Speaker 1: out of the tanks, hoping that he would be able
Speaker 1: to bring the ship back up to the surface, but
Speaker 1: it didn't work, and his efforts were also hampered because
Speaker 1: one of the drive motors had been damaged when all
Speaker 1: the water started pouring in. The other drive motor also
Speaker 1: burned out while they were trying to maneuver out of
Speaker 1: the mud at the bottom of the ocean, which left
Speaker 1: them with no way to maneuver the ship, and because
Speaker 1: of where they had sunk, they weren't really in the
Speaker 1: like path of any ships that might be passing um.
Speaker 1: It was really unlikely that they were going to be
Speaker 1: able to get the attention of another ship, and their
Speaker 1: presence in Baltimore was not going to be missed for
Speaker 1: several days. So for the next couple of hours, Cook
Speaker 1: tried to force water out of the torpedo room using
Speaker 1: a number of pumps, and he was not making a
Speaker 1: lot of headway. So he decided to try to use
Speaker 1: some of their compressed air to try to pressurize the room.
Speaker 1: And while this did help, it quickly became obvious that
Speaker 1: there was not enough air to do this job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea was that if they were able to pressurize
Speaker 1: the room, it would force the water out and they
Speaker 1: would rise back to the service. Different accounts kind of
Speaker 1: vary in their explanations of why Cook tried the next
Speaker 1: thing that he tried, which was to use what was
Speaker 1: left of the compressed air to clear out the aft
Speaker 1: ballast tanks, and this actually worked. It meant that the
Speaker 1: stern of the sub now was a lot more buoyant
Speaker 1: than the bow, so it rose up, lifting the submarine
Speaker 1: off of the sea floor. Uh, but also re orienting
Speaker 1: it so that it was more or less vertical. So
Speaker 1: just imagine for a moment a submarine which is a confined,
Speaker 1: cramped space on a good day. If you have ever
Speaker 1: done like a tour of a military submarine, you probably
Speaker 1: have that moment of holy smokes, this is really tight
Speaker 1: space live down here. So then to think about all
Speaker 1: of these people in this tiny space. Uh, it's it
Speaker 1: will give you a moment of pause, at least it
Speaker 1: does me. So everything is wet aboard at this point.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of broken stuff, and now it's
Speaker 1: about sixty degrees from horizontal, so not quite straight up
Speaker 1: and down, but really close to vertical. So I just
Speaker 1: imagine people stacking on top of each other as they
Speaker 1: try to get footing. Yeah, for another round of good
Speaker 1: news bad news. The good news was they weren't stuck
Speaker 1: on the floor of the ocean anymore. They were tracking
Speaker 1: their depth and the vessel was very slow, really inching
Speaker 1: upward towards the surface. But there was bad news, which
Speaker 1: is that now the lowest point of the ship was
Speaker 1: the battery room, which had filled with water. The water
Speaker 1: started interacting with the sulfuric acid in the batteries, producing
Speaker 1: chlorine gas. In such a confined space, no vent delician. Remember,
Speaker 1: the chlorine gas had the potential to become deadly. So
Speaker 1: the crew started evacuating the parts of the ship that
Speaker 1: we're filling up with chlorine gas by basically hauling themselves
Speaker 1: over one another, climbing the previously horizontal surfaces of the ship.
Speaker 1: Which were now vertical, until they were all out of
Speaker 1: the battery room, and then they sealed that off behind them.
Speaker 1: They also started trying to funnel some of their air
Speaker 1: into the torpedo room to try to keep it from
Speaker 1: refilling back with water. And at this point, uh, this
Speaker 1: had all been going on for about five hours. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take another brief break before we resumed their efforts
Speaker 1: to rescue themselves. So five hours after sinking to the
Speaker 1: sea floor, the men aboard the S five were not
Speaker 1: in good shape. Everything as we said before, it was
Speaker 1: wet and slippery. There was debris everywhere thanks to the
Speaker 1: combination of stirred up bilge, water and fuel and exhaust,
Speaker 1: and the lack of a functioning toilet. It smelled awful,
Speaker 1: and Cook had come to the conclusion that his effort
Speaker 1: to use compressed air to clear water out so that
Speaker 1: they could rise faster was not working. He was preparing
Speaker 1: to tell the men that hope was lost and that
Speaker 1: they were going to die. Not long after that, some
Speaker 1: men who were sheltering in the submarine's motor room, which
Speaker 1: at that point was the highest point in the submarine,
Speaker 1: reported that they could hear waves breaking against the side
Speaker 1: of the vessel. So that sounds awesome, right, like we
Speaker 1: have cleared the water. Uh. Since they weren't oriented in
Speaker 1: the correct direction, they used math plus the ship's inclinometer
Speaker 1: to figure out just how far up they were. When
Speaker 1: the good news was now about twenty ft of the
Speaker 1: ship were above the water line. That's all, But there's
Speaker 1: also bad news. The actual escape hatch, though, was still
Speaker 1: submerged by a good thirty feet, and even if they'd
Speaker 1: been able to shift their angle from sixty degrees to
Speaker 1: ninety degrees from horizontal, the hatch still would have been underwater,
Speaker 1: and that shift would not have been enough to clear
Speaker 1: it of the waterline. But now having part of the
Speaker 1: vessel above the waterline gave everyone a tiny glimmer of hope,
Speaker 1: and they came up with a plan to cut their
Speaker 1: way out of the ship. So it's a tiny glimmer
Speaker 1: of hope because they're planning to cut their way through
Speaker 1: three quarter inch thick steel that was made specifically to
Speaker 1: keep the ocean out of the submarine to not be
Speaker 1: easy to break. Correct. Uh, that sounds like just a
Speaker 1: sprit plan, but it is what they decided to do,
Speaker 1: and they did it. Cook climbed up to the tiller room,
Speaker 1: which was a small compartment off the motor room, and
Speaker 1: he and several men took turns, starting with an electric
Speaker 1: drill until it's motor burned out, and then they turned
Speaker 1: to a manual drill. And that's what blows my mind. Like,
Speaker 1: but I guess if you feel like life of both
Speaker 1: yourself and a lot of men that you are, you know,
Speaker 1: close with at that point they've worked together really closely,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. You have the choice of we can
Speaker 1: try to drill through three quarter and still with a
Speaker 1: manual drill, or we can die. Yeah. Uh so slowly
Speaker 1: but surely. They drilled a quarter inch hole through the
Speaker 1: side of the sub and that took twenty minutes, Sarah,
Speaker 1: quarter inch hole. So it's not like any anybody's getting
Speaker 1: out of that. No, and unfortunately that also doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that fresh air is coming in. Yeah. Um, so they
Speaker 1: were finding you know, they were successful. Yeah, they had
Speaker 1: managed to make a hole. They decided that what they
Speaker 1: would do was to drill holes close enough together that
Speaker 1: they could then knock out the spaces between them with
Speaker 1: a hammer and a chisel, hoping to create a hole
Speaker 1: large enough for the men to escape through. But based
Speaker 1: on the fact that it took them twenty minutes to
Speaker 1: make the first hole, they all expected that this effort
Speaker 1: was just going to take more time than they have,
Speaker 1: but they persisted anyway. By morning they had a space
Speaker 1: large enough to scan the horizon for ships, and they
Speaker 1: were actually seeing some, but those ships were too far
Speaker 1: away for them to get their attention. And since they
Speaker 1: had opened a hole in the ship, it was no
Speaker 1: longer as pressurized as it had been, so there was
Speaker 1: more water seeping in as air was escaping out of
Speaker 1: this hole that they had punched. And even though in
Speaker 1: theory they had a source of fresh air, now it
Speaker 1: was not enough to keep the air in the ship clean.
Speaker 1: The air was in fact increasingly disgusting, and the oxygen
Speaker 1: levels were low enough that the men couldn't keep at
Speaker 1: their drilling task for long. Having this source of of
Speaker 1: you know, air from the outside, like fresh air from
Speaker 1: outside wasn't coming in. Gross air from in the ship
Speaker 1: was going out and being replaced from up underneath by water,
Speaker 1: right is what was happening. So basically, now they were
Speaker 1: in this process of trying to make the whole big
Speaker 1: enough to escape from before the size of the hole,
Speaker 1: let enough air out, the submarine sank back below the waves.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna let that set for a minute, like
Speaker 1: it's a race against time to try to make the
Speaker 1: whole bigger before the ship sinks again. I keep saying ship,
Speaker 1: and I think somebody might write in and say, we
Speaker 1: should have said sub the whole time. So if if
Speaker 1: that's a nautical faux pa, I'm very sorry. Twenty four
Speaker 1: hours after the initial incident, so a full day they
Speaker 1: have been in peril. They had a hole in the
Speaker 1: side of the ship that was about six inches by
Speaker 1: eight inches. But basically everyone was unable to work at
Speaker 1: that point to make it any bigger because there was
Speaker 1: just a lack of oxygen. Uh, and many of the
Speaker 1: men had lost consciousness, so it wasn't And when you're
Speaker 1: doing something like drilling a hole, and with the manual drill,
Speaker 1: it's really hard, it's really difficult, and you consume a
Speaker 1: lot of oxygen. So when there's not much there, well,
Speaker 1: and all of the oxygen, not all, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the oxygen at this point had been replaced by
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide and breathing that is not good for you
Speaker 1: and can lead you to all kinds of other health
Speaker 1: effects by your body not being able to clear that
Speaker 1: out as waste um. Plus some of the guys who
Speaker 1: had already as the whole situation with chlorine gas started,
Speaker 1: some of them had started to have other breathing problems
Speaker 1: because of the toxic gases that were inside the ship.
Speaker 1: It was a really bad situation. But just then a
Speaker 1: ship came by, and Cook, who was still conscious, roused
Speaker 1: some men to try to find a way to signal it.
Speaker 1: And what they wind up doing was tying a sailor's
Speaker 1: shirt to a ten ft long length of copper pipe
Speaker 1: and sticking out, sticking that out the hole that they
Speaker 1: had made, and waving it around. So the ship in
Speaker 1: question was a merchant ship, the s S. Atlantis, which
Speaker 1: was actually headed away from them, but good fortune, someone
Speaker 1: on deck turned back and actually saw their signal, and
Speaker 1: so they came about to see what was going on.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to imagine the mind of the man
Speaker 1: who sees like a piece of pipe sticking out of
Speaker 1: a hole, of something sticking out of the ocean, Yeah, going,
Speaker 1: what the heck is that? Yeah? The Atlanti, says Captain
Speaker 1: Ernest A. Johnson, maneuvered close to the S five and
Speaker 1: then he rode the rest of the way himself in
Speaker 1: a dinghy or a little skiff or something, and he
Speaker 1: had the following conversation with Cook through the hole in
Speaker 1: the sub which is just fantastic. And I will do
Speaker 1: one part in Holly can do the other part. What
Speaker 1: ship are you? Submarine? S five? What nationality? United States?
Speaker 1: Where are you bound to hell by compass? I love?
Speaker 1: Why is this not a film? I feel like it
Speaker 1: has to be And I should have thought IMDb before
Speaker 1: we came in here. Um. And then just like we laughed,
Speaker 1: the men who were still conscious on the submarine laughed. Um.
Speaker 1: And after you know, his confusion kind of cleared up.
Speaker 1: Johnson realized that this was a crisis like this was
Speaker 1: an emergency that he needed to help with right now,
Speaker 1: and so he tied the S five to his ship
Speaker 1: with chains and cables to keep it from sinking, and
Speaker 1: then he ordered his men to build an improvised wooden
Speaker 1: platform so that they could have better access to try
Speaker 1: to work on the ship. And then they also made
Speaker 1: an improvised air pump to try to get some fresh
Speaker 1: air into the ship or into the submarine for the men.
Speaker 1: I also just loved the cook in the most dire
Speaker 1: circumstances is finding a way to correct chips like he
Speaker 1: gets my unending respect and admiration for Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: the one of the there are two primary sources for
Speaker 1: for this episode, and one of them is a book
Speaker 1: called Under Pressure, The Final Voyage of Submarine S five,
Speaker 1: And one of the remarks that comes up was that
Speaker 1: the situation like it's really difficult to live on a
Speaker 1: submarine and people tend to have really dark senses of
Speaker 1: humor and to be able to make a joke about anything. Um,
Speaker 1: but the jokes had ceased for quite some time before
Speaker 1: he said to hell by compass, and like that was
Speaker 1: one of the things where he realized, like how di
Speaker 1: are the men's mental situation was that no one was
Speaker 1: laughing about anything anymore. Uh So the Atlantis Is radio
Speaker 1: operator unfortunately was not on board. Also not on board
Speaker 1: or any sorts of tools or equipment that would have
Speaker 1: made it easier to drill through the side of the submarine.
Speaker 1: So the exhausted and at this point delirious crew of
Speaker 1: the S five passed the gear that they had been
Speaker 1: using out of the hole to the crew of the Atlantis,
Speaker 1: who then could resume drilling from the outside, and then,
Speaker 1: quite fortunately, another ship appeared. This one was the s
Speaker 1: S General George W. Girtles and Johnson ran up an
Speaker 1: emergency flag on the Atlantis to get the other ship's attention,
Speaker 1: and that ship's master, Captain EO. Swinson, uh moved his
Speaker 1: ship over and anchored nearby. Being a much bigger and
Speaker 1: more equipped ship and having a radio operator on board,
Speaker 1: the George W. Gettels was able to radio the Navy
Speaker 1: and let them know what was up with the submarine,
Speaker 1: but it was going to take at least until the
Speaker 1: next morning for a Navy vessel to arrive, so Captain
Speaker 1: Swinson and Johnson decided that they would keep on working
Speaker 1: to try to free the crew of the S five.
Speaker 1: Swinson's chief engineer, William Grace and his first assistant, Richard McWilliams,
Speaker 1: headed up the task, working with another manual drill, and
Speaker 1: this one was kind of a ratcheting one that seemed
Speaker 1: to work a little better, as well as chisels and
Speaker 1: a sledgehammer. They finally managed to make a hole big
Speaker 1: enough for the crew to crawl through thirty six hours
Speaker 1: after the original incidents. Ugh uh. They were taken aboard
Speaker 1: the Atlantis, where a makeshift sick bay had been put
Speaker 1: together so that they could receive them. And at this point,
Speaker 1: as you would imagine, the men were in really bad shape.
Speaker 1: Two actors from the George W. Gettles were on hand
Speaker 1: to look after the men, and they agreed that the
Speaker 1: rescue had really been in the nick of time. It
Speaker 1: took so long to evacuate everyone just because they were
Speaker 1: so exhausted and they were basically having to climb up
Speaker 1: the interior of a vertical submarine. They weren't done getting
Speaker 1: all the men off of the S five until about
Speaker 1: the same time as the Navy ships arrived, and Cook
Speaker 1: was the last man to leave the S five and
Speaker 1: at that point he had been awake for two days.
Speaker 1: He he gets the captain goes down with his ship. Award. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. The Navy tried to salvage the submarine, but
Speaker 1: eventually gave up. Two different ships were not up to
Speaker 1: the task of trying to haul it back to the
Speaker 1: surface and just they decided it was just gonna it
Speaker 1: was more trouble than it was worth. Basically, as of
Speaker 1: two thousand two, which is when the book that I
Speaker 1: referenced earlier was published it was still on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean. The Navy investigated, and they found that
Speaker 1: Fox's failure to close the intake valves was probably the
Speaker 1: cause of the sinking, But they also chalked up all
Speaker 1: those extenuating circumstances, including that the valves themselves were apparently defective. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that you know, those valves that were extremely hard
Speaker 1: to wrangle, were really what had caused Fox to leave
Speaker 1: his post in the first place. And Fox had also
Speaker 1: gone way above and beyond during the whole survival effort.
Speaker 1: Pretty much any time they needed a volunteer, he was it.
Speaker 1: I have to wonder personally if that was motivated by
Speaker 1: guilt over it was the whole thing going on. Uh.
Speaker 1: Cook also took some of the blame for having not
Speaker 1: ensured that the ship was clear before giving the order
Speaker 1: to submerge. Yeah, so there's a there's a lot that
Speaker 1: went on, like specific things that went on and all
Speaker 1: of their efforts to save themselves that we didn't go into.
Speaker 1: One of them is that before the motor burned out
Speaker 1: in their drill um, they needed to go get more batteries,
Speaker 1: and so somebody was going to try to go into
Speaker 1: the battery compartment, which was filled with chlorine gas, and
Speaker 1: foxes like, I'll go like he was the volunteer time. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also a note in the book that that Cook, Uh,
Speaker 1: at one of these points when Fox volunteered to go
Speaker 1: do something dangerous to try to help them, realized that
Speaker 1: at no point had he heard any of the men
Speaker 1: criticize him for having messed up in the first place,
Speaker 1: which is kind of incredible to me, Like, like, I
Speaker 1: can see how a person's impulse might be, like Fox,
Speaker 1: You've had one job, like what is the matter with you?
Speaker 1: But instead, like all the men are really focused hard
Speaker 1: on not laying blame on anybody and not arguing about it,
Speaker 1: but on doing whatever they needed to do to keep
Speaker 1: themselves alive. Uh. The Navy also recognized Captain's Swinson and
Speaker 1: Johnson and their cruise for how their lengths they had
Speaker 1: gone to to try to rescue the crew once they
Speaker 1: found the submarine sticking partly out of the water, and
Speaker 1: they also put more safety measures into place so that
Speaker 1: the same thing would not happen again. Cook was also
Speaker 1: a career Navy man, and he eventually retired as a
Speaker 1: full admiral in for more than thirty years of service. Apparently,
Speaker 1: after the S five was sunk, most of the crew
Speaker 1: really petitioned to be placed under him again, which is
Speaker 1: not surprising to me at all. I feel like this
Speaker 1: story could be used in corporate leadership manuals. Yeah, his
Speaker 1: nickname was savvy. He had been nicknamed that long before
Speaker 1: and to this just because that was his demeanor. He
Speaker 1: was a savvy guy. He knew how to how to
Speaker 1: handle things. So yes, so happy and the happy and
Speaker 1: the harrowing story, but a happy end name it is harrowing.
Speaker 1: I I do wish that I had made sure that
Speaker 1: there's not a movie of this at i amdb, because
Speaker 1: their absolutely should be. If there is not, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you
Speaker 1: have heard an email address or a Facebook you are
Speaker 1: l or something similar over the course of today's episode,
Speaker 1: since it is from the archive that might be out
Speaker 1: of date now, you can email us at History podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com, and you can find
Speaker 1: us all over social media at missed in History. And
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