Tara Ross: This Day in History (USS Squalus)

[rangerrebew]

Tara Ross: This Day in History
 
Tara Ross
 
On this day in 1939, a Sargo-class submarine sinks during a deep dive. No submarine crew had ever been rescued once they'd sunk below 20 feet! Would the crew of the USS Squalus become the first to survive such a tragedy?

Submarines had a bit of a bad reputation during the early 1900s. As many as 825 men died aboard submarines between 1921 and 1938. Rescues in deep water were difficult! In fact, service aboard a submarine was sometimes dubbed “the coffin service” because of the low rate of survival during these incidents.

How much courage and patriotism it must have taken to serve aboard a submarine in those years!

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[PeteS in CA]

The N, O, R, and S class boats (and earlier) were pretty poor boats. Accidents, mechanical failures, sinkings with aboard lost. The V-boats were a little better, but were actually onesy-twosy-threesy experiments with several basic concepts. Some were too small (V1-3), some were too large (V4-6), and some were close (V7, V8, and Cuttlefish). These last set off an evolution toward the "Just Right" Gato and Balao classes that were the heart of the USN's submarine fleet in WW2. The 9 boat Sargo class was kind of in the middle of that evolutionary succession, and except for Sealion, sunk in Manila harbor in December, 1942, all served in WW2.

I won't spoil the story for you, but brief histories of Sculpin (SS-191) and Squalus (SS-192) can be found here, http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/submar/