Squalus Survivors Recall Escape

Aug. 15 -- When the Squalus went down in 1939 during a trial run 13 miles off Portsmouth, N.H., 26 crewmen drowned immediately: Faulty valves had suddenly let the sea pour in.

But 33 were still alive inside the submarine on the sea floor, 240 feet down. Water soon shorted out the electric lines.

“We lost all power, we had no lights, no voice phones. There was no light no heat…It was very cold,” said Dan Persico, a Squalus survivor.

As the Russian submarine, the Kursk, lies about 400 feet under Arctic waters, survivors of the Squalus can picture what the 116 Russian crew members have been experiencing since Saturday afternoon, when the Oscar II-class submarine sank.

In the Squalus, the power failure has plunged the crew into darkness and puddles of water froze on the floor around them.

When an emergency radio line to a nearby ship broke, they tried communicating by hammering on the hull. Warren Smith, another survivor remembers trying to send out signals. “Two hits for a dash, one for a dot. I was so tired from beating on those bulkheads with a ball-peen hammer.”

“They didn’t respond,” explained Presico, “so we expected the worst.”

Waiting for Help

Alan Bryson was one of those who crawled into a torpedo room. Shipmates lowered warm pea soup down to them in a milk can.

And they waited.

“You know how they say a watched pot never boils? Well when you are waiting around for someone to come like that, they never come,” said Bryson.

The captain ordered everyone to lie down to save oxygen and energy.

“I had a lot of very close friends back aft,” said Bryson. “That necessarily goes through your mind because I knew they were gone.”

It would be 23 hours after the sinking before rescuers reached the area.

“It’s awfully quiet on the bottom,” said Bryson. Very quiet.”

For Smith, the wait was almost too much to handle. “I said well, I’ll either get out of it or I won’t, the heck with it. And I went to sleep and the next thing you know they were calling me to get in the bell.”