Voyages of Discovery (2006): Season 1, Episode 5 - Voyages of Discovery - full transcript

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In May 1939, the crew of
the submarine USS Squalus

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

They were trapped
on the ocean floor with

their air running out and
no means of escape...

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

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

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

of the most celebrated rescue
missions in maritime history.

It kick-started a whole
new area of underwater

technology and revolutionized
our understanding

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



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

The exercise was
taking place 25 kilometers

off New Hampshire on
the east coast of America.

Are you ready for diving, crew?
Aye, sir.

This was the USS Squalus'
19th test dive -

a timed crash dive
for use in emergencies.

First officer, prepare to dive
the boat! Prepare to dive the boat!

Under the command of
Lt Oliver Naquin...

Dive the boat. Dive the
boat. The Squalus had to

dive to periscope depth -
15 meters - in 60 seconds.

Mark. That's one, two and
three, OK? A series of levers

closed the valves that fed
air to the diesel engines.

Green signaled that
the sub was watertight.

At 7.40am, the dive began.



Mark.

62 seconds.

Well done, gentlemen.

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

SCREAMING

Unbelievably, water
was pouring through the

main induction valves
in the rear of the sub.

FRANTIC SHOUTING

Main valve's not working!

We've hit bottom, sir.

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

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

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

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

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

These men were on their own.

What was going to happen to them?

Bearing in mind that in
the previous 20 years worldwide,

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

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

In the 1930s, submariners
like the crew of the

Squalus were taking
their lives in their hands.

Underwater technology was in
its infancy and, in the history

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

The disaster of the Squalus
would become a pivotal

event that would change
underwater safety forever.

Even today, flooding is a danger
that terrifies every submariner

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

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

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

This is really hard work

but of course I knew
it was going to happen.

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

Freezing cold water
under high pressure.

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

it's twice what the
pressure is at the surface

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

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

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

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

As men struggled desperately
forwards, the crew who had already

made it into the control room
faced an agonizing decision.

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

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

They were ordered
to seal the control room.

SCREAMING

26 men died in
those first few minutes.

33 survivors were
entombed in what was now a

watery coffin stranded
on the bottom of the ocean.

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

Carl joined the Navy
as a teenager in 1936.

By the summer of 1939,

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

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

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

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

anything except how
to shut the water off.

Everybody said, "What did you think?"

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

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

Massive volumes of water
pouring in this. Tremendous volume.

And it went into both engine rooms.

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

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

and a new danger
was already upon them.

Water was seeping into the
forward battery compartment,

threatening to short-circuit
the huge batteries

that powered the
sub's electric motors.

This is the forward
battery, of course.

This is the battery hatch.

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

on the batteries were
coming out, so the battery was

overheating, we were
pulling several thousand amps.

As the batteries
heated to a critical level,

the chief electrician
shut off her power.

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

Nobody in the battery
compartment would have stayed alive,

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

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

With no power, there was no heating,

no light
and no hope of raising the sub.

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

Take a roll call. Yes, Sir.

Bryson! Aye, sir.

CALLS NAMES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

Aft torpedo, do you copy?

FAINT BUZZING

Aft torpedo, do you copy?

FAINT BUZZING

Forward battery, do you copy?

FAINT BUZZING

Forward torpedo, do you copy?

FAINT BUZZING

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

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

Ever since the sinking of the
Lusitania in World War I

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

But the early models
produced on both sides of the

Atlantic, some of which
were even powered by steam,

were often a greater
danger to their own crews

than enemy shipping -
they were steel death traps.

Submarine design had
moved on by the '30s, but

despite the image
portrayed in recruitment films,

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

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

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

But despite the dangers,
there was pressing reasons

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

'Millions of Americans,
men, women and children

wait in the cold on bread
lines, in soup kitchens.'

The Great Depression of 1929
threw America into turmoil.

By 1932,
the economy had virtually collapsed.

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

'railroads come
to a virtual standstill.'

There were 15 million unemployed

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

'..The ranks of the unemployed
are...' But the submarine service

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

While the rest of the US
was gripped by poverty

and unemployment, young
sailors were guaranteed

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

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

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

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

'his old schoolteacher
and makes himself at

home in the comfortable
barrack accommodation.'

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

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

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

For the crew of the stricken
Squalus trapped on the

ocean floor, things were
going from bad to worse.

MEN SHOUT

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

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

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

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

But there was no way out.

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

Radio communication was
impossible that far down

and the last message to
base had been garbled.

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

Well and truly lost.

The crew released a
marker buoy and some rocket

flares, but the chances
of rescue were remote.

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

In the '30s and '40s, subs
built here at Portsmouth

naval yard were at the
forefront of submarine design

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

Squalus was at the
cutting edge of these

developments and yet
still the sea took her.

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

the big question remained -
could those men be saved?

The answer to that lay
with one man, Lieutenant

Charles Momsen,
nicknamed "Swede" Momsen.

In 1925, 14 years before
the Squalus disaster,

Momsen was a sub commander
and was badly shaken by

the tragic sinking of his
vessel's sister submarine.

Stranded on the
bottom of the ocean,

several of Momsen's
friends lost their lives

while the Navy stood by helplessly.

Momsen was determined
things had to change.

Submarines had to become safer.

Helen Hart Momsen
is Charles Momsen's granddaughter.

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

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

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

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

his fingers were all torn
to stubs because he had

tried to open the hatch,
which would have been

impossible even without the water on
top of it,

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

and he was just
overwhelmed because, at first

he thought, "Well, it
wouldn't be so bad -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

they just ignored him.

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

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

and, of course, back in
those days the Navy was more

or less run by what they
called surface admirals.

They had all served on
surface vessels and they

weren't sympathetic with
the submarine service,

they saw it as a bunch
of mavericks and my

grandfather was the
biggest maverick of all.

Momsen lobbied the
bureau to take his ideas on

board, but again and
again he was turned down.

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

Determined not to be
thwarted by Navy bureaucracy

a second time, Momsen
began developing rescue ideas

without the knowledge of
his commanding officers.

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

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

A remarkable breathing
device that gave submariners

a chance of reaching the
surface from 100m down.

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

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

and then he tested
it in a swimming pool

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

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

'Air exhaled into the device
passes through soda lime which

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

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

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

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

Crikey, it looks like
a hot-water bottle.

Doesn't it? It does. It does.

OK, how does it work?

I met a man who actually was saved
with this from the Tang. This one?

Yeah, out in the Formosa Straits.
Oh, I'd better be careful with this.

He ascended
from a submarine with this.

And this is what goes in your mouth.

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

Right... regulator mouthpiece.

Hold that up.

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

'one at a time,
holding securely to the

'marker line and taking
particular care to pause

at the designated intervals
for decompression.'

The Momsen lung was
the first truly successful

underwater breathing
device for a submariner.

Filled with pure oxygen
that recycled during

breathing, it didn't
allow you to stay

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

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

Wow. You've got the
same pressure as on me,

the water pushing on
here, so equal pressure.

Right. Fantastic.
It just seems incredibly simple.

Yeah, it does. I mean there's no
diving gear, no diving suit. No.

Get that
escape-hatch pressure equalized.

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

Wow.

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

This time the top brass
couldn't ignore Momsen

and, begrudgingly, they
came round to his idea.

'Under the supervision of
Admiral Momsen, inventor

of the famous Momsen
lung, the future submariners

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

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

Thousands were ordered to equip
every sub in the fleet.

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

He's now 103.

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

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

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

You could do 100 foot, no problem?
Oh, yeah.

I could jump overboard
and go along the bottom.

Yeah.

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

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

You're empty.

Yeah.

So what are your memories of Momsen?

He was an innovator, you know.

The man was just
nothing less than a genius

and he could do anything,
just about, yes.

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

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

The Atlantic was
freezing cold and the

chances of getting all
33 men out were remote.

We had planned
an escape using a Momsen lung.

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

and we were going to grease
down and the captain had

selected Greek Medeiros
to be the first man out to

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.

We could have gotten...
the first group could have

gotten out of the boat, no
question, but whether he

could keep going or not,
that was questionable.

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

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

But Captain Naquin
had no idea that his last

location radioed back to
base had been garbled.

They were lost.

With the Squalus now
out of radio contact for

several hours, a second
submarine from the

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

not realizing it was
looking in the wrong place.

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

The search dragged on and on.

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

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

Pineapple seemed to be a favorite.

Man, it was cold.

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

a skim of ice.

But cold and hunger
weren't the only dangers.

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

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

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

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

was desperately searching
for the downed sub.

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

and inside was the telephone
connected to the submarine.

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

This is the USS Squalus.

Is there anybody up there? Over.

'USS Sculpin. Are you receiving?

'Over.' Yes...

Hello?

This is the USS Squalus.

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

and broke the cable.

Communication was lost
with the submarine,

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

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

'May 23rd 1939, the
submarine Squalus lies on

the ocean bottom off
Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

'59 men are trapped inside...'

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

Papers rushed to print the story.

The plight of the crew
became front-page news.

The pressure was on to
do something for the men,

but so far no crew had
even been rescued from a

sunken sub - it was simply
too difficult a challenge.

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

The whole of the town
here at Portsmouth was

looking at the navy base
over there for answers.

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

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

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

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

In desperation, the
Navy at last turned to the

man they had once
ignored... Charles Momsen.

Still unrelenting in his
drive to improve safety,

he was quietly tucked away
in research and development.

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

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

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

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

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

And yet it was just
completely unproven.

Just countless gauges
and valves in here.

Some of them are
to control buoyancy,

some are to control winches,

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

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

The trick to it is
sending it down to the bottom

and accurately locating it
over the submarine escape hatch,

and the key to that
is this thing here.

There's a rubber
gasket under there and

that provides a perfect
seal over the hatch.

When this reaches the submarine,

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

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

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

It provides a perfect
seal, the men can open

up the hatch from
inside and enter into here.

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

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

'Rescue vessels, led by the
Falcon, locate the sub and

prepare to send down a
newly developed rescue bell.'

It was Momsen's big moment.

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

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

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

'Will it work, and at that depth?

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

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

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

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

Tough and determined,
they risked their lives to push the

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

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

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

One boot alone,
this weighs about ten kilos.

So some real problems
with it. Firstly, you

can only dive very,
very close to the ship

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

Secondly, they're
pulling a long air hose

behind them and that
air hose in Momsen's case

would have been 75
meters long so it would have

weighed a ton, making
the dive almost impossible.

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

At the time, we only had
a very basic understanding

of how our bodies react
to being at pressure.

So Momsen dedicated himself
to learning how that happened

and he developed
diving tanks, just like this

one used by the Royal
Navy here at Gosport.

What Momsen and his team
were beginning to discover

was that as a diver
descends, water pressure

squeezes nitrogen from
the air being breathed

into a diver's bloodstream
and body tissues.

At high pressure,
like there are right here,

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

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

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

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

and I guess I must be
experiencing it right now,

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

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

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

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

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

The diver was Martin Sibitzky.

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

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

With the concentration of carbon
dioxide rising with every breath,

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

Sibitzky had to succeed,
and quickly.

On this mission
there was no room for error.

When Sibitzky got down there
and started to work really hard

dragging that heavy cable around,

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

He became physically fatigued
and very confused, almost drunk.

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

Momsen knew exactly what
Sibitzky was going through,

so he talked him through
it, step by careful step.

Momsen helped Sibitzky
gather his thoughts

and overcome the
effects of nitrogen narcosis.

At last
he was able to clip the cable on.

The first stage of the
operation was complete,

but the hardest part
was still to come.

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

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

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

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

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

'This occurs a little more
than 24 hours

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

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

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

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

But would it work?
Would the seal hold?

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

The seal held.

Yeah!

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

A rescue mission had
reached the submarine.

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

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

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

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

or indeed if the bell could
actually manage the four

journeys needed to lift
the survivors to safety.

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

Valves let in air
to the ballast tanks,

and inch by inch,
the chamber rose...

..guided by the cable
to the ship above.

For now, everything seemed
to be working perfectly.

At last,
the bell made it to the surface.

'There is it bubbling
and breaking the water,

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

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

'the rescue chamber coming up
from its first descent.

'Hoisted up. What's in it?

'There are anxious wives
and family waiting tensely.

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

'So weak he has to
be helped after being

entombed for 24 hours
at the bottom of the sea.

'One after the other,
seven in all are brought

up in this first trip of
the rescue chamber.'

It was a historic moment.

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

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

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

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

There was no time to waste.

The next two dives went
without a hitch, with 18

more men being brought
up safely to the surface.

The chamber was sent
back down to the Squalus

for the final time,
a little before 8pm.

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

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

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

Seemed like it took hours.

Man, it was cold
and the air was horrible.

It was getting worse all the time.

How did it feel
getting in that bell?

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

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

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

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

He made his way down tentatively.

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

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

So on Momsen's orders, he cut it.

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

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

Just when it seemed
the worst was over,

the diver returning to the surface
noticed something disastrous.

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

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

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

Afraid that this last strand
would break, Momsen

had to order the chamber
gently lowered back down to

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

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

They dropped us back down
because if that cable had parted

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

With the last of the
survivors trapped inside the

bell, Momsen came up
with an all-or-nothing plan.

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

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

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

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

If it worked, it would
be light enough that it

could be carefully hauled
up, hand over hand.

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

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

So McDonald blow the
lower compartment.

Then blow 20 seconds...

Then he blow 10 seconds.

Finally,
they pulled us clear of the mud

and they had all these people up on
the deck,

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

we went right to the
surface like that.

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

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

'Every one of the
living brought out alive.

'In the history of the
sea, a sunken submarine

represents the depth
of terror and horror.

'This rescue represents
a height of glory.'

We got to the surface...

and I was frozen, man, oh, man.

I tell you, we were lucky,
really lucky.

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

That makes the difference.

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

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

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

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

The Squalus rescue,
carried out under the

glare of the world's
press, had put submarine

safety firmly on the
agenda, and within six

months of the Squalus
sinking, the US Navy

had offered the diving bell plans to
13 other countries

in a bid to make
submarines safer round the world.

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

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

It's called the McCann chamber.

Named after Momsen's successor
in the development programme.

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

to take part in a submarine
rescue training exercise

and I'm going to go down
here in a McCann bell, which

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

to go down to a submarine
at 40 meters,

to see what it was
really like for those

rescuers and for those
men from the Squalus.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Very good.

HE SPEAKS ITALIAN
I can feel the pressure

increasing now.

That's because the water is coming

in the lower part of
the bell and squeezing

all the air into this
part of the chamber.

Yeah.

The bell is noisy,
it looks primitive,

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

The Italians see it almost
as an elevator that can run

back and forth from the
surface to the sea bed.

We've just landed on a submarine!

It's fantastic to think
that a design which is

essentially from the
'30s is still used today.

And it's not just the Italians.

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

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

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

that's the top of the submarine,

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

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

whilst on the bottom of the sea.

Oh, wow.

Hey, thanks for this, guys.

Thanks very much.

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

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

Dry, good coffee, good
company... Here we go.

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

New devices were pioneered
that led to some remarkable

equipment like this
one-atmosphere diving suit.

In one of these, a diver
can work hundreds of meters

down on the ocean floor,
allowing the construction

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

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

which run hundreds of
miles along the ocean floor.

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

After the Squalus rescue,
Momsen was promoted to

Commander and his prestige
in the Navy just rocketed.

He used his influence
to launch a whole new era

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

One of his most significant
contributions was the

development of new mixed
gasses for deep diving.

By replacing the nitrogen
in the air with helium,

he completely eliminated
nitrogen narcosis.

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

have shorter decompression times
and underwater work is just safer.

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

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

seen here looking for a
hydrogen bomb lost at sea

after a mid-air collision
involving a B52 bomber.

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

and more maneuverable, with
ever more specialized functions.

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

As well as submarine
rescue and training, they're

used for things like
investigating wrecks, searching

for lost aircraft, inspecting
marine structures and

even filming the secret
habits of deep-sea creatures.

And one man's vision of
what was possible beneath

the sea helped pave the
way for technology like this.

Momsen was a true pioneer.

He revealed to the world
that hugely complex diving

operations can take place
deep below the surface.

The rescue of the Squalus
gave people confidence

as they dived ever
deeper into this alien world.

Momsen gave hope.

So should things go
wrong down here in the

abyss, we know that
help can be on its way.

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

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

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

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

Her conning tower is still
preserved at Portsmouth Navy Yard

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

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

Well, brings back a lot of memories.

I lost
some very close friends on this boat.

It...

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

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

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

let's say I was always lucky.

I was lucky since then.

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

three wonderful children
and six wonderful grandchildren.

Can't get much luckier than that!

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

Thank you, Swede.

You betcha.

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

I have a medication that I take
in my room

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

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

and "Thank you Swede."