Hell At 50 Fathoms

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Text originally published in 1926 under the same title.

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HELL AT 50 FATHOMS

BY

CHARLES A. LOCKWOOD

Vice Admiral, USN (Ret.)

HANS CHRISTIAN ADAMSON

Colonel, USAF (Ret.)

With a Foreword by

C. B. MOMSEN

Vice Admiral, USN (Ret.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

FOREWORD 5

INTRODUCTION 7

1—Hell at 50 Fathoms (Subs F-4; F-1) 12

Lieutenant Ede Has a Hunch 12

Early Days of West Coast Submarining 14

Jimmy Howell, Daredevil Submariner 14

When the F-4 Almost Sank 17

The F-4 Torpedoes Hawaiian Mission 18

Ensign Ede Takes Command 20

Suddenly—the F-4 Vanishes 23

Oil Slick on Deep, Dark Waters 25

2—The Facts of Life Strike Home (Subs A-6; C-4; B-2) 29

Enter—Death 29

Potential Causes of Disaster 33

3—Battling Against Fearsome Depths (Sub F-4) 37

Strike After Strike Proves False 37

Lost Submarine Found in 50 Fathoms 40

Lifting Gear Improvised 42

Deep Sea Divers Reach the F-4 45

Divers Face Death for Three Hours 46

Then All Hell Broke Loose 51

Franklin Roosevelt Releases Report 54

Board Solves Mystery of the F-4 Sinking 55

4—Sub Strands, Sinks Cruiser, Goes Overland (Sub H-3; CA Milwaukee) 57

Rock and Roll on Samoa Beach 57

Life Guard to the Rescue 59

Howe Speeds H-3 Rescue Efforts 63

The Milwaukee Hits the Beach 64

Heavy Cruiser Total Loss 68

H-3 Goes Cross Country 69

5—Escapes from Forward and Aft (Subs R-25; S-5; S-48) 72

Destination: Hell by Compass! 73

Cooke Looks into a Watery World 75

Strength of Samson, Patience of Job 80

Not a Flame for a Smoke Signal 82

Tons of Little Pigs Go to the Bottom 84

The Plight of the S-48 87

Dumping Ballast Lifts Her Nose 126

Youth Risks Life in Torpedo Tube 127

Walter White Shows His Stuff 129

6—Subs that Sank in the Night (Subs S-51; F-1) 131

A School Is Born 131

City of Rome Slices into S-51 131

F-3 Rams and Sinks F-1 133

The Grim Reaper Sharpens His Scythe 133

Salvage Preparations, S-51 135

Nightmare Jobs for Divers 137

Placing the Pontoons at Long Last 140

S-51 Returns to the Surface 142

Legal Aftermath 143

Public Repercussions 146

Lesson Learned from S-51 Loss 147

7—Doomsday for All Hands (Sub S-4) 149

C.G. Destroyer Slashes into S-4 149

Weather Hinders Rescue Operations 151

Diver Hears Signal from Sub 153

Tonight or Never to Save Six Lives 154

Falcon’s Race to Boston 156

End of Heartbreaking Rescue Phase 158

High Echelon Orders: Carry On! 160

Storm of Public Reaction Strikes 161

Divers Face Dangers in Wintry Seas 163

Death’s Weapon Was a Small Curtain 164

Courts, Boards, and Rewards 166

The Last Long Miles 167

8—From Ashes of Hope We Build Anew (Subs S-4; S-1; Balao; Tang) 169

The Problem of Survival 169

First Tottering Steps Toward Safety 170

Presidential Commission Named 171

S-4 Becomes a Guinea Pig 173

Momsen and the Lung 177

S-4 Lives Again 178

S-4 and the Rescue Chamber 180

Sub Escape Training Tank Built 182

Free Escape for Skin Divers 183

Express Elevator to the Roof 184

The Sub that Sank Herself 186

Free Escapes in Enemy Waters 189

9—They Brought Them Up Alive (Subs Squalus; Sculpin; Sailfish) 193

The Christmas Tree Was Green... 193

Admiral Cole Gets Bad News 198

Waiting, 40 Fathoms Down 200

Submarine Sunk Here; Telephone Inside 202

The Phone that Failed 202

Cy Acts with Cyclonic Speed 203

Falcon Arrives on Schedule 204

The McCann Rescue Chamber Wins Its Spurs 204

Squalus Goes to War as Sailfish 209

10—Gas-Greatest Enemy of All (Subs Tusk: Cochino; A-2-, A-7; B-1; E-2) 212

Tusk Hears Cochino’s Distress Call 212

Cochino’s Men Lashed to Sail 214

Twelve Tusk Men Swept into the Sea 218

Blazing Inferno in Arctic Waters 219

Wright Becomes Living Torch 222

They Also Serve... 225

Cochino’s Men Walk the Plank 227

No Sympathy from Russia 229

The Enemies Within of Submariners 231

APPENDIX 235

SUBMARINE ACCIDENTS (All Nations, 1864-1960) 235

SUBMARINES IN THIS BOOK 245

SUBMARINES IN THIS BOOK (continued) 248

BIBLIOGRAPHY 251

BOOKS 251

PERIODICALS 252

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 254

DEDICATION

Respectfully dedicated

to

the memory of

FLEET ADMIRAL ERNEST J. KING, USN

Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, World War II

A qualified submariner

whose dynamic leadership and

tireless pioneering efforts as

Commander, Submarine Base, New London

and

Commander S-51 and S-4 Rescue and Salvage Forces

furnished inspiration and driving incentive to the progress made by the U.S. Navy’s Constructors, Engineers, Medical Corps, Salvagers, Deep-Sea Divers, and Submarine Service and by civilian submarine builders in developing procedures and equipment for rescuing imperilled submarine crews and recovering their vessels from the clutches of the sea

FOREWORD

Legends of the sea, which have come down to us through the ages, are shrouded in superstition. Everywhere men who follow the sea respect the many traditions which bring luck—sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Neptune (Poseidon to the Greeks) is the Royal Master of all of the briny deep. Bad luck is blamed on the dirty work of some legendary god or demon of the deep. It is never the fault of the honest sailor.

During the Squalus salvage job, one of the most difficult ever undertaken, much of the hard luck encountered was the work of gnomes. The gnomes (called ganomes by the divers) come out of the bottom of the sea to tangle lines, disconnect hoses, steal the diver’s tools, and perpetrate all sorts of deviltry to foul up the poor diver’s work.

In all submarine accidents, ganomes play a part. With their well-known ability to swim through earth as easily as water, they have no difficulty in passing through the steel hull of a submarine to put sand in a bearing, poke a hole in a pipe, open a hatch, start a fire, or do such other mischief to punish the audacious polliwog who dares to enter into the domain of Neptune.

Thus, because submariners dare to leave the surface of the sea, they find in that deep, dark, mysterious unknown a hell at 50 fathoms.

Hell at 50 Fathoms, written by Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood and Colonel Hans Christian Adamson, tells the story of submarine accidents of the United States Navy. It describes the bone-chilling experiences of valiant sailors who risked their lives to perfect underwater craft.

Vice Admiral Lockwood, now retired, so well-known to submariners as the World War II Commander of the Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, has always been interested in diving and all other underwater exploits. This interest was exemplified when, in July 1943, he led a group of swimmers in the recovery of a live torpedo. The torpedo had been test fired against a cliff in an effort to discover the cause of faulty exploders. This effort was successful. The fault was disclosed and corrected, much to the relief of submarine captains who had seen so many torpedoes bounce off Japanese ships without exploding. Lockwood was awarded the Legion of Merit for this conspicuous gallantry.

This is a striking example of the resourcefulness inbred in submarine sailors. Each mishap discloses a weakness that is corrected. The tragedy of the sinking of the S-4 brought forth, with stunning forcefulness, the inadequacy of our technical competency to deal with a simple rescue problem. Within the steel hull of the S-4, brave men hammered out signals pleading for help—help that never came. Using the restored S-4 as an experimental laboratory, the Navy produced dramatic results in learning how entrapped men can escape, how surface crews can rescue them, and how to salvage a submarine for further service.

As was demonstrated 12 years later, in 1939, by the rescue of 33 men from the Squalus at a depth of 243 feet, the pleas of those men in the S-4 at a depth of only 102 feet could have been answered with the greatest of ease.

Knowing the authors of this book as I do, I can attest to the accuracy of their reporting. Lockwood served in submarines from the dark ages before World War I, when the service lived off crumbs and the submarine arm of the Navy was considered only a nuisance. Today, the submarine and its bag of weapons has virtually no antidote. It is a weapons system which can destroy targets anywhere on the face of the globe.

The modern submarine is a supertool of deterrence against the threat of a nuclear holocaust which could destroy all mankind. It is fitting that the rags to riches story of the underseas fleet be told. It is particularly fitting that the submarine accidents, tragedies, and heartbreaks that have bedeviled those intrepid sailors be recounted so that the slow, hard process of bringing about perfection can be understood.

With this thought in mind, I recommend that this book be read and enjoyed. It will help the reader to realize the enormity of an accomplishment that could only have been achieved by men completely dedicated to an ideal.

C. B. MOMSEN

Vice Admiral, USN (Ret.)

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to describe and re-enact the frequently tragic, often spectacular, and always dramatic disasters in the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Service. Every accident delineated within these pages had characteristics of paramount significance that made it a shocking and terrible object lesson which led to improvements in design, equipment, and training.

Present-day nuclear-powered submersible men-o’-war are eons apart from the humble little pig-boats the Navy sent to sea soon after the turn of the century. And yet, until not so long ago, submarines carried more dangers to their safety and survival within their own hulls than were posed by the threat and power of the hostile sea.

First on the roster of enemies within stood the green death, from chlorine gas generated by the mixing of sea water and sulfuric acid in the battery cells. This gas was of a sickly green color and a quick killer, hence its name.

Second came hydrogen gas. This treacherous, tasteless, odorless, and invisible gas was created in the batteries under conditions of charge or certain conditions of discharge. A 4 per cent mixture of it with the air in a submarine could transform it into a powerful explosive.

Third—in the old pre-Diesel days—stood gasoline fumes. Unnoticed leaks could fill engine and motor rooms with fumes that sometimes intoxicated submariners so thoroughly that they lost their capacity to function sanely. Just a flash of a spark, and the boat could blow apart.

The advent of oil-burning Diesels pushed gasoline-driven engines out of submarines. Substantial progress made in the development of devices to measure the hydrogen content of air in a sub, as well as greatly improved ventilation systems, have reduced the menace of hydrogen gas explosions. As to the Green Death, improved construction and design of wet-cells and of battery tanks have lessened the dangers of lethal unions between sea water and sulfuric acid.

Thus, three submarine enemies within have been either eliminated or brought within impressive limits of control.

Two remain that have not been mentioned. One is the system of ducts that serve as air-intakes, for men and machines, when the sub is on the surface. If the outboard valves of these ducts are closed when the sub dives, all is well; if not, they become pipes through which the vengeful sea can swamp a submarine in moments and send her to the bottom. The other source of danger is neglect or error caused by the ever-present human factor. Subs have gone to the bottom with all hands because someone forgot to fulfill his responsibility and left valves or manholes open that should have been closed.

In this book, we have tried to show the specific lessons of trial by error endured by our submarines during the decades when they faced and fought the enemies within. It was a long, slow, up-hill fight. Before World War I, neither the public, nor the politicians, nor some of the powers that be in the Navy Department took submarines seriously. In fact, even after World War I, many civilian and naval leaders did not believe that the submarine was here to stay. The result was small appropriations for construction, maintenance, and weapons, as well as meager allocations of personnel.

And yet, with quiet determination, submariners hung on, despite disappointments and the ever-present threat of disaster. Officers and men were a dedicated and determined lot. As the saying was among the crew in those pre-World War II days: A dollar a dive and six months’ pay if I don’t get back!

From the turn of the century and for 12 years, our submariners seemed to bear charmed lives. To be sure, there were accidents; some few lives were lost. Dining that same period, from 1903 to 1915, other navies had lost 15 submarines and 237 men. Our own age of innocence ended in March, 1915, when the F-4, with 21 aboard, sank in 306 feet of water off Honolulu harbor. The shock aroused the nation. The navy was found to be wholly unprepared to stage effective search, rescue, or salvage efforts at such unprecedented death. The comment that brave men did not die in vain has been worn threadbare through repetition, but, actually, the loss of the F-4 led to a new salvage concept through the employment of pontoons. Also, it brought about the expansion of Navy training of deep-sea divers. Lastly, after herculean efforts, the F-4 was recovered and proof found that faulty lining and construction of battery tanks had permitted sulfuric acid to eat through the hull and thus trigger the sinking of the sub. This weakness was corrected on other subs.

The loss of the F-4 was the curtain-raiser for what seemed like a chain reaction of submarine disasters throughout the twenties. By 1927, the U.S. Navy held second place in the submarine funeral cortege. Britain led with 336 dead in 19 accidents; the United States followed with 146 fatalities in 13 accidents.

It was the sinking of the S-4 in that year which led to the adoption of a high-pressure program to increase the basic safety of submarines; to develop rescue devices and training programs to save the lives of submariners trapped in sunken boats. In fact, the S-4 herself atoned for the part she played in the deaths of 40 men by serving as a deep-sea laboratory for the testing of Lungs and Rescue Chambers. She also became a submerged training station for escapees. Like submarine training itself, a new attitude toward escape and rescue from sunken subs suddenly came of age. Unfortunately, 1927 did not mark the end of submarine disasters, though that year does stand as the terminal point of an era when submarines had inherent lack of safety and when submariners who went down were also likely to be out. We have had grave and regrettable disasters since 1927—for instance, the Squalus. But it is significant that, although 26 of her men died, 33 were brought up alive in the McCann Rescue Chamber.

In reconstructing disasters that serve to illustrate the various types of calamities that can overtake submarines, we have been fortunate in having the co-operation of men who were either aboard the submarines in question or closely associated with rescue and/or salvage efforts, plus eye-witnesses; not forgetting those who designed and tested rescue equipment. Among those to whom we offer our most sincere thanks are:

F-4—Rear Admiral JULIUS A. FURER, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant Commander and Salvage Officer); Commodore C. M. YATES, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant commanding the F-2);Captain BRUCE L. CANAGA, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant commanding the F-boat Tender Alert); Captain PAUL M. BATES, USN (Ret.) (Ensign, the F-3); Commander D. H. DONAVIN, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant commanding the F-4); Lieutenant FRED MICHELS, USN (Ret.) (Chief Gunner’s Mate and Diver, the F-2)

A-2—Captain L. J. STECHER, USN (Ret.) (Ensign, the A-2)

H-3—Captain ERIC F. ZEMKE, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant, Exec., the H-3); Captain R. L. MELLEN, USCG (Lieutenant, C.G. Cutter McCullough); Captain CLARK CONWELL, Vice President, American President Lines; Mr. WALLACE E. MARTIN, Treasurer, Humboldt County, Eureka, California

S-5—Admiral CHARLES M. COOKE, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant Commander, commanding the S-5); Captain JOHN B. LONGSTAFF, USN (Ret.) (Ensign, the S-5)

F-1—Vice Admiral ALFRED E. MONTGOMERY, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant, commanding the F-1)

S-48—Captain EUGENE OLSEN, skipper of the Standard Oil Tug Socony 28

S-51—Rear Admiral R. E. HAWES, USN (Ret.) (Bos’n, the Falcon)

S-4—Vice Admiral C. B. MOMSEN, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant, Submarine Desk Bureau of Construction and Repair); Lieutenant THOMAS EADIE, USN (Ret.) (Chief Gunner’s Mate and Diver); Lieutenant FRED MICHELS, USN (Ret.) (Chief Gunner’s Mate and Diver); Captain H. E. SAUNDERS, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant Commander and Salvage Officer)

S-4—Designing and Testing Rescue Equipment: Vice Admiral ALLAN R. MCCANN, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant Commander and engaged in Rescue Chamber Project); Captain PALMER L. DUNBAR, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant Commander and O-in-C of Project); Vice Admiral C. B. MOMSEN, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant and later O-in-C of Project); Commander CARLETON SHUGG, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant assigned to Project)

Squalus—Rear Admiral OLIVER F. NAQUIN, USN (Ret.) (Lieutenant Commander commanding the Squalus); Vice Admiral C. B. MOMSEN, USN (Ret.) (Commander and Rescue Diving Officer); Vice Admiral ALLAN R. MCCANN, USN (Ret.) (Commander and Rescue Officer)

Tusk and Cochino—Rear Admiral ROY S. BENSON, USN, ComSubPac (Captain and Group Commodore); Rear Admiral R. C. BENITEZ, USN (Ret.) (Commander, commanding the Cochino); Captain ROBERT K. R. WORTHINGTON, USN (Commander, commanding the Tusk); Lieutenant Commander JAMES T. STRONG, USN (Lieutenant, the Cochino)

Among those who, in various ways and different channels, have helped us obtain official records, lists of personnel, board findings, diagrams, charts, and photographs, we are particularly indebted to:

Admiral ARLEIGH A. BURKE, USN, Chief of Naval Operations; Vice Admiral WILLIAM R. SMEDBERG, USN, Chief of Naval Personnel; Rear Admiral R. K. JAMES, USN, Chief of Bureau of Ships; Rear Admiral R. L. MOORE, USN, Assistant Chief, Bureau of Ships; Rear Admiral WILLIAM C. MOTT, USN, Judge Advocate General, USN; Captain R. D. POWERS, Jr., USN, Assistant Judge Advocate General, USN; Rear Admiral E. M. ELLER, USN, Director, Naval History Division; Captain F. KENT LOOMIS, USN, Assistant Director, Naval History Division; Captain C. W. STYER, Jr., USN, C/S SubLant, New London, Connecticut; Rear Admiral W. F. FITZGERALD, Jr., USN (Ret.), Editor, Shipmates; Mr. ELBERT L. HUBER, National Archives, and Mrs. MARY MCNAMARA GOGGIN, his assistant; Commander EDWARD R. EBERLE, USN (Ret.), Director, Submarine Library, Electric Boat Division, General Electric Corporation, Groton, Connecticut, and Librarian, Mrs. EMERY E. BASSETT; Captain KARL R. WHELAND, ComSubGru, San Francisco, California; Commander DAVID F. PURINTON, USN, C/S ComSubGru, San Francisco, California; Lieutenant Commander EDWARD TRESSLER, USN, formerly Submarine Escape Training Tank, New London, Connecticut; Lieutenant HARRIS E. STEINKE, Director Escape and Rescue Department, New London, Connecticut; Commodore WALTER F. MAZZONE, Medical Corps, Submarine School, New London, Connecticut; Commander B. CARROLL, USN, Bureau of Naval Personnel; and Chief Quartermaster L. E. CHULOS, USN, Sargo.

Newspapers to whose files we have had recourse include the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the Boston Herald, the Portsmouth Herald, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, the New York Times, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and the Honolulu Advertiser.

Librarians who have come generously to our assistance include Mr. F. P. BURKE, of the San Francisco Public Library; Mr. GEORGE GOLDFINE, of the Sixth U.S. Army Research Library, Presidio of San Francisco; Mr. RICHARD H. DILLON, Sutro Librarian of the California State Library; Mr. JAMES MARTIN, San Jose State College; Mrs. ALMA GHILARDI, Santa Clara County Free Library, and Mr. GEORGE C. MAGLADRY, Librarian, Humboldt County Free Library.

Thanks within these pages also go to Miss ROSAMUND THAXTER, of Kittery, Maine, and Mr. R. C. SOUTHWELL, of Honolulu, for research done on our behalf, and not least to Hawaiian Archives, Honolulu, for making a full set of newsfiles on the F-4 disaster available on the mainland. Thanks, too, for the helpmate hands extended by our better halves, PHYLLIS and HELEN, not to omit the nimble fingers of BLANCHE DAVIES.

CHARLES A. LOCKWOOD

HANS CHRISTIAN ADAMSON

1—Hell at 50 Fathoms (Subs F-4; F-1)

Lieutenant Ede Has a Hunch

In fact, if the whole boat should suddenly vanish in smoke, I do not think that I should be terribly astonished!

Lieutenant (jg) Alfred L. Ede, commanding officer of the submarine F-4, frowned thoughtfully as he scanned the words he had just put on paper. They formed the closing paragraph of a letter he was writing to his brother, Allison, in Los Angeles. The skipper of the F-4 sat at the green-clothed table in the wardroom of the Submarine Tender Alert, mothership of the First Submarine Division, U.S. Pacific Fleet. This division, comprising four submersibles of the F-class, was based at Honolulu, Hawaii, for lack of adequate facilities at Pearl Harbor. The latter naval base lies about a dozen miles northwest of Honolulu, well sheltered on a series of lochs surrounded by cane and pineapple plantations.

A grin, that was a little tight around the edges, replaced the frown on the face of the young submarine skipper—he was only 28 years old. Then he turned his eyes to the top of the page and re-read the entire letter.

This is not a very exciting place, it began, "but enough happens to the boat to at least keep up interest. I just came back from Pearl Harbor on Thursday where I had been for ten days having a new motor put in. Previous to that, we had a hydrogen explosion in the boat, engine breakdown and so on.

"So, there is something doing aboard the Four all the time.

"Take a mere trifle like today. Down 50 feet, no bottom below, and water trickling in through one of the valves. Still, that does not give us a thrill any more.

In fact, if the whole boat should suddenly vanish in smoke, I do not think that I should be terribly astonished.

Ede smiled somewhat wryly as he signed it: Al. In the lower left-hand corner of the sheet he wrote the date: 22 March, 1915.

Leaning back in his chair, the young submariner glanced about the small and sparsely furnished wardroom where he and other officers of the First Submarine Division ate their meals and held their conferences. The compartment ran athwartship of the Alert which had begun life in 1874 as an iron gunboat, to be converted in 1910 into a submarine tender. She was moored just across Ala Moana Road from the old Naval Station. Although portholes were open on both sides of the ship, the wardroom was hot as a bake oven, and the occasional breezes that stole through the ports and the skylight overhead carried the smell of the unclean waters that lie more or less dead under and between the piers of a landlocked harbor.

Immediately on mooring at her berth alongside the Alert in the narrow slip between the Flat Iron Pier and the Naval Station Pier at the foot of Richard Street, Ede had instituted a search for leaking valves aboard the sub. That day’s dive had been the fourteenth submergence of the month. March was drawing near its end and Ede wanted to make that all-important fifteenth dive before April 1st in order to enable his crew to draw their maximum amount of Diving Dollars, namely $15. As enlisted men in submarines said in those days:

A dollar a dive and six months’ pay if you don’t come up!

Just before he left the F-4 to go aboard the Alert, he had instructed Ensign Timothy A. Parker, second in command, to pass the word that, if Division Commander Smith permitted, the F-4 would make her fifteenth March dive on Thursday, 25 March. And now, this Monday afternoon, Captain Ede waited in the wardroom for Lieutenant Charles E. Smith, commander of the First Submarine Division, to put in his appearance.

Pushing back his chair, the Four’s skipper rose and, in a few strides, stood before one of the open portholes for a breath of air. Just below and beyond him, the four F-boats of the Division were nested side by side. The outboard vessel of the quartet was his own. He noted, with some displeasure, that the diving flag had not as yet been struck. This flag was a rectangular sheet of metal that was clipped to the second of the two periscopes that rose in their housings just abaft the stubby little superstructure that served to streamline the sub’s conning tower. This signal, shown only by subs engaged in diving, or their tenders, had a blue border and a white center in which appeared a red whale-shaped figure. No one knew exactly what that figure represented, but it should have been a porpoise because, among sailors, this animal is known as the sea-pig and submarines were then spoken of as pig-boats. The term derived from the fact that, when making observations, submerged subs would swoop up from below periscope depth, use their periscopes, and quickly dive out of sight to deeper levels. This was called porpoising because the evolution actually copied the playful progress of a school of sea-pigs—and the name stuck.

Captain Ede’s practiced eye raked the F-4 from bow to stern. For her day, she was a large submarine. Even surfaced, her full length of 142 feet 7 inches or her beam of 15 feet 5 inches did not show. Like icebergs, submarines hide their size and pack their punch out of sight below the surface. In her engine room, two 400-hp Diesel engines gave her a top surface speed of 13.5 knots, while a pair of 310-hp electric motors could push her along at 11.5 knots submerged. As for armament, she carried no deck guns, but in the torpedo room in her bow were four 18-inch torpedoes in as many tubes.

In that respect, the F-4 was completely akin to her sister ships, the F-1, the F-2, and the F-3. But there the relationship ended. From the very day she had been commissioned, the Four had built up a reputation for being cranky, hard to handle, and unreliable. To be sure, all subs of that vintage had to be babied along with patient and understanding hands, but even against that background, the Four stood out as a notorious maker of trouble. And yet, Captain Ede regarded his command with a generous measure of affection. There was that something about her that makes certain ships and certain women special, irrespective of their basic characteristics.

For a few minutes, Ede’s eyes rested searchingly upon his vessel as she tugged placidly upon the lines that held her fast. Had he a premonition that, in a matter of a very short time—three days, to be exact—the F-4 and all hands aboard her would actually vanish; if not into dense clouds of smoke, at least into deep, dark waters?

Early Days of West Coast Submarining

The keel of the F-4 was laid in the yards of the Moran Company in Seattle, Washington, in August of 1909. In June of that very year, Midshipman Alfred Louis Ede was graduated from the Naval Academy in the upper third of his class. Thus it can be said that the F-4 and her skipper-to-be started toward their common destiny, although along different paths, at the same periods of their naval beginnings.

Alfred Ede came from a family of pioneer ranchers whose cattle lands lay in the vicinity of Truckee, Nevada. But young A1 had the sea, rather than cattle and lands, in his blood. On leaving the Academy, Ede was assigned to the armored cruiser West Virginia. After that, he saw service aboard the destroyer Truxtun. Early in 1913, the young Ensign had his dearest wish fulfilled when he received orders to undergo instructions in submarines aboard the newly commissioned F-boats of the First Submarine Division, U.S. Pacific Fleet, then based at San Pedro, California. The early classes of submarines were, from 1903 to the mid-1930’s, designated alphabetically by classes (A to V) and by number to indicate seniority within a given class. Thus, the F-4 was actually the fourth F-boat to be built. Submarines were not given names until the fleet type of subs appeared in the 1930’s.

In 1913, as later, Smith was Commodore of the sub flotilla. Brisk, active, and brimming with initiative, he was an excellent leader, a sturdy sailor, a pioneer submariner, and a fine judge of men. Smith, also skipper of the F-1, saw great promise in Ede.

Jimmy Howell, Daredevil Submariner

Originally, the F-1 had been commanded by Lieutenant (jg) James Bruin Howell, a voluble, volatile extrovert who handled the F-1 with great daring. In his book, Jimmy Howell showed more audacity than caution.

One day, toward the close of 1912, Captain Howell was making submerged runs in 100 fathoms of water along the California coast in the F-1. Smith was not aboard. Having in his nature something of the devil diver, Jimmy thought that here was an excellent opportunity to determine just how far an F-boat could dive beyond her designed depth of 200 feet. In those days, the world record for submariners—who went to great depths and survived to boast about it—was about 250 feet.

In actual practice, American submarines seldom, if ever, approached the designed 200-foot depth. Generally, they followed the submarine rule-of-thumb: 16 or 60. If a sub ran at 16 feet, her periscope could be exposed and approaching surface ships avoided. If she ran at 60 feet, surface ships could pass safely over her. But, even as daredevil airmen of the 1910’s had to see how high into the sky they could push their planes, so some submariners felt an urge to see how far into the depths of the sea they could take their craft. Navy discipline restrained those who had such exploratory yearnings. Aloft, a pilot risked only his own neck and his plane. At sea, a captain had to think first of his crew, next of his ship, and lastly of himself.

But Howell proved himself to be the exception to the rule on that day in 1912. He gave orders to dive. However, instead of leveling off at a few dozen feet to go porpoising, he sent the craft down and down and down in a steady glide. Past 100 feet; past 150; past 200 feet—slowly but irresistibly the F-1 nosed lower and