Event One Thousand!

by Dick Phillips

The call "Event One Thousand" would have brought the hair up on the back of your neck if you'd been a submariner on the east coast in the 40's. It signified that a submarine was missing, and at the time, the loss of the Squalus in 240 feet of water was still not ancient history and was fairly fresh in all our minds.

From time to time as a practice exercise and to keep everyone on their toes, a boat would leave New London, go into Long Island Sound, send the appropriate diving and surfacing messages and then go to the bottom and stay there, setting off an Event One Thousand.

Naturally the regular diving and surfacing messages were monitored at New London and as soon as it was realized a boat was overdue, an alert would go out and after the prescribed period or time had passed, an event would be declared and the hunt would begin.

At the time all boats had a pair of "rescue buoys" let into the deck forward and aft. These were painted bright yellow and had reflectors mounted in their rims to reflect light shone on them. They contained a telephone and could be released from inside the boat and were attached to the boat by several hundred feet of wire cable along with the telephone cable to carry conversation between the surface and the boat.

In the days of the Squalus, the buoys only carried the telephone cable and were a means of locating a boat on the bottom. In the case of the Squalus, the telephone cable parted and contact with the submarine was lost. Later, a steel cable was added and this cable was permanently attached to the downhaul yoke over the hatch on the escape trunk forward and the after torpedo room hatch aft.

At the time of the Squalus accident, hard hat divers had to descend to the boat to attach a cable to the hatch yoke in order to haul the escape chamber down to the boat in distress. This required a rescue vessel to get to the site of the accident, prepare divers, find the boat (using the telephone cable) and descend to the deck of the boat to attach the wire cable. Meanwhile the trapped crew aboard the boat were conserving oxygen in order to be able to survive until the preparations were made to use the rescue bell.

The rescue bell itself rode on the after deck of a submarine rescue vessel which was equipped with a boom and hoists to maneuver the bell over the side and into the sea. The bell weighed about nine tons and had positive buoyancy in the water. It stood about 12 feet tall and was eight or nine feet in diameter. It was designed to hold ten persons in rather crowded circumstances.

The bell was connected to the rescue vessel by cables which supplied power and communication, plus hoses for air for the pneumatic drive motor and water ballast control. The motor was used to pull the bell down the downhaul cable to the submarine and, in reverse, to permit the bell to rise to the surface again.

The bell consisted of two compartments, the upper for its human cargo and the lower was flooded to provide weight so as to get closer to neutral buoyancy on the down haul. This lower compartment could be drained once the bell had mated with the area around the escape trunk upper hatch. Draining the sea water from the lower section and releasing the pressure sealed the bell to the hatch. At that point both the bell's lower hatch and the escape trunk upper hatch could be opened and eight of the submarine crew could join the two operators in the bell. The hatches were then shut, the lower skirt flooded again and the bell then rose to the surface. The rescued were removed from the bell and the process repeated until all hands were removed from the submarine in distress.

There were also salvage fittings on the submarine's deck which could be connected to a high pressure air supply and both tanks and compartments could be blown dry from an external air supply. This work requiring the presence of hard hat divers to make the air hose connections.

From time to time a boat would be selected to trigger an Event One Thousand. Only shore command and the captain of the boat selected would be aware of the event until the boat was at sea. She'd go through her regular exercises until she went to the bottom and stayed there.

She'd release her rescue buoys and wait for them to be found. This usually meant a couple of hours of stand easy time as there wasn't much to be done as far as operating the boat was concerned. The use of C02 absorbent or oxygen was usually not necessary, but the practice crew often went through the motions so they'd know what to do should it become necessary.

Eventually the rescue buoys would be found, communication established, the downhaul cable attached to the bell and a trip made down to the boat. On non emergency exercises, only one trip would be made by the bell and eight of the sub's crew would get a free ride to the surface in the bell. They'd board the rescue vessel, and with no duties, would have a restful time, staying out of the way of the rescue crew.

Despite full knowledge of the basic rules (Never Volunteer) several of us took the ride to the surface in the bell. Good thing submariners are not claustrophobic as the bell is very small once you are inside it with ten other swabbies! The bell doesn't sit level and the fact that it rose on a tilt was not particularly reassuring.

The ride to the surface was uneventful with little to be seen through the small ports on the bell. They were dark while on the bottom and lightened up as the bell rose through the water. As mentioned, the rescue of the Squalus survivors was of recent memory at that time and it was hard to ignore the fact that the bell (the same one we were in!) had hung up on its way to the surface on it's last trip from the Squalus! However, the trip to the surface was uneventful and our TDY aboard the rescue vessel was a no sweat trip back to the pier at New London.

However, before that trip was undertaken, the rescue divers had to fit the salvage air lines to the boat and blow her to the surface. For those of us lounging in the sunshine drinking skimmer coffee, it was almost boring as there wasn't that much to be seen.

However, when it came time to admit air to the ballast tanks on the boat to bring it to the surface, there were a dozen or more air lines snaking across the sea until they disappeared below the surface. The flow of air to the boat was controlled through a massive manifold and despite the apparent care with which the air was admitted to the hoses, when the boat did appear at the surface, it came up with an extreme down angle! It couldn't have been a lot of fun to make that ride and have had no control over the boat's movements. (Keep in mind that in those days a large angle would have been anything over 10 degrees. Angles and dangles were a lot less extreme in those days!)

So... while it was not an emergency by any means, several of us did get to ride the bell from the boat to the surface. A very few of the submariners who dived one more time than they surfaced and got to talk about it!

Dick Phillips dick_phillips@telus.net

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