First Submarine Rescue
100th ANNIVERSARY
28 OCTOBER 1923
FIRST SUBMARINE RESCUE
When the four O-class US Navy submarines O-3 (SS-135), O-5 (SS-137), O-6 (SS-138) and O-8 (SS-140) were vectored to the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal for a routine transit on the early Sunday morning of 28 October 1923, the United Fruit Company freighter SS Abangarez was simultaneously cleared to anchor at Dock No. 6 at Cristobal. No one foresaw the pending collision.
Captain W.A. Card of Abangarez was too late to ward off disaster. He spotted the low-profile subs and sounded his horn just moments before his bow sliced a 10-foot gash through the starboard hull of O-5. At 0624 O-5’s No. 1 ballast tank and main engine room were opened to the sea. At 0625 O-5 lay 36 feet below Limon Bay. Though no alarm could be given, moments before the collision the submarine’s watch was heard to call all hands to abandon ship. Sixteen of the 21-man O-5 crew were fished from the muddy waters of the bay in the hour that followed.
TM2c Henry Breault reached the main deck but realized his friend, TM2c Lawrence W. Brown, was asleep in the forward battery room. Without a second thought he re-entered the stricken sub. In the few seconds it took to locate Brown, O-5 sank, and Breault and Brown dogged themselves into the water-tight forward torpedo room–the only space not flooded. Here, if history repeated itself, they would tap fruitlessly until falling asleep from suffocation. To date no one had ever been rescued from a downed submarine!
Commander of US Naval Submarine Base Coco Solo, CAPT Amon Bronson’s divers detected Breault’s tapping. The shallow water of Limon Bay provided a novel opportunity. If the nose of the 173-foot submarine could be lifted a mere 36 feet, those in the forward torpedo room could be saved. The powerful floating crane Ajax was brought from the Pacific end of the Canal and civilian hard hat diver Sheppard Shreaves, then attached to Panama Canal Mechanical Division, spent an unprecedented 24 hours underwater, in zero visibility, tunneling through the soft mud under O-5’s hull with a water-jet hose. On the first two tries the 4-inch cable parted under the weight of the flooded sub and the suction effect of the mud. But on the third attempt, after compressed air lightened the sub’s engine room, the bow of O-5 broke the surface–31 hours after her demise. Breault and Brown, near exhaustion from oxygen starvation, were saved. Shreaves, near collapse himself, was decompressed and survived without injury.
For sacrificing his own safety to save his shipmate, TM2c Breault was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Calvin A. Coolidge. Civilian “Shep” Shreaves received the Lifesaving Medal from Acting Canal Zone Governor Harry Burgess.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 5 NOV 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. .
Grigore, Jules, Jr. “The Loss of the O-5.” Sea Classics, Vol 42 (5), May 2009, pp. 48-49.
United States Congress. United States of America’s Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients and their Official Citations. Columbia Heights, MN: Highland House II, 1994, p. .
ADDITIONAL NOTES: The bodies of Mess Attendant 1st Class Fred C. Smith and Motor Machinist Mate 1st Class Thomas T. Metzler were later recovered floating near the Colon breakwater. The body of Chief Electrician Mate Calvin E. Hughes, who apparently abandoned ship successfully but did not survive, has to this day never been recovered.
Most readers will recall that US Navy submarines were traditionally named for fish. But in these early days of submarine technology vessels were assigned a simple sequential alphanumeric designation by class and launch date.
