Evening Star Newspaper, September 6, 1931, Page 54

Chief Gunner William F. Loughman, who went down 300 feet to the sunken F-4 and whose life was saved by Frank Crilley. R OTHING jars the nerves of officers and men of the United States Navy as badly as the news that a subma- rine has gone to the bottom through a collision or other accident. When any other ship goes down, that is an end of things. If the water is shal- low there may be salvaging operations, but that is all. There is no rescue work to do, no de- mand for speedy and efficient emergency meas- ures. But the submarine is different. Her crew goes to the bottom with her. Usually many men remain alive for hours and days afterward. To save their lives the Navy has put forth superhuman efforts on a task that is always difficult and often heart-breaking. So the Navy has been working on safety devices for its under-sea fighters. The dis- asters to the S-4, the S-51 and other vessels have resulted in new appliances which it is believed will make the life of a submarine man far safer than it has ever been before. One of the most important of the new devices is the “pad eye'—a steel loop embedded in the hull of the submarine, to which cables from surface ships can speedily be attached so that the sub can be raised to the surface speedily. Six of these are installed on each side of a sub and each is able to withstand a direct pull of 160 tons. When the S-51 sank divers spent weary weeks —at the risk of their lives—tunnelling under the sunken ship so that chains might be passed around its hull to lift it to the surface. If the S-51 had had pad eyes the chains could have been attached in a mere fraction of that time. Another new device is a species of diving bell, carried on salvage vessels. This bell, large enough to accommodate ten or more men inside, is lowered to the deck of a sunken submarine, carrying rescue workers down with it. When it reaches the sub it is fitted over a special escape hatch and when the fitting has been made water-tight the hatch is opened and sailors on the sunken vessel can enter the bell and be hauled to the surface. Injured men or men overcomz by gas or foul air could be brought to the surface by this device. EQUALLY important is the Momsen lung, by which men can escape from a sunken sub- marine one at a time. The lung is a bag con- taining oxygen, with a flexible tube ending in an attachment which fits snugly over the mouth and nostrils of the seaman who uses it. Attaching one of these lungs,.the sailor on & sunken sub enters an escape hatch, closes the ccmpartment behind him and opens a hatch which permits him to slip out into the water and rise to the surface. A buoy can be sent up first, connected to the sub by a long line, and the escaping sailor simply follows this line up, stopping periodically to adjust his body to the dininishing water pressure so that he will Thomas Eadie, famous diver, ready to go down during salvage operations on the sunken S-4 off Provincetown, Mass. not be attacked by the “bends” on reaching the open air. Submarines are now being fitted with buoys, attached forward and aft, which can be sent to the surface in case of accident. These buoys carry telephone lines and serve the double pur- pose of marking the submarine’s position, so that rescue ships can find it, and of enabling those on the surface to talk with the men in the submerged hull. Through all of these devices, the Navy is steadily making more and more remote the chances for a repetiticn of the S-4 gnd S-51 tragedies. But scientific rescue devices have not done the job singie-handed. The heroism of many officers and men of the Navy has also been necessary, and it has been displayed in abun- dance. Naval annals abound with tales of brav- ery by men of the submarine and salvage de- partments, and without this bravery the work of developing new safety devices could never have been accomplished. Many of these tales of heroism have never reached the general public, and some of them go back a number of years into the past. The story of Frank Crilley, chief gunner's mate, is a case in point. In 1915 Crilley was on duty at the Brooklyn Navy Yard when the submarine F-4 sank off Honolulu, all her crew being lost. HE F-4 went down in 300 feet of water. None of the Navy divers on the scene could go down to that depth; in fact. at that time it was believed that no diver could do #%. Wearing the Momsen lung, a sailor shows how men could get out oj a sunken submarine through the new escape hatch. § THE SUNDAY -STAR, Making the Sea SA Invention of the New Safe Will Make Rescues Easier Under the Se: Crilley and three other sailors had been conducting diving, experiments in Long Island Sound. They volunteered for service on the F-4 salvage operations, and were ordered to Honolulu. They left Brooklyn an hour after receiving their orders, hurried to San Fran- cisco, and were taken to Honolulu on the old cruiser Maryland, reaching the island just 11 days after the men had received their orders. No time was lost on their arrival in Hono- lulu. All the facilities possible were placed at their disposal. Two barges were commandeered and placed over the wreck and securely an- chored and moored. All air flasks in the vi- cinity, 20 in number, were collected. They were to be the first deep-sea divers to use the flasks instead of the usual pumps. In two days everything had been rigged and the four divers made ready for their first “dip.” Frank Crilley went down first. The idea was to stay down 20 minutes, as the return trip wculd necessitate three to four hours for the proper decompression. On the first day, Crilley made the only dive. He remained down the agreed 20 minutes, pre= pared the work for placing the straps that were to be put on the boat in order to tow it to more shallow water where it wculd eventu- ally be taken to the surface with the aid of pontoons. On the second day, Diver Drellishak went down and stayed his full time, but suffered a severe case of “bends” on the return trip and had to be retired from the work temporarily. A hard wind came up the next day and although the divers were willing to chance it, there seemed to be no real necessity to expose themselves to the danger as it had been defi- nitely determined long since that no life gxisted on the sunken boat. HEN, on the 17th of April, there occurreé another great deed done by a naval man which was to qualify him for the highest re- ward for valor, the Congressicnal Medal of Honor. Dner William Loughman, when his turn came, quickly donned his suit, rehearsed the signals with the man tending his lines, took a last look at the small model of the submarines that had been placed on the barge to conform with the exact position of the sunken one, and let himself down on the descender line which had been made fast to the F-4, In a few minutes he was standing on the deck of the wreck. Without wasting time he immediately went to work to place his strap in place in exactty the same manner as called for on the model submarine on the barge. He had not quite finished his task when the call came from above: “Come up, your time is up.” “Just a second more,” he replied. “And I will be finisned.” In another minute he had finished and given the tender of his lines the signal to pull him up. He had gone upward about 50 feet when he saw his air hose slack over his shoulder, show- ing that the line had fculed in some place. “My line is fouled,” he reported over the phone. “I am going back to the wreck and clear myself.” Another minute and he was again standing on the deck of the F-4, 306 feet beneath the surface. Carefully going over the lines he was convinced that the lines were now clear and once more gave the signal to pull him up. “I started up once more,” Loughman said afterward, “and had just gotten to the same depth as before when I again saw my air hose over my shoulder. I told them to lower me again to the deck and I reversed my procedure of before and up I went again, only to stop at 250 feet, as before. I then realiped that I Graceful, sleck and ominous, a t breasting the could not clear the line by myself and them over the phone that a diver had b be sent down to clear me.” > N the barge grave anxiety was being for Loughman. Frank Crilley, who engaged in tending the line, heard his d mate report that he was unable to clear hi and without further ado said: “Here, Steve, tend this line. I am going d to clear Bill.” In a couple of minutes he was in a suit down beside his friend, who was now ca at 250 feet and unable to go either up or d “In a couple of minutes,” continued Lo man, in his story later, “I saw Crilley con down. They had told me over the phone it was him. He came down om the line on