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Swede Momsen (in uniform) trains sailors to use the Momsen lung. (U.S. Naval Academy Archives)

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Vice Adm. Charles 'Swede' Momsen

With 33 Trapped Aboard Sunken Sub, Momsen Undertook The Impossible

By Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Military.com Columnist

On the eve of World War II, families of the crew of the fleet submarine Squalus watched from shore as America's newest sub took a scheduled test dive. Tragedy struck quickly: Two stuck valves kept the hull open to the sea, and the sub plunged 240 feet to the bottom of the North Atlantic. Twenty-three sailors of 56 aboard died within minutes.

The rest were saved by an inventive Navy submariner, Charles "Swede" Momsen. Visionary scientist, man of action, and dedicated officer, Swede Momsen was also an iconoclast who bucked the system to invent a way of saving entombed submarine crews. Momsen developed a pressurized bell that could be lowered by cable and attached to a hatch on the sub. Diver-operators could equalize the pressure, open the hatch, and transport survivors to the surface.

Being trapped in a sunken submarine is sheer terror. As the 33 surviving Squalus crew members waited with their commander in May 1939, they knew that no one had ever been rescued from a sunken sub. Everyone perished, every time. With mere inches of steel between the men and the freezing water, all reed-thin hopes rested on Momsen's extraordinary efforts.

While his diving bell had worked in tests, a real rescue had never been attempted before the Squalus sank. Momsen arrived in New Hampshire, boarded the Sculpin, the Squalus's sister ship, and promptly went to sleep. He woke only when they reached the Squalus. "That's when I knew I had picked the right guy," said Adm. Cyrus Cole, who directed the operation.

Momsen brought every man -- diver and survivor -- safely back to shore. In the ensuing war, he would go on to save more lives and earn a Navy Cross as a submarine group commander. "I've been with the leaders of the world, and Momsen was the best man I ever met," says Peter Maas, author of "The Terrible Hours: The Man Behind the Greatest Submarine Rescue in History."