S-5 Submarine Catastrophe / Libyan Coup D'état - September 1st Flashback

An error during a crash dive led to a catastrophe aboard the submarine USS S-5 on this day in 1920. There's more to the story in the November 26, 2014 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

On this day in 1969, the Free Officers Movement overthrew King Idris I, and Muammar Gaddafi assumed power.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, history fans. We're off this week while I
complete a cross country move. But don't worry. We've got
plenty of classic shows to tide you over, and be
sure to meet me back here on September eleventh for
a brand new episode.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from HowStuffWorks dot
com and from the desk of Stuff You Missed in
History Class. It's the show where we explore the past
one day at a time with a quick look at
what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's September first. On this

(00:35):
day in nineteen twenty, there was a catastrophe aboard a
submarine called the S five, also known as the SS
one ten. The S five was an S class submarine
from the US Submarine Force, and it left Boston Navy
Yard on its very first mission on Monday, August thirtieth,
nineteen twenty. It was supposed to get to Baltimore and

(00:56):
Maryland on September third, and the crew was supposed to
do maneuvers and training along the way. On September first,
they were supposed to do a crash dive that would
take the submarine from the surface down to periscope depth
in under a minute. But this drill didn't go as planned.
It turned out that one of the air valves didn't

(01:18):
seal correctly and water started filling up the sub's ballast
tanks when it shouldn't. The valves that were being used
were really hard to wrangle, so Gunner's mate, Percy Fox
went to try to help the situation. Only problem was
that when he did that, he didn't complete his own
task that he needed to do before the dive, which

(01:39):
was to close the main induction valve. So when the
command was given to dive and they began diving, water
started pouring into the inside of the submarine. It fell
to Lieutenant Commander Charles M. Cook Junior, also known as Savvy,
to figure out how to save everyone's lives as this

(02:00):
submarine sank to the bottom of the ocean. First, he
tried to seal off all the parts of the submarine
that had filled up with about seventy five tons of
water that wasn't supposed to be there. He sealed those
things off, He blew the ballast tanks. That didn't help.
He started trying to force out the water using pumps,
which also was not effective. Then he used compressed air

(02:23):
and that did work. It cleared some of the unnecessary water,
but the result was only that the stern of the
submarine started rising up. The rest of the submarine was
still underwater. Even though after this compressed air attempt was

(02:44):
sort of successful, the subs started slowly slowly rising back
up in the water. This near vertical position meant that
water was running into the battery room, and if the
water spent too much time in contact with the batteries,
that had the potential to form toxic chlorine gas. After

(03:04):
several hours, twenty feet or so of the boat were
up out of the water, but the escape patch that
they would need to get out of was still way underwater.
So the crew of this submarine started trying to drill
their way out through three quarter inch thick steel. They
had an electric drill that they almost immediately burned the
motor out of, so they had to use a manual drill,

(03:26):
the kind that you crank and crank and crank and
cranked try to get out of the submarine. They did
make a hole, but as the hole let air escape
from the sub that meant more water was coming in
so this turned into a race for the crew to
try to cut their way out of this hole before
they all drowned or ran out of oxygen. The lack

(03:48):
of oxygen became an increasingly huge problem. Eventually, Lieutenant Commander Cook,
one of the few men still conscious at that point,
saw a ship through the hole that they had made.
He flagged it down using a shirt that was tied
onto a copper pipe. The SS Alanthis came to help.
They secured the S five with chains and cables so
that it wouldn't sink back into the water. Then they

(04:10):
had to pass that hand drill out through the hole.
Because the alanthis didn't have any kind of drill to help,
they kept on with the manual drilling. Another ship called
the SS General George W. Girtels passed by and came
to assist as well, and finally, thirty six hours after
the original incident, they had a hole big enough for

(04:31):
the crew to crawl through. The crew began evacuating. Cook
was the last person to leave the sub at that point,
he had been awake for more than two days. Everyone
was rescued. The submarine sank back down to the seafloor
for a long time, its exact location was lost, although
it was rediscovered in two thousand and one. You can

(04:54):
learn more about this incident and the dramatic rescue in
the November twenty six, twenty fourteen, episode of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. Thanks to Tarry Harrison for her
audio work on this podcast. You can subscribe to the
Stay in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and
wherever else you get your podcasts. Tune in tomorrow for
a catastrophic fire. This Day in History Class is a

(05:22):
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Hi There, Welcome to This Day in History Class, where
we sift through the artifacts of history seven days a week.
The day was September one, nineteen sixty nine. Idurus, the

(05:45):
first and only king of Libya, was overthrown in a
coup while he was in Turkey for medical treatment. More
and More Gadaffi, a Libyan army officer, was named Commander
in Chief of the Armed Forces and the chairman of
the Revolutionaire Command Council, Libya's new governing body. Gadaffi reigned

(06:05):
for forty two years until he was killed in October
of twenty eleven. Gaddafi was a controversial figure, with some
viewing him as an oppressive and eccentric dictator, and others
praising his reforms, charisma and anti imperialism. Kadafi was born
in Libya when it was an Italian colony. Libya gained

(06:28):
its independence in nineteen fifty one, and it became a
constitutional and hereditary monarchy under King Idris First. Early on,
Gaddafi was politically active. He was a fan of Egyptian
President Gamal Apdale Nasser, who advocated for socialism and Arab

(06:48):
nationalism and argued against Western colonialism. Gaddafi himself was a
devout Muslim, an Arab nationalist and critical of the monarchy
under King Idris. He read works by revolutionaries and about revolution.
In the early nineteen sixties, Kadafi began military training in Benghazi.

(07:11):
He graduated from the Royal Military Academy in nineteen sixty five,
but while he was there he became part of the
Free Unionist Officers movement. Inspired by the Egyptian Free Officers,
he and some of his friends planned to overthrow King Idris.
The monarch was falling out of favor with more Libyans

(07:34):
as Arab nationalism gained support and people were unhappy with
the monarchy's corruption and ties to Western nations. After rising
through the ranks of the military and gaining power within
the Free Unionist Officer's Movement, Kadafi decided to stage a
coup with his fellow officers to overthrow the Libyan monarchy.

(07:56):
On September one, nineteen sixty nine, dozens of officers in
the Free Officer's Movement overthrew the monarchy in a bloodless
coup while Idris was out of the country. After just
a few days, the Libyan Arab Republic was declared. Experienced
officers and civilians were appointed to senior government positions. But

(08:18):
while the Revolutionary Command Council was in theory meant to
discuss issues until it consensus was reached, Gaddafi suppressed his
opposition and exerted his own will. Gaddafi had taken over
Libya at just twenty seven years old. Gadafi made changes
under what he called Islamic socialism. He closed American and

(08:40):
British military basis in Libya. He replaced the Gregorian calendar
with the Islamic one, and people were required to use
Arabic in official and public communications. Gaddafi nationalized finance, business,
and industry, including big oil interests. He also banned alcol
and nightclubs and declared the Koran the law of the land.

(09:05):
In nineteen seventy, he expelled all Italians from Libya. He
also opposed Zionism in Israel and expelled Jewish people from Libya,
and Gaddafi supported Pan Arab unity. He criminalized political dissent,
and he worked to turn Libya away from the West
and toward the Middle East in Africa. Gadafi eventually transitioned

(09:29):
to a style of government that he called Third International Theory,
under which he further distributed wealth among citizens in funded housing, agriculture,
and health care. He summarized the tenets of his Third
International Theory in a series called The Green Book. The
texts explained the problems with liberal democracy and capitalism and

(09:52):
uplifted Gaddafi's policies. Throughout the nineteen seventies, Libya intervened in
the affairs of neighboring countries and forged agreements with others.
Gaddafi's role was divisive. He encouraged groups to kill Libyan
dissidents in exile abroad. Western nations, especially the United States,

(10:13):
took issue with Gadafi and Libya's support of terrorist and
revolutionary groups around the world, like Palestinian groups, the Irish
Republican Army, the Black Panthers, and the Japanese Red Army.
Gaddafi has been accused of sexual abuse. He also instituted
social programs that improved the standard of living in Libya

(10:35):
and garnered a cult of personality around his peculiar persona.
For instance, he traveled with a group of women bodyguards
and heels, and many supported his vision of Pan Africanism
and African self sufficiency. Tensions between Gadafi and Western nations
east in the nineteen nineties, but in twenty eleven, Gadafi

(10:58):
was captured and killed during the Battle of Seart, with
an autopsy revealing that he was shot in the head.
I'm Eave Jeff Coat, and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. Thank you
so much for listening, and I hope to see you
again tomorrow for more tidbits of history.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
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