S-5 Submarine Catastrophe / Libyan coup d'état - September 1

An error during a crash dive led to a catastrophe aboard the submarine USS S-5 on this day in 1920. / 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 y'all, Eve's here. We're doubling up today with two
events in history, one from me and one from former
host Tracy V. Wilson. On with the show. Welcome to
this Day in History Class from how Stuff Works 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.

(00:26):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's September one. On this day,
there was a catastrophe aboard a submarine called the S five,
also known as the S S one ten. S five
was an S class submarine from the U S Submarine Force,
and it left Boston Navy Yard on its very first
mission on Monday, August. It was supposed to get to Baltimore, Maryland,

(00:51):
on September three, and the crew was supposed to do
maneuvers and training along the way. On September one, 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

(01:13):
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. The only problem
was that when he did that, he didn't complete his
own task that he needed to do before the dive,
which was to close the main induction valve. So when

(01:37):
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 Jr. Also known
as Savvy, to figure out how to save everyone's lives
as this submarine sank to the bottom of the ocean. First,

(01:58):
he tried to seal off all the arts 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.
You started trying to force out the water using pumps,
which also was not effective. Then he used compressed air
and that did work. It cleared some of the unnecessary water,

(02:22):
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
sort of successful, the sub started slowly slowly rising back

(02:44):
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
several hours, twenty feet or so and the boat were
up out of the water, but the escape hatch that

(03:04):
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,
the kind that you crank and crank and crank and cranked.

(03:24):
Tried to get out of the submarine. They did make
a hole, but as the whole 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 of
oxygen became an increasingly huge problem. Eventually, Lieutenant Commander Cook,

(03:48):
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 S S Atlantis came to
help secure the S five with chains and cables so
that it wouldn't sink back into the water. Then they
had to pass that hand drill out through the hole.

(04:08):
Because the Atlantis didn't have any kind of drill to help,
they kept on with the manual drilling. Another ship called
the s S General George W. Girtles passed by and
came to assist as well, and finally, thirty six hours
after the original incident, they had a whole big enough
for the crew to crawl through. The crew began evacuating.

(04:30):
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
sea floor for a long time. Its exact location was lost,
although it was rediscovered in two thousand one. You can
learn more about this incident and the dramatic rescue in

(04:51):
the November episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.
Thanks to Terry Harrison for her audio work on this podcast.
You can subscribe I 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. Hi there,

(05:17):
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. Inderous, the first
and only king of Libya, was overthrown in a coup

(05:40):
while he was in Turkey for medical treatment. More More, Gaddafi,
a Libyan army officer, was named Commander in Chief of
the Armed Forces and the chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council,
Libya's new governing body. Gaddafi reigned for forty two years
until he was killed in October of twenty eleven. Gaddafi

(06:03):
was a controversial figure, with some viewing him as an
oppressive and eccentric dictator, and others praising his reforms, charisma,
and anti imperialism. Gaddafi was born in Libya when it
was an Italian colony. Libya gained its independence in nineteen
fifty one, and it became a constitutional and hereditary monarchy

(06:27):
under King Address the first. Early on, Gaddafi was politically active.
He was a fan of Egyptian President Gamal Updale Nasser,
who advocated for socialism and Arab nationalism and argued against
Western colonialism. Gaddafi himself was a devout muslim An Arab

(06:48):
nationalists and critical of the monarchy under King Address. He
read works by revolutionaries and about revolution. In the early
nineteen sixties, Gaddafi began military training in Benghazi. He graduated
from the Royal Military Academy in nineteen sixty five, but

(07:09):
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
as Arab nationalism game support, and people were unhappy with

(07:29):
the monarchy's corruption and ties to Western nations. After rising
through the ranks of the military and gaining power within
the Free Unionist Officers movement, Gaddafi decided to stage a
coup with his fellow officers to overthrow the Libyan monarchy.
On September one, nineteen sixty nine, dozens of officers in

(07:52):
the Free Officers movement overthrew the monarchy in a bloodless
coup while Idriss 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
while the Revolutionary Command Council was in theory meant to

(08:13):
discuss issues until it because sinceus was reached, Gaddafi suppressed
his opposition and exerted his own will. Gaddafi had taken
over Libya at just twenty seven years old. Gaddafi made
changes under what he called Islamic socialism. He closed American
and British military basis in Libya. He replaced the Gregorian

(08:36):
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 alcohol
and nightclubs and declared the Koran the law of the land.

(08:57):
In nineteen seventy, he expelled all at allions 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. Gaddafi

(09:19):
eventually transitioned to a style of government that he called
Third International Theory, under which he further distributed wealth among
citizens and funded housing, agriculture, and healthcare. He summarized the
tenets of his Third International Theory and a series called
The Green Book. The text explained the problems with liberal

(09:41):
democracy and capitalism and uplifted Gaddafi's policies. Throughout the nineteen seventies,
Libya intervened in the affairs of neighboring countries and forged
agreements with others. Gaddafi's rule was divisive. He encouraged groups
to kill Libyan di in exile abroad. Western nations, especially

(10:03):
the United States, took issue with Gaddafi and Libya's support
of terrorists 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

(10:26):
in Libya 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 Gaddafi and
Western nations east in the nineteen nineties, but in twenty eleven,

(10:49):
Gaddafi was captured and killed during the Battle of Search,
with an autopsy revealing that he was shot in the head.
I'm e's Jeff Cote and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. If you
have any burning questions or comments to tell us, you
can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at t

(11:13):
d I h C podcast. Thank you so much for listening,
and I hope to see you again tomorrow for more
tidbits of history. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

(11:33):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.