Has anyone escaped from a submarine, of the types we built in WW2, that had sunk?
The forward escape trunk has been used twice on boats similar to the Pampanito. The first time was before the war when the USS Squalus (SS-192) went down off the East Coast in 1939. She was quickly found by her sister ship, the USS Sculpin (SS-191), in about 200 feet of water. The Sculpin radioed for help and the Navy rushed the submarine rescue ship USS Falcon (ASR-2) to the scene. They then used a McCann rescue bell to bring the surviving crew to the surface through the forward escape trunk. The 26 crewmen in the after part of the boat died in the initial flooding. It took four trips and, despite a frayed lifting cable on the last trip, the 33 survivors all made it out.
It is unclear how the flooding actually happened. When the boat was salvaged, the main induction valve was found to be open. That would certainly have been enough to flood the boat. However, when the Squalus dove, the main induction indicator was green, showing a closed valve. In addition, in those days, submarines didn’t do crash dives as was done during and after WW2. Instead, they closed up everything until they had a green board on the Christmas tree – everything was secured. Then they would add a little pressure to the air in the boat. Only after they verified that the pressure held, confirming that everything was closed, would they actually open vents and start the dive. The Squalus appears to have been buttoned up for the dive. No one knows how the main induction on the Squalus opened after the pressure test.
Because of this incident, valves were added to the air induction piping in the engine rooms. These were flapper valves that held any unwanted water in that piping and out of the engine rooms. A locking mechanism was added to the main induction to ensure it stayed closed. In addition, the divider between the engine rooms would be a hard bulkhead on future boats, instead of a soft divider. That way, flooding could have been isolated to just one compartment. These upgrades would matter to the Pampanito on her first war patrol.
The other time the forward escape trunk was used somewhat successfully was in 1944 when the USS Tang (SS-306) was sunk by a circular run of her own torpedo. Tang was on the surface in the South China Sea and had just fired the last torpedo she had on board. In spite of drastic turns to try to get the boat out of the way, that torpedo hit Tang around the after torpedo room or maneuvering.
Similar to the Squalus, everyone aft of the control room died in the initial explosion and flooding. Of the crew on the bridge or in the conning tower, about five managed to get clear of the boat. One officer decided to swim to relatively nearby China but was never seen again. The rest of the surviving crew gathered in the forward torpedo room. Due to the severe up-angle, it was difficult to do anything about an escape. One of the survivors made it back to the control room and opened the vents on the forward ballast tanks. This put the whole boat fairly level on the bottom at around 200 feet, so the remaining crew could move about and try to escape.
Only about 13 of the men actually tried to get out via the escape trunk. Some went into the escape trunk but couldn’t bring themselves to try the free ascent to the surface. (Not everyone had gone through the escape tower training in New London or Pearl Harbor.) The first one out was a young ensign who, unfortunately, went too far aft of the escape door, got trapped under the deck in the superstructure and drowned. At least two others ascended too quickly and didn’t get enough air out of their lungs. They died at the surface of ruptured lungs. Only six of the 13 made it to the surface safely. For some reason, the Japanese only picked up five of them.
The nine rescued survivors all lived through their experiences in Japanese prisoner camps to the end of the war. However, it is estimated that the captain, Dick O’Kane, would not have survived another month in the camps. The Japanese reserved particularly harsh treatment for pilots and submariners.
There is no record of anyone escaping successfully from the after torpedo room escape trunk.