Escape From the Deep (16 page)

Narowanski called down into the torpedo room. He wanted someone to open the last oxygen valve so he and others could charge their Momsen Lungs from inside the trunk.
²¹

In the meantime, Lieutenant Hank Flanagan had regained consciousness. He decided to join Narowanski in the escape trunk. There was no time to lose: Flanagan could see smoke seeping through the rubber seals in the hatch leading from the forward torpedo room to the next compartment. Soon, the seals would break and dense smoke and chlorine gas would fill the torpedo room, quickly killing all those still alive.

Flanagan could also see paint beginning to blister on the bulkhead near him, so intense was the heat in the torpedo room. The fire in the adjacent compartment was growing fiercer. There was no doubt about it. If Flanagan didn’t get out in the next escape party, the
Tang
would become his “iron coffin.”
²²

Flanagan climbed into the escape trunk once more.

Not far away, Jesse DaSilva stood near the torpedo tubes, several feet from the ladder leading to the escape trunk. In the increasing gloom, he could see some men gathering beneath the trunk.

“We need someone else,” yelled Flanagan.

DaSilva turned to a close friend, Motor Mechanic Glen Haws. DaSilva knew that Haws’s wife, Myhrl, was pregnant, due to give birth any day.
²³
DaSilva told Haws to go before him and climb into the trunk. Haws had a wife. A family to care for. DaSilva didn’t.
²⁴

Flanagan called down again from the escape trunk. He was losing patience. He told DaSilva and Haws to get going. They were running out of time.

Haws hesitated.
²⁵

“Hell, I’m not afraid to try,” said DaSilva, who then climbed up the ladder to the escape trunk.
²⁶

But DaSilva apparently couldn’t turn his back on his close friend. He made one last attempt to persuade Haws.

“Come on!” he implored.
²⁷

Haws was still not willing to try.

Someone else took his place.

The time was eight o’clock. Almost six hours had passed since the
Tang
had sunk herself. DaSilva knew it because he looked at a clock on the bulkhead.

Most of the survivors of the initial blast were now lying down in bunks, praying or talking in hushed voices about their families. Several had already passed out.
²⁸
Those who were still conscious coughed and choked, or tried using their Momsen Lungs.

There was no panic. The injured men who knew they couldn’t make the escape seemed to have quietly resigned themselves to death. DaSilva figured that others had already convinced themselves that “they would likely foul things up for someone else if they tried. They were content with the fact that that was it. They were just laying there in the bunk, waiting to die.”
²⁹

It was possible that some of the men laying silently in the bunks were already dead, their bodies having finally succumbed to the deadly combination of poisonous fumes from the battery fire, ever increasing levels of carbon dioxide, and the intense heat, which caused extreme dehydration.

Doc Larson tended as best he could to those he could still help. He may have decided to stay with the wounded as long as possible and only leave with the very last party. There was still some oxygen left in the forward torpedo room, which meant there was still perhaps time for another escape attempt after Narowanski’s party. Larson might still make it.

In the escape trunk, Narowanski took charge. The hatch was sealed from below. Then Narowanksi began to flood the trunk. As the water rose, the men felt stabbing pains in their ears. They held their noses and blew out, trying to equalize the pressure. “We started flooding the compartment and, boy, when you flood that thing,” recalled DaSilva, “the air really gets tough. I mean, it gets hard to breathe. At 180 feet, your pressure is really great.”
³⁰

The men felt as if they were going to suffocate. DaSilva saw the water rise above the side door. Finally, it was up to their chests. Their voices were now so high-pitched they were almost inaudible.
³¹
Their hearts racing, they tested their Momsen Lungs, ducking their heads below the water. Then someone opened the door to the superstructure. Narowanski grabbed on to the escape line and exited. He was followed by Hank Flanagan and then by DaSilva. The last man was supposed to follow and close the door behind him.

DaSilva felt his way through the superstructure and then climbed through the hatch leading to the ocean. Immediately, the water pressure grabbed at him, forcing his body upward. He resisted the urge to let go of the line and surge to the surface.
³²
“I wrapped my feet around the rope,” he remembered, “and slowly let myself up ten feet at a time, stopping to count to ten each time.”

DaSilva was about a hundred feet from the surface, in pitch darkness, when he started to have problems breathing. He slowed his ascent.
³³

How slow should I go?
thought DaSilva.
Gotta stop every ten feet . . . or was it fifteen feet?

Is the other man coming up in back of me?

Tighten your grip with your feet, or you will turn upside down.

Where the hell is that next knot?

The waters were black and cold.

Did I stop at that last knot?

How long have I been coming up?

He was rising too fast.

Slow down and breathe deep.

It was still dark. He was still far from the surface.

Should be seeing light by now.

Who’s already up there?

Still the frigid darkness.

Where the hell is the surface?

Wish there was a rescue team waiting.

Maybe the Japs are there.

He found a knot.

STOP! Now slow . . . Up . . . Up . . . Up . . .
³⁴

DaSilva realized he was able to breathe easier. The air in his lungs was equalizing with the external pressure.

No more darkness. When he exhaled, he could see bubbles escape from his Momsen Lung and then shoot upward, like the fizz in a glass of champagne.

DaSilva finally broke the surface. He was not puking. He felt tired but was fully conscious. “Hell, I felt fine,” he recalled. “I didn’t have any aftereffects or anything.”
³⁵

DaSilva saw the bow of a ship the
Tang
had sunk the night before and, far in the distance, the coast of mainland China. Then he spotted Hank Flanagan and Pete Narowanski. They were nearby. They too had made it and looked in reasonable condition. DaSilva then caught sight of Hayes Trukke and Clayton Decker holding onto the soccer-sized buoy. They were treading water.

Pete Narowanski could see the moon setting in the early morning sky. As he swam toward the buoy, he thought of his four-year-old daughter, Jackie, with her dark complexion and long, auburn pigtails. She was being brought up by his parents in the country, near Turners Station in Maryland. Thinking about her and about his mother, who had doted on him and now on Jackie, gave him added strength.
³⁶

Soon, all five of the men were clinging to the buoy, looking at the coast of China. It did not seem too far away. But the current was pulling in the opposite direction. Decker knew he could not possibly swim so far, at least ten miles, against the current in his condition. But Pete Narowanski and Hayes Trukke decided to risk it and struck out for the coast. After only a minute or so, they realized they would never manage to get there, so swift was the opposing current, and they headed back to the buoy.

AT 180 FEET BELOW, a last group was gathering at the steps to the escape trunk. It included Doc Larson, the husky six-foot-tall Iowan, and the steward, Howard Walker—O’Kane’s favorite “chronic gambler.” It is not known who else was with them, if indeed there were any others. Conditions in the forward torpedo room were probably intolerable without the aid of a Momsen Lung. More and more toxic smoke had seeped in, gradually asphyxiating men who were still conscious. There was precious little oxygen and the heat was just as suffocating as the poisoned air.

Somehow, Larson and the badly injured Walker were able to flood the escape trunk, endure the earsplitting increase in pressure as the water rose, and open the door. What happened next will never be known. But it is likely that both Walker’s and Larson’s senses were so dulled that they made terrible errors as they struggled to get out of the
Tang
and then to the surface.

Larson appeared first, not far from the men gathered around the buoy, which suggested he had followed the line up. He was in a shocking state, barely alive, stricken by the bends and a probable lung embolism. Perhaps he had failed to exhale as he rose. Or maybe his Momsen Lung had malfunctioned. In his rush to get out of the escape trunk, he could have forgotten to test the equipment. In any case, his lungs and eardrums were severely damaged. Blood was running out of his ears, his nose, and his mouth. He could hardly breathe.
³⁷

The captain. Richard O’Kane at Annapolis
before his graduation in 1934.
(
Courtesy O’Kane family
)

The O’Kanes. Rear Admiral W. L. Friedell, Commandant
Mare Island Navy Yard, welcomes Lt. Commander Richard O’Kane,
Executive Officer, USS
Wahoo
, and his family back to
Mare Island for a re-fit in May 1943. (
U.S. Navy
)

George Zofcin in
wartime San Francisco.
(
Courtesy Zofcin family
)