What happened to the rest of the men gathered in the Tang’s torpedo room in their Momsen lungs? Why didn’t they escape? They weren’t sure how to do it. “A majority of the men,” reads the patrol report, “had never been properly trained in the use of the Momsen lungs or operation of the escape tank. They, therefore, didn’t have any self-confidence in their ability to escape, causing a general feeling of defeat among them…. After the first two attempts there were very few men left who cared to try an escape although they knew what was going to happen to them below.” They are all there in the Summary of Escapes. Torpedoman’s Mate Fluker: “Would not try after this, his second attempt.” Unnamed Ensign: “Removed in stupor from trunk; preferred not to try again.” Unnamed Machinist’s Mate: “Would not try after this, his first attempt.”
A little practice might have made the difference. “Although everyone had read how to escape,” says the report, “not one had actually went through the motions.” In 1930, at the urging of Swede Momsen, an escape training tank was commissioned for the submarine base in Groton. With the hope that every submariner would have a chance to went through the motions.
AT 40 feet deep and 84,000 gallons, the Naval Submarine School’s Pressurized Submarine Escape Trainer holds easily as much water as a hotel swimming pool. In diameter, though, it’s closer to a Jacuzzi. It’s the sort of thing you might drop into by accident, like a manhole, because you didn’t notice it was there. Despite the aquamarine water and the echoey tile walls, pool isn’t the right word. This is a column of pretend ocean that exists for a single, highly nonrecreational purpose: to practice bailing out of a stricken sub.
Twenty-six sub school students stand around the water’s perimeter in identical (Navy) blue swim trunks. They are young enough that the pimples on their backs still outnumber the tattoos. In ten years it will be different. Navy boys accrue ink like sun damage. A little more every year, in every port. The first training exercise will begin in an escape trunk that feeds into the water fifteen feet down. No breathing apparatus will be worn, just a life jacket. The instructor calls it “a buoyant exhaling ascent,” a term I will tuck away for later use should I ever be called upon to write opera reviews.
Exhaling is the word to be underscored. Faced with an ascent from deep underwater, novice swimmers are inclined to hold their breath—not just to stay alive, but to help buoy them to the surface. They may not realize that that initial lungful of air they took in will expand as they rise and the water pressure decreases. If that breath expands enough, it will burst the lung’s alveoli—the tiny sacs where an exchange of gases in the air and the blood takes place. Should this happen, air bubbles can get into the bloodstream. Air embolism. Not good. Critical care luncheon. The bubble can act like a clot, blocking blood flow and starving organs of oxygen. If the organ in question is the brain or heart, the tissue damage may be fatal. There is speculation in the Tang patrol report that this had been the fate of four men who made it out of the escape trunk but then disappeared: that they’d lost the mouthpieces of their Momsen lungs and hadn’t realized the consequences of holding their breath.
“It’s the Golden Rule of sub school,” the instructor, Eric Nabors, is saying. “Don’t hold your breath.” Nabors carries the evocative title Diving Officer, and seems built in keeping. His hair is buzzed to a half millimeter, his wedding band tattooed. Nothing disrupts the hydrodynamic flow of Eric Nabors in a wetsuit.
To modulate their exhalation—not too fast, not too slow—the young men are instructed to pretend they’re blowing out birthday candles. Yelling also works. To further discourage breath-holding, Nabors and his fellow instructors used to inflate a wine bag down at the bottom of the water and let it go. As it surfaced, the bag would burst.
While Nabors and I have been chatting, I’ve referred to the wine bag as a bota bag. Nabors finally stops me. “What are you saying?”
Did I have the wrong term? That goatskin pouch that herders used to sling over one shoulder? In Spain? The kind where you open your mouth and squirt in the wine?
Nabors blinks at me. “I’m talking about the bag from wine-in-a-box.”
My escort for the day has been chatting with Nabors, and I notice she calls him “Jim.” This would explain the Jim Nabors album (Kiss Me Goodbye) mounted on his office wall, but not the ID badge, which says “Eric Nabors.”
“I fought that battle for a long time,” he says when I bring it up. When your last name is Nabors, there will be people who call you Jim, no matter what you do to discourage them. “Eventually I gave up.”
The bursting bag has been replaced by a video of itself, because the real thing was too intimidating, and no one wanted to get in the Escape Trainer afterward. Few of the students will cop to it, but there’s some anxiety in the house today. Some of these boys can barely swim. The Navy entrance requirement is minimal. You are dropped in a pool fifty feet from the edge, and you get to that edge however you can. You don’t have to like water to join the Navy. “I don’t even like baths,” said one submariner I met.
Nabors explains to the students the sequence of events. A pair of divers are with each student up to the time he begins his ascent, to be sure he’s exhaling at the right rate, that he’s been able to clear his ears, that he’s not feeling panicked. Then they let him go. It’s over in a few seconds. “You’re going to pop out of the water, and a diver is going to say, ‘Are you okay?’” Nabors says. “And you’re going to shout your name, your rank, and ‘I’m okay!’” (So the guy standing by with the clipboard can put a check next to the name.) “Got it?”
“Yes, sir!”
A few minutes later, the first student pops out of the water, buoyant with air and relief. A diver is there to receive him and steer him to the edge. If you wandered onto the scene without knowing where you were, you might think, baptism?
“Are you okay?” shouts the diver.
“Yeah.” Nabors and the clipboard guy exchange a look. Kids today.
One student backs out of the ascent. You can tell who he is by the red bathrobe; everyone else’s is tan or blue. This isn’t done to shame him; no one but the staff knows the significance of being “red-robed.” It’s a way to alert them to keep a watchful eye out, in case a medical issue develops. In this case, the boy was just scared. He confesses a fear of drowning. I glance at his bare feet for the traditional Navy “anti-drowning tattoos”: permanent inkings of a pig and a chicken, one on each foot. Because when the old frigates sank, pigs and chickens from the ship’s hold could be seen floating on the water’s surface.
The boy’s fellow students were sympathetic, and this he expected: “One team, one fight.” I’ve heard the word brotherhood applied to submariners. At 7 percent of the Navy, it’s a tight-knit community. Especially boat by boat. Where an aircraft carrier crew may number 6,000, US submarines have room for fewer than 200. There’s an intimacy born of not only the diminished personal space that the smaller classes of subs impose but the months-long isolation and, until recently, the absence of women. “There’s a lot of hugging and stroking heads,” a former NSMRL psychologist told me. “I was taken aback by how physically affectionate they are.”