Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1939-05-29
PeriIs Just Startinq
For Divers as Squalls
Sa|vaging Begins
How Long the Delicate
Job Will Take, No One
Can Hoard q Guess
BY COMDR. EDWARD ELLSBERG,
q. 3. N. r. (Salvager of the SOL, Author
OF "On the Bottom.")


(Copyright, 1889, by United Features
Syndicate. All Rights Reserved)
PORTSMOUTH, N. H., May %
With her hawsers for the first time
since last Wednesday stretched taut
by choppy sea, the Falcon now
lies moored over the grave of the
Squalls. Nearby on the surface to
windward is the submarine Sculpin,
replica of the unfortunate Squalls,
the shakedown cruise to South
America on which she had just
started when she casually passed
south of the Isles of Shoals to look
around for her unreported sister,
indefinitely postponed.
1t will be long time now before
the Sculpin resumes that casually
interrupted voyage. For the Sculpin
Is being held as rehearsal vessel
for the divers during salvage opera
tons on the Squalus and on how
long those operations will take no
competent person will hazard a
guess.
On the Falcon herself. crowded as
never in her history with divers and
salvage officers, her tense atmo-
sphere which marked her while she
fought to bring up alive those
trapped on the bottom is gone. For
the men on the Falcon, what lies
before them now is a salvage job
IN which nobody's lives but their
own are involved, and whether that
salvage job will take longer or less
time than the two previous battles
with the deep sea for the Ssh and
the S-4 no one knows-yet.
Perils Just Beginning.
For the people of this country,
until the day she rises again, the
Squalls and her difficulties will
very shortly cease to be front page
news. But for the divers of the
Falcon their perils are just be-
ginning. The hazards they have
undergone on the eight dives, in
which last Wednesday Sibitsky
(f1rst down. Hartman, Mihalowski,
Badders, Mcdonald. Squire, Duncan
and Clayton so brilliantly rescued
their 33, will be slight compared to
what they and their diving COM
panions must face in the hundreds
of dives necessary inside and under
meath the flooded Squalus before
she may rise again.
The Navy Department has now re-
leased its tentative plans for recov-
ering the wreck.
The raising of the Squalls is tech
nically a difficult operation. The
submarine is approximately 300 feet
long, bottomed in a half flooded
condition in 240 feet of water. It is
assumed in Washington that there
Is no hope at all that divers can
completely expel from her the water
that flooded her after compartments
and bring her up under control on
an even keel. The most that the
salvagers expect is that they can
get lift enough between tightening
her OF water inside and attaching
pontoons outside, so that one end at
time she can be f1oated upward,
and they have it within their power
to select which end shall first rise.
Depth a Difficulty.
The depth of water creates diff
Guilty, wholly aside from the danger
OF diving in such deep water, should
one end of the 300-foot-long Suualus,
the stern for instance, be lightened
enough so that it starts upward and
reaches the surface while the bow
still rests on the bottom below. The
submarine will be at terrific angle
from the horizontal, about SIS de-
grees, at which angle it will be diff
cult II not impossible to keep the
lifting chains passed under her from
sliding upward along her keel and
letting go their hold, or of spilling
so much air out of the tilted tanks
that they loose buoyancy and sink
again, in either case wrecking the
salvage operation if not the boat
herself.
To avoid allowing the Squalls to
take any such hazardous angle, the
salvagers intend to raise her in three
steps, scissoring her up from the
bottom, so to speak, in stages in
which first one end rises, then the
other, then the first again, without
the vessel ever assuming an angle
greater than some Is degrees.
10 accomplish this dizzy feat of
Juggling l,450 tons of submarine up
from the ocean floor without letting
her run away from them, the salvage
technlcians expect to use pontoons
moored to her stern half way be-
tween the submarine and the sur
face, some 100 feet down, as a brake
on her movements. The idea is that
these stern pontoons will, when
emptled OF water, and the stern
ballast and fuel tanks have been
sufficiently lightened, lift the stern
toward the surface, but not all the
way.
The Scissoring.
For when those stern pontoons
reached the surface her stern would
hang In cradle suspended from the
pontoons bobbing on the surface, her
bow still on bottom, with the sub
marine at an angle of approximately
Is degrees with the horizontal.
olep TWO Oh tne SclSSorlng process
now begins. Leaving the stern alone,
the salvagers blow compressed air
down into the ballast and fuel oil
tanks forward, expelling water and
OIL from them until the bow is
lghtened up sufficiently to start
floating upward. In this stage, the
stern pivots in its cradle half way
between ocean floor and surface,
while the bow rises till the boat is
once again horizontal at mid-depth,
and then the bow continues rising
with increasing speed as the expand
Ing air in the tanks forward expels
more water and increases the buoy
ancy there, until the bow bursts
through the surface and finally
comes to rest.
M