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music we start off this program by groton hasmany many landmarks and i'm going to go through a few so you'll understand the significantlandmarks that groton has this is the fort griswold monument and this isprobably one of my most cherished photographs in my collection you willsee photographs with a monument with the old school the old groton high school oryou'll see photographs with the monument with the the present groton high school if you come fromgroton you probably remember the griswold
hotel it was one of the largest woodenstructures in the united states and of course it was very popular in its heydayin the forties and fifties that was torn down in the late sixties the pfizercorporation purchased the building raised it was going to be theircorporate headquarters but because of the water tide they couldn't build the foundation there's a significant piece of historythat is the first bridge that crossed the thames river
it was the first railroad bridgeultimately changed into or converted into a highway bridge at the time it wasbuilt it was the largest structure or largest longer span in the world here we are at avery point significantpiece of history forgotten was morton plant and his estate as well as histelepathy activities contributed a lot to the town of groton and then we havein the new london ledge lighthouse i call it the groton ledge lighthousebecause it's in groton waters but at the time new london had a little bit more power than we did so they named it new london
1930 we came across a new landmark andgot and it was the united states navy submarine escape training tank now i received an email from betty anne iguess a former navy navy man called the library last night it was disturbed thatit was being called a tank that it was called a tower so i hurriedly went throughall of my documents which included numerous official navy documents and itwas called the tank however many servicemen did call it the tower right so if if i'm wrong i don't think i ambut i'll apologize but everything i have indicates that it is a tank
now what would be the impetus forbuilding that tank we have to go way back so we start offwith some submarine tragedies into place in september 25 of 1925 the ss 51 whichwould at the time it was on maneuvers 14 mileseast of block island it was on the surface by the way and itwas struck by a merchant ship called the city of rome and that's the ship thatstruck it there were three people or threesailors on top when it was struck they survived the boat subsequently sunkand thirty-three men lost their lives that the reason there was an issue overrunning lights that the submarines also
didn't have appropriate running lightson it but it was in 130 feet of water but we lost 33 men only in a hundred andthirty feet of water now the national efforts to raise thesubmarine through pontoons failed and ultimately it was raised in june of 26in 1926 about about 8 months later and then they brought it intothe brooklyn navy shipyard and that's the submarine after they raised itand brought it in now that a significant thing was thebodies of the 33 men were still on the boat when they brought it in and theyraised the wreath before they brought the sailors out so they had theappropriate ceremonies for that
so that was one of the first tragediesthat led to it the second one happened in december 17th1927 and this is the ss for and it was on maneuvers off of cape cod just off ofprovincetown and this one was submerged and there was a mile stretch where theyconducted these high-speed maneuvers in the coast guard destroyer paulding was also in the area at thetime and unfortunately because the water wasvery choppy the submarine did have its periscopes up but the the commander ofthe coast guard destroyed cannot see the weight from the periscopes until it wastoo late
and so the coast guard hope the one onthe on the right the cg 17 ultimately struck the s4 in it sunk in a hundredand ten feet of water and they were all together with 40 lives that were lostthey went down and tried to raise this they had trouble hooking up the linessignificant thing this is the boat on the left is thefalcon which ran out of it was a submarine salvage boat and it ran out ofthe sub base in groton and they were they were working on trying to raise thes4 on the right is a navy diver and thomas eadie the divers will another divernight i don't recall his name right off here went down to hook up an air hose tothe submarine that was sunk
and that diver got tangled up in all thewires and things that were being hooked up to try to do it to soundlessly and he was just about done for and thomas eadie had previously died for about six hours and he volunteered to go down andunravel the the other diver this is mr. eadie and as a result of hisactivities he was awarded the congressional medalof honor so very significant event there that ball was raised in march ofnineteen twenty-eight and brought to the brooklyn naval yard and there it is thatthey would they had just brought it in and the lower right here
they're taking a look at where the coastguard boat struck it and this was the hole that was put inside of it somebody they cause the boat to sinkafter these tragedies they there was a lieutenant navy lieutenant that was working on a device that arebreathing device to help bring sailors up from submarines that were in shallowwater and this was a what they call the sea submarine escape appliance and thegentleman's name was a it was a little tentative time was momsen and and he diddevelop this long and it became accepted by the navy in 1929
this is mr. momsen with his lung and ittook me about six months to find that photograph and guess what i found it ebay where else going to find it? this is him during the last officialtest of it when they approved it to the test with in 1928 they approved it in1929 as a result of the tragedies and thedevelopment of this sea they decided that they wanted to and there's afull view of the momsen lung for you breathe into it and it converts carbondioxide into oxygen they decided to build the united states navy escapetraining tank now they started the
building in nineteen thirty and itdidn't take them long it took them like nine months to build this and someof these photographs are quite interesting this is the foundation now if you lookin the back look at the wheels on the truck you notice their wooden wheels woodenspoke wheels it's octogonal shaped it's 36 feetacross the cement was five feet deep and reinforced concrete on on oak and pinepilings and there is what they called 12 steel holes there are rides to hold thetank and these rods are - and 8-inch
round and replace around the bases youcan see them sitting on the foundation because of these are the rods thatactually hold the metal plate and there is the construction the start of theconstruction of the tank now ultimately the tank ended up being ahundred and nineteen and a half feet tall it was 18 feet in diameter and it held250,000 gallons of water that's a lot of water there was a cupolaon the top and the cool probably is 14 feet high and 25 feetacross and it was everything was riveted acting just like the submarines forrevenue and ultimately it was covered
with an insulation in a corrugatedplanning in this photograph here the steelworkers about eighty percentcomplete there's another photograph of it but youcan see the steelworkers on it i have a tremendous fear of heights i don't think i'd be that man on theright there but these are other how the steelworkersjust perform their duties interestingly later on we'll talk aboutthe demise of the tank but on facebook recently there's been articles postsabout this presentation to me and i had one from a gentleman i knew his fatherand he said my father helped build that
and help take it down and we don't haveany photographs of the building being taken down the tower being taken downbutii'm sure if i showed him this photo show one of those steel workers isprobably his father two years after they built the tankbecause initially the sailors would have to walk the outside of that let me go back you see the stairs thesailors would have to walk up to the different heights where they would haveto to go enter into the tank to do their dives so by the time they get out there theywere exhausted and yet
now they had to perform and and swim andhold their breaths and things like that which we'll get into so two years afterthey constructed the initial tank they constructed a elevator on the outsideand there's the completed tank now as a prospective remember now we'retalking with a hundred and nineteen feet and 14-feet we're talking like a hundredin 25 are under 35 feet tall and when they dived they came out of these hatchdoors and they had hatches just like they were on submarines so you can open them up flood the floodor you get the tank in where they went into an open up these doors and thenthey would enter into the tank just as
if they were coming out of it the escape hatch or a hatch on thesubmarine and then go up you know most of it the initial oneswere conducted at about 18 feet and then they were going down to 50 feet and thenthey'd go down to a hundred feet because actually the deepest area they could iwould be a hundred and ten feet from the bottom now when it was built himeverything's relative it costs a hundred and twenty thousanddollars to construct it, not bad it was heated to 92 degrees the water was heated and it was cleanjust like a pool within the reason for
keeping it 92 degrees the trainer's the divers that assistedthat the submarines that were being taught we're in that pool for seven hours a dayso they try to keep their body temperature close to post to normal sothey kept the tank of 92 degrees a look inside the tank this is inside the cupola at the top ofthe tank again it's 25 feet wide and 14-feet high there's a recompression chamber in the cupola but
there's also two or three down below andthe reason for that one before you even went into the water but we'll talk aboutthat a little bit but before you even want you had to be tested inside one ofthose recompression chambers they may put you inside and they wouldbring them the pressure up to 50 pounds and if you couldn't take the pressureyou you were eliminated from the submarineforce so that was the significance of the recompression type this is looking up from the bottomnotice how clean it looks it's it's fascinating to see this andthat's looking from the 18-foot you are
you can you can see the door that comesout the hatch that comes out it goes into the tank and is it there's a room inside where they wouldflood it bring the pressure up and then theywould go open that door and go out you know i'm sure there's a lot of people inthis audience that have done this i what i did there's the entrance fromif you are on the outside of the tank where you went into the the area wherethey put you inside the tank and then flooded it and pressurized it before you went outinto the tank and this is the entrance
at the hundred and ten foot mark andinteresting they would flood this you would climb go climb under and go upthrough the shaft if you call it that and then enter intothe into the tank and these are interesting in my research i do have aname of the gentleman that painted these by the way he's quite an artist and i isee these drawings and i say who is going to be looking at drawings if i'm coming out here i've got itsurvival to go up i'm not going to and there was also another weather and iam sure was this the sailors having fun there was a no smoking sign outsidethere
now we have an evolution of of theindividual escape techniques diving techniques of what they used when theyfirst open the tank they use that month some low as i calledand that was an application from 1932 about 1956 so most most sailors that we know inthis area that are my age we trained in this particular aspect ofit from there in 1946 they went to what they call the no breathing device this is if i'm not mistaken is what theycall the blow and go all right so you took your breath youwent outside and you whistled
oh well so that was called the blow andgo but they had a lot of problems with thatbecause if you hold your breath ok your lungs expand and this is whenyou come down with the bends here air embolism and things of this naturethat was the reason for the recompression centers or stations thenthey went to the buoyant ascent and this is where they had a it's actually almostlike a preserving that went around your neck and you blew but this helped you rise a lot quickerbut it was very very important that you breathe because if you don't thatpressure is going to build up into your
loans and again you'll end up withevents so i went till nineteen sixty and then they develop the steinke hood andthis is an actual hood that you put of your head and you had that the bouyancyvest but it was important that you breathe and and and i found out aboutthis today and i couldn't find out until today because i had a lot of peoplesaying they don't say oh yeah that was the whole and that's what you did youwent inside this hood and they wanted you to breathe so you would go hole oh oh so you were expelling air so you wereholding it so and i saw a lot of
comments on facebook today oh-ho remember that oh so those arepeople that went through with this steinke hood now this is the actual training coursethat the sailors went through you saw what they the procedures thatthey did but now we're going to everybody's concerned about safety everybody even back then back then i'msaying back in nineteen thirty and safety precautions there is there's a crew of divinginstructors and i have all their names
in mr. baker was a great night maybe a lot of people might remember himyeah he was like a manager at the elks club and he was one of the main diversduring the salvage of the squalus where they did bring up some some submarines from a sunken submarine now every one of those divers is aqualified diver and before they could work as a diver in the tank they were six months of training in thetank before they were permitted to assist the submariners when they weredoing their training there were always 10 divers assigned tothe tank when there's operations going
on it was always a medical officer on dutyso if he came up with the bands are you have another medical emergency they would take care of you on the sideon the inside of the tank there were what they called blisters andthey were there are lockouts that some of the divers would stay in there andthey could come right out and if you had a problem that would bring you either inthere or they would bring you into another thing which they call a rovingdiving bell and there's the roving diving bill and they could lower thatand put you inside of it where there was
air and there's the diving bell andoperation there you were never ever alone in the tank you always had a dive instructor withyou from the time you came out of the hat to you got up they would relay youin 25 feet increments which always had a diver with you so it's the very safety conscious and bythe way if you didn't pass don't go those submarines this is the recompression chamber italked about we put you in there and
everybody's happy right until they closed the door and putthe 50 pounds over then you had to experience that pressure and they had amedical person inside there with you and if you couldn't take it ring the bell open it up and the rest ofthe people would go back in and finish up their exercise but you went back tothe barracks and packed up and they were trained you're on how to operate themonths alone in several several days of this to the actual training for the tankwas two days well one day of school classroom theother day was an actual in the tank and
there's the apparatus well when you came out of the hats therewas a into the tank there was a buoy rope that went to the top and there wereknots in it and you would put your feet and your hands on the role and moveyourself up and when you reach the knot you had to wait for a certain period oftime again to avoid the air embolisms and that's the buoy that came up fromthe bottom now this is the fifth 50 foot ascent tank this is the chamber that tohappen if they flood the chamber then they open the inside hatch and you goinside and start out the door and there's a person coming out into thetank
this one has a steinke hood on but you can see he has two divers withright off the bat and that they'll remain there will be two divers thewhole wave coming up remember i said about putting your feetand your hands on that rope so you can feel the knots and that'sthat's what this person is doing it again accompanied by two divers comingup this one looks like the buoyancywe're as the vest and he's blowing the blow and go as we as we say instructorchecking this steinke hood out while they're still coming up
and now he's at the top and that's quitean achievement i'm sure if if i had been doing a basic me i made it right but you did it more thanonce i believe you did it you did it twice at the 18-foot level than twice atthe 50 foot level and then they gave you an option if you want to do in the75-foot level or the hundred and ten foot level now it took me a while to get this tape andand the library help me out their submarine force library help me out withthis again i won't apologize for the quality of things that we're going toturn two lights down just a little bit
this is a training film from nineteenfifty three of the diving operation know that huge tower is not a silo but awater-filled classroom where men are trained in the use of the month in lungknown as the submarine character proof about to try this safety deviceenter the decompression chamber where they will be subjected to a gradualapplication of 50 pounds of air fresh to be sure that the men do not sufferany undue physical discomfort a doctor another qualified person depress the lung resembles and works in roughprincipal like a gas mask erik sailed into the device passes through soda lineis removed the waste carbon dioxide and
replaces it with fresh oxygen when each student has mastered the useof the lung is then ready for the first attempt that underwater breathing a preliminary ascent is made from a veryshallow level first the buoy is set up attached to aline that will guide them into the circle the line is marked at regular intervalsindicating where the men will fall for ten breaths how the body to become adjusted to thedecreasing pressure and counted in the
event of the year and now for the real test a trip to thetop of the tank from the lowest level of the tower apartment is flooded until the pressurebalances the weight of the water above charging their lungs with oxygen the menpath of truth he escaped at one at a time holding securely to the marker line andtaking particular care to pause at the designated intervals for decompression this man has safely reached the surfacefrom a depth of 100 feet
safety device was developed by theunited states navy been made available to all the people ofthe world in the interest of humanity and safety underneath graduation day brings final inspectionof group of men trained in the fundamentalsof a hard exciting ready to join the submarine botellas united states navy i sat for hours watching these moviesand when i first found it i called shawn, it was on google and icontacted the company and i wanted those
three minutes and they wanted to chargeme 250 dollars for those three minutes in the quality release that well butfortunately the submarine force got a copy of it and they provided to me butto be on the safe side it was a different company contacted theother companies or traditions across the screen and i bought the entire two hoursfor twenty nine dollars so we were we were fortunate with that some notableevents this is what happened in april ofnineteen sixty-eight the fire started in a room and got into the elevator shaft it worked its way up into the cupola andthat says five hundred thousand dollars
but was a lot more than that that caused the damage the submarinefire department as well as local fire departments all of god's firedepartments pretty much responded it took about four hours to extinguishit has started at three o'clock in the morning there's a fire again this is that not anighttime photographs i won't apologize workers we have photograph there's some of the fire apparatus onthe side yeah but the city fire department had asnorkel truck which could go a lot
higher there's that mean spray water by the wayand you can see other firemen working their way up to the cupola there's the city's snorkel truck as theycall it one of a kind for the area it's a greatphotograph now there were two fire teams that wereinvolved one of them was chief vescovi from thesubmarine base and then city of groton fire chief william scarano bill scaranowhat happens to be one of my best friend's was responsible for puttingthat fire out by the way mr. scarano's
in the audience tonight so we're verypleased that he was he was there and a bucket thing under control very rapidly now the first woman eversaturday that were certified here this tank was used for everything thatwe had figured we had women that were involved not in the submarines but withtaking care of submariners submariners so that the first ones werecertified 1943 and they were both in ensigns and i didn't notice till thisweekend notice that the dive uniform in the back and told us thatbefore but they were qualified and they
they were photographed while they werein training there's that balancing best and they'reteaching her how to so you have that blow and go aspect of it in there she's being assisted coming up now like any other thing we always addinterest into it we had some hollywood visitors at thattank we've had a lot of visitors alienvisitors to the to the submarine base but not to the tank well the first ones as tyrone powersthat's him here and he was the primary
actor in the movie called crash divethat was filled at the base the majority of it was filled with thebase and i read a story where he showed up late for one of the production reason and iguess there was a baby master chief that really chewed him outall right you would play if you want to play navy you're going to play the realgame so they taught me how to play a real game the terrible picture the only picture we have it's aphotograph of the newspaper is brian
donlevy here he has his daughter with him in this isbrian donlevy and there is one of the movies he started and you mightrecognize them in this photograph it's him here and that's the fightingcoast guard was filmed in 1951 esther williams reportedly was at the tank ihave no photographs of her at the tank that's the closest thing i could comethrough some of you know you're going to simulate that she was in the tank but i do have a photograph of her with acaptain from the uss trout and it was in new london and when they say new london, i would imagine it
was tied up at the fulton that's the only thing i can think upwell that's her there kate smith she was there is everything everybodyremember kate smith a lot of people don't and if you are a yankee fan youwill remember her now? music (god bless america) and very interesting there she's signing a torpedo to hitler autographing personally want to graphingit but she was quite a patriot a patriot
now the beginning of the end unfortunately because of the cost ofrepairing the it actually became obsolete some of the piping systems within thetank became obsolete so they did a study and they figured itwould cost 267,000 dollars to repair it by the way after the fire within a yearthey brought it back i'd like to mention that they brought it back and theycontinue to use it until about nineteen eighty-two so that's when they found itwould cost about two hundred seventy thousand dollars to repair it anotherthree hundred and sixty seven thousand
dollars a year to operate it but to demolish it was 21 and sixty-fivethousand dollars so they took the took the easy way out and now you gottaremember we're talking we started in nineteen thirty in nineteen eighty-two anineteen thirty wood working with diesel boats and they go down a hundred andfifty two hundred feet now we're talking in the nineteeneighties or talking nuclear boats that probably go double triple that depth sothe use of blowing goal and these things are not going to work so they decided they would demolish it
and build a new submarine escapesimulator that was in the clothes in 1985 they made the decision to tear itdown and build a new one in 1985 and the tank was actually taken down in 1992 that's one of the reasons why that'sanother reason why i it had determined there's no doubt about it i havephotographs of the pipes that were actually hanging out of the out of theequipment this is the new momsen hall it's a new escape training this opened up in 2009 and there's thenew take the cost of 18 million dollars
to build this one all right there is 84 gallons 84,000gallons in here its twenty feet wide and it's only 40feet deep at the bottom of the tank they have actual escape trunks simulatedtrunks that are on actual submarines they've built them into the bottom ofthe tank and the submarine is now practice or drill with what they call anse ie a submarine escape and immersion equipment suits that's one of the suits and that's whatthey practice with when we started the program i mentionedthat rotten had landmarks well this was
our landmark and the sail is coming andgoing that would be the last thing they sawprobably the first thing that they can put their eyes and say i'm hold butwe're fortunate in the aspect that even though that the structure has been takendown it's always been part of our symbol ourlogo for the submarine base and i spoke with the present captain cabinet alwayscover the other night and i have spoken to two previous captains of the base andthey plan to keep that logo so we will always have groton landmarkof the diving tower present for us to enjoy
hope that as part of our submarine proud ceremony that you enjoyed the program tonight music (claps)
