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TI: So you mentioned submarine service, and there was a fairly well-known incident that involved your father.

MH: Yes.

TI: Can you tell me a little bit about, about that incident?

MH: Well, there was a previous incident, too. He was in command of the submarine, and they were installing these batteries, the batteries which were made by Edison. And my father was not too happy about them, and he was, they were installing them, I don't think he was on the, on the submarine at the time, but they exploded. And one man died, I think, and another was terribly badly injured. And so they were court-martialing my father about this, and went to get testimony from this badly injured man in the hospital who said that it was absolutely my father's, not my father's fault in any way. That was the first one.

The second one was, he was, the S-5 was a submarine that he was taking down the East Coast for a training exercise. And one of the training exercises is to take the submarine down. And when he took the submarine down, as it happened, there was a failure in, I guess, one of the hatches -- I'm not familiar with all this -- with one of the hatches, anyway. And the submarine flooded, and they were, they were on the bottom of the bay, it was, not the ocean, the bay. And, but they had an idea that, my father had the idea that they might be fairly near the surface. And so they started to drill through the submarine, they went to the... well, I can't go into the details of it, but at any rate...

TI: Well, and let me -- and this goes back to when you said your father was really good at math.

MH: Yes.

TI: So I, I read a book about this, and yeah, from the charts, he figured out that, I think the depth was about 160 feet or something, and the submarine was, like, about 200. He, I think, intentionally flooded the, one side of the submarine so it would tilt up, realizing that if he got it to a certain angle, the very tip of the submarine would be above surface --

MH: Correct.

TI: -- at the tide, whatever tide time that was. And he was correct. He did this, which was a very risky maneuver, people didn't know what he was trying to do, but essentially had that sub go right up. And then you're right, then they started drilling holes and that saved --

MH: With a hand drill.

TI: With a hand drill. And the, in reading the book, the part that was interesting was how cool he was under those very trying circumstances, to save not only himself, but all of the men on the submarine. And all of them survived, which was amazing.

MH: Yes, all survived.

TI: It's an incredible story. I just, I was just fascinated.

MH: And the submarine is still down there. It's still down there. [Laughs]

TI: But I've seen pictures --

MH: But no escape hatches in those days.

TI: I've seen pictures of the plate, though, that they actually drilled all the way around for the men to climb out. So that was, that was, again, an incredible story, and I think they had investigations again trying to see if your father had done anything wrong. But every account I've seen was that it was heroic.

MH: Yes. And every man of the crew volunteered to come serve for him again.

TI: That's a good story.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.