Charles Momsen
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Charles Bowers "Swede" Momsen (21 June 1896 - 25 May 1967) was born in Flushing, New York. He was an American pioneer in submarine rescue and invented the underwater escape device called the Momsen Lung, for which he received the Distinguished Service Medal in 1929. In May 1939, he directed the rescue of the crew of the Squalus (SS-192).
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[edit] Early Navy Years
Momsen entered the United States Naval Academy in 1914, and was ejected for poor grades during the spring of his plebe, or freshman, year. But Momsen doggedly pursued another appointment to the Academy, repeated his plebe year, and graduated in 1919 — a year early, due to the beginning of World War I.
From 1919 to 1921, Momsen served on the battleship Oklahoma (BB-37). In 1921, he went to the U.S. Navy Submarine School in New London, Connecticut, graduating in January 1922. A year and a half later, he took command of O-15 (SS-76), an aging submarine. A few years after that, he was given command of S-1 (SS-105), the newest of U.S. Navy-designed boats.
[edit] Diving and Rescue
[edit] Early Interest
It was on board S-1 that Momsen's attention became riveted on the urgent need for a way to rescue downed submariners.
On 25 September 1925, a sister sub, S-51(SS-162), collided with a cargo ship and went down in 130 feet of water. Momsen was ordered to take S-1 out to search for the crippled submarine. S-1 found the oil slick marking the spot where the submarine sunk, but without sonar, there was no way to locate the desperate crew on the bottom. Nor was there a way for trapped sailors to escape. The incident showed why submarine duty was dubbed the "Coffin Service"; between 1929 and 1939, 700 U.S. sailors were lost in 20 submarines.
Momsen began to look for ways to rescue submariners. He conceived a diving bell, which could be lowered to a submarine in distress, secured by bolts over an escape hatch and opened to allow trapped submariners to climb in. A watertight seal to the submarine could be achieved by placing a rubber gasket around the diving bell's bottom and reducing the air pressure once the bell was over the escape hatch. Then, the hatch could be opened, and the trapped submariners could climb aboard.
Momsen diagrammed his idea and sent it up the chain of command. He waited more than a year for a response, heard nothing, and concluded that there must have been something technically wrong with the concept.
Momsen's next tour of duty took him to the Submarine Division of the Bureau of Construction and Repair. Shortly after he reported aboard, he came across his diving bell drawings. They had been disapproved as impractical. He stated his case again, but to no avail.
Shortly thereafter, in December 1927, another submarine, S-4 (SS-109), sank off Cape Cod. Forty men died. Six crewmen survived for three days in the torpedo room, but the sailors had no way to escape the submarine.
[edit] Momsen Lung
While serving with the Submarine Safety Test Unit, Momsen began working on a device to help such sailors surface. Officially called the Submarine Escape Lung, it consisted of an oblong rubber bag that recycled exhaled air. The press enthusiastically received the device and dubbed it the Momsen Lung, a name that stuck.
The Lung contained a canister of soda lime, which removed poisonous carbon dioxide from exhaled air and then replenished the air with oxygen. Two tubes led from the bag to a mouthpiece: one to inhale oxygen and the other to exhale carbon dioxide. The device hung around the neck and strapped around the waist. Besides providing oxygen for the ascent, it also allowed a submariner to rise slowly to the surface, thus avoiding decompression sickness ("the bends").
Between June 1929 and September 1932, then-Lt. Momsen developed the lung with Chief Gunner Mate Tibbals and civilian Frank Hobson. In 1929, Momsen received the Distinguished Service Medal for personally testing the device at a depth of 200 feet.
The Lung saved its first lives in October 1944, when eight submariners used it to reach the surface after Tang (SS-306) sank in 180 feet of water in the East China Sea.
The Lung was eventually supplemented by the Steinke hood and free-ascent techniques.
[edit] Diving Bell
Momsen returned to his diving bell idea in 1930, built a prototype, and tested it off Key West, Florida. Momsen had several changes in mind for the bell, but was sent to the Bureau of Construction and Repair to teach submariners how to use the Momsen Lung before he could make the changes. Lieutenant Commander Allan McCann was put in charge of the minor revisions on Momsen's diving bell. When the bell was completed in late 1930, it was introduced as the McCann Rescue Chamber. The name given was seen by many as the act of a jealous navy for the publicity given to the Momsen Lung.
[edit] Gas Mixtures
From 1937 to 1939, Momsen led an experimental deep-sea diving unit at the Washington Navy Yard which achieved a major breakthrough in the physiology of the human lung's gas mixtures under high pressure. At deep depths, oxygen turns toxic. At 200 feet, nitrogen enters the blood, then tissue, causing the giddiness called "nitrogen narcosis". Divers who ascend too rapidly can get decompression sickness, commonly known as "the bends," which happens when nitrogen in the blood forms bubbles. These bubbles can block blood flow and cause intense pain, even death.
In experiments often performed by Momsen himself, the team replaced the nitrogen with nontoxic helium and mixed it with varying levels of oxygen depending on the depth. Today's divers use the knowledge to operate safely deeper than 300 feet.
[edit] The Squalus Rescue
Momsen, already famous for his Lung, achieved even more fame for directing the rescue and recovery of the 33 crewmen of the Squalus (SS-192), which sank in May 1939 in 243 feet of water off Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire. Working from the salvage ship Falcon (ASR-2), Momsen instructed the team of divers as they dove to the submarine and attached cables to the rescue chamber. He also instructed the rescue chamber's operators as they made four trips to bring the submariners to the surface and a final trip to check the flooded aft section for survivors.
Momsen led the salvage of the Squalus, which took 113 days to bring it to dry dock at the Portsmouth Navy Yard.
Along with Rear Admiral McCann, Momsen received a commendation from President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Squalus effort.
[edit] WWII and Beyond
During World War II, Momsen served as Commander, Submarine Squadron 2 and Commander, Submarine Squadron 4. While Momsen was Squadron 2 in the Pacific Fleet, the submarine skippers kept reporting that their torpedoes were not behaving correctly. When fired from the prescribed perpendicular angle, the torpedoes did not always explode. When fired from non-perpendicular angles, the torpedoes exploded. When Momsen's own squadron complained, he decided to find out why. He took torpedoes to the shallow waters and sheer cliffs of the Hawaiian Island of Kahoolawe and fired until he got a dud. Then, risking his own life, he dove into the water to find the unexploded torpedo. With help, he recovered the dangerous live torpedo and brought it on board. A small problem with the pin inside the primer cap was causing the problems.
Momsen earned a Navy Cross as commander of a submarine attack group in the Japanese-controlled waters of the East China Sea. Using an attack pattern he developed, the submarines sank five Japanese ships and damaged eight others. Momsen also received the Legion of Merit for commanding the United States Navy's first wolf pack in enemy waters from February 1943 to June 1944. The US's version of the wolfpack consisted of three submarines travelling together. When they approached an enemy convoy, one sub would attack from starboard, one from port and the last from the stern.
Momsen commanded the battleship USS South Dakota from December 1944 to August 1945. For his distinguished service in command, Momsen was awarded a Gold Star in lieu of a third awarding of the Legion of Merit with Combat "V".
In November 1945, he directed a fleet of nearly 200 surplus Army and Navy ships, manned by Japanese crews, that evacuated the first of nearly six million Japanese from Manchuria, Formosa, and islands in the Pacific.
In addition to the Navy Cross and Legion of Merit with two Gold Stars, he earned a Navy Distinguished Service Medal and a Navy Commendation Medal. Gold Stars are given for each subsequent award of a decoration.
He served as Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Undersea Warfare from 1948 to 1951, then became Commander of the Submarine Force's Pacific Fleet.
Vice Admiral Charles B. Momsen died of cancer and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The 42nd Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, USS Momsen (DDG-92) is named in his honor.
[edit] References
- Keach, James (Director). (2000) Submerged [Film]. New York: NBC. (Television movie.)
- Maas, Peter (1999). The Terrible Hours: The Man Behind the Greatest Submarine Rescue in History. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-019480-4.
- This article is based on material from the Office of Naval Research's public domain biography, Blow the Ballast!.
- Momsen.org points to a biographical page on his granddaughter's otherwise unrelated website, Hart Enterprises: Professional Embroidery.
