Latest / Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast / DDH - Torpedoman 2nd Class Henry Breault
Transcript
- 0:00History's strange, it's alien, and it won't give us what we
- 0:04would like to have. Thank you for spending your time
- 0:10with us here on 92.7 FM 1240 and 1350 AM WMMB.
- 0:16Dave Bowman's been with us all day and now, as he typically
- 0:18does on a Tuesday, he brings us Dave Does History.
- 0:22Our typical 2 links are there for you to the Dave Bowman Show
- 0:25and his regular podcast. Also the Dave Does History
- 0:27podcast page and a third one that is specifically tied to
- 0:31this story, which is what Dave Bowman.
- 0:34Good morning. Well, good morning again.
- 0:38You know the the Talmud has a saying, he who saves a life, it
- 0:43is as if he has saved the entire world.
- 0:47And I think, if I recall my New Testament studies correctly,
- 0:53wasn't it that Jesus fellow who said greater love hath no man
- 0:57than this, that he lay down his life for another?
- 0:59This idea of sacrificing oneself to save someone else is deeply
- 1:06ingrained with us. You can go back through all of
- 1:08history and find that ideal is being held up as one of the
- 1:12highest human ideals that there is, that there's nothing higher
- 1:17than that. And so we find ourselves on
- 1:21October 28th, 1923, yesterday in the dense humidity of the of the
- 1:28Panama Canal Zone, Panama, Panama Canal Zone.
- 1:33It was, as always, thick, heavy. You know that area.
- 1:38The USSO 5 is one of the Navy's small coastal based submarines.
- 1:44These are not submarines that are designed to patrol the
- 1:46Pacific Ocean. These are based on the idea of
- 1:51the Holland submarine, this idea that we have a bunch of coastal
- 1:53submarines that defend the coasts of the United States and
- 1:57in areas of interest. And, and so they're small and
- 2:00they don't have to be really big.
- 2:01And this is one of those. It is in the Bay.
- 2:05They're getting ready to transit the Panama Canal and everything
- 2:10seems to be normal. This is a sturdy vessel.
- 2:15It had served during the Great War, which we call World War
- 2:18One. But even the best machines are
- 2:21vulnerable, and even the best trained crews, the best trained
- 2:26navies, you can't account for bad luck.
- 2:32And out of nowhere comes that bad luck.
- 2:37A giant freighter is going to suddenly collide with the USSO
- 2:415, cut a hole in it and send it plunging to the bottom of the of
- 2:46the depths. Men are going to scramble for
- 2:49safety, but there are those who are trapped inside the sinking
- 2:53vessel, and the clock is going to tick.
- 2:57Today, we're going to take a look at this and we're going to
- 2:59recount the story of unimaginable bravery.
- 3:03When the O5 slips beneath the water, one man is going to take
- 3:07an action that would define courage.
- 3:09That man, torpedo man, Second Class Henry Brow, who found
- 3:13himself, for the moment, safely above the waterline.
- 3:16But he's going to make a choice, and his actions that day would
- 3:20not only save another life, but would earn him the Medal of
- 3:24Honor, the only enlisted submariner to ever receive it
- 3:27for his actions. This is the story of the USSO 5A
- 3:31tragic accident and a hero who went beyond the Call of Duty to
- 3:36save a life. We pick it up in 60 seconds on
- 3:39WMNB. So Dave, you say it's a smaller
- 3:43submarine that Henry Brau is is serving on.
- 3:47Give us a description of the difference in.
- 3:50These old, these old class submarines, now you know, I'm a,
- 3:55I'm a Cold War submariner myself.
- 3:58My, my boat was a little bit over 560 feet long and weighed
- 4:03about 18,000 tons. These old class submarines were
- 4:08very small. They were 170 feet in length.
- 4:11And remember, just because the ship is that long, the boat is
- 4:14that long, doesn't mean that the people tank inside it is that
- 4:17long. There's, you know, ballast tanks
- 4:19and those kinds of things. They, they had very limited
- 4:22range. They didn't have a, you know,
- 4:24big fuel tanks and the likes of that.
- 4:26They weren't nuclear powered and they were, you know, they were
- 4:30very small and very claustrophobic, but they were
- 4:34very good. They could only, they could dive
- 4:36around 200 feet. They had a top speed about 14
- 4:39knots on the surface. But keep in mind this was more
- 4:43than 100 years ago, so you know, it's technology changes.
- 4:49And back in those days though, the O class submarines were
- 4:54pretty pretty resilient, pretty reliable compared to today.
- 4:59I don't think you could get a modern submariner to get on one.
- 5:02But at the same time, at the time, they were the top end of
- 5:06the top end of the models. We would send these submarines
- 5:10out to coastal ports, including the Panama Canal Zone, because
- 5:15the Panama Canal Zone needed to be protected.
- 5:18And so they would use them in there and, and they would, you
- 5:20know, float back and forth between the Pacific side, the
- 5:23Atlantic side. And of course, by 1923, the war
- 5:26was over and there wasn't really any combat situations.
- 5:32But at the same time, you keep training for those kinds of
- 5:34things. So we sent a bunch of these old
- 5:36class boats down there. By the way, we did the same
- 5:38thing in World War 2:00. We, we kept sending submarines
- 5:41to the, to the Panama Canal Zone to do the same thing.
- 5:45Now that kind of duty, you know, it's, it's routine, but you, you
- 5:53have to do the things that you got to do and you keep training
- 5:55and you keep doing these kinds of things, but you can't really
- 6:00prepare for the unexpected. I, you know, I tell people about
- 6:04the time that we dove off Port Angeles and as we dove the, the
- 6:10USS Michigan, a giant freighter went right over the top of us.
- 6:14I was standing missile department upper level and you
- 6:17could hear the, as the propellers went over us And I, I
- 6:24didn't run to control, but I, I kind of made my way up there and
- 6:27you could see everybody in control was just white as, as
- 6:31sheets. I mean, they were shaking the
- 6:33whole 9 yard. And Joe Adamson says to me, we
- 6:38didn't we, we never saw it. And my answer what my question
- 6:41was, what do you mean you never saw it?
- 6:43You got radar, sonar, periscopes, You never saw it.
- 6:48We never saw it. If we'd have dove 30 seconds
- 6:51later, I wouldn't be here. So it's not, it's not something
- 6:58that's an unusual occurrence for sufferings to be rammed by
- 7:01surface ships. It used to happen,
- 7:03unfortunately, far too regularly.
- 7:06And it happens here on October 28th, the morning of October
- 7:0928th, 1923, the O 5 is cruising through the Bay.
- 7:13They're getting ready to transit the canal and it gets hit by a
- 7:18basically a banana freighter that punches a hole in the side
- 7:22and the ship begins to sink. So it wasn't submerged at the
- 7:25time. No, no.
- 7:27In fact, in that era, Bill submarines only submerged to
- 7:31attack. They they tended to stay on the
- 7:33surface. They were basically surface
- 7:34craft that could dive to attack. They didn't have, you know, the
- 7:38unlimited underwater ability that we have now with which has
- 7:43come about because of nuclear power.
- 7:46The the impact caused the death of three men, but at the same
- 7:52and at the same time the ship began to sink.
- 7:54Now the abandoned ship order is given and people start in
- 7:59rushing to get off the ship. The the the United Fruit Company
- 8:04freighter of Banyas hits it. You can't.
- 8:09Submarines are not armored, so when it hits, it's going to RIP
- 8:13a huge hole. The damage is catastrophic.
- 8:16O5 begins immediately taking on water, and the extent of the
- 8:20damage means that the submarine is rapidly sinking.
- 8:23Within seconds, sea waters rushing through the breach.
- 8:27It's flooding compartments, forcing crew members to scramble
- 8:29to the exits. Now, some men are may able to
- 8:31make it to the surface, others are trapped inside.
- 8:34But the plus side here is that the water where they are isn't
- 8:41very deep, around 4045 feet deep.
- 8:44It's not. It's not terribly deep, but it's
- 8:48also in the era before we have developed escape systems.
- 8:53Today, if a submarine sank in 45 feet of water, well, on my boat,
- 8:57it wouldn't matter because the hatches would still be above
- 8:59water. But in some submarines, 45 feet
- 9:02would not be a difficult thing technically to escape from.
- 9:08But in that era, there was none of the equipment that we had and
- 9:10none of the systems that we have in place now to do those kinds
- 9:14of things. But the problem is, as the boat
- 9:18is sinking, Henry Brow, who's a torpedo in second class, has
- 9:22made it, you know, to relative safety.
- 9:26But he realizes that one of his friends, one of his shipmates,
- 9:30is still below decks. And he thinks, well, I, I better
- 9:34go help. He dives back down the surface,
- 9:38gets to where his friend is and realizes they can't get out.
- 9:44And so he shuts the watertight door, seals the compartment that
- 9:47they're in. And as the ship sinks to the
- 9:50bottom of the Bay, they are trapped inside of this room,
- 9:55inside of this compartment on the submarine.
- 9:59Imagine that, if you will. You were on a submarine that is
- 10:03now sunk. What's going to happen now,
- 10:08Bill? Why did you come back?
- 10:10Why did you why did you even try to do that?
- 10:13Yeah, I I get it. But you know, I was.
- 10:16Like a coal miner at the at the bottom of a mine after a
- 10:19collapse in a mine. You know, I would imagine it's
- 10:21probably the same way. But boys, there's there's just
- 10:25something terrifying about this situation as it should better.
- 10:31And that's that's where we're going to start the rest of the
- 10:35story. How much time do they have to
- 10:38get to somebody like that in in that enclosed space?
- 10:41That kind of depends on how much air you have, how much you know,
- 10:43how much the air banks are charged, if they're charged.
- 10:46You know, I mean, if you recall the the Chilean submarine,
- 10:50somebody said a week, who knows for sure.
- 10:53It varies. And we pick it up in moments on
- 10:55WMMB. Dave Bowman joins us for our
- 10:59weekly dive into history. Pay attention, there will be a
- 11:03test. No, there won't be a test, but
- 11:06you will be held accountable. Bill Nick Live.
- 11:10The McPherson Financial Group bringing you this hour of the
- 11:13show and as Victor Law told you, Dave Bowman in the middle of our
- 11:16Dave Does history story. And when we when last we left
- 11:20our hero, he was under the sea in a compartment with his buddy.
- 11:24He went back to rescue and we don't know how much they've time
- 11:27they've got before they can get to him.
- 11:30So heroic move going back to start with Dave and then he sees
- 11:35safest way to do this is to give our chance, ourselves a chance
- 11:38at survival. It's a it's an incomprehensible
- 11:44thing to me. I mean, what, what man in his
- 11:48right mind says the submarine is sinking.
- 11:52I'm going back in because my friend, my shipmate, my
- 11:58crewmate, Chief Electricians mate, Lawrence Brown is still in
- 12:04there and he needs help. Now, we all like to think we
- 12:08would do that, but sometimes I wonder if we would.
- 12:12But in this particular case, Henry Brown does.
- 12:15He goes back inside the ship. He pushes forward to the torpedo
- 12:18room where, where the the where Chief Brown is.
- 12:22And he gets the door shut, sealing off the compartment,
- 12:25which essentially makes it, you know, airtight.
- 12:28Now we're only in 4045 feet of water.
- 12:32Submarine has a test depth of about 200 feet, so there's no
- 12:36danger of it imploding or anything like that.
- 12:40But I don't, I don't know how to describe this to you.
- 12:44I really don't The, the power is out.
- 12:47It's completely dark, Bill. It's a Stygian blackness.
- 12:53Now, it's possible they had flashlights and that sort of
- 12:57thing so that they could see around a little bit and maybe
- 12:59there's some residual panel lights or something like that.
- 13:02But for the most part it is a blackness that that you can
- 13:07almost feel. Now, I've been on a submarine
- 13:09that that lost power like that and it is very disconcerting.
- 13:16And ours was only for a few seconds.
- 13:19And it was, it was the stuff of nightmares.
- 13:22It really is. I mean you.
- 13:23I can imagine, yeah. You mentioned the coal miner
- 13:26thing. It's the same kind of thing.
- 13:29Now you've got the issue of, you know, is the air going to hold
- 13:34out? Is there's no water to drink,
- 13:39there's no food, none of those kinds of things.
- 13:41There actually is water, but they suspect that it might have
- 13:45been poisoned by the lead batteries.
- 13:47So they don't want to drink it because they don't want to get
- 13:50lead poisoning from that. So what do you do?
- 13:54Submarine hits the bottom. You know, there's a lot of
- 13:56noise, there's a lot of shaking. There's a lot of, you know, it's
- 14:00very disconcerting. And now you're trapped in this
- 14:04room with literally no way to get out.
- 14:11Again. This was before we invented
- 14:12escape trunks and that kind of thing.
- 14:14So it it was what do you do have you have you signed your own
- 14:21death warrant by going back to try to help your friend or you
- 14:26know what's what's the outcome now sitting on the bottom at 45
- 14:30feet roughly. You have an opportunity here.
- 14:36And the Navy has learned through previous accidents that it is
- 14:41possible to raise these submarines up the top side.
- 14:45They're going through the, through the roll calls.
- 14:48They're like, well, there's everybody here.
- 14:50Well, we're, you know, basically 5 people short.
- 14:53We've got three that we know are dead, 2 missing.
- 14:57Is it possible that they are alive down there?
- 15:00Is it possible that they survived?
- 15:03The only way we know one way or the other, the only way we can
- 15:06find out is what we got to get this submarine off the bottom,
- 15:12at least part of it so that we can get them out if they're if
- 15:17they're even in there. And those are the questions are
- 15:19going to be going to happen. The word is spreading.
- 15:24We think that there are two men trapped inside here.
- 15:27Navy divers, canal workers join forces.
- 15:30They're going to try to raise this thing up.
- 15:32But time is against them. How much oxygen do they have?
- 15:37Are they hurt? What's going on?
- 15:40The only way we can find out, Bill, is to get this thing to
- 15:44the surface, at least partially, and try to find out if they're
- 15:47still in there or not. What are the techniques they're
- 15:51using? And like you said, this is over
- 15:53100 years ago to get these Subs back to the surface or at least
- 15:57partially. So, Dave, what are they doing?
- 15:59It's, it's strange, isn't it? I mean, we talked about this
- 16:03like it was yesterday, but it was more than 100 years ago at
- 16:07101 years ago. As a matter of fact, technology
- 16:11is much different. There wasn't any scuba equipment
- 16:14back then. Those things didn't exist.
- 16:16So you had, you had hard hat divers going down, you had the,
- 16:21the, the engineers trying to do all this stuff.
- 16:23And eventually, again, it's a it's a complicated story, but at
- 16:28the same time, the whole time, Bro Brow and and Brown are
- 16:33trapped inside this thing. The engineers and the divers are
- 16:37trying to figure out how to lift this thing up.
- 16:40Of course, there are multiple ways to do it.
- 16:43You could do change, you could do ropes, you could do all kinds
- 16:47of things that that try. But you know, is the submarine
- 16:50stuck in the bomb? What if it's stuck?
- 16:52What if it's flooded? What if it's heavy?
- 16:53What if all these kind of questions enter into all these
- 16:56things? Submarine salvage is not an easy
- 17:00thing to do. We learned that with the the
- 17:03S51, or we'll learn it again later with the S 51.
- 17:06But the reality is they managed to get the submarine lifted just
- 17:14enough that the forward torpedo room will break the surface.
- 17:18And as soon as it does from the outside, they open the Hatch and
- 17:22of course Brow and Brown emerge from the submarine.
- 17:27They're not, you know, in great shape because they've been
- 17:30overnight. They they, they've been trapped
- 17:32in the submarine overnight and they managed to get them out.
- 17:38The submarine is later recovered and eventually scrapped.
- 17:42But at the same time, you have this miraculous rescue of Brow
- 17:47and Brown. The story gets picked up by the
- 17:50newspapers. Everybody's excited about it.
- 17:53And then, you know, like anything, it just sort of fades
- 17:56from the news because other things are going to happen.
- 18:00It's a remarkable story. It's a remarkable tale of
- 18:05engineering, you know, working quickly all these kinds of
- 18:09things to rescue these two men. But that's not even the more
- 18:14most remarkable thing about this whole story.
- 18:17The the realization that we slowly come to is this idea that
- 18:25Henry Brau, instead of saving himself, instead of saying,
- 18:31well, I got out, but nobody else did.
- 18:35Instead of doing all that, in the moment of decision, he turns
- 18:41around and goes back inside the submarine for the sole purpose
- 18:47of trying to save his friend's life.
- 18:50And that is a decision that could have cost him his life,
- 18:55could have cost him everything. And the moment he makes that
- 19:00decision, Bill, he has no idea what the end result of it's
- 19:03going to be. He doesn't know what's going to
- 19:04happen. He doesn't know that they're
- 19:05going to be able to rescue this. So why do you make those kinds
- 19:10of decisions? Is it instinct?
- 19:12Is it training? Is it duty?
- 19:14What is it? Did he have any idea, Dave, that
- 19:17that there was a path for them out in the time that they
- 19:19thought they might have had remaining before it's sunk all
- 19:22the. Way I don't see how he could
- 19:23have. They didn't have escape trunks,
- 19:26so he, he wouldn't have known that.
- 19:28So is he, You know, it's always the question of motivation.
- 19:33Why did somebody do that? Well, like the Talmud says, man
- 19:37who saves one life, it's as if he has saved the world.
- 19:42We'll be back to wrap it up. Take your calls when we continue
- 19:45with Dave Does history on Bill Mick live, the McPherson
- 19:49Financial Group this hour sponsor the program.
- 19:51Your opportunity to check in with Dave on this week's Dave
- 19:54does history. If you'd like to do that, by the
- 19:56way, podcast links to Dave and Dave show and one specific story
- 20:00regarding this incident linked up for you on today's show page
- 20:04entitled balancing acts. You find that at billmic.com and
- 20:08look for the Dave Bowman links there.
- 20:09They will be in the final paragraph of our post there
- 20:13today. And Dave so Henry?
- 20:18Bro gets a Medal of Honor for this act that you wonder how
- 20:23many people would perform it. You'd like to think everybody
- 20:26would consider it and and that somebody would be coming for you
- 20:29if you were the guy left in the sub.
- 20:32You'd like to think that and, and we all think that we're
- 20:35going to be the hero, but I, I think it's a, it's a great study
- 20:40in psychology motivation. There are all those questions
- 20:45that enter into that. I mean, what, what's the action
- 20:49that you take when you're faced with that kind of situation?
- 20:53And I don't know that there's any definitive answer on that.
- 20:57But in this particular case, Henry Brown makes the decision
- 21:01to go back to his friend to help his friend.
- 21:04And it turns out after they're rescued, that Brown the the the
- 21:10the friend who bro goes back to save really needed Brow's help.
- 21:16I mean, he was, he was not hurt badly or anything like that, but
- 21:21he was very uptight, you know, very losing it mindset wise and
- 21:26that sort of thing. And it's brow that calms him
- 21:28down, which of course he does because he's the second class
- 21:31Petty Officer and the other guy's the chief.
- 21:34And if you're your Navy, you know what I'm talking about.
- 21:37So there's this, there's this mindset.
- 21:41And of course, after they're rescued, they sort of play it
- 21:44off. The Brow really says, well, I
- 21:46just did what I was trained to do.
- 21:47I just sort of, you know, I just did what I was supposed to do.
- 21:52But it's Brown who tells this, this story to people who are
- 21:57listening about how he wouldn't have made it without without
- 22:01Brow's help, which, of course, is the highest action that you
- 22:07can perform. And so the Navy sort of gets
- 22:11this mindset that we need to acknowledge this.
- 22:15And through a long set of circumstances that I don't have
- 22:18time to go into here, this turns into the presentation of a Medal
- 22:23of Honor. And there's some great
- 22:25photographs of Henry Brown getting his Medal of Honor from
- 22:28Calvin Coolidge. The president of the United
- 22:31States awards it to him. And it reads as follows for
- 22:36heroism and devotion to duty while serving on board the US
- 22:40submarine O 5 at the time of the sinking of that vessel.
- 22:44On the morning of 28 October 1923, O 5 collided with the
- 22:47steamship of Anyas and sank in less than a minute.
- 22:51When the collision occurred, Brow was in the torpedo room.
- 22:54Upon reaching the Hatch, he saw that the boat was rapidly
- 22:56sinking instead of opening. Instead of jumping overboard to
- 23:00save his own life, he returned to the torpedo room to the
- 23:03rescue of a shipmate who he knew was trapped in the boat, closing
- 23:06the torpedo room hatch on himself, Brow and Brown remain
- 23:11trapped in this compartment until rescued by the salvage
- 23:14party 31 hours later. Saved man's life.
- 23:21That is the ultimate definition of what duty and service to your
- 23:26fellow man is. This results in a Medal of Honor
- 23:29for him, which to this day, he is the only enlisted submariner
- 23:35to ever earn the Medal of Honor. There have been others that have
- 23:39done so, but all of them were commanding officers and officers
- 23:43aboard submarines during the Second World War.
- 23:46It's an amazing story and it's a story that many people are not
- 23:52all that familiar with. They don't really know about
- 23:55even in the submarine community, which is why it's a great thing
- 23:59that a new book has come out called the Silent Services First
- 24:03Hero by a great guy by the name of Ryan Walker, who is a
- 24:06historian out of Connecticut who became very fascinated with this
- 24:11story and wrote the book that's now available.
- 24:14You can get it online. And he tells you in this, this
- 24:19whole story, much more detailed than I've been able.
- 24:22You know, I got 30 minutes here to tell you this whole story.
- 24:24He has an entire book, and it's a it's an incredible tale of
- 24:30just an average guy who for a moment becomes a hero and then
- 24:36spends the rest of his life as a sailor.
- 24:40He just goes back to doing what he was doing before in the
- 24:43submarine fleet, and he will eventually pass away of heart
- 24:46failure two days before Pearl Harbor in 1941, almost
- 24:52completely forgotten. And yet here he was, this this
- 24:57man who saved another man's life.
- 25:00And we don't know what happened to Brown or his family, but I
- 25:04guarantee you somewhere there's someone who's alive today
- 25:08because Henry Brow went back and saved Larry Brown.
- 25:12And if he hadn't done that, that person, whoever they are,
- 25:17wouldn't exist today. And that's what the rabbi's
- 25:19teach us. He who saves a life, it's as if
- 25:24he saves the world. We pick it up in 60 seconds.
- 25:28You want it, and now's the time. 321-768-1240 Dave Bowman with us
- 25:35bringing, as Dave does, history. Dave, you say there is a a
- 25:38petition to name a submarine after Henry Brooke.
- 25:42As the as the United States Navy is building the Virginia class
- 25:46submarines, there is a petition that has been making the the
- 25:51rounds to try and convince the Navy Secretary Del Toro to name
- 25:58one of the new submarines after Henry Brock.
- 26:00It's past time to do that. And if you go to my web page
- 26:04today, there will be a link to that petition.
- 26:06You can sign it. Does it mean anything?
- 26:10I don't know. But if we get enough people to
- 26:11say to the Navy, you know what this is, this is important, we
- 26:16need to do that. You'll also find a link to the
- 26:18book The Silent Services First Hero by Ryan Walker.
- 26:22And I had the opportunity to sit down with Ryan about a month
- 26:26ago, I guess, a month and a half ago, I guess.
- 26:28And we did almost an hour telling the story in much more
- 26:32detail than we've been able to today.
- 26:33And I'll link that up as well. And I would this makes a great
- 26:37Christmas gift, Hanukkah gift. It's a, it's a, it's a pretty
- 26:41good book. So you'll want to get that very
- 26:43well researched. Ryan is a fantastic researcher.
- 26:46So give it a shot and would love to he'd love for you to buy that
- 26:51book. I would love for you to buy that
- 26:52book. I would love for you to sign the
- 26:53petition to name a submarine for Henry Brown.
- 26:56Let's. Get to the phones, line one
- 26:59you're up on Bill Mclaugh, good morning.
- 27:02OK, Bill, you probably saw the text, but I wonder if Dave is
- 27:05aware that he quoted the Bible in describing the darkness in
- 27:10the submarine while the rescue was being affected.
- 27:14He said a darkness that could be felt and in Exodus 10/21 that is
- 27:20the description of the darkness and the plagues upon Egypt when
- 27:24Moses was contending with Pharaoh.
- 27:27Interesting, David, did you hear it?
- 27:31Yeah, I'm aware of that story. I'm aware of that.
- 27:33I also described it as Stygian, which comes out of the Greek
- 27:36myths so. Oh, very, very good.
- 27:39Nonetheless, I I cannot imagine that circumstance.
- 27:43I'm I'm not claustrophobic and I know there are folks who I've
- 27:48been scuba diving once in my life.
- 27:49Dave and my wife went down for just a brief minute and she was
- 27:54done. She was claustrophobic.
- 27:55She thought her whole world was inside that mask.
- 27:58I am not that way. Darkness would compound any such
- 28:01feeling you had, though that would be difficult.
- 28:04In in a way, and I know this sounds like a strange thing to
- 28:07say, but in a way I'm kind of blessed with that because I'm
- 28:11basically legally blind. Not quite, but almost there.
- 28:16So for me, you know, if I take my glasses off, I can't see
- 28:20anything anyway. So from that aspect of I've I've
- 28:24always learned to feel my way around things and to sense my
- 28:27way around things. And even on the submarine when
- 28:29lights would go out, I didn't have a whole lot of problems.
- 28:33But I'll tell you what it's it's a creepy feeling when the
- 28:39submarine isn't working right. It's I've been there.
- 28:43It, it's a strange feeling. I haven't been on one that sunk.
- 28:47I haven't been on one that was flooding, but it, I have been on
- 28:50one that was on fire and it is a very creepy feeling.
- 28:53It is it, it? And at the moment, you know, you
- 28:57talk about this, this reaction, what I remember most of that the
- 29:02moment is not thinking about it at all, reacting the way we were
- 29:07trained to react. And it wasn't until a couple of
- 29:10days later that I started realizing crap, you know, that
- 29:15was close. That was, you know, maybe, maybe
- 29:21that was the moment that I shouldn't be here from.
- 29:24It was. It was really weird.
- 29:27Well, and in circumstance after circumstance, whether it's law
- 29:32enforcement and training for armed confrontation or the
- 29:36drills that you guys would run on those submarines time after
- 29:40time after time to the point you react the way you're trained and
- 29:45you react in that situation, the way you've been allowed to
- 29:47train. If you were allowed to slack off
- 29:49during training, you're going to slack off in that situation
- 29:52because that's your normal reaction to that kind of
- 29:55situation. And the better the training, the
- 29:57more the training, the more ready you are to take it on, I
- 30:00guess. That's, you know, I, I, I had
- 30:02the opportunity to meet some, I call them kids who are currently
- 30:07on Michigan today who weren't born when I left the boat.
- 30:12And one of them asked me if I had any advice for them.
- 30:16And that's what I said. Train like it's the real thing
- 30:19and learn your damage control because it will save your life.
- 30:21It saved mine. So these are things that become
- 30:27ingrained in dust. And you know, you can you can
- 30:31make the argument that browse reaction was training, but man,
- 30:37what a decision to be made. And it's, you know, it's a
- 30:39similar decision. Somebody has to close that hatch
- 30:41to try to save a life or try to save a ship.
- 30:44It's not all that different from the Fitzgerald when she got
- 30:47rammed. Somebody had to close that door
- 30:49knowing that there were 11 guys behind it.
- 30:53Those decisions are not easy to make.
- 30:55And the stories should be told. And that's why Ryan has told the
- 30:58story and the Silent Services First Hero, which I would
- 31:01encourage you to order. And please sign the petition to
- 31:05name a submarine for Henry Brough.
- 31:08How tough in the circumstance that he was facing and, and, and
- 31:11maybe Ryan was able to give you a description of this when you
- 31:15talk to him. Dave, to get that door shut and
- 31:19sealed. So they were in a watertight
- 31:21compartment. That and and airtight too,
- 31:23apparently. You know, I don't recall that
- 31:24specific discussion. I don't think it would be that
- 31:26difficult. Those watertight doors are
- 31:28pretty, pretty easy to close as long as there's not water
- 31:32pouring through them. And it depends on which way
- 31:34you're going, you know, if you're up, down, whichever with
- 31:39gravity. But I've, I've never seen
- 31:41personally a problem with closing those doors.
- 31:43I've heard of it being a problem, but I've personally
- 31:46never seen that all. Right, very good.
- 31:49Line 1, I got 30 seconds for you.
- 31:51Good morning, Go. On Bill, Ed and Melbourne.
- 31:54Make it quick, Ed. Dave, as far as saving somebody,
- 32:01doing stuff like he did, I think you're actually born with that.
- 32:05That's in your DNA. You hear the comment.
- 32:09I mean it's possible I. Yeah.
- 32:13I think it's more training, but I think it's training but.
- 32:16I would agree. I think it is the training
- 32:18because if you don't have the training, you're not sure how to
- 32:21react. You may want to react, but I
- 32:22don't think you have any any clue about what you're doing
- 32:25without it. Always an intriguing story with
- 32:28Dave does history. Thank you, my friend.
- 32:30Links for you at billmc.com on today's show page entitled
- 32:33Balancing Act. And Dave, we'll see you next
- 32:37week. We're talking elections next
- 32:38week because you're here on Election Day.
- 32:40Yeah. It'll be great.
- 32:43Check out more. Stories from
- 32:45history@davedoeshistory.org.