USS Lagarto formal identification photo's and dive sketch produced August
2005.
Drawing copyright 2005 by Steve Burton
www.thaiwreckdiver.com
Dive Site Classification:-
NOTE:- This is very much an allied
'War Grave' and remains the property of the US government. Diving activities are
subject to USN permission. 86 allied servicemen (many of whose relatives I know
personally) perished in the sinking. The crewmen's bodies still lie entombed within her
sealed compartments- No penetration or artifact recovery whatsoever is
permitted. I will personally commence proceedings against anyone
discovered to be desecrating this site.
Reported
as probably sunk by Japanese minelayer HATSUTAKA in the Gulf of Siam. Believed lying in 30 fathoms of
water. The Hatsutaka
was herself sunk by the USS Hawksbill 12 days later.
Below is a conning tower shot of another Balao class
submarine the USS Pampanito
shown here for comparison with the underwater shot above to assist in
identifying this submarine type
Original painting of a
Balao class sub by artist John Meeks
available from
http://www.subart.net.
Used with permission.
John Meek's sensitive work depicting WWII submarines from all nations may be
viewed online in 'Gallery-2' of his web sitehttp://www.skybirdart.com/
Construction details
Laid down January 12th 1944 at Manitowoc
Shipbuilding Co, Manitowoc. Launched May 28th 1944. Commissioned
October 14th 1944
‘One of many
WWII wrecks recently identified in Thai waters by
Koh Tao Wreck
Research Vessel MV Trident’
The Gulf of Siam with
Bangkok as its hub, has been an important international seaway stretching back
over millennia. Until recent years, trade routes into Thailand overland from all
neighboring countries were tenuous at best. With either mountains, wide fast
flowing rivers, or impenetrable jungles preventing all shipments by land larger
than could be carried by pack mule.
Such was the situation
that faced Japan following its invasion of Thailand in 1941. Just one railroad
joined Thailand with Singapore and with transport aircraft being the only other
viable means of logistical supply, the Gulf of Siam was busy with Japanese
merchant vessels transporting the heavier items needed for the war effort, plus
warships protecting their vulnerable cargo against the growing threat of allied
submarine action.
Just how successful
submarines were in destroying Japanese naval supply lines are given in these
stark figures: - The US Navy's WWII submarine force
sank over 5 million tons of enemy shipping accounting for over 60 percent of all
destroyed enemy tonnage.
But US
submarines didn’t have it all their own way during the deadly cat and mouse game
above and below the waves, and in all, 52 US submarines and over 3,500 sub
crewmen lost their lives.
USS LAGARTO – LOST
Such was to be the fate of
the USS-LAGARTO, when during a joint radio co-coordinated attack of a Japanese
convoy with the submarine USS-BAYA on the 3rd May 1945, the Japanese escort
minelayer HATSUTAKO recorded a depth charge attack on a US submarine in 30
fathoms (55 meters) of water. The BAYA was never able to re-establish radio
communications with the LAGARTO and it is assumed that it was this attack that
was responsible for her sinking. The ‘unusually
alert’ HATSUTAKA crew was so vigilant in
defending the convoy that it was also able to successfully drive the USS BAYA
off.
That the HATSUTAKA was
subsequently sunk 12 days later was not by accident. The captain of a nearby US
submarine USS HARKBILL was a close friend of the LAGARTOS captain, he requested
and was granted permission by COMSUBPAC to divert from his patrol orders for a
revenge attack. 4 torpedoes were expended against the HATSUTAKA during a
prolonged attack that lasted two days. A final lucky MK14 mod 3 torpedo fired
from a distance of nearly 3 miles through an allied minefield, finally blew the
HATSUTAKA into two pieces while an attempt was being made by Japanese naval
forces to take her under tow for repairs caused by the damage from the
HAWKBILL’s earlier attacks. No survivors of the HATSUTAKA’ s sinking permitted
themselves to be rescued.
On May 7th 1995
on the 50th anniversary of the LAGARTO’ s sinking, Commander Vaughn
from the Los Angeles class Nuclear submarine USS New York City laid a Wreath at
the presumed final resting place of the USS-Lagarto.
The exact location where
USS-Lagarto was attacked and sunk remained a mystery until 19th May
2005. When just after the 60th anniversary of her sinking, Koh Tao
Divers Jamie Macleod & Stewart Oehl diving from the Koh Tao based shipwreck
research vessel M.V. Trident descended a shot line in 73 meters of water to
investigate an underwater anomaly rising some 15 meters from the seabed close to
the LAGARTO’ s last reported position of N007.55, E102.00.
The shot line landed near
to the bows of the LAGARTO, and on a day of uncharacteristically good visibility
at these great depths, they stood on the bottom and gazed up at the distinctive
massive outline of a Balao class submarine.
Dive Review
Any dive planned to a depth of 75meters
should be made using Heliox or Trimix breathing gases so as to avoid both
Oxygen Toxicity and Nitrogen Narcosis at this working depth. An actual
Lagarto dive plan is shown below.
From the dive plan printouts, it’s
interesting to note, that for only a 25minute bottom dive, the diver has to
spend 1hr 14mins carrying out very formal mixed gas
decompression. It took 4 dives of this type just to swim around all 4
quadrants of the wreck taking the notes and sketches that formed the basis
of the analysis in this article. In accordance with the US navy permission
for diving the LAGARTO, no penetration dives at all into the living quarters
of the submarine were made, and no part of the wreck was disturbed in any
way.
Unbelievably during a whole day of diving, A
juvenile Whale Shark joined the dive team while waiting at their long
decompression stops. Divers already on the surface quickly re-entered the
water to snorkel with the gentle giant. For added fun and double-jeopardy a
poisonous sea snake also swam near the group until it bumped into the lens
of the (until then…) totally fearless video-grapher.
Wreck Condition
The pictures and dive sketches show the
311ft long 1,500ton USS LAGARTO upright and in one piece. The sinking
location lies in open ocean, and as would be expected for a dive so far out
to sea, the surface visibility is excellent at around 50 meters plus. During
this dive sequence, the tip of the LAGARTO’ s twin periscope tubes and
conning tower pierced a silty thermo-cline that began from 60 meters and
extended all the way down to the sea bed at 75 meters depth. Visibility
below the thermo-cline was much reduced from that near the surface, but the
wreck was still clearly visible as a submarine, even before divers reached
the wreck.
During the 1st dive on the
LAGARTO with over riding need to return to the ascent line so as to assure
that our dive team didn’t become a ‘lost-at-sea statistics(again!) , our
team ‘reeled out’ from the ascent line along the top surface of the wreck.
This gave an indication of the massive size of the LAGARTO, since by the
time we’d reached the bow, I’d used all of the 50meters of line on the
reel.
Natural light still penetrated through the
thermo-cline, but all divers were thankful of the high power technical
diving torches which each diver carried with them, that gave illumination to
the fine details of the wreck necessary when diving at these depths.
As Jamie’s Purple book of ‘net snag marks’
indicated, the LAGARTO has caused many fishing boats to loose their nets.
These large football pitch sized nets cost upwards of USD25,000 each, and
are not left on the bottom without a fight. All smaller sized items that
protruded through the hull have been pulled off during attempts to wrestle
free the nets, leaving only massive lumps of steel such as the conning
tower, bow & stern planes, props, plus the twin 5 inch guns intact.
Final Moments
After each dive, it was possible to add more
details to the dive sketch that would formally identify the USS LAGARTO.
Unlike many other Balao class submarines, the LAGARTO had two 5-inch guns
mounted in front of, and behind the conning tower. These were clearly
visible mounted in a stowed position, which together with the wrecks
location confirmed the identification.
A forward starboard torpedo door is open,
and it’s possible to peer inside and confirm that it is empty. This suggests
that the LAGARTO went down fighting and that a torpedo had been fired during
her last moments. The rubber seals of the torpedo tube muzzle door are still
in excellent condition even after 60 years underwater.
Sadly, also visible was the massive damage
caused to the port quarter forward of the conning tower. The LAGARTO had
plainly sustained a direct hit from a depth charge or other large explosive
ordinance. The destruction caused by this device had been sufficient to
entirely destroy the external steel plating that contained several large
buoyancy compartments and then penetrate much further into the sub to punch
a large hole through the 1 inch thick high tensile steel inner pressure bulk
head that contained the crew’s living spaces.
All crew in the compartment adjacent to the
damaged area would have perished instantly from the force of the explosion.
Tons of water per second from the 55meters of water pressure would have
rapidly entered these forward living spaces, throwing the sub off balance
and negatively buoyant, and causing it accelerate rapidly nose down towards
the sea bed. The subs external control planes are juxta-positioned; The
foreword planes are set to the ‘dive’ position whereas the stern planes were
set to ‘surface’. It may have been that with all the internal watertight
doors closed, the stern compartments crews survived the initial explosion
(as in the Russian Kursk submarine disaster on August 12th
2000), and that a desperate last ditch attempt was made to override the
steep descent by blowing emergency buoyancy tanks and moving the aft control
planes into the ‘ascend’ position from other emergency controls located aft.
However, the weight of the flooded forward living spaces compounded with the
destroyed forward buoyancy compartments was too much weight to overcome, and
the sub stayed on the bottom.
Extract of the
USS Lagarto's co-operation with the USS Hawkbill. Courstesy of the Wisconsin
Maritime Museum newsletter,
http://www.wisconsinmaritime.org/
Diving the USS LAGARTO – A War Grave
The USS LAGARTO submarine is a restricted
war grave. 86 American servicemen lost their lives during the sinking, and
as such, she is being treated with the utmost respect which she deserves.
The Lagarto lies far out to sea, in very
deep water that would prove lethal if dived breathing air. Only a hand full
of people in the Far East (all known to each other) have the pre-requisite
skills and financing to execute a dive to the Lagarto breathing ultra
expensive Helium based Trimix… and come back alive. Thus mass tourism or
casual vandalism by recreational divers to the Lagarto’s final resting place
is highly un-likely.
Like all submarines, the USS Lagarto was
expensive to produce, utilizing 250 ton of lead batteries, tons of bronze,
copper and other non-ferrous materials for her weapons and propulsion
systems, meaning that although the salvage value of a submarine in current
monetary values could run to several hundred thousand dollars, her extreme
depth and the complexity of any Helium saturation diving techniques
necessary to facilitate any worthwhile salvage would make any commercial
recovery attempts unviable.
She is currently being researched and
documented by MV Trident’s team with the permission of the US Navy's Naval
Historical Center. The exact location of the Lagarto remains a closely
guarded secret.
SUBVETS
Submarine
Veterans or SUBVETS are a special breed. ‘Pride runs deep’ within the
community of WWII SUBVET families, their children, and their grandchildren
that continues to this day. All submarines are very specialized pieces of
military hardware, but the origins of the LAGARTO are particularly
interesting. The Manitowoc shipyard that built the LAGARTO was located
hundreds of miles inland. That the US Navy department through its bureau of
ships contracted a small shipbuilding company, located on the shores of Lake
Michigan, about as far from the ocean by river as you could possibly
imagine, to build submarines, the most difficult shipbuilding construction
job known at that time is a story in itself. The Manitowoc shipbuilding
company ended up building 28 of these Balao class submarines in total. WWII
SUBVETS and their relatives still live in the area to this day.
Sub Crews in
WWII developed a battlefield humor when writing home about the very real
risks of falling victim to depth charge attacks. ‘Don’t’ worry if anything
happens to me. I’ll have a 6 Million Dollar Coffin with plenty of friends…”
was a common remark.
Prior to the
discovery of the LAGARTO, I’d received many requests for help from SUBVET
relatives and technical assistance from personnel at the Wisconsin Maritime
Museum in Manitowoc in the USA.
On learning
of the LAGARTO’s discovery, a Mrs. Nancy Mabin Kenney
(the daughter of LAGARTO Signalman First Class William T. Mabin),
established contact with the dive expedition group. Nancy contacted other
surviving relatives and during July 2005 two of Nancy’s children
(grandchildren of the LAGARTO crewman) traveled to Thailand to accompany the
wreck research vessel for the trip that would formally identify the
USS-LAGARTO.
For Nancy Mabin Kenney of Lake Leelanau, Michigan USA.
and for the surviving relatives of the LAGARTO’ s crewmen, 2005 was a
special year that provided closure from knowing the exact location where
Husbands, fathers and grandfathers lay, and pride in the knowledge that the
LAGARTO went down fighting.
“All my life, I never really knew my father, but the
people who knew him well kept him alive in my memory,” Kenney said. “To
think of what my mother’s generation went through with all the uncertainty
during the war is just overwhelming. But now it’s up to my generation to
support these men and make sure they’re honored,” she said.
On the
conclusion of the final dive sequence, a memorial service was held at the
LAGARTOS final resting place.
Jamie
Macleod, Stewart Oehl and the divers and crew of the M.V. Trident during the
USS Lagarto Memorial trip July 2005. MV Trident may be contacted at
www.techthailand.com
Nancy Mabin Kenney, daughter of USS Lagarto
crewman William T Mabin, Wisconsin USA
The
Grandchildren of USS Lagarto crewman William T Mabin
‘Wisconsin Maritime Museum newsletter’
Jul-Sep 1998 & Oct-Dec 1998 issues.
‘Wisconsin WWII Stories-The home front’
Video cassette from the Wisconsin maritime Museum
‘Fresh
Water Submarines the Manitowoc Story’ by Rear Admiral William T. Nelson, published
Heffner printing 1988
USS Lagarto (SS-371)
Memorial Service
Location: 2660 S. Scenic, Springfield, Missouri
Date:
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Time:
1600 (4 p.m.)
On or about May 3, 1945 the USS Lagarto, while on
patrol in the South China Sea, was sunk with all hands onboard. Now, after 60
years of unanswered questions and obscurity, the wreckage of USS Lagarto has
been located. Finally, family members and friend can have closure.
In honor of this tragic
event the Ozark-Runner Base of the United States Submarine Veterans Inc in
Springfield, Missouri will conduct a “Memorial” and “Tolling of the Boats”
ceremony for this proud naval warrior and her gallant crew. And where better to
hold such a ceremony than in the shadow of another proud warrior the USS Lapon
Sail and Submarine Memorial located at the American Legion Post 639 at 2660 S.
Scenic.
Join us as we honor this ship and the local
Springfield, Missouri families who lost loved ones, the families and friends of
TM2 (SS) Ralph Simmerman, CRM (SS) Wardour L. Britain (not pictured) and CPHMA
(SS) Robert Spalding.
Memorial bricks in honor of
the USS Lagarto and her crew will be on display in the memorials commemorative
brick walkway around the conning tower. Refreshments will be served in the
American Legion Post following the ceremony.
for her
un-tiring help in encouraging the Thai wreck diver team to keep this
research project alive.
Nancy's
children who traveled across the world to accompany the research dive
team to the South China Sea that formally identified the USS Lagarto
Roy Leonhardt, (deceased)
WI
Associate
member of United States Submarine Veterans of World War II. Sadly passed
away in March 2006 just prior to the USS Lagarto memorial ceromony. Roy
commenced the proceeding that eventual lead to the USS Lagartos discovery.
Roy's continual technical assistance, and his knowledge of which
sub-veterans still new what, and where they now lived, was fundamental in
putting together all the pieces of the USS Lagarto puzzle. Take care Roy.
Steve B2
The Trimix tech diving
team aboard the MV Trident
July/Aug 2005
Jamie Macleod,
Stewart, Steve B2, Steve F., Leigh,
Chris, Allan, Dr. Mike, Milos, Andrew Yates,
Clark and Jeremiah,and
the Trimix tech diving team aboard the MV Trident July/Aug 2005-Tel +66-9-591-3186.
Accompanied by Beth & John -
Grandchildren of USS Lagarto Crewman W.T Mabin [SM1]
“The wreck of
the USS Lagarto is a restricted war grave and as such cannot be disturbed.
Any dives on the wreck have to be carried out with the express permission
of the USN"
A WAR TO REMEMBER
In memory of the sailors lost on the USS Lagarto
Gulf of Siam, South China Sea, May 3, 1945.
A Sailor's Poem
Run silent, run deep
For freedom we fought to keep
How we spent so many days
Beneath the shimmering waves
A terrible foe we fought
And gave our lives; and freedom bought
Now our souls forever lie
Restlessly beneath the waves
So silent now, so deep
For it is not enough for you to weep
For we shall not have died in vain
Lest you forget for what we gave
We gave our lives, freedom to save
For if you forget our deeds
Then we shall never sleep
Though we lie so silent, so deep.
by Al Alessandra, July 3rd, 2005
Copyright ThaiWreckDiver.com 2007
Labeled with ICRA The
Internet Content Rating Association
![5inch deck gun in action. courtesy of Jim Christley [oldsubs@adelphia.net]](images/5inch_deck_gun.jpg)
![5inch deck gun schematic. courtesy of Jim Christley [oldsubs@adelphia.net]](images/5inch_deck_gun_schem.jpg)
