While attending a performance at the Classen School of Advanced Studies (which included one of my son's friends), I noticed that there was a plaque on the wall, across from the main entrance, partially covered with posters advertising the school's yearbook and another proclaiming how much they love their Lady Comets.
Gently lifting back the tape stuck to this plaque, I found it was a memorial to Lt. Joseph Hester Patterson, US Naval Academy Class of 1936, and Classen High School Class of 1930, who was lost in the wreck of the USS Squalus in May 1939.
Now, anyone who knows much of anything about submarines will recognize the name USS Squalus. At the time it was the newest submarine in the fleet, with all the latest improvements and newest technology of the day. However, it sank off the coast of Portsmouth, NH, on a routine dive. 26 of the 59 aboard her were lost; the remaining 33 were saved in one of the more amazing feats of undersea rescue ever attempted.
(As for me, I've always been intrigued by submarines. I can't say why that is, but, back in 1987, had the Navy had college benefits to match the Army, there's a very good chance I would have become a submariner rather than a tank crewman. I've read quite a bit of the history of US submarines in WWII, and toured the USS Batfish (located here in Oklahoma, near Muskogee) and the USS Drum (in Mobile Bay, AL) and it was fascinating to see the same areas I'd read so much of on other submarines of the same classes.)
Submarines of that era were diesel-electric, meaning that they were powered by diesel engines while on the surface, and by electric motors, powered by batteries, while submerged. The boats [submarines are always referred to as 'boats' rather than 'ships'--don't ask me why] were optimized to run on the surface, which accounts for the slow submerged speeds typical of that time. Battery life was limited, and submarines would have to periodically surface to recharge the batteries and refill the compressed air tanks that made it possible for them to resurface.
I've done some searching on the internet, and found quite a bit of information on the Squalus and her sinking. For unknown reasons, after the submarine had begun her 18th dive, when all aboard was in normal condition, all safety procedures followed and cross-checked, and was already partially submerged with no indication of any problems, one of the main induction valves, which supplied air to the big diesels, opened, and water poured into the aft sections of the boat, causing immediate flooding. A partial watertight condtion had already been set (which I imagine was part of their standard procedures) which limited the flooding to the aft areas, including both engine rooms, the crew berthing areas, the aft torpedo room, and the battery spaces.
The surviving crewmembers were able to deploy an emergency buoy, and were also able to fire off marker rockets, which led to the Squalus' sister ship, the USS Sculpin, to locate the Squalus about 4 hours later. The Navy immediately launched rescue efforts, which pioneered a number of new diving methods (including the first operational use of heliox, the mixture of helium and oxygen still used for extremely deep dives). After 33 hours on the bottom, the last man off the Squalus, the skipper Lt. Oliver Naquin, reached the surface. (The rescue efforts were headed by then-Lt. Cdr. Charles 'Swede' Momsen, inventor of the Momsen Lung, a rescue device to allow submariners to escape from stricken submarines below the surface, and whose exploits throughout his career are part of US Navy legend. BTW, his first duty station was aboard USS Oklahoma.)
[Here's a link to an excellent US Navy site about the Squalus and the rescue efforts. And here's one with the official statement of Lt. W.T. Doyle, a survivor of the sinking of the Squalus, which details all the procedures used in the dive.]
The Squalus itself was recovered from the bottom (the bodies of the crewmen who lost their lives were not recovered until then) as a full investigation required the examination of the submarine. As there were similar submarines already in service, and more being built, if there might be a flaw in the design it was critical to find it and correct it. None was ever found, but as the suggestion was made that a crewman may have inadvertently opened the induction valve, confusing its control with the control for a different valve nearby. Subsequent redesign of the controls made it practically impossible to confuse the two, even in complete darkness, by changing the shape of the controls. (Incidentally, this same approach is used in aircraft cockpits to this day, to eliminate any possible confusion between, say, a landing gear handle with a flap control lever.)
As for the Squalus, it was repaired and recommissioned as the USS Sailfish. USS Sailfish served in the US Pacific Fleet throughout WWII, sinking or damaging 20 Japanese vessels totalling nearly 84,000 tons. She and her crew also earned 9 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation during the war. She was decommissioned in November 1945, and sold for scrap. However, her sail and conning tower (that section you typically see people standing on, with the periscopes sticking up, when a submarine is on the surface) was removed and put on display at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, as a memorial to the 26 men who lost their lives aboard the Squalus, and to all their fellow submariners who have died in the line of duty.
The memorial in Portsmouth, another at the gravesite of another crewman aboard Squalus, Torpedoman's Mate 1st Class Robert Gibbs, a model of the Squalus created by a long-time dock worker at the Portsmouth Naval Yard, which now resides in the Tuck Memorial Museum, and the plaque at Classen SAS are the only memorials (other than some fine websites) that I have found.
Now, I cannot know why the Classen High Class of 1950 chose to have a plaque made and installed for a classmate who graduated from their school two years before they were born. The plaque states that he was a hero in death as much as he was a friend in life. And I cannot dispute the fact that, for whatever reason, the Class of 1950 felt strongly enough to honor Lt. Patterson in such a manner. That reason must have been sufficient in their eyes to pass on the legacy of Joseph Patterson to future students in perpetuity; that his life, and the manner of his death, should be something worthy to inspire and motivate future graduates of that fine institution.
But here today, almost 73 years after his death, his plaque is covered by mundane posters, obscuring its message. To be honest, the plaque is in need of cleaning; some sort of pink residue besmirches the lower parts of the plaque, and there's other accumulated dust and grime in the depths of the lettering.
In a larger sense, is this the ultimate fate of all memorials? I doubt one student in a thousand there at Classen SAS can tell you the story of Lt. Patterson as well as I have above; at best they might remember him as 'that guy whose name is on that thing at the front of the school'. But how many years will it take before the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial is held in so little regard? We Oklahomans have, to me, an enraging tendency to disregard our history, tearing down memorials to make way for more 'useful'--meaning commercial--purposes. Or, as in this case, we simply have so little respect for them that we cover them up and pretend they're not even there.
And so, given the way things are, how long before the Bombing Memorial falls into disrepair and we fill it in for a more 'appropriate' commercial purpose? Perhaps some new business tower, or more parking? How long before our descendants purposefully forget about us, and what happened to us, and the reasons why we felt it important to memorialize the things we have created, built, and installed to remind us--and them--of who we are, and who we were?
On a practical standpoint, perhaps not every one and everything deserves to be memorialized; if all memorials were maintained indefinitely, eventually the landscape would be littered with memorials everywhere, some stacked on top of others. Perhaps we need to be very careful about who and what we memorialize. But we also need to respect the judgment of those who have gone before in who and what they chose to memorialize, and to keep those memorials well-maintained and presentable. To do otherwise demeans us as a people.
Gently lifting back the tape stuck to this plaque, I found it was a memorial to Lt. Joseph Hester Patterson, US Naval Academy Class of 1936, and Classen High School Class of 1930, who was lost in the wreck of the USS Squalus in May 1939.
Ensign (later Lt. (j.g)) Joseph H. Patterson, USN
Now, anyone who knows much of anything about submarines will recognize the name USS Squalus. At the time it was the newest submarine in the fleet, with all the latest improvements and newest technology of the day. However, it sank off the coast of Portsmouth, NH, on a routine dive. 26 of the 59 aboard her were lost; the remaining 33 were saved in one of the more amazing feats of undersea rescue ever attempted.
USS Squalus, in happier times
(As for me, I've always been intrigued by submarines. I can't say why that is, but, back in 1987, had the Navy had college benefits to match the Army, there's a very good chance I would have become a submariner rather than a tank crewman. I've read quite a bit of the history of US submarines in WWII, and toured the USS Batfish (located here in Oklahoma, near Muskogee) and the USS Drum (in Mobile Bay, AL) and it was fascinating to see the same areas I'd read so much of on other submarines of the same classes.)
Submarines of that era were diesel-electric, meaning that they were powered by diesel engines while on the surface, and by electric motors, powered by batteries, while submerged. The boats [submarines are always referred to as 'boats' rather than 'ships'--don't ask me why] were optimized to run on the surface, which accounts for the slow submerged speeds typical of that time. Battery life was limited, and submarines would have to periodically surface to recharge the batteries and refill the compressed air tanks that made it possible for them to resurface.
I've done some searching on the internet, and found quite a bit of information on the Squalus and her sinking. For unknown reasons, after the submarine had begun her 18th dive, when all aboard was in normal condition, all safety procedures followed and cross-checked, and was already partially submerged with no indication of any problems, one of the main induction valves, which supplied air to the big diesels, opened, and water poured into the aft sections of the boat, causing immediate flooding. A partial watertight condtion had already been set (which I imagine was part of their standard procedures) which limited the flooding to the aft areas, including both engine rooms, the crew berthing areas, the aft torpedo room, and the battery spaces.
The surviving crewmembers were able to deploy an emergency buoy, and were also able to fire off marker rockets, which led to the Squalus' sister ship, the USS Sculpin, to locate the Squalus about 4 hours later. The Navy immediately launched rescue efforts, which pioneered a number of new diving methods (including the first operational use of heliox, the mixture of helium and oxygen still used for extremely deep dives). After 33 hours on the bottom, the last man off the Squalus, the skipper Lt. Oliver Naquin, reached the surface. (The rescue efforts were headed by then-Lt. Cdr. Charles 'Swede' Momsen, inventor of the Momsen Lung, a rescue device to allow submariners to escape from stricken submarines below the surface, and whose exploits throughout his career are part of US Navy legend. BTW, his first duty station was aboard USS Oklahoma.)
[Here's a link to an excellent US Navy site about the Squalus and the rescue efforts. And here's one with the official statement of Lt. W.T. Doyle, a survivor of the sinking of the Squalus, which details all the procedures used in the dive.]
Lt. (j.g.) Joseph H. Patterson is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 9, Site 5969
The Squalus itself was recovered from the bottom (the bodies of the crewmen who lost their lives were not recovered until then) as a full investigation required the examination of the submarine. As there were similar submarines already in service, and more being built, if there might be a flaw in the design it was critical to find it and correct it. None was ever found, but as the suggestion was made that a crewman may have inadvertently opened the induction valve, confusing its control with the control for a different valve nearby. Subsequent redesign of the controls made it practically impossible to confuse the two, even in complete darkness, by changing the shape of the controls. (Incidentally, this same approach is used in aircraft cockpits to this day, to eliminate any possible confusion between, say, a landing gear handle with a flap control lever.)
As for the Squalus, it was repaired and recommissioned as the USS Sailfish. USS Sailfish served in the US Pacific Fleet throughout WWII, sinking or damaging 20 Japanese vessels totalling nearly 84,000 tons. She and her crew also earned 9 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation during the war. She was decommissioned in November 1945, and sold for scrap. However, her sail and conning tower (that section you typically see people standing on, with the periscopes sticking up, when a submarine is on the surface) was removed and put on display at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, as a memorial to the 26 men who lost their lives aboard the Squalus, and to all their fellow submariners who have died in the line of duty.
The USS Squalus Memorial at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard
The memorial in Portsmouth, another at the gravesite of another crewman aboard Squalus, Torpedoman's Mate 1st Class Robert Gibbs, a model of the Squalus created by a long-time dock worker at the Portsmouth Naval Yard, which now resides in the Tuck Memorial Museum, and the plaque at Classen SAS are the only memorials (other than some fine websites) that I have found.
Now, I cannot know why the Classen High Class of 1950 chose to have a plaque made and installed for a classmate who graduated from their school two years before they were born. The plaque states that he was a hero in death as much as he was a friend in life. And I cannot dispute the fact that, for whatever reason, the Class of 1950 felt strongly enough to honor Lt. Patterson in such a manner. That reason must have been sufficient in their eyes to pass on the legacy of Joseph Patterson to future students in perpetuity; that his life, and the manner of his death, should be something worthy to inspire and motivate future graduates of that fine institution.
But here today, almost 73 years after his death, his plaque is covered by mundane posters, obscuring its message. To be honest, the plaque is in need of cleaning; some sort of pink residue besmirches the lower parts of the plaque, and there's other accumulated dust and grime in the depths of the lettering.
In a larger sense, is this the ultimate fate of all memorials? I doubt one student in a thousand there at Classen SAS can tell you the story of Lt. Patterson as well as I have above; at best they might remember him as 'that guy whose name is on that thing at the front of the school'. But how many years will it take before the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial is held in so little regard? We Oklahomans have, to me, an enraging tendency to disregard our history, tearing down memorials to make way for more 'useful'--meaning commercial--purposes. Or, as in this case, we simply have so little respect for them that we cover them up and pretend they're not even there.
And so, given the way things are, how long before the Bombing Memorial falls into disrepair and we fill it in for a more 'appropriate' commercial purpose? Perhaps some new business tower, or more parking? How long before our descendants purposefully forget about us, and what happened to us, and the reasons why we felt it important to memorialize the things we have created, built, and installed to remind us--and them--of who we are, and who we were?
On a practical standpoint, perhaps not every one and everything deserves to be memorialized; if all memorials were maintained indefinitely, eventually the landscape would be littered with memorials everywhere, some stacked on top of others. Perhaps we need to be very careful about who and what we memorialize. But we also need to respect the judgment of those who have gone before in who and what they chose to memorialize, and to keep those memorials well-maintained and presentable. To do otherwise demeans us as a people.
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