O-class: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:30, 23 August 2023

Design, Construction, and Naming Notes

The Fiscal Year 1916 coastal submarine construction program was expanded with 16 submarines authorized for construction. The Navy took the L-class specifications and scaled up the requirements a bit. The result was the O-class. As usual, the Navy chose to have the submarines built to two different designs submitted by Electric Boat and the Lake Torpedo Boat Company. In an unusual move, the Navy obtained a legal license to build two subs of the EB design at government Navy yards. O-1 was built at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Maine, and O-2 at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Bremerton, WA. O-3 through O-10 were also EB designs, but they were built at the EB contractor Fore River Shipbuilding in Quincy, MA. O-11 to O-13 were built at the Lake yard in Bridgeport, CT., and O-14 to O-16 at a Lake contractor, California Shipbuilding Company in Long Beach, CA. CALSHIP ran into severe difficulties in construction, and all three boats had to be towed up the coast, incomplete, to Mare Island Navy Yard in Vallejo, CA. for completion.

USS O-5 (SS-66) was sunk in a collision with a steamer near the entrance to the Panama Canal. Three men died, 16 successfully escaped before the boat went down, and two, Henry Breault and Lawrence Brown were trapped alive in the torpedo room. The bow was lifted from the mud and the two men were rescued. O-5 was a total loss and even though she was salvaged the boat was not returned to service.

These were the first U.S. submarines with really satisfactory diesel engines from the start. In general they were well liked and quite useful, although once again the Lake variant was rated inferior to the EB boats. They spent a lot of time in Panama guarding the approaches to the canal. The Lake boats were discarded in the mid 1920's, and the EB boats were laid up in mothballs In Philadelphia between 1931 and 1941. They were hurriedly returned to service as war clouds loomed in 1941 and served in a useful capacity as training boats in New London. Unfortunately, USS O-9 (SS-70) was lost with all hands in a tragic accident in June 1941. Her crew is "On Eternal Patrol".

The decommissioned O-12 was pulled out of mothballs and sold back to Lake. He had the boat heavily modified for Sir Hubert Wilkins' polar expedition of 1930 and renamed it Nautilus. It was intended to run the boat under the ice all the way to the Pole. It was not successful in this role and it sank in a deep Norwegian fjord in 1931.