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Posted by Jim Christley on February 24, 1998
Folks:
MM3(SS) James Smallwood was the duty auxiliaryman on USS Sargo in 1960 and was taking aboard oxygen from a pierside truck/trailer.
The connection was in the stern room with the manifold behind the watertight door in the forward port corner of the room. Although the exact circumstances will not be known, a high pressure high flow leak occurred.
Smallwood, realizing the danger to himself and the ship, woke the only other man in the room and told him to get out. (The stern room had some berthing). He then attempted to isolate the leak. Just as the man he awakened cleared the hatch, the room erupted in an oxygen rich explosion/fire fed by any flammable material and the high pressure oxygen. Smallwood died instantly in the room. The crew attempted to fight the fire and eventually, unable to enter the room and with the temperature of the aft bulkhead of the engine room high enough to blister and smoke the paint in the engine room even with hoses playing water on it, the decision was made to breast out from the wharf (S1B) and submerge the stern. This was done, the fire went out.
The rest of the story is one of extensive clean-up and inquiry.
The only torpedos the Skate class could carry aft were the 19' Mark 27 and Mark 37 swim out types. The Mark 45 (ASTOR) was a full size torpedo and the only one capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. It could not be carried in the stern room of a Skate class, so there was never a "nuclear weapon cookoff" danger.
The boat relied on battery power after the shore power cables (which enter the engine room hatch in the forward end of the engine room) were disconnected during the breast out operation. She commenced running her diesel when it became clear that she would reach the limit of her battery capacity before shore power could be reconnected.
The reactor was shut down at the time of the accident. Hydraulics may have been lost because the plant was all the way aft in engine room upper level against the stern room bulkhead.
The results of the tragedy included a review of oxygen loading procedures which have precluded any repeats of this type accident in the last 38 years of operation.
Keep the faith
Jim Christley
In Reply to: USS Sargo Oxygen Fire posted by Jim Christley on February 24, 1998
When I was on the Queenfish (SS-393)
in 1961, as a 990-wonder, a former crewmember of the Sargo, Art Sholls,
ET2(SS) told us pretty much the same story. He was standing on the pier
when the fire broke out. The explosion shot a column of fire several hundred
feet into the air and the blast knocked him off his feet. He said that
if Smallwood hadn't taken the actions he did, sacrificing his life in the
process, the Sargo might have been destroyed. The way I see it MM3(SS)
Smallwood was a hero in the finest tradition of the silent service. Those
silver dolphins do mean something!
Stan Mize, CPT, US Army (Ret), ex-ET1(SS)
DBF, NBF, FTA