USS F-4

"USS Skate (SS-23)" redirects here. For other ships, see USS Skate.

USS F-4 (SS-23) was a United States Navy F-class submarine. She originally was named Skate, making her the first ship of the United States Navy named for the skate, but was renamed while under construction. Commissioned in 1913, she operated in the Pacific Ocean until she sank accidentally in 1915, the first commissioned submarine of the U.S. Navy to be lost at sea.

USS F-4 was in commission from 1913 to 1915.
History
United States
Name	USS F-4
Builder	The Moran Company, Seattle, Washington
Laid down	21 August 1909, as USS Skate
Launched	6 January 1912
Sponsored by	Mrs. Manson Franklin Backus
Commissioned	3 May 1913
Renamed	USS F-4, 17 November 1911
Stricken	31 August 1915
Fate	Foundered, 25 March 1915 Raised, 29 August 1915; later a harbor marker and buried as trench fill off Pearl Harbor, 1940
General characteristics
Class & type	F-class submarine
Displacement	330 long tons (340 t)
Length	142 ft 7 in (43.46 m)
Beam	15 ft 5 in (4.70 m)
Draft	12 ft 2 in (3.71 m)
Speed	14 kn (16 mph; 26 km/h)
Complement	22 officers and enlisted
Armament	4 × 18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes

U.S. Navy inspectors examining the implosion hole in F-4's port side in drydock at Honolulu, late August or early September 1915. Note that the submarine is upside down in the drydock, in the position she was found on the ocean bottom.

Plans for the F-class submarine

Francis Hughson, Crew Member

Construction and commissioning

The submarine's keel was laid down on 21 August 1909 by the Moran Company of Seattle, Washington, with the name USS Skate. While under construction, she was renamed USS F-4 on 17 November 1911. She was launched on 6 January 1912, sponsored by Mrs. Manson Franklin Backus, wife of the successful Seattle business man and banker Manson Franklin Backus.^[1][2] F-4 was commissioned on 3 May 1913.

Service history

Joining the First Submarine Group, Pacific Torpedo Flotilla, F-4 participated in the development operations of that group along the United States West Coast in 1913 and into 1914. In August 1914, all four F-class submarines were transferred to duty in the Territory of Hawaii, the first submarines to operate from Hawaii. The facilities at Pearl Harbor were still under construction at the time, so the submarines were based at rented pier space in Honolulu.^[3]

During training maneuvers off the entrance to Honolulu Harbor on 25 March 1915, F-4 suffered a casualty and sank to the bottom 1.5 mi (2.4 km) from the harbor, coming to rest at a depth of 306 ft (93 m). Upon noticing that F-4 had failed to return on time, U.S. Navy authorities at Honolulu began efforts to locate her. One diver from her sister ship USS F-1, Chief Gunner's Mate John Agraz, made numerous deep dives during the search phase without a diving suit or weights, with just a diving helmet and breast plate perched on his shoulders. Eventually searchers located F-4 on the bottom and determined that the pressure hull had imploded, flooding the submarine and killing her crew. All 21 aboard perished.

Electrician's Mate 3rd Class James Morton Hoggett remained ashore when F-4 got underway to stand duty as a pier watchman, responsible for receiving any important news that occurred ashore while F-4 was at sea and relaying it to F-4′s commanding officer upon the submarine′s return — a common practice before ships had radios — as well as for looking after the submarine's supplies and gear left behind on the pier. He was F-4′s only survivor.^[4] '

Salvage and recovery

The U.S. Navy determined that the submarine needed to be raised so that the crew could be recovered and the boat examined to determine a cause of her loss. An ambitious and technologically challenging diving and engineering effort began which set a new precedent in deep-water salvage.^[5] Divers assisted in slinging lifting chains under the wreck's hull, with the chains attached to six specially built lifting pontoons. Naval Constructor Lieutenant Commander Julius A. Furer, Rear Admiral C. B. T. Moore, and Lieutenant Charles Smith led the demanding effort.^[6] Navy diving expert Chief Gunner George D. Stillson surveyed the wreck and found the superstructure caved in and the hull filled with water.^[7] (Note: the cited newspaper article was technically incorrect, it was actually the pressure hull that had caved in.)^[8] One of the divers involved in the salvage operation was John Henry Turpin, who was probably the first African American to qualify as a U.S. Navy Master Diver. After five and a half months of effort the submarine was raised and returned to dry dock in Honolulu on 29 August 1915. Only four of the dead could be identified; the 17 others were buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.^[9]

The investigating board subsequently conjectured that gradual leakage of battery acid onto the steel pressure hull below the forward battery well had weakened the hull and the rivets that held the hull together. This permitted sea water to enter the battery compartment under submerged pressure. Subsequent post-salvage examination showed that the bilge suction valves in the battery tank had been accidentally fouled by tar pitch used to seal the battery well, rendering the crew unable to pump out the flooding seawater. This flooding in the forward battery well caused the crew to lose buoyancy control, and the submarine quickly sank below her crush depth, with the hull imploding in the torpedo room.^[10] Others believe that the bypassing of an unreliable magnetic reducer closed a Kingston valve in the forward ballast tank, resulting in a delay.^[11] Based on other reported issues, there may also have been problems with the air lines supplying the ballast tank.^[11]

After the completion of the investigation useful equipment was stripped from the wreck and F-4 was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 31 August 1915. She was removed from the dry dock in Honolulu Harbor in early September 1915 so the other three F-class submarines, which had been rammed accidentally and lightly damaged by the U.S. Navy supply ship USS Supply (1872), could be drydocked for repairs. F-4 was moved, still hanging from the pontoons, to Pearl Harbor, where she bottomed in the shallow waters of the then-unused Magazine Loch on or about 25 November 1915. She was then disconnected from the pontoons and allowed to settle into the mud at the bottom of the loch. She remained there until 1940, when she was found to be in the way of expansion of the Naval Submarine Base Pearl Harbor pier facilities. The wreck of F-4 was moved a few yards to the west and re-buried in a trench dug in the loch bottom near Submarine Base mooring S14, where it remains to this day.^[12]