Submarine rescue pioneer gets surface ship named after him

BATH, Maine -- Sixty-four years after a Navy officer led a daring deep-sea rescue of 33 sailors from a sunken submarine, his daughter christened a warship named in his honor Saturday.

Despite having quadruple bypass heart surgery last month, Evelyn Momsen Hailey, 82, smashed a bottle of champagne on the bow of a destroyer bearing the name of Vice Admiral Charles Bowers Momsen.

On the fifth swing, the bottle broke, streamers shot in the air and the crowd broke into applause.

Christopher Hailey, grandson of "Swede" Momsen, noted the irony that the Navy saw fit to honor a man from the submarine corps with a surface warship designed, in part, to hunt enemy subs.

"As a submariner, he did all he could to avoid destroyers," Hailey told the audience. "This one got him."

The $1 billion, 510-foot guided missile destroyer was built to withstand chemical attacks. Advanced radar enables it to simultaneously wage battle with enemy airplanes, warships and submarines.

Always full of ideas

Born in 1896 in Flushing, N.Y., Momsen was always full of ideas from an early age, relatives say. Today he would likely be described as "thinking outside the box." Back then, his unconventional ideas didn't always endear himself with the Navy brass.

He learned the hard way -- when his proposal for a diving bell languished on a desk at the Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair -- that getting things done sometimes meant circumventing official channels.

Without getting approval, he created a temporary breathing device, the Momsen lung, out of rubber scavenged from old inner tubes. A pickle barrel served as a makeshift diving bell used in his early descents.

He conducted a dramatic test in 110 feet of water in the Potomac River. He rose to the surface using his emergency air supply and held up a pebble he had snatched to show he reached the river's bottom.

Top Navy officers learned about his test like everyone else: They read about it in the Washington Star. Despite rankling superiors, he had proved his point and the lung became standard issue aboard U.S. Navy submarines.

He also helped create the Navy diving bell used after the USS Squalus sank on a test dive in 1939, 13 miles off the New Hampshire coast.

Twenty-six sailors in the submarine's 59-member crew died, but the rescue of the survivors captured the nation's imagination at a time when such an operation was thought to be impossible.

Momsen directed the rescue of the survivors, who waited 23 hours before a Navy tugboat arrived carrying the nine-ton diving bell. The bell was lowered to a hatch on the Squalus to rescue the men.

One of four remaining survivors, Carl Bryson, 85, of Groton, Conn., also attended Saturday's ceremony.

"Swede was a wonderful person," Bryson said.

The christening was a family affair: Evelyn Momsen Hailey was the ship's sponsor and Swede Momsen's stepdaughter and three granddaughters assisted as matrons of honor. The ship does not officially become a Navy ship until its commissioning.

Christopher Hailey delivered remarks on behalf of the family.

"Creativity was the thing that characterized him. If he went into some other field, he would have made his mark there. He was always asking, 'How could things be made better?"' Hailey said.

Other family members included a great-grandson, Andrew Hailey, who will serve aboard the vessel, as well as about 70 others from across the country.

Police said they arrested 13 people for criminal trespass at a protest by peace activists outside the shipyard's entrance.