The Sunken Mystery Of The USS Lagarto | Lost & Found: The Search For A US Submarine | Timeline

We've always known about a missing U.S. submarine somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand. I knew instantly what we'd found. We now have a really good chance of discovering what happened to the submarine. One of the most dangerous seas in the world because it's so shallow. All of this water just not deep enough you couldn't dive. You were there to sink a ship. You didn't think about home or if you were going to get killed or anything. That did not enter your mind. The Japanese commander came straight on and got lucky. Legato went down swinging. Telegram. Oh, all hell broke loose. He's my grandfather. How do you not care about that? What rendered the crew unable to escape the sun? It's a great mystery. Three months before the end of World War II, as fierce battles raged close to Japan's home islands, an Imperial Japanese Navy convoy loaded with supplies crept northward, cautiously hugging the Gulf of Siam coastline. Enemy crewmen aboard the oil tanker, cargo ship, and two heavily armed escort vessels likely didn't know they were being watched. Soon, one of the Japanese vessels detected the American sub dangerously close. Suddenly, Ben Jarvis, commander of the U.S. submarine Bea, knew he'd been spotted. One of the warships turned toward him, closing fast. Jarvis ordered Bea to charge the ship head on. The shark's mouth war paint cut through the waves on a collision course that resembled a high seas version of chicken. I fired two down the throat shots and neither one hit. I saw one of these torpedoes spinning right underneath the guy's bowel, but apparently it went to onto the bottom. And just when I thought that the guy was going to ram me, we were head and head. I said, right full rudder. And this guy had the same training because he gave right full rudder himself. So here we went side by side and the ship went by just like that. The Japanese warship circled back and chased Jarvis and his crew for 20 minutes with unrelenting machine gun fire. Some of this stuff was coming around inside of the bridge and ricocheting out the other side. I fired three down the throat shots from my stern and still I didn't hit the goddamn guy. What's more, Jarvis couldn't dive because his 311 foot submarine was in waters only 250 feet deep. The Gulf of Siam, now called the Gulf of Thailand, is one of the shallowest bodies of open ocean in the world. All of this water, just not deep enough. You couldn't dive, but if a surface guy was on top of you, because you were just, you couldn't maneuver. You didn't have anything underneath you. Finally, the warship gave up. Jarvis had escaped, barely. He put out a call for help. Commander Frank D. Latta, a veteran of nine war patrols, recipient of the Navy Cross, and skipper of the submarine Legato, set up a rendezvous on the surface. We came alongside and we both stopped dead in the water. The seas were calm and they pulled side by side, bridge to bridge, and they spoke literally 20 feet away. And my dad, he just said, well you've been shot up and shook up and I think I better take the next try. And my father set out an attack plan and they did it. And my dad was to attack and sort of chase them into the bayou. And they proceeded to do that and that's the last anyone saw of the Legato. Oh gee, that's not the messiest, messiest practice I ever had in my life. And he never rodged it for any of them. And during that time, my feeling was, from the very beginning, he must be in trouble. But they tried to contact the Legato the following morning and there's no response. One year earlier, Legato stood draped in patriotic bunting in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The town, 80 miles north of Milwaukee, had climbed out of the Great Depression by building shipyard cranes to reconstruct Pearl Harbor, landing craft to hit the beaches of Normandy, and 28 submarines for the Navy. It was a big celebration in the whole community. The banks of the river were lined with people, including all the wives and family members of the Legato. And it was like Fourth of July celebration. It was wonderful. The Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company launched its vessels sideways because the river that circled the shipyard near Lake Michigan wasn't wide enough for a more typical stern launch. This wave went right across the river and it was just way over heads. It knocked them back. There were people scrambling around, all soaking wet. There were people laughing. And then all of a sudden it bobs up like a child's bathtub toy. It was, it was really a spectacular sight. This is part of the old machine shop. When the Navy contract hit the front page, more than 500 men applied for jobs. Quickly, the workforce grew to 7,000, including Jerry Pilger, fresh out of high school. Well, I graduated on a Wednesday. I went to Manitowoc Ship on Friday, applied for a job, and then the following Monday I started to work down at the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company as a shipbidder helper. Because I knew someday that I was going to be in the service, and I figured that's the place I want to be. I want to see what's going on down here. I think, you know, not only that, it offered the highest pay, 39 cents an hour. Charles West, who founded the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company, wanted to build destroyers. The shipyard had launched hundreds of steel hull ships and had earned a reputation for quality. But the Navy needed submarines. Demand for them exceeded the capacity of shipyards on both coasts. The Navy was doubtful about launching a submarine sideways, and Charlie West had to convince the Navy that there would be no problem. But he had a heck of a time convincing them. They built a model submarine to duplicate exactly how a 312-foot submarine could be launched into the Manitowoc River. They said that that boat will go in at a certain angle, it will roll over to a certain angle, and it will right itself, 48 degrees. Not 47 or 49, 48 degrees. Well, at first it was only men, but then they started training women to be welders, because there weren't enough men to fill all the job vacancies. In Manitowoc, more than 600 women train for industrial jobs, part of the three million women hired to work in war plants across the U.S. We figured we could get a job sweeping, and he said, no, only welders, that's all they wanted was welders, nobody else but welders. Quickly, Rosella Siebert acquired a nickname. Rosie the Welder, because that's what I was doing. I enjoyed it after I knew how, what I was doing. I did get burnt a couple times, right straight through the leather jacket, but that didn't bother. The subs were built in sections that weighed between 35 to 60 tons, then loaded onto trailers that hauled them outside where they were assembled, even in the harsh Wisconsin winters. They would work on at least five submarines at one time. They were in various stages of production. The shipyard adopted a slogan to express the urgency to help Uncle Sam. After they really got production going here, and the farmers and the cherry pickers went to work on them, they were putting out almost a boat a month. Activity in the shipyard hummed all day and all night. The shipyard sponsored bands of all kinds, several of them that played at commissioning parties held at the Silver Lake Hotel where cakes were cut with a saber. The company also sponsored group activities to encourage teamwork. There were women's teams for bowling and softball, and a dozen men's softball teams that competed to be champions of the shipyard. Singing groups performed on the local radio station. Movie stars like Spencer Tracy, born in Milwaukee, and friends with the commander of the Manitowoc sub, Icefish, paid a visit. So did the comedy team Abbott and Costello. But what kept morale highest was what workers heard back from sailors. He said, I owe you my life. And I said, what? And he said, well, I owe you my life. I said, what did I do? And he said, I won't tell you. We found out that it was the welding, and whenever they got in the sub, that's the first thing they did is look at the welding. And there's a lot of sailors that said that we saved them because that was good welding. But before a sub and her crew were considered seaworthy, they practiced diving and other maneuvers in Lake Michigan, often in sub-zero temperatures that froze hatches and anything or anyone not moving. Mike Latta was an eight-year-old tag-along when his father took Legardo on her first trials. You know, I never realized it at the time. Years later, I realized I was a skipper's kid. And I was like this, I turned into this mascot, I think, because no matter where I went, I had free run of the boat. And invariably, there'd be some big guy grab me by the seat of the pants, whoa, you know, hey, go Mike, you know, pat me on the head off, I'd go. And these guys, it was never around my dad, or just, they just did that. They just took care of me. It was always calm. There was no shouting. All the orders were very calm. And the response was calm, you know, aye, aye. I thought, you know, damn, it all comes from him. I think I was just kind of, it's the first time I'd seen him at work. Soon, work on the next submarine was nearly complete. More sailors came, and Manitowoc was never the same. It was wild. It wasn't the pokey little town that it had been. The sailor couldn't buy himself a drink in town. He would go into a bar, and there might be a shipyard worker there, and they'd say, buy the sailor a drink. And girls, my goodness, the girls. You'd get out of that gate, and there was two waiting for you. Six or seven girls from my class married submarine sailors. And sailors on a budget took their dates to the movies. I worked at the Strand Theater, and I sold tickets. I was a cashier, and I popped popcorn. If the sailor only had a dollar, he could get two tickets for 44 cents each for two adults, and popcorn was a dime. So for 98 cents, he could have two tickets and a box of popcorn. After months of drills, Legardo and her 86-man crew headed for war. The morning they left, Commander Latta reassured loved ones personally. He spoke to each of us individually, and he was just a wonderful man. I admired him greatly. He said, I will bring them back. And we were all confident that he would. Wisconsin submarines, 1,000 miles from the Atlantic and nearly 2,000 from the Pacific, got to the war by going down the middle, sailing south on Lake Michigan to Chicago, and through a series of waterways that led to the Mississippi River. That was quite a trip. Some of it, they traveled under their own power. Some of it, they were pushed, and some of them, they were on dry docks, submarines. And sometimes, some of the superstructure wasn't on them because they had to go under so many bridges. A flat-bottom floating dry dock carried each submarine over shoals, clearing some bridges by inches. Once, when a heavy rainstorm delayed the journey, a farmer boasted he was the only one in the world with a submarine tied to his cornfield and charged admission to see it. Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians, all from HistoryHit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Download the app now to explore everything from the wonders of ancient Pompeii and the mystery of the princes in the tower to the life of Anne Boleyn and D-Day. Sign up via the link in the description. When Ligardo reached New Orleans, she entered a war zone immediately. German U-boats sank 60 ships in the Gulf of Mexico during the war, including the tanker Virginia at the mouth of the Mississippi River. To relieve worry from relatives, Ligardo's crewmen were encouraged to write letters home often. The letters from Harold Todd, written on onion-skin paper, printed with Ligardo's emblem, became heirlooms to Ray Todd, who told her husband just before he left that she was pregnant. Dearest Ray, please understand that I will not be disappointed if it turns out to be a girl. On the contrary, I will be quite happy because I know she will be the loveliest little lady in the world, except for her mother. He worried that for my safety, so he bought a 45 and gave it to me to keep in the car. He said nobody's going to argue with a nervous woman with a 45. All you have to do is just have it. At sea, the Navy sent film cameramen aboard submarines to provide theater audiences back home with images of efficient men working together smoothly. The captain came below and said, take her down. The diving alarm was sounded, and what had been a joking bunch of fellas turned suddenly into an alert team of experts. Nobody spoke, but all through the boat, you could hear big valves being spun closed and the sea slapping against the hull like a chambermaid spanking pillows. Then, no noise, no pitching, no sense of movement whatsoever. Lieutenant Harold Todd, Jr., USS Ligardo. Aboard the close quarters of a submarine, discipline was relaxed. Beards and mustaches were allowed. Each submariner had volunteered for the duty, selected after three screenings for intelligence, physical ability, and mental toughness to work in a claustrophobic environment. Submariners were paid more, but the trade-offs included patrols that kept them at sea for up to 10 weeks at a time. Crewmen routinely inhaled fumes of diesel oil, tobacco smoke, and the smell of sweat that led some to call submarines pig boats. Ray, darling, they showed us a motion picture of battle first aid with real casualties. My god, the morals seem to be, when in doubt, give a morphine injection. Lieutenant Harold Todd, Jr., USS Ligardo. In LaGrange, Illinois, Margaret Maben opened letters from her husband, William, a signalman aboard Ligardo. The couple had married two years before and had a daughter, Nancy, who they nicknamed Flags. My darling Margaret, I can't quite believe I'm to be away from you and Nancy for so long. I am fully conscious that there are three of us now. How I'd love to hear her little voice or feel one of those little kisses of hers, to say nothing of yours. Try to mention me to Flags so she won't forget she has a pop. All my love, Bill. Following battleships that barely squeezed through the Panama Canal, Ligardo slipped into the Pacific Ocean on an 8,000-mile journey from Manitowoc to the subbase at Pearl Harbor. In Hawaii, a second deck gun that fired a five-inch diameter shell was added to Ligardo, an option also given to Ben Jarvis aboard the submarine Bea. And since the targets that we were getting were not worth torpedoes, they wanted to have these five-inch guns. So I said, okay. Of course, it made my crew happy because they loved to shoot those damn guns. The subbase was also where crewmen loaded torpedoes capable of hitting a target more than two and a half miles away. Subs were also stocked with what many considered the best food in the Navy. Ham, eggs, milk, tuna, potatoes, and chicken. But Frank Latta wasn't finished equipping the submarine. Just before leaving port, Latta had something else brought aboard and hidden in the sub's cargo. I've often wondered how he managed to keep secret his Harley. At every port, he and the machinist mate would take it apart, break it all down so it would fit down through the hatch and hide it someplace that the Navy never knew about. And then they get someplace like an R&R port, they take it out in the dock and put it back together. Off you go. Sometimes you have to step outside some of the rules and do what you got to do, and that's what he did. By the time Legato left Pearl Harbor, she was ready for action. On the way out of port, the sub's radio picked up a broadcast of Japanese propaganda from a woman dubbed Tokyo Rose. We know very well that American submarines have headed west from Pearl Harbor. If American submariners are wise, you will turn back. Certain death awaits you over here. And now I'll play for you unfortunate Americans a popular recording. Blast me, if I ain't getting to feel like an old sea dog. I'm beginning to really like this business. It's the same swashbuckling, adventurous feeling that Eric the Red, Magellan and Cook must have had while at sea, Todd became a father. My darling. Well, sweetheart, I've gone and done it. I've had a baby. Now I'm a full-fledged woman, I betcha. He's just a doll, has the most gorgeous sort of peach colored complexion and reddish hair, and he looks exactly like you. I hope you're as happy as I am, sweetheart. It's a wonderful feeling. All my love, Ray. P.S., his name is Michael Burgess. At this late stage of the war, American submarines were targeting Japanese merchant vessels to cut off the supply of raw materials and food that fueled Japan's war machine. Near the end of Legato's second war patrol, the sub headed to an allied naval base at Fremantle, Australia for much needed R&R and a But a distress call from the submarine Bea prolonged Legato's patrol, which had already endured several depth charge attacks from Japanese warships. Dearest Ray, we've come out of situations that took the prayers of the wives and mothers and fathers, both mine and my shipmates, to pull us through. But don't worry anymore, because the rough stuff is over and it's smooth sailing from here on It was the last letter from her husband that Ray Todd would open. Legato rendezvoused with the heavily damaged Bea. Seeing the sub shot up and her crew shaken, Commander Latta volunteered to take over the attack of the Japanese convoy. For years, Ben Jarvis would never forget Frank Latta's I did feel the loss of Latta. I really did. It did know me that God, here's a guy that I really admired and that he was lost in the same conditions that I was in. But Latta still has a very warm spot in my heart. At home, Ray Todd suspected trouble when the postman delivered a stack of her letters to Harold Marks, returned to send her. When the letters came back, it was very hard to continue being hopeful, because that was a pretty good sign that they weren't around any longer. Then a telegram came. The doorbell rang one day, and when I answered the door, there was a man on a bicycle, just like you would see in all the movies, and handed me the telegram. And I sat on the stairway and looked at it and thought about it for a long time before I got up the courage to open it. Lieutenant Harold Todd was missing in action. And then I remember letting out a scream and everybody came scrambling. There were other tenants in the building and a whole bunch of people gathered around them. The postman arrived and he came up and rang the doorbell. My mother answered and I remember seeing this yellow telegram and all hell broke loose. That was it. When it's missing in action, you really don't know where they are. They could be on an island somewhere. They could be in a prisoner of war camp. So there's always this hope that someday you might see them again. I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan. But the war's end would be bittersweet. On the same day that the headline that Japan had surrendered, there was a smaller article on the front page of a West Coast newspaper saying USS Legado is missing. It must have been very hard for the families when all of their friends and neighbors and everyone celebrating, they knew that the person that they loved most was not coming back. Dear Mrs. Latta, my child and I have recently moved into a new apartment. I find myself thinking how thrilled Bill would be with it. With working and taking care of a three-year-old child, I am very busy and grateful to be so. It is the only thing that helps me plow through these dreary days. I find myself resenting people who just feel that Bill's number was up. I know time will help, but I guess it will be a long, long time. Margaret Maben. My dad was metals in a box, you know, and friends of the family and whatnot, they mean well, but you know, these uncle types would, you know, friends would come and say, well, no, Mike, you're the man of the house. Oh, okay, mister. But then in those days, you know, you sort of said, oh, okay. And I took care of my brother. You know, I was the man of the house. Eight years old. With the war over, the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company laid off half its workforce, including Rosella Siebert. Rosie the welder and her female colleagues were no longer needed. Well, I didn't like it very well, but there was nothing, we knew it was coming, so it was worse than getting kicked out from home because it was such a good place to work. I enjoyed it, but I had to go to Sturgeon Bay and weld on cargo boats. In the years that followed, Holly Latta remarried. So did Ray Todd and Margaret Maben, and Nancy Maben kept a picture of her father on her bureau for more than 60 years. It's a photograph of him holding me, and it's just, it shows that sort of father-child connection, and you can tell by the way he's looking at me that he's very happy to be with his little girl. It's very special. I know there's no need for me to say, take care of our Nancy, just give her a little extra love for her old man. Someday, I'll be able to do some of the things for our daughter that most little girls expect from their fathers. Sigelman William Maben, USS Legato. Submarine veterans in Wisconsin would not forget Legato's crew. They began a public campaign to honor the men aboard Legato who never returned. Subvet Roy Leonard wanted more. He wanted to find Legato. Together with the Wisconsin chapter of the U.S. submarine vets of World War II, they scoured Japanese war records and discovered rough coordinates where a Japanese convoy reported sinking an American submarine in the Gulf of Siam the night Legato disappeared. It's been on there for years, just leave it like it is. The veterans found and contacted Jamie McLeod, an experienced shipwreck diver in the region, who agreed to look for Legato. We've always known about a missing U.S. submarine somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand, but no one's ever conducted a proper search before. The mystery was where to start. McLeod began by surveying local Thai fishermen to see if they could recall snagging their nets on something big near Legato's last reported position. We'd invite the captain on board for a couple of beers. We'd get him talking about his area of expertise in the Gulf of Thailand, and then very politely ask him if he's got any wreck marks. And then the little bit of paper comes out, and then they write them down for us. The fishermen are very interested in what we're doing. I think they think we're crazy. They know there's something down there, but they have no idea what the wrecks are. All they know is there's a wreck there somewhere. It could be a modern wreck, it could be a World War II wreck, it could be an ancient wreck. After collecting numerous slips of paper, McLeod's sonar showed something metal on the bottom of the Gulf, 150 miles from shore. It's a big ocean, there's a lot of wrecks. The coordinates can be absolutely nothing, or they can be absolutely everything. Nearly 60 years to the day Legato disappeared, McLeod followed his weighted line to the bottom, hoping that he'd be in the vicinity of the 300-foot submarine. On his very first attempt, McLeod landed on top of it. The first thing I saw was the very, very front of the bow, and then I didn't quite reach the conning tower because I was so excited. I wanted to get the signal up to the guys quickly to come and have a look. I was going down that line. I passed him at about 50 meters, and Jamie was just going, I was very excited. My heart started pounding. I was filled with adrenaline. Wow, I knew instantly what we'd found because it's actually what we were searching for. Half a world away in LaGrange, Illinois, John Kenney, grandson William Maben would never meet, saw something on his computer. Around Memorial Day, that's when I stumbled on to my shock that someone had found the Legato. The phone rang, and it was my son, and he said to me, Mom, are you sitting down? My mother doesn't take bad news very well. She said this is good news or bad news. And then he told me about searching that end. And then I said, they've found your father. And it was like somebody just kind of punched me. It just took my breath away, literally. I think she was so overwhelmed that it took her a while just to digest the enormity of what we just found out. We never thought it was going to be found. That's never anything that was discussed. It was lost, and the Navy doesn't look for missing ships. When you know so little about your father or what happened to him, and you've grown up without him, it feels like having a hole in your heart. There's always something missing. The Wisconsin Maritime Museum sponsored an expedition to the Gulf of Thailand. Wreck divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, portrayed in the bestseller Shadow Divers, led a team hoping to answer what happened to Legato and her crew. Near the shelf where the shallow Gulf of Thailand meets the South China Sea, the divers followed a weighted line down. Slowly, ghostly spires of Legato's periscopes appeared. Further down, Legato's bridge, where Commander Latta discussed his battle plans with Bayer skipper Ben Jarvis. Two coral-encrusted deck guns are aimed towards schools of fish that slipped from one side of the conning tower to the other. Legato came to rest perfectly level on a flat sandy plain more than 230 feet below the surface. She has become home to countless sea fans and oysters. Decades of snagged fishermen's nets wrapped Legato like a mummy. It's a dangerous wreck. My first time in and around nets, I got hung up, and you got to cut your way out, and it really puts the fear of God in you for a little bit. Underneath the tangle, Legato's giant rudder is pushed hard to port, and all of the dive planes are turned downward, indicating a steep dive. Legato's final maneuver appeared to have been an escape. Not just diving and turning, but you're talking a radical dive, a radical turn. This was clearly a very extreme, evasive maneuver. Chatterton and Kohler saw a large area of damage 18 feet high in Legato's port side, just ahead of the conning tower. A massive metal hull had been crumpled inward three feet. We've seen other submarine wrecks that have suffered a pounding, and we've seen dents in the steel, but this is way beyond that. If this is the cylinder of the hull, the side is actually bent in exactly like my fingers are showing you. Think about that, probably three to four feet out of round. That's a lot of force. It's obvious that there was a tremendous detonation there. The pressure hull itself took a tremendous pounding, just, you know, shoved in there. Though Legato's ballast tanks, designed to fill with air and water to control buoyancy, are crushed, the damage appeared to stop just short of penetrating Legato's pressure hull, the inner compartment that held the crew. We lit it up really carefully, and to the best of our knowledge, we couldn't see a direct breach. We couldn't see a hole into the compartment. The men in that compartment would have taken a tremendous beating, but there was nothing obvious that I saw that told me this is where the water came in, this is how Legato sank. If water didn't enter at the point of damage, then how did she sink? The starboard bow revealed a clue to Legato's final moments. Mysteriously, a torpedo tube remained open. Kohler put his still camera inside. There's no torpedo. We were able to confirm there is no torpedo, but the strobe just can't reach the 20-something feet to let us know whether that inner door is closed. With that outer door open, if a weapon had detonated close enough, it is quite possible that that water pressure could have traveled through the inside of that tube and blown the inside door of Legato's torpedo tube open, creating a 21-inch wall of water that would just have been totally unrecoverable, totally devastating. It was something that we tried to look into. One of the possibilities for sinking is that they had to do a crash dive, the doors weren't entirely closed, they got deep, and it just blew that door open and water started pouring in the forward torpedo room. So what we've done is we've taken a small little camera, attached it to a pole, and we're trying to maneuver it down the torpedo tube to see if that inner door is open. If that inner door is open, that's pretty much the death knell for the Legato. A camera on a stick, I'm pretty much convinced it's all going to come apart halfway down that tube, and he's going to have a struggle going down to the submarine with all this stuff. While Chatterton was down below trying to maneuver the camera on a stick into the open torpedo tube, the crew topside could only wait. After an hour on the wreck and another three hours in decompression, the divers climbed back aboard Trident, but their news was not good. The housing designed to protect the auxiliary underwater camera from saltwater flooded. It depressurized itself, so it ain't a little leak, it's a big leak. Yep. Despite the camera's failure to peer all the way down the tube, everything else the divers found, the rudder and dive plane positions, the large damage area, and the open torpedo tube, all of these details began forming a picture of Legato's last moments. Legato was a periscope depth and either saw a target of opportunity or a perceived threat. She fired a torpedo and then immediately went into a very dramatic turn and dive, and then before she could get the chance to get down to safe depth, something happened. It stopped the torpedo man from closing the door. It stopped the control room crew from stopping the dive or straightening the rudder. The captain saw the threat, decided to snap a shot off, but the Japanese commander came straight on A perfectly placed depth charge in 230 feet of water, you wanted to dive down as fast as possible, but then you're going to want to level out. Legato never got to that point. These were two escorts, so he was dealing with two pretty active people, and you can only shoot at one of them at a time. He was trying to shoot one when the other depth charged him from the other side. That's my feeling. You can drop it right along the side. Yeah, that's where you want to be. Depth charges were the most feared anti-submarine weapon. Near the end of the war, Japanese depth charges packed enough explosives to knock a 1,500-ton sub sideways. Herb Starmer, a pharmacist mate aboard the USS Cobia, never forgot the depth charge attack he endured in these same waters. It is the most frightening thing that a person can go through. It was as dark black as you could imagine. The temperature was up to 129 or 30 degrees. The carbon dioxide count was so high. The crew was getting so drowsy and out of drink that they would just lay in their bunks. There were a few that were around praying, and that attack was something that left all of us with a different attitude, I think, towards life. It was as close as any of us ever got to being killed. I just felt that that sacrifice should be recognized. I was determined, absolutely committed to finding a way to honor these 86 men on Legardo. I called at least one member of almost every family, and very early on, we reached a consensus that we wanted the discovery of Legardo to be recognized by the Navy or the United States government. But months passed, and Nancy Kenny waited. I began to get very angry, actually. I would send emails and make phone calls to everyone I could think of, and very politely but very firmly ask, these are your men. This is your ship. It may be our family member, but it's your fellow sailor. What are you going to do about it? The Navy responded that it needed proof. Only one American sub was lost in that hundreds of mile area. So that was, we thought, enough evidence, but it's not. One letter in particular sent Nancy Kenny over the edge. Words to the effect that we don't even know that this is an American submarine. We don't even know that it's a Baleo class, and all of these kind of excuses for not doing more. And I, at that point, I went absolutely ballistic. Finally, with pressure from congressmen and senators, the Navy agreed to use a planned training mission in the region to identify the submarine. In 2006, a year after Jamie McLeod first found Legardo, the USS Sauber sent divers down. They cleared away netting and found letters stamped on a propeller hub. Letters that began to spell Manitowoc, the Wisconsin town where Legardo was built. Proof enough for the Navy to place a plaque near the stern officially declaring the submarine Legardo. I felt a thrill that I have never before since felt, and I remember looking up at the ceiling and saying, we did it, daddy. We did it. Nancy's father, William Mabin, was a track star at Lyons Township High School in the Chicago suburb of LaGrange. He nearly won the 1936 state championship in high hurdles. Years later, another plaque was placed in Mabin's honor and in honor of 74 other classmates from this one high school who died in World War II. The plaque still hangs in the school's main hallway. William Mabin. Joy Marriott Jr. What I always came back to was the fact that there were 86 men on that submarine at the bottom of the sea who died in the service of their country, and they could not speak for themselves. And that if the family members and friends of these men didn't pursue it for them, no one would. More than 60 years after their sacrifice, Legardo's crewmen and their families were honored. At the very spot where the sub had sailed out of Manitowoc, 200 relatives gathered all these years later to hear the Navy's conclusion of what happened. The middle torpedo tube was open and the torpedo inside was missing, so USS Legardo apparently went down fighting. To many, those last three words meant everything. When I heard Admiral Cassius say they went down fighting, I don't think anyone in the Navy, especially in the submarine service, throws those words around lightly. For the family and friends of those who perished. Amen. In my mind, it doesn't just commemorate the Legardo. It's for all the boys. And I think it's very important that we don't forget. The moment when we did receive the flags was one of the most deeply emotional moments of my life. To see all the beauty and the pomp and circumstance of this Navy ritual, that to us was not just a ritual. It was a personal gesture on the part of the Navy. And we appreciated it very, very much. Boy, she talked about wanting that flag. My mom talked about wanting the flag presented from the Navy from almost the beginning. It's a scenario that she'd seen so many other military veterans get. And I think the proper funeral, proper burial, proper recognition from the Navy, that was what getting the flag meant. Far from the sound of taps, Legardo keeps some mysteries to this day. Dissatisfied with the failure of the improvised camera on a stick, John Chatterton made a second trip to the Gulf of Thailand. This time, he brought a small, remotely operated vehicle with a tiny camera inside that relayed pictures to a computer screen on the surface. The ROV crept into Legardo's open torpedo tube to see if the inner door, the one that opens into the forward torpedo room where the crew loaded the weapons, had been pushed open by a force of water causing the boat to sink. The inner door on a torpedo tube is never meant to hold the water pressure deeper than periscope depth. They would have never been diving. They couldn't dive with that door open. So again, they were closing that door and diving. They were doing a very quick maneuver to get out of harm's way because if they had gone to the bottom, the water pressure at 230 feet could blow that hatch open and flood the submarine. And they knew this. From inside the tube, the ROV's camera showed that the inner door was in fact closed. Then the camera's view filled with silt. But if water didn't enter the sub from the torpedo tube, where did it get in? I think there's more damage done somewhere. So there must have been another blast, another cause for the destruction of the boat. The damage to the port side of Legardo continues down below where we can see it. It actually disappears down into the silt. So it's quite possible there is a breach in the hull, but it's buried in the mud and we can't see it. Explosive experts will tell you that the energy coming from an ordnance detonation is up and out. When you look at the area of damage, this was a very well-placed piece of ordnance adjacent to the submarine or even just a little bit below it, right alongside the port hull. You feel the boat shake, jar, jump, move. You can feel it fly sideways. The whole submarine is going to lurch to one side and the pressure inside the submarine is also going to increase. That's enough to drive you right to your knees or to render you incapable of making immediate decisions, as simple as closing a door or turning a valve because you're incapacitated. Also, the divers believe the force of a bone-jarring depth charge exploding extremely close to Legardo's hull likely caused countless leaks in the metal fittings. Could be enough solution. The most vulnerable point is anywhere you put a crew hull, any kind of crew hull connection, it is a weak point. It is a failure point. This deformed the hull. Like Richie was saying, what's on the other side of that hull? If it's utility lines, whatever. All of that. How do you, you know, things are so that you could shut them off? But what if it's the valve that breaks? Precisely how long the men survived under the depth charge barrage and flooding of their boat is not known. It is almost unthinkable to speculate on their being trapped in a submarine and dying one by one. That is not something that you want to think about. I would say that the boat flooded very rapidly. You hope that means that the concussion from the depth charge was so great that they were knocked unconscious and died quickly and mercifully. So it must have been incredibly fast. I mean, I don't know. I choose to believe that it was quick. If not, they had time to think good thoughts. So. The people could still live down there for up to 24 hours. Of course, it gets pretty damn devoid of oxygen by that time, but you still can live. But I feel that most of the crew were gone within a half hour. That's my feeling. And I think, unfortunately, that most of them drowned. If some of the crew had lived for a half hour, why did no one escape? When the submarine's down, you're going to have to get out. Quite simply, you don't have any other option. Any possibility at survival in a submarine that's disabled is going to have to be beyond that hatch. Had they tried to escape, had they been able to escape, we would have found open hatches. There would have been physical evidence there on the site, and we didn't find any of that. The last guy out wouldn't bother to shut the hatch. And I'm sure that hatch would be open if anyone came along years later to look at it. They could have made an escape at that depth without any trouble. During World War II, the Navy used a device called the Momsen Lung, an early rebreather that recycled exhaled air and allowed a submariner to escape underwater from a sunken vessel. It was demonstrated on this television program in the 1950s. We have a section here with Momsen Lung. First of all, here's the mouthpiece that is put in the mouth, and then here is the inside container. I see one of the boys has one on there now. These lungs are used in training that they may be ready to escape from a sunken submarine if necessary. Submariners practiced using the Momsen Lung by escaping from inside water-filled towers at a depth of 100 feet. In October 1944, nine crewmen from another submarine, the USS Tang, survived an escape ascent from 180 feet below the surface, but they were picked up by the Japanese Navy and tortured. We knew that the Japanese would torture and submarine sailors would be treated worse than the normal prisoners of war would be. The communications officer would probably not survive. They would torture him until he died. The radio men were people that they would just terrorize until they got every bit of information from them they could. The Japanese had such a fear of what the submarines were doing. It was just hate. Despite the potential for torture, if captured, Jarvis, Chatterton, and Starmer all agreed Legato's crew would have escaped if it was possible. One thing about a human being is preservation, and you want to survive. I can't imagine a crew making a decision, a conscious decision, we're not going to try to escape. I think the normal submarine sailor would have tried to get out if he had the opportunity or if it was a choice. Something incapacitated their physically, mentally, or some reason. The most unsettling part is not knowing what happened to them in their final moments. I'd like to know what exactly brought about the demise of that submarine. But smaller mysteries connected to Legato have been For years, a garage in LaGrange, Illinois had a name etched in the cement floor, a name its owners didn't recognize until they read in the local newspaper about Legato's discovery and contacted Nancy Kenny, whose name appeared in the article. Apparently my father must have had a playmate who lived in that house, and when they poured the cement floor, he drew his name, the cement, and it was touching to me because it was something he did, and it was so human, and it made him seem very real to me. I picture this playful, innocent kid wanting to make his mark, and you know what's amazing is that he did this, and it's still there, you know, 80 some years later. Houses get renovated, garages grow, people put new cement, that cement's still there, that's neat. I mean that's a physical impression that he made, and he touched that. Before divers left Legato, Nancy Kenny asked Richie Kohler to say a prayer. Richie had asked me before he went over to Thailand if there's anything he could do. She had made a request that I do something she can't do, that I touch the side of her father's tomb and let him know that her, her mother, and the rest of the family love him and miss him very much, and that everybody's okay. And he did. That's what he did. History is much more than just a bunch of dates and events. It's about human connections, so for us as wreck divers to be able to communicate with survivors or family members that are somehow linked to these wreck sites, for us, is what it's all about. There are no plans to raise Legato or retrieve the bodies of her crew. She is a war grave, and according to the Navy, cannot be disturbed. She's there. She looks beautiful. And it's fitting that we leave her there. Wreck divers attached an American flag. And they tied it onto the tip of the conning tower, and it started to billow in the the waters like it was blowing in the wind on a flagpole. When divers last checked, Legato's flag still waved in the underwater current. So good. That's where they are. That's where they belong. And God bless them.