On Sept. 1, 1920, during a practice crash dive about 50 miles southeast of Barnegat Light, the submarine S-5 had flooded and plunged bow first to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The commander of the sub was 34-year-old Charles M. Cooke, a 1910 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. Naval historical records describe the attempts to surface.
“The aft ballast tanks were blown. The boat remained locked in the grip of the ocean floor mud. The aft normal fuel oil tanks were blown overboard.
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