Submarine USS O-9 was lost on June 20, 1941 and located in early September 1997.
She was commissioned in July of 1918 and built by the Fore River Ship Building Company in Quincy Massachusetts.
She was an O class submarine.
172 feet in length with a beam of 18 feet.
She displaced 480 tons on the surface and 629 tons when submerged.
She was in service until 1931. She was then decommissioned and laid up in reserve at the Philadelphia Navy Yard where she laid neglected for the next nine years.
She was recommissioned in 1940. Her size and range was not suitable for action so she was to be used as a training submarine out of New London Connecticut. The USS O-9 was in very poor condition and had to have a major over haul. She then went to New London where she began sea trials including shallow dives. During the tests she had minor equipment breakdowns and suffered from "up to 19 leaks". On June 19 she left with submarines O-10 and O-6 for deep water dive tests off the Isles of Shoals near Portsmouth New Hampshire.
On the morning of June 20, 1941 submarine O-6 was the first submarine to do a deep dive, followed by O-10. Both successfully completed dives to as deep as 225 feet. At 0837 O-9 slipped under the surface..... an hour later she still had not surfaced. At 1850 pieces of the submarine were recovered in an oil slick with the USS O-9 number on it. Water depth was measured at 450 feet. 33 hands were lost. Rescue and salvage efforts were terminated on June 22, 1941.
Featured below are some sonar images obtained during the relocation effort :
The first image is the first contact that was made.
The following image was one of many that took a closer look at the initial target. This is the one that
gave us a good Identification. Note the central island's shadow is cast on the bottom. Shadows are light, hard contacts dark.
