225 ft of water doesn't seem like that much for an entire crew to be lost in. Wouldn't it be possible for some of the crew to excape? Of course, if the mine was large enough the sudden catastrophic damage could have been insurmountable.
I'd like to hear some opinions of submariners.
Any survivors might have been strafed and killed.
Most sub losses in WWII (and before, and since, actually) were lost with all hands. Crews train to escape but they joke about the futility of the training. Think of Kursk, lost to a hot torpedo.
If something opens the sub to the sea and the compartments are not all sealed, sayonara. The good news, I guess, is not having survivor's guilt.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Too many unknowns. Plus, the Japanese weren't known for their kindness to surrendering enemy.
I dont know if this class of sub even had an escape chamber.
I dont think stankey hoods were in use at the time.
Even if they were in use, the "stankey hood" is pretty much just a feel good thing for congressmen and familys.
Its not likely to save your life at those depths
Without knowing exactly what caused the Lagarto to sink, I can't give a 100 percent accurate opinion on this, but they probably didnt have much time to do alot. The Gulf of Thailand is really shallow. Shallow water amplifies depth charges, and makes the damage much worse to a submarine.
If they hit a mine, and it breached the pressure hull, it was probably all over in seconds. Sea pressure on the hull increases linearly with depth, and compounds flooding when a submarine is submerged. They would have had only a few seconds to escape, if even that, because a mine makes a pretty big hole in the hull.
Pressurizing a compartment with High pressure air would have bought more time, but as Travis mentioned, it probably would have been really hard on the crew-members doing it, if they even had the time to do it. In addition, it also would have made free-ascent impossible because the pressure in the compartment would have injured anyone trying to open a hatch facing outward.
They also could have been forced down until they suffocated, killed by poisonous Chlorine gas from a breached battery, suffocated by an onboard fire secondary to battle damage, or drowned by a breached hull valve that caused massive flooding. There are a million ways to die on a submarine. These are just a few
The Japanese also had a unique type of depth charge that consisted of a line, grapnel hook, and explosive device that traveled down the line to explode on contact with a submarine hull. Several boats described these in After action reports in this area of the world. it could be a candidate.
If a stricken WW2 sub could surface one last time, then some of the crew might have a chance to escape. However, they then had to worry about being shot by the enemy ships as they escaped, or being machine-gunned in the water. (BTW, the "sporting" brits had a habit of doing this to U-boat crews, so the Japs weren't the only bad guys) Plus, subs don't carry much in the way of life rafts, and floating in the ocean 100 miles from land doesn't give you much to be hopeful about. There are lots of reports of planes sinking subs and reporting "survivors in the water", but by the time surface ships arrived, they were gone.