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Show 4 5. SHIES II iOEffl dLISi Both Escape After Most Unusual Un-usual Experience in History His-tory of the Craft. By JOHN M'HUGH STUART, Staff Correspondent cf International News Service. WASHINGTON, Dec. 0. Two United States submarines have collided thirty icet under water and both have come wifely home to port to tell what is so far the narrowest escape in the war. No one hd ever suspected that two Kuhmarines' could ' bump and not both tie crushed like e?g shell?. .So far as naval records show, no accident of the sort lias ever happened before. But this happened. And it was all so much in the course of the day's work tliat the men who felt death strike and miss are abk to tell of it quite casually. It has not been mnde a subject of report to the navy department. The only injury whs t h;i L the very stem of one vessel was 1 chipped off and some rivets were sprung ,-hft other. The commanding" officer of 'on-, eroel told the- story on a recent visit here. The navy department permits the story to be made public through, the International In-ternational News; Service. "We were bu?y on our usual job,' says the youthful skipper. "We knew this other chap was in the neighborhood en-paged en-paged in the samo maneuvers. We wero humping along at eight knots, thirty feet suhmerged. In about the coldest, bleakest streak of winter water that there Is on th Atlantic coast. "When, zowie! Something hit us. "We rolled over on our beam ends and then we stood on our tail, and before I knew it there was daylight In the periscope and we came down with a flop on top of the water, only to drop in again and out on co more, ail the time rolling from one beam end to the other. It seemed like half an hour before we got her stead j' on the surfa.ee. Honest, it was 0 somewhat of a surprise when she stopped plrouet ting and we got the hatch cover open. "And the first thing I saw when my head got above the combing was this other chap coming up Just the same as we were. The old man is one of my best ; friends, but when I saw him poke up on deck, I yelled some things to him that are- not in any copy of the regulations he ever saw. And ho yelled some back to me. " 'You blankety blank blank he yelled, 'you have chipped our nose off.' "Then we both got sane again and found neither of us was busted. Fortunately Fortu-nately lie had been ba rely moving. ITe was only logging about a knot an hour. A nd he said when he got the punch it sent him whanging down to the sandy bottom so hard that it knocked all hands o;"f their feet. Roth of us came up ail right and we finished the day's work, and we've been out again every day since, and. by golly, it's cold." That's all this young man had to say about It. But those in the navy department depart-ment who knew hirn and know the work he and his craft ore doing, have a little more to say. Jt happened the day after the F-1 and the F-3 collided in a fog with a long list of lost at sea. The young skipper who told the story lias been acting act-ing as the tackling dummy upon which h. various anti-submarine stunts have been fried. Tie persisted in the duty through Jr :onip. of the worst weather the coast has nowti. lie is to be married within a onth from the time when he felt that refill rush a loner his frafl craft's skin ' and felt her stagger to a blow supposedly fatal, blind and dumb beneath thirty feet of water. |