This article was found on the Sun Times News Group. I thought it was worth posting here. Here is the link to the article, Movie Explores WWII Sub Found 60 Years Later.
By J.T. MORAND
For most of John Kenney’s life he’s heard a story about his grandfather William Mabin that had no ending.
He shared this experience with the families of the 86-member crew of the USS Lagarto, a submarine that disappeared in the Gulf of Thailand in 1945, just three months before World War II ended. He heard the story from his mother, Nancy Mabin Kenney, who was just a baby when the submarine and her father, a signalman from La Grange, vanished.
“It weighed on her so heavily,” said John Kenney, 40. “We picked up on it.”
But, four years ago, divers found the sub.
The next year, in 2006, Harvey Moshman, of Evanston, and fellow documentarian Chuck Coppola set out to make the documentary film, “Lost and Found: Legacy of USS Lagarto,” which will air on WTTW channels May 24-26 to honor the Lagarto crew and their families, and to teach others about the submarine and some of its crew, who still reside in the sub.
Steve Rashid, also of Evanston, did the documentary’s music.
“For 60 years, families of the Lagarto never knew what happened,” Coppola said.
“Everybody had the same interesting story that had no ending,” Moshman said. “Now we have an ending.”
The hour-long documentary uses photographs, film footage, interviews with family and friends of the crew and other WWII submariners, and computer-generated animation to tell the story of the Lagarto from its beginning to its current status as a war memorial. Viewers will learn about the men, their families, the conditions aboard submarines and the threats they faced.
Moshman and Coppola, writers and producers, hired technical divers John Chatterton and Ritchie Kohler, hosts of History Channel’s “Deep Sea Detectives” to survey the sub and film it.
The 312-foot long Lagarto was built in a shipyard in Manitowoc, Wis., and had to be slid sideways into the Manitowoc River with a splash that sent waves to the opposite shore. Manitowoc was one of five shipyards in the United States to build submarines.
The documentary shows the route the USS Lagarto took, which included a trip down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Farmers along the river would watch the alien-looking ships as a form of entertainment, the documentary explains.
An interview with Ben Jarvis, a commander on another submarine, reveals he was one of the last people to speak with Frank Latta, commander of the USS Lagarto, when the two subs pulled up next to each other so Jarvis could tell Latta about the convoy of Japanese ships in the shallow Gulf of Thailand.
The Lagarto set off in pursuit of the ships and never came back.
It wasn’t seen again until 60 years later, by another generation that included divers Jamie MacLeod and Stewart Oehl. They learned that fisherman had been losing nets there to someting big 250 feet below the surface.
Divers found the Lagarto covered in layers of those lost nets. Some mystery surrounds what exactly caused the sinking of the submarine.
A depth-charge attack from the Japanese ships almost certainly played a role, but divers could not find a crack in the sub’s hull. If the sub could be raised or entered, more clues might reveal what caused it to sink. But, it’s a memorial now, and law prohibits it from being raised or entered. However, “Lost and Found” explores some intriguing theories, which include an empty torpedo chute and the risk of diving a sub in such shallow waters.
Kenney would like to know more and is in favor of entering the sub, if it were possible.
“I think I’m in the minority, though,” he said, adding he respects the U.S. law and the wishes of the other families connected to the Lagarto crew.
Moshman said he has no interest in the interior of the sub. However, he confessed to being interested in something he was told, on good authority, is stowed on the Lagarto — a Harley Davidson motorcycle that belonged to Latta. The documentary tells how the bike was taken apart to get aboard the sub, and reassembled when it was in port so Latta could ride it.
Moshman and Coppola said “Lost and Found: Legacy of USS Lagarto” was framed as a Memorial Day story, something they decided back when the documentary crew was floating over the sub for four days in 2007. Little is known about submariners who occupied the ships that slipped unseen below the surface of the oceanic theaters of war. Escape from below was a long shot.
“They had the highest mortality rate of any branch in the service,” Moshman said.
The documentary, they said, will shed some light on these men and the crew of the USS Lagarto in particular.
“I’m excited for the larger public to know the story,” Kenney said.
‘Lost and Found: Legacy of USS Lagarto’
Airs at 6 p.m. May 24 at 2:30 p.m. May 25 and 3:30 p.m. May 26 at 3:30 p.m. on WTTW Channel 11. To find your local WTTW channel, go to www.wttw.com.
About Duane Johnson
