It was the chilly winter night of December 6, 1941, and Navy stoker John Capes was dozing off on his makeshift bunk bed made from an old torpedo tube. His vessel, the Parthian-class British submarine HMS Perseus, surfaced calmly while recharging her batteries under cover of the night near the shore of the Greek island of Kefalonia.
Suddenly, a massive explosion struck Perseus; the ship jerked violently, throwing Capes off his bed and sending him flying through the air. The lights went out, and he could feel the submarine dropping like an anvil amid the screaming sounds of the crew.
Water began pouring into the engine room as the air grew dense with smoke and fumes. As Capes scrambled across the engine room, he discovered the door was locked due to the water pressure. He then grabbed a flashlight and dragged as many injured men as he could toward an escape hatch. At 270 feet below the surface, Capes knew they would continue to sink.
The brave man then seized his only tool for survival, a bunch of Davis Submarine Escape Apparatuses that had only been tested at a depth of 100 feet, and fitted three injured men and himself with them. After what seemed like eons, he managed to release the hatch locking mechanism and leave the sinking submarine.
Even so, for the 31-year-old sailor, his survival story was just beginning…
