Henry Breault receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Coolidge. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
On March 8, 1924, Torpedoman Second Class Henry Breault received the Congressional Medal of Honor during a ceremony on the White House lawn. Breault won the medal for heroic actions after his submarine, the USS O-5 (SS-66), sank during a collision in the Panama Canal. Rather than escape from the vessel (which had collided with the S.S. Abangarez, owned by the United Fruit Company), Breault remained on board to assist a shipmate. Both were rescued a day later.
USS O-5 off Provincetown, MA, on April 14, 1918.
According to the Submarine Force Museum, Breault is the “only enlisted submariner to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions aboard a United States submarine.”
The rescue of USS O-5 (SS 66) at Coco Solo Submarine Base, Panama Canal Zone. Photo courtesy of Ric Hedman, TN(SS) and navsource.org.
President Coolidge awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to four individuals during his Presidency. The recipients were as follows:
BREAULT, HENRY. Torpedoman Second Class, U.S. Navy. Presentation: 8 March 1924. Citation: For heroism and devotion to duty while serving on board the U.S. submarine 0-5 at the time of the sinking of that vessel.
EDWARDS, WALTER ATLEE. Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy. Presentation: 2 February 1924. Citation: For heroism in rescuing 482 men, women and children from the French military transport Vinh-Long, destroyed by fire in the Sea of Marmora, Turkey, on 16 December 1922.
LINDBERGH, CHARLES A. Captain, U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve. Presentation: March 21, 1928. Citation: For displaying heroic courage and skill as a navigator, at the risk of his life, by his nonstop flight in his airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, from New York City to Paris, France, 20-21 May 1927, by which Capt. Lindbergh not only achieved the greatest individual triumph of any American citizen but demonstrated that travel across the ocean by aircraft was possible.
RYAN, THOMAS JOHN. Ensign, U.S. Navy. Presentation: 15 March 1924. Citation: For heroism in effecting the rescue of a woman from the burning Grand Hotel, Yokohama, Japan, on 1 September 1923.
For more information, see http://www.history.army.mil/moh.html .