At the beginning of the 20th century, all major navies turned their attention toward
developing a weapon of immense potential—the military submarine. The highly
effective use of the submarine by the German Navy in World War I heightened this
interest and an emphasis was placed on the submarine that continues today.
The U.S. Navy had operated submarines on a limited basis for several years prior
to 1900. As American technology expanded, the U.S. submarine fleet grew
rapidly. However, throughout the period of 1912 to 1939, the development of the
Navy’s F, H, and S class boats was marred by a series of accidents, collisions, and
sinkings. Several of these submarine disasters resulted in a correspondingly rapid
growth in the Navy diving capability.
Until 1912, U.S. Navy divers rarely went below 60 fsw. In that year, Chief Gunner
George D. Stillson set up a program to test Haldane’s diving tables and methods of
stage decompression. A companion goal of the program was to improve Navy
diving equipment. Throughout a 3-year period, first diving in tanks ashore and
then in open water in Long Island Sound from the USS Walkie, the Navy divers
went progressively deeper, eventually reaching 274 fsw.
The experience gained in Stillson’s program was put to dramatic use in
1915 when the submarine USS F-4 sank near Honolulu, Hawaii. Twenty-one men
lost their lives in the accident and the Navy lost its first boat in 15 years of submarine
operations. Navy divers salvaged the submarine and recovered the bodies of
the crew. The salvage effort incorporated many new techniques, such as using
lifting pontoons. What was most remarkable, however, was that the divers
completed a major salvage effort working at the extreme depth of 304 fsw, using
air as a breathing mixture. The decompression requirements limited bottom time
for each dive to about 10 minutes. Even for such a limited time, nitrogen narcosis
made it difficult for the divers to concentrate on their work.
The publication of the first U.S. Navy Diving Manual and the establishment of a
Navy Diving School at Newport, Rhode Island, were the direct outgrowth of experience gained in the test program and the USS F-4 salvage. When the U.S. entered
World War I, the staff and graduates of the school were sent to Europe, where they
conducted various salvage operations along the coast of France.
The physiological problems encountered in the salvage of the USS F-4 clearly
demonstrated the limitations of breathing air during deep dives. Continuing
concern that submarine rescue and salvage would be required at great depth
focused Navy attention on the need for a new diver breathing medium.
In September of 1925, the USS S-51 submarine was rammed by a
passenger liner and sunk in 132 fsw off Block Island, Rhode Island. Public pressure
to raise the submarine and recover the bodies of the crew was intense. Navy
diving was put in sharp focus, realizing it had only 20 divers who were qualified to
go deeper than 90 fsw. Diver training programs had been cut at the end of World
War I and the school had not been reinstituted.
Salvage of the USS S-51 covered a 10-month span of difficult and hazardous
diving, and a special diver training course was made part of the operation. The
submarine was finally raised and towed to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York.
Interest in diving was high once again and the Naval School, Diving and Salvage,
was reestablished at the Washington Navy Yard in 1927. At the same time, the
Navy brought together its existing diving technology and experimental work by
shifting the Experimental Diving Unit (EDU), which had been working with the
Bureau of Mines in Pennsylvania, to the Navy Yard as well. In the following
years, EDU developed the U.S. Navy Air Decompression Tables, which have
become the accepted world standard and continued developmental work in
helium-oxygen breathing mixtures for deeper diving.
Losing the USS F-4 and USS S-51 provided the impetus for expanding the Navy’s
diving ability. However, the Navy’s inability to rescue men trapped in a disabled
submarine was not confronted until another major submarine disaster occurred.
In 1927, the Navy lost the submarine USS S-4 in a collision with the
Coast Guard cutter USS Paulding. The first divers to reach the submarine in 102
fsw, 22 hours after the sinking, exchanged signals with the men trapped inside.
The submarine had a hull fitting designed to take an air hose from the surface, but
what had looked feasible in theory proved too difficult in reality. With stormy seas
causing repeated delays, the divers could not make the hose connection until it was
too late. All of the men aboard the USS S-4 had died. Even had the hose connection
been made in time, rescuing the crew would have posed a significant problem.
The USS S-4 was salvaged after a major effort and the fate of the crew spurred
several efforts toward preventing a similar disaster. LT C.B. Momsen, a submarine
officer, developed the escape lung that bears his name. It was given its first operational
test in 1929 when 26 officers and men successfully surfaced from an
intentionally bottomed submarine.
The Navy pushed for development of a rescue chamber that was
essentially a diving bell with special fittings for connection to a submarine deck
hatch. The apparatus, called the McCann-Erickson Rescue Chamber, was proven
in 1939 when the USS Squalus, carrying a crew of 50, sank in 243 fsw. The rescue
chamber made four trips and safely brought 33 men to the surface. (The rest of the
crew, trapped in the flooded after-section of the submarine, had perished in the
sinking.)
The USS Squalus was raised by salvage divers (see Figure 1-21). This salvage and
rescue operation marked the first operational use of HeO2 in salvage diving. One
of the primary missions of salvage divers was to attach a down-haul cable for the
Submarine Rescue Chamber (SRC). Following renovation, the submarine,
renamed USS Sailfish, compiled a proud record in World War II.
Figure 1-21. Recovery of the Squalus.
|
Just as the loss of the USS F-4, USS S-51, USS S-4 and the
sinking of the USS Squalus caused an increased concern in Navy diving in the
1920s and 1930s, a submarine disaster of major proportions had a profound effect
on the development of new diving equipment and techniques in the postwar
period. This was the loss of the nuclear attack submarine USS Thresher and all her
crew in April 1963. The submarine sank in 8,400 fsw, a depth beyond the survival
limit of the hull and far beyond the capability of any existing rescue apparatus.
An extensive search was initiated to locate the submarine and determine the cause
of the sinking. The first signs of the USS Thresher were located and photographed
a month after the disaster. Collection of debris and photographic coverage of the
wreck continued for about a year.
Two special study groups were formed as a result of the sinking. The first was a
Court of Inquiry, which attributed probable cause to a piping system failure. The
second, the Deep Submergence Review Group (DSRG), was formed to assess the
Navy’s undersea capabilities. Four general areas were examined—search, rescue, recovery of small and large objects, and the Man-in-the-Sea concept. The basic
recommendations of the DSRG called for a vast effort to improve the Navy’s
capabilities in these four areas.
JDirect action on the recommendations of
the DSRG came with the formation of the Deep Submergence Systems Project
(DSSP) in 1964 and an expanded interest regarding diving and undersea activity
throughout the Navy.
Submarine rescue capabilities have been substantially improved with the development
of the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV) which became
operational in 1972. This deep-diving craft is air-transportable, highly instrumented,
and capable of diving to 5,000 fsw and rescues to 2,500 fsw.
Three additional significant areas of achievement for the Deep Submergence
Systems Project have been that of Saturation Diving, the development of Deep
Diving Systems, and progress in advanced diving equipment design.
