30,000 Leagues Undersea: True Tales of a Submariner and Deep Submergence Pilot

By Tom Vetter

Journey with me into the abyss, a world far more dangerous than space!

What's this book about? Life. Death. Imminent danger. Unexpected reprieve. Victory. Defeat. Success. Failure. Thermo-nuclear war. True love. Loss. High drama. Low comedy. Ronald Reagan. Mikhail Gorbachev. And Bond, James Bond.

They’re all here. Ninety amazing and entirely true tales of swash-buckling adventure on the sea and beneath it, as a boy grows into manhood steadfastly pursuing his lifelong dream, wins a million-to-one shot to become a Hydronaut, and lives a life of high adventure undersea exploring the abyss, a world far more dangerous than space.

The author states:

I have been trapped on the seafloor twice. Deluged by flooding as I dove a submarine to its maximum depth. In control of a submerged submarine on fire. Alone on a sinking boat at night, bailing to stay alive. Out of air with empty lungs while diving 90 feet down. Next to a fool about to light his cigarette as we stood on 66,000 gallons of high-octane gasoline. And I have had the chance to do and see amazing things, enough for ten lives.

I have sailed 100,000 miles in submarines, dove more than three miles to the abyssal seafloor of the Pacific, and explored an alien world far more dangerous than space. I have gone to places on Earth no one else ever will. I found the first naval aviator ever recovered from the abyss. I mapped the wreckage of USS Thresher. And I held thermonuclear targeting steady on Mother Russia as President Reagan met Gorbachev in Reykjavik.

In this book, I tell those stories and more, 90 stories of a life spent undersea. These are the good parts, cooked down to short tales you can read on a bus, a lunch break, or in your bunk before lights out.

Join me. I will take you places no one else can. You will survive, I promise, and have a good time along the way. So come on—dive in!

“At turns gripping, compelling, and simply enchanting, Vetter’s 30,000 Leagues Undersea is a door straight into a breathtaking world few human beings have ever touched ... or ever will.” –– Holly Lisle.

30,000 Leagues Undersea. Fiction adventures Jules Verne might have written. But I lived them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Vetter Books, LLC
• Release date: Apr 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781941160107

Book preview

***

THE TALES:

Inside MY Space Program

Hy·dro·naut noun \ˈhīdrəˌnȯt, -nät\

Definition of HYDRONAUT: A member of the crew of a deep-sea vehicle (as a bathyscaphe) other than a submarine.

Hydronaut. Merriam-Webster.com ¹

In many ways the Navy’s Deep Submergence Program was like its stellar counterpart, NASA’s Space Program: both programs were run by agencies of the U.S. Government; both sought to expand man’s understanding through the investigation of alien worlds; both involved cutting-edge science and a great deal of innovation, even improvisation at times; and the learning curve for each was very steep, even vertical, every day.

But there were some notable differences, too. The level of national resources committed to the two was markedly different—a single Saturn V launch cost $5 billion, probably more than all the money ever spent on Deep Submergence. The TV and news media were all over the Space Program, but rarely showed any interest in its undersea counterpart. The astronauts were lionized everywhere, but the Hydronaut title never stuck beyond the dictionary. Few Americans today even know there was a Deep Submergence Program—and after the Challenger Deep accomplishment, no one cared. For a time, every kid wanted to be an astronaut. As far as I know, I’m the only guy who ever started out to become a hydronaut and did so.

But the Inner Space Program, as some called it, actually put people regularly into alien worlds far more hostile than the moon or Mars. The sea pressure in the abyss is far greater than the surface pressure on all of the inner planets; since all the outer giants other than Jupiter have gravities comparable to Earth’s, we may yet find that their surface pressures are lower, too. Temperatures in the abyss are at or barely above the freezing point of saltwater; only the great pressure keeps the water liquid. And of course the liquid atmosphere in the abyss is unbreathable as well as cold.

But perhaps the biggest difference between the programs was the amount of human resources brought to bear to make our respective missions possible. NASA brought many thousands of scientists and engineers into the planning and design of each of the space missions, thanks to the funding provided by American taxpayers. In contrast, for many of the more than two dozen Navy deep submergence missions I participated in, we had . . . me.

To explain what I mean, let me walk through the planning needed in preparation for a dive. Planning began with the mission, or objective of the dive. Military missions often investigated the loss of an aircraft or some other vessel, while scientific missions typically carried a scientist seeking to gather data relevant to his scientific discipline such as oceanography, marine biology, or tectonic geology. Whatever the mission, the plan was developed to accomplish it as best we could.

Military missions such as aircraft searches were usually preceded by other missions that geolocated the wreck site using sidescan sonar and other large-area search systems; otherwise we were just driving around in the dark, like a man searching the lawn late at night with a flashlight, looking for his lost keys. Once we had a datum to work from, our work could proceed.

Scientific missions were at the heart of our 1977 Caribbean and Atlantic deployment. Scientists with good scientific ideas that met selection criteria of their host institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the Navy were granted one or more dives. And they showed up during their mission window with materials and plans in hand. As Trieste’s operations officer during the deployment, I sat down with each group of them to digest their goals, plans and background materials, and then worked with them to write a dive plan that would accomplish the goals they set.

The dive plan was a multi-page document that identified the pilot, co-pilot and observer; specified geocoordinates for the dive; named the support ship; outlined the objectives to accomplish; set down the background that explained the purpose of the mission; identified all special equipment to be carried or rigged; and wrote a procedure so that all hands—Trieste pilots, guest scientists, tracking and support teams, divers, support ship officers, dive and recovery parties—knew what we were to do and how we would go about it. Later during the dive, we consulted the plan often to ensure we got done what we had set out to do.

How many people were involved in the planning of space missions? Dozens? Hundreds? Certainly more than a few, or the one, I’ll bet.

Another key element to each mission was charting the dive site. Unlike space missions, we could not see our dive area—no one could. And as often as the seafloor at the dive site was an unending flat plain of tough, sticky clay (tenacious ooze, we called it), we found ourselves diving Trieste into unmapped canyons deeper and steeper than the Grand Canyon. Charting these sites became crucial, because we could not afford a potentially fatal crash-landing on the side of an unmapped cliff or onto an unexpected bench of mud that would mire Trieste like a mammoth in a tar pit.

So how did the charting get done? Did we use the standard navigation charts? No, the most accurate and detailed charts available usually showed the dive area we cared about as a quarter-inch square with maybe one sounding on it. Did we have teams of rocket scientists that sent probes down for three years to plumb and sample the site, as NASA does for Mars?

Nope. We had me.

I would lay out a grid of geocoordinates over the dive site, and then the support ship navigator and I would drive the grid using the ship’s fathometer to collect bathymetric (depth) information along each grid leg. With data in hand I would interpret the soundings and draw a chart to correct navigational scale, connecting and filling in the isobaths—lines of identical depth—to build up a map of the undersea topography just as the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) does on land. Then I would photocopy the portions around the dive site on a plastic sheet to create a transparency, use an overhead projector to correctly scale it for our navigational plotter, and retrace it to finally become a high-resolution chart on which we could directly navigate the bathyscaph.

Would you drop into a canyon four miles deep based on a hand-drawn chart? Maybe not. But for us, it was infinitely better than anything anyone else could provide, and much better than diving blind. And our experience with them was that the charts proved to be reasonably accurate predictions of the terrain we encountered.

There were astronauts when I was a kid. I didn’t want to be one once I realized I would never actually get beyond orbit. But as a hydronaut I did reach alien worlds, encounter real alien life forms, and map unexplored worlds. We hydronauts have been to places on Earth that no one before and no one else will ever visit. And it was my charts that took us there.

Eat your heart out, astronauts. Hydronauts have you beat!

***

So, What Is This Book All About?

***

I have been trapped on the seafloor in a submersible twice: once in the structure of an oil platform, and once under a gas pipeline. I have been deluged by flooding in the control room of a submarine at test depth. I have had the deck and conn of a submerged submarine on fire. I have been alone in the dark on a sinking boat, bailing to stay alive. While diving, I have been out of air with empty lungs 90 feet beneath the surface. I’ve stopped a fool a split-second from igniting a cigarette lighter in a cloud of gas fumes as we stood atop 66,000 gallons of high-octane gas. I have cheated death and survived more times than Indiana Jones. And though I am an ordinary man, God gave me extraordinary opportunities to do and see amazing things, enough for ten lifetimes.

I have sailed more than 100,000 miles in submarines, surfaced and submerged. I have made dives to depths greater than three miles to reach the abyssal seafloor of the Pacific, entering an alien world far more dangerous than space. I have gone to places on Earth no one else will ever go or see. I have found the remains of a naval aviator on the seafloor 2,000 feet down. I first mapped the wreckage of USS Thresher. And as America’s primary shooter in 1986, I held thermonuclear gun sights steady on Soviet targets as President Reagan faced down Gorbachev in Reykjavik.

In this book, I tell those stories and more. This book is a compilation of tales, the highlights of life spent as a submarine officer and a deep submergence pilot. These are the good parts, cooked down to short tales you can read on a bus, on a work break, or in your bunk before lights out.

Join me. I will take you places no one else can. You will survive, I promise, and have a good time along the way. So come on—dive in!

***

Avocation

A son’s destiny is beyond his father’s control, but not beyond his help. – TGV

As the oldest of five siblings, I learned the word responsibility long before I could spell it. It wasn’t something I took to naturally. I preferred to shirk all obligations, and only began to take on responsibility consistently as I entered my second decade, thanks to a father’s determination and firm grasp on manhood. Now I wear responsibility like my skin, something else I can never take off. But before I was tamed to that harness, I was truly free, so the choices I made then were solely and truly the deepest desires of my heart.

Dad had also been a sailor, during WWII. He was attending Notre Dame studying aeronautical engineering when his draft notice came through. But, although he was in all other respects more than qualified, his eyes weren’t good enough to allow him to become the pilot he longed to be or to obtain a commission. So he served as an aviation electrician’s mate in the Navy. A four-year enlistment was enough to instill a lifetime of naval discipline, and I was raised with naval phrases and naval justice, both swift and sure. It wasn’t easy on either of us.

I made my first lifetime decision at the age of seven, a career choice that drove many later decisions. I had already explored a series of future careers: cowboy, knight, cowboy, frontiersman, cowboy (I liked cowboys). But none of these were really anywhere near a final choice until I got chickenpox.

Or rather, until we all got chickenpox. It was 1957, I was seven, and we had recently moved to St. Louis. Dad had just become Honeywell’s flight test director for the U.S. Air Force’s supersonic F-101 Voodoo fighter electronics refit at McDonnell Douglas. We were living in a rented house, as this was a three-year assignment, and we already had a home in Minneapolis.

New schools brought new diseases. Dad hadn’t had chickenpox before either, so he and I and both my younger sisters were suddenly all struck down at once, stuck at home for a couple of weeks. We were all covered in pink spots, small pockmarks painted with calamine lotion to soothe the awful itching.

Only Mom was healthy, and she had her hands full looking after all of us. My sisters were small and had each other to play with. But Dad and I were trouble. We were restless souls whose discomfort was only intensified by cabin fever. Fortunately, Mom had an ally, something new at home—a television. Black and white images on an oblong screen set in a yellow maple cabinet. It was magic.

Together, Dad and I found ways to spend our forced confinement, lost in new pursuits. We watched television. Victory At Sea was a new program: exciting compilations of Navy footage of WWII film, set to music from Richard Rogers’s South Pacific. Thrilling episode after episode we watched, whenever they appeared. Both of us were awestruck by heroic exploits set in global carnage as the war shifted back and forth between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The imagery stays with me, and even today I own the series on DVD.

But another program had more immediate impact. Opening with a scene of a submarine surfacing at an extreme up-angle, Silent Service presented stories of U.S. submarine exploits drawn from WWII operations, often using actual combat footage from Navy archives. I found them infinitely compelling. Submarines were, to my young eyes, complex, mysterious, and very cool. I was irreparably smitten.

We also built plastic models. Dad chose a Japanese Zero as my first model because he expected that I would want to become a pilot. He wanted his lifelong dreams to become mine. I was unaware of this, so I made my own choices, and when we finished it, I asked for a submarine.

My father’s dismay was palpable. Although he had been just as thrilled and enamored of airplanes throughout his life, he didn’t quite understand my similar fascination in another technology no less complex. Only years later when I gave him an extended tour of USS Gudgeon, did he come to appreciate my choice. He said, I’ve always thought these things were a plumber’s nightmare, as wet inside as outside. But I was wrong. They’re a lot more complex than aircraft! No wonder you like them.

Too young to understand his disappointment, it had no impact on me. I was free, uninhibited, and absolutely certain in my choice. And I wanted a submarine of my own.

So as a good father does, he bent his wishes to mine and bought me a model U-boat. We built models of planes together, but I built the U-boat by myself. It was a treasure I built and played with, and it didn’t last long before bits started to break off. But the dream never broke and the choice was made. Someday, somehow, I would be a submariner.

***

Marianas Ambition

My heroes haven’t always been cowboys. – TGV

My dad’s mother Rose was my favorite grandmother, perhaps because I was her first grandchild and we bonded early. She mothered me for weeks when I was just a year old, as Mom was staying with her parents as she gave birth to my first sister, Shelley. Dad was overseas in England as a Honeywell technical expert. He was on a six-month deployment with the Air Force’s legendary 509th Bomb Group (of Hiroshima fame), which was practicing strategic bombing missions over Europe in order to deter Stalin’s military ambitions. The Korean War was raging, and I was a treasured guest of Grandpa George and Grandma Rose.

According to an oft-told family legend, it was during this time that I spoke my first real sentence, which turned out to be prophetic. I was seated in my father’s old high chair while Grandma fixed dinner, and I found myself in deep trouble. Somehow the safety strap had become unfastened, and I started to slip out the bottom, sliding to my doom. Clutching the tray in an attempt to avoid falling, I was heard to utter a desperate cry:

. . . Going down . . .!

I’ve been going down ever since.

Rose and I were always very close after that. She was widowed suddenly just before my sixth birthday, and family visits became very important to her. She lived in New Ulm, 90 miles away from Minneapolis, so we’d go down for all the big holidays, or after she was widowed, she would come to see us, chauffeured by her son George and staying in his home. Visiting her was always a treat, and staying with her was always okay with me. Many of my best memories occurred during stays with her. At six I asked her to be my girlfriend and promised to marry her someday. Later, when I introduced my wife to her and saw them together, I realized something profound. They took to each other instantly because they were essentially alike. I had indeed married my own grandmother.

Rose was a tiny woman, never breaking the five-foot mark. She was a banker’s wife and a pillar of both church and community. In her youth she was delicate and willowy, but more tennis-ball-shaped when I knew her. She had a tinkling laugh like chandelier crystals, twinkling eyes set in laugh lines, and a little hook to her nose. She had a strong sense of propriety, a tender heart, and a lot of starch in her corset.

I only ever saw her let her guard down once, at the end of her life, when the hospital had over-medicated her and her normal inhibitions were temporarily turned off. She was desperate for my brother and me to bust her out and take her home. In just one sentence she let slip an insight I had never known—I’ll bet when she was young she was a lot more fun than I had ever suspected.

After Grandpa George died, Rose left his office largely untouched. A large oak hutch that had originally been the built-in dining room sideboard inhabited one wall. I liked to borrow the latest National Geographic magazines stored in it, lie on the rug, and read. The August 1960 issue captured my full attention, and changed my life again.

In the article called Man’s Deepest Dive, a man named Jacques Piccard described how he and Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh descended in a craft called a bathyscaph to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, an abyssal hole 37,800 feet deep—a mile deeper than Mount Everest was high. How cool was that?!

I devoured the story and studied the details. How strange this vessel was, an undersea dirigible that used gasoline for buoyancy and iron shot for ballast. How the descent and ascent took hours, with just 20 minutes spent on the seafloor. How they had been unable to take pictures because contact with the seafloor stirred up silt, which did not drift away because there was no real current to move it. How they had seen a flatfish on the bottom, life despite 17,000 pounds of sea pressure. How a window in the access trunk had cracked under the unimaginable pressure and imperiled their egress.

Clearly these were men of both tremendous vision and courage, able and willing to risk their lives to explore a world far harder to survive in than the moon.

This was it! This was what I had to do—become a bathyscaph pilot and explore the 70 percent of the planet covered by water. It became an ambition, a dream, and a lifelong goal. It also became the determinant by which many subsequent decisions and choices were made: Will this choice help me become a bathyscaph pilot?

Let me elaborate. I did not become a naval officer, decide to be a submariner, and then choose to be a bathyscaph pilot, although that was the eventual sequence of events. I made those choices because I realized that the bathyscaph was operated by submariners who were naval officers. To become a pilot, I would need to join the Navy, earn a commission, qualify as a submarine officer, and then apply to become a pilot. So that is what I did.

I knew there weren’t many who would get to pilot such a machine; I had no idea how many would even want the chance. I had no idea then how great the odds against me were, but it would not have mattered. When you find the thing you love, you don’t care what obstacles you face or what cost you will pay. Whatever happened, I wanted to be one of the few.

That article did one more thing for me. It named the men who had become my heroes: Don Walsh, Jacques Piccard, Larry Schumacher, Dr. Andy Rechnitzer, and Giuseppe Buono. Over the years I have met all but Andy, who passed away just before I got the chance.

Today they are still my heroes. I think only Don is left and I count him a good friend. I’ve gone on to join that very small fraternity, but that’s a later tale. This is the turning point that steered me in their direction.

***

A Visit to the Chief of Staff

Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it! – Unknown

It was spring of 1976, and my second sea tour was coming to an end with a new assignment in July, after a year on Harder and more than two on Gudgeon. According to my detailer, I had a tour of shore duty coming. I wanted to get my long-awaited choice of shore duty—another two years at sea, this time on Trieste II.

Shore duty at sea? Yes, you read that right. The general name detailers gave to a job you wanted, as opposed to a job the Navy assigned you, was termed shore duty. Let’s face it, rarely did anyone want more time at sea as a reward for long periods of hard work at sea. But I guess I was one of the few.

She lived nearby—my dream girl. Trieste II had a compound nearby on Ballast Point, and when she was out of the water I saw her coming and going between Gudgeon and the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. I had plenty of time to think about how I was going to get orders to her.

I asked the detailer about orders to Trieste II and got a sympathetic but non-committal answer. Yes, it was possible, but there were a lot of shore jobs that had to be filled and I was under consideration for a number of them. But my interest in the bathyscaph would be taken into consideration.

Not good enough. Shore duty was supposed to be my reward for doing a good job during four years of hard work at sea, more than half of which was actually spent at sea, and much overseas. I had done as the Navy wished; it was my turn now.

Then I learned that my first CO had a new job. He was now up the hill at COMSUBDEVGRU ONE, the squadron responsible for Trieste II and the other deep submergence units. And he was chief of staff, number two in command of the group. Assigning officers to the DSVs was done through him, depending on his approval or veto.

God had just smiled on me. The one guy who could give me my dream was my old boss, a man who had been the fifth to pilot the bathyscaph when he was my age. It would certainly be worth a walk up the hill.

I arranged an appointment and went to see him. I explained that I was just as keen to serve on Trieste II as ever, and that I had a shore tour coming in a few months. I asked if she would have an officer’s billet (job) opening up soon, and if there was a way I could get orders to her. He was understanding, and said he’d see what he could do. I thanked him most earnestly and left with hope in my heart. I had a shot at it.

Nothing more was heard for several weeks. And then one day the XO called me into his office to say that I had received orders for my next tour. My heart jumped into my throat. He didn’t say anything more, he just handed them to me. It was short, but oh so sweet. He grinned as I did my best rebel yell.

It read, …report COMSUBDEVGRU ONE not later than 31 AUG 76 [for] duty with TRIESTE II (DSV-1).

God had just done more than smile, after my old CO whispered in His ear.

***

Trieste II at Last

BUPERS Order 175438, dated April 5, 1976, read:

"LT THOMAS G. VETTER, USN

USS GUDGEON {SS 567} {0567}

WHEN RELIEVED IN AUG 76 DETACHED DUTY; REPORT COMSUBDEVGRU ONE NLT 31 AUG 76 DUTY WITH TRIESTE II {DSV 1} AS AN OPERATOR OR CREW MEMBER OF AN OPERATIONAL SELF-PROPELLED SUBMERSIBLE INCLUDING UNDERSEA EXPLORATION AND RESEARCH VEHICLES;

LIST I- ITEM-19-TEN; 23-PERS-423

JAMES D. WATKINS

VICE ADMIRAL, USN

CHIEF OF NAVAL PERSONNEL

COPY TO:

COMSUBDEVGRUONE"

And so it was that I left Gudgeon as she was about to return to the shipyard, and reported to COMSUBDEVGRU ONE. Since both were located on the Ballast Point Submarine Base in San Diego, it wasn’t a big move for me. COMSUBDEVGRU ONE was the parent squadron for Trieste II and the other DSVs and DSRVs, so it handled many of the personnel, supply, pay, engineering, medical, and other administrative functions for these small units. After I checked in, I was assigned to Trieste as her third officer.

As a unit, Trieste occupied a fenced compound along the water, one I walked by routinely from my previous boats to reach the BOQ where I lived when ashore. There was a large steel Butler building in the compound housing offices, parts, and workspaces, but most of the work was done out of six vans that went aboard a support ship when Trieste went to sea for prolonged periods.

The crew of Trieste typically consisted of three officers, five chief petty officers (CPOs), and 15 to 19 enlisted men. Most of the latter were fairly senior petty officers; all were very experienced technicians, and many were also experienced Navy SCUBA divers, hand-picked for their skills and competence, I can honestly say they were, man-for-man, the finest group of military professionals I ever had the pleasure to join. Officer or enlisted, their skills were much better than average, and everyone pulled their weight far beyond the norm, even in an elite service like the general Submarine Force. In three years we had just one incident that required imposing military justice. In the same period I watched these men work day and night in open ocean and undersea. They worked tired and worn out, without complaint, under the most severe conditions, to ready, dive, and recover the bathyscaph. I will always have the greatest respect for all of them.

Trieste’s officers were expected to qualify and serve as pilots, but our chiefs were also allowed to train as pilots if they so chose, and three among us ultimately did. In fact, of the 38 men from Trieste, Trieste II, and Trieste II (DSV-1) who qualified as bathyscaph pilots, 30 were officers, two were warrant officers, and six were chief petty officers.

Like flights into space, dives in Trieste were precious experiences. In their service lives, Trieste made 128 dives, Trieste II made 54, and Trieste II (DSV-1) made 129; a total of 311 dives in 31 years, or roughly 10 per year. The last 263 dives were made by the U.S. Navy. The dive logs can be found on Trieste’s website, located at: http://bathyscaphtrieste.org/

Dives were rare and demand was high for a chance to go down. The opportunities went first to pilot candidates, so only rarely was there an opportunity to send a crewman down. Yet many of the most dedicated crewmen did get a chance, and the other crewmembers envied their luck.

The bathyscaph itself was astonishing. Ninety feet long, 18 feet high and about as wide, out of the water it was bigger than a bus. Its hull was cylindrical with a hemispherical nose and a conical tail. A flat superstructure above the hull provided a walking surface and housed many of the electrical housings and external devices. A fairwater amidships forward surrounded the entrance hatch. The hull sat on four stubby skegs—rigid legs that held the underside of the hull off the bottom, and kept the sphere out of the mud.

Bathyscaph Trieste II (DSV-1) sitting high and dry on the skegs. Black stripes mark internal bulkheads in the float. For scale, note the men working on lights and cameras. The sphere is to the left and behind them (Photo by Stan Reinhold, with permission.)

Despite her size, the huge cylindrical hull (called the float) was remarkably thin; she was built of 16-gauge steel over a steel skeleton, so most of her skin was just 1/8th of an inch thick. It was thin because it wasn’t designed to withstand sea pressure—just to contain the gasoline. This is because Trieste was different; she wasn’t like a submarine, she was really an undersea zeppelin, like the Hindenburg. She operated in much the same way, which is why we were called pilots. In fact, when Auguste Piccard sold the original Trieste to the U.S. Navy, he recommended that the Navy man the vehicle with blimp pilots, rather than submariners or aviators. But the Navy had no blimps left, so submariners became the Navy’s choice to operate the vessel.

The float was internally compartmented by nine bulkheads running athwartships and two fore-and-aft into 29 compartments. Of these, three held 30 tons of steel shot for ballast, to pull us to the bottom; two were ballast tanks holding air to keep us afloat when surfaced and water when submerged; and the remainder were filled for diving with 66,119 gallons of avgas—115/145 octane aviation gasoline that provided buoyancy undersea. The entire craft weighed 100 tons out of the water, and 300 tons when submerged.

So Trieste was built to allow sea pressure to act in ways that preserved her integrity. Things that had to stay dry and couldn’t take sea pressure—people, electronics, light bulbs, etc.—were put in hard cylinders and spheres that could withstand a sea pressure equal to 13,500 psi—one-and-a-half times her 20,000-foot test depth.

Everything else was designed to compensate for sea pressure in one of two basic ways: (1) we let sea water flood the inside and convey the pressure to both sides of the structure, cancelling it out—as in the case of the skegs, superstructure, and into the float itself, by means of special piping. Or (2) we used bladders of oil to fill other boxes that didn’t mind pressure but couldn’t be exposed to salt water, such as the silver-zinc batteries and the electrical switch boxes. Then, as we went deep, sea pressure squeezed the bladder to push oil into the box, compensating rather than crushing it.

We had a reminder of the consequence of sea pressure with us all the time at sea. High on Trieste’s radio mast was a pipe that had been missed when the welders built it; they left no hole to allow it to free-flood. And so, on her first dive out of the shipyard, the sea fixed that flaw by crushing the pipe flat, like you’d squeeze a toothpaste tube to get the last of the paste out of it. Quarter-inch-thick steel is no match for abyssal pressures.

Beneath the float between the forward skegs the personnel sphere was mounted. Seven feet in outer diameter with walls six inches thick and built of HY140 steel, the sphere was internally lined with bays of electronic controls so that it had only about a four-foot diameter of floor. Into this snug cabin we routinely squeezed three men: a pilot, co-pilot, and navigator or observer. Outside and forward of the sphere were the manipulator, a number of thallium-iodide lights, and video and still cameras mounted on pan-and-tilt mechanisms so that we could see in almost all directions—everything but straight up.

To shed weight and ascend, we had the ability to drop steel shot from the shot siloes through magnetic valves original invented by Piccard. The shot flowed through a pipe around which an electrical coil was wound, creating an electromagnet. Cut power and shot would flow. Restore power and the magnetic force would hold the shot in place. It was a fail-safe mechanism to ensure we could release shot on command. And since water and air formed rust clumps in the shot in mere hours that could block the shot valves and trap us on the seafloor, we could de-energize another electromagnet in an emergency and drop the entire bottom of the shot silo and all its remaining shot to allow us to return to the surface.

We could drop shot to lighten ourselves, and we could vent avgas to add weight again. Avgas is so buoyant that it floats to the surface and completely vaporizes, without creating a slick. We had 5,000 gallons to maneuver with, but never used anywhere near that much—perhaps a few hundred on a demanding dive.

The business end of Trieste, showing the sphere with its main viewport; the forward skegs; forward, port, and starboard pan-and-tilt lights and cameras; and the manipulator. (Photo by Stan Reinhold, with permission.)

We had a six-function manipulator which mimicked the human arm and allowed us to put recovered items in a sample basket. It had super-human strength afforded by hydraulics, but it was also finicky and prone to damage.

Four electric thrusters gave us propulsion; one on the centerline aft pushed straight ahead or pulled us astern; two, mounted on tail fins aft would turn Trieste to port or starboard, or together add to our forward or reverse motion. And topside forward on the starboard side we had a bow thruster that would assist turns by pushing port or starboard as well.

We never drove Trieste on the surface; she had no need. We would take her in tow by her support ship. But on the bottom she was fairly nimble and we could fly or drive her over the seafloor. Trimmed to within 200 pounds lighter than neutral, we had a trail ball—a 200-pound ball of lead on a cable—that anchored us an adjustable height above the bottom. Flying on the trail ball kept us up out of the mud and reduced the risk of driving into rocks or debris. But the ball was connected to its cable with a weak link, so we could break free should we wedge it under something; far too often, we lost the trail ball when the link snapped in heavy seas.

We could also ski on the skegs, riding lightly on the smooth steel shoes with which the skegs were soled. When we made return dives in an area we could tell we’d been there by our skeg tracks and by the little shot piles left on the earlier dive. Following our own tracks was a useful way of returning to a site or feature of interest.

When we took Trieste out to sea from our San Diego compound behind a support ship of opportunity (meaning one loaned to us to support a short series of dives), the process went like this. The 100-ton floating crane would come to the compound, pick up the vehicle and set her into the water. Trieste would float high, with only half the float submerged. We had a set of mooring buoys next to the compound where we could moor her out of harm’s way. We would then use two local Navy MIKE boats to drive Trieste to the Navy’s Fuel Pier near Ballast Point to take on 66,000 gallons of avgas ballast, which weighed her down to about her normal floating condition. Fully gassed, we would return her to the moor.

Trieste II floating high in the water before being gassed and shotted, 1976. (Photo by Stan Reinhold, with permission.)

Then all hands—officers, chiefs and men—would turn to, to transfer thirty tons of steel shot in 25-pound bags from the compound onto the bathyscaph, where it was poured through funnels into the shot siloes. The steel shot offset the buoyancy of a portion of the avgas, and gave Trieste a lift capacity of 20,000 pounds—ten tons. In the deep submergence world this heavy-lift capability was unique. Nothing else could retrieve more than perhaps a ton.

The support ship would come by on the day we went to sea and would take the vehicle in tow. The Boston whaler would follow the support ship and serve as a chase boat and taxi between the ship and Trieste. Day or night, in all kinds of weather, the boat crews rode it out. We thought nothing of donning a flight-deck life jacket and jumping in the whaler for a run out to the vehicle to do some job. We joked about it—called it swash, short for swash-buckling. It was fun, though in ways perhaps only pirates and rodeo cowboys truly appreciate.

Trieste II in tow, gassed and shotted, ready to dive, with the Boston whaler keeping station, 1976. (Photo by author.)

At sea, there was always work to be done. Until the vehicle dove, or once she started her return to the surface, the crew worked their butts off with this task or that. In tow a stern watch, manned by a chief and a couple of crew, looked after the vehicle and coordinated all activities. Whaler crews ran gear back and forth while other crewmen performed maintenance and repair work on the vehicle in tow.

Just before the dive, the dive supervisor sent divers down to ready the underside of the vehicle—uncover cameras, open shot valves, pull safety pins, etc. Then the command pilot would do the pre-dive checks in the sphere—energizing and testing equipment on his checklist. Finally the pilots would enter the sphere; the topside support team would seal them in and flood the access trunk between the sphere and the top hatch, and return to the ship. Swimmers would, on command, open the vents and be picked up by the whaler while Trieste slowly vanished into the deep.

Master Chief George Ellis, enlisted DSV Pilot #16, watches divers through the viewport. (Photo by Stan Reinhold, with permission.)

During a dive most of the crew could rest while the officers and chiefs performed the mission. Dives might last eight to 10 hours; most went twice that, and some exceeded 24 hours. It was a long time in that little sphere.

When Trieste surfaced the topside team needed to blow the access trunk and open the hatch. Safety pins were inserted and the pilots were ferried back to the ship for a meal and sleep. Batteries had to be recharged immediately after a dive, so monstrous battery cables were floated back to Trieste and a generator tended to power the charge. Film cameras and items in the sample basket were retrieved by divers, who also safed the vehicle, shutting shot valves, covering lenses, and so on.

Broken gear—often