WHETHER YOU WERE IN THE SERVICE FOR SEVERAL YEARS OR AS A CAREER, PLEASE DESCRIBE THE DIRECTION OR PATH YOU TOOK. WHERE DID YOU GO TO BOOT CAMP AND WHAT UNITS, BASES, SHIPS OR SQUADRONS WERE YOU ASSIGNED TO? WHAT WAS YOUR REASON FOR LEAVING?
I reported to boot camp at Great Lakes, IL on November 3, 1970. Ah, the joys of attending basic training during an Illinois winter! We were given three choices of rates (Navy-ese for 'occupations'). My first choice was Ocean Systems Technician (OT) and my second was Sonar Technician (ST).
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| My 'hero' picture with the MK-12 helmet aboard YSD-53 |
I don't recall what the third choice was. The Navy wanted to augment the submarine fleet, and I almost volunteered for submarine duty, until our fateful first liberty call, when a group of us took the train into Chicago. We serendipitously visited the Museum of Science and Industry, and after touring the captured German U-boat, I politely rescinded my offer. Yes, I realize that there are only two types of ships in the fleet: submarines and targets. I also realize that modern nuclear submarines are much, much larger and more sophisticated than World War II diesel/electric boats, and I have utmost respect for all you Bubbleheads out there, but, decided that I'd still like to see the sun every day, thank you very much.
Well, the Navy was having none of that, and I was shocked to receive orders to Torpedoman's Mate 'A' School at RTC Orlando, Florida. I spent a month and a half in the frozen tundra at NTC Great Lakes attending Basic Electricity and Electronics School, and finally, in March 1971 I was on a flight to McCoy Field in sunny Florida.
The course covered WWII-era steam torpedoes and tubes and was mostly forgettable except for one incident that changed the course of my life. As I've stated earlier, I wasn't particularly enthusiastic when I got orders to the TM school. I don't have anything against the rate, but I simply didn't have any interest in it.
I admit that I didn't push myself too hard, but I stayed out of trouble and passed all the written and practical tests. Apparently, too many of my classmates did worse. One day we students were summoned to an All-Hands meeting. The Commanding Officer (CO) of the school was there, as well as a civilian official in a suit and tie from Washington DC. They told us that the fail rate at the school was unacceptably high and wanted to know from the students why this was so. We could speak freely, they said. Total silence. Then, a hand from the back of the room was raised, and the speaker -- I'm not admitting anything! -- said, "Well, maybe it's because some of us got stuck with this school and don't want to be here." Total silence. All eyes were on the miscreant, including the laser eyes of the CO. Uh-oh, the big mouth did it again!
A week later, a messenger interrupted class and told the instructor that I was to report to the CO's office. "Oh man, you're in trouble now," everyone said almost as one. I was expecting to get thrown out of the school and sent to the fleet as an I.B.M ("instant boatswain's mate, " a.k.a. "deck ape") or permanent mess cook.
The CO was looking at my records and said, "I see you studied marine biology in college."
"Yes, sir!"
"Well, there is a unit requesting volunteers to train marine mammals. Of course, it is in a tropical country that has hostile action. Are you interested?"
"Yes, sir!" (Hmm, I wonder where that could be...!)
"Of course, you will need to satisfactorily complete this course..."
So, I got three sets of orders. One, to 4-week scuba training at the 2nd Class Dive School at San Diego, California. From there, a 10-day Vietnamese Orientation school at Coronado, CA. Then, a flight to Oahu to the Naval Undersea Center for several weeks of Marine Mammal Training and then to Cam Rahh Bay as a member of Project Short Time.
I arrived in Honolulu in September, 1971 and was met at Honolulu Airport by one of the members of the unit, Chief Foster (Navy chiefs are the friendliest guys on the planet. You can always call them by their first names. Funny thing is, they all seem to have the same first name, "Chief"). I remember being totally blown away by the ride over the Pali Highway. I didn't travel much before joining the Navy!
The Naval Undersea Center (NUC) occupied the far side of the peninsula of the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station (KMCAS), across the main runways. You had to stop at a traffic light before crossing and wait for clearance because it was a very active base. No running the red light here! The Phantom jets, in particular, were awesome to watch at such close range. They would make a deafening roar and spew a cone of flame as they took off.
NUC consisted of a few prefabricated trailers and piers with lots of cages and pens at the waters edge. The cages contained sea lions which were being trained to recover practice torpedoes and missiles while the occupants of the pens were Atlantic bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus for you science buffs). Civilian trainers, many from the tourist dolphin shows at "seaquariums" in Florida and California, were employed to modify the behaviors for military purposes.
The dolphins were used in a new swimmer defense system to locate enemy sappers who would plant explosives on a ship's hull and sink it to disrupt the supply chain of war material in South Vietnam. Dolphins are highly intelligent animals and have such an amazing sense of echolocation that they can distinguish between, say, a log, a shark, a turtle, or a human swimmer. Because it was risky -- and expensive -- to use civilian trainers in a war zone, the Navy established a military detachment to test the system in a war setting. The civilians trained the animals. We in the military detachment were tasked with maintaining these behaviors.
I spent several weeks in Hawaii learning the animals and the system. My civilian mentor was Mike Braget. He was among the initial members of the military detachment in Cam Ranh Bay. After his enlistment ended he returned to NUC as a civilian trainer.
When the time came for my deployment, I flew from Oahu to Travis Air Base in California. In about a 24 hour flight, we had one refueling stop at Wake Island and another at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, with the final destination Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. A year and a half earlier, I figured that if I joined the Navy, I wouldn't be sent to Vietnam, and here I was, a volunteer no less! After checking in, I didn't have a clue as to what was next. All of a sudden there were two camouflage-clad arms around me in a bearhug. It was my greeting party. I'm not sure what kind of an impression I made, because halfway across town, I realized in a panic that I didn't have my personnel records packet on me. We turned around and made our way back to the airport, and luckily they were still on the check-in desk.
So, finally, I arrived at my temporary quarters, which was the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) villa in the old French part of Saigon. I and our medical corpsman were the only non-EOD qualified personnel in the NUC military detachment. If an explosive device (e.g., a limpet mine) was ever found on one of the ships we were protecting, the EOD guys would be tasked to remove it. I only spent a couple of days in Saigon, getting my jungle camouglage uniforms, sidearm, steel pot, etc. The villa itself dated to French colonial times. There was a memorial shrine set up in honor of EOD sailors who perished in the line of duty. The roof of the building was set up as a bar. One of the most surreal evenings of my life was spent up there drinking gin and tonics with some of the local, ah, ladies, listening to the dull thud of artillery explosions in the distance. During the day, as I was getting ferried about getting my stuff, we were ordered to keep the windows of the jeep closed, despite the stifling heat. There were student protests going on, and they were worried that a grenade or Molotov cocktail would be tossed in. A few days later, I was aboard a propeller Caribou transport aircraft headed for the air base at Cam Ranh Bay.
The Project Short Time compound (also known as our 'hooch") consisted of a few quonset huts located on the southern tip of the Cam Ranh Peninsula, adjacent to the Naval Communication Station.
Our mission was to protect the ammunition jetty located just south of the Cam Ranh Air Base a few miles north of our compound. Our barge was moored a few hundred yards to the west of the pier. The dolphin pens were secured to the barge. There were four animals: John, Slan, Garth and Toad. We had excellent views of the bay from our position. During the day and on nights when there was no ship at the pier, there was just a watch on the barge, and the Sentry Vehicle Station boats were tied up. If a ship was in port, we deployed the SVSs before sundown for our nightly vigil. The three SVSs were anchored near the pier so that all 360 degrees around the pier was monitored.
The unique SVS boat had been specifically designed for Project Short Time. It was a pontoon-type boat, about 30 feet long, with a flat deck. A large cutout enclosed below with mesh netting housed the dolphin during a watch. A small cabin which could fit 2 people was just aft of the animal's pen. Propulsion was supplied by twin outboard motors. The boat was motored out to the sentry site and anchored by a 2-point moor. First, a Danforth anchor was let out aft, the boat eased forward and the anchor set, and then carefully moved forward, letting out almost all of the stern rode. The forward anchor was then let out and set, and the boat was positioned at the center. The operator then set a net extension to make the pen larger and open the gate. He'd then set the paddles in the water (more on them later), turn on the 'black box' in the cabin and test the electronics. Meanwhile, back at the barge, other members released the dolphin from its home pen and it followed a 17 foot Boston Whaler to the SVS. It swam inside the SVS pen, the operator closed the gate, and he'd give the animal its reward: a couple of thawed frozen smelt, which they loved. The first fishy snacks of the day contained several vitamin pills.
Communication between the human operator and the dolphin was accomplished using underwater sound transducers and three paddles which projected underwater into the pen. When the operator wanted the animal to conduct a search, he'd press a button on the 'black box' which caused the transducer to make a sound at a specific frequency. When the dolphin heard the sound, he (or she, we had both genders) pressed the paddle on the aft center of the pen, just below the cabin window, and searched the water for swimmers. A yellow light illuminated on the box to let the operator know the system was functioning. The animal then rotated onto its side and scanned in a 180 degree arc. It appeared to nod its head up and down. It was transmitting a loud sound beam into the water. If the sound encountered an object, it bounced back and alerted the dolphin --just like a submarine's or destroyer's sonar, but way more sophisticated -- which knew exactly what the objects were. Dolphins can actually tell the species, size, etc. of any fish in this way. That's how they hunt in the wild. This took about 20 - 30 seconds. If the animal 'saw' nothing, it pressed a paddle on the forward right side of the pen with its 'beak' (actually called it's rostrum), and a green light illuminated on the box in the cabin. If the operator was satisfied that the animal performed a good search, he'd toss a couple of fish through the window into the eager mouth of the animal as a reward. The trick, of course, was in determining if it was a good search, because the animals sometimes got bored and would screw off just like any red-blooded enlisted sailor! The dolphin's sonar is very loud, but most of it is in the ultrahigh frequency that humans can't hear. It was in the detailed observation of the behavior that you could tell. Of course, every now and then, an actual human swimmer would have to be taken far away and try to sneak up on the system to test it.
If the animal located a swimmer, it pressed a paddle on the left forward side of its pen, and a red light would go on on the box. The operator then pressed the button again to re-interrogate the animal, and it would search again. This was done to prevent false positives. The operator immediately radioed the news back to base. The dolphin by this time was very excited, like a dog wanting to chase a ball. The operator would come out of the cabin, gently place a special tagging device over the dolphin's rostrum, and then he'd open the gate to release it. The animal swam directly toward the target and rammed its rostrum near the center of the person's back.
This tagging device was intended to mark the location of the target, and it had two parts. A hollow sleeve was designed to fit over the animal's rostrum (what you'd think of as the snout. Remember, the actual breathing hole is back up on top of the head.)
Attached to the forward part of the sleeve was a bouyant detachable cone. When the dolphin pushed the cone into the back of its target, it depressed a button which released the cone. As soon as the cone was free, a bright strobe light began flashing, which alerted the team to the location of the target. There were actually two types of cones, one that simply separated from the sleeve and another that triggered a little spring-loaded stainless steel barbed dart connected to the detached cone by a 5 meter wire cable.
The dolphin was in contact with the target for only the instant it took to deploy the device. When the operator saw the distant flashing, he pressed the recall transducer button. As soon as the animal returned to the SVS, the gate was closed, the now coneless sleeve removed, and a bucketful of tasty fish was tossed to the now ecstatic dolphin. An armed boat was then dispatched to secure the target.
We also had several 17-foot Boston Whalers, painted all black. A 50 mm machine gun mount was mounted on the bow. Attached to the console were several holsters made from cut out sausage buoys into which were inserted an M79 grenade launcher ('thump gun') and M16s. After the SVSs were moored, the animals were led one at a time from their pens to the SVS boats. They freely followed the Whaler. Only one animal failed to return during the year Project Short Time existed in Cam Ranh Bay.
I shared my nocturnal watch and the dolphin John with Charlie Wongdock. One of us would get some rest while the other would stand the watch. Every few minutes we'd press the transducer button to 'interrogate' the animal, who would perform his search and get his reward snack. We also were equipped with the new high-tech night vision enhancing Starlight scopes, which allowed us to scan the darkness around us for sampans skulking about. Sampans were often used by the VC to insert sappers by water. In fact, shortly before I arrived in Cam Ranh Bay, a team of insurgents managed to infiltrate the air force base and blow up a significant munitions dump.
If we saw a sampan entering restricted waters near the jetty through our Starlight scopes, we'd radio the barge, and they'd send out the black Whaler to intercept it. Before getting too close, the boat crew launched parachute flares to illuminate the sampan using the M79 grenade launcher ("thump gun"). One night I was assisting GM1 Hart by handing him the rounds from the ammo box, when one of them didn't feel right. I looked down at it, and it had an orange top (explosive grenade) instead of a white top (flare)! Oops, put that one back! Once the sampan was inspected, it was towed back to shore and the local police notified. I felt sorry for the folks, because every time we intercepted a sampan it was a local fisherman who'd been fishing the area for many years. But, it was Vietnam, and you never knew...
The sampans were small primitive craft, filled up with monofilament line. I have no idea how they managed to keep it from tangling. Another time we picked up a couple of kids in a sampan, and towed them back to shore. They were scared witless and crying while waiting for the cops. Unfortunately, I carelessly stepped a little too close to the water and slipped on a slick patch of algae. SPLASH! As I hauled my fully clothed drenched self onto the quay, the tears quickly turned to belly laughs.
Every other day or so, one of us was selected to make a test swim on the system, always in the dead of night. The Whaler would take the pretend sapper a long way from the barge, practically across the bay, and drop him off, alone, with only a small strobe light to signal in case something went wrong. I can admit that it was an unnerving experience to be swimming on the surface in a tropical bay in near total darkness by yourself. The waters teemed with sharks, barracuda, rays, sea snakes, and, of course, we didn't want to meet any small brown humans towing packages, either. We had to swim slowly and as quietly as possible, and it took a lot of resolve not to shout out at the slightest ripple in the black water surrounding you. It was actually a relief when you saw the signal from the SVS that the animal had 'seen' you and was on its way. One time I could see a line of red tracers in the distance fired up a mountain and bouncing off the rocks. It was a Korean unit attempting to keep the VC from setting up a mortar attack on the air base from across the bay.
The unloading operations for the munition ships usually went on around the clock. Locals did the work, including operating the ship's cranes lifting containers out of the holds and onto the quay. It wasn't uncommon to see boxes whack against the ship or the dock. In the early morning daylight, after one of my first overnight watches, I happened to notice some jelly-like goo smeared on the ground. "What the &&@!! is that?" Without skipping a beat, our first class Gunners Mate (GM1) Dave Hart said, "Better not light a match. That's spilled napalm."
In early December, we had to pack everything and prepare to redeploy to Guam. The NUC military detachment experiment in Vietnam was coming to a successful close (meaning we didn't get blown up), and we were to train and turn over the dolphin swimmer defense system to another unit, a detachment of the Inshore Undersea Warfare Group. Charlie had an altercation with one of the chiefs, so he was sent back early to Kaneohe.
The dolphins had been trained before they left Kaneohe to swim into a custom designed stretcher so that they could be safely lifted from the water. They were loaded into individual specially engineered transport containers, which sprayed water mist to keep their skin cool and moist. We all got into a large C141 cargo plane, and flew to the island of Guam, where a barge and pens had already been set up in the Inner Apra Harbor of the Navy Base. Four other dolphins, Nemo, Rounder, Snooper and Snorkle had already arrived from Kaneohe. It was a long, tense flight, and we had to monitor the animals and their containers constantly. It was very important that they didn't become overly stressed or overheated. A NUC veterinarian was also on the flight. We arrived at Anderson Air Force Base at night, transported the animals onto flatbed trucks, and drove very slowly south towards Apra Harbor. We made one stop for the island's only stop sign.
During the next few months, we set our SVS boats up alongside a submarine at the Navy Base in inner Apra Harbor. The IUWG guys were great fun and learned fast. Charlie Wongdock had rejoined us, but most of the chiefs in our unit did not. The CO of the IUWG group was an odd fellow who sported a long beard and wasn't too regular with his haircuts. We nicknamed him "Lieutenant Groovy" (but not to his face, of course!). I still had John the porpoise.
While I was on the island in 1972, the last Japanese soldier from World War II was captured hiding out in the bush at Talafofo. Guam is not a very large island, but there is rugged terrain in some areas. There are several large military installations nearby. It is amazing that this fellow hid out for 27 years. A few of our EOD guys got to examine his weapons. His name was Shoichi Yokoi, and there is an article about him in Wikipedia. He died in 1997.
The bad part about Guam was that we weren't a small independent group out in the sticks anymore. That meant a return to haircuts, pressed uniforms and shined shoes. We were berthed in open-bayed transit barracks next door to the marine brig, which was an incentive for us to improve our behavior. Charlie decided to play a joke for one inspection. He put a small spool of thread in his breast pocket and led the end out through the buttonhole. Loose threads, or 'Irish Pennants,' were as bad as scuffed shoes or off-center belt buckles. Sure enough, Lieutenant Groovy stopped in front of Charlie, frowned, and pulled on the thread....and pulled....and pulled... until the entire company burst out with hysterical laughing. That was the last of the inspections while I was there.
After about three months or so, the IUWG operators were up to speed, and it was time to return to Hawaii. The NUC military detachment of Project Short Time, which was officially designated CTU 115.9.1 (Coastal Surveillance Testing Unit), had accomplished its mission and it was time for it to disband. Most of the team had already dispersed back to the EOD teams or the fleet. I spent a month or so training sea lions as part of the Quick Find project. Sea lions were trained to recover practice missiles up to 500 feet deep. They wore a sleeve on their muzzles that had a spring-loaded grabber arm secured to it and a thin, long line leading back to a small inflatable boat. The spent practice torpedo emitted a locator pinging noise when it hit the bottom. The sea lion would accept the sleeve and follow the ping down to the device. It was trained to press the center of the sleeve against the narrow after-body of the missile, which depressed a button which released the arms of the grabber to secure the ordinance. The seal would then shake off the sleeve, swim back to the boat and get his fishy reward. The animal I worked with was named 'Spooky,' because sometimes he'd turn suddenly and give you a nip on the leg. He was being retrained from another project in which he was deployed from a helicopter. The chopper would hover, and his cage was lowered to the surface of the water. The cage's door would open from a radio signal, and he'd swim out, do his thing, and return to the cage. I was selected to accompany Spooky to his new home at the Point Loma, California NUC campus. This project was being handed over to the SEAL team, so I stayed at one of the guys' apartment in Coronado for a week.
Not long after returning to Kaneohe, I received orders for the full 10-week course at the Second Class Dive School at San Diego, 30 days leave back in Massachusetts and then to the USS Coucal at Pearl Harbor.
Yogi Berra famously said, "It's like deja vu all over again." This was the same school I survived when I became scuba qualified prior to arriving at NUC. The four weeks of scuba training was when the instructors 'encouraged' candidates to quit in order to weed out the weak from the strong. They wouldn't let me skip the scuba phase (trust me. I asked!), so I knew in advance all of the fun physical playtime in store for the class in the next few weeks. The good part of this was, I was prepared and pretty much aced the exams. I eventually made Honor Man in my class.
I arrived at a new duty station in Hawaii for the second time in my Navy career on November 22, 1972. This time I was assigned to the USS Coucal (ASR-8; Auxiliary Submarine Rescue), homeported at the submarine base at Pearl Harbor. The Coucal was a Chanticleer class submarine rescue ship built during World War II. Her primary mission was to rescue trapped personnel from a sunken submarine, and she also had the capability to salvage the stricken vessel. Several submarine tragedies had occurred in the early years of the 20th century, and the Chanticleer ASRs were designed based on the lessons learned from the famous Squalus rescue of 1939 off Portsmouth, NH. About one third of her 100-man crew was dive qualified. Coucal could also provide other towing, salvage, and diving services to the fleet.
I checked in during a maintenance period, and the entire exterior surface of the ship was painted in red lead primer instead of the usual haze gray. Since it was also approaching the Christmas season, the Deck Department had also painted the four 20-foot long salvage buoys, called 'spuds,' in a white and red candy cane pattern (they are normally a solid bright 'international orange' color). I was assigned to the Salvage Department, which was responsible for maintenance and repair of the diving equipment. We had over a dozen Mark V ('mark-five') helmets set up for either air or heliox operations as well as lightweight Jack Browne mask and scuba equipment. The Salvage Department was located aft, below the fantail area of the ship.
The old girl displayed quite a few battle ribbons and commendations. She served during World War II, Korea, and the Vietnam wars. She also participated in the Bikini Atomic Bomb testing in the late 1940s. She spent time in Turkey training Turkish divers submarine rescue techniques. She never, however, fulfilled her primary mission, because after the Squalus, no submariner rescue operations were ever successfully attempted. I learned many years later that Coucal was decommissioned in 1977 (only 2 years after I left her), and her last service to the fleet was as a target for a ship-fired missile in 1991. The last of the ASRs were also decommissioned in the 1990s, so the entire class of ship is now extinct.
After New Year, the ship was back in active status, and we put to sea. My at-sea watch station was in the Combat Information Center (CIC). OS2 Dan Aguilar was my usual co-watch stander. Mostly we tracked contacts on the radar screen and reported their movements to the bridge, taking periodic range and bearing readings. Sometimes the Officer of the Deck (OOD) called for a man-overboard drill, and the deck gang tossed a dummy, called Oscar, over the side. Then, we'd have to track the ship's movement using a plotting board.
Although none of the dozen or so ASRs built during and after World War II actually performed a rescue operation since the Squalus in 1939, we still performed many services to the submarine fleet and endlessly practiced to do our job in a hurry if needed. When a submarine first went to sea after a major overhaul for sea trials, the Coucal would accompany her for a few days. Also, we played 'target' during war games or to give prospective submarine COs and XOs practice stalking their prey. Since submarines are not designed to moor at standard piers or to anchor easily, Coucal also provided rafting services. We would tie up at a pier or anchor offshore and a sub would tie up to us. Then, the submariners would use our quarterdeck to go ashore or our utility boat would ferry everyone to "the beach" for a well-deserved liberty.
Once a quarter, the ship steamed over to Lahaina, Maui to practice submarine rescue operations. A few years before I came aboard, the Navy had prepared and sunk a decorated but now obsolete WWII submarine, the Bluegill, about a mile or so off Lahaina in 130 feet of water. All of the hatches had been welded shut to keep curious sport divers from entering, and the sub had been perfectly laid right-side up on the bottom. During the trip over, the entire crew rigged the ship to perform a four-point moor. The heavy mooring chain had to be hauled from the chain lockers, inspected, set up, and laid out on the deck. There were four chains, one for each salvage anchor that made up the four-point moor. Each length had to be a certain length, depending on the depth of operation. The basic lengths, or shots, were 90 feet long and were secured together with removable links. Then, one end of the chain was secured to the anchors while the other was secured to a heavy nylon mooring hawser, which in turn was secured to the spuds. The spuds were hollow steel cylinders rounded at each end, painted 'international orange,' and clad with wood sheathing. It was hot, exhausting work that took between six and eight hours to set up. The ship steamed a cloverleaf pattern and dropped each anchor in a perfect box around the downed submarine. The spuds were not yet connected to the ship, so the utility boat was launched to connect mooring lines to the spuds. Once attached, the ship was a stable platform from which to search and conduct rescue and/or salvage operations. Instead of using the propeller to maneuver, the ship could be precisely maneuvered over the wreck using winches and capstans to let out or take in mooring lines.
As soon as Coucal was securely moored over the submarine, a team of scuba divers was deployed to clean off the escape hatch and install a cable. If there was an actual emergency, the stricken submarine would deploy an emergency buoy at the hatch, but we had to install a connection each time we practiced on the Bluegill. All divers then set up the surface-supplied dive stations. The hats, weight belts, dresses (yes, the canvas/rubber hard hat suits were called 'dresses') were carried up from the Salvage Locker, umbilicals connected and figure-eighted on deck, and the divers' stage was assembled. The first part of the dive operations used the air helmets, so all of the second class divers dived first. Diving operations used a lot of people to get one team into the water. Each diver had two tenders, who dressed/undressed the diver and tended his umbilical. A standby diver was 'hatted' first, seated and his helmet tied off to relieve the weight from his shoulders. Of course, the standby diver had two tenders. Then, there was a phone-talker, who communicated with the divers and wrote down data. In charge was the Master Diver. When everything was ready, the divers were guided to the stage, stepped in, and held onto a bar for support. The stage was lifted over the side and lowered into the water by winch (requiring a winch operator). If everything checked out, the stage was lowered to the bottom (or to the deck of the practice submarine) at a certain speed. The second phase of the diving operations was mixed gas using a helium-oxygen mixture specially formulated for the depth. Because the heliox (helium/oxygen breathing mixture) Mark V helmets were much heavier than the air hats, the divers had to be hand-winched to the standing position so they could shuffle over to the stage.
In the early months of 1973, Coucal was scheduled for a major 6-month overhaul. We moored up at the shipyard in Honolulu and moved everything not nailed down onto a barge. Another barge served as enlisted berthing. We acquired a battered 17-foot Boston Whaler, and I was assigned the task of fixing it up. The bow was smashed in, and it was just a little bow heavy after repairs, but we used the boat for recreation when we could.
I really didn't want to spend the entire 6 months living on a nasty barge, and, as I mentioned earlier, second class divers had fewer opportunities during heliox diving ops. So, I made the decision to request Diver First Class School, which was then located in Washington, D.C. Because I was more than halfway through my 4-year enlistment, I had to extend for eight months. So, in March of 1973 I left sunny Hawaii for the banks of the Anacostia River, and I returned in August sporting a new pin and another chevron just in time for another 4-point moor off Lahaina.
In March of 1974, we embarked on a 6-month Westpac cruise. On our first leg, we towed a small tugboat from Pearl Harbor to Midway Island, which was still a Naval Air Station (it is now a National Wildlife Refuge). We spent the next six months visiting the Japanese ports of Yokosuka and Sasebo, the Philippine ports of Subic Bay on the island of Luzon and Cagayan de Oro City in Mindanao, The Taiwanese ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung, the Korean Port of Pusan, and the British colony of Hong Kong. One of my regrets about my naval service was that I never got my shellback certificate. Coucal's previous Westpac deployment took it to Australia, but, alas, not this one. Of course, there were memorable adventures at each port of call.
I separated from active duty in June 1975 after four years and eight months. I didn't think so at the time, but in hindsight it was a privilege to serve on the old girl. We used to joke that "ASR" meant "Assholes and Submarine Rejects." The ship's name was an embarrassment. Other ships were called "Resolute," "Intrepid," "Preserver," or after historical places like "Iwo Jima," or after famous heroes such as "Eisenhower," but our ship was named after a tropical cuckoo bird. I've learned a little bit of the history of submarine rescue from researching around the Internet. After several peacetime submarine disasters, there was great pressure directed at the Navy to develop a means of rescuing survivors who might be trapped in the vessel on the bottom. Early ships available for retrofitting into salvage platforms were Lapwing class minesweepers left over from World War I. Back in the day, ships of a particular class were named by theme. For example, battleships were named after states ("Arizona," "Massachusetts"), submarines were names after sea creatures ("Skate," Sculpin"), and so on. The Lapwing class minesweepers were named after birds. Enough of these ships were retrofitted so that the tradition was continued for the newly designed Chanticleer class ASRs. I also learned that that the few Congressional Medals of Honor awarded for extreme valor during peacetime were presented to Navy divers involved in submarine rescue. We trained hard and were always prepared to take action, but the opportunity never came.
Unfortunately, when I left active duty in 1975 the economy was down, and jobs for unemployed marine biology majors and ex-torpedomans mate hard hat divers in Southeastern Massachusetts were a bit scarce. I was able to collect a few months of unemployment checks.
In the winter of 1976 I took a lifesaving course at the New Bedford YMCA and the following summer I landed a job as a lifeguard at a state beach in Westport, Massachusetts. Horseneck Beach is very crowded in the summertime, being close to the cities of Fall River and New Bedford and featuring over two miles of fine sand. It is also an exposed barrier beach, and when the weather was windy the sea pushed up choppy surf and formed rip currents. Every summer multiple people needed to be pulled out of the water. This meant that the lifeguard positions were competitive. Candidates had to pass stringent written, fitness, and proficiency tests to be considered. The other candidates were mostly college jocks. I was 28, the "old guy." I've never been much of an athlete, but I was still reasonably fit from my Navy days.
I can't remember the exact date, but sometime in the summer of 1976 I made a fateful scuba dive at King's Beach in Newport, Rhode Island. At the end of a pleasant dive, I removed my fins and began walking out of the water. As I neared the shoreline, a shortish, gray-haired man approached me and said, "You're a Navy diver, aren't you?"
"Well, yes, I was a Navy diver, but I got out about a year ago. How"d you know that?"
"Your UDT swimmer's vest gave you away. Nobody wears those except for navy divers!"
My cover was blown. I had enlisted in Uncle Sam's Navy in 1970, and I had served on active duty until 1975. I was a Navy diver first class when I got discharged. Since I didn't have enough money to buy one of those new-fangled buoyancy compensators, I used what I had. One of my souvenirs of service, besides a slightly rearranged nose (the result of an unfortunate Cam Ranh Bay bar incident) and a lifetime of 'sea stories' was my faithful, if antiquated, UDT swimmers vest, complete with 2 carbon dioxide inflator cartridges.
My King's Beach acquaintance was TM2 Fred Bergmann, or Bergy for short. We chatted about navy diving for a while, and then he asked me if I wanted to re-enlist. A new diving reserve unit was being established at the Fall River, MA Reserve Center. Since I was working as a seasonal life guard for the stingy state of Massachusetts, the prospect of some added income outweighed my qualms of returning to the world of inspections, haircuts, "YES SIR!" and spit-shined shoes. The rest, as they say, is history.
The new reserve unit was designated as Harbor Clearance Unit 2, Detachment 201. The parent command was headquartered just south of Norfolk at Little Creek, Virginia. Because it was still in the formative phase of development, I became a 'plank owner,' and I served until 1983. The name was later changed to Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit, or as we called it: 'Mudsue.' LCDR Dan Daglio has written an excellent history of MSDU reserve units 101 and 201, and I've uploaded his paper as a .PDF file to my profile on this website.
We drilled at the Fall River Reserve Center for the first few months, spent a few weekends at Fort Rodman in New Bedford, but we soon moved into space at the SIMA (Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity) Pier in Newport, Rhode Island.
One of the first things I needed to do was to re-qualify as a diver first class because I had left active duty two years earlier. So, I returned to NSDS for two weeks in the summer of 1977. The Experimental Diving Unit (EDU) had already moved from Washington to Panama City, Florida, and NSDS would follow in a few more years as the Navy consolidated its diving training into one facility. The venerable old Mark V was still being used in the fleet, but the school was introducing two new systems into the training course. The Mark 12 was specially designed for the Navy to replace the copper hat as a heavy deep sea helmet. It was constructed of yellow Lexan plastic, and unlike the old Mark V, a diver could wear a specially designed dry suit with a weight-bearing nylon oversuit in 'bottom mode,' or he could dive in a wetsuit or even a bathing suit in 'swimmers mode.' A story circulated around the school that some of the old master divers resisted the retirement of the old copper hat, and one of them reportedly repeatedly whacked his head against a ship's hull in an attempt to crack the helmet and thereby to prove its unworthiness. Another new piece of diving gear was the lightweight helmet, the Mark 1, which was a modification of the Kirby Morgan Band Mask. This replacement for the Jack Browne Mask consisted of a full face mask attached by a special stainless steel band to a neoprene hood, which was held securely onto the diver's head by a rubber strap system called a 'spider.' The Mark 1 could be used by continuously flowing air through it like it's predecessors, but the usual way of breathing was by a special demand regulator installed into the mask, which used a lot less air and was much quieter.
Part of the routine for reservist navy divers included the dreaded Saturday morning physical training. Since I was appointed the unit Diving Supervisor and was in pretty good shape, I lead the torture. We warmed up with such delights as 8-count bodybuilders, pushups, and 'hello-darlings' (my favorite), and then a 4 mile run up the 'Burma Road' on the Newport Navy Base. In the early days, Fred struggled and earned for himself the nickname 'Old Pear Shape.' In the last year of my service, Fred had slimmed down and became quite fit, while the civilian life had been a little too good to me, so our situations reversed. He took glee in that, and he was extremely proud when he completed Phase Training and achieved qualification as U.S. Navy Diver.
I had only returned to civilian life for a year, but I learned that my uniform was already obsolete. On our first ACDUTRA to Little Creek, I had to wear a suit and tie while everyone else wore their dress uniforms on the flight. When we got there, I could switch back to my old Seebee-style greens for daily use. I've recently seen yet another change to the Navy enlisted uniform, the infamous cammo 'blueberry' outfit. I have no idea what possesses the good folks down in Washington, D.C., but I wish they'd stop mucking around with uniforms.
There were now a few reserve detachments of HCU, a lot of ex-sailor volunteers, but not a lot of qualified divers to fill the ranks. Since I was the senior enlisted diver at the time, our CO, LCDR F.B. Montague, appointed me as the first unit Diving Supervisor. Because we were primarily civilians, and the full Diver Second Class course lasted for 12 weeks, relatively few people could get the time off from their civilian employers. To address this problem, Reserve Command established a 'phased' training curriculum in which classroom topics were presented during our weekend drills using study materials provided by the dive schools. The monthly classes were one of my assigned tasks.
We provided diving services to the remaining ships berthed in Newport on our monthly weekend drills. The unit received a letter of commendation for replacing a propeller on the USS Manley DD-940 that had to be completed in a timely fashion to allow the ship to meet her underway commitment. We dived with our sister detachment, 202 up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on one weekend. Another noteworthy mission involved inspecting some submerged track-way on a Navy-owned island in Newport Harbor and resulted in a few of us divvying up a large bag of quahogs to take home. They were thick on the bottom and practically jumped into our 'goodie bags.' I had clam chowder for a week! One weekend we drove up to a pond in Lakeville, Massachusetts to locate and mark shallow rocks. A few weeks earlier there had been a tragedy involving young kids, a motorboat, and excessive speed. I don't think the rocks were to blame.
The unit also drove down to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to survey a barge hull. I was very, very happy that I was assigned to be the Dive Supervisor, because New York's East River at the time was nasty. We didn't have surface-supplied equipment available to us, so the guys dived in regular scuba gear. There were brown lumps floating on the water, as well as white absorbent, ah, pads, with bright red streaks in the middle. Fortunately, nobody got sick.
In the early days we used scuba gear despite the obvious drawbacks for certain missions because that was what we had. You're given a mission; you do it as best you can. Our workshop in the SIMA building included several full sets of gear. An active duty person assigned to the Reserve Center was responsible for getting routine maintenance done. It would have been much more efficient, however, if each of us had been assigned equipment exclusively for our use and a locker in which to store it. Instead, it sometimes took half a day to get equipment checked out for a dive and then check it back in at the end of the day.
Our annual two week "Active Duty for Training" (ACDUTRA) deployments were always done at our parent command, Harbor Clearance Unit Two, in Little Creek, Virginia. 'Little Crack,' as we not-so-fondly called it, wasn't exactly paradise in late June, as it was always stiflingly hot and steamy. Still, it was a good opportunity to practice our skills using equipment that we didn't have at home. During the early years, we used the heavy Mark V helmets. HCU was headquartered on a large barge moored to a pier, and nearby was a training barge moored over about 20 feet of water. The visibility ranged from a coffee-colored one inch just below the surface to pitch black at 20 feet, and there were lots of stinging jellyfish called 'sea nettles.' Instructors from the dive school ran the water training.
We also performed some useful tasks during ACDUTRA. One of our first missions was to inspect the positioning of a vessel in a drydock. This was the last time we used the old Navy spun-aluminum scuba cylinders. Another task involved plugging a sea suction opening underneath the USS Texas (CGN-39) at the Norfolk Navy Base. The ship was huge and the visibility was zero, so my buddy and I (we only had untethered scuba gear) held onto our lifeline with a death grip as we searched the hull for a very small opening in the blackness far underneath the surface (or so it seemed) while sea nettles stung every exposed patch of skin. On another occasion, we drove up to Port Charles Virginia, a short distance up the DELMARVA Peninsula to meet HCU's salvage vessel, the YSD-53. From there we steamed into Chesapeake Bay to an artificial island and assisted a team of regular Navy divers in inspecting the steel sheet piling that held the island together. A team of us inspected the hull of a ship in the Mothball Fleet anchored up the James River and later toured the ghostly interior of one of the deserted ships.
I spent another summer, 1977, as a lifeguard at Horseneck Beach. Again, I ended the summer in tiptop (well, for me) shape. In early 1978, I was hired as a field biologist for Northeast Marine Environmental Institution. We collected specimens from the sea for various researchers and universities, and we led field excursions for school groups from elementary schools through the university level. I had many adventures, but none pertain to this essay.
One of my reservist shipmates from Det. 201, Jack Johnson, was employed at the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Falmouth on Cape Cod. On one weekend drill he mentioned to me that the current Diving Officer, Mr. David Owen, was retiring in 1980 and that I should apply for the job. I had earlier looked into employment at WHOI and it's sister institution the Marine Biological Laboratory with no success, so I wasn't too hopeful, but what the Hell... To my surprise, I was asked to come in for an interview -- with the entire Diving Control Board individually. In early 1980 I received a letter in the mail informing me that I had won the position of Diving Safety Officer at the WHOI.
One of the requirements of my new job was to teach diving to scientists who needed to dive to further their research interests. I started work lacking a scuba instructor certification, but I was given some time to obtain the necessary 'ticket.' After researching the various 'alphabet soup' of scuba certifying organizations, I settled on applying to participate in an ITC (Instructor Training Course) leading to certification in the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) beginning in August at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Most of my colleagues at other universities at that time were NAUI instructors, and the organization enjoyed an excellent reputation. One of the other candidates at that ITC was my future wife, who later became employed at the MBL and later at WHOI as a Systems Librarian. On March 31, 2010, Maggie and I retired on the same day after a 30 year career. So, my Navy connections lead to my successful career and marriage.
In late summer or early autumn of 1980, an air force warplane crashed into the sea about five miles east of Jonesport, Maine with the tragic loss of both crewmembers. Salvage vessel USS Preserver (ARS-8) steamed up from Little Creek to recover what remained of the aircraft, which had broken apart upon entry and was scattered over a wide area in over 150 feet of water. The ship had been deployed on site for about two months, and the work in the stormy Gulf of Maine was becoming exhausting. Our parent command, MDSU-2 made a request to our detachment for volunteers to augment and relieve the regular Navy divers for a two week deployment. MR2 Marshall Swing, TM2 Fred Bergmann, and I volunteered on short notice, made arrangements at home and at work, and met the ship in mid November.
The water in the Gulf of Maine in November is challenging to say the least. The water is cold, winds can whip up a sea quickly, and at 150 feet it is as dark as night. All of the diving was surface-supplied using the new Mark-12 system. Instead of being inside a round copper dome with four small windows, the Mark-12 helmet was a lightweight yellow Lexan plastic with a large flat faceplate. Communications with topside were excellent, although the hat, having a continuously flowing air supply, was still noisy. The shoulder-zippered foam drysuit was warm and comfortable. In fact, it was warmer to be a diver in the water than tending topside in the bitter wind. A nylon jumpsuit on top of the drysuit provided not only chafing protection, but it also had pockets for specially shaped lead weights (ditchable weights are not required for surface-supplied diving). It was a lot more comfortable, if less romantic, than the old Mark V.
Our unit received a nice letter of appreciation from the Commander, Naval Reserve Readiness Command Region One.
We were again requested to supply volunteers in 1981, this time as test subjects for an experimental chamber saturation dive at the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory in New London, Connecticut. Steve Faszcza (pronounced "fazz cha." We called him "Fuzzy." That's OK, everyone butchers my French Canadian name, too), Marshall Swing and I volunteered for one of the two sets of experiments. Ours was called SUREX II, and the other was AIRSAT.
The purpose of the experiment was to gather information and develop procedures "for use in transferring from a pressurized submarine rescue craft to a decompression facility, should a pressurized submarine rescue become necessary, to further knowledge of nitrogen elimination and the relationship to decompression sickness, and to provide emergency surfacing and decompression protocols for both Navy and civilian operational nitrogen-oxygen saturation diving. " (quote from subject information document).
We reported to the Submarine Medical Research Laboratory in Groton, Connecticut in mid-September and spent the first week obtaining baseline medical, psychological and physiological data for each of us. We performed a basal metabolism test on a stationary bicycle while breathing a measured amount of oxygen and expiring a measured amount of carbon dioxide. Then, we entered the experimental chamber, which was an extra-large double lock recompression chamber about 20 feet long by 8 or o feet in diameter. It was roomy, but remember, once pressurized, you couldn't leave. I have to admit to a very strange feeling when the outer hatch closed and I realized that, no matter what, I couldn't leave my metal prison for 8 days. The days, however, were filled with activities and passed quickly. We saturated at 45 feet for 24 hours, then the outside tenders quickly lowered the pressure back to sea level. After a few minutes, we were re-pressurized back to our storage depth. Various physicians and technicians then locked in with us and performed various tests. Blood was drawn to test for gas phase changes. An eye doctor looked into our retinas to look for evidence of tiny bubbles. We performed lung function tests using a spirometer. We tested our hand strength using a calibrated squeeze device. The pressure was increased several times during the week, and the surface excursion and various tests were repeated. So many blood samples were taken that the phlebotomist used our other arms. By the end of the eight day experiment our arms looked like they belonged to a junkie. In the evening, there was a movie. We got to choose our meals from a reasonable list, and the food was sent to us via the small medical lock.
Unfortunately, I volunteered for one project too many. As a new hire at WHOI, I couldn't get unlimited time off to participate in Navy games. So, I had to miss ACDUTRA one year, and that resulted in having a 'bad' (incomplete) year. I was also concerned that I couldn't progress in rank. For one thing, I'd never worked as a TM, and the training in 'A' school was on totally obsolete WW II-era fish. There was no way that I could or would reactivate to go to 'C' school. Also, the course book had a section of pink pages in the middle: confidential to secret material. This meant that I'd need to commute on my own time to the reserve center to study a subject for which I had no aptitude or interest. I put in a request for a change of rate and extended my enlistment for one year. The request passed from the command to the reserve system to BUPERS in Washington, but it eventually came back denied because the TM rate was 'critical.' So, I was at a crossroads. On the one hand, I had many adventures over 12 years and enjoyed the camaraderie of the part-time Navy, but on the other hand my Navy career was stuck. Others were getting promotions. I had a pretty good civilian career and wasn't as desperate for extra money any more, and weekends were getting more precious. So, I decided that it was time to move on. My last drill was in June, 1983.
My last Navy dive was a search and recovery mission at the SIMA pier in Newport. It seems that a Porta-Potty had gone missing from the pier, and we were asked to search for it. After swimming the entire periphery of the pier we failed to locate the missing 'shitter.'
