Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above (Apollo Quartet)

by Ian Sales

  On 1 June 1971, the Trieste II was officially placed in service, having previously been listed as “equipment”. She was classified as Deep Submergence Vessel 1, and made part of an Integral Operating Unit with the USS White Sands, an auxiliary repair dock, and the USS Apache, an ocean-going tug.

  It was as part of this IOU that the Trieste II was sent in September 1971 to an area of the Pacific Ocean just north of Hawaii.

  During the Cold War, both the USA and the USSR operated a number of spy satellites in orbit. These overflew enemy territory and took photographs of sites of interest to their respective nation’s intelligence services. During the 1960s and early 1970s, neither television nor the radio transmission of imagery was at a sufficiently advanced level for this job. As a result, the satellites carried film cameras, and once the film had been fully exposed it was, in US spy satellites, jettisoned and fell to earth in a specially-designed re-entry vehicle, called a “bucket”. These safeguarded the film during their fall to earth, much like a space capsule. And, also like a space capsule, the bucket would release a parachute in order to slow its descent. However, rather than splash down into the sea, the bucket would be caught in mid-air by an aircraft fitted with a special hook, typically a USAF JC-130 Hercules flown by the 6549th Test Group out of Hickam Air Force Base on Hawaii.

  On 15 June 1971, the latest in the line of Keyhole spy satellites, the KH-9 HEXAGON, was launched from Vandenberg AFB, California. An improvement on earlier KH satellites, it carried four buckets, and 175,601 feet of nine-inch film. Five days after launch, the satellite ejected its first bucket, containing 40,000 feet of film. Due to a damaged parachute, it was not retrieved in mid-air, but allowed to hit the water and sink. Divers then retrieved it. The second bucket, ejected on 1 July, carried 52,000 feet of film and was successfully captured in mid-air. During the recovery of the third bucket, on 10 July, the parachute snapped off and the bucket hit the sea and sank in almost 20,000 feet of water. The final bucket was successfully retrieved by a JC-130 on 16 July.

  The retrieved footage was so superior to that produced by previous spy satellites the CIA decided to try and salvage the sunken third bucket. They approached the US Navy, who proposed using the DSV-1 Trieste II bathyscaphe.

  The Integral Operating Unit comprising the Trieste II, USS White Sands and USS Apache set out from San Diego on 27 September and headed 60 miles offshore to test the bathyscaphe’s ability to retrieve an object from the sea floor. Engineering corporation Perkin-Elmer had designed and built a “hay hook”—known by the Trieste II’s crew as a “kludge”—for the purpose. This fastened on the front of the vessel’s float, and was designed to scoop up the film bucket from the ocean bottom. The first dive on 29 September did not go well—several systems aboard suffered electrical problems, and the winch cable jumped the pulley and broke, dropping the hay hook and causing the DSV to ascend 400 feet rapidly. After forty-five minutes of searching, they eventually found both the hook and dummy bucket, but returned to the surface only with the hook.

  A second test dive on 5 October also proved unsuccessful when a failure of the navigation computer meant Trieste II could not even locate the dummy bucket. Meanwhile, the US Navy had sent the USNS De Steiguer, a survey ship capable of towing a search fish at depths of more than 20,000 feet, to the search area to find the missing bucket and mark its location with a deep ocean transponder.

  On 11 October, during a third test dive, the Trieste II finally located the dummy bucket but lack of time meant they could not use the hook to retrieve it. Confident the hay hook would work as intended, they surfaced. Nine days later, the USNS De Steiguer reported it had found the missing bucket, and had taken photographs of it. The IOU immediately headed for the search zone, arriving on 2 November.

  On 3 November, the aft dock well of the USS White Sands was flooded, the Trieste II was towed out in the Pacific, and the ten-hour-long pre-dive procedure began. This involved loading the float with 67,000 gallons of gasoline and 32 tons of steel shot. Each of the onboard systems was also thoroughly checked out. On 4 November, the USS White Sands headed for a position above the “zero dot”, the deep ocean transponder marking the bucket’s location, while the Trieste II began her descent. The dive ended at 2 am on 5 November without the bucket being located.

  Bad weather then moved in, forcing the IOU to head for Pearl Harbour on 15 November. After a week in port, the USS White Sands, carrying the Trieste II, and the USS Apache returned to the search zone. Again weather intervened, and the next dive did not take place until 30 November. A leak in one of the shot releases gave the bathyscaphe a 25 degree list to port, making control of the craft difficult. A computer failure also resulted in a loss of navigation data. Despite this, the crew managed to locate the bucket. They were unable to retrieve it but instead planted a deep ocean transponder beside it.

  Yet again, bad weather caused a delay. On 5 November, while towing the Trieste II, the bathyscaphe collided with the stern of the USS White Sands, and the towline became entangled with the ship’s port station-keeping propeller. While swapping towlines, the Trieste II was sent adrift by a swell, but was fortunately recaptured by the USS Apache. The IOU then returned to port for the Christmas period.

  On 25 April 1972, the IOU was back in the search zone, and the Trieste II made its third dive for the sunken bucket. After a 210-minute search, the crew spotted the target. It took six attempts before the Trieste II managed to hook the bucket and lift it from the ocean bottom. Unfortunately, when it impacted the water, the bucket had split, opening the film stacks inside to the sea. As the bathyscaphe rose to the surface, lengths of film up to three feet in length began to break off.

  After a nine-hour ascent, the Trieste II reached the surface, and a five-man dive team rushed to reach it. But by the time they arrived, the film stacks had disintegrated, leaving only seven strips of film between three and six feet in length. These were carefully transported to an Eastman Kodak processing plant in Rochester, New York, but the company was unable to salvage any usable imagery from them.

  The Trieste II continued in active service with the Pacific Fleet until 1980. In May 1984, she was retired and moved to Submarine Development Group 1. In 1985, Trieste II was moved to the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington, where she currently resides.

  Picture credits: Trieste pressure-sphere (US Naval Historical Center); KH-4B Corona film recovery manoeuvre (National Reconnaissance Office); Trieste II in the USS White Sands’ dock well (OAR/National Undersea Research Program); USS Apache and USS White Sands (US Navy).

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  On 9 April 1959, NASA introduced seven men to the world. They were the first American astronauts, the Mercury 7: Alan Shepard, Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Walter M Schirra, L Gordon Cooper and Donald ‘Deke’ Slayton. NASA wanted to beat the USSR to put a man into space, but the Soviets won when, on 12 April 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth. Alan Shepard, the first American into space, made a sub-orbital hop on 5 May aboard the Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft.

  NASA had known for at least two years that the Soviets planned to put a woman into space, but showed no interest in matching the accomplishment, and in fact disingenuously insisted the organisation was not in a “race” with the USSR.

  And yet, in late 1959, three separate schemes had set about evaluating women as astronauts.

  In August of that year, fifty-eight-year-old pioneer aviatrix Ruth Rowland Nichols underwent centrifuge and weightlessness testing at the Air Research and Development Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Although too old to ever be a serious candidate for astronaut, Nichols was determined to prove she had what it took.

  In September 1959 at the annual Air Force Association convention in Miami, Florida, Brigadier General Donald D Flickinger, USAF and Dr W Randolph “Randy” Lovelace II were introduced to a young female pilot called Jerrie Cobb. Flickinger immediately realised she was an ideal candidate for his Project Woman In Space Earliest, also based
at Wright-Patterson.

  The third was a publicity stunt, arranged with NASA’s full cooperation. During October and November 1959, Betty Skelton, a famous aerobatic pilot and multiple record-holder—on her death in 2011, she still held more combined automobile and aviation records than any other person—underwent a series of tests by NASA scientists for Look magazine, who published the results in their 2 Feb 1960 issue under the title “Should a Girl Be First in Space?”. The article was not a serious attempt at determining Skelton’s fitness for the Mercury programme, although she did demonstrate she was a match for the male astronauts.

  Unfortunately, when news of Nichols’ testing was made public, and she rightly pointed out the medical establishment’s lack of knowledge on the workings of the female body, Wright-Patterson Aeromedical Laboratory head Colonel John Paul Stapp (of rocket-sled fame) persuaded ARDC to close down Flickinger’s Project WISE. Stapp considered women physiologically and emotionally unable to handle spaceflight: “Economically, the cost of putting a woman into space is prohibitive, and strictly a luxury item we can ill afford.” One year later, finding it impossible to find work as a pilot and still dreaming of space flight, Nichols took her own life.

  Unable to use the facilities at Wright-Patterson, Flickinger handed over Project WISE to Lovelace. On 14 February 1960, Cobb reported to the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and underwent the same six days of testing given to the candidates for the Mercury programme. NASA had already declared itself uninterested in Lovelace and Flickinger’s research, and so both were careful to explain to Cobb that selection for astronaut training was unlikely to follow completion of the tests. When Cobb passed, and in some tests scored better than the men, they asked her to provide the names of additional women pilots, partly in order to prove her results were not exceptional.

  Between 17 January and 15 July 1961, eighteen women pilots were tested at the Lovelace Clinic. Twelve passed. Compare this with the male candidates—thirty-two were tested, eighteen passed (and seven were selected as astronauts). These thirteen women, referred to by Cobb as Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs) but later known as the Mercury 13, were under no illusion the tests they had taken would lead to selection by NASA.

  Shortly before the Lovelace Clinic testing took place, Randy Lovelace contacted Jackie Cochran, the most famous and most accomplished woman pilot in the US, who was a close personal friend. Cochran too wanted to be considered for astronaut training, but she was over the age limit and generally not in good health. She was however determined to control any programme involving women astronauts, much as she had done with women pilots during World War II.

  In 1942, Nancy Love had persuaded the US Army Air Forces brass to create the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron while Cochran was in Britain flying for the Air Transport Auxiliary. On learning of this, Cochran was furious—she had made a similar proposal earlier but it had been rejected. She returned to the US and used her many contacts among the USAAF high command to form the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots with herself in charge. Love’s WAFS became a part of Cochran’s WASP.

  In a similar fashion, Cochran would not accept Cobb as the leader of the Mercury 13 and worked tirelessly to take control of the group. While Cobb wanted to prove that she, and by extension the other twelve women pilots, were as capable and qualified as the Mercury 7 and so should be recruited as astronauts, Cochran wanted to create a testing programme to form a pool of suitable candidates should NASA ever decide to fly a woman. This would later prove the programme’s undoing.

  Once the testing at the Lovelace Clinic had concluded, Lovelace set about arranging for further tests similar to those undertaken by the male astronauts. Because of the incident with Nichols, USAF refused the use of their facilities. Cobb, however, discovered in her home town of Oklahoma City something better than the phase two tests undertaken by the Mercury 7. Psychiatrist Dr Jay T Shurley had built a sensory isolation tank in the basement of the Oklahoma City Veterans’ Hospital where he worked. This was far superior to the darkened room used on the male astronauts. Shurley put Cobb in the tank... and she broke all previous records, spending three times as long, in a more isolated condition, than the best of the Mercury 7. The sensory deprivation tank, plus a battery of psychological tests, became phase two of the Mercury 13 programme.

  Lovelace managed to persuade the US Naval School for Aviation Medicine at Pensacola, Florida, to lend its facilities for a third phase of testing. In June 1961, Cobb spent ten days at Pensacola, undergoing spaceflight simulation tests in a high-altitude chamber, experiencing the Multi-Place Ditching Trainer and a slow rotation room, and undertaking a variety of physical fitness trials. She passed them all. Arrangements were made for the remaining twelve FLATs to undergo the same regimen of tests, and they were told to report to Pensacola on 18 July 1961—but this was later postponed to 18 September.

  Before that could happen, Jackie Cochran, upset because she felt she had been sidelined from leadership of the programme, spoke to Vice Admiral Robert B Pirie, head of US Navy air operations, about her concerns that the Mercury 13 programme was being mismanaged. Pirie wrote to James Webb, NASA Administrator, who responded that NASA had no interest in women astronauts. The US Navy promptly withdrew the use of its Pensacola facilities.

  Cobb was still determined to prove she had the “right stuff” and campaigned tirelessly for selection by NASA. She appeared in the press numerous times—her testing at the Lovelace Clinic was the subject of an article in the 29 August 1960 issue of Life, and her time in the sensory deprivation tank also appeared in Life’s 24 October 1960 issue. Cochran herself also wrote an article about two of the Mercury 13, twin sisters Marion and Jan Dietrich, which appeared in the 30 April 1961 issue of Parade magazine; and Marion Dietrich penned an article on the testing for McCall’s magazine’s September 1961 issue.

  NASA Administrator James Webb tried to fob off Cobb by offering her a contract as a special consultant for the organisation (however, NASA never asked Cobb to do anything, and she was never paid). But Cobb continued to campaign for NASA to accept some or all of the Mercury 13 as astronauts. If the Russians were planning to put a woman into space, she argued, then here were thirteen opportunities for the US to do it first. NASA was adamant only men could be astronauts, and would not even admit that it had deliberately fixed its entry requirements such that women could not qualify. At that time, such prejudice was not against the law. In 1963, NASA even rejected an African-American astronaut, USAF Captain Edward Dwight Jr, despite the fact he met all the selection criteria. Cobb continued to campaign for the chance to fly in space, and with the help of Janey Hart, another of the Mercury 13, the wife of a US senator and a seasoned Washington insider, managed to convince Congress to set up a special subcommittee hearing.

  Then, on 16 June 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. This was a blow to Cobb’s campaign. Hart was less concerned as she had been pushing an anti-discrimination agenda—the Kennedy administration, after all, had publicly committed itself to gender equality.

  For years after Tereshkova’s flight, it was rumoured she had performed badly, incapacitated by space sickness and too poorly trained to undertake any useful tasks. In fact, her flight was very successful—much more so than that of Gherman Titov, the second cosmonaut in space. But she too had to deal with discrimination in the USSR.

  On 17 July 1963, Cobb and Hart testified before a congressional subcommittee. Although one or two members of the special subcommittee seemed sympathetic, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. When Mercury astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter gave their testimonies, they forcefully insisted there was no need to train women astronauts. “The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order,” Glenn testified. That Glenn did not have a degree—one of the qualifications needed to become an astronaut—but was still selected was mentioned but passed o
ver swiftly. Though the Mercury 13 had outperformed the Mercury 7 in many tests, none of the women had flown jets or were jet test pilots, and so “did not meet” NASA selection criteria. The test pilot requirement was dropped later that year—Buzz Aldrin, one of NASA’s third intake of astronauts, was never a test pilot. Also not mentioned was Carpenter’s poor performance during his space flight, though this omission may have been more to keep confidence in the Mercury programme high.

  The biggest blow to Cobb and Hart’s campaign, however, came from Jackie Cochran. Since the Lovelace Clinic tests, Cochran had been insisting she was in charge, writing to various members of the Mercury 13 laying out her ideas and plans. Cochran testified that she saw no good reason to make a woman an astronaut simply because she was a woman. She re-iterated Glenn’s argument that women belonged in the home—even though her own career was an exception to that rule—and opined that it was the job of men to lead the way and for the women to follow on and “pick up the slack”.

  Although scheduled for three days, the congressional hearing closed after two. Cobb and Hart had lost, and the Mercury 13 went their separate ways. Many had lost, or resigned from, their jobs to take part in the programme. Not all managed to pick up the pieces of their lives, but some did continue over the years to keep the dreams of the Mercury 13 alive. Cobb herself left the US to become a supply pilot for a missionary organisation in South America.