Stover, Albert “Smoky,” 117–18, 230–33
Stratton, Julius, 226
Stratton report, “Our Nation and the Sea; a Plan for National Action,” 226–27, 229, 234, 248
submarines:
buoyant ascent of, 2
escape devices, 2–3, 231
escape testing, 3–9, 14, 22, 35, 231
nuclear-powered, 16
rescue and salvage, 24, 167, 239–40
and useful work, 254
in wartime, 31
submersibles; mini-subs, 228–29, 239
Sub Sea International, 210
Sunbird, 58, 60
Taylor, Edward Lee “Hempy,” 208–9
Taylor Diving & Salvage, 201–4, 208–10, 211–12, 232, 258
and Cognac platform, 218–25, 247
Hydrospace Research Center, 210, 214, 235
and hyperbaric workshop, 215, 216–17
Tektite Project, 175–76, 199, 208, 228, 234, 253
This Is Your Life (TV), 13
Thompson, Robert, and Sealab I, 106–7, 108, 111, 115–16, 117, 118–19, 122, 152
Thresher, 80–81, 83, 93, 128, 239
Tolbert, Bill, 145–47, 150, 154
Tomsky, Jackson M. “Black Jack”:
and Cannon’s death, 185, 186, 189, 193, 194–97, 239
punitive letter of admonition to, 195–96
and Sealab III, 168–70, 176, 177, 181, 184, 198, 243
and undersea spying, 238–39, 243
Trieste, 81
trimix, 248, 250
Tringa, 230–32
Trudeau, Pierre, 258
Tuckfield, Cyril “Tuck”:
and Archerfish, 4, 5, 6–8, 32
and Genesis, 40
and Sealab, 126, 131–32, 133, 136, 140, 143, 169
search and recovery work, 98, 99–100
testing submarine escape, 6–9, 231
Tuffy the porpoise, 147–48, 167, 173
Tyler, Steven, 258
umbilical, 18, 20, 24
undersea archaeology, 48, 50–51, 53, 99, 227, 254, 257
undersea dwellings, 16, 26, 42
Argyronète, 228, 229–30, 236
for commercial needs, 214–15
and Cousteau, 53, 58, 61–64, 83–86, 150–51, 227–28
Deep Cabin, 85–86, 105
Deep Diver, 228–29, 254
“Diogenes,” 61–64
habitat for hire, 234
Helgoland, 236–37
Hydrolab, 233–34
inflatable, 97–98, 246
mobility for, 227–29, 236–37, 253
SAGA, 253–56
Sealab, see Sealab
SPID, 97, 100–103, 108, 207
and spying, 239–46, 253
Starfish House, 83–85, 86, 131, 150, 215
underwater welding habitats, 215–16, 246, 250
Union Carbide, 207
U.S. Divers, 45, 211
Valz, Jean, 209
Verne, Jules, 15, 228, 258
Vogel, Al, 127
Wakelin, James, 66–67, 94, 125
Wallace, Ken, 208–9, 210, 219
Wells, Paul A., 186, 192–94, 195–97
Wendler, Joachim, 236–37
Wesly, Claude, 62–65, 84, 115
West German government, funding by, 250, 252, 253
Westinghouse Underseas Division, 206–7, 209–10
White, Ed, 148, 149
Whittaker, Christopher, 73–74
Williams, Esther, 3
Wilson, Woodrow, 17
Wiswell suit, 179–80
Wookey, George, 43–44, 46
Workman, Robert:
and Bond, 35–38
and Cannon’s death, 187, 191
and Experimental Diving Unit, 83, 94, 127, 208
and Genesis, 37–38, 41–42, 64, 67, 76, 220
and Sealab II, 125, 148
and SPID tests, 101–2
and Taylor Diving, 208–9, 210, 211
and thousand-foot dives, 72–73, 213–14
World War II:
amphibious respiratory unit in, 36
flight simulators in, 47
and Pearl Harbor, 11, 30
and POWs, 157–58
and salvage operations, 237
Youmans, John, 126–27
Zetterström, Arne, 43
Prior to the breakthroughs in diving made during Sealab, the deepest dives had to be made wearing heavy gear like this “helium hat,” an adaptation of the standard dive suit design from the early nineteenth century.
Dr. George Foote Bond, who began his medical career in the late 1940s with a practice in the backwoods of the Blue Ridge Mountains, might have seemed an unlikely father of a project like Sealab.
Commander George Bond, at right, with Cyril Tuckfield immediately after their record-setting swim to the surface from out of a submarine that was more than three hundred feet below. Bond arranged the 1959 demonstration to show that emergency escape from such depth was indeed possible with little more than a lungful of air and the proper technique.
Right: Walter Mazzone, a veteran of numerous harrowing World War II submarine patrols, in 1963 at the Medical Research Laboratory of the U.S. Navy’s submarine base at New London, Connecticut, where he became an indispensable aide to Bond.
Above: Bond and Mazzone open the medical airlock that allows small items to be passed in and out of a pressurized test chamber during the final phase of Genesis, the experiment they conducted prior to Sealab to show that divers could safely live in a sea floor shelter.
Right: Bob Barth, a Navy diver and volunteer test subject throughout the entire Sealab project, prepares for an extended stay inside a pressure chamber as part of the final phase of the Genesis experiments.
The Sealab I habitat, in transit from Panama City, Florida, where it was pieced together on a shoestring budget, to Bermuda for its first major trial run in the summer of 1964.
Standing with Sealab I are (from left) Bob Barth, Captain George Bond, Lester “Andy” Anderson, Dr. Robert Thompson, and Sanders “Tiger” Manning.
Scott Carpenter, the Mercury program astronaut, at left, with Lieutenant Commander Roy Lanphear, the officer in charge of Sealab I operations. Carpenter sought to be among the first to live and work on the ocean floor.
Jon Lindbergh, left, son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, and Robert Sténuit. In June 1964, three weeks before Sealab I, Lindbergh and Sténuit were preparing to attempt a deep, multiday dive near the Bahamas with inventor Edwin Link’s latest creation, a kind of undersea pup tent called the Submersible Portable Inflatable Dwelling, or SPID.
Andy Anderson, facing camera, shares a meal inside Sealab I with Tiger Manning, to his right, and Dr. Robert Thompson.
Dr. Thompson, left, and Manning, inside Sealab I. Behind them are the aquanauts’ four bunks.
The SS Berkone, with Sealab II in tow, at right, was made up of converted ships to serve as mission control during the lab’s forty-five days as a sea floor base in 1965 off the coast of Southern California.
The first of three aquanaut teams, including Berry Cannon and Scott Carpenter, at left in the front row, pose with Sealab II.
Captains Bond (above) and Mazzone, taking a rare break from their Sealab II monitoring station on the support ship Berkone.
The Team 1 aquanauts inside Sealab II take a moment to listen over the intercom as Captain Bond gives one of his typical Sunday sermons. Standing are, from left, Billie Coffman, Fred Johler, Scott Carpenter, Robert Sonnenburg, and Berry Cannon.
Robert Sonnenburg, left, the only aquanaut on both the first and third teams, inside Sealab II with Robert Sheats, the experienced master diver and Team 3 leader who suffered an unwelcome case of the bends as the undersea project reached its end.
Team 3 aquanaut Paul A. Wells, at work on a sunken aircraft fuselage, wears the gas-recycling Mark VI diving gear favored during both Sealab I and II, despite some dangerous quirks. The Mark VI looks similar to standard scuba, except for t
he breathing bags worn like a vest.
Captain George Bond with Jacques-Yves Cousteau at a conference, circa 1968. The two friendly rivals were early proponents of creating sea floor stations and planned to collaborate on a film about Sealab III.
The new Sealab III habitat arrives in Long Beach by barge from San Francisco, where it was remodeled and expanded from the hull of Sealab II. Changes in the design ultimately contributed to the pro-ject’s premature end.
The Sealab III support ship USS Elk River under way. The Personnel Transfer Capsule, a pod used to deliver divers to their habitat on the sea floor, sits between the ship’s superstructure and its open moon pool. The gantry crane for moving the PTC is at the stern; the twin command vans, where top managers like George Bond and Scott Carpenter could often be found, are amidships.
The gantry crane positions the Personnel Transfer Capsule over the moon pool on the Elk River. This PTC system, while more advanced than the relatively primitive prototypes for the previous Sealabs, developed problems early.
An artist’s rendition of the support ship Elk River, the Personnel Transfer Capsule, and Sealab III habitat, as they would appear during the actual operation.
Ed Link looks over a scale model of the deep-diving vessel to be called the Johnson-Sea-Link, in honor of Link’s partnership with his friend and fellow marine enthusiast J. Seward Johnson. The vessel could deliver divers to extraordinary depths and had many successful runs before a catastrophic accident.
Henri Delauze, founder of the French commercial diving giant Comex, pictured with the SAGA, the submarine and mobile habitat project he took over after Jacques Cousteau had to abandon it.
Dr. Robert Workman, a leading Navy scientist whose expertise jump-started Sealab, went on to head the research department at Taylor Diving & Salvage Co., a New Orleans–area company founded by former Navy divers to tap into the growing market for offshore oil.
The massive base section of the offshore oil platform Cognac before it was lowered for installation in the Gulf of Mexico at a record-setting depth of 1,025 feet.
The USS Halibut, cruising out of San Francisco Bay, carries on its afterdeck what was said to be a mobile mini-sub, but was really an affixed pressure chamber from which divers could come and go to carry out top secret missions.
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Sealab Page 53