Details surrounding death of USN divers +1 year ago finally released under FOIA

[fire_diver]

...just playing the game you proposed:

If you're the one being beaten to death with a tire iron, how do you feel about your parents, wife, children stepping in to help, knowing they could likely be injured or killed along with yourself?

It's not a ****ing game.

 

[Pavao]

It's not a ****ing game.

Forget the first sentence please, my bad.

Now, I would still like to hear your answer to the question though, please.

 

[Abdullah]

When you spend so much time with a core group of people they become family. Not "like a family", they ARE family. I spent more time with my guys in deployment than I do with my wife. 24/7 eat, sleep, work and play together. If you don't do everything in your power to save one of them, even if it means you could die in the process, you are a complete scumbag.

People who have never served simply can't grasp what it's like because they have never been there. I know it's cliched, but it's true too.

You don't need to be life long military or an emergency response professional to have the sense of duty to try to work through issues under duress. People do it every day in all walks of life. The AI forum question people are asking is perfectly legitimate - At what point does a diver make the rational decision to save his own life? Military commanders make this life and death call all the time - How much do they sacrifice before the sacrifice is too much to sustain the long term objective?

I think in this case Akimbo probably hit the nail on the head - the diver ran out of air before he could resolve the entanglement. They probably thought they had time, until they were out of time. It seems more likely that this case is more similar to a recreational dive casualty than to a heroic last stand in a hail of gunfire. The failures in leadership notwithstanding, the nature of this tragedy is a very good lesson learned for recreational divers looking to make deep dives without the redundancy that a technical rig provides.

 

[nadwidny]

I think in this case Akimbo probably hit the nail on the head - the diver ran out of air before he could resolve the entanglement. They probably thought they had time, until they were out of time

Yup. I wouldn't think there was a whole lot of pressure gauge watching going on. There was too much else to focus on.

Would these guys have been on air/nitrox or trimix? My guess would be air/nitrox since most military or commercial protocols for mix require a chamber, surface supplied, etc.

Would they have been on doubles or was the news report correct that they were on singles?

 

[Abdullah]

Yup. I wouldn't think there was a whole lot of pressure gauge watching going on. There was too much else to focus on.

Would these guys have been on air/nitrox or trimix? My guess would be air/nitrox since most military or commercial protocols for mix require a chamber, surface supplied, etc.

Would they have been on doubles or was the news report correct that they were on singles?

All indications are that this was supposed to be some sort of bounce dive on a single tank. 150 feet would be too deep to be practical for any nitrox blends. You could use trimix for a bounce (not sure about safety on that, but they clearly weren't making safe decisions anyway). The information doesn't say whether they had a chamber available on site.

 

[Akimbo]

Yup. I wouldn't think there was a whole lot of pressure gauge watching going on. There was too much else to focus on…

How do you see an SPG or computer in zero visibility? The British Navy (and probably others) developed Progressive Equalization to monitor their gas before SPGs and in zero visibility, but the US Navy never adopted the technique.

Additional Thoughts on Black Water

Typical doubles manifolds that have been used for decades by the US Navy only support one regulator, don't have individual post or isolation valves, but do have a 300-500 PSI reserve lever. Unfortunately, the reserve levers aren't super reliable and often get pushed down accidently. It isn't clear from the reports I have read if they were using those or modern isolation manifolds.

See USD Twin Manifold PN 280000 on this page:
http://www.aqualung.com/militaryandprofessional/product_information/Cylinder_Valves_02_r1_10.pdf

 

[Lead_carrier]

Forget the first sentence please, my bad.

Now, I would still like to hear your answer to the question though, please.

I can't answer for fire-diver but I will answer it for myself. If I'm on a dive and get paired with an insta-buddy, including most of the peopley on this board. I will do everything in my power to help get anyone out of a jam without getting myself killed. If I am diving with my family (see fire_divers definition of family) I will do everything I can to get them out of a jam, INCLUDING getting myself killed trying. That's just the way I am. Since most people on here claim they won't dive with an insta-buddy then most of the equation will never be able to exist. Am I right or wrong? Probably, but that's just the way it is.

 

[nadwidny]

How do you see an SPG or computer in zero visibility? The British Navy (and probably others) developed Progressive Equalization to monitor their gas before SPGs and in zero visibility, but the US Navy never adopted the technique.

As long as one can get their SPG to their mask it can be read, even in "zero visibility".

 

[agilis]

People who have never served simply can't grasp what it's like because they have never been there. I know it's cliched, but it's true too.

And it can't really be explained. I think I understand the complex feelings of long dead young men who wrote and died in trenches a century ago, but my students, the same age as those young poets, could not get their point, not really. In some ways it is so subtle and so deep that it barely exists on the edge of understanding for those of us who felt it, but it is still there even now, after so many decades.

The news report held an unexpected shock for me. My cousin Michael, 'Stretch', was awarded a similar medal posthumously in 1968, something to do with lifesaving, as I recall. Second Battalion, First Marines, Quang Tri. He was 18 years old. Though I think of Michael all the time, I'd completely forgotten about the medal.

Time has a way of stripping away the unimportant details, leaving only the pure truth.

 

[Akimbo]

As long as one can get their SPG to their mask it can be read, even in "zero visibility".

No, that's poor visibility. Zero visibility is when you put your dive light against your faceplate and can only see a dull glow — typical of what you get on soft mud bottoms like in ponds and many harbors. I have tried and you can't see a SPG or bright computer like an Atomic Cobalt.