Sealab I’s 50th Anniversary

[John C. Ratliff]

In the USAF Pararescue, we were using the first and second generation Calypso before it was approved by Navy EDU, as the DA Aquamaster really did not work well for parascuba jumping. A bit later, we converted to MR-12s, and the comment I heard from some of the other PJs was that the MR-12 seemed "rinkydink" compared to the USD Calypso. Here's a couple of our training dives from Okinawa in 1968, and me in parascuba gear circa 1976.

...Chief Cyril Tuckfield was running the dive locker as his last duty station before retirement. Tuck was a legend.

He made the buoyant ascent from 302' from the submarine the USS Archerfish in 1959 with Captain George F. Bond, the father ofSaturation Diving. His long friendship with Bond lead to his being on all three Sealab projects, either as a support diver or an Aquanaut on Sealab II. I lived in the enlisted quarters across the street from the dive locker and would spend hours talking with him. Aside from being one of the nicest and most modest humans you could ever meet, he would share any bit of knowledge he had accumulated.

Do you have any pearls of wisdom, stories, or information that Chief Cyril Tuckfield passed to you that you can share? That would be fascinating. I had heard of his buoyant ascent, although I did not know it was him. I think it was still being talked about in the U.S. Naval School for Underwater Swimmers when I went through in 1967. Also, I have a book in my library titled Underwater Physiology, Edited by C.J. Lambertsen, and he has some papers in it too. I have used it as a reference for many, many years now.

SeaRat

 

[Akimbo]

... Do you have any pearls of wisdom, stories, or information that Chief Cyril Tuckfield passed to you that you can share?...

I wish I could boil it down like that. Tuck was a quiet modest guy. He wasn't a wordsmith with a bunch of one-liners. In addition to being a diving legend, he was a submariner during the diesel to nuclear upheaval. He struck me as the kind of sailor that did his best with whatever was assigned to him rather than a "buck the system" type. What he gave me was more a sense of what it was like in the trenches from the beginning. He could also read people like a young kid like me at the time could barely comprehend.

Captain Bond's experiments in saturation diving started out unfunded, unauthorized, and viewed by superiors as having no value to the Navy. I never met Captain Bond and had no idea of the politics that had to be overcome. In many ways, Bond had to be a maverick, much like Charles "Swede" Momsen in the 1930s.

Project Genesis and Sealab I were bastard children with a lot of the Navy's diving brass (superior officers) only relenting for the PR value -- the military in general was not very popular at that time. Somewhere around the time of Sealab I, the Navy suddenly found a critical need -- top secret submarine based spying projects. I don't think Tuck was read into any of that but commented on the sudden friction that developed between the traditional diving navy and a few civilians from Washington with buckets of money and enough stroke to make the most senior officers get out of the way... including Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the virtual Czar of the nuclear Navy.

I guess both of use chalked all the conflict up to navy politics, which was disturbing to me as a naïve young sailor. It only made sense to me after Blind Man's Bluff came out -- I hope Tuck read it before he passed away.

If you are interested in Sealab, these are must-reads:
Papa Topside: The Sealab Chronicles of Capt. George F. Bond, USN

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew

The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea by John Pina Craven

Sealab: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor by Ben Hellwarth (Ben is pretty active on Scubaboard)

This book provides a lot of insight into what the diving navy was like before the war
The Terrible Hours: The Man Behind the Greatest Submarine Rescue in History by Peter Maas

 

[SEALAB Author Ben H.]

Great to find this thread going. . . Yes, it was 50 years ago today, right about now, that four U.S. Navy divers swam into SEALAB I, nearly 200 feet below the surface of the Atlantic southwest of Bermuda. So began a game-changing adventure that opened a new window - and door - into the world underwater. The risks they took and the achievements of their pioneering mission are unlikely to be mentioned this week by many news outlets or in twitter feeds, but we should all take a moment to remember America's first "aquanauts," who showed all the same kind of Right Stuff as the more celebrated astronauts of their time. Pictured here, standing at one end of SEALAB I, are Robert A. Barth, Capt. George F. Bond (not an aquanaut but the father of SEALAB), Lester "Andy" Anderson, Dr. Robert Thompson and Sanders "Tiger" Manning . . .
.

 

[Akimbo]

It is interesting that it is the same day that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon 5 years later.

Ben:
You might want to square these guys away (select July 20):
Today In History. What Happened This Day In History

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Ben,

Thank you for coming onto this thread, and sharing the photograph.

For others: if you have not heard, Ben Hellwarth wrote:
Sealab: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor

I plan to get this book soon. This was a monumental achievement (Sealab I), and Sealab II contributed a lot. The problems with Sealab III led to breakthroughs too, which I want to learn more about.

SeaRat

 

[SEALAB Author Ben H.]

Yes, this would not be the first timeline to be missing SEALAB. Most discouraging was a big timeline on the history of exploration in the June 2013 issue of National Geographic that included such things as William Beebe's bathysphere, but no mention of SEALAB I, II, or III. (I commented on this at the time on my Facebook page. On my page just the other day someone commented on the odd coincidence of the July 20 dates.)

---------- Post added July 21st, 2014 at 11:36 PM ----------

That last post was in response to Akimbo . . . and John, you're welcome, and I hope you'll find my book interesting. Here is something of a sneak preview I wrote, just posted today in honor of SEALAB's 50th - and to add a little context to all the recent news about Fabien Cousteau's Mission 31 at the Aquarius Reef Bas . . .It's linked above but just in case it's at: Zócalo Public Square :: Is the Final Frontier Under the Sea?

 

[captain]

I was asked by the man who was there on Sea Lab 1 to post this correction.

"Tom,
I'm not a member of scuba-board but I would like to straighten Akimbo out on Sea-lab 1 misinformation.

Dr. Chris Lambertsen used the acronym SCUBA for a lot his papers prior to 1952 when he published it for the public.

SeaLab Divers on the bottom used a push-pull system and The Mark VI semi-closed UBA. There were no twin 90's on the project at that time.

Standard surface support was twin 72's and DA Aqua-master regulators special ordered by Master Diver Bob Sheats, he had me take them all apart and remove the yellow hoses(we used them for replacement hoses later)clean and rebuild to USD spec's.

I have 18 dives in my Navy Log book in support of SeaLab 1, 3 are in 210'-220' range on a USAF aircraft body recovery, the remainder are photo dives to film the the Sea-Lab Habitat and the Aquanauts 194'-200' depending how it was measured, we would do 12-13 minute dives to depth and then did a safety stop at 10-15 feet (we didn't have name for it then). Majority of the SEALAB 1 film is my footage, some of the same footage was used in the SEALAB @ film also."

 

[captain]

This photo of Bernie Campoli was taken from inside Sea Lab1


View attachment 191573

 

[Sam Miller III]

The question is what kind of camera housing and what size of film?

hint: made in Kalifornia

SDM

 

[captain]

I am sure Bernie will supply the answer, standby.

---------- Post added August 20th, 2014 at 01:51 PM ----------

The answer from the man behind the camera,

" The Underwater housing and camera is a Sampson Pro with a WW2 35mm Bell and Howell EYEMO motion picture camera with a custom 400 foot film magazine, I call it the 1964 version of the Current Gopro video camera."


Note

Eyemo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia