Every submarine operating area has at least one submarine rescue ship always in readiness to speed to the scene of a submarine disaster. These are modern, powerful ships, fully equipped to spend weeks at sea and able to handle a wide variety of missions. The complement of 90 men includes about 20 first- class divers and one master diver. Most of the six officers are also divers. The ASR (A for auxiliary or non-combatant, SR for Submarine Rescue) carries two big recompression chambers, a diving bell, and all the gear that conceivably might be needed for any diving job, large or small.
When any submarine is at sea, one of the ASR’s is designated the “ready ship” and, if not already at sea, is on a one-hour notice for getting underway. USS Sunbird (ASR-15) was the “ready ship” on 16 January 1961. We were moored at our home port of New London, Connecticut, loading spare parts and supplies, and doing routine maintenance. The general topic of discussion centered around Texas Tower No. 4 which had collapsed the previous night. This was of more than passing interest to us, because, a few months before, we had done some diving work on the tower.
About 1300, we got a phone call from our squadron operations officer, ordering us to get underway as soon as possible and proceed to the tower site. Ships already there had reported that they had heard what sounded like tapping coming from inside the wreck. They thought that possibly someone was still alive inside the tower and they wanted diving assistance immediately. An hour later, we were underway with ten extra divers from a sister ship and from the submarine base.
We arrived on the scene at 2220 and anchored half a mile from the destroyer Blandy which was, in turn, anchored about 500 yards south of a sonar contact which was assumed to be the tower wreckage. A boat from the aircraft carrier Wasp came by and took our diving officer, master diver, and me over to Blandy to get the latest information. At this conference we found that a young naval officer had already made attempts to locate the tower using shallow water gear. He had not been able to go deep enough to see much, but had caught a glimpse of what he thought were two of the tower legs about ten feet below the surface. We also found that Mr. David Crockett and four civilian divers from Boston had arrived at the scene and had made further attempts to locate and buoy the wreckage. Davy Crockett is with a firm of marine contractors and had done extensive installation and repair work on the tower before its collapse. His divers included some well known scuba men from a salvage and sales outfit in Boston. Working from a small boat in darkness and heavy seas, they had not been able to locate the wreckage although they had been down to about 90 feet and had come out of the water just before we got there. By this time the worsening weather made further operations unprofitable as well as hazardous and we felt that nothing more could be done that night. After the conference, I went to the ship’s sonar room to listen to the tappings and my journal for the night says: “listened to tapping on Blandy sonar. Maybe so, maybe not, no real pattern.” Due to the extremely rough weather, the Sunbird people spent the night aboard Blandy.
The next day was fairly calm. Sunbird personnel got back to their ship about 0700 and by mid-morning our scuba divers in our whaleboat, working with Davy and his men in Blandy's boat, had located and buoyed the wreck. Divers went to 60 feet to buoy the wreck and some went deeper and tapped around the wreckage searching for signs of life. Nothing answered them except the noises of shifting wreckage. We could hear these rappings very clearly through the SunbircTs hull and, of course, even louder on our sonar. These distinct, man-made noises sounded not at all like the random rattlings we had heard the night before. The divers reported the water to be fairly clear with about 40 feet of visibility, with a slight current, and cold.
By mid-afternoon it was apparent that the weather was going bad again. Blandy was anxious to get back to normal operations so Davy Crockett and his men transferred to Sunbird. About this same time, several Life correspondents including a well known author and underwater photographer, came aboard from a tug which had brought them out from New York City.
A review of information gathered during the day indicated that the “A” corner of the tower was up off the bottom about a hundred feet. Where the other two corners were we did not know. We had time for one more set that day, but I had been reluctant to let our divers go much deeper than a hundred feet while working from the boat since they would be a long way from the chamber in case of accident. Two of our best men, however, were in structed to go as deep as 165 feet to try to find out where the “C” corner of the tower sat. While Sunbird circled nearby, they boated over to the buoys and hit the water just before dark. Swimming down the buoy line to 60 feet where the line was attached to the base of a radio tower, they took off and angled down across the sloping deck of the wreck. On the way down they spotted the tower’s traveling crane with its broken boom hanging down over the side. At 165 feet they were on the “C” corner of the tower deck and could see that the bottom of the two-story structure rested on the ocean floor 20 feet farther down. As they started up, one man lost his face mask when the strap broke, but they surfaced without any difficulty and were back in the boat after only ten minutes. By 1730 we were done for the day. All the destroyers and the aircraft carrier Wasp left the area during the night leaving Sunbird and Penobscot, a Navy salvage tug, alone at the scene.
The 18th dawned cold and blowing half a gale. Boating was out of the question and thus so was diving. We spent the long, stormy day working up what information we had and laying out a plan of action. In view of the reports of wreckage ten feet below the surface, I was not anxious to take our 17-foot draft ship over it until it had been found and buoyed. So far, none of the other divers had spotted anything closer to the surface than the top of the radio tower at 25 feet, but the survey was far from complete. Davy Crockett had brought a set of plans of the tower with him and I asked him and his divers to act as guides for us since they had all lived in the tower for varying periods before its collapse and were familiar with its interior. This was a unique arrangement whereby civilian scuba divers worked side-by-side with Navy divers from a Navy salvage ship.
During the night we heard more tappings on our own sonar but I found that I could hear the same tappings louder if I pressed my ear to the anchor chain. It was my opinion then as well as now that the tappings heard previously were merely due to anchor chains rattling and the sounds of shifting wreckage.
The 19th dawned fairly calm and snowing lightly. At daybreak we were in action and moved Sunbird to within 400 yards of the wreck before anchoring again. Most of the light buoys attached previously had carried away in yesterday’s blow so the morning’s effort was centered about attaching a more permanent buoy using wire cable. The men who handled this job worked from our whaleboat and one from Penobscot. Upon their return, several others made a general inspection of the upper 100 feet of the wreck. The Life photographer accompanied them for part of their tour and got his pictures for the magazine. This team used up nearly all their time for a no-decompression dive and were back in the boat after 23 minutes. The next group worked down to 165 feet for 15 minutes, taking two at 20 and five at 10 on the way up. Three men worked down to the bottom at 187 feet for 10 minutes, stopping at 10 feet for three minutes before rolling into the boat.
These dives gave us a pretty thorough picture of the outside of the wreck and used up the morning. One quick look around the inside of the tower was decided upon before knocking off in the face of rapidly gathering weather from the northeast. After working up a careful plan for the dive, three divers boated out to the buoy and rolled over the side. They found the entrance door leading off from the tower main deck without difficulty in the good visibility and started in. They were somewhat taken aback by spotting a body floating in the overhead of one of the first compartments inspected but, sticking with the plan, passed it up in order to see as much of the interior as their time permitted. One man had been a little slow getting down due to ear trouble and was the last in. He stayed at the first bend in the passageway holding his light as a beacon, another man stayed at the next bend, and the third swam down the tilted and sloping passageway as far as he could before being stopped by debris and collapsed bulkheads. On the way out, and since they had a little time left, they took the body in tow. Since one man had been to 160 feet, they all stopped at 10 feet for a bit before surfacing with the body. With the help of the boat crew and standby divers, the body was pulled into Penobscot's boat while the divers rolled into Sunbird's for a quick trip back to the ship and a short soak in the recompression chamber to correct any shortcomings of their decompression.
The weather was making up fast by this time and we were forced to knock off. An ocean tug from New York came alongside and took off the Life photographer and the other correspondents while we made preparations for getting underway to ride out what the tumbling barometer and lowering skies told us was heading our way. Although we were through diving by 1300, the day’s activity resulted in a good picture of the situation which can be summed up from the message sent back to shore headquarters that night:
TEXAS TOWER LOSS SITUATION REPORT. SUN- BIRD AND PENOBSCOT UNDERWAY ABOUT FIVE MILES SOUTHWEST OF WRECK RIDING OUT NORTHEAST BLIZZARD. POSITION OF WRECK EXTENSIVELY SURVEYED WITH FINDINGS AS FOLLOWS:
A. BOTTOM OF PLATFORM AT BRAVO AND CHARLIE CORNERS RESTING ON BOTTOM, BOTTOM OF PLATFORM AT ALFA CORNER ONE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE BOTTOM. ALL EXTERNAL HATCHES AND DOORS ON RADOME DECK AND MAIN DECK BLOWN AWAY. MOST WINDOWS BLOWN OUT. MINIMUM DEPTH OVER MAIN STRUCTURE IS 65 FEET, ONE RADIO MAST INTACT AND STRAIGHT, TOP 25 FEET BELOW SURFACE. OTHER RADIO MAST DOWN. RADOME FABRIC DRAPED OVER SEVERAL ACCESSES. CENTER RADOME HOUSE FIFTY PER CENT CARRIED AWAY. UPPER AIRLOCK HATCH COVERS BENEATH RADOMES BLOWN AWAY AND HATCH COAMINGS DISTORTED. MAIN DECK PLATING REASONABLY INTACT. NO LIFEBOATS SIGHTED. ALL HANDRAIL MISSING AND INFLATABLE LIFE RAFT RACK DISTORTED. TRAVELING CRANE IN PLACE NEAR CHARLIE CORNER, BOOM BENT DOWN OVER SIDE.
B. PARTIAL INSPECTION MADE IN INTERIOR THROUGH OPERATIONAL SPACES PASSAGEWAY AND OFFICES BY ONE THREE-MAN SCUBA TEAM. SOME BULKHEADS DOWN, TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF GEAR AND DEBRIS ADRIFT AND PASSAGEWAY PARTIALLY BLOCKED.
C. BROKEN CAISSON STUBS NOT LOCATED.
The last sentence of the message was my main concern for the next two and a half days as we rode out the storm. If two of the tower legs (caissons) had been seen ten feet below the surface, I did not want to take the ship over the wreckage until they had been found. On the other hand, it didn’t seem wise to make any more inside swims or deep outside dives from a whaleboat, even if the ship—with its recompression chambers—was maneuvering nearby. In case of accident, I wanted to be able to get the divers aboard and into the chamber without a time-consuming boat ride in between. We had to moor the ship over the diving site, but first we had to find out if there was any wreckage which could punch a hole in our hull. As the blizzard wore itself out, one plan after another was thought up and discarded.
Finally we decided to try finding high obstructions with the swimmer’s sonar which is a small battery-powered metal detector capable of ranges of a few hundred feet. Failing in this, we would try to get two shallow draft Navy tugs out from New York, rig a weighted line between them and have them drag the area for obstructions high enough to hit Sun- bird’s hull. Third, we would build a sea sled and have scuba swimmers ride it at 60 to 90 feet to see what they could see. This plan of action was followed in the ensuing days. No luck with the sonar, no luck with the dragging. Not much luck with the weather, either. Usually we were able to work only two or three hours a day, and some days not at all. Our sister ship Tringa and the submarine base needed the divers which had been loaned to us so we had to transfer them all to Tringa when she came out after them on the night of 23 January.
The weather reports on the 24th looked even worse than usual. Shore headquarters gave us permission to seek shelter in New York and by 2200 we were moored at the ice- clogged Navy Yard pier in Brooklyn. We were out again on the 26th and finally got a couple of hours of weather good enough to try the sea sled. Two divers mounted up for the first ride and spent 25 minutes at 90 feet being towed in a search pattern behind the boat at about 4 knots. Upon surfacing they reported that the sled, designed and built on board, worked perfectly. Two more divers also gave it a go, but nothing was found by either team. We tried it again the next day but the sled flippers became damaged by the heavy seas and we had to give it up. Finally, on the 28th, the weather was good enough to complete the searching job. Sonar, dragging, and the sea sled combined, an area 600 yards square centered around the wreck had been searched. Nothing except the main wreck had been spotted so I decided to take a chance and assume the area was safe for navigation. After getting the sled riders aboard, we got underway and dropped mooring gear southwest and northeast of the wreck. These would be our beam anchors when we moored on a northwest heading during those periods of decent weather.
At noon on the 28th we made our first trip directly over the wreck. I must confess to a certain dryness of the throat as the soundings came up and up, then dropped off sharply as we passed over the top. The rest of the day was spent maneuvering in the vicinity taking fathometer readings and sonar ranges on the wreckage. The weather gave us a real break on the 29th by coming up calm, clear, and cold. We eased the 2,200-ton ship in over the wreck, dropping our stern anchor 300 yards before going overhead. When we had about 500 yards of 2-inch anchor wire out aft, we let go a bow anchor. Heaving around on the stern wire and veering chain forward, we pulled back over the wreck. While riding to these two anchors, the boat crew pulled out 7-inch nylon lines to the two sets of mooring gear on our port and starboard beams. By taking a strain on these lines and adjusting the scope of the bow and stern anchors, we were able to center the Sunbird directly over the wreck.
The day started beautifully but it turned out to be one of the most frustrating of the entire job. The object of the day’s activity was to blast some additional openings in the structure to make escape routes for the swimmers in case they got lost inside the wreck. Try as we might, we could not get the main charge to detonate. The primacord primed, the detonators detonated, the booster charge boosted, but as for the main charge—nothing. As we prepared to clear out of the moor, we could feel the stern wire rubbing on the wreck somewhere, but a team of swimmers found that it was not caught, so we tripped out the nylon lines, picked up the bow and stern anchors, and got underway for the night.
The next day was a big one and every diver on board got into action. As for the weather, it was one of the best days yet, being calm, warm (above freezing, that is), and sunny. We ran a descending line directly to the center access hatch from the side of the ship so that the swimmers could go over on the stage, get on the line and go directly to the hatch. We had hoped to station a hard-hat diver at the hatch so that he could keep track of swimmers going in and out, help with any bodies they might find and be ready with an extra air supply if anyone ran short inside the wreck. Sunbird’s able executive officer and one of the Navy’s most experienced deep sea divers piled on his 195 pounds of canvas, lead, steel, and copper, and disappeared over the side. Because the stage on which he was to stand outside the hatch plumbed down through the bent-over radar antennae, we couldn’t get him to the hatch without fouling his hoses. On other occasions later in the job, we tried to use hard-hat divers as safety men for the swimmers, but each and every time the wreckage foiled the plan.
Twenty-three swimmers got inside the wreck on this day and two others made repeated dives to hook up and later to disconnect the descending line. In general, teams of three men each entered the wreck, towing 1,000-watt divers’ lights. One man stayed just inside the main hatch and tended the light cable to prevent its fouling. The other two men swam to their designated search area, through doors and passageways, down stairwells and corridors through the eerie gloom of the structure, expecting at any moment to be confronted by dead men. They pulled over mattresses, chairs, tables, and other debris as much as possible to make sure they were not missing anything. No attempt was made to force locked doors since it seemed inconceivable that anyone would have been inside a locked room and, anyway, most of the locked rooms could be checked from outside by looking through windows. This was the first time inside the wreck for most of the divers and a few were bothered by a shortage of air caused, no doubt, by hyperventilation due to anxiety. Some of the teams, rather than use the big diver’s light powered from the ship above, used ordinary Navy battle lanterns or diver’s flashlights.
Most of these first interior swims were at about 160 feet for 15 minutes, which calls for one minute at 20 feet and four minutes at 10 feet. The swimmers had the stops for various depths written on their flippers with grease pencil and their stops were double-checked by the surface tenders in the following way: Upon reaching the 20-foot level, the teams found a stage, hanging from the 5,000-pound diver’s boom, waiting for them. An extra set of tanks or a shallow water face plate was tied off to the stage in case they were short of air. Also a piece of plastic with a grease pencil was hanging from a line from the surface. Upon reaching the stage, the team leader wrote his maximum depth reached on the plastic which was then pulled to the surface and checked by the master or the doctor. The proper stops for the depth were written on the plastic and sent down to the swimmers as a matter of academic interest, but all they had to do now was hang onto the stage, the decompression being controlled by the tenders. After the proper interval, the stage was hoisted to the 10-foot level, then up and over the side, landing the divers on deck.
Some of the men were bothered by the cold water while taking their stops, and abbreviated the decompression in favor of a soak in the recompression chamber. As each set came out of the water, they were issued a shot of medicinal whiskey by the ever present diving doctor. If the master diver did not like the decompression taken, the team went to the pot, otherwise a short debriefing was taken by diving officer. After a hot shower and getting dressed, a more thorough debriefing was taken. The civilian divers found all this quite luxurious compared with the conditions under which they had conducted operations in the past. In the Navy, however, safety is paramount and an injury to a diver is very rare indeed. A whaleboat was kept in the water fully manned, in case a swimmer made an emergency surface away from the side of the ship.
It was a good day’s work and no more bodies were discovered.
On the strength of a favorable weather forecast, I decided to stay in the moor over the wreck all night to save the time necessary to center up in the morning. This turned out to be a mistake. The wind slowly picked up through the night and backed around from the bow to the port beam. By dawn on the 31st, the wind was up to half a gale and freezing seas were breaking over the laboring ship. It was too rough to use boats to disconnect the mooring lines from their buoys, so the lines were cut at the 600-foot splice. We heaved around on the bow anchor, got it up and then heaved around on the wire to retrieve the stern anchor, a special 4,000-pound lightweight, but as the wire came to the vertical, we found we couldn’t get the last 200 feet, which was apparently caught. We briefly considered cutting the wire but I discarded that idea because, once cut, this type of wire cannot be spliced, due to its special core. We would be out of business just when things were getting started in good shape. If we had to lose the anchor, I decided to lose it the hard way.
We took all the strain on the wire that the towing engine would produce (about 40 tons), engaged the pawl to prevent the towing engine from paying out any slack, and cleared the fantail of all personnel in case the wire broke and whipped around. Pretty soon, as hoped, a big swell came along, lifted the ship several feet, and the anchor tore loose. Upon getting it to the water’s edge, we found it to be still tangled up in a couple of tons of wreckage which Davy Crockett could not identify as coming from the tower. We fished the tangled mass of steel off the flukes of the anchor with lines run to a deck capstan and gave it the deep six well clear of the tower site. Later we found that we had caught the anchor in some framing which had been used during construction of the tower and which had been jettisoned upon completion of erection.
The first of February was another good day and, after the hard-working boat crews had run new mooring lines and retrieved the ones that had been cut, the divers checked out several more spaces. A number of divers worked all the way to the bottom inside the wreck. As the last three divers came aboard at 1530, the first hundred dives of the job were completed. Again, no bodies were seen.
Profiting from previous experience, I decided not to stay in the moor in spite of the good weather outlook. This turned out to be the wise thing to do, because the wind was howling again the next day. Shore headquarters radioed us that a big storm was heading our way and directed us to return to base at New London to ride it out. By 2230 that night we were moored snugly to our own berth after breaking through solid ice all the way up the Thames River. We had one snow storm after another for the next several days.
Monday morning, 6 February, found us underway again headed out for the wreck site. We arrived at the site much too late to do any diving, but as we circled the wreck, we picked up a new sonar contact a short distance northeast of the main structure. Considering that the tower had collapsed in a northeast gale and that it probably rode down to the southwest, the new contact seemed to look promising for the missing tower legs.
The weather on the 7th was poor in the morning but improved rapidly and by noon we were in the moor again and completing the interior search. As the weather became better and better on the surface, the visibility below became worse and worse. Davy Crockett said that he frequently had observed this condition at the tower site when he had been working there. He thought it was caused by a plankton movement in the area and estimated that it would probably last for four days. Visibility underwater was finally reduced to about five feet.
Before we quit for the day, we decided to try to recover a suitcase that had been spotted through the window of the tower commander’s stateroom. The swimmers had not been able to check this room from the inside because of wreckage blocking the door so they gave it a try using a boat hook to reach through the window since the steel sash prevented them from going in. The glass had been thoroughly cleaned out as the tower sank. The boat hook was too long, however, and it prevented them from reaching around the corner and hooking the suitcase. Two men gave it another try using a sawed-off boat hook, but they didn’t have any better luck and couldn’t find the right window in the reduced visibility. In the meantime, two more divers went out in the boat and, estimating themselves to be over the spot where we had held the new sonar contact, dropped down to the bottom to have a look around. Poor visibility also thwarted their efforts and all they could show for their swim was a big quahog shell. That ended the day’s activity and we got underway from the moor once again. Because of the poor visibility, we seemed to be wasting our time, but I felt that the suitcase was worth getting. The tower personnel were preparing to be evacuated before the disaster overtook them and I hoped the suitcase might contain the tower commander’s notes and records.
We gave it one more try the next day. Since I did not expect to be in the moor very long, I wanted to save the time necessary to run mooring lines and to recover them later. Our faithful friend Penobscot gave us an expert assist by anchoring nearby and taking one mooring line. Using this and our bow and stern anchors, we were able to get over the wreck in short order. This method would not do for long periods, however, because Sunbird put a terrific strain on the much smaller Penobscot's anchor chain. Two men hit the water for what turned out to be a brilliant dive. They found the right window in the murky visibility, hacksawed through the window sash, went in and got the suitcase, out again with a short stop at 10 feet, and were back on board in under nine minutes. Among other things, the suitcase was found to contain a small clock which was stopped at 7:28. Since it was also found to be wound and presumably running up until the instant that the tower collapsed, the exact time of the disaster was pinpointed for us.
With Davy Crockett’s estimate of duration of poor visibility in mind, it seemed that we should improve the time by doing something other than diving. The Boatswain disconnected one of the bow anchors from its chain and payed the chain out until about 20 fathoms of it was dragging on the bottom. We then steamed around slowly in the vicinity of where the missing tower legs were most likely to be. Every time the anchor chain jumped and rattled on something on the sandy bottom, we stopped and threw over a marker buoy. In a couple of hours, we had three spots buoyed and decided it would be best to go home until visibility improved.
We were out again on the 10th and dropped into a two-point moor (bow and stern anchors only) alongside the most promising marker buoy. A pair of divers dropped down the buoy line and landed right in the middle of a king- sized junk pile. Twisted caissons and braces were strewn about in all directions. The divers were up again after eight minutes at 187 feet to report their find. Since it was already nearly dark after our run out from New London, we had time for only one more set. The standby divers flippered down to make a more thorough inspection. The visibility was back to its original 40 feet, bearing out Davy Crockett’s prediction perfectly. The swimmers were able to confirm that we were very near the original tower site by the empty tin cans and other debris they saw which had obviously been discarded from the tower when it was in operation. After 15 minutes on the bottom swimming in and around the tangled mass of legs and bracing they came up with standard decompression and made their report. By taking sextant angles from the bow and stern of Sunbird to the buoy over the main wreck, I was able to calculate that we were 200 yards bearing 070 degrees true from the main wreck. No caissons or bracing had been found nearer to the surface than 130 feet.
Early the next day, 11 February, we planted another set of mooring gear to enable us to center over the new diving site. By using a bow anchor and running lines to the new mooring buoy as well as the old ones, we were centered over the caisson wreckage by midmorning. Again, almost every diver got to the bottom during the day using a schedule of 187 feet for 15 minutes with standard decompression. Any apprehension that any of the divers had felt about the depth and wreckage had long since left them. Whereas, earlier in the job, some of the men were coming up on reserve or even out of air, they were now coming up with 800-1,000 psi left in the big Navy 3,000 psi double jugs. Many of the divers, however, were suffering from head colds caused by the chilling effects of the cold water and by exposure to the elements when not diving but working about the decks as tenders as well as at routine ship’s work. It should be added here that Navy divers are sailors first. In addition to diving, they are expected to carry out all the multitudinous duties of their rate, be it boatswain’s mate, damage controlman, ship fitter, engineman, gunner’s mate, or any one of several other specialties.
The wreckage of the tower legs and braces was in such an unbelievable tangle that very little agreement could be reached among the various sets of divers as to what they had seen and how it lay on the bottom. The visibility, although good, was not quite good enough to see how one caisson was laying in relation to others or to the ship above. Two of the three main caissons were found, however, and pretty well identified as being the “B” and “C” legs. These huge pipes were over 12 feet in diameter and underwater looked even more gigantic. While the Navy divers were trying to familiarize themselves with the layout of the submerged wreckage, one of the civilian divers with a Navy diver as a buddy was photographing everything which he could positively identify. When their time was up, another pair took over the photo chores. One caisson footing was found and identified as being that for “B” leg. The footing was seen to be intact but the caissons broken just above the bottom. This leg had bent only slightly before it broke, allowing the caisson to crash to the bottom. Hard-hat divers were tried again in the hopes that with their ability to stay down much longer than the scuba divers they could make a more thorough investigation. Again they were ineffective because of the tangle of wreckage.
All available divers being “expended” by mid-afternoon and repetitive dives being uneconomical at that depth, we were through for the day. Once again I was faced with the choice of getting underway for no apparent reason in view of the fine weather then existing and forecast or, on the other hand, staying in the moor and maybe saving a lot of time and work the next day. I elected to stay put. Our salvage partner Penobscot was sent back to New York to pick up 30 more flasks of oxygen to replenish our dwindling supply to the recompression chamber and to get yet another case of medicinal whiskey.
As usual that night, we had a divers’ conference to talk over the day’s activity and to plan the work for the next day. As a result of the widespread disagreement as to what was what on the bottom, several means of clarifying the situation were discussed. Finally it was suggested that we construct an “as wrecked” scale model, each diver to add details to it as he came out of the water. Work on it was started right away.
At first light the next morning the weather was still fair but deteriorating. The first dive to try to find the base of “C” caisson turned out to be the only dive of the day. By 0930 we had chopped out of the moor and were underway in swiftly rising weather.
As we steamed slowly in the area riding out the storm, we got the word that we could have only two more days on the job before we would have to get back to the base and resume our normal duties for the submarine force.
By the morning of the 13th, the seas were subsiding and once again we entered the moor. The divers tried their best to come back with the information that they were sent after and once again they were largely foiled by the utter chaos on the bottom. Attempts to measure the broken pieces of caisson were made. The teams took a known length of line to one end of a caisson, attached it and attempted to stretch it along the broken piece. By cutting the line at the other end of the caisson and measuring what was left over, we hoped to determine the lengths of the various pieces of caisson and thus determine where the failures had occurred.
Even this simple operation was ineffective due to the inability of the swimmers to get through the mess in a direct line. They attempted to buoy the ends of the caissons by swimming to a broken end, attaching the buoy line and then inflating the buoy so that it would float to the surface. This did not work either, since the buoy fouled on the way up or drifted with the surge of the seas in such a way that no precise measurements could be made. The missing “A” caisson was found, however, and some slight idea as to its layout was gathered by the swimmers.
A civilian diver and his buddy came swinging aboard at 1631 after a photo run and this turned out to be the last dive on the wreck. The next day was the last that our schedule permitted on the job but it was a repeat of so many others as far as the weather was concerned and no diving was possible. We weren’t even able to get the boat in the water to run retrieving lines to our mooring buoys. Recovering the mooring gear was thus out of the question in the huge, towering seas. Our faithful friend Penobscot was released about noon and shortly thereafter disappeared in the general direction of New York City, her home port.
The 15th was still far from calm but the coxswain and his boat crew manned their boat for their final effort. After four hours of back breaking, mule hauling work, all the tons of mooring buoys, chains, and anchors were back aboard and safely stowed. Coast Guard Buoy Tender Sassafras was planting a big obstruction buoy near the wreck site as we cranked on best speed for home, one month to the day since the tower had collapsed.
Many readers may be wondering if there was ever any life in the tower after its collapse. Our search of the tower was thorough and complete and I believe that the body we found was the only one inside the tower when it went down. All evidence indicated that this victim died almost instantly. As for what had caused so much concern for the first several days of the job, I believe the diver saw the light colored fabric of the collapsed radomes and thought they were the tower legs. It is entirely possible, however, that the legs were still standing at the time and slowly collapsed while we were looking for them.
Civilian divers, as well as Navy divers, deserve every bit of credit they received for their magnificent and courageous efforts under the long and trying conditions connected with this operation.