Even though Mike was not scheduled for a dive until later in the operational phase of the mission, he had plenty to do. Standing on the deck of the R/V Falling Star, Mike had responsibility for checking out the instrumentation package prior to any operation. To do this effectively, Mike had to don a wet suit and SCUBA apparatus. Mike enjoyed this assignment because it allowed him to be close to the Squid and to be part of history.
The initial operational dive would be conducted by the Squid’s regular crew of two: the pilot, Jim Anderson, and his crew chief, Walt Carver. Anderson was an old hand in the submersible business, having trained on such vessels as the Deepstar 2000, Alvin, and Aluminaut. Anderson had been stricken with deep-sea fever at an early age and like most pilots of commercial submersibles had spent his entire career chasing that dream.
When Robison figured that the Squid was going to become reality, he put out the call to his old friend who at that time was at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute near Falmouth, Massachusetts, running its small fleet of submersibles, including the Alvin, which having a dive depth of 8,000 feet was one of the deepest diving free swimming vessels available. When Anderson heard 20,000 feet he didn’t need much persuasion and was in Sunnyvale within a week.
Anderson was just over six feet tall and had the leathery brown tan of someone who probably spent too much time in the sun. His brown hair was thinning and his blue eyes had a penetrating hardness tinged with the crinkles of a smile. He wore dungarees and white tee shirts, on his right forearm was a tattoo of a porpoise diving into the waves, if you looked hard you could still see the heart with the name “Louise” that the porpoise was supposed to hide. On his belt, he always carried a stainless steel sailing knife in a leather case, the kind that has a five inch blade on one end and a five inch marlin spike on the other. Anderson’s reputation was hard work, hard play, joker when things went well and deadly, deadly serious about the dives.
When things go wrong on the bottom, you can’t pop the canopy and parachute out — here there is no out, was one of Anderson’s favorite quotes.
In contrast, Walt Carver had spent twenty years in the U.S. Navy and had retired at age thirty seven as a Chief Petty Officer. Most of his career was spent in the engine room of various surface fleet vessels. After his retirement from the Navy, Carver got a job as a shop foreman in the Marine Division of MacAlear assembling hydrofoils used for patrol in Viet Nam. It was in this job that Carver earned a reputation for meeting and exceeding performance standards and schedules. So it was an easy call for Robison, when the funds actually started flowing from McHugh’s confidential sources, to badger MacAlear’s management into sparing Carver from his normal duties.
Shanghaiing Carver may have been the smartest thing that Robison did during the entire fifteen months. Carver was all over the place, making sure that each component was correctly assembled and checked out. The young engineers and technicians at MacAlear called him Chief in deference to his retired rank and out of fondness for this gentle, soft spoken West Virginian who had never even seen the ocean when he walked into the Navy recruiter’s office in Beckley, West Virginia, one autumn day in 1942, Walt had decided to join the Navy right after Pearl Harbor, but had to wait until autumn when he turned seventeen. Carver’s dad had refused to sign for him when he was sixteen.
A slight man of forty-five, Carver was a wiry contrast to Anderson both in appearance and in style. No bravado, no jokes, just quiet listening and contemplative nods of the head when listening to the many problems sure to arise. Carver always dressed in his Navy dungarees and light blue work shirt. Even after twenty years in the Navy and eight at MacAlear, his weight had not changed one pound and he could still wear the uniform he wore as a recruit at the Great Lakes Training Center in Illinois.
The Squid was beautiful, its fiberglass outer hull glistened white, royal blue lettering and striping made for an impressive machine. The pressure hull hung inside the outer hull, but projected from the bow of the vessel thereby enabling the pilot and observers to see frontward and downward.
A fiberglass conning tower, flooded during dives, enabled the crew to operate the submersible at the surface. Outfitted with a fully articulated robotic arm, the Squid could do useful work in addition to providing mobility during its dives. The Squid also had forward scanning sonar which worked much like radar would for a surface vessel. Television cameras and strobe lights completed the standard instrumentation.
Because of its mission, the Squid was also outfitted with a variety of oceanographic instrumentation including the now familiar metastable-helium magnetometer. Launching the Squid was an art, in and of itself. The R/V Falling Star was a catamaran with a gigantic open platform that served as an elevator in between its twin hulls. By lowering the platform, the Squid could simply swim out on its own power. There was no need to hoist the submersible into the water.
The Squid sat on a specially designed cradle in the center of the elevator. Designed for an earlier, shallower version of the Squid, the Deep Diver, the R/V Falling Star did not require extensive refitting to accommodate the Squid. Because of the size of the R/V Falling Star, the water between the two hulls remained relatively calm.
Additionally, the hulls of the R/V Falling Star could be flooded, dropping the vessel’s waterline to create a pool of calmness even in moderately rough seas.
Anderson and Carver climbed in to the conning tower of the Squid. Dressed in blue coveralls with the MacAlear logo on the back, both of them had wisely worn long johns underneath. Despite the 90 degree air and warm surface water temperatures, the ocean beneath the photic zone remained generally a cool 32 degrees, Fahrenheit. At deeper depths, the temperature could drop even further. The Squid was equipped with chemical heaters, but prudence dictated that occupants dressed warmly. Robison served as dive director on this first dive. McHugh and Sevson would help Robison launch the submersible.
Mike was dressed in his wet suit and SCUBA equipment. His job today was to ride the outside of the Squid, along with two MacAlear technicians to conduct a final instrumentation check in the water before the submersible attempted its first dive over the Hatteras Abyssal Plain. In addition to his wet suit and SCUBA gear, Mike would be wearing a microphone and headset so he could communicate with Anderson.
Anderson and Carver disappeared into the pressure sphere of the submersible, the hatch closed with a solid, but muffled clang. Once the hatch was closed the only way that Anderson could communicate with Robison was via a through-hull telephone patch.
However, once the Squid was launched from the R/V Falling Star and the telephone link was automatically uncoupled, the crew of the Squid would be left on their own. However, they would have the company of Mike and two MacAlear technicians for the start of their trip.