Divers home after submarine rescue

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33320, 3 September 1973, Page 15

Divers home after submarine rescue

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BARROW-IN-FURNESS, September 2. Two British divers had a champagne reunion with their wives last night after being hoisted to the surface of the Atlantic in the deepest submarine rescue on record. The 11-ton midget submarine Pisces 111 was winched from the ocean depths shortly after 1200 GALT, (midnight N.Z. time) and the crew, Roger Mallinson and Roger Chapman, flown from the rescue area to this north-west England port.

The two men emerged from their metal tomb about 100 miles (160 km) off the southern Irish coast looking “fit enough to play football,” according to one rescuer. He said the sea was very rough.

The drama began on Wednesday morning when the Pisces 111 was being used to lay a new Atlantic telephone cable on the ocean floor.

A cable apparently snagged a hatch on the surfaced submarine, and it plunged 1375 feet to the ocean floor within 30 seconds, coming to rest at an angle of 70 degrees.

Two sister submarines were flown to Cork on the Irish south coast from Scotland and the Canadian east coast port of Halifax. United States Air Force planes also took a deep-sea recovery device known as Curv to Cork from San Diego, California.

The international rescue operation started with the entombed crewmen singing for their lives to help the search craft locate their position.

On Friday a light guideline was attached to the 19-foot Pisces TIT, and yesterday a bigger cable was taken down by Curv and wrapped around the trapped vessel. The Canadian cable-laying ship John Cabot started to winch Pisces 111 to the surface yesterday morning in a last-ditch effort after the rescue craft had had several snags. ‘Comfortable* Mr Mallinson, who celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday on the ocean floor on Thursday, said that they had been comfortable during their ordeal and had had faith in the ability of their colleagues on the surface to rescue them. He said: “One of the first things we did was to rig up a platform and cushions to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. “Quite early on we had a message from the Queen to wish us good luck, and this was one of the things that gave us most hope. “It has been a long time, and if we had known how

long it was going to be in advance, things would have been more difficult.” ‘Complete faith* Mr Chapman, aged 28, said: “Getting to the bottom took about half a minute, and from then on it was just a matter of waiting and spinning out the life supports. We had complete faith in those at the top, and we knew the depth was the reason why it was taking so long.” Fears were held that the oxygen supply for the two men would run out by Saturday noon, but they still had one day’s supply left when they surfaced after 76 hours underwater.

“At no stage did we ever give up hope,” Mr Chapman said. “I guess our confidence waned a little when we could not talk to the surface, but that was not very often. We were regularly kept informed about all developments.”

I Mr Mallinson said they had 'been able to conserve their j air much better than expected. “We did this by lying i still and just talking quietly [to one another,” he said. . Both men said they would [continue diving. Earlier rescues The Pisces 111 was involved in another rescue drama three years ago off the Canadian west coast of British Columbia.

A plug was not inserted after a maintenance check, and the midget submarine was trapped for seven hours in 600 feet (180 metres) of water off Vancouver. The Pisces series of midget submarines are designed by the International Hydrodynamics Company, in Canada. Pisces 111 was operated by Vickers Oceanics, a sub-

sidiary of Britain’s big Vickers ship-building and engineering company.

The rescue came only two months after a similar operation off the Florida coast. But only two of the four-man crew of the mini-submarine Johnson Sea-Link were alive when the vessel was pulled from 360 feet of water after more than 30 hours. .