Norman C. Polmar - Opening the Great Depths: The Bathyscaph Trieste and Pioneers of Undersea Exploration

THE BATHYSCAPH TRIESTE

and Pioneers of Undersea Exploration

Norman Polmar and Lee J. Mathers

Naval Institute Press
Annapolis, Maryland

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

2021 by Norman Polmar and Lee J. Mathers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Polmar, Norman, author. | Mathers, Lee J., author.

Title: Opening the great depths : the bathyscaph Trieste and pioneers of undersea exploration / Norman Polmar and Lee J. Mathers.

Description: Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020050159 (print) | LCCN 2020050160 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682475911 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781682475928 (epub) | ISBN 9781682475928 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Piccard, Jacques. | Walsh, Don, 1931- | Trieste (Bathyscaphe)History. | BathyscapheUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Underwater explorationUnited StatesHistory20th century. | ExplorersUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC VM989 .P65 2021 (print) | LCC VM989 (ebook) | DDC 359.9/383dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050159

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050160

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Printed in the United States of America.

29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 219 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

This book is dedicated to the adventurers and scientists, both military and civilian, who in frail craft challenge the Earths most inhospitable environmentthe deep ocean.

by Dr. Don Walsh

T he bathyscaph Trieste was a scientific marvel that accomplished unprecedented scientific, technical, and military feats in the ocean depths. France and the United States both acquired and subsequently developed improved versions of the original Piccard bathyscaph. The French concentrated on the bathyscaph as a tool for deep-ocean scientific investigation, and their vehiclesthe FNRS 3 and the Archimdewere valuable tools for that research.

The U.S. Navy employed the three Trieste variants both as scientific tools and as operational military platforms. The Trieste program provided the Navy a nascent capability to put a manned deep submersible almost anywhere on the ocean floor for search and limited recovery operations. Indeed, the bathyscaph proved to be of unequaled value in locating and examining the remains of the sunken nuclear-propelled submarines Thresher and Scorpion, as well as other objects lost on the ocean floor.

Significantly, the Triestean inner space vehiclewas conceived and developed by Auguste Piccard, a pioneer and record holder in manned balloon flight. This volume recounts the story of how Piccard pioneered the development of atmospheric research employing manned balloons and then, with his son Jacques, employed the research balloon concept to develop the bathyscaph. His initial efforts had limited success, but the Trieste proved his design concept.

From the Triestes initial dives, the participants in the program realized that they were making history, diving to previously unexplored and unexploited depths, developing new capabilities, and opening a new frontier. Comparisons with developments in space and the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union were constantly made in official speeches and documents, and in conversations concerning the Trieste program and contemporary developments in undersea technology and capabilities.

The Triesteactually three distinct vehicles carrying the same nameopened the entire three-dimensional volume of the oceans to exploration, exploitation, and operation. The bathyscaph was a first-generation system, a Model-T that spawned an entirely new industry and encouraged new concepts for naval operations. These new deep-sea technologies lacked the geewhiz factor of the contemporaneous space race, but were just as significant in the development of new technology, new knowledge, andespeciallynew military capabilities.

The official unclassified dive logs for all three versions of the Trieste are in the collection of the U.S. Naval Undersea Museum, in Keyport, Washington, and can be accessed at https://bathyscaphtrieste.org/contents/divelog/logt2.html. The museums logs do not include the dives for the Trieste II dives between 1963 and 1967.

The many persons who assisted in researching and writing this book are listed in the Acknowledgments. However, it must be noted that one of the authors has had a close and long-lasting relationship with Dr. Don Walsh, who took the original Trieste to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in January 1960, since a few weeks after the deep dive. Walshs friendship and assistance made this book possible. Also, that author, as an employee of the Northrop Corporation, worked full-time for four years in the Navys Deep Submergence Systems Project, where he had an association with some of the events described in this book.

Early Trieste commanders Larry Shumaker and Donald Keach also provided early and extensive assistance to this project. Both of these men passed away before we completed our research. The authors also have benefited from the assistance of Victor L. Vescovo, whose 20182019 dives into the worlds six deepest trenches established a new world record for the deepest manned dive in historybesting the Triestes record, which had stood for almost 60 years.

Also, Pelham Boyer, formerly of the Naval War College, was most helpful in copy editing this volume. Janis Jorgensen of the Naval Institute provided assistance with illustrations, while Richard Russell, Glenn Griffith, and Rachel Crawford of the Naval Institute Press brought this project to reality.

Notes on style and usage:

The spellings bathyscaphe and bathyscaph are both in common use. We have used the latter spelling as the accepted American style in contemporaneous official documentation and newspaper usage.

Despite the widespread adoption of metric measurements, the American readership still prefers the English system of feet, yards, ounces, pounds, fathoms, etc.

All times are presented as local time, except in reference to events in space, where Zulu time (Greenwich Mean Time) is annotated: for example, 1600Z for 4 p.m. at the Greenwich meridian.

Norman Polmar
Lee J. Mathers

I t has been more than 60 years since I first encountered the bathyscaph Trieste. Little did I realize at the time how much our fates would be intertwined in the decades since then. Over the years the story of this unique and historical submersible would be told in many different ways, but never comprehensively.

Thus, this book is long overdue. It remained for Norman Polmar and Lee Mathers to write this definitive story. They tell the little-known history of a quarter century of the U.S. Navys use of three