Helen A. Siiteri - Papa Topside: The Sealab Chronicles of Capt. George F. Bond, USN

Papa Topside

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

1993 by Helen Siiteri

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.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published 2013

ISBN 978-1-61251-378-2 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Bond, George F. (George Foote), 1924-1983

Papa Topside : the Sealab chronicles of Capt. George F. Bond / edited by Helen a. Siiteri.

p. cm.

Includes index.

1. Bond, George F. (George Foote), 1924-1983. 2. DiversUnited StatesBiography. 3. United States NavyBiography. 4. Saturation diving. I. Title.

VM980.B66A3 1993

33297dc20

92-33297

CIP

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

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Frontispiece: Captain George F. Bond checks the chamber pressure gauge on the U.S. Navys first Personnel Transfer Capsule, which rests on its side on the deck of the support barge YFNB-12. Decompression of the four Sealab I aquanauts inside the chamber took about one day. The four Navy aquanauts were Lester E. Anderson, Robert A. Barth, Sanders W. Manning, and Robert E. Thompson. (U.S. Navy photo)

Contents

Capt. George F. Bond, MC, USN, who made his mark as one of the U.S. Navys undersea pioneers and the Father of Saturation Diving, was, first and foremost, a medical practitioner to the family of Navy divers. Members of his squadron sought his advice in connection with their most personal problems and those of their families. He considered his assignment as senior medical officer an opportunity to practice family medicine in the truest sense. Submariners and deep-sea divers recognized him as one of their owna man who spoke their language and shared their lives.

I knew him as perhaps no other associate did. During my years with him as coinvestigator, I rarely went anywhere in the Navy diving community that I did not hear stories of how he had gone out of his way to provide medical attention to sailors or their families. He was never too busy to share our burdens.

Dr. Bond was a man of vision and foresight, fortified with a sprinkling of fantasy and a single-mindedness of purpose. As early as 1957, he postulated that human beings would one day inhabit the seas as free agents. The transition from fantasy to fact was not easy. While industry could take immediate advantage of new technology, we were delayed in our progress from one phase to the next by a constant requirement to justify our goals to higher authority However deterred by that authority, Dr. Bond lived by the adage Theys moren one way to skin a cat.

The fact that a medical doctor and his small team were embarked on a totally new concept of deep-sea diving was not taken lightly by the dyed-in-the-wool salvage diving community. A dichotomy developed; the old school was reluctant to accept that the rules of thumb governing the life of the surface-supported diver did not apply to the saturation diving technique. This led to direct competition for facilities, divers, and the most necessary evil of all, funding.

With the successful completion of Sealab I, the salvage diving industry began to recognize the true value of saturation techniques. Besides increasing the amount of meaningful work one could expect from a diving team, such techniques had a favorable ratio of work accomplished to cost incurred. With this added stimulus, many large diving companies began to develop operational saturation systems for open-water use.

By 1970, one of the major diving companies completed its first 1,000-feet-of-seawater simulated dive in its new state-of-the-art, deep-diving complex. During the press conference that followed, the leading Navy engineer asked, Hey, Doc, how do you like a diving complex that was designed and built by real engineers rather than you medical guys? The only answer I could come up with represented my true feelings: Its easy when the road has been paved.

If it were not for the development of saturation diving, the offshore petroleum industry as we know it would not have been feasible. Saturation diving using a personnel transfer capsule and a deck decompression chamber opened up the oil fields of the continental shelf for exploration and exploitation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has accomplished fisheries studies, oceanography programs, marine engineering projects, and marine biology research using saturation diving systems. NOAA has credited this diving technique with making it possible for scientists to live and work on the ocean floor for virtually unlimited time, allowing a nine-hour day of research before returning to the habitat.