Shallow waters, strong currents
combine
to present challenge for USS Safeguard
Story
and photos by Wayne Specht, Misawa bureau
chief
Navy divers and their
helpers listen intently to a briefing before descending to the floor of the Pacific Ocean
off northern Japan to recover F-16 debris. |
ABOARD THE
USS SAFEGUARD — Navy divers are battling strong currents to recover debris of a
Misawa F-16 that crashed April 3 near Ripsaw Range.
Divers are
searching in 20 feet of water in the Pacific Ocean for pieces of the $20 million aircraft.
"Shallow
waters [generally] have stronger currents than deeper water," says Lt. j.g. Rebecca
Aten, 25, a dive officer aboard the Sasebo-based Safeguard salvage ship. "It can get
rough at times underwater."
Navy divers
and explosive ordnance disposal specialists aboard the Safeguard arrived April 21 at the
crash site off Northern Japan. They have been working around the clock to retrieve debris
that is rapidly hidden by shifting sands on the ocean floor.
Two people help adjust
the diving helmet of Petty Officer 1st Class Eugene Jahrling before he and another Navy
diver begin a two-hour work session on the floor of the Pacific Ocean retrieving F-16
debris. |
EOD
specialists in rubber boats use hand-held sonar units to locate debris, then mark it with
bright orange buoys for divers to recover.
On
Thursday, the ship returned to Hachinohe port, about 20 miles to the south, to off-load
debris retrieved the previous two days.
That bounty
included the aircraft’s radar unit, nose strut, front cockpit section and a portion
of the fuselage.
The
F-16’s engine was found last weekend. Investigators at Misawa Air Base quickly tore
down the critical component, looking for clues that might explain why the aircraft
malfunctioned.
The stern
of the 255-foot-long Safeguard is where divers prepare for their dives. Two go into the
water, and a third remains on deck as a reserve.
Aten said
it takes 30 minutes to prepare each diver, who wears the Navy’s Mark-21 dive suit
topped off with a 26-pound yellow diving helmet.
Navy divers Petty Officer
1st Class Eugene Jahrling and Petty Officer 3rd Class Kelso Sharp are lowered into Pacific
Ocean waters aboard a device called a stage to look for debris from an F-16 that crashed
April 3. |
"They
wear wet suits beneath their dive suits, and a lot of weights since the water is so
shallow here," said Aten, the only female diver on the ship.
Each
diver’s suit is tethered to 600 feet of bundled color-coded tubes consisting of
breathing air, a back-up hose and a communication line. The colorful hoses make the
position of divers easier to monitor from the ship.
"In
case the hoses fail, we also wear a tank of air that would help get us up to the
surface," said Aten, a 1998 Naval Academy graduate who went through six months of
Navy dive school followed by seven weeks of salvage school at Panama City, Fla.
Water
temperatures hovered around the 44-degree mark as Aten and fellow divers slid below the
surface this week.
"As
long as you keep moving you don’t feel the cold," Aten said. "After an hour
it begins to set in, but we just keep on working."
Because of
the shallow depths, divers wear about 30 pounds of weights to control buoyancy.
Petty Officer 2nd Class
Mark Sawyer uses a communications box to talk to Navy divers working on the floor of the
Pacific Ocean. |
"Divers
need a strong mind and a strong will, too," says Petty Officer 2nd Class William
Phillips, 29, a four-year Navy diver who helped look for bodies following the Alaska
Airlines crash off Point Magu, Calif., that claimed 88 lives last year.
When he
isn’t scheduled to dive, Phillips helps divers prepare and is one of several people
on deck who control diver’s movements.
No one goes
over the side, however, until they get the OK from Senior Chief Petty Officer Jimmie
Plummer, a master diver who has made more dives than he can recall during his 16 years in
the Navy.
Plummer is
the ship’s "Godfather" when it comes to the divers.
Sea water runs down the
face of Petty Officer 3rd Class Kelso Sharp as his diving helmet is removed following a
two-hour dive in the Pacific Ocean. |
He oversees
topside preparations and monitors underwater movements by listening to divers’ voices
coming from a tinny speaker in a communications box.
"I’ll
get into the water when I have to look at something critical, or to tell a diver how I
want something rigged," says Plummer, who keeps his diving proficiency by completing
four dives every six months. "I tell my divers, ‘Don’t be heroes, just get
the job done.’"
As a master
diver, the top rung in the Navy’s diving career field, Plummer draws an extra $500 a
month in hazardous duty and proficiency pay. Officers like Aten get a flat rate of $245
monthly.
Diving can
be a risky profession, says the Safeguard’s hospital corpsman, Chief Petty Officer
Michael Wenzel.
"The
most life-threatening emergency for a diver is to have an arterial air embolism, air
bubbles in the bloodstream," Wenzel says. "That can happen if divers come back
to the surface in an uncontrolled manner."
The
Safeguard has a decompression chamber where divers would spent time to have bubbles
expelled from their bodies if necessary.
Petty Officer 1st Class
Eugene Jahrling signals to Navy dive officers he is OK following his two-hour dive in the
Pacific Ocean. |
To prevent
that from happening, Wenzel says everything is done deliberately and by the book, namely,
the Navy Dive manual. A copy of the latest revision is on a table near where divers go
over the side.
During
most salvage operations, the standard anchoring method is to drop a 7,000-pound anchor
from the ship’s bow and a 6,000-pounder from the stern, said Lt. Billy Block, the
Safeguard’s executive officer, who is also dive-qualified. This two-point mooring
set-up allows Safeguard helmsmen to keep the ship steady in windy conditions.
"What
makes this salvage operation a tricky one is having to move the ship in towards the shore
only (when) high tides occur to keep it from grounding itself on the sandy bottom,"
Block said.
This
mission is a particularly interesting one because the ship is operating as close as 1,500
feet from the shoreline, Block said.
"This
is the closest to the beach I have ever worked," he said.
Hazy sun sets over the
USS Safeguard salvage ship moored near Ripsaw Range in northern Japan as a boat returns
workmen to shore. |
The
Safeguard is expected to continue salvage operations until Air Force officials at Misawa
decide most of the debris has been recovered.
Still being
sought is the aircraft’s tail assembly, which contains the flight data recorder that
would give vital clues regarding positions of the flight controls just before the crash.
Block said
that while much of the Safeguard’s day-to-day operations involve routine training,
salvage missions like this one are more infrequent.
"Unfortunately
it takes a crash like this to give us an exciting (salvage) mission," Block said.
"At least the pilot ejected safely."
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