PV-2 Harpoon | Historical Archives | Underwater images/video | Exploration updates

Saturday, July 15th, 2000:

Two teams of divers visited the plane wreck of the PV2-Harpoon on 7/15/2000.

The first team of divers (Walter Jaccard, Miranda Aldritt and Kurt Kauth) had a mission to simply deploy an upline and explore the plane after the upline has been established. The upline was to be used by a group of people coming out with Bob Mester, of Underwater Atmospheric Systems, Inc who was bringing an ROV to shoot video of the plane. Hooking the plane using standard grapple hook techniques is inadvisable due to the fact that the plane will sustain heavy damage from this technique. The surface team saw the lift bag after approximately 10 minutes of bottom time and hooked a bouy to it. The first team spent the next twenty minutes exploring on the wreck and all surfaced with smiles on their face, a successful dive.

The second team of divers (Kevin Connell and Mark Tourtelout) had a mission of videoing the plane and the ROV in action. After the ROV was ready to go, they left the surface and went directly down the upline to the rear landing gear of the plane. The team spent 30 minutes on the wreck shooting some excellent video. Unfortunately, they never saw the ROV on the bottom and assumed there were some delays. The key parts of the plane that were videoed were the cockpit, escape hatch, radio antennae, bomb bay doors, machine guns, landing gear, and tail surfaces.

View the images from this dive »

Logistics:

Each team used 25/35 mix, as per SCRET standards and a single AL30 or 40 of EAN50 for decompression. Bottom time was 30 minutes actual, decompression was a short 15 minutes. Bottom temp was 42 and above 30 it was 60ish. A nice change to have a thermocline to deco in!

Credits/Thanks:

Bob Mester – Organizing, Press, and ROV
Jim Kelnhofer – Video Equipment, video captures
Miranda Aldritt – Gas diver
Kevin Connell – Videographer, gas diver, surface support
Walter Jaccard – Gas Diver, surface support, skipper
Kurt Kauth – Gas Diver
Mark Tourtelout – Gas Diver, surface support

- posted by Walter Jaccard