Scapa Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay and Hoy. Its sheltered waters have played an important role in travel, trade and conflict throughout the centuries. Vikings anchored their longships in Scapa Flow more than a thousand years ago. It was the United Kingdom's chief naval base during the First and Second World wars, but the facility was closed in 1956.
A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military, and in some European countries, police work. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, combatant diver, or combat swimmer. The word frogman first arose in the stage name the "Fearless Frogman" of Paul Boyton in the 1870s and later was claimed by John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy and member of the OSS Maritime Unit, to have been applied to him while he was training in a green waterproof suit.
Diving activities are the things people do while diving underwater. People may dive for various reasons, both personal and professional. While a newly qualified recreational diver may dive purely for the experience of diving, most divers have some additional reason for being underwater. Recreational diving is purely for enjoyment and has several specialisations and technical disciplines to provide more scope for varied activities for which specialist training can be offered, such as cave diving, wreck diving, ice diving and deep diving. Several underwater sports are available for exercise and competition.
Underwater divers may be employed in any branch of an armed force, including the navy, army, marines, air force and coast guard. Scope of operations includes: search and recovery, search and rescue, hydrographic survey, explosive ordnance disposal, demolition, underwater engineering, salvage, ships husbandry, reconnaissance, infiltration, sabotage, counterifiltration, underwater combat and security.
HMS Challenger was a Royal Navy diving support vessel, operational from 1984 to 1990.
Gutter Sound is a sound in Orkney, Scotland, part of Scapa Flow. It lies to the west of the main harbour between the internal islands of Cava and Fara, and the large outer island of Hoy. Gutter Sound was one of the sites of the scuttling of the interned Imperial German High Seas Fleet in 1919, and the scene of a major salvage operation in the 1920s. The remaining wrecks are frequently visited by recreational divers.
HMS Affray was a British Amphion-class submarine. It was the last Royal Navy submarine to be lost at sea, on 16 April 1951, with the loss of 75 lives.
A United States Navy diver refers to a service personnel that may be a restricted fleet line officer, civil engineer corps (CEC) officer, Medical Corps officer, or an enlisted who is qualified in underwater diving and salvage. Navy divers serve with fleet diving detachments and in research and development. Some of the mission areas of the Navy diver include: marine salvage, harbor clearance, underwater ship husbandry and repair, submarine rescue, saturation diving, experimental diving, underwater construction and welding, as well as serving as technical experts to the Navy SEALs, Marine Corps, and Navy EOD diving commands.
Marine salvage is the process of recovering a ship and its cargo after a shipwreck or other maritime casualty. Salvage may encompass towing, lifting a vessel, or effecting repairs to a ship. Protecting the coastal environment from oil spillages or other contaminants from a modern ship can also be a motivator, as oil, cargo, and other pollutants can easily leak from a wreck.
Keith Jessop was a British salvage diver and successful marine treasure hunter.
The Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom that provides protection for the wreckage of military aircraft and designated military vessels. The Act provides for two types of protection: protected places and controlled sites. Military aircraft are automatically protected, but vessels have to be specifically designated. The primary reason for designation is to protect as a 'war grave' the last resting place of British servicemen ; however, the Act does not require the loss of the vessel to have occurred during war.
Goldfinder is a 2001 autobiography of British diver and treasure hunter Keith Jessop. It tells the story of Jessop's life and salvaging such underwater treasures as HMS Edinburgh, one of the greatest deep sea salvage operations and most financially rewarding in history.
USS Tringa (ASR-16) was a Chanticleer-class submarine rescue ship of the United States Navy. She was laid down on 12 July 1945 at Savannah, Georgia, by the Savannah Machine & Foundry Co.; launched on 25 June 1946; sponsored by Mrs. Nola Dora Vassar, the mother of Curtis L. Vassar, Jr., missing in action; and commissioned on 28 January 1947.
Salvage diving is the diving work associated with the recovery of all or part of ships, their cargoes, aircraft, and other vehicles and structures which have sunk or fallen into water. In the case of ships it may also refer to repair work done to make an abandoned or distressed but still floating vessel more suitable for towing or propulsion under its own power. The recreational/technical activity known as wreck diving is generally not considered salvage work, though some recovery of artifacts may be done by recreational divers.
HSwMS Belos (A214) is a submarine rescue ship in the Swedish Navy's 1st Submarine flotilla. She carries the Submarine Rescue Vehicle URF. She is also capable of carrying the NATO rescue system NSRS. HSwMS Belos is currently [2017] the largest ship in the Swedish Navy. HMS Belos is traditionally the name of the Swedish navy's submarine rescue vessel and she is the third ship with that name.
The McCann Submarine Rescue Chamber is a device for rescuing submariners from a submarine that is unable to surface.
The Royal Swedish Navy's Submarine Escape and Rescue system (SMER) is a set of equipment used by the Swedish Navy to provide rescue facilities for the crews of disabled submarines. The submarine rescue ship, the submarine rescue vessel, and the escape system on the submarines, which consists of an escape trunk and an escape suit, are its three main parts.
Kommuna is a submarine salvage ship in service with the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet and the world's oldest active duty naval vessel. A double-hulled catamaran, she was laid down at the Putilov Factory in St. Petersburg in November 1912 as Volkhov. The ship was launched the following year, and commissioned on 14 July 1915. She was renamed Kommuna on 31 December 1922. Kommuna has served in the Russian Imperial, Soviet, and Russian Federation navies through the Russian Revolution and two World Wars.
The history of underwater diving starts with freediving as a widespread means of hunting and gathering, both for food and other valuable resources such as pearls and coral. By classical Greek and Roman times commercial applications such as sponge diving and marine salvage were established. Military diving also has a long history, going back at least as far as the Peloponnesian War, with recreational and sporting applications being a recent development. Technological development in ambient pressure diving started with stone weights (skandalopetra) for fast descent. In the 16th and 17th centuries diving bells became functionally useful when a renewable supply of air could be provided to the diver at depth, and progressed to surface supplied diving helmets—in effect miniature diving bells covering the diver's head and supplied with compressed air by manually operated pumps—which were improved by attaching a waterproof suit to the helmet and in the early 19th century became the standard diving dress.
Submarine rescue is the process of locating a sunk submarine with survivors on board, and bringing the survivors to safety. This may be done by recovering the vessel to the surface first, or by transferring the trapped personnel to a rescue bell or deep-submergence rescue vehicle to bring them to the surface. Submarine rescue may be done at pressures between ambient at depth, and sea level atmospheric pressure, depending on the condition of the distressed vessel and the equipment used for the rescue. Self-rescue of submarine personnel by buoyant free ascent at ambient pressure is considered submarine escape. Survivors may require recompression treatment for decompression illness.
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