reached a depth of 1,234 feet in Lake Como, 

 but later, on an unmanned test dive, a lift 

 cable broke and it was lost. 



Elsewhere throughout the world, submers- 

 ible activity in the 1950's was minimal. Not 

 surprising, Japan, a country dependent upon 

 the sea for 64 percent of its protein needs (2 

 percent in the U.S.), was an early user of 

 submersibles. While Beebe dived to provide 

 biological information of an academic nature. 

 Dr. Naoichi Inoue, Head of the Faculty of 

 Fisheries at Hokkaido University, initiated 

 design and construction of the BATHY- 

 SPHERE-Uke KUROSHIO (Fig. 3.7) to inves- 

 tigate a major factor in his country's nu- 

 trient resources. By 1960 the 650-ft, 3-man 

 KUROSHIO conducted 380 dives for benthic 

 (bottom dwelling) and nektonic (free-swim- 

 ming) fisheries studies off the coast of Japan. 

 Retired in 1960, KUROSHIO was replaced in 

 the same year by KUROSHIO II, a larger, 

 maneuverable, more capable successor to its 

 earlier namesake. 



In the United States two submersibles ap- 

 peared in the fifties: SUBMANAUT and 

 GOLDFISH. Built by Martine's Diving Bells, 

 Inc., of San Diego, California, SUBMANAUT 

 (Fig. 3.8) used diesel/electric power on the 

 surface and batteries while submerged. Orig- 

 inally designed for an operating depth of 

 2,500 feet, installation of a 3-inch-thick, 13- 

 foot-long, plastic wrap-around window for 

 photography decreased its capability to 600 

 feet. Launched in 1956, SUBMANAUT shot 

 underwater films for various movie compa- 

 nies before it was shipped to Miami, Florida 

 in 1958 from where it traveled to the Baha- 

 mas, Cuba, Italy and Bermuda to shoot other 

 movie and television footage. In military 

 submarine fashion, SUBMANAUT made sev- 

 eral journeys, e.g., Miami to the Bahamas, 

 on the surface under its own diesel/electric 

 propulsion. In its most notable assignment, 

 SUBMANAUT was featured in the MGM 

 movie Around the World Under the Sea (11). 



The shallow diving (100-ft) GOLDFISH was 

 the 1958 creation of an ex-Navy submariner, 

 Mr. Burt Dickman of Auburn, Indiana. 

 GOLDFISH was a prototype submersible for 

 investigating and photographing insurance 

 claims on sunken vessels, but it never real- 

 ized this potential although it carried sev- 



Fig 3 8 Edmund Marlines SUBMANAUT used diesel engines for surface power 

 and battenes when submerged. (Edmund Martine) 



eral hundred people into various Indiana 

 lakes over the next 10 years. 



Displaying remarkable foresight in the re- 

 quirements for manned submersibles, 

 Jacques Cousteau, as early as 1953, began 

 design on the 1,000-foot, small, maneuvera- 

 ble DIVING SAUCER (Fig. 3.9) which was 

 launched in 1959. Cousteau's desire was to 

 build a submersible from which scientists 

 could observe and photograph oceanographic 

 phenomena in comfort and with a degree of 

 access to undersea valleys and narrow can- 

 yons not attainable by the large, cumber- 

 some bathyscaphs. Cousteau dived several 

 times in FNRS-3 and saw the weak and 

 strong points of the underwater elevator. 

 Several bathyscaph features, such as conical, 



Fig, 3,9 Cousteau's DIVING SAUCER The forerunner of Bathyscaph progeny. 

 (Westinghouse) 



40 



