nation's naval architects are producing 

 a fleet of small, odd-looking submarines, 

 most of these aimed at great depths." 



—TIME 



5 June 1965 



"ITe'rc about where the space industry- 

 was ten years ago. My guess is that this 

 new industry will be larger than aero- 

 space." 



— G. T. Scharffenberger 

 Senior V. Pres., Litton Ind. 

 NEWSWEEK 



27 September 1965 



"Despite the recent appearance of more 

 non-military submersibles the shortage 

 still exists." 



-R. Loughman, 



General Dynamics Corp. 

 -G. Butenkoff, 



Allis Chalmers Mfg. Co. 



September 1965 (29) 



There was yet another factor impossible to 

 assess: the magnetic attraction of man to the 

 deep ocean. The opportunity to be on the 

 very frontiers of abyssal exploration is pow- 

 erful tonic. The attraction of things beneath 

 the sea is apparent considering the televi- 

 sion and cinematic successes of Cousteau 

 and others. The foundations of this attrac- 

 tion lay in the unknown, the beauty, the 

 eternity, the serenity and the brutality of 

 life beneath the waves. To the layman, it is a 

 spectator's world; to the average oceanogra- 

 pher and marine engineer of the pre-1960's it 

 was a world of inference. Before Beebe, all 

 knowledge of the ocean below 100 or so feet 

 was derived from instruments hung over the 

 side of ships. From such discrete bits of data 

 did oceanographers infer the condition of the 

 deep. When scientists and engineers, who 

 spent years on rolling, pitching ships trying 

 to piece together what lay beneath their 

 decks, sense the opportunity to see this 

 realm with their very eyes, decisions can be 

 made which transcend profit-and-loss state- 

 ments. Whether large or small, corporations 

 are groups of individuals, and the attraction 

 of the deep ocean is no less to the engineers 

 or vice presidents of General Motors or 



North American Rockwell than it is to a 

 Piccard or a Perry. To an immeasurable, but 

 significant degree, this magnetic attraction 

 drew the decision-makers of the mid-sixties. 



VEHICLES FOR ANY OCCASION 

 (1965-1970) 



Succumbing to the prevailing atmosphere, 

 submersible builders in the last 5 years of 

 the 1960's produced the greatest variety of 

 deep-sea participants and activities in his- 

 tory and, almost overnight, saw the sharpest 

 decline. From 19 operational vehicles in 1964, 

 the number grew to 60 by the end of 1970. 

 Federal support of oceanography, increasing 

 by leaps and bounds in the early sixties, 

 leveled off in the latter part of the decade, 

 and with it the submersibles of large indus- 

 try either went into storage or were sold. 

 The largest user of submersibles in the U.S., 

 the Navy, acquired its own vehicles and dis- 

 continued leasing. Trends in vehicle design 

 developed which resulted in greater viewing 

 capability, diver support and transport, 

 greater manipulative capacity and a lessen- 

 ing emphasis on great depth capability. 



Indeed, developments and shifting trends 

 in undersea technology occurred with such 

 rapidity in this period that it must be fol- 

 lowed on a year-to-year basis to comprehend. 



1965 



Under an agreement with Cousteau's 

 OFRS, Westinghouse Corp. anticipated the 

 delivery of a 12,000-ft DEEPSTAR vehicle in 

 1964, but welding problems developed in the 

 Vasco Jet-90 steel hemispheres. The attend- 

 ant delay and possibility of Navy certifica- 

 tion problems was unacceptable to Westing- 

 house. Instead, they constructed a sphere of 

 HY-80 steel, used by the U.S. Navy in nu- 

 clear submarines, and, accepting a depth de- 

 crease of 8,000 feet, fitted it to the already 

 designed DEEPSTAR. The Vasco Jet hull 

 remained in France and would later (1970) 

 constitute the pressure sphere of SP-3000 

 (31). The new DEEPSTAR 4000 began its 

 test dives at San Diego in early 1966. 



In Vancouver, British Columbia three com- 

 mercial divers completed the first of their 



51 



