SEA GRANT COLLEGES 251 



Senator Pell. We will now proceed to our last witness for this 

 morning, Mr. John Perry, the president of the Perry Submarine 

 Builders, West Palm Beach, Fla. I understand that your submarines 

 are called Cubmarines. 



Mr. Perry. Yes. 



Senator Pell. I have your statement here and I will ask you to pro- 

 ceed as you will. 



STATEMENT OF JOHN H. PERRY, JR., PRESIDENT, PERRY 

 SUBMARINE BUILDERS, INC., WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. 



Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Since Dean Spilhaus has already very ably pointed out to you the 

 problems and potentials of invadin<>-the sea, I feel that my contribution 

 here can come from describing what we have accomjilished to date in 

 this endeavor and perhaps point out the parallel of these endeavors 

 to the meaningful purposes of the proposed bill S. 2439. 



For the past 10 years I have been building small submarines for 

 the purpose of research and doing useful work in the sea. At the 

 time when I began these endeavors, it seemed there was to be little 

 general interest in this area except from a strictly military view- 

 point, and there was little, if any, of what might be referred to 

 as a "state of the art." Today, however, it has become obvious to 

 almost everyone that not only does the area beneath the sea make 

 our country more vulnerable than ever before from a military stand- 

 point, but from an economic viewpoint the invasion of this vast un- 

 known is important and absolutely essential. The question then is 

 no longer shall we enter but how, how fast, and how^ well. The Navy 

 as well as industry have already found out a good many of the prob- 

 lems and have suggested a good many answers. The problem right 

 now is to arrive at the practical aspect of getting into the sea on a 

 daily, routine, economic basis and, sometime in the next few years, 

 live there on a more or less permanent basis. 



Currently, we at the Perry Submarine Builders Co. are building 

 our 10th submersible. One of those to be finished this summer is 

 l^eing built on a joint venture with Mr. Edwin Link who has for many 

 3^ears been the country's leading pioneer in man-in-the-sea projects, 

 among which was the first saturatio)i dive in the world and who, 2 

 years ago, headed the expedition in which Robert Stenuit and Jon 

 Lindbergh lived for 51 hours at a depth of 427 feet. The vehicle we 

 are now building with Mr. Link is designed to have the capability of 

 delivering a work force to any depth on the Continental Shelf, to 

 send two men out and return them to safety. One of our vehicles 

 was used by Oceans Systems, Inc., and the U.S. Navy in the recent 

 search for the H-bomb off the coast of Spain. Another is at work in 

 Kwajalein in the Pacific Ocean on a classified project of the U.S. 

 Army Materiel Command. 



Among other projects, we are currently building an underwater lab- 

 oi'atory and classroom which I have donated to the Florida Atlantic 

 University at Boca Raton in Palm Beach County, Fla. One of the 

 purposes in making this donation was essentially to accomplish in my 

 own small way what the concept of Senator Pell's bill for sea grant col- 

 leges is designed to do. 



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