'Everything ... went wrong' as two Navy divers died

The Balitmore Sun, via Stars & Stripes ^ | June 20, 2013 | Matthew Hay Brown

[Timber Rattler]

The dive that claimed the lives of two members of an elite Navy team wasn't the only thing that went wrong that February day at Aberdeen Proving Ground's Super Pond, witnesses testified during a military hearing Wednesday.

First, the underwater breathing units that the team took to Aberdeen failed, forcing the divers to change equipment. Then, the first two men into the water had to cut their dive short when the line that tethered them to their boat tangled.

That was when Diver 1st Class James Reyher and Diver 2nd Class Ryan Harris took their fatal plunge.

The standby diver who was sent down to check on the pair had his scuba regulator freeze solid — he was out of breath when he resurfaced. Two more rescue divers came back after one became disoriented in the cold, murky depths.

"Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong for us," Petty Officer 1st Class Fernando Almazan, the dive supervisor, testified.

(snip)

The Super Pond was built in the 1990s to give the Navy a place to conduct underwater explosion tests that would not harm fish or other aquatic creatures.

[Timber Rattler]

Incompetence and poor equipment maintenance in the Navy, not to mention a man-made deathtrap that these guys are being forced to train in.

[dfwgator]

Blaming it on the sequester in 3..2..1..

[Diogenesis]

Mohammed inside?

[ronnie raygun]

This is what happeneds across the board when you have ROT that festers brought to us by rats and thier cohorts

[Steely Tom]

There’s a hell of a lot of ways to get dead in the military. That’s why they are constantly training, checking their equipment state, cleaning, painting, and inspecting.

At least they used to do those things.

[William Tell]

From the linked article: "Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 conducted salvage operations after the crashes of TWA Flight 800, ..."

Hmmm...

[Triple]

it is not likely that these two were in the navy at the time...

[UCANSEE2]

it is not likely that these two were in the navy at the time...

Nothing like 'facts' to ruin a good conspiracy theory. Party pooper.

: )

[PUGACHEV]

Many of us learned to dive at night in a quarry, where visibility was about 6”, the muddy water was a constant 45 degrees, and disorientation was so bad you had to watch your bubbles carefully to see which way was up. After that, almost nothing that you could encounter would be as bad, much less waters in the warm Caribbean. I am so glad I started that way.

[skeeter]

No kidding. 150 ft, 41 degrees, no visibility, filled with junk.

On the other hand, they've selected a profession profession thats extremely risky by nature.

[headless_thompson_gunner]

I attended the funeral of one of these divers earlier in the year. My first military funeral... horrible, awful sadness mixed with pageantry and patriotism.

These kids had a very dangerous job. IMO, their superiors, equipment let them down. A tragedy that should have been avoided.

[A.A. Cunningham]

In 1996 Reyher was 12 and Harris was 5.

[livius]

So nobody felt empowered enough to cancel it?

[njslim]

Took Scuba cert when in college

In Rochester NY

In December

It started snowing and snowed all day. By nightfall had 6”
snow on ground

And that water was COLD.....!

[Calvin Locke]

I took my cert dives in the middle of December, too, just North of Boston. There may have been snow on the ground, but as I remember 30+ years ago, while it was cold, it was mostly sunny.

[az_gila]

If two out of four regulators don’t work “out of the box”, perhaps it’s time to really checkout and inspect the remaining two?

And the first safety diver also had a frozen regulator.

Someone should have called of the exercise at the beginning with the discovery of 50% failed equipment.

[pabianice]

Environmentalists killed them. They forced the Navy to build its own dangerous diving tank so as not to annoy precious fish and seaweed.