Photos by request.Post em if you got em, please.
Thanks for the compliment DD.
When you hear the words military divers, especially after the movie "Men of Honor", the stereotypical assumption is that they are all men. Well guess what - military women have been diving for several years. And they are being recognized for their wonderful accomplishments.
Donna M. Tobias was the first woman to become a US Navy Deep Sea (hard hat) Diver in 1975. She worked on search and salvage operations, underwater repairs of surface ships and submarines, and on the conversion of two YFN (barges) into diving and salvage liftcraft. She also served as a submarine escape instructor, hyperbaric chamber operator and a SCUBA instructor at a Navy SCUBA diving school . In the late 1970's she participated in leading-edge hyperbaric treatments for medical purposes and the evaluation of one-person portable recompression chambers.
Here's a photo of a "Screw change" operation we did on the USS Whitehurst (DE-634) circa 1966.
The WHITEHURST hit a whale off the coast of California resulting in a bent prop. The damage to the screw caused extreme vibrations and had the prop not been changed, more damage to the shaft and bearings would have been the result.
Utilizing the crane and rigging crews and we divers from the tender, the screw change operation was completed in about 12 hours.
The WHITEHURST pulled alongside the tender mid afternoon. We hit the water and began removing dunce cap and related nuts and bolts. Using the tender's crane, we broke the boss nut loose and ceased operations for the day.
The following morning, we were in the water at 5:30 am. We applied three turns of primer cord to the forward side of the prop. At 6:00 am, the Boatswains Mate piped reveille and at 6:00:15 we yelled "Fire in the hole," cranked the hell box and set off the explosive charge. The charge "broke the seal" of the hub to the shaft. A chocker was attached to the padeye inserted into the screw's hub and hooked to the balance beam holding the other prop.
The boss nut was removed, the damaged screw was pushed free of the shaft. The balance bar, now holding two screws was rotated, the new screw inserted onto the shaft and the boss nut re-installed.
You can probably imagine the surprised sailors when that explosion took place. They came topside in their skivees to check out what all the noise was about.
