U-534

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DanBo

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On land, hopefully H20
I hope I am in the right thread. And since this is wreck diving, I thought that perhaps someone shed light on a newbie diver here.

I was watching on PBS last night about the salvage ops on the U-534 somewhere near Denmark. They managed to eventually bring the sub up to the surface. My question is, unless the film was that old and equipment config have changed, why was a diver using doubles upside down? He did not seem to do any penetration of the sub? I thought the show was great and now I'm looking into taking some wreck diving lessons.

Any input really appreciated. Thanks,

Dan
 
don't wear your tanks upside down. That's not the way 99.9% of us do it.

Tom
 
Have ya'll ever noticed that every time you see a commercial diver in a hard hat rig that their bail out bottles or any other bottle they have on is always mounted upside down? I wonder why this is? Does it have something to do with the valves not banging into the back of the helmet or something like that? Who knows??
 
Could they have been wearing rebreathers maybe? Most models I've seen have their tanks mounted upside down.

Also I found this rather interesting article on Divernet extolling the virtures of wearing your tanks upside down.

Marc :jester:
 
For the replies; that helped answer my question.

FLL Diver, thanks for the article. That was it! Only thing that's missing was that these divers (3 of them) were wearing full face masks for communication amongst themselves.

WreckWriter, thanks for letting me know that 99.99% don't do it that way. I will certainly remember that tip.

Dan
 
a lot of commercial divers mount tanks that way because it makes it a lot easier to reach the valves when you are in full gear at depth. The thing to keep in mind is that when surface-supplied, this will be a bail-out bottle, where the valve will be normally off, and you only turn it on when you are not getting any air from the surface.

Recreational and tech divers normally don't do this because we quite often have to "stand" our gear up (on the dive boat, etc.) and this would put the wieght of the tank on the valve (bad idea!)

:shark:
 
Canuckdiver hit the nail on the head.

The bailout bottle is 99.9% always off until needed. The reason being, if your valve is leaking your not going to have any air in the bailout when you need it.

the only exception to the rule is when your doing penatration that restricts you from reaching your bailout bottles valve. In this case its on at the bottle and off at the free flow of your band mask or superlite.

I was putting a valve together inside a 36" pipe where you are unable to take your arm an put it down your side to reach the valve on your bailout.

Andy
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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