http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/socal/96107-sealab-ii.html
Mr. Killion,
Those notes are historically significant and should be presereved and if possible copies made avaliable to future serious dive historians. ( coukd you father have been Jack Tragasser aka "Black Jack."
Sea Lab was terminated after the death of Barry Cannon --which was viewed on TV 6
M news by the American public-- and the rest of the world.
His death was offically listed as an accident...The barolime scrubbers had not been changed between dives....
There is a lot of controversy over the cause of death. I was on the Mark II Deep Dive System about two years after Barry Cannon's death. Several people from the Sea Lab III team were still at Submarine Development Group I and none of the men I spoke with accepted the empty canister theory. They were using Mark IX semi-closed mixed gas rebreathers. I never had to use one of those pigs, but everyone who had said an empty canister could not go unnoticed. Several reasons were given that I must agree with.
First, the rig would be too light without the weight of CO
2 absorbent. Even if nobody noticed how much lighter one rig was when they were passed into the chamber, up into the bell (PTC or Personnel Transfer Capsule in Navy jargon), and put on the diver; you would surely notice being way too buoyant. Second; the Bell Operator and Cannon would have noticed a problem because breathing resistance and bag inflation is much different without absorbent. Third, nobody is sure that the rig that was eventually found to have an empty canister was actually in the water that day, let alone the one Cannon wore. As you can imagine, keeping gear sorted out for forensic investigation was not the big concern in the heat of rescue.
Unfortunately, the classic blue/purple/gray skin color of CO
2 poisoning would not have been noticed because they were wearing helium permeated wet suits and were very cold even before getting in the water — everybody's lips and fingernails were blue. The plan was to use electrically heated suits out of the bell, but they were "red tagged" due to electrocution hazard a few days before. Hot Water Suit manifolds had not been installed in the Bell, only the habitat. Some of the schematics I used still had the electric heating systems shown, even though they were gone by the time I came aboard.
Some divers thought Cannon had a heart attach due to the cold. Others thought he was electrocuted. The electrical systems on the Mark II bells were a complete disaster by today's standards, even year$ later when I maintained and dove them. The only detailed uninfluenced first hand written account that I am aware of is Dr. Bond's chronicles published in
Papa Topside.
In the end, Sea Lab III would have probably killed someone anyway. The whole program was far too rushed, the move from 200 to 600' was too fast to develop the systems, and there was not enough testing. It took a huge amount of money and three years of work just to get the Mark II system operational. If nothing else, we now know that everyone in Sea Lab would have gotten pneumonia since their breathing gas was not heated. The whole Sea Lab III story is sad.
