SEALAB Author Ben H.
Contributor
Fifty years ago today three Navy volunteers emerged, scruffy but grateful, from a chamber at the Experimental Diving Unit, shown below, after living in a mixed-gas atmosphere at the pressure equivalent of a 100-foot dive. The trio had been sealed in there for the unprecedented duration of a week, undergoing tests and making dives in a "wet pot" to demonstrate - they hoped - the safety and potential of what came to be known as saturation diving. The technical legacy of their efforts lives on, so kudos to test subjects Bob Barth, Ray Lavoie and Sanders "Tiger" Manning, and also to Capt. George Bond, the father of SEALAB. With his right-hand man, Capt. Walter Mazzone, Bond led this and other key diving experiments en route to the creation of the first SEALAB the following year.
