Va. Beach NECC unit nabs Sloan Award
February 4th, 2011 | Awards Diving EOD Mobile Diving and Salvage Navy NECC The greenside | Posted by Bill McMichael
The top 20 percent. That’s where Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training and Evaluation Unit 2 now finds itself in terms of public AND private employers in terms of programs, policies and culture for creating an effective and flexible workplace.
EODTEU 2, located in Virginia Beach, Va., received the 2010 Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility from Rear Adm. Michael Tillotson, the commander of Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, during an awards ceremony Feb. 4.
“It’s fantastic to be recognized,” said Lt. Cmdr. Oliver Herion, the executive officer of EODTEU 2. “Our team at all levels, officer, enlisted and civil service employees, work hard on the programs that benefit the command and its personnel.”
The Sloan Award recognizes public and private organizations for innovative and effective workplace flexibility practices. Sloan Award judges use a rigorous scoring methodology to determine if an organization ranks in the top 20 percent of the nation’s employers in that regard.
In one example of workplace flexibility, the command recently established an internal college degree program that allows command members to take college classes within its workspaces after-hours and on average, Herion said, “complete an associate’s degree within 18 months.”
Such innovation is essential for EODTEU 2, which provides advanced pre-deployment training to Atlantic Fleet EOD platoons and Mobile Diving and Salvage companies. The unit’s training calendar contains more than 300 days of events, including night shifts and week-long evolutions, according to the command.
To give the unit a breather, the operations department schedules two weeks every July without training.
Sloan Award honorees become part of a national flexibility leadership network representing employers of all sizes and from all sectors to share best practices, exchange ideas and serve as models for other employers and community leaders. Exclusive learning opportunities will be shared with this network throughout the year.
The left of boom
June 29th, 2010 | Diving Environment | Posted by Phil Ewing
Navy divers, like these sailors from MDSU 1 working off Barbados this month, could be called in if officials decide to blow up the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. // MC2 Chris Lussier / Navy
Former President Bill Clinton didn’t just say “they” need to blow up the still-gushing Deepwater Horizon well, or that “we” should — he said “the Navy” would have to do it. All right. Fortunately it’s got just the guys for this job, guys with high-speed dive gear and cool tattoos who belong to the Mobile Diving and Salvage Units.
So how would they do it? The troublesome wellhead is too deep for human divers, so the Navy’s demo team would probably have to put a charge on a remotely operated vehicle, send ‘er down to the target zone, and either write off the cost of the robo-sub or run lots of det cord from the surface. Mash the button, boom, and — just as they have so many other times in this world — explosives make a problem go away.
But would it be that simple? Many things could go wrong. An explosion could destroy the underwater pipes and infrastructure but not actually stanch the leak, and then you’d have a gushing well under a worse mess of wreckage. What do you think? Should the Navy start planning to blow this thing up, or should we give the sea-roughnecks already on the job more time to handle it?
Career advice from a Navy legend
April 13th, 2010 | Diving Historical NASA Naval Academy Navy Science and technology Submarines | Posted by Lance Bacon
Scoop Deck spent an awesome morning with retired Capt. (Dr.) Don Walsh, pilot of the bathyscaphe Trieste, which recorded the deepest dive any man has made. He and Jacques Piccard on Jan. 23, 1960 dove 35,797 feet (6.8 miles) into the deepest known part of any ocean, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. (Navy Times has some special coverage regarding that dive in the upcoming edition.)
Walsh, a submariner by trade, shared another interesting story: how he got his doctorate. The Naval Academy grad didn’t finish on the top rungs of his class. In his words, he was “officially stupid.” After his XO tour, the Navy had a problem.
The coolest business card ever
April 13th, 2010 | Diving Foreign navies Historical Navy | Posted by Lance Bacon
Scoop Deck has seen many titles on business cards — commander, director, secretary, chairman … but never one as good as the one we received today:
Scoop Deck spent an awesome morning with retired Capt. (Dr.) Don Walsh, pilot of the bathyscaphe Trieste, which recorded (by far) the deepest dive any man has made. More to come on that …
Also present was Sagalevich, Walsh’s Russian counterpart who later took Walsh to view the sunken remains of Bismark and Titanic. In fact, Walsh gives a very couteous nod to his good friend, calling him the “true leader in submersible science.”
Sagalevich, who holds the world record for the deepest fresh water dive at 5,371 feet, has been the director of the Russian Deepwater Submersibles Laboratory since 1979. He helped construct the MIR Deep Submergence Vehicle, has more than 300 submersions as chief pilot and led 28 expeditions including expeditions to Titanic, Bismarck, and the submarine Kursk.
On Aug. 2, 2007 he was the pilot of MIR-1 DSV, which reached the North Pole seabed. The subsequent territorial claims by Russia has caused some political rumblings, as Scoop Deck has reported, but the effort was the final push that resulted in Sagalevich being awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation for “courage and heroism showed in extremal conditions and successful completion of High-Latitude Arctic Deep-Water Expedition” on Jan. 10, 2008.
A long way to go
February 15th, 2010 | Diving Navy | Posted by Susan Schept
Navy Chief Equipment Operators Steve Eckroth, left, and Mark Hurley, right, assigned to Underwater Construction Team 1, and Army Spc. Leslie Shiltz, assigned to the 544th Engineer Team (Dive), wrap wire around adjoining pieces of re-enforcement bar while strengthening sections of a pier in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 8.//MC2 Chris Lussier/Navy
Here’s a look at what the Navy and the Army are up against in rebuilding the earthquake-damaged pier in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The pilings are barely there. The repair work could take months to complete.
The only way to travel
December 9th, 2009 | Diving Life at Sea Shore duty The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
MC1 Matthew Bash / Navy
Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician 2nd Class Edwin Sharpe has come up with an elegant solution to a problem that has plagued military rear ends since 1957, when the C-130 Hercules made its debut with the U.S. military. Sure, it’s a useful aircraft, but it can be less than… ah… comfortable to sit on a mesh seat for extended rides. Sharpe’s answer is to lie on mesh instead — in his hammock.
Sharpe was part of a team from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 traveling to, of all things, a diving assignment in Afghanistan. He, his shipmates and U.S. soldiers were assigned to recover the body of U.S. Army Sgt. Brandon Islip in the Bala Murgahab River.
Another Spru-can chops into Davy Jones’ AOR
August 20th, 2009 | Diving Historical Science and technology Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The destroyer Arthur W. Radford, seen here underway in 2002, is to be sunk as an artificial reef off Delaware // Navy
Naval Sea Systems Command announced Thursday it’s transferring one of the fleet’s best-known Spruance-class destroyers to the state of Delaware so it can be turned into an artificial reef. It’s the beginning of the end for the destroyer Arthur W. Radford, also known as “The Finger.”
Although final details for the transfer still must be ironed out, the basics are in place: The Radford will be sunk in the Atlantic at a spot equidistant from Cape May, N.J.; Ocean City, Md.; and Indian River Inlet Del. The ship will rest on the bottom in about 120 feet of water, NavSea said, which will make it a relatively easy dive.
The Radford is one of the last Spruance-class destroyers, ships that were a mainstay in the surface fleet of the 1970s and 80s, before the arrival of the Aegis-equipped Arleigh Burke class. Almost all of them have been sunk as targets or otherwise disposed of. Radford’s career took it around the world for 26 years and included a series of adventures and misadventures detailed on its surprisingly comprehensive Wikipedia page.
The ship earned its nickname “The Finger” after it was outfitted in 1997 with an experimental composite mast, to test the technology later used in the enclosed masts of the Navy’s San Antonio-class gators. In the view of some observers, this made it seem as though the destroyer was flipping you the bird. It won’t take that feature to the bottom, though; the Radford’s composite mast was removed when the ship was mothballed, and other topside features also likely will be cut away before it goes to its final resting place.
What lurks beneath?
July 21st, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Diving Historical | Posted by Gidget Fuentes
SB2C-4 banks over USS Hornet in the China Sea in January 1945 . Navy photo.
Local fishermen in search of some record large-mouth bass in a San Diego-area lake last winter found something else on their electronic fish finder: A World War II carrier bomber.
A cursory look determined the airplane is a Curtiss SBC2 Helldiver, a daring dive-bomber that apparently had made an emergency landing into Lower Otay Reservoir, southeast of San Diego, during a bombing test run on May 28, 1945, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The Navy had bought more than 7,000 of the Helldiver, which joined with the better-known Douglas SBD Dauntless on bombing runs during the Pacific theater campaigns in the latter half of World War II. The Helldiver found in the lake’s depths has been identified as a Variant 4 model.
The Texas-based Commemorative Air Force maintains a restored SB2C, often flying it at air shows and demonstrations. It’s not known yet if the airplane can be safely recovered and salvaged, perhaps as a vintage museum display. A dozen Navy divers in San Diego on July 23 will take to the lake for a site survey and a closer look at the airplane, said Lt. Katherine Raia, a spokeswoman with Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 1 in San Diego.
Yer welcome, fishies
June 3rd, 2009 | Diving | Posted by Phil Ewing
MC 2 Christopher Perez/Navy
So ye need a cruiser pulled off the reef, do ye? Yer lookin’ fer downed World War II aircraft, eh? And now ye got some fish doors what needs closed? Here’s yer answer: Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 1
Just when ye thought ye’d seen Navy divers pitching in for some of the unlikeliest jobs imaginable, try this one on for size: Divers from MDSU 1 helped the Army Corps of Engineers close some 10-foot high screen doors on a set of locks in Washington State, to keep salmon from swimming into the drainage system. The underwater doors must be closed before the fish migration season starts in mid-June, so the salmon don’t get stuck.
Now don’t say the Navy never did nothin fer ya, fishies.