The Mystery of the FTR OBA
I always have loved diving underwater. Cheap eye
goggles as a little guy, later a helmet homemade by my buddy Chick.
He conjured up a large empty oxygen tank somewhere, drilled and
tapped a hole that received a needle valve which we used to fill-er-up,
with unfiltered, undried air at a local gas station. That is, until
the proprietor raised hell with us for overworking his compressor.
With the air hose attached tank to helmet, we ventured into the
underwater realm of any lake in northern New Jersey from which we
were not run off by property owners, boaters, or other persons
lacking understanding of youthful need for exploration. Two heavy,
half-round, solid lead weights affixed on both back and front bib,
kept the helmet snugly on one's shoulders. It worked great, although
a photograph taken by Chick's girlfriend Dutch revealed that from
the front, a diver in this rig resembled a hard-hat Jayne Mansfield.
While we never found or recovered anything, just the idea of
trudging about in silt and muck in that dark, forbidding, alien
environment, provided excitement for a good number of years.
Eventually, I did obtain SCUBA gear, but never
really got into it until after my discharge from the Navy.
Nonetheless, we did have onboard a couple of types of gear to
maintain my diving interest. One was the OBA, the Oxygen Breathing
Apparatus, kept in a bench locker in the Forward Torpedo Room. It
was not meant for use for emergencies, remaining virtually
untouchable except for periodic checkouts and actual use in drills
or in extremis. What a waste! The rubber, full face mask was a black
beauty with neat round eye ports. Two soft accordion pleated hoses
joined a canister that filtered smoke and certain toxic gasses.
Remove the canister and attach a hand-operated air flow control
valve and hose to the low pressure air line in the forward escape
trunk and Wallah! - a nice piece of diving equipment.
So, one day in the far Pacific, we enjoyed swim
call. I asked the Skipper if I might try this now multi-purpose gear
in the clear blue water. A patient man, somewhat intrigued, he
agreed. Getting a bit carried away, I "request permission to dive
under the boat and enter one of the ballast tanks."
Maybe he thought this would be a good way to
offload that college kid. "Approved". With the Captain, Exec,
officers, COB, and a bunch of guys all watching from the bridge,
deck, and rigged out bow plane, I donned the OBA cum dive mask and
swam about 30 yards away from the hull dragging behind the hose
supplying all necessary air. Surprised and rather delighted with my
unexpected audience, I turned back toward the hull, arched over and
performed my very classiest surface dive and headed down into the
Pacific Ocean.
"What the hell? NO AIR!!" I checked the valve
open. O.K. Quickly felt around the mask with both hands. O.K.
Frantically ran my hands back along the soft accordion pleated
hoses. "Holy s---! The hose on the left had kinked adjacent to my
ear upon performance of my fancy surface dive. Swollen with
compressed air, it felt big and as hard as a basketball. It was
getting bigger. Enough! I could have cared less what was happening
to the right hose. That left SOB was going to blow! I ran both
thumbs under the chin of the face mask and pushed it up to get out
of it before it exploded. Too late. It blew with a deafening roar. I
did my free ascent amid an expanding cloud of air bubbles and rose
through the surface several feet into the atmosphere to the absolute
fascination and delight of the astonished officers and crew.
The COB was near hysterics, but once recovered,
after seeing me surface, laughed like hell, pointing and jeering at
this unanticipated delight. Now the Pacific is filled with hungry
sharks and little draws them more quickly than a good underwater
explosion. Apprehensive, I kicked like hell back to the boat and
once safely up on the horizontal bow plane, I felt like an idiot,
but greatly relieved. I could see everyone laughing at my expense
but thankfully, temporarily deaf as a stump. I was unable to hear a
thing. One of the crew reeled in the air hose and detached what
remained of the OBA. The COB, recovered and pissed, grabbed it and
disappeared below. Now I was more terrified of him than the damned
sharks, but I never heard another word about it. Hopefully in some
dire emergency, a future shipmate would not need the OBA in the
Forward Torpedo Room only to find it useless with an unexplained
ruptured pleated left hose.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Warren - we have to see the
picture taken by Chick's girlfriend!
