US Navy mark 5

For anyone who is into scuba diving, there is a feeling of awe when we think of the "oldtime" surface supplied divers. You see, while SCUBA was only developed and marketed to recreational users in the early 1960's, the hard-hat surface supplied diving rigs had been around for hundreds of years previous.

Ever since I was a kid, I thought that it would be great to grab a garden hose and go exploring on the bottom of some pond. Turns out that this is physiologically impossible (constraints on the human lungs' capacity to draw in air against a greater surrounding pressure, etc.). However, if you take that garden hose and force air down through it using a compressor, then it would work. This is essentially what they discovered a few centuries earlier, you take a metal helmet and run a compressed air hose down to it from the surface, giving you a tethered surface-supplied diver, often referred to as a "hardhat" diver. These expensive, bulky, cumbersome, and heavy systems were only available to military and commercial divers. Not exactly available to a 10 year old kid, or a 33 year old for that matter.

So when the opportunity to dive a vintage US Navy mark 5 (mk 5) dive helmet presented itself, I jumped at the chance. This is the same rig shown in the Hollywood movie "Men of Honor". These rigs were used for a very long time in the USN, up until the mid 1980's when they were replaced by lighter composite versions. The entire Mk 5 rig weighs in at 196 pounds (the helmet alone weighs 65) and takes several people to help get you into the units.Obviously, you are not going to be running any marathons in these things, but like most things they are not too bad once you get into the water.

This was some of the most fun I have had in years. It really made me want to join the navy and go to navy dive school to become a salvage diver. They get to do this all the time, although in much different gear now. Carrying almost 200 pounds of gear, plus all the additional equipment needed to go surface supplied diving isn't exactly the "garden hose" dreams of my youth, but I would definitely go wandering around on the bottom of any lake, pond, or ocean with one of these rigs again.