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NOT Identified - Mystery WW1 GERMAN Submarine
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Jul 1, 2025
This video showcases the adventure of diving unknown wrecks, with the extra excitement of it being a World War One submarine. Identifying these underwater mysteries can be challenging, often requiring scrubbing of the props. Join the #Gasperado team as we attempt to solve the mystery of this submarine wreck. We returned to this WW1 German UC Type C submarine in 2023 and believe that it has now been identfied as the missing UC-68 - https://youtu.be/0UnV-SxWHiQ I also have plenty of other videos of dives on deep submarine wrecks - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSks_DrnduzWwe41yuWoVjunNkmlSXAJ4&si=TQ8CCaUCYBvfaNKl *Support what I Do* If you'd like to support what I do then please consider joining my channel 👉 http://bit.ly/4kMVqCB You may also wish to buy me a coffee! 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/d33puk ☕☕☕ *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 04:07 Change of lazy shot protocol 06:51 Arrival at the submarine 08:03 Starboard prop covered in net 09:30 Port prop 10:45 Lots of cutting! 15:28 Punctured dryglove!! 21:17 Taking pictures 24:07 The conning tower
View Video Transcript
0:00
there's something particularly special about diving unknown wrecks and that's an order of magnitude greater when it's
0:07
a submarine they're also notoriously difficult to identify as there's almost
0:12
no external clues as to their identity so to identify a submarine you've
0:19
normally got to go down prepared to scrub the props and this Gasperadoo's trip from 2021 that's exactly what we
0:26
aimed to do our team was divided up into each person had a different task mine
0:32
with work where my buddy Wills was to get down there and attack the prop we'd done it all already on a previous
0:39
submarine so knew exactly what to expect the only difference this time was it
0:44
wasn't 70 m it was 85 fortunately conditions for the dive were
0:50
absolutely stunning both above and below the water so that makes for a great
0:55
video which I think you're really going to enjoy and ahead of you is us getting down and realizing it isn't a World War
1:02
II submarine after all you're also going to see us getting to the prop and having to remove huge quantities of net before
1:09
we can get to it before that there's a little uh incident I have on the way down my CO2 alarm goes off and I
1:16
actually end up getting back out of the water and you're then going to see us swimming around the rest of the wreck
1:21
and getting some wonderful photos of the inside of the conning tower so this is a lovely lovely dive and a great video so
1:30
sit back and enjoy as always if you fancy giving us a like that would be
1:36
really appreciated and don't forget you can also now join my channel if you really want to support what I do now
1:43
I've already mentioned that I had a CO2 issue on the dive so what you're
1:48
actually seeing here is me getting in for the second time you can probably see that the boat is empty you can see that
1:54
my buddy is there in the water and he's actually been sat there for about 15
2:00
minutes uh this is Will good mate of mine we've done loads of diving together and absolute credit to him he sat there
2:07
and waited for me while I got out of the water took apart my unit sort it all out
2:12
and then got back in again and what I've done is the bit about the CO2 alarm is
2:17
at the end of this video so if you're interested in that you can leap forward and uh obviously use the chapters on the
2:23
video but this first bit now is purely focused on the uh on on the dive but it
2:30
is effectively my second dive of the day i got to 6 m on the first one but here
2:36
we are in the descent and I guess the first thing you could probably see is the water is really really green and
2:43
this didn't bode particularly well it also doesn't fit in particularly well with the fact that I told you that
2:49
conditions were amazing so the good news is as we get down this green layer
2:54
that's in the top um I don't know 10 or 15 meters of the water is going to vanish and it's going to become
3:00
absolutely crystal when we get down there so that was uh that was great that was great when it happened but at the
3:06
moment we're in the green lair and we're on the way down will who's been sat there for 15 minutes waiting for me I
3:12
suspect is really really keen to see us uh to see us go down and we obviously
3:18
have a job that we're going to do together and I would say this I guess but of all the jobs on this dive ours
3:24
scrubbing the props is probably the most important because that's where the information to identify it is probably
3:30
going to come from so to roll back I've already said that there was a team of us going uh down on the dive and different
3:37
people had different things ours was to uh to go down and see if we could scope props some of the other guys were
3:44
looking uh there was a uh believed to be some identifying marks potentially on
3:50
some of the uh stuff around the the conning tower and at this point we
3:55
thought what we were going to do was a World War II Mark 7 submarine that was
4:02
uh I'm not 100% certain where that information had come from but it was what we thought we were dealing with now
4:08
there's been a slight change of protocol here because Will and myself were meant to put the lazy shot in and in fact we
4:14
got the lazy shot on the shot line we just never got down and put the cross on
4:19
when I got back to the surface I told the other guys and they sorted it all
4:24
out so everything was okay and our tags are already on which is why you don't see us putting them on now obviously
4:31
you've got to be really careful with these change of protocols cuz they can really easily mess things up it's why um
4:37
I I went to great length to explain what was happening when I got to the surface and it all worked out well uh in this
4:43
particular case everybody knew what was happening anyway back to the dive uh so
4:50
just uh to quickly understand where we are uh you can see it's about 40 mi give
4:57
or take southwest of Plymouth in the UK and for those of you who like that put on a put on a globe you can see uh uh
5:04
another map there you go that's our home place home port Plymouth there and that says uh where our sub is out there so in
5:11
the middle of the English Channel and quite happy hunting around for submarines in in both wars so lots of uh
5:20
mystery stuff out here lots of unknown ships and you know lots of submarines
5:25
well not lots of submarines but certainly submarines that still haven't been identified so it was entirely feasible that this could be a German
5:32
World War II or a World War I submarine but we were definitely going down expecting um to find a World War II one
5:40
but that's the kind of nature of this kind of diving is you never know what you're going to get so bit like a box of
5:46
chocolates to quote Forest Gump what we've got here though is some divers who
5:51
are heading back up now normally on really tidal sites this is a bad thing because it means that you've something's
6:00
gone wrong which obviously it has in this particular case fortunately not the end of the world for us today but hey
6:06
it's uh it's not a good drill and is to be avoided where wherever possible but anyway what you can see though is we've
6:14
got below that really really green bit and you can see uh strobes down there
6:19
you can see divers lights on the wreck which is absolutely fantastic you can also see there's no current as well so
6:26
the divers going down have which is Will and myself we've moved off the shot line to allow the divers coming up to to stay
6:32
on the shot line and that's kind of um that's kind of good drills what you can also see here is that we've got our
6:39
strobes out we're going to put our strobes on that's also good drills because we want to uh we want to know
6:45
where the shot line is i mean actually as you're going to see the conditions down here are absolutely fantastic so
6:52
probably didn't need those but once again it's one of those SOPs and then you can see you probably just heard me
6:58
there just seen the submarine and it is fantastic you can see there what the
7:03
visibility is like you can also see that I've identified which way is the stern
7:08
and maybe that's one of my issues i didn't pause to admire how wonderful the wreck was how stunning the conditions
7:15
were i was all about the job so uh let's get to the tur stern that hatch there is
7:21
into the engine room almost certainly in fact it is into the engine room and
7:26
interesting that there's no um there's no hatch cover on it so so what happened to that uh you can't imagine that these
7:33
things would get ripped off unless it was open so that may may be a clue but I'm not focused on that now i'm now
7:39
focused on on getting to the stern and you can see that the submarine is already tapering so this is a small
7:44
small submarine and uh as we come over you can see it's also slightly on its port side as we come as we come over the
7:52
top here there is just nets everywhere and um that's that's not great because
7:59
underneath those nets is where we need to be that's where we need to be uh
8:04
scrubbing and you can see there I've deployed my uh my dive knife and it people always say "Oh that's pathetic
8:10
you need a big one." But as you can see there it's making fairly short work of that um that fairly thick fishing net
8:17
cutting through it but obviously as I do that it just instantly uh you know there's all sorts of silt and stuff
8:22
caught on it and that gets kicked up now obviously with a fishing net you've got the kind of the fibers of it but then there's a there's a big bit of rope that
8:30
kind of uh holds it all together and you can see there that's what I'm currently uh trying to work my way through i mean
8:35
I guess that's probably I don't know several centime centimeters thick you can also see that I've I tell Will that
8:41
I've done enough there he can start to get in and he can start scrubbing he's the guy with that white string bag with
8:47
all the kit in and off he goes now for those of you who don't know submarines
8:52
or props on submarines I guess it's a fairly niche uh piece of knowledge is there are normally three blades and in
9:00
between one of those three blades are some numbers the numbers will tell you what type of submarine it is they will
9:06
often have may even have the individual submarine details on there cuz they were um supposedly for each submarine and
9:13
they'll also give you some date information as well so while Will's doing that though I've decided to come
9:18
around the other side and to see if I can see the other prop because it might be that the other prop is easier to get
9:24
to even though it's on the down side now you can see me coming around here i've that big thing I kind of pushed off on
9:31
was the uh the stern torpedo tube and uh you can see me there i'm having a look
9:37
at the uh at the prop and you can see that is that is completely buried we're
9:43
uh we're not getting in there it's you'd need to shift all that dirt and stuff out of the way so frankly um that isn't
9:51
isn't really happening so having realized that there's no point
9:57
going and having a look at the second prop or the port prop I'm now going to go back and see how uh how Will's
10:02
getting on and you can see he's kind of been hard at work he's a commercial diver Will so he's used to scrubbing
10:09
props and in fact the uh the stuff he's using there are actual tools for
10:14
scrubbing props so he's um he's kind of hard at work you can probably see down on the seabed there that looks like uh
10:23
the hydroplane every time I do a submarine video I use a term and somebody picks me up for it and tells me
10:30
they got that I've got it wrong so I'm slowly learning the correct terms for submarines but I think that was
10:35
definitely hydroplane on the um on the seabed there
10:41
so this is me pointing to Will to where he needs to be scrubbing and I think Will is telling me that he
10:47
can't find any numbers on it which is obviously upsetting you see what he's using there is like an ice scraper the
10:53
ice scraper gets off the um the biggest bits of concretion that are on the on
10:59
the prop and then you can then use the polishing thing hopefully to to get some more detail so So that that's what Will
11:06
is is doing and when we did it before on the U95 if you've not watched my U95
11:13
video you definitely should do i'll uh I'll stick a link in for it but when we did it the uh we're really lucky the
11:20
numbers were on this bit of the prop so they were the easiest one to get to and as soon as really as soon as we started
11:26
doing it you started to see them which was really good news now Will and myself are both looking uh kind of expectantly
11:33
and anxiously at this to try and see if there's anything there and um you know I
11:39
think we're realizing that there isn't which is really upsetting because oh
11:45
something's beeping there i think that was probably Will's not sure what it what what it was but
11:51
he's clearly not that fussed and he's he's resuming attack that big circular thing is the thing that you you're meant
11:57
to use for um for for for scrubbing props it's like a big um sort of
12:03
scrubber that you would use for for dishes or something or something like that actually it's not really that good
12:08
what we could really do with is a with a is a a wire brush that'd be much better now Will's obviously said there's no
12:15
numbers on there so what I'm going to do now is try to get underneath and you can see that's where there's even more of
12:20
this net is in the way so the only way I'm going to be able to get through it is to do what I'm doing here which is
12:26
you know doing even more cutting so my uh my trusty dive knife is out again and
12:32
it's it's cutting away you can see once again that kind of that's destroying the visibility but it's the only way it's
12:39
the only way we're going to get through now those of you who've been watching the computer in the bottom left hand side will will see obviously we've got
12:45
quite a good uh mix for this depth so gas density is pretty good which is fortunate cuz we are obviously working
12:52
quite hard down here you've probably also seen that I've been down well coming up for 11 minutes now and I've
12:58
got about 40 minutes of TTS first stop is at 27 m so that's kind of racking up quite quite nicely um you can also see
13:06
that I am uh you know I'm getting through this stuff but it's clearly hard work now those of you who've seen some
13:13
of my other videos will know that we came back and we dived this submarine again and when we dived it we came back
13:19
with much better tools for cutting our way through this rope so the uh the ghost fishing guys they they have to
13:25
deal with this problem all the time and what they actually use is uh is pipe cutters for going through these uh these
13:32
really big thick bits of rope that um that nets oldfashioned nets like this are made of so you can see my knife my
13:39
little raora there which I love to bits by the way it's kind of it's uh
13:45
you know it's working okay but it's um yeah it's not it's not super easy but
13:50
anyway there we go i'm I'm kind of I am getting through the net what I do know though is at the other end of this net
13:56
is going to be another one of those thick bits of rope so I'm kind of ging my loins uh prepared for that
14:03
now this probably isn't isn't the greatest uh bit of uh video me kind of hacking away at this sort of stuff but I
14:10
think So
14:16
so Will's just talked to me again there and I think what he said is that there's no um there's no numbers on the top bit
14:22
so that's just kind of confirmation which uh which isn't which isn't great you can see there I'm I'm clearing more
14:28
net out of the way and that's basically what I ended up doing for most of this dive that is quite hard work for those
14:34
of you who've never done any kind of exertion at depth working at depth on a rebreather is really kind of quite hard
14:42
manual effort it does take um it out of you more than it does if you were doing
14:48
probably the same activity much shallower um I guess you know when you talk about work of breathing on a
14:53
rebreather you know that the not only have you got to work you've got to push the gas around your loop you've got to
14:59
push it through the scrubber and um all the time you're generating more CO2 so
15:04
your body has got more CO2 naturally in it in the in the bloodstream so it's not one of those things they particularly
15:10
recommend but anyway we ain't going to identify this submarine unless we we we get into
15:16
the uh into the prop so there we go and that's um obviously in the in the list
15:21
of people who you know jobs people volunteer for everyone's quite happy to be the person who does all the takes all
15:27
the photographs nobody normally is particularly keen ah now something interesting has happened here you can probably see that I have taken off my
15:33
dry glove and you could probably also see that I although not particularly well is what I'm doing is I'm taking out
15:38
the little uh I've got a little uh piece of surgical tubing that goes between the inner seal and the dry glove so during
15:46
the cutting I've managed to puncture my dry glove somehow so what I've done is I've removed the dry glove removed the
15:54
little tube that maintains the pressure in my dry glove and then what I've done is I've uh I've refitted the um refitted
16:01
the dry glove so clearly what I've now got to add to my w is a soggy uh is a
16:07
soggy left hand fortunately because I've removed the little tube it hasn't gone up my wrist too far you
16:15
probably also saw that that whole sequence was was done and dusted really quickly and it is because it's a a well
16:22
drilled maneuver on my part you uh you probably saw that I used the the knife
16:28
to actually lever it off uh Will is waving the scrubber around for reasons
16:34
that are not particularly clear don't know why but um I think he's probably trying to get in there into that other
16:40
blade so I guess if you to look you consider the prop as a uh as a clock
16:47
face one one face is probably at 11:00 this one down here is is probably about
16:53
4:00 and therefore uh you know is the next easiest one to get to so once I've
16:58
I've got rid of this bit of net here then wheel's going to be able to to get in on it and attack what we're really uh
17:05
hoping is that this is the one that will have it on because if it doesn't the other one is far far more difficult to
17:11
get to um I guess that's probably in about the 7 or 8:00 position so it's going to require getting underneath
17:19
uh so bit of communication between us there
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what Will is trying to say to me is that his his fin has come off somehow
17:34
that's his fins come off and what he's the reason he's no longer scrubbing is he's gone over there to put his fin back
17:39
on i I have no idea how that happened but uh anyway there we go these these
17:45
things do happen so he's going to uh sort himself out and then then come back i guess he probably would prefer me to
17:50
be helping him but I I think I'm so focused on the chopping that I haven't realized that his fin has come off so
17:57
that's why I'm I'm not helping him but hey he's uh he manages to do it himself
18:03
people who watch my other videos will realize that I have actually published uh this video before when I published it
18:10
though it was done without any uh narration or any kind of context so it was it was literally just the the raw
18:17
video so hopefully you won't feel cheated by me publishing it a second time because uh I guess for the added
18:23
bonus uh director's cut edition you've got my commentary you've also got the um
18:28
the computer on the screen as well so you can see you know my TTS you can see what depth I'm at um all those kind of
18:35
things so uh I think that's enough to uh to warrant doing it again in particular I think the explanation to give you the
18:41
context of what's going on because I know bits like this for instance are just really really difficult what what
18:46
I'm doing here is actually going underneath now you probably saw the SKG was above me there which is the bit that
18:53
stops a submarine uh banging on the seabed and what I'm doing now is is clearing the way so I can get all the
18:59
way under to that third that third blade so I'm basically on the seabed trying to get underneath the SKG just getting rid
19:06
of the uh the rest of the net you can see the viz is completely completely gone but equally uh I've also cleared
19:13
out an awful lot of the net and and in a bit I am going to come out and you can kind of see how much better it looks
19:20
than when I uh when I first started on it but before that happens there's some
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more there's some more net to be dealt with and uh you can also probably hear Will again
19:35
and there's me so for those of you who've never dived a rebreather those kind of uh those sounds you know you can
19:42
to a certain extent talk through a rebreather and that's what I'm obviously uh what we're doing there now it's it's
19:49
not particularly easy to understand but but you can communicate a bit
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and because we're so close together we can hear each other really well and you can even hear the hear it on the power
20:06
lens which is the the camera that's taking this video it's mounted on my uh on my mask strap so
20:15
uh that's why you're kind of getting getting the uh the head footage this was before I I had two video cameras on a
20:21
helmet this is this one is it's the original uh paral lens dive camera plus
20:26
as well rather than the more modern vikita so it's why the quality is not quite as good as some of my most recent videos but I have to say I like this
20:33
video because it's um you know it really shows what's going on i think it shows the amount of effort that we put in
20:39
although we I think we've now got to the point where we've given up on uh trying to scrub the prop anymore and what we've
20:46
decided is that it's time for us to get a bit of uh footage so that we can
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record what we found and you know I think we're both fairly tired at this point as well and we also want to go and
20:58
see what the rest of the wreck is like so um as I did on a lot of these dives I'm videoing and I've got my stills
21:04
camera for some reason I've only got a single uh video light in fact I know why it was at this period in my diving I was
21:11
having loads and loads of problems with video lights these were really really cheap Chinese ones and they were they
21:17
were they were rubbish so they'd often fail uh and and that's clearly what's happened there but hey it's kind of it's
21:24
okay and what I'm doing is is using to get you know to get as many photos I can and actually some of the photos I got
21:30
were pretty decent such as this one here you know that's the rear firing torpedo tube obviously it wouldn't have been
21:36
sticking out in the open like that it would have had the uh the casing around it so not the pressure hole but the kind
21:43
of the outer skin that that by and large gives a submarine a shape that would have been round it but because normally
21:49
that's quite thin metal it falls away and and vanishes so you end up with only
21:55
the kind of really solid bits like this torpedo tube um sticking out and I think
22:01
one of the interesting things about rear firing torpedo tubes is actually they um they were surprisingly effective i think
22:08
you know I read one particular incident of a submarine skipper it might be Hans Rose actually where he fired some
22:14
torpedoes out the front and another one out of the rear pretty much at the same time and sunk two ships which is uh
22:21
which is which is pretty impressive stuff the other thing that's impressive is I don't know if you saw there the flashing lights um on the on the um on
22:30
the shot line and I think what that does is just shows how fabulous the visibility is so you know even this
22:36
submarine this will be 50 or 60 m long the fact that you can see the strobe that's got to be 20 odd meters away I
22:42
think is is just really really impressive the other thing that's quite impressive is that you can see there I'm
22:48
taking photos without um a video light so there's enough ambient light down
22:54
here for me to actually get some fairly decent quality quality images which once
22:59
again considering we're 80 odd meters right out in the middle of the English Channel is is really quite impressive
23:06
and the second time we came back to dive this submarine it was actually even better than this so by compar and and if
23:14
you haven't watched that video you definitely uh definitely should do and the reason you should watch that video
23:19
is because we went back and we scrubbed the prop again and we didn't find
23:25
anything on it so you know there you go i've kind of slightly spoiled it for you but it did allow us I think to have a a
23:31
much better understanding of what the submarine was and we have tentatively given it a number now I'm not going to
23:37
tell you what the submarine was but if you want to find out you can go and watch my go and watch my other video uh
23:43
meanwhile we're we're kind of heading to the conning tower here you can see Will has hung his white bag with all his
23:49
tools he's hung that on the lazy shot somebody's strobe is actually on the deck and
23:55
uh Will is obviously pointing uh pointing out some stuff to me that that looks like a um one of the pressure
24:02
ballast tanks on the seabed that's obviously the conning tower will's having a good look inside it and it was
24:08
absolutely fabulous inside the conning tower there was all sorts of um gauges
24:13
and uh engine telegraphs and port holes and all sorts of stuff i mean the the
24:18
the question as to why there are two big holes in the conning tower is one that I address in uh in detail in my next video
24:25
so I have my own theory on how these got there not everyone agrees with it but um if you want to know what that theory is
24:32
you should definitely listen to my other video but this is obviously me sticking the camera in there uh getting some
24:38
photos and you've seen some of those photos at the beginning of this uh bit of this video that big dial in front of
24:45
me there that that is a depth gauge there's a an engine telegraph off to the left and there's actually another one to
24:50
the right as well obviously like most submarines it it did have two engines well I guess four engines had two diesel
24:56
engines and it had two uh electric engines as well so um you know one for
25:02
each prop and we've already seen that there's uh there's two of those so for those of you who are looking at my uh
25:08
computer you'll see I'm just getting close to 100 minutes uh TTS and as
25:14
always with the uh with the dives off uh in deep our maximum run time for this is
25:19
is going to be 2 and 1/2 hours so 150 minutes so I am I'm keeping an eye on
25:25
that just getting a bit of a photo of Will there who I think has found um some
25:31
uh ready use shells like all submarines of this era they had the the deck gun
25:37
that was outside the pressure hull and one of the things they wanted to be able to do was get it uh firing really
25:43
quickly so they would keep shells um underneath the kind of the floor so
25:48
that's in between the pressure hull and the outer casing so they would be able to you know lift up the bits of wood or
25:55
whatever they'll be able to get out the shells the shells would be in protective um bags that would prevent the sea water
26:01
or whatever get to getting to them and then they could obviously load them and fire them straight away other bits and
26:07
pieces you can see okay so that's me uh looking at the gun there with a uh with a lovely crab on it and uh and getting
26:15
some photo you know getting photos of it one interesting thing about this gun is obviously it's press it's it's pointing
26:21
to the stern and that forms part of my theory about what happens to this submarine it's uh not everyone agrees
26:28
with it and it's something I discuss at quite a lot a lot of length in the other um in the other film of this dive you've
26:34
probably seen there that I've managed to turn my uh uh video light into into red
26:39
there when I was I was trying to get it on so the other thing you can see is the TTS is mounting here so we're you know
26:46
I'm up to about 100 or the total run time at the moment is about 130 odd minutes so So that's getting really
26:53
close and anybody who's listened to any of my chats about TTS will know that uh I I normally assume that I'm going to
27:00
save a bit when I accelerate it with the P2 and I'm going to lose a bit because the fact I'm not going to follow the um
27:07
that I'm not going to be at the right depth for the exactly the right amount of time so it's a bit of a bit of a bat
27:13
trying to decide when to leave bottom not least because the skipper always
27:19
gives me a hard time if I uh if I smash the uh smash the run time so uh I I know
27:25
that I'm going to um I've got to be careful of that one so that's why I'm here by the conning tower which is quite
27:30
close to the shot line and therefore you know I can just kind of run down the rest of my dive and uh get up get up
27:37
fairly uh you know get to the shot line fairly easily and get up and and that's kind of what I'm doing now i've just seen something on the seabed there you
27:43
can probably see I've spotted it looks like um a bit of brass and it's just uh
27:48
it's kind of some sort of elbow or I guess which is a bit disappointing because clearly outside the conning
27:56
tower would have been other bits and pieces so it would have been um you know
28:02
there would have probably been a compass up there there would have been a helm up there uh many of those things would have had some sort of identifying features on
28:09
them so they're not there and or it's that's what I kind of hoped it would be
28:14
very briefly it wasn't so that's uh that's a bit disappointing but hey there
28:20
there we go now the other thing I've not done which you you may ask why is I've not really been forward of the gun and
28:27
that was one of those things I kicked myself about afterwards i don't know why I didn't because I I would had plenty of time to do it and I should have done it
28:33
rather than taking all those photos of the gun and if I'd have done that what I'd have found is that there's a whole
28:38
load of uh mine tubes further forward so this was a UC
28:44
Mark 2 or UC type 2 World War I mine laying submarine incredibly incredibly
28:51
successful submarine type in fact the these this type of submarine has sunk
28:57
more ships than any other submarine you know in the history of the world so they
29:02
they were super super effective don't know what it is there a piece of uh piece of brass and once again I'm
29:08
surprised I didn't bring that up cuz it may have it may have helped there you go god goodness know where where Will is
29:15
off but he clearly is not paying any attention to the run time um so I'm just
29:20
telling him that I'm I'm heading up because I am paying attention to the run time and I know that I'll be in trouble
29:26
from the skipper but I think Will's Will's heading back as well so he's just uh he's off to have a look at the
29:31
periscope there which uh you probably you saw me taking some photos of it earlier on there you go one final uh uh
29:38
one final photo of Will in fact I am going I'm going to go back and I'm going to take uh the eye photograph these uh I
29:47
I just love these these uh things that you can still see the optics in a periscope after so many years and this
29:54
is obviously the photo that I started uh this uh this video with and so it was
29:59
pretty much the last thing I did uh as part of this dive was to get that photo looking uh looking deep inside and you
30:05
wonder I wonder who the last person to look out at that periscope uh was and what what they saw you know it's kind of
30:12
incredible so this is what we're looking at here is the top of the coning tower it would have once again it had an outer
30:18
casing on it the casing would have gone much further back so the stuff on the ground here those kind of vents and stuff would have all been part of that
30:24
that elbow I found on the on the seabed was was probably part of it but um
30:31
that's all obviously long gone and uh here you go you can see us getting back
30:36
to the shot i've come up a bit so slightly minimizing the uh the deco it
30:41
was Will strobe down the bottom here's mine you can always recognize my stuff cuz by and large it's got a bit of green
30:47
tape on it i'm gonna get that get that on me and then I'm going to uh get myself up as quickly as I can because
30:54
you can probably see there I'm showing uh well total run time would be about
30:59
156 minutes so I'm going to need to kind of sort that out otherwise I'm going to
31:04
be in trouble with the skipper not that not that the skipper really you know he
31:10
doesn't mind that much well he's going to give you a bit of bit of stick about it but he'd much prefer people to be
31:17
safe and all those kind of things what he doesn't like is divers who who just
31:23
take the mickey and stay down there all the time and and you can see today the water is 15° C i mean this is October so
31:31
it's the warmest time of the year so even at 70 m there it's it's 15° C so this is going to be lovely for deco and
31:37
that that horrible green layer that we saw earlier on is going to be even warmer that's so that what that's what
31:43
happens i think it's 16 or 17° or something like that so you know absolutely lovely temperature for doing
31:49
your decompression certainly by uh by UK standards any So you can see I've
31:54
chopped the video a bit there so that we're now much shallower you can see it's starting to uh it's still water's
32:01
still quite clear but it's the light is green because obviously of all that stuff above us there's the uh the lazy
32:06
shot and you can see that my tag is the only one left on there i'm just getting
32:11
some there's m make quite nice photos i always think so getting a photo of of wheel there you can see uh my sheer
32:18
water is telling me that I've uh I've come up a bit shallow but it's it's all good it's just that yellow warning and
32:24
uh it's uh it's gone now so just just time for a few more photos of Will and
32:29
the lazy shot which you can see is under a little bit more tension now so a sign that the current is uh is picking up so
32:36
I'm going to come in there i'm going to take my tag off and then I am going to release it and we're going to start
32:42
drifting which will be a relief note out to all the other divers who are above us and remember when we were going down the
32:49
other other divers are coming up so some of them have probably been on the the lazy shot now hanging on the lazy shot
32:55
for for nearly 30 minutes and it's okay as long as the current's not particularly strong but once a current
33:02
picks up that that gets quite uncomfortable so they'll be really pleased that we've uh we've released the Lazy Shot and we're now drifting in the
33:08
current so the next thing I want to do is I'm going to quickly show you my Deco profile because I know people enjoy that
33:16
so here it is fairly uh I guess fairly standard do dive profile for me i guess
33:21
probably the uh probably the most interesting bit as you can see the first bit of the dive is quite deep and that's
33:26
obviously when I was on the seabed and then I come up there to to be actually on the submarine i drop down right at
33:32
the end to pick up that valve and then I uh I start my ascent and ascent is
33:38
pretty much as you expect you see I I swap to uh from 1.3 to 1.5 there and
33:44
then obviously accelerates a bit of a a wobble there at one point not not sure what's going on uh shallow but other
33:51
than that bog standard uh dive profile and come out about 7 minutes over the
33:57
brief run time so I get a telling off from the skipper on the way home now the other thing that you recall that I
34:03
promised you is actually the first dive so you remember the one I've shown you is the second dive this is the first
34:10
dive when I get in and uh everything seems normal obviously you see conditions are great and this is the one
34:16
on which I am going to have the uh CO2 alarm so
34:22
you will see that you'll see that in a minute and I'll I'll talk you through uh what happens but at this point all seems
34:29
normal and I've done a pre-b breathe um I've done all my checks all the uh the normal kind of stuff and it's probably
34:35
worth mentioning that obviously we've traveled a huge amount of time to get here will and me have got an important
34:41
uh role in fact part of the role is putting on the uh the lazy shot so there it is will's uh Will's got that on it's
34:47
dropping it down and obviously where are we are heading now so I'm just checking that Will's okay he is there's the uh
34:54
the kind of green layer and at this point everything is is as you would expect all seems pretty good keeping an
35:01
eye on uh my handset and just and I think in any moment now I am going to
35:08
get a beeping and there we go i'm telling Will that I've uh I've got a problem and you can
35:14
probably just see in the left hand corner of your screen the handset is flashing red and what it's giving me is
35:19
a uh CO2 uh alert so it's telling me
35:24
there's two levels of alarm on uh an AP inspiration there's a CO2 alert and a
35:31
CO2 bailout this is this is the former um but obviously it's really early on in
35:36
the dive i'm really shallow there is an opportunity for me to do something about this and that's what I'm going to do so
35:42
I'm going to get out the water and just check that everything is okay inside my head and and when I get out what I
35:48
actually find is that the uh the O-ring has got a slight kink in it i don't know
35:54
how that happens it's possible that happened when I uh when I actually dismantled it when I'm back on the surface um I don't know but what I do is
36:01
I I I put it all back together again and refit it do my tests so I do a positive
36:07
and a negative and uh I then uh I get back in the water and as you've already seen it performs absolutely flawlessly
36:14
so um I can't say for certain that the CO2 alarm saved me from a CO2 hit but
36:20
you know you would you would indicate you would you would expect that it probably has and clear for this dive as
36:27
you've seen at the bottom we were doing a uh we were working really really hard
36:32
so therefore the risk a CO2 risk was uh you know was particularly high so
36:38
actually in my view um this was a sensible thing to do at this point is I
36:43
got a CO2 alarm was not to carry on with a dive was to get out the water have a
36:49
look at it see if I could sort it out um and then and then get back in again you know as you can see here the the surface
36:55
crew are really really switched on they're you know they're on me like a shot basically and picking me up and
37:02
getting me out of the water and you know fair call to them because you know sometimes skippers as soon as they got the divers in and the divers are down
37:08
particularly on a long dive they uh they think "Oh I go to sleep for an hour or two because nothing's going to happen."
37:14
But actually you know it's really nice that they were paying attention and can get me out the water nice and quickly so
37:21
it was you know this kind of level of support for a diver is is really good to
37:26
know that you've got it and yeah so there you go that was my uh that was my CO2 alarm i don't think they expected me
37:33
to to get back in but um I was I was really really keen to do this dive and
37:39
you know obviously I that's what I did i got out i you know stripped quickly stripped down the head quickly had a
37:46
look at everything inside put it all back together again did my uh positive and negative got kitted back up and was
37:52
back in the water and as you've already already seen at the beginning of this dive Will sat on the uh on the shot line
37:58
and waited for me to get in so uh you can see as I get out the water everyone wants to know what's going on and you
38:04
can uh you can actually hear me talk now please click
38:14
the lazy is on i don't know will still in there is he yeah the uh the shots it's gone straight
38:21
down so it's vertical so I'll be able to fix that on when I go back in or give it to Will or give it to Steve okay so I
38:28
mean I'm hoping I'm hoping that I just take my leap apart again and be able to put it back together and go in again
38:36
and as you've seen that's that's exactly what happened uh managed to get in managed to get down managed to do the dive was really pleased about that and
38:44
what a cracker absolute cracker it was in fact it was so good that we came back several years later had another go at it
38:50
unfortunately didn't get a conclusive identity but we got enough information out of it so I
38:56
think we know what it is and I'll just finish by saying once again if you
39:01
haven't seen the uh the video of the second dive you should uh you should definitely do that and there's a link in the description there's a there's a link
39:08
above me other than that it was a storming day at sea and I'd particularly uh like to thank Steve and Barbara
39:14
Mortimer who organized these gas baros dives it was an absolute belter uh as
39:20
for for everyone else well as always please give us a like leave us a comment and I will look forward to seeing you on
39:26
the next one