SIX Years to Identify A 70 Metre Deep WW2 Submarine - Here's What They Found

0:00
70 m down, pitch black, a submarine with
0:05
no markings, no identification, and no
0:09
explanation for why it's there. What
0:12
happened next became the best-selling
0:14
book, Shadow Divers?
0:17
>> No government, no expert, no military
0:20
source could answer the simple question,
0:23
"What is this? And why is it off Point
0:26
Pleasant, New Jersey?" To identify this
0:28
boat, they had to go inside it. 70 m
0:32
down on air. Narcosis so thick they
0:37
could barely read their own gauges.
0:40
Hours of decompression.
0:42
This is the early '9s. There's no
0:44
technical diving industry, no courses,
0:47
no standards.
0:49
>> Nitrox was in its infancy. There were no
0:52
diving computers. No one was diving try
0:56
and no one was diving rebreather. The
0:58
concept of using uh anything other than
1:00
air for decompression was voodoo.
1:04
>> It took 6 years. It costs lives.
1:07
>> And so we now had three fatalities that
1:10
had occurred on this boat.
1:12
>> Eventually they recovered a tagged piece
1:15
of equipment from deep inside the wreck.
1:18
They had their answer. U869,
1:22
a boat that everybody believed had been
1:24
sunk off the coast of Gibralta.
1:27
>> At that moment, only two people in the
1:30
whole world knew this was positively a
1:33
World War II German.
1:36
>> Richie Cola was one of those divers. And
1:38
in this video, he explains to me how the
1:41
U869 was identified and what it was like
1:45
to be part of one of the most seinal
1:47
moments in technical diving history.
1:49
Welcome, Richie. I am so looking forward
1:52
to this story because when I was
1:54
learning to dive and when I was starting
1:56
to get into technical diving, this is
1:58
the book we all read.
1:59
>> First off, that was quite an
2:00
introduction and thank you, Dom. I
2:02
really, really enjoy doing these videos
2:05
with you. Um, you do a knockup job of
2:07
it. Um, you're a positive spin on
2:11
technical and shipwreck diving world and
2:14
love you for it, brother. So, I'm happy
2:16
to be here. Um, as for the U869 and the
2:20
shadow diving story being a seminal
2:24
part, I all agree that it was a part,
2:27
but you have to realize um, in the fall
2:30
of 1991 when this German yubot was first
2:34
located off the coast of New Jersey in
2:36
the United States, there were technical,
2:40
even though it wasn't really called
2:41
technical diving at the time, it was
2:43
just diving or deep diving. there was
2:46
deep divers doing uh the Lucatania or
2:48
starting to get ready to go to the
2:50
Lucatania. Uh uh Kevin Gur had already
2:53
gone to the Britannic uh around the same
2:56
time. So technical diving in in its
2:59
infancy was occurring in different
3:01
places around the world with different
3:03
groups and because there was no internet
3:06
because there were no international
3:08
diving conventions for us all to get
3:10
together and share tech and share ideas
3:13
and information. We were all operating
3:16
in a vacuum. So the story of Shadow
3:18
Divers was literally operating in that
3:22
vacuum in the fall of 1991.
3:25
And and and a small synopsis of the
3:27
story was I belonged to a group of
3:29
divers uh called the Atlantic Wreck
3:31
Divers. Uh the genesis of that group was
3:35
because in our area of the eastern
3:38
seabboard of the United States, there
3:40
were lots of diving clubs and there were
3:42
lots of uh commercial diving boats going
3:45
out to shipwrecks, but they were only
3:47
going out to shipwrecks in in the 30
3:50
maybe 40 m range. They didn't want to
3:53
take anybody deeper. And so our group
3:56
wanted to find artifacts. One of the
3:57
things that we love to do, we wanted to
3:59
find ver shipwrecks. We wanted to go out
4:01
there and find artifacts and recover
4:03
them. Um because in the late 80s and
4:07
early 90s, it was a remarkably different
4:10
time than what we're living in now. I
4:13
like to call it the wild west of
4:16
shipwreck diving and artifact recovery.
4:19
We have a different social outlook and
4:22
and the laws are also being enacted or
4:26
enforced differently now than they were
4:28
back then. So, the ability for scuba
4:30
divers to go out in the Wild West and
4:33
find shipwrecks and take stuff was
4:35
really different. And, you know, I I'm
4:38
not saying it was better. I'm not saying
4:39
it was worse, but it was certainly
4:41
different. And so the Atlantic Recre
4:42
Divers formed as a group so that we
4:44
could as a group of 10 men charter our
4:47
own boat and go wherever we wanted to go
4:50
regardless of depth, regardless of diff
4:52
uh distance offshore for the sole
4:55
purpose of diving shipwrecks, finding
4:57
artifacts and recovering.
5:00
And it was in this theme that a another
5:03
dive boat was going out to look at an
5:06
unknown mark. And in the fall of 1991, a
5:10
captain named Bill Nagel, took his dive
5:12
boat, the Seeker, uh, to a fishing mark
5:16
that had been given to him by a local
5:17
fishing captain. And when the first team
5:20
went down, they saw what was at first
5:22
due to the narcosis. Let's let's rewind
5:26
a little bit. This was 1991.
5:29
There were no diving computers. There
5:31
were no commercially available and no
5:34
one was diving rebreathers. No one was
5:36
diving a try. Nitrox was in its infancy
5:42
and many of the training agencies that
5:45
now teach nitrox were against it. They
5:48
were telling people that nitrox was
5:50
going to hurt people. So the concept of
5:52
mixed gases, the concept of using uh
5:55
anything other than air for
5:57
decompression was voodoo. It was no no.
6:00
It was actually in the late '80s when we
6:03
started just carrying oxygen to
6:05
decompress on but not taking any benefit
6:08
of it. Just looking at it as a benefit,
6:10
not not reducing your decompression. So
6:12
this was the infasy and very very
6:14
rudimentary beginnings of what we now
6:17
call technical diving. So these guys go
6:20
down to this wreck in 70 plus meters of
6:22
water. They're on air. It is cold. It is
6:26
a very turbid dark environment much like
6:29
the English Channel uh um you know in
6:32
the late in the year when it when it's
6:34
all stirred up and at first many of them
6:37
thought it might have been a barge and
6:39
they thought this because of the rounded
6:40
edges and the amount of debris uh the
6:43
way that they saw it in their minds
6:45
their nitrogen addled minds they thought
6:47
it was a barge but one diver named John
6:50
Chatteran found an angled hatch and had
6:53
as he had been diving another submarine
6:56
called the U853, which has exactly the
6:58
same hatch. He believed, "Oh my gosh,
7:01
this must be a submarine." And then when
7:03
he peered down in the hatch, he saw what
7:05
he believed to be a torpedo. Now, at
7:08
this dive, he did not have a camera. So,
7:10
he's coming up and telling people, "I
7:13
saw an angled hatch. I saw a torpedo."
7:15
And they're like, "Yeah, sure you did."
7:19
Because as anybody who's ever dove deep
7:21
air, I can't begin to tell you how many
7:24
bells I found,
7:26
diving deep air, but then went to grab
7:28
them and it's a pipe flange or it's a
7:30
bucket or, you know, it's it's just a
7:32
piece of crap and it wasn't a bell. So,
7:34
my mind is uh when you're diving that
7:37
deep on narcosis, you really got to
7:38
second guess a lot of the things that
7:40
you see. And also your memory as you
7:42
come up, you know, there there's an old
7:44
expression, been there, saw it, forgot
7:46
it. that those were deep air days. So
7:49
John Chattan comes up. He believes it's
7:51
a submarine. Other people believe it's a
7:53
barge. Um they plan another secret trip
7:56
out to the site. They go out there. Um
7:59
John now brings a camera.
8:02
He goes down. He films the torpedo and
8:05
just films around the wreck. But
8:08
tragically on that second trip there was
8:10
a fatality. One of the divers uh
8:12
succumbed on the bottom. A gentleman
8:13
named Steven Feldman. He passed out at
8:16
depth and although his buddy tried to
8:19
bring him up,
8:21
uh he couldn't he couldn't carry him up.
8:23
So he thought the next best thing would
8:26
be to tie him to the line so that they
8:29
could come down on a a subsequent dive
8:31
and recover the body. Um, unfortunately
8:34
in the current, the body was swept away
8:37
and it wouldn't be recovered uh um for
8:39
months later um inadvertently when it
8:42
was brought up in a fishing net by a
8:44
fishing boat that had been dragging in
8:46
the area. Um we don't know what happened
8:49
to Steve Felman. We can all guess that
8:52
it might have been um either carbon
8:55
dioxide CO2 from a bad regulator. It
8:58
could have been oxygen toxicity from
9:00
breathing air at 70 plus meters. We will
9:03
never know. All we know is that he
9:05
passed out and drowned underwater and
9:08
his body was recovered uh months later.
9:11
Well, um obviously when there's a
9:13
fatality, there has to be a report made
9:15
and the secret of Bill Nagel's mystery
9:18
submarine was now out. No one actually
9:21
knew where it was except Bill. But now,
9:24
the idea of there possibly being a World
9:27
War II submarine in an area that there
9:29
wasn't supposed to be a submarine was
9:32
enticing to many of the wreck divers
9:33
around the uh the region, myself being
9:36
one. So, uh, without getting into the
9:39
nuance of the story, which is quite
9:41
entertaining, um, a a a person who was
9:44
sworn to secrecy felt that I needed to
9:47
be on the next or third trip and, um,
9:51
wound up talking to Bill Nagel, who Bill
9:53
and I knew each other. I had run Andrea
9:55
Doria charters on Bill's boat and Bill
9:58
allowed me to take the place of uh not
10:01
only the fallen diver Steven Feldman but
10:04
after that fatality a number of people
10:06
that were on that trip never went back
10:08
to the yubot again as often happens when
10:11
there's a diving incident or accident
10:13
and people see that for them that's it
10:16
they're done they may not be done diving
10:19
but they're not going to go back to that
10:21
site or that depth and and inadvertently
10:24
This is exactly what happened. Providing
10:26
a few new places for other divers. I was
10:28
one of them. The problem was that uh the
10:31
gentleman that I mentioned earlier, John
10:33
Chatteran, didn't like me and didn't
10:35
like the Atlantic Rectus. We kind of
10:37
butt heads. Um I know you guys may find
10:40
this really unusual, but in the
10:42
northeast area of the United States,
10:45
even to this day, there seems to be this
10:48
Hatfield and McCoys kind of feuds always
10:50
going on in the dive community. Um, I
10:54
won't get on get into the minutiae of
10:55
the how and why. Let's just leave it as
10:58
John and I didn't like each other. And
11:00
when Bill Nagel told John that I'm going
11:02
to be on the trip, John really had an
11:05
attitude about it. So, it's funny to
11:09
jump ahead to the actual dive on that
11:11
third trip where I go out with John and
11:14
and the rest of the team. I make my
11:16
first dive. It's obviously a submarine.
11:19
There's no doubt. By this time, we're
11:21
still all diving air, but I had the
11:24
benefit of everyone else telling me what
11:26
they had seen, the layout. A gentleman
11:28
named Steven Gatau had sketched out what
11:31
he thought the wreck looked like. So,
11:32
this enabled me to have like a game
11:35
plan. And my game plan was to go into
11:37
the submarine and find something that
11:39
would identify it. Well, on that first
11:42
dive, I found what I thought was a
11:44
canteen, but it was actually an aluminum
11:46
uh can. looks like a canteen, but it was
11:49
filled with pot ash, which is to absorb
11:52
carbon dioxide. And I and I believe you
11:54
may have a photo of me actually holding
11:56
that with my dive buddy, uh, Kevin
11:58
Brennan. And and that was our first
12:00
dive. We then had a a two-hour surface
12:02
interval, and the weather had gotten a
12:05
little picked up. Yep. That's a picture
12:07
of me and two of the potach canisters
12:10
that I had brought out of the rack. They
12:12
did not have any marking on them. And it
12:14
was only after that I opened and opened
12:16
them up and realized there was a powder
12:18
inside that we realized what they were.
12:21
But um so this is the surface interval
12:24
and uh the weather picked up. Not many
12:26
people wanted to go in the water for the
12:28
second dive. As a matter of fact, only
12:30
two people went in the water myself.
12:32
>> So I've just I've just got to pick you
12:33
up on that one there, Richie. So we're
12:35
we're talking two 70 m dives
12:38
>> in a in a day and and just run me
12:41
through what your service and obviously
12:43
diving on air.
12:44
>> Well, we were we were the dive profiles
12:46
back then on air were for for I'm going
12:49
to use feet 230 ft. So do the math on
12:52
that is 70 something meters. And um
12:58
we would do 15 to 20 minutes on the
13:00
first dive. We would do a twohour
13:02
surface interval. um your decompression
13:05
for that would probably be about 90
13:07
minutes first dive.
13:10
Your second dive after two hours you
13:13
would do again another 15 minute dive.
13:15
Uh but now your uh decompression would
13:18
be about 2 hours 15 minutes 2 and a half
13:20
hours. So needless to say uh we were
13:23
>> you calculating where are those numbers
13:25
coming from by the way?
13:26
>> Okay we uh back then I was just using
13:29
Navy tables but here's the amazing
13:32
thing. The US Navy uh doesn't make
13:35
repetitive dive groups or didn't make
13:38
repetitive dive groups for dives over
13:41
220 ft. There were no repetitive group.
13:44
So, a member of our team, a guy named
13:46
Brad Sheer, who actually was, no word of
13:50
a lie, a rocket scientist, he worked for
13:52
Grumman Engineering who built the F-14
13:55
Tomcat. um he had access to computers
13:58
and created an algorithm or created an
14:02
algorithm that understood the way that
14:05
the decompression profiles and basically
14:07
he extrapolated to what our groups
14:10
should be so that we could make
14:12
repetitive dives at depths up to 250 or
14:15
240 actually. None of us had any
14:17
intention or ever would have to the best
14:20
of my knowledge dived deeper than 240 ft
14:24
on air because most of the wrecks that
14:27
we dove like the Andreadoria were in 250
14:30
foot of water. Most of us had no desire
14:32
to go to the sand. Much like the
14:34
Britannic, um just because it's in 400
14:37
feet, you don't have to go to 400 feet.
14:39
You've got all this wreckage that's high
14:41
up for you to go to. So you don't have
14:42
to go to the maximum depth. So getting
14:45
back to your point, the these profiles
14:48
were generated by in my case Brad
14:50
sheared. I'm not sure where other people
14:52
may or may not have gotten them. You
14:54
know that in a small community the word
14:55
gets around and people do have a
14:58
tendency to share information. And so
15:01
these air tables uh we call them the
15:04
thug tables because that was the
15:05
nickname of the Atlantic Rect divers
15:08
because of our skull and crossbones.
15:10
People like to call us the thugs. So,
15:13
uh, yeah. So, Brad named them the Thug
15:16
Tables. I I'll get you a picture of him
15:18
so you can because I still have my Thug
15:20
Tables.
15:21
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I
15:23
mean, that whole idea though, isn't it?
15:25
You know, you guys are absolutely
15:27
cutting edge here. So, so there's
15:28
nothing there's no training. There's no
15:31
uh, you know, science behind it. You are
15:34
literally you know, making it up as you
15:36
go along. And you know that is abs that
15:40
is you know so you know when I say
15:41
you're at the cutting edge of of
15:43
technical diving
15:45
>> you are I mean I know other people were
15:46
doing similar things but you I guess you
15:49
were doing it in your own little stove
15:51
pipe weren't you and you were doing it
15:52
for the kind of reasons that you wanted
15:54
it for and you were yeah and that's what
15:57
you were doing
15:58
>> at this time in diving history or in my
16:01
history there were no wreck diving
16:03
classes to speak of there was no
16:05
decompression classes to speak of
16:07
decompression was covered in your basic
16:10
scuba certification and it wouldn't be
16:13
until 1985
16:16
that diveboats required advanced open
16:20
water. So at the time of this events in
16:23
1991 I only had two certification cards
16:27
a basic and advanced open water. That
16:31
was it. And that's what we dove the
16:32
Doria with. That's what I was diving the
16:35
Ubot with at this time. So, getting back
16:39
to our story, I do the surface interval
16:42
and I'm about to go back in the water.
16:44
It's just going to be me and John
16:45
Chatteran. Bill Nagel says to me, uh,
16:48
you know, don't go into the front of the
16:50
submarine. John's going to go in there.
16:52
And I'm like, well, why does John get to
16:55
go in there? He goes, John's got a
16:57
camera. I'm like,
17:01
damn it. So, I don't I don't get to go
17:04
in, you know, I had already been in the
17:06
stern. Now, I wanted to crawl in and get
17:08
into the bow section and see what I can
17:11
find. So, John goes in there, he's got
17:14
his camera. Um, and as he goes in, um,
17:18
the footage, you know, which is out on
17:20
the internet, you can you can find it.
17:23
Um, it's kind of grainy because again,
17:25
it's, you know, 1991,
17:27
but it's incredible because the remains
17:29
of cabinetry was still there. It was
17:31
plywood cabinetry and he actually had to
17:33
take his hand and go like this to push
17:35
the cabinet and it didn't fall. It
17:37
exploded. It just like literally just
17:39
turned to fragments of of particle board
17:43
and it disappeared.
17:45
Um, but the key here is that at the
17:48
conclusion of the dive, I had searched
17:50
around what I would then realize was the
17:52
conning tower and I found a speaker
17:54
tube. Um, but it again like the pottish
17:58
container, it didn't have any writing on
17:59
it. And um, I noticed that there was a
18:02
light above me and that was John. So, it
18:04
was time to go. So, I had to what we
18:06
call trip the the shot. I had to make
18:08
sure that the shot will come out of the
18:10
rack. And I'm coming up the anchor line
18:12
and John's above me. And as everybody or
18:15
anyone who knows about decompression is,
18:17
you know, we're staged apart by minutes
18:20
and and we're moving in a group like
18:21
this up the line. So, I'm not really
18:23
getting closer to him because every time
18:25
I get closer, he goes up. But I notice
18:28
that below him, hanging below him in a
18:31
net bag was crockery.
18:35
>> And you know, I knew I mean, I could
18:37
smell it, you know. I mean, I could
18:39
smell the history. And, you know, I've
18:41
never um denied I'm unabashedly a
18:45
collector of crockery and artifacts from
18:48
shipwrecks. So, I need to see these
18:51
things. But as I mentioned to you, John
18:54
and I weren't friends. We didn't like
18:55
each other. So finally, as we get to the
18:58
shallowest of our decompression stops, I
19:01
catch up to him and I reach up to look
19:04
in his bag and he and he pulls the bag
19:06
up
19:08
and he like clutches it to his chest.
19:10
And you know, it's one of those, you
19:12
know, moments. We have moments in our
19:14
lives that that you can close your eyes,
19:17
you can relive that moment. And this is
19:19
really one of those moments. I'm looking
19:21
up at him. He's looking down at me. He's
19:23
got this big green bag and it's filled
19:25
with crockery. And we're we're looking
19:28
at each other. And I think each of us
19:31
have a different feeling of of what this
19:34
moment was. Um for me it was like, "Oh
19:37
man, you're being a real prick." you
19:40
know, and for him, he's looking at me
19:41
and then he he realizes there was no
19:44
malice that I was just excited,
19:47
literally so excited to see the
19:49
artifacts. So, he kind of like lowers it
19:52
down and lets me look at it. And I take
19:55
it and I look at it and and I believe
19:57
there was three bowls and a plate. And
20:01
as I spin it around and the silts coming
20:03
out of it,
20:04
all of a sudden on the back of one of
20:06
the bowls, bold as day, I could see it
20:10
was the eagle and the swast sticker in
20:13
the year 1942. And I get goosebumps. I
20:16
mean, the hair is sticking up on my arm
20:17
right now because at that moment, only
20:20
two people in the whole world knew this
20:23
was positively a World War II German
20:27
off of Point Pleasant, New Jersey that
20:30
nobody knew about except well, we were
20:32
the only two that knew it was really a
20:34
Yubot just for that for those moments.
20:37
And you know, that's that's been a um a
20:40
a cornerstone of what would ultimately
20:43
become a lifelong friendship and
20:45
partnership between John and I is
20:47
literally cemented in that moment. And
20:50
and so obviously we finish our
20:51
decompression, we come up and uh
20:55
everybody's super excited, you know,
20:57
that wow, this is a Nazi yubo. People
20:59
are going to their books as soon as we
21:02
get home. um were trying to keep it a
21:05
little quiet because we we didn't want
21:07
to go to the press or the news until we
21:09
knew which one it was. And everybody
21:11
starts looking in the history books and
21:13
like there's one that was supposed to
21:15
have been sunk off Delaware which is
21:16
about 80 miles south of us. There's
21:19
another one that was supposed to be sunk
21:21
off New England which is 100 miles to
21:23
the north. So how did the US Navy get
21:26
the the location so wrong? you know, 100
21:29
miles this way or 60 miles that way. So,
21:32
it doesn't dawn on us that this could be
21:35
another Yubo. We're just figuring that,
21:37
you know, in the fog of war, they made a
21:39
mistake, you know.
21:40
>> Yeah.
21:41
>> So, actually, sorry, I just want to pick
21:43
up that point, Rich, because it is a
21:44
really interesting point, isn't it? I
21:46
think that lots of people assume that
21:49
people know where everything is. And you
21:51
know there is people often forget that
21:53
you know it's a war and stuff just
21:55
sometimes vanishes and and the records
21:58
are just really not that good even when
22:01
stuff is actually known to have been
22:02
sunk and they know what it is what it is
22:04
often the actual location it can be
22:07
really vague and I I know in this
22:09
particular case it's it's completely
22:11
wrong but it is a kind of more general
22:13
point isn't it? It it is and and you
22:16
know by their very nature uh submarines
22:19
of all nationalities are intended to be
22:22
secretive. That that is their very
22:23
purpose is is to sneak around, if you
22:26
will, and not be seen, not be found.
22:30
And uh and to that end, there's usually
22:32
no external markings. And so the the
22:35
very first thing is like people like any
22:37
other shipwreck. Oh, go find the bell.
22:39
Oh, go to the stern. Find the letters.
22:41
You know, uh, most people see pre-war or
22:45
post-war photos of submarines that have
22:47
the numbers written on the side of them.
22:48
Well, the first thing that happens
22:50
during war is all that's painted over or
22:52
removed. They don't want anybody knowing
22:54
what submarine or what ships going
22:56
anywhere. So, it's all supposed to be
22:58
super secretive. But the real kick in
23:00
the teeth over that next winter, 91
23:04
going into 92 was when we did go to the
23:07
US Navy. We did go to the uh Federal
23:10
German Republic uh their their um emiss
23:14
ambassadors in uh in New York City. We
23:18
told them about the find. No government,
23:21
no expert, no military source could
23:25
answer the simple question, what yubot
23:28
is this? And why is it off Point
23:30
Pleasant, New Jersey? So coming into the
23:33
summer of 1992,
23:35
we actually realized that we have an
23:38
Enigma submarine that no history book uh
23:43
there's no factual uh indication of any
23:46
kind that there was supposed to be. We
23:48
knew submarines operated in the area,
23:50
but there was no report of one sinking.
23:53
Many of the shipwrecks that I was
23:54
recovering artifacts from had been sunk
23:56
by German hubot, but none of them had
23:59
been sunk there. So this created a
24:02
problem. So that forced us to go back to
24:04
the record. As a matter of fact, many of
24:06
the experts in Germany um and one in
24:09
particular, Horse Breau, uh the late
24:11
Horse Bread, he's passed. He is the um
24:14
originator creator of what is now known
24:17
as the Yubot archive in Cooks in
24:20
Germany.
24:21
>> A great place. If you ever really are
24:24
going visiting Germany or you're doing
24:25
any research on Yubot, this is the
24:28
place. and um and it's a private f
24:31
private facility. It's not funded by the
24:33
German government.
24:34
>> He was the one who says you have to go
24:36
back to the wreck. The answer is going
24:38
to be in the wreck. And so we were
24:40
getting advice from German veterans,
24:43
from historians, archivists at uh um at
24:48
some of the uh places where we were
24:50
going and getting uh naval records,
24:52
captured naval records, uh College Park,
24:55
Maryland, um the National Archives here
24:58
in the United States, trying to access
25:00
captured German records to see what what
25:03
uh where submarines were sent, trying to
25:06
figure out where this fell through the
25:08
cracks at At the same time, we're
25:10
forensically diving the submarine. Well,
25:13
when you forensically dive the submarine
25:14
and you start to go inside, one of the
25:16
most brutal and horrifying facts is
25:19
going to kick you right in the teeth.
25:22
And I've already uh elaborated on diving
25:25
air. And I at this point I had been
25:27
diving
25:29
15 years. I've been diving a number of
25:31
different shipwrecks at depth that had
25:34
loss of life. The Andrea being one. Over
25:37
50 people died on that. It doesn't
25:39
matter that there had been fatalities. I
25:42
had never seen the human cost.
25:46
The there was no remains. But inside the
25:49
stagnant water of this sealed tomb, if
25:52
you will, um the crew was still there.
25:55
My first dive into that bow section
25:57
where John had found the dishes, um I
26:02
was horrified. I mean, literally
26:04
frightened beyond anything I had ever
26:07
seen because it was like a scene out of
26:10
a horror movie. There was human remains
26:13
strewn around the cabin in some cases.
26:16
Um, you know, intact rib cages, the the
26:19
skulls uh with the jaw hanging out or
26:22
broken off. Um, some of the larger bones
26:26
with the tattered remains of uniform on
26:28
it. Um,
26:30
it was
26:32
so scary. It was everything I could do
26:35
to close my eyes,
26:37
just keep thinking, breathe, and then
26:40
got out of there. And and you know when
26:42
I when I told this story to the author
26:44
of the book Shadow Divers, Rob Kersonen,
26:48
who understood that we only had so many
26:50
days of the year, very limited
26:52
opportunities to go this far offshore
26:54
due to the weather, uh due to timing,
26:58
many different things, all getting
26:59
together to try to get out to this site.
27:01
And there I was waiting like a kid on
27:03
Christmas morning to go make this dive.
27:05
I finally get in there and the first
27:07
thing I do is stop,
27:10
freak out, turn around and come out. And
27:15
I like to think that we listen to the
27:17
little voice in our head and and that I
27:21
was I had lost my cool. I had just I'm
27:23
not, you know, I am not I am unabashed
27:26
in the fact that I had never seen human
27:28
remains before uh like that. Um it was
27:33
grotesque. It was I was confronted
27:36
with not only my own mortality but my my
27:40
morality as a person who collects
27:42
artifacts. I'm like what do I do now? I
27:45
I'm not a grave robber. And that was the
27:48
thing that really stuck with both myself
27:50
and John. John is a veteran. He served
27:52
in uh uh Vietnam. You know, he was a
27:55
medic. uh for him the the line between
27:59
uh uh uh soldiers and and and their
28:03
graves was clearly defined. But for
28:05
someone like me who hadn't been in that
28:07
situation until that exact moment, I had
28:10
this this conf it wasn't confusion. It
28:13
was well, what do I do now? And so John
28:16
and I agreed that however we were going
28:20
to proceed, we had to proceed in a way
28:22
that we could look into the eyes of
28:25
anyone and say that we operated with
28:28
respect.
28:29
And so the first thing we said is
28:31
there's going to be no digging amongst
28:32
the human remains. There had to be a way
28:35
to find things. And so one of the things
28:37
that we wanted to do early on was to try
28:40
and find the type of submarine. We
28:43
realized that there were two types of
28:44
German yubot that had been sent to
28:46
operate off the United States, a type
28:48
seven and a type 9. And although many of
28:51
you may now know, remember this, we
28:54
don't know what we don't know back then.
28:56
So, we have to learn it. And so, we go
28:58
to the stern and we see that there's two
29:00
torpedo tubes. Well, that tells us now
29:03
that this is a type nine, but that had
29:05
to be a dive. That had to be done and
29:07
documented. And then, okay, we know it's
29:09
a type nine, but which type nine? We we
29:11
look up and we find out how many
29:13
hundreds of them had been built and that
29:15
we find out how many of them never
29:17
returned at the end of the war. We're
29:19
coming up with theories in our mind. Was
29:21
these Nazis trying to escape to the
29:23
United States? And you know, maybe Adolf
29:25
Hitler was on board. Maybe this gold
29:27
treasure. I mean, everything the world
29:29
was our oyster because there were no
29:31
answers and it was up to us to get those
29:34
answers. So part of it was we noticed
29:36
right away that the dishes that John had
29:39
gotten had a year on them and so you
29:42
know the war lasted five years so and
29:45
the Americans were involved in it for a
29:47
good three and a half to four. So if we
29:50
if we could get dishes that would help
29:53
narrow it down you know and so you when
29:56
you think about it it's like people say
29:57
to me well why did you grab you know all
29:59
of the crockery? Well you know every one
30:01
of them have the year right there. So we
30:04
found dishes uh and crockery that was
30:08
all the way up to 1944.
30:10
Well, that means it didn't sink in 43.
30:13
So the these were things that helped us.
30:16
Another problem we had was that because
30:19
the German late war building program was
30:23
stressed by their own design. Um they
30:26
were building their submarines out of
30:28
cheaper and cheaper material and steel,
30:32
stainless steel even does not last very
30:34
well underwater. And you can see that
30:36
this is the remains of a fork or a spoon
30:39
and it had the eagle and swastiker on
30:41
it. It's got a U and an R um on
30:44
officer's room which indicated what area
30:48
and what class of sailor and then when
30:50
it's buried in the mud it's in a much
30:52
better condition. So this is one that
30:54
was buried in the mud and this is one
30:56
that sat out. So I like to show people
30:58
the difference between what the salt
31:00
water will do if something's encased and
31:02
buried or not. And so needless to say,
31:06
all of the tags, the the defining things
31:10
that we had access to had degraded to
31:13
such a point where they were nearly
31:15
useless. I believe you may have a um a
31:19
schematic, a photo of the schematic that
31:21
actually helped us narrow down where
31:23
this submarine was built. Um John had
31:26
found it and recovered it and pulled it
31:28
out. And it actually says in the corner,
31:31
Desameg, there you go. It it actually
31:33
says this is a Ubot type 9C. And then
31:36
this should be one more uh photo like
31:39
that that says that's the whole thing.
31:40
That's all that's left of this schematic
31:43
which was a wiring and plumbing
31:45
schematic. But on the other side of it
31:47
actually says the word desame. So the so
31:51
this tag or the corner of the schematic
31:54
that said desame gave us two great bits
31:57
of information. one, we knew we knew it
31:58
was a type 9 C, but now it told us where
32:02
it had been built. And of the type 9
32:05
German Ubot, they were built in three or
32:07
four different facilities. So by finding
32:11
that tag or that that schematic, it
32:14
helped us narrow us down to a smaller
32:17
number of possible Ubot. And so each
32:20
forensic find, each thing we recovered
32:23
kept narrowing it down, narrowing it
32:25
down. And during this search,
32:28
John found a box. And this was probably
32:33
um another one of those pivotal moments
32:35
in the shadow divers story in which it
32:38
was cutlery. And and he didn't know it
32:41
was cutlery. He just knew it was a box.
32:43
So he puts the box in the bag, brings it
32:44
up. It's filled with mud. When he gets
32:46
up to the top, you know, there's some
32:48
pieces that look like this. But most
32:50
importantly in there was a knife. And
32:53
the knife because it had been immersed
32:55
in the mud, the wooden handle was still
32:57
there.
32:59
And in that handle was carved the name
33:03
Horinberg.
33:05
And this was not a marine knife. As a
33:09
matter of fact, the knife says that it
33:11
was part of the um Hamburg Lloyd
33:14
shipping company. So, this knife, which
33:18
was stainless steel, um, some sailor
33:21
named Hornberg probably pilered it off
33:24
of one of the training ships and carved
33:27
his name on it. Who knows why, but he
33:30
did. And this was awesome. You know, on
33:33
that day, Brad Shear came over and
33:36
slapped Chatterton on the back and said,
33:38
"You know what? You've done it. Find
33:41
Hornberg and you found the answer.
33:43
you'll know who the you So, we're all
33:45
like, "Yay, we figured it out. This is
33:47
awesome." Right.
33:49
So, John writes to uh Horse Bread Out in
33:53
uh Germany and says,
33:55
>> "So, I just I just got to pick that one
33:56
up there because that is obviously an a
33:58
really interesting thing. These days, of
33:59
course, what you do is you Google him
34:01
and then you give him a call and or
34:03
you'd send him a WhatsApp or whatever,
34:05
whereas obviously you guys are sending
34:06
letters."
34:08
>> And that is that is true. I I I I
34:10
neglected to mention that in 1992 there
34:13
you know in my business we had a fax
34:16
machine
34:19
but we you know I don't know many other
34:21
people that had a personal fax machine.
34:24
So the reality was uh most of our
34:26
correspondents
34:28
um whether I I had been writing to
34:30
people at the MOD in the UK which we'll
34:33
talk about in a little bit um we had
34:35
been writing to Germany um to both uh
34:38
the author and um archivist Axel Mesley
34:41
as well as Horse Breau but Horse Breau
34:44
was our point of contact and and so when
34:48
we wrote to him with the name Horenberg
34:50
he wrote back and uh said sorry That's a
34:54
dead end. Horrenburgg was sunk off of
34:57
Casablanca, off North Africa on the
35:00
U869.
35:03
It can't possibly be U869 because she
35:05
and then when we looked, we could see
35:07
that the U869 had been sunk by the
35:09
Illiscreet and another destroyer off
35:11
Casablanca. And we both know that
35:14
history books are never wrong. So if
35:16
they say they sank U869 off North Car
35:19
off Northern Africa, they did. So, the
35:22
knife was a fluke. Either somebody stole
35:24
the knife, either maybe Horenburg had
35:26
been on that boat, left the knife. Who
35:28
knows? But the odd thing about that
35:31
name, and it's kind of really odd, is
35:35
you know, in in America and in the UK,
35:37
we have names that are so super common,
35:39
like Smith or Jones, right? Horrenburgg.
35:44
O of the 40,000
35:47
German sailors who served on your hubot
35:50
during World War II,
35:52
one.
35:53
>> Wow. Wow.
35:55
>> One.
35:56
>> Wow.
35:57
>> So, it kind of
35:59
>> and he was radio operator.
36:01
So,
36:03
got to go back to the wreck. And, you
36:06
know, at this time now, um, it's
36:08
starting to get a little more amped up.
36:10
there are other people coming because
36:12
there's a little bit of notoriety. It
36:15
had made the news that, you know, there
36:17
was a mystery submarine. There were lots
36:18
of people very interested in our story
36:20
on both sides of the Atlantic. Um, I
36:23
started writing to a gentleman named
36:26
Robert Copic who was an archivist at the
36:29
Ministry of Defense in Scotland yard.
36:34
And um, I just start writing into
36:36
writing to him back and forth. He was
36:39
very interested. that I I have all my
36:40
correspondents and again as you you
36:43
mentioned it's letters we're writing
36:45
letters and mailing letters so weeks go
36:48
by between time and anytime I would get
36:51
that really cool air mail post and you
36:53
know it was Mr. Rob Copic. So, he had
36:56
actually in one case um
37:00
uh uh gave me a phone number and it was
37:02
kind of interesting cuz you know when I
37:05
first called him I thought I had the
37:06
wrong number because the person who
37:09
answered the phone with that very funny
37:11
English ring tone said hello mod
37:15
Scotland Yard. I thought I had the wrong
37:16
number. I didn't mean to call Scotland
37:19
Yard, you know, but uh we started
37:22
corresponding because he had um I had
37:24
gotten his name and number from um one
37:27
of the archivists that I was working
37:29
here um at College Park at National
37:31
Archives, Capture German Records
37:33
Division said that Robert Copic had
37:36
enigma decrypts. And for for our uh
37:39
people who don't know what that is, it
37:41
basically the short version, it's an
37:43
incredible story is that the British had
37:45
broken um through Bletchley Park and
37:48
other means the German codes and was
37:50
reading the German radio transmissions.
37:54
And because this was a late war loss,
37:57
there was a good chance that Robert
37:58
Copic might be able to find radio
38:00
transmissions that had been decrypted um
38:03
in our area or or in going back and
38:06
forth. So this was another source of
38:09
archival research that we were each
38:11
taking undertaking to try and answer
38:13
this at the same time that we're diving
38:15
the wreck and trying to pick up these
38:17
artifacts that'll help us.
38:19
So
38:21
it's amazing that I get a letter back
38:24
and of course the letter was absolutely
38:26
stunning
38:29
and in the letter from Robert Copic he
38:30
says it's interesting to note that U869
38:35
before heading to Cassid North Africa
38:37
was originally ordered to operate off of
38:41
New Jersey
38:43
but then uh got halfway across the
38:46
Atlantic and they said you don't have
38:47
enough fuel so go to North Africa
38:50
instead.
38:51
So now we're our heads are spinning.
38:54
It's like, well, maybe they didn't get
38:56
the order. Maybe, you know, there was
38:58
some kind of thing. But without proof,
39:01
without physical proof, it's all theory.
39:05
And to that point, there were other
39:06
Ubot. To this day, there are two other
39:09
type 9 Ubot, U879 and um U851
39:14
that are both lost off the east coast of
39:17
the United States somewhere between
39:19
Maine and North Carolina. They're not
39:22
found. They are believed to have been
39:24
sunk in ASW or anti-ubmarine warfare
39:27
attacks, but with no debris, most likely
39:30
at night and therefore um
39:32
unsubstantiated or undocumented. Of
39:35
course, they could have succumbed to
39:36
just a a tragedy that we we don't know
39:39
about, but wherever they are, they've
39:41
yet to be found. So, technically, there
39:44
was the possibility this could have been
39:45
one of three or four different Ubot.
39:48
And so, that required us to get
39:50
something physical from the wreck.
39:53
During the course of these dives, a
39:55
father and son team had joined us, Chris
39:58
and his son, Chrissy Rouse.
40:00
And by this time now um it is 1993 and
40:04
and over the winter of '92 into '93 many
40:07
of us took tryix lessons. This was the
40:11
beginning of the use of tryix. So I had
40:15
been diving for two years to this hubot
40:18
on air and where were we now about to
40:21
start to venture into open circuit try.
40:24
Well, it was obvious to me once I
40:29
started diving and watching John
40:30
Chatterton um diving Trimix and I was on
40:33
air. Um my favorite very short story is
40:36
John and I dive this together. He's on
40:40
Trix, I'm on air, he's got his camera.
40:43
We go down together because by this time
40:45
we have developed into a partnership,
40:47
dare I even say friendship kind of
40:49
forced on us by Bill Nagel. and uh um
40:52
I'm I'm going to do the the the line
40:54
work cuz he's got the the camera. So, I
40:57
tie into the wreck and I'm like, "Okay,
40:59
let's go." And he goes, "Okay." And we
41:02
do our dive. We come back up. We do our
41:04
decompression. We're back in the boat.
41:06
We're going to do our surface decomp
41:08
surface interval for our next dive. And
41:10
we're having a peanut butter jelly
41:12
sandwich. And he says to me, "Why did
41:14
you tie in and then untie and then tie
41:18
in again?" I'm like, "I didn't do that."
41:20
He goes, "Oh, no you did." I'm like,
41:23
"No, I didn't."
41:25
Sure as Plays the video, shows me
41:28
on the camera. I'm watching the video. I
41:30
tied it in. I looked at it. I untied it
41:34
and tied it again. No memory of doing
41:36
that at all. Had to watch it on camera.
41:39
And I'm still like, I can't believe I
41:41
don't remember. And that is when I'm
41:44
like, okay, I I think this Tryix stuff
41:46
might there might be something in this
41:48
for me. So, of course, I I started
41:50
diving it. Now, um, one of the things we
41:53
didn't know at the time, and nobody
41:56
mandated you had to dive Tryix, it just
41:59
became the better way. It's kind of like
42:01
today, nobody says you can't dive these
42:04
racks on open circuit, but if you're
42:06
going to be diving 100 meters between
42:08
cost, efficiency, and safety, CCR is
42:13
just a win-winwin. So, you're going to,
42:16
you know, uh, gravitate towards that.
42:18
Well, on one of these dives, Chris and
42:20
Chrissy came out with us, and it
42:23
appeared that they were diving Tryix,
42:25
but what we did not know was they were
42:27
diving air, but they were just carrying
42:31
um decompression gases under their arm.
42:33
They didn't have Tryix. And they not I
42:36
don't know whether it was whether they
42:37
were embarrassed or um they just didn't
42:40
want to know. Nobody questioned. There
42:42
was there was nobody looking out after
42:44
each other or checking what any gases
42:46
were. Again, this was in the infasy
42:48
infancy of all of these protocols. No
42:51
protocols have been set up. It was still
42:54
to a degree the wild west. You do you, I
42:56
do me. Nobody questions anybody. So,
42:59
they go in. I had dove that morning uh
43:02
with John.
43:04
Um we came up, they went down. Um I was
43:09
in the wheelhouse arguing with John and
43:11
the captain about making a second dive.
43:14
They wanted to pull the hook because
43:16
it's getting the weather's starting to
43:17
turn and they want to head in. And I'm
43:20
like, "Ah, it's not that bad." You know,
43:22
let me go. I'll make another dive. And
43:24
all of a sudden, I'll never forget, um,
43:26
either John or the captain was looking
43:28
out of the the the front window of the
43:30
boat. You got, they said, "Oh my god."
43:33
And we saw these two heads pop up in
43:35
front of the line, like in front of the
43:38
line, in front of the boat. So, we knew
43:40
that they had just done an ascent from
43:42
70 m. And uh I don't need to tell you
43:45
that that that is not good. And now
43:48
they're swimming back. And um without
43:51
getting into the entire detail,
43:52
unfortunately
43:54
um first uh Chris, we got Chrissy, the
43:57
son, on board. And uh we were trying
44:00
struggling to get uh the father on
44:03
board. His he said his legs weren't
44:04
working anymore. We were trying to strip
44:06
his gear. Unfortunately, he uh went
44:09
unconscious and died and we dragged him
44:11
into the boat. We did CPR. Um, his son
44:15
Chrissy stayed alive until the
44:17
helicopter got there. We got them both
44:19
in the helicopter. They got Chrissy into
44:21
the chamber, but unfortunately he had
44:23
passed in the chamber.
44:25
And so we now had three fatalities that
44:29
had occurred on this yubot. And so on
44:31
top of the 56 men crew, now there were
44:34
three divers that had lost their lives.
44:36
There had been a couple of near misses
44:38
where divers had um done a rapid descent
44:42
due to overweing and then coming back up
44:45
and they had to be airlifted but there
44:46
was no real decompression problem. So
44:48
there had been a series of uh let's call
44:51
them learning mistakes that were going
44:53
on with people with the advent of tryix
44:56
with the advent of even bigger tanks
44:58
because now during this process I
45:00
switched from aluminum 80s alley 80s on
45:04
my back to what we call Genesis 120
45:06
steels which were super heavy massive
45:10
steel tanks but again it gave you an
45:12
extra 40 cubic feet of gas per cylinder
45:15
so I mean that's like carrying another
45:17
alley on your back. So, of course, we we
45:19
were trying to get the most bang for our
45:21
buck. So, equipment was changing,
45:24
technology was changing, gases were
45:27
changing, but people weren't. And when
45:30
that happens, when when there's that
45:32
intersection, there's almost always
45:35
tragedy and and and that's exactly what
45:38
happened. Um the very short version of
45:41
the Rouses are uh they were highly
45:44
experienced cave divers. They always
45:46
used a line going into the submarine,
45:48
which I could talk about that. And so
45:51
the son went in because on a dive he had
45:53
seen something with writing on it. And
45:55
as I mentioned, finding something with
45:56
writing was paramount to the identity of
45:58
the submarine.
46:00
And and he was going to work on it and
46:02
his father stayed outside. Well, my
46:05
understanding is whatever their dive
46:06
plan was, uh, the son didn't come out
46:10
and so the father went in. So now you
46:12
got two people in zero visibility. And
46:15
when he found his son, he had found him
46:18
pinned where a a large piece of
46:20
equipment had fallen on him and he
46:21
couldn't extricate himself. The father
46:24
got him out. And and when they came out
46:27
of the submarine, they thought they were
46:29
heading to the stern where the anchor
46:31
was, but instead they headed almost 150
46:34
ft the wrong direction to the bow. By
46:38
this time, I believe one of them was so
46:40
low on gas, they made this terrible
46:42
decision, they said, "We're going to do
46:44
a free ascent."
46:46
Um, but somehow by the odds of uh
46:53
just incredible odds, they intersected
46:56
with the as they're doing a free ascent,
46:58
they they ran into the anchor line and
47:01
they grabbed it and they now had the
47:04
ability to ek out some kind of a
47:06
decompression plan. They had left two of
47:09
their uh decompression bottles on the
47:12
wreck. They never got back to the anchor
47:14
line where the bottles were. So, they
47:17
only had two bottles of of an
47:19
intermediate gas, something that could
47:20
have been breathed brea breathed at
47:22
depth under their arms. But that's
47:25
better than breathing nothing because
47:26
their backmounted gas was almost all
47:29
gone. And when Chrissy went to put his
47:33
rag in his mouth,
47:37
um he took two breaths, spit it out, um
47:40
and then bolted for the surface.
47:42
And anybody as a parent could probably
47:45
imagine the horror
47:48
of Chris Senior's decision-making
47:50
process at this moment.
47:54
You know, I'm looking at you right now
47:56
and you know, no matter who that is, no
47:57
matter how great a buddy they are, if
47:59
they opt to blow off all that
48:02
decompression and face what they will
48:04
face at the surface, and I don't have to
48:07
face that, I'm not sure I would follow
48:10
them to the surface. I may try to drag
48:11
them and help them down, but I don't
48:13
know if I would break that ceiling. And
48:17
so there in lies the dilemma for Chris
48:19
Senior. His decision was to join his son
48:22
on the surface. And so he came up. So
48:24
after what we calculated as 40 plus
48:27
minutes at 70 m, they came up almost
48:32
mostly with no decompression directly to
48:34
the surface.
48:37
And so you can understand the the the
48:39
explosive decompression that was
48:41
occurring in their bodies at this
48:43
moment. And everything that I just
48:45
recounted to you was shared with me um
48:48
as John was doing CPR on Chris Senior.
48:52
Um John asked me to go get a notepad and
48:56
get a statement from Chrissy and find
48:58
out what happened. And as a a young lady
49:01
who was on board that dive, Barb Lander,
49:03
was administering oxygen,
49:06
everything that we do, give him aspirin,
49:08
water, whatever we could do until the
49:09
helicopter got there. I did ask
49:12
questions and everything that I have
49:13
just shared with you was directly from
49:16
Chrissy's mouth to me about and when we
49:19
looked at his gear, we realized what
49:20
happened. Obviously, in the struggle to
49:23
uh extricate himself from the wreck, he
49:25
had torn the mouthpiece. So when he was
49:27
trying to breathe off of the the stage
49:29
bottle regulator, water was just pouring
49:32
in from the tongue. So that's why he
49:33
wasn't and and he had lost it. This is
49:35
another one of those things that once
49:37
you've the snowball effect, once you've
49:39
lost your cool, there was no ability for
49:42
this young man to to regain it. He was
49:45
spiraling out of control. And it would
49:47
appear that his father was in control
49:48
and made conscious decisions. And you
49:52
know if Chrissy would have allowed him,
49:54
you know, you could have taken
49:55
regulators, you could have buddy
49:56
breathed. There was so many alternatives
49:58
that could have worked out to less than
50:01
this tragic event. But sadly, that's not
50:05
was what to come. So after the the death
50:08
of Chris and Chrissy, it wound up pretty
50:10
much being just me and John and I
50:13
wouldn't even say a handful of people.
50:15
There was maybe one or two other people
50:17
that would continue to go out to the
50:18
wreck. And it got pretty sad. I mean, it
50:21
got really sad. We felt like the wreck
50:24
was beating Well, John felt like the
50:27
wreck was beating him. John to know John
50:29
Chatteran is to know a person who is
50:31
incredibly fix fixated on the end
50:34
result. He is a performance-based
50:37
person. He is a test pilot. He loves
50:40
trying new equipment, trying new
50:42
techniques. I'm more pragmatic. I like
50:45
letting other people see it, you know,
50:46
try it and then I watch and then I'll
50:49
adapt it if it looks good to me. He's so
50:51
we're in many ways we're kind of
50:53
opposite and he was taking this on the
50:55
chin and you know here I was being the
50:57
optimist. No, we're going to go back in
50:59
there. We're going to get it. And you
51:02
know, again, without getting into the
51:03
big story of our lives,
51:06
six years goes by in which a year and a
51:09
half I quit diving due to personal
51:11
things going on in my life with divorce,
51:13
custody of my children. I just didn't
51:16
have the mindset for this kind of
51:17
diving. And then when I started to get
51:20
back into diving, they still had not
51:23
found one thing to positively identify
51:25
this wreck. And I start going back to my
51:28
books. We we believe it to be U869 based
51:33
on the information from Robert Copic at
51:35
Scotland Yard mod. We totally believe
51:39
that U869 missed the radio signal,
51:42
continued to New York and underwent some
51:44
terrible tragedy. But we can't prove it.
51:47
We can't I can't knock on someone's door
51:50
and say, "Hey, I found your your son or
51:53
your brother or your father, but I'm
51:55
only, you know, I'm kind of sure." No,
51:58
we had to be proved positive. So, I'm
52:00
going back through all the research and
52:01
I'm going through a book called Yubot,
52:04
literally Yubot on. And in one of the
52:08
photographs, I see a tag that says U853,
52:13
which is another German submarine some
52:15
off of Rhode Island off here in New
52:17
England. And I looked down and and the
52:21
photo was credited to a friend of mine
52:23
guy named Billy Palmer. I'm like, call
52:26
Billy up. Billy, where'd you get that
52:28
tag? Oh, in the electric motor room.
52:31
There are spare parts boxes and all of
52:33
them have that. And I'm like,
52:37
you're telling me that all this time in
52:39
the one compartment we couldn't access
52:42
because debris was blocking it? There
52:45
are boxes that have the number of the
52:48
Yubot on it. And nobody in the world
52:52
ever thought to tell us to go in this
52:54
one room where there are literally over
52:58
a hundred boxes that each has the number
53:01
of the Ubot. He goes, "Yeah."
53:04
So I call Chatterton up and now we're
53:07
now it's like gas on the fire. Now we're
53:09
all hot. So we go and I mean it is a
53:12
major undertaking because this area of
53:15
the submarine you have to get through
53:16
it. The only way to get in was through
53:18
the diesel motor room and all this
53:20
equipment had fallen in. We had to use
53:22
we used a chain fall which is basically
53:24
chain would have come along to wrench
53:27
things out of the way. The minute we
53:29
cleared that there was another uh
53:31
obstruction and so John comes up with
53:34
this radical plan which I did not like.
53:36
Um, again, this was uh 90
53:42
99
53:43
and um he's going to take his tanks off
53:47
at 230 ft and swim 40 ft over the
53:51
engines and then get on the other side,
53:52
put a single tank on, work on a single
53:56
tank that's 70 m,
53:59
find a box, get it, give it to me, take
54:04
the tank off, swim over the motors,
54:06
rinse and repeat.
54:08
I There was a hundred things that could
54:10
have gone wrong. So many different
54:11
things. And as a matter of fact, during
54:13
one of them, he did. And in in in one
54:16
case, we we tried this on a shallower
54:18
submarine. We actually went to the U853
54:21
and practiced this exact deal. We did
54:24
the exact thing. We went down. He took
54:26
his tanks. He took his double tanks off,
54:29
took a single tank, swam, went around,
54:32
spent two minutes, came back. But of
54:34
course that's only 30 m. So the gas
54:38
consumption is not the same. But the
54:39
idea was the technique practicing the on
54:42
and off getting it done. And so we we
54:44
did do at least two dry runs with that.
54:47
But then of course nothing you know the
54:49
best made plans of mice and men. And so
54:52
of course on one time he goes he goes in
54:55
there um he gets snagged.
54:59
He's trying to to work in there. He's
55:00
stirring up the visibility. He's his
55:03
buoyancy is totally off because you go
55:05
from wearing a twin set to a single
55:08
tank. It was, excuse the language again,
55:10
a cluster And he comes out and
55:13
he's he's good on gas, but he didn't
55:15
accomplish anything except to get him
55:16
frustrated.
55:18
He did film and see boxes, but when he
55:20
went to touch them, they were fused. We
55:23
didn't know at the time they were
55:24
actually strapped. Makes sense. You
55:26
know, boxes on ships. They've got to be
55:29
secured. So they were actually strapped
55:31
into position, but because of the
55:33
encrustation and cro uh and growth, he
55:36
couldn't see that. So he had to come
55:38
back with a crowbar to to pry them
55:40
apart. So that's another dive. So
55:43
finally after I think it was two or
55:45
three dives, he was able to get in
55:47
there, pry one of the boxes, put it in a
55:50
bag, bring it to me. I handed it to a
55:53
dive partner who sent it up on a lift
55:55
bag. We never read it. We couldn't see
55:57
it. It was totally covered with growth,
56:00
you know, things all over it. So, we had
56:02
no idea if there was even tags on the
56:04
box. We just knew we had a box. And then
56:07
John's coming out. He gets stuck.
56:10
And then he runs out of gas on the far
56:14
side of the engine. I'm there waiting
56:17
for him to help him put on his tanks.
56:21
He comes by me, drops the now empty
56:25
aluminum 80, and swims directly over my
56:28
head right to his twin set. And I'm
56:31
freaking out cuz here he is at 70 m
56:34
inside a submarine with nothing to
56:37
breathe. And he's just like,
56:41
and of course the gas was on. Everything
56:44
worked in his favor cuz he lived. But I
56:47
was like, you know, you're going to kill
56:49
me. I can't I can't take this anymore. I
56:51
can't take the stress. Needless to say,
56:53
>> and it's it's one of the things I mean,
56:55
you've got to look at it as well, you
56:56
know,
56:58
uh you know, why why are you doing this?
57:01
And you know, that is, as you've just
57:03
said there, is an incredibly dangerous
57:04
thing. And just to kind of get that
57:07
final confirmation, I mean, that's
57:09
that's kind of a lot of people would
57:13
consider that, you know, totally
57:14
unreasonable thing to do. Ridiculous.
57:17
But, you know, I I understand it and I
57:19
think, you know, some other people
57:21
would, but it is when viewed absolutely
57:24
rationally. It's a completely bonkers
57:25
thing to do, isn't it?
57:26
>> Well, you know, top side, I argued with
57:30
John. I'm like, why didn't you give me
57:31
the out of air? I could have given you
57:33
my, you know, my other regulator. I
57:35
mean, he's like, well, I had enough gas.
57:37
I f I could see the cylinder. I could
57:39
see the tanks. And I thought to sit
57:41
there and communicate with you would
57:43
take more time than it would to swim. So
57:45
he made an executive decision and it
57:47
worked. But again, you got to think at
57:49
any moment if at that point his fin
57:51
strap had got struck stuck on there was
57:53
there's by the way this is not a benign
57:55
environment. Anyone who's ever been in a
57:57
submarine there's all danglies and
57:59
snagglies and things always just
58:02
grabbing you and and you know even under
58:04
the best of circumstances much less
58:06
trying to freeze swim um in in not the
58:10
best buoyancy cons configuration.
58:13
Uh, so I got my heart back. Um, we get
58:16
on the line, we're ascending and then,
58:20
uh, we get to our shallow decompression
58:22
stops and someone comes down with a, um,
58:27
a notepad and on the notepad it says the
58:30
yohoo has a name. It's U869.
58:34
And so at that point we knew it was
58:38
positively the U869. What we didn't
58:42
understand was why it was U869.
58:46
And and and you know, again, there there
58:48
are things that we'll never know. There
58:50
there there are things about the sinking
58:52
that are subjective. There are things
58:54
about the radio messages that are
58:56
subjective. And you know, the only
58:58
people that know can't talk in in every
59:00
case. So, we can make um you know, uh
59:04
educated guesses, if you will. Um, if
59:08
you talk about the sinking, to this day
59:09
there's still controversy about what had
59:11
happened. Um, you know, the US uh Navy
59:16
and the US Coast Guard themselves are at
59:18
odds. Uh, you know, I've interviewed the
59:20
US uh Navy commander Judson who was on
59:23
one of the vessels. There was the USS
59:25
Coiner and the USS Crow. One of them was
59:27
Coast Guard, one of them was Navy. The
59:29
Navy claimed the kill after the fact
59:32
because they said that they bombed it,
59:33
but um the Judson said no, it acted like
59:37
a wreck. No oil came up, no debris. When
59:39
you look at the condition of the U869
59:41
blown into two pieces, how do you blow a
59:43
ship into two pieces and not a single
59:46
piece of paper or a single piece of
59:47
wood? Oil. You know how much oil a fuel
59:50
oil a submarine was carrying? Nothing
59:53
came to the surface. So many other
59:56
people look at it and go, "Well, Judson,
59:58
Commander Judson was right. It was Iraq,
1:00:00
but it was Iraq submarine, but it had
1:00:02
been killed earlier." But what killed
1:00:04
it? Some people come up and say that it
1:00:06
was um a hydrogen explosion from the
1:00:09
batteries, which would account for why
1:00:11
it's blown open like a like a trick
1:00:13
cigar, why the Conning tower is blown
1:00:15
off. I mean, you guys have dove many
1:00:18
Ubot, and I don't think you've ever seen
1:00:20
them that they're blown up like this,
1:00:22
and there's different damage. The the
1:00:26
area of the Connie tower is blown open
1:00:28
and apart as if from an exter I am not
1:00:31
an explosives expert. I'm not a naval
1:00:34
architect. I'm a wreck diver. Okay? So,
1:00:36
let's leave it at that. So any theories
1:00:38
I come up with is usually smarter people
1:00:41
in in the case of um the self-inflicted
1:00:45
torpedo that was an idea that was given
1:00:47
to us early on by uh the US Naval
1:00:50
Weapons Station Earl when we had gone
1:00:52
there and shown them video and drawings
1:00:54
of the wreck. They looked at it and they
1:00:56
said, "Well, that looks like what they
1:00:57
would expect from a um a charge where
1:00:59
the torpedo goes in and blows blows the
1:01:03
pressure inward, which accounts for why
1:01:06
all the hatches are blown off. Every
1:01:08
hatch is blown open in the entire
1:01:10
submarine." And the difference in the
1:01:12
back, the hole is pressed in, which
1:01:15
would be implying that a depth charge
1:01:17
had pushed it in. So, we've got depth
1:01:20
charge damage obviously in the back and
1:01:22
then we've got some other damage up in
1:01:24
the front that that are at odds with
1:01:26
each other. So,
1:01:28
again, it's one of those things that
1:01:30
maybe when I when when I get my just
1:01:32
reward and I can meet my Captain Neyberg
1:01:35
myself one day, I'll be like, "So, what
1:01:37
happened?"
1:01:38
You know, but until then, I don't think
1:01:40
we're going to know. And then when it
1:01:42
comes to the radio, the thing that's
1:01:44
really interesting is that the knife,
1:01:47
the radio operator was Horrenburgg.
1:01:51
And so Horenburgg himself would have
1:01:54
been the one responsible for responding
1:01:56
to the new change in orders because and
1:02:00
and I know you know this Dom I've heard
1:02:03
people go, "Oh, Neyberg probably
1:02:06
disobeyed them because he wanted to go
1:02:07
to There is no way a a naval commander
1:02:11
of of 56 men is going to um basically
1:02:16
disregard
1:02:17
uh uh and disobey a direct order from
1:02:20
his superiors and go to an area a
1:02:23
thousand miles away. So, it's kind of
1:02:26
obvious they did not receive the order.
1:02:28
They didn't get it. We don't know why.
1:02:31
We don't know whether it was atmospheric
1:02:32
conditions. We don't know whether there
1:02:35
was damage to the radio system and they
1:02:37
were unaware of it. Again, another one
1:02:40
of the mysteries of the U869. But um
1:02:43
>> as as somebody who's used a lot of
1:02:46
military radio comms, I can tell you
1:02:48
radios are never as good as people who
1:02:50
don't use them think they are because
1:02:53
comms is every military in existence
1:02:57
communications has has always been the
1:02:59
problem. And you know I trying to
1:03:02
communicate I don't know even how how
1:03:03
many thousands of miles that is but yeah
1:03:05
I mean it would it wouldn't surprise me
1:03:09
in the least. You know the um what is
1:03:11
it? Okam's razor the the simplest
1:03:13
solution is normally the normally the
1:03:15
right one and the idea that didn't get
1:03:17
it and sailed over there and then
1:03:19
>> yeah I mean that seems to make a lot of
1:03:21
sense to me
1:03:21
>> they proceeded with their original
1:03:22
orders.
1:03:23
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, so that that was the
1:03:25
case and you know the takeaway of the
1:03:28
story um and the reason why I believe it
1:03:33
got such attention was that there was no
1:03:38
treasure and this is the important thing
1:03:40
for the people now listening to this. At
1:03:43
the time that we got that tag there was
1:03:45
no documentary film, there was no book
1:03:47
there was no shadow dive. All there was
1:03:50
was a small artifact, a tag
1:03:53
that would enable me to go to Germany
1:03:58
and meet with some of the families and
1:04:00
tell them not what they already knew.
1:04:03
They knew that their loved one didn't
1:04:05
come home. what I could tell them was
1:04:09
where they were and that the people who
1:04:11
found them treated them with respect
1:04:14
and that maybe we could provide some
1:04:16
answers and and you know there were some
1:04:18
things that will remain not answered and
1:04:21
then there are others that you know and
1:04:23
in many of the cases uh the family
1:04:25
members uh wanted us to u bring and and
1:04:29
I did I went down to the wreck I brought
1:04:31
a wreath down I brought letters down
1:04:33
from family members and you know it was
1:04:36
really I think it's cathartic and and
1:04:39
and really wonderful that I I got to
1:04:42
meet like the second watch officer. His
1:04:45
name was Zigg Freed Grant. I got to meet
1:04:47
his brother Hans George who was at the
1:04:49
time a 9-year-old boy who got to stand
1:04:54
with his brother on board the U869.
1:04:58
His brother took him on board this
1:05:00
submarine. his mother could only stand
1:05:03
on the dock because it was bad luck for
1:05:06
women to come on board a ship. So his
1:05:10
little brother got to see and he said to
1:05:12
me, Hans George said he thought his
1:05:15
brother was like an astronaut. He was a
1:05:18
hero. He was on like the equivalent of a
1:05:22
rocket ship. all of these shiny dials
1:05:24
and and the incredible he can remember
1:05:26
the smell of electricity and ozone and
1:05:29
oil when he got to go down into the
1:05:31
submarine and and and to be able to sit
1:05:33
with Hans George and recount that story
1:05:36
and then and then to meet Captain
1:05:39
Neyberg's son who was an infant when his
1:05:43
father died. He was an literally an
1:05:45
infant. He never he doesn't remember his
1:05:47
father. he sees photographs of him and
1:05:49
his father. And then to have met uh um
1:05:53
uh other family members um like the
1:05:56
Bront family uh of uh of and Otto
1:06:01
Britzius who was the youngest man on
1:06:03
board uh young I mean he was just barely
1:06:07
18. He his mother had to sign him in at
1:06:09
17 years old. So, he just turned 18
1:06:12
years old on board the submarine. And um
1:06:17
you know, war sucks. Let's not kid each
1:06:18
other. Doesn't matter who they are,
1:06:20
where they are. Yesterday's enemies is
1:06:22
is they they were the enemy in 1945 and
1:06:25
now they were just poor kids caught up
1:06:27
in a global conflict. None of them
1:06:30
wanted to be part of it. I I know this
1:06:32
for a fact because I've read their
1:06:34
letters. I've read their letters home to
1:06:37
their girlfriends, wives, children,
1:06:41
mothers, and you know, it's hard to read
1:06:46
a letter
1:06:48
from um Siggy to his mom and to his
1:06:51
brother where he's like talking about
1:06:53
praying to God because this doesn't
1:06:56
relate when we want to think about the
1:06:58
Germans and Nazis. We don't we don't
1:06:59
think about people saying, "I'm praying
1:07:01
to God this war will be over." Um, and
1:07:03
then we can all be together again.
1:07:05
Hopefully by Easter this will all be
1:07:07
done. I mean, this is a letter he wrote
1:07:08
to his mother before he sailed. In the
1:07:10
ca in the case of Helmet Neyerberg
1:07:13
telling his son, "I know that you're
1:07:14
scared when the bombs go off. Mommy
1:07:17
tells me that you're crying, but don't
1:07:19
worry, daddy. You'll be home soon from
1:07:21
from the sea in his submarine." I mean,
1:07:23
it brings tears to your heart and and it
1:07:26
brings back that moment for me that I
1:07:27
had when I was in the submarine and I
1:07:30
saw these remains and now I I I can I I
1:07:34
I have not a sense of closure, but I I
1:07:37
know that in my eye my mind I did the
1:07:40
right thing. I acted in a way that I
1:07:42
could hold my head up high and and know
1:07:44
that we did the right thing for the
1:07:46
right reason, not for money and not for
1:07:50
fame or any because there was none.
1:07:51
There was literally nothing more than
1:07:53
going to Germany, shaking hands. Um, as
1:07:56
you were showing a picture earlier, um,
1:07:58
we returned many of the artifacts that
1:08:00
we had recovered from the submarine to,
1:08:03
um, Horse Bread Out where if you, uh,
1:08:06
that that's a picture of right there.
1:08:08
That's a picture of me with the box. Um,
1:08:11
to my left is uh, Kirk Wolfinger in the
1:08:14
green sweatshirt. Uh, the man in the
1:08:16
light blue shirt with the white beard is
1:08:19
Horse Breau. Uh John Chatteran is in the
1:08:22
background with the the dark blue shirt
1:08:24
and then Rush Denoyer. Uh the two
1:08:26
gentlemen on the far right and left are
1:08:28
the producer executive producers of uh
1:08:31
the documentary called Hitler's Lost Sub
1:08:34
because when we did this and identified
1:08:37
it positively it became international
1:08:39
news got picked up and then both NOVA
1:08:42
which is a public television uh concern
1:08:46
here in the United States partnered with
1:08:48
Dariegel in Germany and produced an
1:08:50
incredible two-hour documentary film
1:08:53
called Hitler's Lost
1:08:55
in which they took our our stories, our
1:08:58
video and and and publicized it. And I
1:09:02
thought that was it, Dom. I thought that
1:09:05
this story
1:09:07
would was that was as far as it would
1:09:09
ever go. I thought that, okay, I got
1:09:12
this opportunity to to be in part of a
1:09:14
television show and I did something
1:09:16
really cool. But, you know, it's funny
1:09:18
how
1:09:19
people take notice when when you do
1:09:22
things and somehow someway
1:09:24
that got me here. And along that way,
1:09:26
I've worked on television. I've done
1:09:28
some incredible things. I'm still very
1:09:30
fortunate to work with incredibly
1:09:32
talented people. And it all stems from
1:09:36
that. And and you know, it it is self-s
1:09:40
serving to say this about myself, but I
1:09:43
can certainly say it about John. Um,
1:09:46
character is what you do when no one's
1:09:48
looking. And somehow I like to think
1:09:51
that that was recognized because
1:09:54
I can't explain it any other way,
1:09:56
friend.
1:09:58
No, I mean that is an absolutely amazing
1:10:02
story and I, you know, bit of a fanboy
1:10:05
here. I have I I have read the book.
1:10:07
I've read um you know several of the
1:10:09
books um about the um you know about
1:10:13
some of the events and you but hearing
1:10:16
it from you is
1:10:19
is really fascinating and understanding
1:10:23
I think as well the the way you know the
1:10:26
decisions that were made and and how
1:10:28
they were made and going back that 30
1:10:32
years ago into time as well you know to
1:10:34
kind of understand what the world was
1:10:35
like then as well. I mean absolutely
1:10:37
fantastic that you were you know able to
1:10:40
meet some of those people who were so
1:10:42
closely connected with the crew as well
1:10:45
and you know because
1:10:47
>> some of the images some of the images
1:10:48
you showed you know I I kind of glossed
1:10:51
over the research is like on we made a
1:10:53
number of trips um to uh Washington DC
1:10:58
to Chicago where there is the U505
1:11:02
museum it's a captured German type 9
1:11:04
yubot once we knew it was a type 9. We
1:11:07
kept going back to Chicago cuz nothing
1:11:09
trains you better for where you're going
1:11:11
than to look at one that's still intact.
1:11:13
Um to some degree that was very helpful.
1:11:16
Um but of course trips to Germany and in
1:11:18
many of them I started interviewing
1:11:21
German Yubo commanders because I thought
1:11:23
well they got to know right they these
1:11:25
are the guys. And so there's a picture
1:11:27
of me working uh alongside um Captain
1:11:30
Lieutenant Eric Admiral. he retired as
1:11:32
an admiral. Um, top, that's Eric Topp,
1:11:35
and I got to spend two days with him at
1:11:37
his home where he shared not only his
1:11:40
own anecdotal stories of being a Yubo
1:11:43
commander, but he looked over all of our
1:11:45
data, he shared with me this incredible
1:11:48
award that he received, which is the
1:11:49
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross signed
1:11:52
by none other than Adolf Hitler. Um,
1:11:55
what a what an incredible piece of
1:11:57
history right there. But more
1:11:59
importantly, um, getting to meet him.
1:12:01
And then there's, I think, another
1:12:03
picture of me with Hans Rousing at his
1:12:05
home. That's, I believe, me and John
1:12:07
Chatteran interviewing him and and going
1:12:10
over some of the the the details of our
1:12:12
investigation and our findings. Now, the
1:12:15
thing that is important about Hans
1:12:17
Rousing is that not only was he a Yubo
1:12:20
commander, but he was at um, BDU West.
1:12:23
In other words, he was one of the um
1:12:27
officers who's in charge of uh Yubo
1:12:31
command. And so at the late war, you
1:12:34
know, he couldn't remember
1:12:37
exactly Captain Neyberg or 869 per se,
1:12:40
but he understood the operations. And
1:12:43
one of the things that he said to me,
1:12:44
which was bone chilling, and I've read
1:12:47
it in other places, but it's another
1:12:48
thing to hear it from a man. He he
1:12:52
basically said, "We knew we were
1:12:54
suffering grievous losses, but we had no
1:12:58
choice. Even though we would send a
1:13:00
submarine out and we would lose 56 men,
1:13:03
that one submarine
1:13:06
would occupy dozens of ships, dozens of
1:13:10
aircraft, hundreds of hours of allies.
1:13:14
And if we didn't send our submarines
1:13:15
out,
1:13:17
then that resource would be used against
1:13:20
us. So in other words, understanding the
1:13:23
sacrifice that these Yubot men were
1:13:25
going to make was required, was
1:13:29
expected. Not that their lives had no
1:13:31
value, but it was an extending game to
1:13:35
prevent more Allied superiority from
1:13:38
coming in on the German homeland. And
1:13:41
and again, it's one thing to read that
1:13:43
dom. It's another thing to listen to a
1:13:45
man who lived it, who made that those
1:13:48
decisions, who sent those boats out, you
1:13:51
know, I'm sure
1:13:52
>> and who'd been there himself as well.
1:13:55
And
1:13:55
>> Exactly. Exactly.
1:13:56
>> You know, both those two men that you've
1:13:58
just talked about there, you know, were
1:14:00
really well-known skippers. I mean, Eric
1:14:03
Top in particular, but I mean,
1:14:05
>> and obviously, you know, they're both
1:14:08
dead now clearly, but the fact that you
1:14:10
had the opportunity to, you know, to
1:14:12
meet those people, I mean, that is
1:14:14
absolutely it must be incredible to to
1:14:17
have been able to do that, you know, I'm
1:14:19
so jealous, frankly.
1:14:21
Well, you know, I I I am sure that that
1:14:24
that down the road you're you're you
1:14:26
know, I really believe that that people
1:14:28
who apply themselves there will be
1:14:31
reward for uh you know, doing the right
1:14:34
thing at the right time for the right
1:14:36
reason. And that's that's all I can tell
1:14:38
you is that and and also when it comes
1:14:41
to interviewing and meeting people like
1:14:44
this and listening to their story, um
1:14:47
it's enrichening because you know the
1:14:49
human condition is not changed. Dom
1:14:54
3,000 years and we're still killing each
1:14:56
other. Okay. We started with sticks,
1:14:59
then swords, you know, torpedoes. Now
1:15:02
it's drones. you know, it the condition
1:15:06
doesn't change. It's a sad it's a sad
1:15:09
testament. Um, and you would like to
1:15:11
think that we would learn. And one of
1:15:13
the things that I'm trying to do is
1:15:14
learn from history. And if there's
1:15:15
anything that the shadow diver story
1:15:18
tells us is is that history is a work in
1:15:20
progress.
1:15:22
>> Just as I was finishing that up with
1:15:24
Richie, I was interrupted by my son. So,
1:15:27
it kind of ruined the last bit of the
1:15:29
interview. I never got really to say to
1:15:31
Richie what an incredible interview that
1:15:35
was. How brilliant it was to take us
1:15:37
right the way back into one of the
1:15:39
seinal moments of diving history of
1:15:41
technical diving history. Something that
1:15:44
I think a whole load of us, you know, we
1:15:46
were brought up on. Frankly, I'm sure
1:15:48
you'll all agree with me. It was
1:15:50
incredible hearing it from Richie
1:15:52
himself, being taken all the way back
1:15:54
there, understanding decisions, the
1:15:56
process of research, and the opportunity
1:15:59
to meet the people that he did while he
1:16:02
was doing some of his TV stuff. Anyway,
1:16:04
I hope you've all enjoyed it as much as
1:16:06
I did. As you know, I'm Dom Robinson,
1:16:10
Deep Wreck Diver, and as always, I will
1:16:14
look forward to seeing you on my next
1:16:16
video.

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