Hello fellow Psubbers
Just thought I'd fill you in on some interesting
information about Russia's underwater capabilities or lack of.
Most of my career has been saturation diving
specializing in Hyperbaric welding on petroleum pipelines around the world,
(welding pipe in a dry room on the bottom of the ocean) I can't remember
the specific year but around the mid 80,s myself and three other Yanks were
hired to go over to Turku Finland and work with the Russians. They were
having a state of the art diving vessel built that specialized in
commercial diving work and capable of performing Hyperbaric welding mainly in
the Caspian sea. Our job was to show them our technique in Hyperbaric
welding and go threw all the systems and make sure that they all functioned
properly before they made their final payment to the shipyard that built
it.
We went out into the Baltic sea, put the Habitat
down in 500 feet of water and did a full weld joining two 40 foot sections of
24" pipe together to make sure everything in the Habitat worked properly (that
is another story in itself!). The name of the diving vessel was "SKATT"
and was around 400 feet in length. I was told that the Russians had spent
about 80 million U.S. on it which I believe as everything on it was top notch
and they had cut no corners at all. It was much nicer than any other
system I had ever been on and I had been on a lot of them in the past. The
vessel also had a small sub that had two separate compartments that
could take two divers down in the pilots sphere and then they could crawl
threw to the other sphere, close their hatch, and pressurize their
compartment to equal the existing depth, lock out to do a job and then
return where the sub would surface, be retrieved by a stern "A" frame and
then set on deck on a set of what looked like railroad tracks where it would
then hydraulically travel along the deck going threw a large set of double doors
to the inside of a large heated room where it would then mate up with the sat
system which was one floor below, where the divers could then crawl threw and
decompress in comfort.
This sat system even had two hyperbaric life boats
which was something I had never seen before! We also pressurized to 1000
feet to test out a new helmet that they had developed which looked like a gold
fish bowl and had what looked like a windshield wiper on the inside to
wipe away any condensation that may occur. Everything checked out, they
paid the final payment and it headed to the Caspian sea and docked in Baku ready
to go to work. Almost right after that, the Berlin wall came down and from
what I understand, the SKATT was being used as a floating hotel and has never
worked as what it was intended for! It is frustrating with these two sub
incidents to hear that they have no deep water capabilities when if fact I know
they do or atleast did! I would love to find out what ever happened to
such a fine diving support vessel.
Sorry for the long email but thought some of you
might find it interesting.
Rick Patton
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