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Larry Brady was asleep when the phone rang. “Sub lost,” said his boss.
Brady didn’t need any further explanation. He dressed and made his way to work, to a Navy lab on Point Loma, where he was a key member of a team uniquely qualified to manage deep-sea disasters.
It was August 29, 1973. Earlier that day, a tiny two-person sub-line running a telephone cable 250 miles off the coast of Ireland got stuck at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. A surface accident had torn off one of the hatches and flooded the aft area of the ship.
Fish III was 1,575 feet deep, too deep for divers to reach with a tow rope. They would need another submarine to get there, and it would do it quickly. The two men in Pisces III, Roger Mallinson and Roger Chapman, had about 72 hours of oxygen left.
Calls for help went to another fish working in the North Sea and to one in Canada. The US Navy was also notified, which is why Brady’s phone soon rang.
He was the lead pilot of the CURV-III, a remote-controlled submersible developed at the Naval Undersea Center for the recovery of exercise torpedoes and other lost ordnance. An earlier model made international headlines in 1966 when it found a hydrogen bomb off the coast of Spain dropped by a B-52 after a midair collision with a tanker.
Now the submarine and its crew of seven were flown on a cargo plane to Cork, Ireland, and right in the middle of a drama that would have almost as many ups and downs as the high seas – device malfunctions and MacGyverish corrections, injured egos, and selfless victims , Terror and ultimately triumph.
It was a three day cliffhanger that captivated the world. News teams hired fishing boats and helicopters to reach the website so they could send regular updates.
Now the story has largely disappeared from the public mind and has been replaced by more recent stories about the harrowing problems people routinely find themselves in.
However, it hasn’t faded in the Bonita house where 85-year-old Larry Brady lives. “I remember,” he said, “every nagging detail.”
A new book
The Story of Pisces III is reinterpreted in a new 369-page book entitled “The Dive: The Untold Story of the World’s Deepest Submarine Rescue”. Pegasus Books will publish it in early June.
British author Stephen McGinty was less than a year old when the accident happened, too young to remember. But he grew up fascinated by the sea, and eventually he heard of the mishap and the attempt to save the lives of the two submarines – and, appropriately, he heard about it during a cruise at sea.
Then he came across an old newspaper story from 1973 about the fish and became more and more curious.
“It was the whole 3½ day ordeal of men, what they did and how they survived, and the Brotherhood of the Sea too,” McGinty said in a telephone interview from his home in Scotland. “I was very moved by the idea that in the event of a disaster they would put everything else on hold and try to go there to help. There is this sense of duty to provide help. “
McGinty is a journalist for the Sunday Times in London and a producer of documentaries. His account of the fish unfolds with cinematic flair, cutting back and forth between what it was like in the cold, tiny submarine when the oxygen dwindled and the carbon dioxide rose, and how it was upstairs when the crews frantic rescue plans tinkered together to attach a rope to the submarine and tow it to the surface. The film rights have already been given to the producers of “Saving Private Ryan” and “Speed”.
McGinty said his research eventually pointed him to Point Loma and its number of naval bases and civilian contractors working on various maritime projects. “If in 1973 there was still a quiet center of the universe for submarines,” he writes in the book, “then it is San Diego.”
CURV-III was the latest in a line of remotely controlled submersible boats from the 1950s. It was 13 meters long, five meters wide and seven meters high. It weighed 5,000 pounds and was powered by a cable connected to a control panel in a small trailer on a support ship.
Brady sat at the controls, using joysticks to manipulate the steering, lights, cameras, and an arm of the submersible that could hold or grab various objects.
He loved and was good at work. His career eventually spanned 40 years and took him to places around the world to recover helicopters, airplanes and other items. He was convinced that CURV-III could also help Fischen III.
When his crew arrived in Ireland, however, it became clear that the managers of the British company responsible for the stranded submarine were viewing the Americans as backups. They would only be used if the manned submarines imported from Canada and the North Sea were unsuccessful.
“It was 1973 and Britain was in decline,” said McGinty. “There was this feeling that it would be a real slap in the face if Americans were the ones who saved them.”
Setbacks, then success
The first rescue submarine was set down, but began to leak and had to surface again. The second submarine couldn’t find the Pisces III, which was resting on its tail in a ravine, making it difficult to ping the sonar.
On the third attempt, the fish was found, but after the rescuers attached a tow hook, it slipped.
Brady and CURV-III prepared for takeoff. The crew plugged in the control cable and there was an electrical explosion. Water had gotten into the system and now the cable at one end was a molten mess. They would have to do a repair.
And so it went on for hours. Everyone was exhausted and nervous. In the fish below, Mallinson and Chapman struggled not to use up all of the oxygen and not to give up hope.
Eventually one of the manned submarines attached a tow rope, but it was not considered strong enough to pull the fish to the surface. Brady sent CURV-III downstairs and secured a second with a toggle bolt.
“It felt almost anti-climatic after all the traveling, insomnia and anxious moments,” Brady is quoted in McGinty’s book, “but it really wasn’t any more difficult to insert than parking the car in the garage after a long drive home.”
The recovery made headlines in newspapers around the world. Mallinson and Chapman became lifelong friends, calling on the phone every September 1 to celebrate the anniversary of their rescue. Chapman estimated that there was less than 20 minutes of oxygen left by the time they reached the surface.
Brady never met men, “a bitter pill to swallow,” he said. He and the crew of the submersible were taken back to Cork, where Brady bought a bottle of Irish whiskey to celebrate.
When they returned to San Diego, they were greeted as heroes. The city issued a proclamation declaring it “CURV III Day”.
“We knew in our hearts what we had done and we had done good and were happy,” said Brady.
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