By James Heinz

I still remember that night.  Apollo 11 was on the moon.  I was 12 years old. On July 21, 1969, at 8:56 p.m., I was sitting in the living room with my parents in Milwaukee and watching a grainy black and white image, and heard those immortal words: “I’m about to step off the LEM now….That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”  And I told myself that someday I would say the same thing.

One reason I began SCUBA diving is that it is the closest thing to being an astronaut on earth.  SCUBA diving is essentially the same as an astronaut’s Extra Vehicular Activity.  Like an astronaut, the diver enters a three dimensional space that is inherently hostile to human life.  The diver depends exclusively on his equipment and his knowledge of how to use it to move from a zone of life into a zone of death and then back into the zone of life.

Modern SCUBA equipment does not look a lot like a spacesuit.  But there is one type of diving equipment that closely resembles the suits the astronauts used on the moon.  That type of equipment is the original hard hat helmet and hose equipment referred to as classic gear, standard dress, or heavy gear. It is basically unchanged since Augustus Siebe invented it in 1830 in London.  Like a spacesuit, it has a spherical helmet attached to a one piece suit with removable gloves.

I always wanted to dive in classic gear as it is the nearest thing to a spacesuit on earth. Given the expense of the gear and the need for surface support, I had resigned myself to never re-enacting the lunar landing in earth equipment.  But then the good folks at DESCO came to the rescue.

DESCO stands for Diver’s Equipment and Supply Company.  The Milwaukee company is the last manufacturer of classic gear in America.  They sponsor the Lake Michigan Classic Diving Organization. During the week of September 27-30, they conducted a class in the use of this gear.  After a day of classroom instruction, the students spend the next three days diving into Lake Michigan from the dock at Milwaukee’s Discovery World.  These days were devoted to a Classic Dive Rally, where any certified SCUBA diver could reserve a one hour slot to use classic gear.  My fellow Wisconsin Marine Historical Society member Todd Gordon took the class and qualified as a surface attendant for classic gear.

Like me, Todd has always wanted to dive classic gear but Todd also has a family connection.  His uncle was a hard hat Navy and commercial diver for many years who shared stories of his exploits.   These stores led him to consider becoming a commercial diver.

I signed up for a slot at the rally and was reserved for 11 a.m. on October 1.  It was a beautiful day.    I showed up eager to re-enact my childhood fantasy and found myself reminded of my childhood in other ways.

In a previous post  I told why I had stopped SCUBA diving in 2011 because of a third episode of “the bends.”  I sold my equipment to be sure I wasn’t tempted to dive again. So why was I volunteering to dive again?  It is impossible to get the bends in less than a depth of water equivalent to one atmosphere of air pressure, or 33 feet of water.  The water around Discovery World is 15 or so feet deep, so there’s no danger of getting the bends.

The first person I met was a wet man in a wet wetsuit.  He was Dale Palecek who had dived in classic gear before me.  He had just gotten out of the water after filming another rally participant underwater and would later videotape me getting dressed and going down into the lake.  His video can be viewed here.

Todd was waiting for me with the people conducting the rally: Greg Davis and Kirk Marshall.  Greg runs Classic Diving Limited and is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Mk V Working Equipment Group,  whose Facebook page you can check out.  While Greg is a recreational diver, Kirk is a former commercial diver who learned to dive many years ago in Mark V gear. He once dove to 600 feet on an oil rig off the coast of Brazil.  His white hair showed that he had apparently been doing it right for many years. He still runs Marshall Diving Services.

The suit was laying on the dock.  Made of layers of rubber sandwiched between layers of canvas twill, stretched out it looked like the biggest child’s onesie that I had ever seen. And, like a small child, I needed others to help dress me. I had been told to wear long wool socks to pull up over the bottom of my jeans so they would slide easier into the suit. Given that the water was in the sixties and dressed in my jeans and cotton T shirt, I would only be underwater for about 30 minutes.

As I sat on a stool, Todd and Kirk rolled the suit down and I pushed my legs into it.  The suit is one-size-fits-all, which means it doesn’t fit anyone.  Standing, I stepped into it and they pulled it up to my waist.  I then sat down again and my tenders put my feet into size 14 galoshes with buckles, the same black Wisconsin winter galoshes I wore as a kid.  Classic galoshes for classic gear.  The last time someone had to help me put on my galoshes I was 5 years old.

They strapped what I believe are 15 pound lead weights around each ankle. These took the place of the classic brass shoes that hard hat divers wore

Why strap weights to my feet? Modern SCUBA equipment is cheaper and easier to use than the classic US Navy Mark V gear.  Each is designed for different functions.  SCUBA is designed mainly to enable horizontal movement while the classic gear is fashioned to keep the diver in one place while performing underwater construction work.  SCUBA’s ability to float around would not work for someone using hydraulic tools or a high pressure water hose.  A commercial or navy diver must stand upright on the bottom.

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The problem with the suit is that it will fill with air. If it fills too much with air the feet can “puff out” and your feet will lose contact with the shoes, making it impossible to walk.  Worse, if you should fall and the feet rise, the air in the suit would rush into the feet, inflating them.

The diver, feet first, would ascend at a rate that increases exponentially. As the diver rises the water pressure decreases. Air flows into the suit until the diver pops to the surface, his suit puffing out so that he floats helplessly. Essentially, the diver is trapped inside a human-shaped balloon, unable to move arms and legs. The diver can purge air from the helmet but that’s of no use if the diver is upside down. A diver rising too fast can develop decompression syndrome or hyperbaric injury, commonly known as “the bends.”

I had a similar problem when I dove SCUBA with a dry suit, which is also filled with air. However, I put air into the suit at my discretion and had a valve to remove it. In hard hat diving, the air hose delivers a continuous stream of air into the suit via the helmet, making suit inflation unavoidable.  Suit inflation leading to rapid, unplanned ascent can be a problem even if the diver stays upright.

After strapping the weights to my ankles, I stood up and then was ready to put my arms through the sleeves.  Kirk approached me with a bottle of liquid soap which he sprayed on my wrists.  I indignantly insisted that I take baths.  He told me that this was so my wrists would slide through the tapered rubber cuffs. This proved to be a good idea, as my wrists slid easily through the cuffs.

Next came the weight belt.  It is counterintuitive to most people that divers must wear weights to sink when in the water.  Most people sink naturally without weighted assistance. However, the buoyancy caused by air in the suit means that the diver would float if he was not weighed down. SCUBA diving weight belts are made to be quickly released. As far as I could tell I could not release this belt, at least not easily. It went around my waist, with the straps crossed over my shoulders, and a crotch strap that went from front to back and was buckled in the back. It weighed 60 pounds.

Next came a square cushion with a round hole in it through which my head protruded so the cushion was directly on my shoulders to bear the weight of what was to come.

Wikipedia describes the breastplate as “… an oval collar-piece resting on the shoulders, chest and back, to support the helmet and seal it to the suit.  The breastplate is usually connected to the suit by placing the holes around the rubberized collar of the suit over bolts (studs) along the rim of the breastplate, and then clamping the brass straps known as brails against the collar with wing nuts to press the rubber against the metal of the breastplate rim to make a water-tight seal.”

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The top of the breastplate is a collar with outside threads which goes around the neck and onto which the helmet is screwed.  The collar was a tight fit and my nose stuck over the edge.

After the breastplate was on, my tenders secured it to the brails with brass wingnuts.  Classic gear is defined by the number of bolts on the breastplate and the number of view ports in the helmet, known as “lights.” The suit I was diving was the classic US Navy Mark V diving suit, which is a 12 bolt, 4 light suit.

Finally, the helmet. It is made of spun copper coated with tin by reason of Navy specs, to prevent a patina from forming on the copper.  It weighs about 60 pounds. It was placed over my head a quarter turn to my left until it rested on the collar threads, and then rotated so that it faced forward.

The helmet proved to be like a lot of cars.  It appeared much bigger on the outside than on the inside.  The air hose is connected to the left side of the helmet and there is a purge button on the right side of the helmet that I had to press with my jaw to activate.

Now it was time to stand up.  In the video, you can see I don’t stand fully upright because the 60 pounds of copper on my head made it impossible for me to stand erect.  The weight of the helmet pulled my head forward and down.

While all this was happening, I had attracted a crowd of curious onlookers along the seawall.

Kirk told me not to worry. “Do you know how much this suit costs? You’re coming back one way or another.” I was told that the helmet alone costs $7,000. It was the “another” that bothered me.

I had to back up with the assistance of my tenders to the wooden steps that led down into Lake Michigan.  I grasped the hand rails and walked backward down the steps. I felt the cold of the water on the outside of the suit, and the pressure of the water pressed the suit against me.  Down the steps I went, one step at a time, until I arrived at the bottom step.  And then I finally said it:

“I’m about to step off the LEM now…That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Neil would have been proud of me.  Todd said, “Thank you, Buzz Lightyear.”

Like Neil, I stood on the surface of an alien world.  And once again, I was transported back to my youth.  When I first started diving in the 1970s, the visibility was so bad that we called it “Braille diving.”  You did not see the wreck you were diving on, you felt your away along it.  Visibility in Lake Michigan has gotten so much better over the years, now sometimes as great as 100 feet.  Apparently, this corner of Lake Michigan didn’t get the memo.

It was like diving in pea soup. Literally, it was the same grey-green color, only colder. Visibility was about 18 inches.  A blind diver would have felt quite at home.  In fact, a blind man made a living doing commercial diving in the muddy Ohio River in the years after World War II wearing a helmet with no windows.

The murk surprised me.  In the video you can see the water looks clear as I descend the ladder.  However, once in the water visibility was extremely poor.

I promptly became disoriented. I was told over the intercom to move to my left and go west towards the north-south seawall between Discovery World and Summerfest.  I thought I was going that way until topside command told me I had actually walked under the pier from which the dive was being conducted.

I stumbled to my left, and I do mean stumbled.  I could not see the bottom or my feet, so I stumbled over potholes and mounds of what felt like gravel, probably left over from construction in the area. I could not see much of anything.

I moved through a green murk for some time hoping that I was headed in the right direction.  Finally the rusty, zebra mussel coated shape of the seawall materialized out of the gloom 18 inches in front of me.  I was overjoyed to find it.

Having arrived at the wall, what was I to do?  I stared at the wall for a few moments, and then tried to move to my right.  After a couple of steps my right foot descended into a hole that seemed to have no bottom.  I then shuffled to my left.

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My biggest problem was the constant air flow was filling the suit. As I stood at the wall I noticed that I was standing on tiptoe. This was because the suit was filling with air, pulling me toward the surface.  I then hit the purge button with my chin. I could control the flow of air into the helmet by using a small valve on the air hose that I held in my left hand. The valve had a handle on it similar to the one on my home’s outside water faucet.

At first I dealt with the buoyancy problem by turning off the air.  Todd cautioned me not to do this. I realized that if I left the air off too long, I would end up breathing my own exhaled carbon dioxide, which would eventually cause me to pass out. So I kept the air on and periodically hit the purge button. When the suit felt snug around my arms, I knew I had the optimum amount of air in it.

I could feel the cold but it was not uncomfortable.

The helmet had an intercom inside it with which I could communicate verbally with my tenders. However, the constant hissing of the air coming into the helmet made it hard for people to hear me. I turned the air off briefly when I spoke, including my moon landing moment.

So there I was, staring at the wall, wondering what to do next, when Todd rescued me by telling me it was time to end my fun-filled adventure in cold pea soup.  Returning was easy. I just had to follow my air hose, stumbling all the way.  I arrived at the bottom of the steps only to realize an important truth. Getting in is the easy part. Getting out is the hard part.

Once I had submerged, the weight of the suit, helmet, and weights was largely counteracted by the buoyancy of the air in the suit.  However, now instead of walking down stairs into a supportive liquid medium, I would be climbing steps while wearing 180 pounds into the non-supportive air, where there would be no buoyancy to counteract the force of gravity.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought.  I went up one step at a time holding onto the hand rails.  I made it to the top and then shuffled over to the seat, where the process of putting on my gear was repeated, only in reverse.  As my tenders slowly disassembled me, my fan club smiled.  I had survived.

Dale Palecek videotaped himself getting suiting up, descending, and then coming out of the water. You can view the video here or on his Facebook page.

Todd paid me the ultimate compliment: “You did good.”  He said a lot of people had stopped at the bottom of the steps and just stayed there until it was time to come up.

Never mind if Neil Armstrong would have been proud of me.  I was proud of me. It was one small step for a man, one giant leap for me.

Photo at the top of page:

Jim Heinz having the Mark V helmet placed on his head. Photo credit: James Heinz

Other photos:

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James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.