How Submarines Docked While Underwater – DSRV-2 Avalon – Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle



Avalon is one of only 2 Mystic Class Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, built in the 1970’s and retired in the early 2000’s it was a submarine rescue system designed to fly anywhere in the world within 24 hours and begin a rescue operation.

It was constructed by Lockheed in Sunnyvale, California, and the Draper designed control & Navigation system borrowed heavily from technology developed for the Apollo program.

DSRV-2 Avalon is on display at the Morro Bay Maritime Museum
https://morrobaymaritime.org/

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36 thoughts on “How Submarines Docked While Underwater – DSRV-2 Avalon – Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle”

  1. I'm curious how they made exterior lights capable of operating at 5000 feet underwater using 1970s technology. There were no (bright) LEDs and all the other lighting technologies I'm aware of from the time period required a low pressure environment. Did they just use extremely thick glass?

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  2. The computer program was loaded by tape, by which I assume you mean "paper tape" The paper tapes had a habit of breaking apart after a few uses. Ah yes, I remember the teletype with the integral paper tape punch/reader.

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  3. As far as I know, the survivors of the USS Tang were the only people to successfully escape a sunken submarine. 180 feet and only 5 out of 13 who escaped the forward torpedo room were rescued. Were there any other stories of people successfully escaping a sunken sub ?

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  4. I feel like if anyone could find a way to get the data off those tapes it would be CuriousMarc. It wouldn't be the first time he has recovered ancient data from tape in a weird format. And he already has experience recovering AGC data so if this has some commonalities with the AGC then he'd already have a leg up

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  5. Hey Scott, will you be playing Xenonauts 2 since its finally entering early access? Your playthrough of the first game is still one of my all time favorite playlists to binge watch to this day.

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  6. I recognized the submersible and smokestacks before I even started the video. Morro Bay's a cool area. You can watch sea otters from the base of Morro Rock a few hundred feet from the museum. I used to go there all the time in college. I hope you got a chance to grab some local favorites like High Street Deli or Firestone Barbecue while you were in the SLO area!

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  7. I'd imagine that part of the reason you'd want to use a submarine as a mother ship would also be for speed of rescue. With a functional sub nearby, the transit time to shuttle groups of rescuees would be much shorter than the trip to the surface. Shuttle everyone to a safe vessel, and take them all up in one go.

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  8. I have a serious question for you, Mr. Manley.
    If it were possible to place a foil between the sun and the earth, with the objective to reduce the amount of sunlight that reached earth by 10%. Would this reduction of sunlight (10%) be enough to reduce global warming? Bonus question: if this is possible, and the reduction is sufficient…what resources would be necessary to accomplish this project?

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  9. Hi Scott. Really cool video with which I have a couple connections of sorts. I was Army trained on an INS made by Litton used in OV-1(we had Ds) that used core memory and was loaded by punched tape! Later I was a member of the ERIC (Equipment Repair and Information Center) as a field service computer technician at Martin Marietta when LockMart was formed. After that I worked on the computers supporting Atlas 5 in Englewood Co. Fly safe!

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  10. I worked on the DSRV manual when I was at Electric Boat in the late 1960s. It was never used for rescues, but a simulated DSRV acted as a pressure chamber for divers during the cold war; most famously on the USS Halibut SSN 587 and USS Parche SSN 683. These boats supplied divers to tap Soviet undersea cables and other secret missions. Were the actual DSRVs used in a similar way? Spy missions were actually the most important use of attack submarines during the cold war. The details are just becoming known.

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