Ready to Dive, livre ebook

In Ready to Dive, Curt Newport describes his role in some of the most daring and consequential deep ocean search and recovery operations of our time. Newport was there on the front lines and in the trenches, rigging lift lines, piloting underwater vehicles, and dealing with the carnage following both military and civilian plane crashes. Starting with his life as the son of a US Army aviator during various international postings before covering his conflicts with his father during the turbulent 1960s, the book details how he got into the subsea field. In a career lasting nearly fifty years, probing waters deeper than three miles, Newport describes unwinding passenger clothing from submersible propellers during the Air India salvage, recovering tons of volatile fuel–laden solid rocket motor parts from the Space Shuttle Challenger, thumbing through the wallet of a young girl lost during the crash of TWA Flight 800, and deciphering the navigational mystery of the USS Indianapolis. Ready to Dive is a gritty, blunt, and real firsthand subsea account unlike any other.
Preface
1. 1978: A Near Miss with Nekton Alpha at 500 Feet
2.1951–1966: Army Brat
3.1967: Runaway
4.1970: England
5.1977: The First Job
6.1978: The Oil Patch
7.1985: Air India Flight 182
8.1986: Challenger
9.1996: TWA Flight 800
10.1999: They Said It Would Never Be Found — Liberty Bell 7
11. 2000: Heavy Cruiser CA-35
12. 2001: The Deepest Shipwreck
13. 2010: Air France Flight 447 and Bluetail 601
14. 2015: The SS El Faro
15. 2017: Shadow of the Indianapolis
16. 2023: Race to the Deep Ocean
17. 2024: Reflections
Acknowledgments
Curt Newport Operational Experience, 1977–2020
Acronyms
Sources