A nine-man technical diver team has set a new deep wreck scuba diving world record of 193 meters (633 feet).Old shipmates never forget...
Lead diver Rob Lalumiere reached the deck of the USS Cooper this morning at 8:22am, seven minutes after starting his descent, and placed a memorial plaque on the shipwreck to honor the 191 officers and crew who went down with the ship when it was torpedoed by the Japanese during the Battle of Ormoc Bay on December 3, 1944.
Over five hours later, as Lalumiere was completing his last required decompression stop at a depth of three meters, surviving USS Cooper crew 81-year-old Henry "Hank" Wagener asked to be taken from the surface support vessel to the top of the descent line which was connected to the ship he served aboard 60 years ago.
There Wagener waited for Lalumiere to surface as he held the descent line to "touch the souls" of his fallen comrades.
At 1:45pm, exactly five and a half hours after the dive started, Lalumiere resurfaced and shared an emotional embrace with Hank Wagener followed by high-fives and handshakes from the many tired but elated team members who worked for many months planning and preparing for the dive.
Update: USS Cooper photo from here
My late Dad, Laurence J. Cuneo , was one of the fortunate survivors of the sinking of the Cooper. He told us, his children, about the horrible experience of the ship going down, and floating in the ocean in the dark for many hours waiting to be rescued.
ReplyDeleteI thank all of the men who served and regret the loss of the 191 who perished that night.
He was a true hero and a wonderful father, whom I miss .
Donna Cuneo Washburn