I am such a person. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh have been to a spot on this earth that no other human being has ever seen or is likely to see. Why? Because, as the man who climbed the mountain said: “Because it’s there!”

And Andy Rechnitzer? ... “Abort the mission!” His superior commanded by radio,. “Too late”, he replied. “Bathyscaphe down 10,000 feet and counting!”

The night before the last dive in the U.S.S. Thresher search of 1963, we discovered a rip on a bottom seam of the float caused by the swaying action of the mechanical arm welded to it and the float was taking in sea water through it. Guiseppe Buono instructed me to keep forcing JP-5 Hi-Test aviation fuel into the float until we reached the desired level of seawater in the float.

The next morning, we found no change in the float’s seawater level and Guiseppe declared the bathyscaphe safe for operation. Don Keach asked Guiseppe: “Guiseppe are you sure it’s safe?” Guiseppe answered, “If anything goes wrong, I’ll let you beat the dirt out of me!”

Guiseppe and I opened the valves on the end tanks to let out the air after the check-off procedure and sent Trieste I down on its last dive. (Trieste II was already in the wings). Now on the Boston Whaler, Guiseppe says to me: “Manny, I didn’t sleep a wink last night, thinking over all the possibilities. As long as there is no leakage at the top of the float, everything will be all right.” And everything was.

When segments of the Krupp Sphere slipped out of alignment just prior to the scheduled record attempt, John Michel, who has a knack to size things up and find solutions fast, lost no time in locating a submarine tender on which he knew he would find a couple of special hydraulic jacks which were crucial to the plan he had in mind to re-align and slip-proof the sphere. He got a special flight to bring them in from Hon Kong and the rest is history.

And Admiral Mooney? He was at the controls of Trieste II when the hull of the U.S.S. Thresher was located at a depth of 8,200 - 200 miles east of Boston in August of 1964.

In Spain, in early 1966, Cdr. Mooney got permission to test dive the Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography’s Submersible “Alvin” at a point indicated by a local fisherman as the spot he had seen the parachute carrying the hydrogen bomb lost off the coast of Spain land. The spot had been declared too far out of the protected area of probable impact. The bomb was found in a matter of minutes.

To have worked with individuals of such statute proved to be the most instructive period in my life.

There were others: harold Edgerton, Kenneth Mackenzie, “Red” Haggerty, Jacques Cousteu and PrinceVitorio Emanuel Ol Savoia of Italy.

Having worked within the aura of such luminaries is an exciting page in my exciting book of life. Manuel M. Medina 9/22/06