 The latest weapons coupled with the fighting skill of the American soldier stands ready on the alert all over the world to defend this country, view the American people against aggression. This is the Big Picture, an official television report to the nation from the United States Army. Now to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Sergeant Stuart Queen. It comes as a surprise to many people to learn that within the Army there is an elite group of specialists who wear two uniforms. One is the uniform of the United States soldier. The other is the more complicated gear of a professional diver. During a military operation, the safeguarding of ports is the Army's responsibility. To obstruct harbors and destroy port facilities is always a prime objective of the enemy. Helping to maintain those facilities or restore them after the battle is the job of an Army diver. From Korea to the Arctic, Army divers perform underwater salvage, rescue work, construction, underwater repair of Army vessels ranging from troop ships to scouts. Today we are visiting one of the Army's most unique installations, the military divers course of the Transportation School at Fort Eustis, Virginia, where apprentice divers learn one of the toughest, most difficult, and most adventurous jobs in the world. Any Army officer or enlisted man may apply for diver's school. But to enter, he must pass one of the world's most stringent physical examinations and demonstrate that his intelligence is also well above average. During their 17-week course, these men will spend hundreds of hours on the bottom of the James River, often waist-deep in mud. It is work requiring strength, endurance, and ingenuity. At the recompression chamber, the aspiring diver gets his first introduction to the natural phenomena, which make diving the taxing complicated craft that it is. The recompression chamber is both a training device and an instrument which enables the staff of the school to determine a man's suitability for diving. To watch his reaction to pressure under controlled conditions, the recompression chamber can duplicate the intense pressures a diver encounters on the bottom, where his body may be subjected to pressures three or five times that to which he is accustomed on the surface. These young men are going to receive a graphic demonstration of what such pressures can mean to the unwary. An ordinary tin can, which has been sealed at surface pressure, is hung in the chamber to demonstrate the consequences of taking a closed air space into the ocean depths. There are potential closed air spaces within the human body, the ear canals and the sinuses. Here, the instructor demonstrates the technique for equalizing the pressure within those areas of the body with that of the surrounding environment. Pressure is increased gradually, simulating descent beneath the water. Because the men are breathing, the air in their bodies equalizes the pressure. It's different with that sealed tin can. This happened at the equivalent of 30 feet, something to think about for a man who will someday be descending to depths of 150 feet and more. Here is one group of students, which will set about its studies with a real incentive to learn. The students are next taken on a tour of the school. As here they learn that while there is adventure and glamor to diving, there is also a lot of hard work. To qualify as a diver, the student must learn to perform many jobs underwater that take skill on dry land. For instance, tying knots in pitch blackness, wearing heavy diving mitts. The diver must be, among other things, an accomplished welder. He begins by learning the techniques of normal surface welding, a skill which other men may spend months or years to acquire and which they make their soul life's work. The diving student will find the techniques of underwater cutting and welding similar to those of the surface, with the difference that down there every job is going to take him five times as long. The diver is a jack of all trades. Welder, carpenter, mechanic, all rolled into one. He must become familiar with a variety of commercial power tools which have been adapted for underwater work, such as these pneumatic drills and saws. He must also be an explosives expert at home with such items as blasting machines, plastic explosives, gelatin dynamite, and TNT. More than 40 hours of the Army Divers course is devoted to demonstrations and practical exercises in the safe handling of underwater explosives and the techniques of underwater demolition. This is a problem which, to the uninitiated, may seem like being asked to build fires in a bathtub. All divers perform a certain amount of demolition work. But for the military diver, this skill is particularly essential. Rivers, harbors, and other navigation channels are almost invariably blocked by a wartime enemy. The outcome of a vast military operation may depend on the speed with which a handful of military divers can demolish or remove such obstruction. Stand by, fire in the hole. With its numerous port facilities on the James River, the Army Transportation School at Fort Eustis is an ideal place for the training of divers. Divers operate from many different types of vessels. They must become familiar with the ships from which they will work, as well as with the problems they may encounter on the bottom. To salvage ships, a diver must know them thoroughly. The problem of finding your way around on a strange vessel is greatly complicated if the vessel happens to be lying on its side at the bottom of a harbor. Divers' training is in progress at various levels. Novices have opportunities to study the work of both their own instructors and students who have already embarked on more advanced aspects of the training. The students' first dive will be made not in the river, but the school's specially constructed 30-foot tank. There are portholes around the bottom of this tank through which the diver can be watched, the convenience for the instructors, and a safety factor for the students. For the diver, conditions inside the tank are a little different from the real thing. Before the student himself is ready to take the plunge, there is classroom work to be mastered. He must become absolutely at home in the various types of diving gear he will use. This suit is not watertight, but it does keep the body warm in moderately cold water. The diver carries his own breathing equipment in the form of two compressed air tanks and a face mask. There are diving suits for various depths and operations. Part of the diver's skill is knowing how to select his equipment. As the student now begins to learn, the type of suit he wears for a given operation will depend on more than the depth of the water. You make your selection according to the type of work to be done, how long you expect to be underwater, and according to the climate. The suit which works fine in the Panama Canal Zone may leave something to be desired in the icy waters of Alaska. This is a lightweight dress used for searching underwater or performing minor tasks at relatively shallow depths. Deep sea diving is usually considered to be anything deeper than 36 feet and may exceed 250 to 300 feet. These men are hoping to graduate with the rating of salvage diver, allowing them to perform work to a depth of 90 feet. Even there, however, they will encounter pressures nearly three times normal and their lives may depend on their ability to handle their deep sea equipment. Before he can become a diver, the student must know his diver's dress inside and out. He must be able to wear it himself and he must also be a qualified diver's tender. Diving suits are waterproof and airtight. From the moment the diver is dressed and his faceplate sealed, he is entirely dependent on the skill of his two tenders. The instructors at the school keep a watchful eye on every detail of the student's work, for they know that during his career as a diver, each man's life may depend on his having learned the procedures so well they become second nature. At long last, the student is deemed ready to enter the 30 foot tank. Make his first dive. Getting underwater and staying there is itself a test of diving skill. Despite his 40 pound shoes, 84 pound belt, 54 pound breastplate and hat, as the diver calls his helmet, he may float like a cork if he fails to control the flow of air into his suit. After making sure everything is in order, the diver with his suit inflated swims to the descending line. He keeps his legs locked around the line, regulating his descent by how long it takes him to equalize pressure in his body with that in the water around him. Too fast a descent might result in ruptured eardrums or other serious consequences. The maximum rate of descent is usually about 75 feet a minute. Pressure against his eardrums tells him that he has gone down too fast. He pauses, rises a few feet and waits. Putting to good advantage the lessons he learned in the recompression chamber. From the bottom, he regulates the air-exhaust valve of his suit to adjust himself to the surrounding pressure, making his body more buoyant or less buoyant, depending on the job he's about to perform. Much of a diver's underwater work consists of searching for sunken objects and lost articles. He must learn the technique of doing this, using his so-called distant line to keep track of his progress as he sweeps around in a circle on the bottom. The diver's life is now literally in the hands of the tenders on the surface who control his air supply and lifeline, stand by for emergencies. They also send down the tools he needs for his underwater work. This is an exercise in oxy arc cutting. The student must operate a cutting torch with sufficient skill to slice through a half-inch sheet of steel. The instructor arrives for a first-hand inspection and approves the job with a wrap on the head. In this weighted bag are several boards with which the student next teaches himself an important lesson about working underwater. He is going to build a wooden box down here, he hopes. The trouble with wood is it floats. Hold on, some help coming down. Lesson number one. Even a simple task like nailing together a wooden box becomes a job for an expert on the bottom. The instructor comes down to offer a few pointers on how to handle buoyant objects when doing a job underwater. The purpose of this exercise is not to show the student how to build boxes underwater, but to impress upon him that down here, you don't just lay things down and expect to find them waiting for you later. When the student demonstrates to his instructor's satisfaction that he is at home under the water, he is ready for the final stage of his instruction. He will now move on from the tank to actual operations under the waters of the nearby James River. Up to now, the student has dived and performed his underwater work under ideal conditions, conditions made possible by the school's 30-foot tank. He has learned to work with his tenders on the surface and acquired confidence both in them and in himself. Like a fish out of water, the diver is virtually helpless on the surface, weighted down by his heavy belt and shoes and by his helmet, which by now, of course, our student would never call anything but a hat. As he goes down into the James River, the new diver discovers that normal diving conditions are frequently anything but ID. Lowered to the water by his diving stage, the diver swims to the descending line. He goes down into inky darkness, mud stirred up from the river bottom, making visibility impossible. Down below is a sunken vehicle, which the diver must prepare for salvage. Topside, his friends and instructors watch and wait. The tender keeps careful check on the air compressor. And a fellow diver stands by for emergencies. Take a strain on the line. Okay, Charlie, blow up to the surface and move to your stage. Stand by to come up. Coming up. The rigging job is successful. This young man, who 17 weeks ago had never been under the water, is now a qualified salvage diver, a fledgling member of one of the highest paid trades in the world. Here she comes and with her, the student's rating. He will go on now to perform actual work in ports and harbors to progress in his craft until someday he receives the designation master diver qualified to probe any ocean depth human ingenuity can reach. To become a diver, a man must have some remarkable mental and physical qualifications. A diver is alone underwater. Against the dangers he meets, he has only his diver's gear, his technical knowledge, and his common sense to helping. Army divers are relatively few in number, but they're a proud service and they've a right to be proud. This is Sergeant Stuart Queen, your host for The Big Picture. The Big Picture is a weekly television report to the nation on the activities of the Army at home and overseas. Produced by the Army Pictorial Center. Presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station.