Navy Salvage | Page 1, 2
The USS Grasp is a United States Navy Rescue and Salvage Ship, known as an ARS. This class of ship is designed
to render assistance to disabled ships, provide towing, salvage, diving, firefighting and heavy lift capabilities.
The mission of the rescue and salvage ships is four-fold: to debeach stranded vessels, heavy lift capability from
ocean depths, towing of other vessels, and manned diving operations. For rescue missions, these ships are equipped
with fire monitors forward and amidships which can deliver either firefighting foam or sea water. The salvage holds
of these ships are outfitted with portable equipment to provide assistance to other vessels in dewatering, patching,
supply of electrical power and other essential service required to return a disabled ship to an operating condition.
 The Mini-Remote Operated Vehicle (MiniROV), Open Frame Vehicle (MR2) is self-propelled and capable of remotely taking pictures and live video to depths of up to 1,000 feet. |
The USS Grasp (ARS 51) is homeported out of Little Creek, Va. The ship holds a crew of 6 officers and 94 enlisted,
and is capable of hauling 170 tons of salvage. The Navy also possess 3 other ARS ships: The USS Safeguard (ARS
50), Pearl Harbor, HI; USS Salvor (ARS 52), Pearl Harbor, HI; and the USS Grapple (ARS 53), Little Creek, Va. The U.S. Navy Deep Sea Diving program consists of several classifications of divers. These are: Second Class Diver, First Class Diver, Saturation Diver, and Master Diver. |
The divers are graduates of the Naval Diving and Salvage Center (NDSTC) in Panama City, Fl. Using special equipment and training, this unequaled group of professionals can dive to extraordinary depths, and stay submerged for hours at a time. Navy Diving is comprised of several types of diving such as, Underwater Ship's Husbandry, Underwater Construction, Salvage, Demolition Diving, Saturation, Research, Hyperbaric Medicine, and Diver Training.
The salvage divers are specifically trained for difficult salvage operations, and the next task for those aboard the USS Grasp will be to carefully bring the wreckage of Kennedy's plane to the surface from it's depth of 116 feet below. The wreckage will be examined by officials in an attempt to learn the cause of the crash.
The crew of the USS Grasp is well versed in these kind of recovery operations. They were an integral part of
the operation to locate and recover TWA Flight 800. The Boeing 747 crashed into the Atlantic off Long Island July
17, 1996, shortly after take off from Kennedy International Airport. There were 120 Navy divers on station at the
height of the operation to find TWA Flight 800. Diving operations took place between 115 and 130 feet deep in 50-degree
water. Visibility on the ocean bottom was normally between 12 and 15 feet but was reduced to zero during periods
of heavy weather and current.
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Within the first week, Navy divers had found and recovered both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. For the first month, the divers were working around-the-clock shifts of 12 hours on and 12 hours off and recovered more than 50% of the aircraft's wreckage. The wreckage has been reconstructed and examined in a hangar in a Grumman facility in Calverton, N.Y. |
Official U.S. Navy Photo
