Inside SEAL Team Six(38)

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If the sub was the extraction vessel, we’d swim back to the boats and motor back to the sub.

We also trained with SDVs (swimmer-delivery vehicles), which are minisubs that accommodate two to five men. We’d be stuck underwater for four hours in this cramped little thing, shivering and trying to clear our ears.

It wasn’t just a sense of unease that kept me from enjoying these maneuvers. Near midnight on January 16, 1982, one of these minisubs returned to the USS Grayback, which had bottomed off the coast of the Philippines. Then divers secured the SDV within the submarine’s starboard hangar.

After stowing the SDV, Grayback’s support divers and the SDV crew (a BMC, an ensign, two petty officers, a seaman, and a fireman) remained within the flooded starboard hangar making preparations to reenter the submarine. They received permission to shut the outer hangar door, the step just before draining and venting the hangar.