> OK, I know this list is pretty quiet, but now I'm perturbed.  The first
> discussion to happen here in months, and I'm stuck listening to only
> one side of it.  And not only that, but it's the uninformative side to boot!
>
> So, welcome to the list Mr. Collins, and for Rick and everyone else
> participating in this exchange:  Come on, share the wealth!
>
> (Anyone care to summarize what's happened so far?)
>
> Thanks.
>
>                 Matthew Saltzman


Sorry Matthew,

There has been so little activity on this list lately that when Joey Collins
posted his U-352 question I just replied to him and assumed no one else was
listening.

To start off with a good web site for North Carolina diving is:

http://ias.ga.unc.edu/~egapmh/BFDC.HTML

As for the U-Boat and dive operations that go out there...

The U-352 is in about 115 feet of water depending on the tide. It has been about
3 years since I dove on it so I don't know yet if the recent storms have hurt it
much.

The U-Boat sits upright on the bottom with the conning tower sticking up at
about a 30 degree angle. There are parts of the periscope, and some ballast
tanks lying on the sand nearby.

I was surprised at how different the shape of the U-Boat was from the pictures I
had seen in books.

It turns out that the type VII-C U-Boats (short for Untersea Boot) and most of
the other subs of that era had two hulls. One was the inner pressure hull that
withstood the pressure and a second outer hull that covered the pressure hull
and all the valves, ballast tanks, and other irregularly shaped objects with a
relatively smooth skin that reduced friction in the water.

The outer hull was relatively thin and many of the thin plates have rusted away
or were blown off by the depth charges that sank her.

A depth charge blew off most of the outer hull around the conning tower, and
killed the sub's executive officer. So the pressure hull portion of the conning
tower looks more rounded and shorter than in the pictures of the conning tower
you see of intact U-Boats.

The latticework frame that the outer hull plates were connected to is clearly
visible.

The 88 millimeter deck gun was also blown off by a depth charge and that
probably saved most of the crew. When the heavy deck gun fell off the badly
damaged and flooding U-Boat popped to surface and many of the crew were able to
abandon ship before it sank again.

I have not seen the deck gun but it is supposedlly a few hundred yards from the
main wreck of the U-Boat. There is a big gear on the deck where the gun used to
sit.

The 20 millimeter gun from the conning tower is on display at the Olympus Diving
Company docks. A lot of other artifacts are on display in the Olympus Dive
Store.

There are a couple of open torpedo loading hatches and a large open galley hatch
as well as the open conning tower hatch on the U-Boat. The inside is full of
silt and rust powder and gets strired up very easily.

At 115 feet you don't have much bottom time on a no-deco dive but the U-Boat is
small and you can see the whole thing in a short dive.

The U-352 is about 33 miles out of Beaufort Inlet at Morehead City and Beaufort,
North Carolina.

I once commented on the list that the U-352 was an easy dive. The time that I
went out the seas were calm and two of the divers were making only their 3rd and
4th ocean dives. We had no problems at all.

Another fellow responded that it was calm when he went out but that a storm blew
in while he was under and he surfaced to 10 foot seas. After they got everybody
out of the raging seas he was thrown around so badly that he put his arm through
a window on the boat and ended up getting 10 stitches.

Having a freak storm come up is very rare. What probably happened was that a
weather front was moving through and the dive operator decided to go for it
hoping to beat the weather annd got caught. Every once and awhile you might have
a thunderstorm pass through unexpectedly but they usually pass in less that and
hour and don't churn up the seas that much. Thunderstorms in the region are
usually in the late afternoon well after the dive boat is safely back at the
dock.

The biggest dive operation in the area is Olympus out of Morehead City. They
have two cattle Boats and a bunch of six packs. George Purifoy owns Olympus and
discovered the wreck of the U-352.

As for diving the U-Boat, the problem Joey had in trying to arrange a dive was
that Olympus doesn't usually schedule specific dives. They get all the divers
together and vote on where they want to go before departure.

That makes it tough when you are there on vacation like Joey will be and you
specifically want to dive the U-Boat. Otherwise Olympus is a really good
operation.

Discovery Diving in Beaufort is a little smaller but a little more laid back.

At first I suggested that Joey might want to contact one of the many independent
six pack operators in the area to see if they would schedule a U-352 dive for
him.

One I recommended was Dennis McKee. He used to run his six pack, the Seaduction,
out of Olympus but is independent now. Dennis is a great guy and a PADI
instrutor, as well as a licensed boat Captain.

All of the contact information for these guys is on the web site.

Be advised that the Area Code for Morehead City/Beaufort has changed from 919 to
252 and the web site may not reflect that yet.

As Joey and I discussed the dive I mentioned that I have a boat that I dive from
and I might be able to get the coordinates for the U-Boat from somebody and we
could just schedule our own dive. I haven't been out to the U-Boat in such a
long time that I'd like to make another trip out there. So that's where we are
now.

Rick