Good afternoon this is Silver Spring Exploration Command Center calling in,
for the dive on USS Bugara. We are joined today by Ed Ettner who was the commanding
officer of Bugera, 1957 and 1958. It's very interesting to see the hull
in a different perspective. There's a certain attachment to it, when you see
something like this. You realize it's resting peacefully on the bottom
There's a lot of of memories inside that boat
What you're looking at is the exhaust, and now
we're at the top of the snorkel. Ed Ettner was telling us that he had to write one
of the first manuals for how to use these and installing them in our fleet boats
He said he wrote that in '47 But down below this band of
superstructure is the actual pressure hull of the submarine. On top of that
that superstructure was once covered not only by the steel that you see here
but also by a teak deck. That teak deck is now gone. I believe it's been consumed
by marine organism. What we're seeing right now is, you see a little bit of
curved track it's coming up off to the left hand side of the image.
That's safety track, or safety rail, and the guys could actually cable into that, so when they
were operating on the boat deck in heavy seas they wouldn't be washed off
One of other notable achievements is that she came across a Chinese junk
It was forced to operate for the Japanese and it was being attacked by pirates and
two of the Chinese crew had already been killed and Bugara came in there and rescued
the Chinese crew and destroyed the pirates. And then sank the boat because it was
operating for the Japanese. And I think that was the case in most of
the attacks on junks, they were able to able to take the crew off, and some of their
supplies and some of their personal effects, and sink the junk
and put the crew ashore So as we approach the stern of Bugara
you can see the aft torpedo tubes. These boats had the capacity to fire both from
the bow and the stern. You can see the dive planes coming into view with
Bugara's rudder, and also down to the bottom you can see the propellers
coming into view as well now The propellers are actually around eight feet in length
each propeller, so the diameter is around 16 feet. Josh this is really good
I'm getting a nice view now of the stern chock right here
at the very tail end of the superstructure
so there's a nice view of a very large lingcod there
absolutely and as that lingcod moves along he perfectly outlines the aft hatch
The fish that you see there are mostly red banded rockfish and
there's some lingcod. That's the gray one. And then all of those beautiful white
plumed anemones, those are Metridiums
The visit to Bugara has answered a few questions for us. We don't see any evidence of a sudden
event that sank her, but rather it looks like progressive slow flooding where that
came from, hard to say, but it looks like she just slowly filled and at the final
point and they realized she was going they had because the lines and she came
down and you can see pretty much level on to the bottom. But we're certainly seeing
here as well is some sinking damage, implosion. She got to a certain depth, some of
the main air lines. You can see not only have collapsed the actual
manifold piping itself, but deformed some of the deck stringers and a little bit
of the super structure around it. A couple of possibilities are that water came in
through the snorkel if there was any kind of wave action
if the top of the snorkel didn't seal. Another possibility would be maybe
some failure, if something was kept open that slowly began to progressively flood her
It could be that the stern glands, at the propellers, may have introduced a leak
Ed's sense was that it probably came from around the sail.
We have achieved every goal we had looked for. A couple minor things
but we we are content and we are
ready to bless and release you for recovery of vehicle