Profiles in History: Andreas Rechnitzer: A Diver of Great Depth

(L–R) Lt. Larry Shumaker, assistant officer in charge; Lt. Donald Walsh, officer in charge; Andreas B. Rechnitzer, scientist in charge; Jacques Piccard, co-designer and technical advisor of Bathyscaphe Trieste. Public Domain

Andreas “Andy” Rechnitzer (1924–2005) grew up in Escondido, located just north of San Diego. As a young boy, he could be found swimming in the ocean along the California coast. Later, in his teenage years, he began experimenting with spearfishing and freediving along San Diego’s La Jolla beaches and along the coastal waters of Mexico. His love of the ocean would ultimately guide him to one of the most influential careers in diving and deep sea research.

While in college, America was thrust into World War II. Rechnitzer soon left California to attend the U.S. Navy Midshipmen School on the other side of the country. The school was located at Fort Schuyler in the Bronx on the easternmost side of Long Island Sound. Having grown up on the Pacific coast, Rechnitzer found himself along the Atlantic Ocean. Graduating in 1945, he was commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve and served in Hawaii as the war came to a close.

As a Navy veteran, Rechnitzer utilized the G.I. Bill to attend college, earning his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University in 1947, then his master’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1951. While attending UCLA, Rechnitzer made the acquaintance of another graduate student by the name of Conrad Limbaugh. The two soon began diving together, and their friendship would result in some of the world’s founding diving manuals and documents.

The New World of SCUBA

During World War II, the French naval officer and oceanographer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, developed his Aqua-Lung, which would completely revolutionize diving. By 1943, he had completed his creation, which has long been known as the Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, or SCUBA.

Learning about Cousteau’s SCUBA in 1949, Limbaugh convinced his UCLA professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Boyd Walker, to purchase the equipment. When Walker made the purchase, Limbaugh and Rechnitzer, no longer constrained by freediving, began using the equipment to make deeper and longer underwater dives. At the time, there was no manual or instructions on how to safely practice what is now known as scuba diving. By trial and error, Rechnitzer and Limbaugh began jotting down how to best dive with the new gear.

Classic twin-hose Cousteau-type Aqua-Lung. Public Domain

“We dived out of the back end of [Limbaugh’s] car,” Rechnitzer once recalled. “We had bathing suits, Aqua-Lung, faceplate, and fins, that’s all.”

By the summer of 1950, Scripps had purchased another SCUBA unit. Now, instead of one diving and the other snorkeling, the two young divers could conduct underwater dives simultaneously. These dives resulted in Rechnitzer and Limbaugh establishing several safety and skill procedures, such as ditch and recovery, which requires a diver to ditch his gear at the bottom of the ocean or pool, swim to the surface, then descend to the bottom and retrieve the gear; the buddy system, which is simply duo dives where fellow divers ensure each other’s safety; and buddy breathing, which is a technique for emergencies when one diver’s tank is out of air and the two must share a single apparatus. Together, they were first to “establish a formal SCUBA training course and to train scientists to use SCUBA for research; both basic and applied.”

In 1956, Rechnitzer earned his doctorate. Roger Revelle, the director of Scripps at the time, encouraged Rechnitzer to pursue oceanographic goals outside of Scripps. According to Rechnitzer, “It was the best advice he could have given me.”

The Bathyscaphe

Rechnitzer joined San Diego’s Naval Electronics Laboratory (NEL) to become its Deep Submergence Research Program Coordinator and Oceanographer. Around this time on the other side of the world, Auguste Piccard, the Swiss physicist and inventor, had completed and successfully tested the deepwater submarine he called a “bathyscaphe.” By the time Rechnitzer had left Scripps, Piccard had tested it throughout the Mediterranean Sea, reaching as deep as 10,300 feet.

This submersible named Trieste had become too expensive for Piccard and his son, Jacques, to retain. Looking to use the bathyscaphe long-term, the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR) in London leased it in 1957 to conduct several dives around Capri, the Italian island located in the Bay of Naples. Rechnitzer participated in several of these dives. The U.S. Navy purchased Trieste in January of 1958, and by the summer it was shipped to the NEL in San Diego.

The Trieste in 1958. Public Domain

The ONR and the NEL, with guidance from Jacques Piccard, worked to refabricate the bathyscaphe to prepare it for its deepest dive. In fact, it would be the deepest dive possible: the Challenger Deep located in the Marianas Trench. Throughout the rest of 1958 and much of 1959, “Trieste” was prepped for the scientific undertaking called Project Nekton, for which Rechnitzer was its director.

Shortly after “Trieste” arrived in San Diego, Rechnitzer convinced the Navy to provide “two submarine-qualified officers and about five enlisted men to maintain and operate ‘Trieste.’” One of those submarine-qualified officers was Lt. Don Walsh, who would make the historic dive alongside Piccard into the deepest depths of the Marianas Trench. That dive, however, might never have happened without Rechnitzer.

The Greatest Dive Ever

On Nov. 15, 1959, Rechnitzer and Piccard conducted a dive of 18,150 feet―the deepest dive on record at the time. Upon its return to the surface, the rapid temperature change from cold to warm caused a glue joint to fail when the pressure sphere expanded. The issue was corrected, almost comically, by way of a forklift ramming the spot until the section of the sphere realigned.

Don Walsh (L) and Jacques Piccard in the Bathyscaphe Trieste. Public Domain

By January 1960, Trieste was ready for the Challenger Deep. On Jan. 23, Walsh and Piccard loaded into the bathyscaphe. The weather was inclement and the seas were rough with 25-foot swells. Nonetheless, Rechnitzer gave Walsh and Piccard the green light. Trieste began its descent.

Shortly after the dive began, Rechnitzer received a message from the director of the NEL: “Cancel diving. Come home.” He informed John Michel, who was chief of the boat as well as the master machinist who had fixed the pressure sphere, of the message. He then suggested to Michel, “Let’s find some more coffee.” The postponement worked. When he responded to the message, his response was short and elusive: “‘Trieste’ now passing 20,000 feet.” Already a record, Trieste was more than halfway to its destination. Project Nekton would continue. According to the U.S. Naval Institute, Rechnizter’s delayed response actually “put his job on the line to buy some precious minutes for the diving team.”

Trieste reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep at an unbreakable record depth of 35,814 feet. Rechnitzer’s project has been the only time humans have ever reached such a depth.

An Honored Diver

In honor of this major achievement, Rechnitzer was awarded the Navy Department Distinguished Civilian Service Award by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His work in deep sea dives and exploration would continue for decades. He was part of the 1974 expedition that confirmed the discovery of the Civil War-era ironclad USS Monitor. He participated and led expeditions in various places, including the Arctic, Antarctic, and Lake Baikal in Siberia. He founded and was the first president of the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California, which continues to collaborate with his alma mater, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Throughout his life, Rechnitzer was honored with various awards and positions. He is the only person to be awarded the NOGI (New Orleans Grand Isle) award from the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences three times—considered the “Oscar of the ocean world.” He was awarded the Lockheed Martin Award for Ocean Science and Technology and the Roger Revelle Award from the San Diego Oceans Foundation.

From 1970 to 1984, he was on the scientific staff of the Chief of Naval Operations and Oceanographer of the Navy. He was a senior scientist at Science Applications International Corporation from 1985 to 1998. He was one of the first on the National Association of Underwater Instructors’s Board of Advisors, along with Cousteau. In 2005, just weeks after he died, Rechnitzer was inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame.

Would you like to see other kinds of arts and culture articles? Please email us your story ideas or feedback at [email protected]