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He spent 30 days living and working on the sea floor at ambient pressure as the team leader for two ten-man diving teams, helping to establish the foundation for the ambitious program that still lay in the future.

In 1967, he was assigned to the Navy's Deep Submergence Systems Project (DSSP) as Director of Aquanaut Operations, where he supervised the diving activities on SeaLab III shortly before his retirement in 1969. SeaLab III used the shell from SeaLab II, but in every other way it was dramatically different. Situated on the bottom off San Clemente Island in 600 feet of water, this experiment was top secret, designed to test procedures that would ultimately lead to the fantastic exploits of Halibut and Seawolf. Low-key public announcements only described in a superficial way the nature of the deep-sea living project, never mentioning anything else.

SeaLab III was not without problems, despite its pioneering triumphs. Dive team member Berry Cannon died when a control problem caused him to exit the habitat without a fresh charge of carbon dioxide absorbent. This effectively ended SeaLab III as a project followed by the public. In fact, most of the senior Navy personnel with peripheral oversight for SeaLab III also believed that the project had ended.

In actuality, Cannon's tragic death came near the end of the on-the-bottom-operate-out-of-a -habitat phase of Craven's grand plan. The next phase was the outfitting and employment of Halibut, first as an underwater platform for the 20,000-foot capable "fish," and later as the on-site platform for divers using the simulated DSRV to conduct underwater operations first proved on SeaLab III.

At the same time, volunteer Navy divers assembled at the submarine base at the foot of Point Loma in San Diego. They received extensive theoretical and practical training in the esoteric subject of saturation diving. Their practical training took place on Elk River (IX 501), the vessel that had supported the earlier SeaLab experiments off the California coast. Some of these sailors received shipboard assignments on USS Pigeon (ASR 21) and USS Ortolan (ASR 22). The best, however, underwent incredibly thorough background investigations, and those who passed reported to the Special Operations Group - assignment to Halibut, and later to Seawolf and Parche.

These guys in their rickety relic submarines (Halibut and Seawolf) and later in the relatively modern Parche, pulled off the greatest intelligence coup in history. They repeatedly

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