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Originally Posted by Bubblehead Nuke
Let me add an experience along a similar theme:
After a hatch ring repair job, we had to go into the escape trunk to verify NO leakage on the upper hatch seal. Well, a bright (read DUMB!) person saw that the dogs were not fully engaged and gave the operating ring a twist to fully engage the dogs. Once we surfaced and came into port, we could NOT undog the hatch.
You have to remember that he hull (and hatch) COMPRESSES when you dive. When we went shallow, the hatch uncompressed and now the hatch was dogged TOO tight and could not be opened. As this is how you get people topside (well, ONE of the ways) we could not go into port (we were at the point of putting people topside when we found this out). We had to go BACK out, dive to a deeper depth (thank gawd for logs to tell us how deep we were for the test) and undog the hatch. I mean FULLY undog the hatch and then resurface, redog the hatch, then go back down again.
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I was just about to recount almost that same exact story. I guess it isn't as uncommon of a mistake as I had thought. I feel for the dumbass that dogged it while we were a test depth though. He became known for the incident. Also we didn't return to sea, they had the tender land a ****load of lead onto the hatch so it could be undogged. A few hundred pounds per square inch can add up when spread across an escape hatch.
