USA as Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Arthur E Munson

Jimmy L Held

Ronald S Reich

Jim M Walton

James R Hartley

An apparatus for employing and retrieving a seaborne vehicle having a frable surface includes a muzzle and a cylindrically shaped cocoon. The muzzle is clamped to the vehicle and then pulled by a rope into the cocoon. Bladders within the cocoon are inflated with pressurized air to retain the vehicle. The vehicle can then be safely retrieved by hoisting the cocoon out of the ocean. Vehicle deployment is achieved by placing the vehicle in the cocoon, pressurizing the bladders with air, lowering the cocoon and attendant vehicle into the ocean, exhausting the air from the bladders, and then towing the cocoon so that water passing through apertures in the bow of the cocoon push the vehicle into the open ocean.

Apparatus for deploying and recovering a seaborne vessel

In improved cable cutter for undersea use is presented which has a self-cained, pressure compensated hydraulic system which allows it to operate in the deep ocean. The cable cutter is designed to operate from and mate with manipulators of Navy deep submergence vehicles. The concept of this cable cutter is a closed hydraulic system which provides driving force on a piston pushing a cutting blade against an anvil. The hydraulic power is provided by an internal gear pump. The gear pump has a drive shaft which mates with the rotary output of a deep submergence vehicle manipulator. The hydraulic fluid reservoir also serves as a pressure compensator for working in the deep ocean. The hydraulic fluid system comprises a main cylinder which contains the drive piston and a secondary cylinder which consists of a flexible tube that allows fluid pressure equalization with the environment as well as volume compensation. Both cylinders are mounted between manifold components. One manifold component is rigidly connected to the cutter end of the drive piston cylinder, and the other manifold component rigidly connected to the other end of the drive piston cylinder is in contact with an assembly containing the internal gear pump.

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San Diego, CA, United States of America

Arthur E Munson