Making history under
the sea -- again

The Navy's plan to raise the Ehime Maru was revamped this week when undersea conditions didn't cooperate. The sea floor is too dense and full of clay to allow the tunnelling tubes to travel where they're supposed to go. So the Navy has a fallback plan, trying something simpler albeit slightly more dangerous.

The fact that the Navy even has another solution -- on an operation that many considered impossible a few months ago -- shows how seriously it is taking this moral imperative. Even more than that, it illustrates how highly professional our naval engineers are. No other navy on the planet could even attempt an operation on this scale. You can't just squirt the Ehime Maru full of urethane foam and have it pop to the surface. (Can you?)

Hawaii has been the site of naval-salvage miracles before. When the F-4 sank off Honolulu in 1916, new technology was developed to raise the submarine. When the Pacific battle fleet was sunk in the Pearl Harbor attack, every ship except Arizona and Utah was refloated in the greatest underwater salvage operation in history.

It looks like American naval engineers are about to make history again. Good luck to them.

Burl Burlingame

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