An Cosantóir the official magazine of the Irish Defence Forces and Reserve Defence Forces.
Issue link: https://digital.jmpublishing.ie/i/659344
www.military.ie the defence forces magazine | 17 R ecently students on the 30th Naval Service Diving Course completed week eight and nine of their 11-week course. This phase, deep work-up, was conducted in bere Island from 21st February to 4th March - 12 gruelling days. This training prepares the divers for extensive operations and arduous hours in extreme conditions, often with little sleep. The course starts with a week of work-ups to qualifying depths on Scuba to 35 metres. The typical day begins at 0600 hrs with a 5km run, with a minimum of six dives to take place before the day ends at 2300 hrs. Students are instructed in specialised search techniques, night-time insertions, parachute and enclosed lifting bags, diver-through-water and hard wire communications - whilst working under stressful conditions where teamwork is a must. The first week ends with a Diving Sec- tion tradition of 'running the cross', a 13km run to the highest point of Bere Island. This is followed by a week working with a naval ship equipped with a recompression chamber (RCC) to carry out essential drills such as in-water decompression, omitted decompression, surface decompression, re- covery of an unconscious diver, and chamber attendant drills. The rest of the course is built on this strong foundation. Commodore Frank Lynch (retd), once said, "Undoubtedly the fact that the early divers were established as an elite group from the very begin- ning with a huge failure rate on aptitude and training courses, favoured the sound develop- ment of the diving capability… Dedication to diving was the norm and extraordinary efforts over and above the call of duty were common." - The Naval Sevice Diving Section recently cel- ebrated 50 years of service. In the early days of the unit personnel went to the UK for training before the Naval Service ran its first domestic training course for divers in 1982. Since then a total of 30 courses have been run, with 132 per- sonnel qualifying as Naval Service divers. by LT CDR TONY O'REGAN, MCDO, OIC NAVAL SERVICE DIVING SECTION Students and instructors of the 30th Naval Service Diving Course, at the sumit of Bere Island.