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Luck of the Alvin

March 16, 2007

Forty one years ago this week, Alvin pilots Bill Rainnie and Marvin McCamis located an unexploded hydrogen bomb that had accidentally been dropped into the Mediterranean Sea two months earlier by a U.S. Air Force B-52.  It took a month of searching with Alvin (foreground), Navy ships, and the Navy sub Aluminaut and another month of trying to hook and raise the bomb before officials (inset) from the U.S. Navy and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) could pose with it on the deck of the U.S.S. Petrel. Rainnie and McCamis received a Meritorious Service Award from the Secretary of the Navy for their efforts. (Photo Courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)