On October 12, 1992, Chrissy Rouse, 22, swam into the wreck of a German U-boat in 230 feet of water off New Jersey. A piece of wreckage fell on him and pinned him. His father did not surface without him.
The dive lasted forty-one minutes. Three divers died on this wreck before anyone could name it, the Rouses among them. Other divers needed almost five more years to learn it was U-869.
CHAPTERS
0:00 October 12, 1992
0:38 A U-boat off New Jersey
2:08 230 feet on air
2:57 Steve Feldman, 1991
3:24 The knife
4:01 Chris and Chrissy Rouse
5:30 Columbus Day weekend
6:34 The dive plan
7:23 Pinned inside the wreck
8:27 Thirty-one minutes
10:02 At the surface
11:19 The helicopter and the chamber
12:08 Almost five more years
13:38 The tag on the box
14:06 Why the records were wrong
SOURCES
• aquaCORPS incident report (1993), reprinted by InDepth: https://indepthmag.com/early-technical-diving-deaths/
• UPI, “U-boat discovered off New Jersey”, October 17, 1991: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/10/17/U-boat-discovered-off-New-Jersey/4754687672000/
• NOVA, “Hitler’s Lost Sub”, transcript (2000): https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2712lostsub.html
• John Chatterton, interview with Bret Gilliam: https://www.tdisdi.com/diving-pioneers-and-innovators/john-chatterton/
• Chatterton, Kohler and Yurga, “Final Report on U-869”: https://johnchatterton.com/final-report-on-u869/
• Bernie Chowdhury, “The Last Dive” (2000)
• Robert Kurson, “Shadow Divers” (2004), and his C-SPAN Booknotes interview: https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/180056-1
• U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office, “The Sinking of the U-869” (2005)
• uboat.net, U-869: https://uboat.net/boats/u869.htm
ARCHIVE FOOTAGE
The three black-and-white clips are U.S. Navy film from two reels. They show U-858, a U-boat of the same type as U-869, after it surrendered off New Jersey in May 1945. They do not show U-869.
U.S. Navy film. National Archives 80125, hosted at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/NPC-15659
U.S. Navy film. National Archives 80121, hosted at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/NPC-15652
ABOUT THIS VIDEO
The other images are illustrations made for this video. None is a photograph of the wreck or the divers, and none shows a real person’s face. The maps and diagrams are not to scale. The narration names its source where accounts differ.
#U869 #WreckDiving #TrueStory
source
