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Avalon (DSRV 2)

Named in 1977, AVALON was the second of the two Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles of the Navy designed to perform rescue operations on submerged, disabled submarines of the U.S. Navy or foreign navies. Retired in 2000, AVALON is now preserved at the Morro Bay Maritime Museum, California.

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AVALON History:

AVALON (DSRV-2) was the second of two MYSTIC-class deep submergence rescue vehicles built for the United States Navy to provide a modern capability to reach and evacuate crews from disabled submarines lying far below the depth limits of traditional rescue bells. Conceived in the mid-1960s, constructed by Lockheed Missiles and Space Company at Sunnyvale, California, and placed in service in 1972, AVALON spent nearly three decades assigned to the Deep Submergence Unit at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, conducting trials, exercises, test programs and occasional recovery operations with U.S. and allied submarines. Although it never carried out an actual wartime or peacetime submarine rescue, it was kept at a high degree of readiness through the final decades of the Cold War and into the 1990s, before being decommissioned in 2000 and later displayed as a museum piece at Morro Bay, California.

The origins of AVALON lay in the loss of the nuclear attack submarine USS THRESHER (SSN 593), which sank on April 10, 1963, during deep-diving trials east of Cape Cod with 129 sailors and civilian technicians on board. At that time, the Navy had no means of reaching a stricken submarine at the depths where the wreck was later found, and investigation of the accident underscored both the need for stricter design and quality-assurance standards and for a modern deep-submergence rescue system. In 1964-1965, the Navy established the Deep Submergence Systems Project, sometimes referred to as the Deep Sea Submergence Project, to pursue that goal, and a Presidential Deep Submergence Review Group recommended a new, highly mobile rescue vehicle that could be rapidly transported worldwide.

In August 1966, the Navy awarded Lockheed's Sunnyvale, California, facility a contract to build a pair of deep submergence rescue vehicles, which would become MYSTIC (DSRV-1) and AVALON (DSRV-2). The design used technology and materials drawn from contemporary space programs and emphasized both depth capability and transportability. The hull consisted of a series of high-strength steel spheres linked within a streamlined outer body, capable of withstanding pressures at depths of up to 5,000 feet. The finished vehicles were about 49-50 feet long, roughly 8 feet in diameter, and displaced around 37-38 tons in diving trim. They were powered by electric motors drawing on silver-zinc batteries, driving a main propulsor and four smaller thrusters to allow precise maneuvering over a disabled submarine. Inside, the craft carried two pilots and two rescue crew and could accommodate up to 24 survivors per cycle, with enough battery endurance for roughly 30 hours of submerged operations.

A key feature of the design was mobility. AVALON was built as a "fly-away" system that could be loaded onto U.S. Air Force C-5 or C-141 transport aircraft, along with its supporting control vans and handling gear, and flown to an airfield near the site of a submarine accident. From there, it could be moved by road and embarked on a submarine rescue ship, on a specially fitted nuclear submarine, or even on a suitable surface ship. Photographs from the period show the craft being rolled into aircraft hangars and loaded aboard C-5 Galaxy transports, and at least one image documents AVALON arriving at Brest airport in France aboard a C-5, illustrating the intended ability to deploy the vehicle rapidly across the Atlantic for NATO contingencies.

AVALON was formally launched as DSRV-2 on May 1, 1971, following completion of construction at Sunnyvale. The vehicle was delivered to the Navy on June 1, 1971, and activated for service later that year. Official records treated the hull as an unnamed service craft designated "DSRV-2" or "No Name (DSRV-2)", but in practice it was informally known as AVALON, echoing the naming convention applied to its sister MYSTIC and later widely used in Navy and public references.

After delivery, AVALON joined the Deep Submergence Unit (DSU), which operated from Naval Air Station North Island at Coronado in San Diego. Early in the 1970s, the DSRVs were stationed for several years at Lockheed's Ocean Laboratory in San Diego before consolidating under DSU, an organization responsible not only for AVALON and MYSTIC but also for other deep submergence vehicles, unmanned systems and the submarine AGSS DOLPHIN (AGSS 555). Throughout its career, AVALON's home base remained in the San Diego area, where DSU maintained the specialized crews, divers and technicians needed to operate and support the system and kept at least one of the two DSRVs in a continuous "rescue-ready" status.

To place the new rescue system into an operational context at sea, the Navy constructed a pair of submarine rescue ships, USS PIGEON (ASR 21) and USS ORTOLAN (ASR 22), designed as dedicated mother ships for the DSRVs. In practice, MYSTIC was usually paired with ORTOLAN, while AVALON was associated with PIGEON, both ships operating primarily from the Pacific coast. PIGEON, launched in August 1969 and commissioned in 1971, provided a stable surface platform, heavy handling gear and a support deck for AVALON, allowing the small submersible to be launched and recovered in a wider range of sea states and giving DSU another option for worldwide deployment.

During the early 1970s, AVALON underwent extensive sea trials and training dives to validate its systems and refine rescue procedures. Operational evaluation of the overall DSRV concept included simulated rescue missions in which a host submarine would descend to depth and lie at a controlled angle while the DSRV navigated to the hull, carefully positioned its circular "mating skirt" over a standard submarine escape hatch, and established a watertight seal to allow pressure equalization and transfer of personnel. Former DSRV commander Richard H. "Dick" Taylor later recalled that in these years, much of AVALON's work was carried out off San Clemente Island off southern California, where the crew repeatedly practised approaches to submarines resting on the sea floor. The design aim was to be able to open the lower hatch at depths of up to about 1,000 feet, but in training the deepest successful open-hatch evolution reached roughly 800 feet, demonstrating real but carefully bounded capability at depth.

By 1972, AVALON had progressed sufficiently in its test program that Taylor became her third commander, one of only a very small number of officers qualified to pilot deep-submergence craft in Navy service. His recollections underline the highly specialized nature of the DSRV detachment, where officers and enlisted crew could earn the Deep Submergence insignia after a year of assignment, and where familiarity with both submarine operations and complex undersea engineering systems was essential. In this period, AVALON and her sister MYSTIC were among the very few U.S. Navy craft capable of working at 5,000 feet, placing them in a small community of deep-diving vehicles alongside scientific submersibles such as ALVIN.

A central part of AVALON's mission was to demonstrate that the United States and its allies could actually execute a deep-water rescue if required. In 1979, the vehicle took part in a major exercise with the Royal Navy that highlighted this capability. In that drill, AVALON was flown from San Diego to the United Kingdom and embarked on the British ballistic-missile submarine HMS REPULSE (S 23) at Holy Loch Refit Site One in Scotland. Photographs from the time show the DSRV being hoisted aboard REPULSE at Holy Loch and later secured on her back, while the exercise scenario envisioned the rescue of the crew of the British diesel submarine HMS ODIN (S 10), which simulated the role of a submarine in distress on the seabed of the Irish Sea. Taylor later recounted that the deployment from San Diego to the exercise area took about 48 hours, demonstrating that within a couple of days the DSRV system could, in principle, reach a disabled allied submarine in the North Atlantic theatre.

Through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, AVALON continued to support both national and allied training. Although many day-to-day operations were routine training dives whose details are not recorded in open sources, available imagery and accounts document her embarking on a succession of U.S. nuclear attack submarines for handling and mating exercises. In the early 1980s, for example, a series of photographs from Pearl Harbor shows AVALON being lowered by crane onto the deck pylons of the STURGEON-class attack submarine USS CAVALLA (SSN 684) for a "fly-away" exercise intended to train personnel in the handling and operation of the DSRV from a forward-based submarine. These evolutions at Pearl Harbor demonstrated that AVALON could be delivered by air to a fleet concentration area in the central Pacific, quickly loaded aboard a host submarine and made ready for simulated rescue operations in the region.

From a programmatic standpoint, AVALON was part of a broader family of deep submergence assets managed by the Deep Submergence Unit and its higher headquarters, Submarine Development Group and later Submarine Development Squadron 5. An official command history for 1992, for instance, lists DSU as operating MYSTIC, AVALON, the deep submergence vehicles TURTLE (DSV-3) and SEA CLIFF (DSV-4), the submarine rescue ship PIGEON, the deep-diving research submarine DOLPHIN and several specially tasked nuclear submarines such as PARCHE (SSN 683) and RICHARD B. RUSSELL (SSN 687). AVALON thus spent much of her service life embedded in a technically focused community that carried out not only rescue training but also oceanographic research, submarine trials, and recovery of objects from deep water, all under strict safety and certification standards that grew out of the THRESHER experience.

The end of the Cold War did not reduce the need for submarine rescue preparedness, and AVALON's most clearly documented operational year is 1992, when the vehicle took part in both national and alliance activities. On August 13, 1992, according to Pacific Fleet command records, AVALON was tasked in the recovery of a U.S. Marine Corps CH-46E helicopter that had gone into the sea, an operation that drew on the DSRV's ability to locate and work around wreckage at depth. Later that month, she deployed across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean to support SORBET ROYAL '92, a NATO deep-sea rescue exercise. The same command history records AVALON assigned to SORBET ROYAL from August 29 to September 19, 1992, operating in the Mediterranean alongside allied submarines and rescue forces.

Imagery and ship histories add further detail to AVALON's role in SORBET ROYAL '92. In late August 1992, the STURGEON-class attack submarine USS BILLFISH (SSN 676) embarked AVALON on deck and crossed the Atlantic to Spain, where photographs taken at Naval Station Rota on August 25 and September 2 show the DSRV secured to the submarine's deck pylons. Captions from official photo archives and later analyses identify the submarine and AVALON as being scheduled to participate in, and then preparing to participate in, the NATO exercise. Another image shows BILLFISH departing Rota carrying AVALON specifically "for NATO deep sea rescue exercise SORBET ROYAL '92", while a fact-checking article based on museum and National Archives information confirms that a well-known photograph of a submarine with a small vessel on its back actually depicts BILLFISH with AVALON during that same exercise on September 2, 1992. This deployment combined the "fly-away" and "mother submarine" concepts: AVALON, airlifted and transported forward, was mated to a nuclear submarine rather than a surface rescue ship and used in multi-national drills that practised the logistics and procedures of responding to a disabled submarine in the alliance's southern maritime approaches.

The same 1992 records underline how closely integrated AVALON and the DSRV program had become with broader Pacific Fleet operations by that time. They appear in the context of a wide range of exercises, readiness tests and deployments, with AVALON's SORBET ROYAL participation listed alongside major anti-submarine warfare exercises and battle group training events, while SEA CLIFF and other deep submergence vehicles are shown supporting scientific and recovery tasks such as operations in "Iron Bottom Sound" and recovery of military hardware for analysis. In this environment, AVALON functioned as both a contingency asset and a high-end training tool, ensuring that NATO and U.S. submarine forces retained a realistic appreciation of what a deep-water rescue would entail.

Although SORBET ROYAL '92 is the best-documented alliance exercise involving AVALON, photographic and written evidence indicates that the vehicle continued similar work with U.S. submarines into the later 1990s. Images from Navy presentations and slide collections show AVALON fitted to the hulls of LOS ANGELES-class submarines such as USS GREENEVILLE (SSN 772), which entered service in the mid-1990s, demonstrating that the DSRV system was being practised with newer classes of attack submarines up to the eve of AVALON's retirement. Other references associate AVALON with submarines including USS GUITARRO (SSN 665) and with ongoing fly-away training, reinforcing the picture of a craft that remained technically relevant even as newer submarine classes and alternative rescue technologies appeared.

Technically, AVALON represented a particular stage in the evolution of submarine rescue. Its rating to 5,000 feet gave it the ability to reach most operational depths of nuclear submarines of its era, but its reliance on battery power, limited endurance, and the need to pause to recharge during very deep cycles constrained the number of trips it could make in a given scenario. Its mating skirt required that a disabled submarine's escape hatch remain intact and accessible, and its operational concept depended on the ability to bring the small craft and its support infrastructure close enough to the accident site in time. Nevertheless, both available technical assessments and the test record summarized by former crew indicate that within its designed envelope, the DSRV concept worked: the vehicles successfully mated with submarine hatches on the bottom, transferred personnel in simulations, and validated the aerodynamic and logistic concept of transporting a rescue system by air across large distances.

By the late 1990s, the Navy had begun to consider replacing the DSRVs with a more modular submarine rescue system. Operational and support costs, advances in remotely operated vehicle technology, and the recognition that maintaining two fully crewed and certified deep-submergence vehicles was demanding all weighed in favor of change. In this context, planning documents describe a requirement to keep only one DSRV in full rescue-ready status at any given time and note that AVALON would be laid up or inactivated around November 2000 while her sister remained active a few years longer. Open sources agree that AVALON was decommissioned in 2000, after roughly 28-29 years in service, and that MYSTIC continued alone until being superseded by the Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System, which included the pressurized rescue module FALCON and was fully fielded in the mid-2000s.

In terms of formal recognition, the DSRV program's official listings attribute to AVALON a small set of unit awards and service medals reflecting her long period of alert duty rather than combat operations. These include two awards of the Meritorious Unit Commendation, two Navy E Ribbons indicating efficiency and readiness, and entitlement to the National Defense Service Medal with a star, acknowledging participation in two qualifying national emergency periods. The awards highlight that, although she never performed an actual rescue, maintaining the capability itself over nearly three decades was regarded as a meaningful contribution to fleet safety.

After decommissioning, AVALON's fate was initially uncertain. Some accounts anticipated that she might join other deep-submergence vehicles at the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington, where MYSTIC was ultimately displayed. In practice, however, the vehicle was placed on loan by the Naval History and Heritage Command to the Morro Bay Maritime Museum on California's central coast. By mid-2010s she had become the museum's signature exhibit, positioned outdoors near the waterfront at Morro Bay, where her unusual silhouette, mating skirt and external thrusters offer visitors a visible reminder of the Cold War era of nuclear submarines and the technical effort invested in safeguarding their crews. Local reporting notes that AVALON has been on loan to the museum since 2016 and that the museum views itself as custodian of a rare and important artifact of U.S. naval technology.

Even in retirement, AVALON's story has continued to evolve. In June 2021, the Morro Bay museum hosted Richard Taylor, one of AVALON's former commanders, who addressed an audience about the DSRV program's origins in the THRESHER tragedy, the challenges of deep-submergence operations and his experience commanding the vehicle in the 1970s. In 2023, the museum undertook a significant restoration, enclosing the submersible in a temporary shrink-wrapped "cocoon" so that specialists could strip weathered coatings and apply new military-specification primer and polyurethane paint, funded by a grant and coordinated with the Navy as the owning authority. These activities, combined with interpretive exhibits that explain the connection between the Apollo-era technologies used in the DSRV and modern computing and materials, have turned AVALON into both a preservation project and an educational platform.

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