Mo. Man Remembers Kursk Mission

PARKVILLE, Mo. (AP) â€” Handy with tools and drawn to the sea, Don Degener has made a living beneath the waves. <br><br>Construction, welding, concrete work â€” whatever jobs can be done undersea, Degener

Monday, December 4th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

PARKVILLE, Mo. (AP) â€” Handy with tools and drawn to the sea, Don Degener has made a living beneath the waves.

Construction, welding, concrete work â€” whatever jobs can be done undersea, Degener has performed them in nearly three decades as a professional diver.

But nothing prepared him for what he saw Oct. 21 when he descended 350 feet into the frigid Barents Sea off Russia's northwest coast.

Before him was the stricken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk. Five stories high and more than 500 feet long, the sub held 118 dead Russian sailors, most killed by an explosion in August.

How Degener, 48, came to be the only American on the Kursk recovery team is a story that began decades ago not in some seaside town, but in this Kansas City suburb.

Growing up in Parkville, Degener was always fascinated by bodies of water, and what lay under the surface.

``One of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid was `Sea Hunt,''' Degener said, referring to the Lloyd Bridges diving classic. ``Then those Jacques Cousteau documentaries came along. I thought I was going to be an oceanographer.''

When he was 11, he rigged an air hose to a bucket and spent a half-hour walking on the bottom of the family swimming pool.

After his schooling he worked in Wyoming oil fields for a while until, in 1975, he enrolled in a diving school.

``I haven't worked a day in the United States since,'' Degener said at his Parkville home.

He has worked on oil rigs, undersea construction projects and other diving jobs, mostly for Dallas-based Halliburton Co., an energy-services giant.

For the Kursk operation, Degener joined 11 other Halliburton divers â€” nine British, one Norwegian and one South African. All had worked together for years around the globe.

Six Russian divers joined the team, and Carrier trained them to use equipment they knew nothing about. Then the diving ship Regalia steamed to the Kursk wreck site.

On Oct. 21, Degener and other divers were on the seabed, aiming a cutting machine at the Kursk's hull. The cutter fires a water-and-cutting-grit mix out of a nozzle at a pressure of 15,000 pounds per square inch.

``That thing will cut your leg off like a light saber out of 'Star Wars,''' Degener said.

The divers cut through a tough rubber sheath that covered the sub, then through an outer steel hull. They used torches to cut through a layer of support beams, pipes and wiring. Finally, they used the cutting machine to create a 6-foot-wide hole in the 3-inch steel forming the sub's inner hull.

On Oct. 25, as Russian divers entered the Kursk, Degener observed from pressurized living quarters, watching television images from cameras mounted on the divers' helmets.

By the time the operation was through Nov. 7, Degener had made 16 dives from the Regalia to the Kursk.

Visiting the Kursk would have been a perfect adventure, he said, if not for the sad reality.

``I've been on a Russian submarine and I've had the honor of being the only American to have been there,'' Degener said.