t relatively uneventfully, until March 26, 1966, when the determination that he had originally called upon to help him become a Navy diver would seem almost feeble in comparison to the tenacity that he would need in order to stay a Navy diver. On January 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52G bomber carrying a hydrogen bomb collided with a KC-135 refueling tanker off the coast of Palo mares, Spain. In March, aboard the USS Hoist, Brashear and his crew were taking part in efforts to retrieve the nuclear weapon in 2,500 feet (758m) of water. Brashear had rigged a three-legged "spider" with grappling hooks on each leg. It was attached to the submersible Alvin, which would use it to attach parachute rigging to the bomb. The apparatus worked beautifully and the bomb was brought to the surface. At 5:00 p.m., a shift in the position of the ship that had pulled alongside the Hoist to receive the bomb caused a chain of events that almost killed Carl Brashear and seemed certainly to have killed his career in the Navy. During efforts to bring the bomb aboard, a swell caused an unexpected movement in the ship's position. The timing was catastrophic. The atomic weapon slipped from the parachute rigging and sank again, but even worse, a pipe broke loose from one of the ships and became a deadly missile. Brashear saw the pipe break. "I got all my sailors out of the way, but I didn't get myself out of the way," he says. The injuries he suffered were overwhelming, and so sudden that at first, he didn't know anything was wrong. Only when he tried to put weight on his leg did he realize the extent of the damage. He jokes about it today. "I found that I didn't have a leg to stand on," he chuckles. Most of the flesh on his leg was ripped away, leaving his foot attached only by the tendons in the back of his calf. Bones were exposed and the bleeding was profuse. He also suffered head and internal injuries. The dive boat did not carry a doctor. The corpsman did w...
