Navy EOD divers then dropped buoys into the sea using high-powered military GPS units that can pinpoint a spot on the ocean smaller than a coffee table.It took about one hour to reach the crash site from the coastguard station at Moriches. Finally, Zipgun would allocate the new targets for that day, chosen from the thousands of sites that had been identified by the sonar ships and laser cameras. Symptoms include a feeling of euphoria often likened to smoking a joint Your ability to make rational decisions is greatly impaired. Some divers also experience a loss of manual dexterity, and numbness of the tongue and lips."I think I had narcosis once during the TWA operation," said Vincent. "I remember looking at my gauges and then not knowing why I was looking at them. It's like that feeling when you walk into the kitchen then stand there wondering why you came in."The day began with a briefing by a lieutenant commander from the Navy in a tent at the back of the Moriches coastguard station His radio tag was "Zipgun".

Vincent compared Zipgun's briefings with a football coach giving the team a pep-talk in the locker-room before the big game. He would congratulate teams that had made important finds, but remind those that had come up empty the day before that they had, none the less, performed a vital task They had eliminated another target. If you've got plenty of air, you've got time to cut yourself out But if your air is limited it gets difficult You're working against the clock And at that time we were only using one tank. So we didn't have a big margin of error."Knowing that it would be in for the long haul, and in order to minimise the potential risks, the Navy had decided early on that only a small number of divers, the hard-hat divers who worked on the densest debris field, would use decompression chambers They would stay down for an hour. Scuba divers like Vinnie were to roam the perimeters of the debris field and limit the duration of their dives to 15 minutes.It was pushing the envelope, anyway. According to the Navy's own decompression tables the maximum bottom-time at 130ft is actually 10 minutes.

But because the plane was lying at depths that varied from 120 to 130ft, the Navy decided that it could allow the divers to stay down for 15 Five minutes could make all the difference. It could also be extremely dangerous.Narcosis or "rapture of the deep" results from the increased intake of nitrogen the deeper a diver goes Some divers may experience it at 50 or 70ft All divers will be affected at 250ft. But what Vincent most remembers from his first dive was the child's sneaker he found under a piece of wreckage.Swimming around the wreckage of the 747 was difficult and dangerous, especially because of the cables and wires on board which spewed out of all sides like piano wire "Entanglements are a major factor. One diver found a sheet of music by Marcel Dadi, a French guitarist who was en route back to Paris after being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville Everywhere, there were bottles of cologne and toiletries. "I remember seeing cloth napkins, which told me it was First Class It was good visibility that day: 20 to 30ft We dropped down .. into just a tangle, a mess of wreckage.

If you didn't already know it was a plane, you'd think you had landed in a junk yard. It was jagged metal, electrical cables, and sheets of aluminium, all twisted and mangled and torn in a huge pile Only the seats told you it was a plane. They were strewn all over the place."The plane was lying in 125 to 135ft of water. This part of the Atlantic is constantly dragged by scallop boats, so the ocean floor was mostly flat, and featureless.