Introduction to New Naval Undersea Museum Foundation President Merle Vogel
I was born in Seattle, started elementary school in Issaquah, moved to Richland, Washington and graduated from high school there. I joined the Navy and served on two nuclear submarines and two diesel submarines before getting into deep submergence. Assigned to Trieste II, I was part of the Navy crew that monitored the construction of Trieste, DSV-1 that sits in the museum parking lot. My next deep submergence assignment was as part of the “factory crew” of DSRV‑2. It wasn’t yet Avalon while I was on it. The name came later. The initial DSRV-2 crew went to the factory in Sunnyvale where DSRV-2 was being built and received training by Lockheed trainers. DSRV-2 finally left the factory in Sunnyvale and went to San Diego. From DSRV-2, my next assignment was Deep Submergence School where we wrote the curriculum and taught new operators how to operate the DSRV. My next assignment was DSRV-1 Mystic (the DSRVs had been named by now) as Chief of the Boat. We took Mystic through OpEval and she was placed in service. Following that I started LMET school in Rota, Spain, commissioned USS Yorktown (CG 48) as Command Master Chief, and retired from active duty at HSL-41 as Command Master Chief. After retirement I worked for the Navy as an Instructional Systems Specialist using technology to improve training. –Submitted by Merle Vogel