Victor Vescovo

Never get into a vehicle where their fear of failure is greater than their fear of dying.

Good advice.

Good advice.

You want people that are a little bit nervous.

They're more careful that way.

And I can't tell you how many times I aborted a submersible dive because I wasn't comfortable with a piece of equipment, the environmental conditions, or any number of things.

I'd say, nope, not today.

That's probably why I'm still here.

I'm really proud of those dives.

Those were the most exciting dives.

We found the two deepest shipwrecks in history, the USS Johnston in 2021, and then the USS Samuel B. Roberts, the destroyer escort.

Both went down during the largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, specifically the Battle of Samar, which was a part of the larger battle, where a small ship

destroyer flotilla took on the cream of the Japanese Navy, including the largest battleship ever constructed, the Yamato.

So few people know about this battle in 1944 where American sailors, with complete and utter disregard for their own safety, charged, in some cases without orders, directly into the teeth of Japanese battleship squadrons to protect the small escort carriers they were guarding.

It was

the epitome of what we hope for in the naval service in terms of bravery and duty and all those other wonderful things.

And they won.

By the end of the day, they had attacked with such ferocity, including with the naval aviators that were also doing incredibly brave things.

The Japanese taking significant casualties from these tiny ships that they actually thought were cruisers,

that they turned around by evening and fled the battle.