Cornish Shipwrecks (volume 3) The Isles of Scilly

New York: Taplinger Publishing Company. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. 1971. 1st American Edition; 1st Printing. Hardcover. B&W Illustrations; This book is in Near Fine condition and has a Near Fine dust jacket. The book and its contents are in clean, bright condition. The text pages are clean and bright. The dust jacket is crisp and clean. "Born in Norfolk and raised in Great Yarmouth before being evacuated to Oxford during the Second World War, he went to a sea training school (TS. Mercury, Hamble) at the age of 14. Larn taught himself to dive in 1947, using a German-made Dräger U-boat escape set in the River Thames. He then joined the Merchant Navy where he served his apprenticeship as a deck-officer with the South American Saint Line and eventually became 2nd Mate. In 1950 he transferred to the Royal Navy where he stayed for 22 years. As a Chief Petty Officer Mechanician/diver he served in Korea and initiated diving from Dragonfly helicopters to recover ram-jet un-manned gunnery target drone aircraft off Malta, being dropped into the sea wearing diving equipment with Petty Officer John Guppy, up to five miles offshore, to assist a rescue tug in recovering the targets intact. They were possibly the first divers in the Royal Navy to operate using diving apparatus from helicopters, long before SAR divers. He also participated in diving expeditions all over the world. Larn then specialised in air-launched weapons, Firestreak, Redtop, Sidewinder, Bullpup, Mk.43 and 44 homing torpedoes, and the 2000lb HEMC nuclear bomb, and was Chief Petty Officer i/c the Guided Weapons Section on board HMS Hermes for three years, which required Positive Security Vetting to Top Secret - Atomic. " (from Wikipedia) .