At Comsubin, the new diving licenses were handed over to the students of the Poseidon course

(To Marina Militare)
02/12/17

In the presence of the Chief of Staff of the Navy, team admiral Valter Girardelli, on 1 December 2017 the traditional ceremony for awarding patents to students who successfully passed the 2017 ordinary diver course

The anniversary was anticipated by the deposition of a crown in the Chapel of Varignano in memory of the fallen, carried out by the students of the course Poseidon in the presence of the commander of the "Teseo Tesei" divers and raiders group, rear-admiral Paolo Pezzutti.

The awarding of the patent and the blue diver's beret celebrates the end of an intense training period lasting 10 months, through which 9 sailors have been selected this year who, from today, will continue their service in the ranks of the Operational Group Divers (GOS) between continuous training and demanding operational missions.

In fact, from tomorrow morning, these young divers, 4 officers, 1 volunteer on a four-year short stay and 4 volunteers on a short annual stay (VFP1) will be assigned to the Ready-to-Use Department of the GOS to begin their specialist training with the most performing diving equipment existing today. . In particular, the VFP1 personnel who attended the course were able to do so thanks to the new enrollment method that allows access to Comsubin through a competition open to civilians that starts with a simple online registration to be made on the Navy website.

Becoming part of the Underwater Operational Group, means integrating into excellence in the area of ​​national defense in the maritime context that extends its capabilities not only to the military field, but also to numerous activities in favor of the community, especially in the health, scientific and social fields.

As indeed the Chief of Staff in his speech recalled: "these activities range from safeguarding public safety, to the inspection of wrecks of damaged boats or aircraft, to the inspection or recovery of archaeological finds, to name just a few activities involving divers. The service to the Nation, to its citizens, to the community unfolds both by defending them, protecting them, safeguarding them militarily in carrying out maritime security and defense operations, and by contributing to the development of the country system, with the professionalism, skills and knowledge of our sectors. niche, difficult to find in other areas".

There have been many operations that, in recent years, have seen Comsubin divers busy both in Italy and abroad, but the best known to the public are those carried out in favor of the community that have had a strong emotional impact on the population: the intervention on the island of Giglio following the sinking of the Costa Concordia (2012), in Genoa following the demolition of the Port Tower (2013) and in the Mediterranean Sea following the most tragic shipwrecks in recent Mediterranean history (2013 in Lampedusa, 2015 in the Central Mediterranean).

But the current year was also a very profitable year for the GOS. Thanks to the fundamental and indispensable support of Nave Antaeus, the Naval Unit for underwater operations, a saturation dive was performed on the wreck of the submarine Veniero in Sicily in favor of the Superintendency of the Sea of ​​the Region and, in the waters in front of Terracina, the black box of the Eurofighter Typhoon of the Air Force recently found in the sea was found and recovered.

As part of the daily activities of remediation of explosive ordnance from January 2017 the divers have neutralized a total of 21.684 residual war from Italian seas, rivers and lakes. 

But these men are also in Antarctica to direct all the dives carried out by researchers of ENEA, they have immersed themselves in many sites of archaeological interest on behalf of the MiBACT and offer their work to the MiSE as regards the underwater control activities of the platforms offshore.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the collaborations with the Health Authorities of La Spezia and Taranto through which treatments of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (OTI) are carried out, in election and in emergency, in favor of the population. These therapies, carried out through the decompression chambers supplied to the Armed Forces, are conducted by the diver under the supervision of Comsubin's Medical and Nurse personnel in Underwater and Hyperbaric Medicine. During the 2017 in the OTI Centers of Comsubin and the Military Hospital of Taranto, a total of approximately 2.000 treatments were carried out in favor of patients of the relative provinces.