Jim Suit - History

History

The petrochemical industry was unwilling to finance their research, but a grant was obtained from the British government, and a new company, DHB Construction (for Dennison, Hibberd and Borrow), was formed to develop the suit. The first JIM suit was completed in November 1971 and underwent initial trials aboard HMS Reclaim in early 1972. Two dives were conducted to depths in excess of 400 ft (121 m), and were limited only by the depth of the ambient divers providing support. Further development and testing continued until March 4, 1974, when Mike Humphrey conducted a chamber dive to the equivalent of 1,000 ft (300 m). The US Navy Experimental Diving Unit conducted tests in 1976.

In spite of the successful tests, the offshore petroleum industry still expressed little interest in the suit and it was not until 1975, when Oceaneering acquired DHB Construction and exclusive rights to the application of JIM suits in the oilfields, that the suit achieved success. This did not however please the British government, who after contributing money to the suit's development, did not want to see it being "given" to an American company over a British one. However, at the time, British diving concerns, most notably 2W, doubted the suit's abilities and therefore passed on purchasing the operating rights.

Its first commercial deployment was in 1974, when JIM suits were used in the recovery of lost oil tanker anchor chains in a Canary Islands harbor. In 1976 the JIM suit was used for a series of four dives on PanArtic's Hecla M25 well which were made through a hole cut in an ice floe 16 feet (5 m) thick, on which the rig was positioned, the first dive setting a record for the longest working dive below 490 feet (149 m), five hours and 59 minutes at a depth of 905 feet (275 m). In 1979, oceanographer Sylvia Earle set a human depth record of 1250 feet (381m) using a JIM suit.

The Arctic dives of 1976 proved that the JIM was capable of performing oilfield operations in very cold and very deep water; the average water temperature at the wellhead was measured at -1.6C (29°F), while the average internal suit temperature was about 10C (50°F). The operators needed no more than a heavy woolen sweater for thermal protection. The following year the JIM suit was used on over 35 jobs with an average duration of over two hours and in depths varying from 300 to 1,130 feet (100 to 394 m), and by 1981, 19 JIM suits had been produced.

The JIM suit and its variations enjoyed great success in the offshore oil industry for many years, although their effectiveness was hampered by the unwillingness of oil companies to install walkways around submerged sections of oil platforms. An experimental thruster pack that would connect to the existing JIM models was designed, but the suit gradually fell out of use with Oceaneering as their new WASP suit, a mid-water vehicle, became the favourite of contractors. The JIMs were still used by the company during the 1980s, including in a joint SAM and WASP recovery of a Wellington Bomber from Loch Ness in 1986, and were often used as back-up standby units for the rapidly-advancing WASP suit. By 1990, the JIM suit was no longer commercially operated. Today, some of them may be viewed at museums across the world, along with many lightweight replica versions.

The JIM Suit is, perhaps, best known to the general public for its appearance in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, although it played a larger role in the 1989 sci-fi/horror film DeepStar Six.