Born in Oakland, California, Mr. Newport was part of a military family. His father, Col. E. Newport (USA, retired), was an Army aviator and flew Bell H-13 helicopters during the Korean conflict (for a MASH unit), as well as assorted Army aircraft during two tours in Vietnam, later having an integral part of the development of the Apache helicopter in the late 1970s.

Curt Newport entered the underwater field in 1974, when he began work fabricating ship fenders and later on, deep saturation diving equipment for Ocean Systems, Inc. He helped construct the first 1,500 foot commercial saturation diving system in 1976.

He left Ocean systems in 1977 to attend the Commercial Diving Center, near Long Beach, California, where he learned the basics of air and mixed-gas diving. Later that year, he was chosen to be part of the operations team for the SCORPIO I, a remotely operated underwater vehicle developed by a California based aerospace contractor. For a three year period, he piloted the SCORPIO, TROV, and TREC Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) as well as the Nekton Alpha manned submersible on various underwater missions including coral harvesting (Taiwan), pipeline inspections (Gulf of Mexico), oil production platform inspections (North Sea), and bottom surveys (Mediterranean Sea), and the closure of the Ixtoc I blowout (in the Gulf of Mexico with famed oilwell fire fighter Red Adair).

Mr. Newport joined Ocean Search, Inc. later in 1980 to work with the SCARAB II underwater vehicle during Atlantic sea trials (off the Bell Telephone Cable Ship Long Lines), and cable repair work in the Sea of Japan for KDD. Aware of the increasing complexity of underwater vehicles, he left Ocean Search in 1981 to return to college for further education. Mr. Newport returned to the underwater field in 1985 when he was retained as a consultant by Eastport International to operate the SCARAB II ROV during repair and cable burial work on TAT-4 (Trans-Atlantic Telephone Cable No. 4) working from the Canadian Coast Guard Ship John Cabot.

Although the mission was expected to last only two weeks, Mr. Newport remained on the ship for over five months when it was pressed into service by the Canadian Government to salvage wreckage from Air India Flight 182, which crashed off the coast of Ireland on June 23 in 6,200 feet of water. From July through November of 1985, he piloted the SCARAB vehicle across a 15 square mile debris field inspecting aircraft wreckage and attaching tools and liftlines to components targeted for recovery during the unprecedented operation. It was during this mission that the concept of finding and recovering Liberty Bell 7 emerged.

In 1986, he was asked to participate in the recovery of wreckage from the left and right hand boosters from the Space Shuttle Challenger. He operated the Gemini underwater vehicle during numerous inspection and recovery dives off of the Swedish salvage ship Stena Workhorse. Mr. Newport helped recover the heaviest single piece of booster wreckage, the aft skirt assembly (over 14,000 lbs.), by driving the Gemini vehicle into the open end of the solid rocket booster. He also succeeded in attaching liftlines to the first booster fragment recovered which showed evidence of the cause of the disaster. He later helped recover an Air Force F-16 fighter aircraft off the coast of Japan and supported the conceptual design of the Deep Drone 8000 ROV, on behalf of the US Navy's Supervisor of Salvage and Diving.

Mr. Newport also began a detailed historical and technical investigation into the loss of the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft by examining previously classified NASA and US Navy documents, interviewing retired NASA and Navy personnel, and formulating the first realistic operational plan to locate and recover the sunken Mercury capsule.

He left Eastport, Int. in 1988 to work in robotics integration for NASA's planned Space Station Freedom. His primary accomplishments in the space robotics field have been as a co-author of RSIS (Robotic Systems Integration Standards), TAM (Task Analysis Methodology), and investigating the use of the Flight Telerobotic Servicer (FTS) in conjunction with the Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV) for remote satellite servicing.

Newport also organized and participated in two expeditions to the location where Liberty Bell 7 sank in 1961 using the Deep Ocean Search Systems (DOSS) in 1992 and Magellan 725 ROV in 1993 to conduct preliminary investigations of the area. However, the limited time available at the site precluded a through examination of the seafloor and the Mercury capsule remained undiscovered at that time.

In 1994, Mr. Newport began working as a consulting field engineer for Margus Company, Inc. in support of submarine telephone cable inspection, burial, and maintenance. In the summer of 1994, he participated in the installation of 179 kilometers of telephone cable (CANTAT-3) near Halifax, Nova Scotia, on behalf of Teleglobe of Canada, BT Marine, and STC Submarine Cables with the Sea Plow V cable burial system (owned by AT&T). He also worked in the Mediterranean Sea on behalf of France Telecomm and Alcatel with a SCORPIO 2000 underwater vehicle on board the cable ship N/C Raymond Croze supporting the survey and burial of numerous French and Spanish fiber-optic submarine telephone cable systems.

In 1996, Newport joined Oceaneering Technologies and supported beach trials for the US Navy's Sea Tractor cable burial vehicle. Later in the year, Newport supervised the inspection and burial of several underwater fiber-optic cables in the South China Sea near Taiwan and the Philippines with the Phoenix II ROV on behalf of Cable and Wireless, Alcatel, and ITDC.

Newport also located and salvaged a Marine F-18 fighter aircraft and Navy HH-60 Seahawk helicopter from the Atlantic Ocean as well as an E-3B Viking aircraft from the Mediterranean Sea near Haifa, Israel. The Mediterranean operation also resulted in the finding of an intact and rare Royal Air Force Bristol Beaufighter, lost during the Second World War. Mr. Newport later succeeded in identifying the aircraft and the circumstances of its loss. All of these operations were conducted on behalf of the Navy's Supervisor of Salvage and Diving.

He also participated in the TWA Flight 800 salvage operation with the Navy's MR-1 ROV while stationed on board the USS Grasp (ARS-51) and Grapple (ARS-53), both combat salvage vessels. MR-1 ROV operations on the Grasp resulted in the finding and recovery of both the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), four fan-jet engines, over half of the crashed Boeing 747 jetliner, and about 50 crash victims. An accomplished photographer, his TWA 800 photographs were used by the NTSB to help document aircraft wreckage recovered during the investigation. He also helped compile a Marine Disaster Response Plan on behalf of the Navy detailing how to support similar large-scale salvage missions in the future.

He has also been involved in several underwater communications cable inspection and repair operations with the US Navy's CRS ROVs during classified missions on the USNS Zeus (TARC-7) supporting the Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center, based in Williamsburg, Virginia. These operations have been deemed vital to maintaining the Navy's ability to monitor the movements of hostile ships and submarines along specific travel routes in the North Atlantic Ocean near England.

Mr. Newport's ROV piloting experience also supported a 1998 expedition to the sunken White Star ocean liner RMS Titanic on behalf of RMS Titanic, Inc., the Discovery Channel, and Dateline NBC while participating in a live television broadcast from the famed shipwreck from 12,600 feet underwater, the first time this had been accomplished. The unprecedented event was aired on schedule and distributed through more than 100 countries internationally. Newport's piloting of the Magellan 725 deep diving ROV gave scientists and historians on board the Research Vessel Ocean Voyager a more detailed view of critical areas of the ship than had been previously possible.

In April of 1999 and supported by funding from the Discovery Channel, Newport organized and led a third expedition in a search for Grissom's sunken Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft in the three-mile deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean, using the Ocean Explorer 6000 side-scan sonar and Magellan 725 ROV. After an intensive examination of a 24 square mile area, known as the Blake Basin, Newport's team identified 88 individual sonar targets, many of which could have been the missing Mercury capsule. However, on May 1, he sent the Magellan ROV to the bottom to visually inspect a series of eight "high-probability" targets clustered around Newport's best estimate of the location of Liberty Bell 7. Incredibly, after less than six hours on the seafloor in waters 16,043 feet deep, Grissom's long-lost spacecraft was finally discovered sitting upright on the ocean floor with the words "UNITED STATES" and "LIBERTY BELL 7" clearly visible on the craft's dark shingled exterior; the capsule ended up being the first of eight targets. Unfortunately, after the historic find, heavy seas precluded recovering the artifact and in the process of recovering the Magellan, it too was lost at sea.

On July 4th the same year Newport led a final expedition to the Liberty Bell 7 site using the newly constructed Ocean Discovery ROV to attach his specially designed recovery tools to the top of Grissom's long-lost spacecraft. Following a series of dives to the bottom, at 2:20 am on July 20th, the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, Liberty Bell 7 was gently lifted from the rolling seas and placed on the deck of the salvage ship amidst cheers from the entire crew. And on July 21st, thirty-eight years to the day that Grissom lifted off from Cape Canaveral, housed inside of a custom-built steel transport container, Liberty Bell-7 was returned to dry land once and for all. The spacecraft is currently on a three-year nationwide tour and the events of the two expeditions were document in the Discovery Channel film, “In Search of Liberty Bell 7,” broadcast on that channel in December of 1999. The Liberty Bell-7 recovery remains the deepest commercial salvage operation in history.

In the year 2000, Mr. Newport led two Discovery Channel sponsored expeditions to the Philippine Sea in an effort to locate and film the Heavy Cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA 35), which was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine on July 30, 1945. Unfortunately, assorted equipment problems and bad weather at the height of typhoon season have so far precluded finding the sunken warship. The next year, he led a private expedition back to the Liberty Bell 7 location in an effort to identify a mysterious sonar target discovered during the search for Grissom’s sunken space capsule. That target turned out to be deepest wooden shipwreck ever discovered (a 19th century merchant ship lost in almost 16,000 feet of water). Over a series of dives using two Russian Mir manned submersibles operating from the Research Vessel Akademik Keldysh, numerous artifacts were recovered from the sunken sailing ship including over 1,500 Spanish silver and gold coins, two flintlock pistols, a wooden sextant and telescope, as well as numerous glass and ceramic artifacts.

During his work with underwater vehicles, he has accumulated over 4000 hours of piloting time during 60 undersea missions and operated Canadian, U.S., and British vehicles in the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, English Channel, Mediterranean Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Campeche, Formosa Straits, Sea of Japan, Straits of Sicily, South China Sea, the Pacific Ocean, and the Philippine Sea.

Mr. Newport has published one book and numerous magazine articles about aviation and technology, among them, “Lost Spacecraft: The Search for Liberty Bell 7” (a 312 page account of the recovery of Grissom’s Mercury spacecraft). He was also cited by NASA for his role in Space Shuttle Challenger salvage operations and robotics support to the Space Station Freedom program as well as the NTSB, US Navy, and Oceaneering for his support of the TWA Flight 800 accident investigation. He has also spoken on behalf of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, St. Louis Science Center, the Kansas Aviation Museum, Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and been interviewed by various media organizations such as NBC’s Today Show and Evening News, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, CBS Morning News, USA Today, Florida Today, British Broadcasting Company, National Public Radio, CBS National Radio, Reuters, and the Associated Press.

• Hobbies: My Rocketry Activities - Curt Newpot

Copyright © 2004 Curt Newport
Designed by www.bridalshowcase.com/DarlaPhoto