creating the arc-oxygen underwater cutting torch. A diving task at Pearl Harbor was the recovery of bodies. It was a gruesome task that was eventually stopped as bodies would simply come apart when disturbed, from being submerged too long. The creation of Naval Construction Battalions to build advance bases in the Pacific Theater put more diving assignments in front of the Navy, enough that the Seabees had a school of their own to qualify 2nd class divers. CBs would put men in the water from the tropics to the Arctic Circle. In the Aleutian Islands Naval Construction Battalion 4 had divers doing salvage on the Russian freighter SS Turksib in water. In the tropics Seabee divers would be sent close to an enemy airfield to retrieve a downed Japanese aircraft. At Halavo on Florida Island, divers from the 27th CB recovered a Disburser's safe full of money plus changed 160 props on vessels of all sizes. The 27th Naval Construction Battalion logged 2,550 diving hours, with 1,345 classified as "extra hazardous". Seabees would also blur the definition of diver with the development of the Underwater Demolition Teams. Another historic note to the Seabees is that they had African American divers in the 34th CB. Those men fabricated their diving gear in the field as instructed at diving school. For depths less than a modified USN Mk III or MK IV gas mask was considered acceptable and preferred by the men of the 27th CB. Twice, while at Milne Bay, the 105th CB sent special diving details on undisclosed missions. Divers in the 301st CB placed as much as 50 tons of explosives a day to keep their dredges productive. However, the divers of CB 96 used 1,727,250 lbs of dynamite to blast of coral for the ship repair facility on Manicani Island, as an element of the Naval Operating Base Leyte-Samar. Their primary diving gear was modified Navy Mk III and Navy Mk IV gas masks. The war itself produced an unending demand for underwater ship repair and salvage. In New York, capsized at the dock leading to the Navy creating a Salvage school right there to deal with the issue. For the next year the Navy had 75 divers working on her salvage. Each of the fleet's repair ships had divers. Six of them from were put to the test using the new technology of underwater cutting and welding.