Searle then served two years as Chief Engineer on the USS Providence before attending the Command and Staff Course of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island in 1961 [REF].
As the Navy Supervisor of Salvage, Searle was responsible for the planning and buildup for the salvage and harbor clearance forces in South Vietnam, as well as many major salvage and deep ocean search and recovery projects such as the location of the sunken nuclear submarine USS Scorpion.