SUPER SUBS
DeepFlight
By: Jake Townsend - Photography: Courtesy of DeepFlight and Tom Perkins
Flight of
the Navigator
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The number of large yachts carrying submersible craft amongst their toy
inventory is certainly on the increase as a growing number of owners and guests
taking their exploration of the oceans to a new level. In this issue we speak to
Graham Hawkes of DeepFlight to discover more about his magnificent
underwater flying machines and Super Falcon owner Tom Perkins, who has
enjoyed exhilarating subsea adventures since acquiring the first DeepFlight
machine during his build of the imperious Maltese Falcon.
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T
Though it is often to the stars that
we look when considering undiscovered frontiers, it is easy to
overlook that vast mystery that covers the majority of our planet and yet remains unknown to all but
a handful of our species. Even for those whose love
for our oceans calls them to water’s surface, what
lies beneath the waves is largely out of reach due
to constraints of both physiology and technology–
unless of course, you’re Graham Hawkes; engineer,
inventor, entrepreneur and owner of DeepFlight
Submarines, whose underwater craft are among
the most advanced and exciting personal submarines on the market.
First having come to public attention on the decks
of Tom Perkins’ legendary sailing yacht The Mal224
When asked about the
motivation behind his designing
such a dynamic submersible,
Hawke told u: "I wanted to swim
with the big animals."
tese Falcon, these sleek, winged machines are
more aircraft than submersible in spirit. Designed to
‘fly’ underwater, Hawkes’ inventions have pushed
at the boundaries of a largely unchanged submersible technological landscape, and have brought
dimension to the underwater exploration and
recreation experience. There is simply no other
underwater craft that matches those produced by
DeepFlight. With the recent announcement of
DeepFlight’s newest submarine, the Dragon, the
company’s innovative array of personal underwater craft is now undeniably unlike anything on the
commercial market.
Hawkes’ subs glide through the water, allowing for
maneuverability and control that make contact
with our oft hidden undersea life easier than was
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previously imagined. “I wanted to fly with the big
animals,” says Hawkes of the impetus to devote his
life’s work to these aquatic airplanes. And fly he
has: Hawkes is rife with tales of adventure in his
craft that includes encounters with all manner of
sea creature including a graceful aquatic dance with
a giant female manta ray, and a very close
encounter with a great white shark in Mexico-- the
latter with Sir Richard Branson as co-pilot.
Having begun his career working at a defense contractor, Graham Hawkes was on course to later
markedly influence submarine technology and perception. “Immediately after college I ended up with
a defense contractor working for the Royal Navy
where I was involved with special manned submersibles for military,” says Hawkes. His work soon
began to focus on designing and building innovative
submersible craft for offshore oil and gas exploration and development—mainly used in North Sea.
Until Graham Hawkes, submarine design and technology in general focused on submerging a craft to
depth, with little attention paid to maneuverability
save for the most rudimentary of capabilities. Subs
could go up and down, forward and backward: Graham Hawkes wanted to fly—but first he had to sink.
“As it was with Chuck Yeager,” Hawkes explains,
“they needed a small craft to break the sound barrier–our first breakthrough to underwater flight
was called DeepFlight 1.”
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It was when Steve Fossett, the late American businessman and adventurer, called on Hawkes and
Hawkes Ocean Technologies to design a potentially
record-breaking submersible, dubbed “Challenger
Deep”, that would take Fossett 37,000 feet to the
bottom of sea-- the lowest recorded depth at solo.
Though Fossett perished in an unrelated accident
before the Challenger Deep was put to the test,
Richard Branson and his company Virgin Oceanic,
later purchased the craft and are still the owners
today. Though a well-known film director managed
to break the official record before the Challenger
could, Hawkes is satisfied that he created a techno226
Graham Hawkes returns from a
dive with Richard Branson in
Mexico, during which they enjoyed
an encounter with a large Great
White shark.
logically superior craft that is still very much up to
the challenge. Branson is now committed to diving
to the ocean’s five deepest points in the Challenger.
Hawkes, however, had bigger goals in mind.
“I was looking for new challenges,” says Hawkes, “Up
until the Challenger Deep, my biggest challenge was
getting to bottom of the ocean for science. Most
subs are launched from the surface, sink straight
down and wiggle around a little bit at the bottom.
The ocean is a three dimensional space, however; a
submersible craft should take advantage of this.” It
was this innovative thinking that lead to the development of Hawkes’ underwater “airplanes”, and
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Though not available to contribute to
this feature at the time of going to
press, Dietrich Mateschitz –founder
of Red Bull energy drink company–
and his family are obviously enjoying
their time with their new Super Falcon
at their private island in Fiji.
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TOM PERKINS:
THE FALCON
AND DR. NO.
There is no one quite like Tom Perkins: he
is one of America’s leading businessmen,
the father of venture capitalism, a
groundbreaking engineer, an adventurer,
certainly a raconteur—a sometime
writer— and unsurprisingly, the very first
person to purchase a Super Falcon for
private use. Perkins’ leadership in Silicon
Valley, including pivotal roles at SpectraPhysics, Hewlett Packard and
Genentech among others, may have
made him his fortune, but it is his taste
for adventure and eye for the very best
that sets him apart from other visionary
business leaders.
“Graham (Hawkes) had built a prototype
of the Super Falcon,” says Perkins,
recounting his first encounter with the
craft. “I took one look at it and instantly
knew how it worked—though I had no
interest in buying the thing I was looking
at; it was crude.” But Perkins was
intrigued, and later visited Hawkes at his
Northern California headquarters where
it took under an hour for the two men to
come to agreement: two Super Falcons
would be built simultaneously, the first
one going to Mr. Perkins, of course.
Graham would have to settle on the
second, the Super Falcon II.
Perkins’ Super Falcon was, in many
ways, a perfect fit for another famous
Falcon, this one the world’s largest
sailing yacht “The Maltese Falcon”,
which at the time had only recently been
completed. It has since been sold, “at a
profit,” Perkins mentions in recounting
the story. Though Tom Perkins is well
known for his business acumen, The
Maltese Falcon is a testament to his
engineering genius. The yacht is still one
of the most advanced ever built, and
entirely designed and built by the man
himself. “I did it to prove that it could be
done,” he says of the extraordinary ship.
“I was the contractor, I managed the
project myself, I designed the sailing
system and the widgets, I wrote the
software-- I spent years designing it.”
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puts Graham Hawkes in a league of his own.
With this evolution of undersea exploration in mind,
Hawkes utilized the sum of his vast knowledge of
submersible design and engineering, beginning with
its early military application, then industrial use, its
application in science and exploration and finally, for
the pure satisfaction and joy of flying through the
ocean’s vast blue underworld. “Up until we created
the Super Falcon, there was no market for submersibles other than for government use; following
the Challenger, I decided that I would build a craft
that I wanted-- not for anyone else,” he says.
“With the DeepFlight and all of our craft, you don’t
sink to the seabed and look at a crab-- you’re flying
in beautiful blue space with a shark or a whale. You
are truly in a different world.” Now producing
underwater craft several generations removed
from the first, ‘experimental’ underwater flying
subs, Hawkes’ inventions have created a new kind
of transportation—and inspired an entirely new way
to think about our interaction and travel underwater. “If you are seeking adventure and your own
satisfaction, then the best thing you can hope for is
to have encounters underwater with the big animals: whales, manta rays and sharks. We have done
that. Those experiences blow your mind.”
The result of Hawkes’ passionate pursuit was the
Super Falcon, the 4th generation of his flying submarines. “The Super Falcon is where we perfected
everything—I’m still in love with it,” says Hawkes.
The design, which does indeed look like a small fixed
wing aircraft, is striking; so much so that when Tom
For anyone who has seen her in person,
with its gleaming carbon fiber hull and
towering masts, there is no doubt of his
mastery of the medium. He also has a
great sense of humor: while still in his
possession, nautical flags spelled out the
message, "Rarely does one have the
privilege to witness vulgar ostentation
on such a grand scale." It isn’t known
whether her new owners had the
gumption to keep the missive.
Given pride of place on the foredeck of
the groundbreaking vessel, the Super
Falcon was companion to many of
Perkins’ adventurers in seas around the
world. “It is enormous fun,” he says of
the sub. “It’s really an underwater
airplane; you can dive it straight down,
go straight up, do rolls and aerobatics-you scare the wits out of people when
you do that – it’s a lot of fun to be ten to
fifteen feet below surface, to see all of
the marine life.” He used the sub in the
Caribbean, in Mexico and later
extensively in the South Pacific, where
the sub found a new home on Perkins’
latest vessel, now up for sale, Dr. No—a
37- meter converted military vessel that
Perkins and crew used to explore the
seas around Palau, Tahiti, Australia, New
Caledonia and the Kingdom of Tonga,
where he famously became the first
human being to dive with Humpback
whales at depth—in the Super Falcon, of
course. “Because it hadn’t been done
before,” he says, “ we didn’t know if they
would flee, or even attack—it turned out
they were very curious. They came
close to us and saw that we were
people; they did ballets for us; it was
quite exciting.”
Perkins estimates that he’s logged
between 120 and 130 hours in his Super
Falcon, “and has never had any
operational problems.” After nearly four
years worth of adventures, he’s recently
put Dr. No up for sale, and with it, the
Super Falcon. Now, instead of seeing him
gliding into the sea in his submarine, you
might catch a glimpse of him speeding
along Northern California’s highways in
his recently delivered Pagani Huayra—
the very first in the United States. “It’s
an incredible car—a pure sports car,” he
says. And he would know.
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PILOTING
SUPER FALCON
CPT.
CHRISTIAN
TRUTER:
MASTER
OF DR. NO
Having explored many places around the
world with Super Falcon, we were excited
by the amazing conditions and
oceanography of French Polynesia. Our
first day of Submarine operations off
Anse Amyot was particularly memorable.
It dawned clear with no wind and a tiny
swell on the outer reef. I was to be on the
first dive with Mr.P and after our pre-dive
check we were towed by the tender out of
the pass towards the gin clear water of
the Pacific. Our first dive took us north at a
depth around 100 to 130’ (30-40m)
through schools of reef fish and sharks.
After about 30-minutes we took the
Falcon down the wall and into the darker
waters. Along this wall we found a large
chain of marine caves at around 60-80
meters, these caves may never have been
seen by man before as they lie in water no
often dived and never at this depth. It is a
remarkable thing to see something and
know you are first. Soon we were back at
the pass and after flying in entrance
through schools of feeding fish we
surfaced and were towed back to Dr.No.
After a quick lunch we managed two more
dives before the light faded and the deep
water turned an inky black. The next
morning the wind was again light and the
sea flat. So we jumped straight in to the
Super Falcon and explored the wall to the
south of the pass. In the south there were
no more caves but we did spend several
minutes traversing a school of pelagic
trigger fish (the biggest school I have ever
seen and anyone that I have talked to
about it have ever heard of). We then
headed back to the pass to fly along the
edge of the drop-off with the sharks and
barracuda. At the entrance we had a
wonderful flight in congress with a huge
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"We peered into a
chain of marine
caves no human
had previously
cast eyes on..."
Perkins, founder of legendary Silicon Valley venture
capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Buyers and
designer of the world’s largest sailing yacht, saw it
at the Monaco Yacht Show, he was intrigued
enough to later pay Graham a visit at his San Francisco-area headquarters. “Tom wanted a submarine
for himself,” says Graham, “and wanted something
that no one had. If anyone can find what is the most
cutting edge, it is going to be Tom.” After showing
Perkins the Super Falcon design on the computer,
his decision was almost instantaneous. “He wanted
the first one and he didn’t want to wait, so we built
two together: Tom had first one, I had the second.”
Perkin’s Super Falcon I brought new attention to the
firm, as the sub was given pride of place on the foredeck of The Maltese Falcon (the similar names are
coincidental), where it was put to great use (see
sidebar). Perkins was so enamored of the craft that,
even after selling The Maltese Falcon, he purchased
a second boat, Dr. No, and retrofitted it specifically
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So enamored was Tom Perkins with his Super
Falcon, that after selling Maltese Falcon he acquired
Dr. No and had her refitted specifically to allow for
the continuation of his subaquatic adventures.
to afford its continuing use. Before the Super Falcon series, and now with the new Dragon, any
personal submersible required a crew to both
maintain and operate it. “Our craft have a very
tough set of requirements,” Hawkes says. “You
aren’t going to have a specialized crew of submariners on board—the craft have to be used by a
yacht crew. We had already built for military; our
military craft are equally as complex as those built
for the commercial market—they simply can’t
afford to fail—so you have to deal with things quite
differently. Reliability is imperative. Our craft will be
used by non- experts—previously subs came with
the crew of people who built them, but that wasn’t
going to happen anymore.” Both models fit two
people, one behind the other, with 360-degree
views courtesy of the signature acrylic domes that
surround both pilot and passenger. Powered by
rechargeable underwater lithium ion batteries, and
designed to give off minimal electrical charge so as
not to repel sensitive underwater creatures, the
subs are able to operate for nearly 6 hours at a
time. The low frequency electrical output coupled
with extremely silent mechanics and propulsion
allow for enhanced interaction and minimal disturbance to undersea life. Talk to anyone who has
owned or operated either a Super Falcon or the
new Dragon and stories of very close encounters
with large marine animals are common. After Tom
Perkins came Richard Branson for second time,
who purchased a Super Falcon, and then most
recently Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz,
whose Super Falcon Hawkes delivered to an undisclosed location in Fiji.
eagle ray for a few minutes before
surfacing and heading back to the yacht–
‘the good doctor’, Dr. No. When Mr.P
cooked up the plan for the Dr. No project,
one of the primary goals was to fly the
Super Falcon submarine with whales.
Later this developed into a plan to film
whales from the Super Falcon with hope to
watch and record behaviors not previously
witnessed. As a concept it does not appear
that hard. Step 1: Take Super Falcon to the
whales. Step 2: Fly with whales. Step 3:
Record. Sounds easy…. Well after a year of
preparation it all started to come together
when 45lb (20kg) of camera equipment
arrived on Dr. No in Denarau, Fiji, prior to
our departure for Tonga and our search for
whales. In order to film–after much debate
and discussion–we settled on a new Nikon
D-4 camera in a Nauticam housing to be
mounted on the nose of the Super Falcon
(Falcon) and remote controlled via
Ethernet on a tablet in the rear cockpit. On
arrival in Vavau we enjoyed several
encounters with whales, but whilst there
are many in the Vavau group there is also a
lot of territory and they don’t hang about.
On the morning of the 19th however we
moved location and conditions were
perfect. There were whales around but
very far off. Around 11am a group of four
whales started to head towards the Dr., so
the decision was made to launch the
Falcon and tow it towards the Whales.
When the Falcon was 100-yards from the
resting group the tow was released and
the Falcon flew at 130’ below the tender
towards the group. At first there was just
the sapphire blue Pacific, but slowly great
dark shapes emerged and then took form.
We were doing it! We were flying a twoman submersible with humpback whales
in their domain, the open blue! The first
dive of the day was the most successful
with 3-4 minutes cruising with a group
consisting of a mother and calf and two
escort males at around 130’ depth.
One of the escort males inspected the
Falcon closely and then on an agreed
impulse the four giant mammals moved
out of view… but a first had been achieved.
Never before had a powered submersible
flown in close proximity to Humpback
whales, but Super Falcon had–and we
have the footage to prove it.
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If the Super Falcon is akin to flying an airplane,
the Dragon is akin to flying a helicopter—albeit a
helicopter that virtually anyone can learn to fly in
just a few hours. “For those who are adventurous or have a love of flying- they will choose the
Super Falcon. It takes a couple of days to learn to
fly it,” says Hawkes. “For those who are looking
to do normal exploration, and want ease of use,
they would choose the Dragon. Even your
guests can just jump in and drive the thing!”
Among other advancements, the Dragon can
hover like a helicopter allowing for relaxed
underwater exploration—if you want to “play
with whales,” as Graham says, then the Super
Falcon is your craft of choice.
Like all of Hawke’s subs, the Super Falcon Mark I
and Mark II and the Dragon are positively buoyant,
making them quite safe. Conventional submersibles use ballast to descend, meaning the
default motion is to sink; DeepFlight subs are the
opposite. A built in fail safe mechanism insures
automatic returns to the surface if anything goes
awry. “The Falcon can be dived straight down or
straight up vertically and your ears don’t feel a
thing because the pressure hull holds back the
water,” says Hawkes—a remarkable feat of engineering that is rather surprising to anyone who
has had previous experience SCUBA diving. The
Super Falcon can be charged overnight and is
ready for a whole days use, the Dragon is capable
of rapid charging. Oxygen is supplied by medical or
aircraft grade oxygen tanks, which are carried
externally. A microcomputer controls life support
and the constantly- refreshed atmosphere, which
is much like those used on a spacecraft.
Piloting both craft is very simple— owners are
always encouraged to enjoy being at the helm of
their own sub. There are two seats, but “you
don’t need a professional pilot; you don’t buy a
Ferrari and give the keys to a chauffeur. You are
going to drive or fly it by yourself!” Hawkes
exclaims. The fly- by- wire controls allow for
intuitive operation—and can easily be learned in
an afternoon. On your left hand is a throttle and
on the right is a small fly by wire joystick; with
your left hand as you advance, the Dragon will
dive; when you pull back to the mid point, it will
hover, and when you pull back, you will rise. It
really is as simple as that. A microcomputer takes
care of safety, making sure that you don’t go too
deep or too close to surface. However, this is not
a hands off experience: the owner is flying the
craft, but safety systems will advise if any
adjustments to depth or speed need to be made.
Says Hawkes: “I have had the pleasure of taking
kids and kings underwater and everyone leaves
with a huge smile on their face”
The Super Falcon is priced at USD 1.7 million, the
Dragon is slightly less at USD 1.5 million. Both craft
take 9 months to complete.