The sinking of HMS Thetis in 1939 on its first test cruise not only claimed the lives of 99 submariners, but also ruthlessly exposed the shortcomings of British submarine technology. The question of why only 4 men were able to escape from the boat lying in shallow water was completely unclear. Rachel Lance, an American biomedical engineer specializing in underwater detonations, brilliantly explains in her book "Chamber Divers" how a group of geneticists (!) commissioned by the British Navy not only clarified the circumstances of the crew's deaths, but also developed the basis of modern diving physiology in the following years of war and influenced the outcome of the Second World War.
Geneticists establish modern diving physiology
But why, in desperation, did the British Navy turn to a geneticist of all people? The man in question was John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, the son of John Scott Haldane, the founder of modern decompression physiology. As a teenager, he had actively participated in his father's research and acquired a great deal of knowledge about diving physiology. The British Admiralty tapped into this knowledge.
Haldane gathered a conspiratorial and scurrilous group, among them Jewish scientists from the continent who had fled the Nazi terror, as well as former like-minded people he had met during the Spanish Civil War. Hans Kahle, an arch-communist who was regarded by British intelligence as a war criminal on the side of the anti-Franco coalition and was immortalised by Ernest Hemingway as the fictional "General Hans" in "For whom the bell tolls", also took part as a test subject. Haldane managed to include him in his project and spared him, the German citizen hiding from the Nazis in Great Britain, from being arrested by the british law enforcement authorities. Haldane's research was so important that he was allowed to continue despite his socialist leanings. However, the MI5 kept Haldane under close surveillance.
In the hyperbaric chambers of the Siebe Gorman company in central London, the group was soon able to clarify that the crew of the Thetis had died of CO2 poisoning. (The company dates back to August Siebe, who in 1819 had designed the first helmet for a "standard rig" for British naval divers, which allowed them to kneel without flooding the helmet). It subsequently drew up guidelines for emergency exit procedures from submarines under oxygen breathing and for CO2 filters and the quantities of lime required for submarines, thus laying the foundations for the operation of small submarines for commando operations, for example. In the meantime, the Second World War had broken out and at the latest after the "Dieppe raid" in August 1942, a commando operation on the beaches of Normandy, which ended in a debacle with the loss of around 70% of the troops deployed, mainly Canadian soldiers, due to completely inadequate knowledge of the surroundings, the Allies realised that an invasion could only be carried out after a thorough reconnaissance of the landing beaches. And that meant divers were needed.
Pressure chamber experiments during the Blitz
The British Admiralty quickly expanded the group's remit. In addition to studying nitrogen narcosis (rapture of the deep) when diving with compressed air, the main focus was on researching oxygen breathing under water. In several hundred pressurised chamber experiments on themselves, the "chamber divers" went to the limits of what was tolerable and beyond. They were subjected to nitrogen narcosis, repeated seizures as a result of oxygen toxicity, barotrauma and, in one case, pneumothorax with arterial gas embolism. They also continued their experiments intermittently during the bombing of London by the Luftwaffe.
First SCUBA divers...
They established the first guidelines to prevent oxygen toxicity when breathing pure oxygen while diving, an issue that was a top priority for the Admiralty as it was the only way to deploy combat divers to scout and clear landing beaches.
Until then, diving was synonymous with metal helmets and umbilical cords, a mode that was completely unsuitable for commando operations. SCUBA diving had just been invented during the war years and for these dives systems used pure oxygen as breathing gas, as they had actually been designed for the rescue of submarine crews.
... and the invention of Nitrox
The British soon lost divers with these devices in highly clandestine tests under unexplained circumstances. The "chamber divers" were able to show that seizures when breathing oxygen under increased pressure were responsible for this, and they invented nitrox in passing by lowering the oxygen content to 70%, thus providing a safe breathing gas for the relatively shallow dives of the commando divers.
The Donald plagiarism
So it was the "chamber divers" and not the naval surgeon Kenneth "Ken" Donald who defined the limits for safe diving with oxygen. The latter was put in charge of the group in 1942 to "lead" the research. Haldane's socialist agitations and his supposed political "unreliability" may have played a role in this. Donald subsequently claimed the findings for himself, although his professional qualifications were far from sufficient. This applies in particular to the statistical analyses, without which no guidelines could have been drawn up. For reasons of secrecy, Haldane and his colleagues were prevented from publishing their results scientifically for the rest of their lives. Not so Donald, who, after his naval career, published his findings in 1992 in the book "Oxygen and the diver", which is regarded as the standard work on the subject. The author bluntly states what this book is: one hundred per cent plagiarism, in part verbatim, of the work of the "chamber divers". I have often wondered why there are no other publications by Donald. Now I know why.
The "chamber divers" ensured that the Allies were able to scout the landing beaches and clear and demine underwater obstacles on D-Day with divers. Without them, a successful invasion would probably not have been possible. In fact, "frogmen", as the first SCUBA divers were called at the time, were the first to enter the beaches in Normandy: before the invasion for reconnaissance purposes and during the invasion as underwater clearance and demining commandos.
"Their achievments were buried under classification markings until 2001. Ther world never knew what the chamber divers had achieved, what they had contributed to D-Day, to science, to the world as a whole. ... Until now." - Rachel Lance
Lance tells this story in a gripping manner. Nevertheless, it remains technically precise. I have never read a more thrilling explanation of decompression sickness. Her reports on the commando actions of divers and small submarine crews are fascinating, with which she draws a direct line from science to its immediate realisation in war. She does not leave the human dramas that unfolded in the research group either. These show what the "chamber divers" were first and foremost: People who pushed the limits of what was possible under precarious circumstances. In return, they were poorly paid or not paid at all and only partially insured.
Only in a few places did I expect more depth, for example when it came to the question of why the British were so far behind the Germans in terms of physiological knowledge of submarining.
Forgotten scientists
Lance emphasises a widespread problem in science: the concealment of significant contributions made by individuals. As an example, she uses the enigmatic person of Helen Spurway, former student, later lover and second wife of Haldane, who was responsible for the statistical analyses of the oxygen experiments as a test subject and brilliant scientist, and whose contribution would be worthy of separate publications today, but who is still only known as a geneticist.
The book is highly recommended to anyone interested in diving, military or scientific history, or who simply wants to read an exciting, non-fictional book from the time of the Second World War. It is currently only available in English.
P.S.
After the war, a Frenchman sought advice from Haldane. He was authorised to use the findings of the "chamber divers" for his diving expeditions, provided that military use was ruled out. This man was Jacques Cousteau.
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