page_title: Rebreather
section_title: Rebreathers during World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Rebreather / History / Rebreathers during World War II
caption_attribution_description: A British navy frogman, here equiped with the well known Davis apparatus. Those men were the underwater experts who blasted a hole in the Nazi's Atlantic Wall to enable invasion craft to reach the Normandy beaches on D-Day.
context_page_description: A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing of the substantially unused oxygen content, and unused inert content when present, of each breath. Oxygen is added to replenish the amount metabolised by the user. This differs from open-circuit breathing apparatus, where the exhaled gas is discharged directly into the environment. The purpose is to extend the breathing endurance of a limited gas supply, and, for covert military use by frogmen or observation of underwater life, eliminating the bubbles produced by an open circuit system. A rebreather is generally understood to be a portable unit carried by the user. The same technology on a vehicle or non-mobile installation is more likely to be referred to as a life-support system.
  Rebreather technology may be used where breathing gas supply is limited, such as underwater or in space, where the environment is toxic or hypoxic, as in firefighting, mine rescue and high-altitude operations, or where the breathing gas is specially enriched or contains expensive components, such as helium diluent or anaesthetic gases.
context_section_description: In the 1930s, Italian sport spearfishers began to use the Davis rebreather; Italian manufacturers received a license from the English patent holders to produce it. This practice soon came to the attention of the Italian Navy, which developed its frogman unit Decima Flottiglia MAS and was used effectively in World War II.
  During the Second World War, captured Italian frogmen's rebreathers influenced improved designs for British rebreathers. Many British frogmen's breathing sets used aircrew breathing oxygen cylinders salvaged from shot-down German Luftwaffe aircraft. The earliest of these breathing sets may have been modified Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus; their fullface masks were the type intended for the Siebe Gorman Salvus, but in later operations different designs were used, leading to a fullface mask with one big face window, at first circular or oval and later rectangular (mostly flat, but the sides curved back to allow better vision sideways). Early British frogman's rebreathers had rectangular counterlungs on the chest like Italian frogman's rebreathers, but later designs had a square recess in the top of the counterlung so it could extend further up toward the shoulders. In front they had a rubber collar that was clamped around the absorbent canister. Some British armed forces divers used bulky thick diving suits called Sladen suits; one version of it had a flip-up single faceplate for both eyes to let the user get binoculars to his eyes when on the surface.
  The Dräger rebreathers, especially the DM20 and DM40 model series, were used by the German helmet divers and German frogmen during World War II. Rebreathers for the US Navy were developed by Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen for underwater warfare. Lambertsen held the first closed-circuit oxygen rebreather course in the United States for the Office of Strategic Services maritime unit at the Naval Academy on 17 May 1943.
caption: A 1945 British navy frogman with Davis apparatus.
exif: {}