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CHAMBER DIVERS by Rachel Lance

CHAMBER DIVERS

The Untold Story of the D-Day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations Forever

by Rachel Lance

Pub Date: April 16th, 2024
ISBN: 9780593184936
Publisher: Dutton

A fine history of the discoveries that allow humans to work safely underwater and the brilliant British scientist who led the effort.

Former Navy engineer Lance, author of In the Waves, has an irresistible subject in J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964), an eccentric polymath and central figure in the 1920s genetics revolution. His accomplishments in a variety of fields are so numerous that his role in pioneering underwater research is often forgotten. Lance begins with the 1939 sinking of the British submarine Thetis. There was no explosion, and although the crew possessed breathing apparatuses, only a few escaped. Royal Navy leaders appealed to the famous Haldane to learn why. At the time, he was director of a university genetics laboratory, but at the beginning of World War II, he transferred his focus to underwater research. Haldane’s experiments took place at a London factory that manufactured breathing equipment and possessed a hyperbaric chamber. In the first half of the book, Lance emphasizes the experiments, the subjects of which were the scientists themselves, who occupied the chamber to experience the pressures and varying gas concentrations encountered by submariners. Many suffered dizziness, headaches, and somnolence but also vomiting, seizures, bleeding, collapsed lungs, and broken bones. Some, Haldane included, never fully recovered, but the results dispelled a great deal of ignorance. At high pressures, nitrogen causes confusion, and pure oxygen becomes poison, so carbon dioxide management may be the key. In the second half, the author describes how these discoveries affected the war, mostly during the June 1944 Allied landing at Normandy, preceded by months during which scouts approached the heavily guarded coastline under water and surveyed the beaches to map defenses, obstacles, and minefields, avoiding the disasters that marred earlier landings. Throughout, Lance makes good use of archival material that remained classified until 2001.

A fascinating, hair-raising account of groundbreaking research.