Diving Icon’s Ashes Spread Off Key West ~ Christian J. Lambertsen 'the father of combat swimming'

Key West Citizen and Bait Wrapper ^ | March 10, 2012 | ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staff

[Travis McGee]

Unlike nitrogen bubbles in the joints, oxygen pressure tolerance varies widely between folks. Before BUD/S, potential trainees have to sit in a re-compression chamber breathing pure O2 for an hour or so, while corpsmen watch them closely. I forget what the simulated depth on the test was, it might have been 60’ of pressure for 60 minutes, but that is just a guess based on a 30+ year old memory.

In general, frogmen level out and swim at about 30’ to the target. If a ship was coming overhead in a harbor, you might dive down to 60’ until the ship passed by. But in general, 20-30 feet was the cruising depth on oxygen.

[Travis McGee]

Mixed-gas rebreathers can be used very deep. Pure oxygen rebreathers are for shallow combat dives. Instead of going down 400’ and working in one area for hours on mixed gas, combat swimmers may swim for 3 hours toward a target at 25’ depth, leaving no bubbles at all. Nary a one. All using that little oxygen bottle at the bottom of the Draeger rig.

[driftdiver]

Oxygen becomes toxic at certain pressures. On 100% oxygen your safe depth is only about 40 ft to avoid oxygen toxicity. As you said it depends on the person.

[Travis McGee]

And it even varies for the same diver at different times and under differnt conditions. 30 and less was considered “safe,” but sometimes folks got in trouble or even passed out at that “safe” depth. Others routinely took oxygen to 60’ without problems.

Usually, we were restricted by a harbor depth to about 25-30 feet, so we were literally skimming along the bottom, hoping not to run into old piles of nets or junk on the bottom.

In daytime, skimming just above the sand or mud, you would be able to see how much you were “crabbing” due to current in relation to the bottom.

We trained in daylight and at night, and of course, we had no lights, just the glowing dials of the watch, depth meter, and compass attached to our plexiglass “attack boards.” One buddy with the attack board “navigating” by time and course, the other just touching his shoulder like a “wing man.”

[driftdiver]

My limit is a 102ft on a 36% mix. Everything was fine and then boom it hit ya.

Of course I’m a recreational diver so I did it the PADI & NAUI way.

[Elle Bee]

Just thinking about the Emerson rig makes my head ache and my chest hurt ... that's a work out .... and I only tried it once .... I was told that there was a limit to the depth in use

I've known a few women who would have been more proficient on that gear than I could ever be

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[Travis McGee]

It was just going out when I was coming in, so I learned it a dove it a few times, but we then switched 100% to the Draeger.

[Travis McGee]

You can get very casually proficient, then boom, an error or an anomoly, and you can be dead very quick....on any rig.

[Elle Bee]

I was told they're a little toxic ... and in my singular experience it seemed to give the lungs a healthy workout ... and I had a bit of a residual 'hangover' feeling afterward

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[Elle Bee]

Lambertsen OSS colleague Mess was inventor in his own right

In waters 30 miles off Key West in late 1941 and early 1942, Walter Mess sat in his custom-built 85-foot boat made of plywood and powered by two 1,500-horsepower engines lifted from a P-51 Mustang fighter airplane. He built her himself and named her Jeannie.

She could cruise faster than 60 mph, the 99-year-old veteran told The Citizen this week. He was hunting Nazi U-boats. The silence of the night broke when an enemy U-boat surfaced.

"They came up maybe a quarter to half a mile away from shore and they fired at me," Mess said of the enemy U-boat. "Punctured my gas tank. I had a thousand gallons of fuel on board. We got lucky that night."

Mess was an operative with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA during World War II. He ran so-called P-boats, ultrafast and maneuverable boats for the nascent spy agency, which evolved into the CIA after the war.

Mess went on to secretly lead a team of boatmen into the Indian Ocean, where they dropped off groups of spies and clandestine military men on the beaches of Burma and Thailand to pick up downed Allied fighter pilots.

Such boat units later evolved into Navy Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, the boat crews that deliver and pick up SEAL Teams in hostile territory.

Mess is in Key West today to help spread the ashes and honor his former OSS colleague, Christian Lambertsen, a man who helped train the underwater demolition dive units that years later became the SEAL Teams. Lambertsen's invention of a re-breather scuba system made such missions possible, and he is considered the father of Special Operations Forces' combat swimming.

Mess and Lambertsen worked together in Burma during the war. There weren't many OSS men in the field in those days and it required a lot of quick thinking on your feet, Mess said.

"It was high-octane stuff," he recalled.

Mess will join Lambertsen's family at the Army Special Forces Underwater Operations School on Fleming Key, where he is looking forward to honoring his colleague and seeing Key West for the first time since the early days of WWII, he said.

"Back in those days it was a minefield offshore," Mess said. "I spent a lot of time training seamen down there on how to handle boats. I'm sure it has changed a lot since then. It was a pretty raw little town in those days."

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The ashes of, Christian Lambertsen, the man who developed what became the most advanced scuba systems used by today’s Special Operations Forces were spread in the waters off Key West on Saturday. From left are: Erik Lambertsen, Chaplain Lt. David Martin, Maj. Trevor Hill, retired Lt. Walter Mess, Bradley Lambertsen (with ashes), retired Lt. Col. Gary Lambertsen, David Lambertsen and Richard Lambertsen.

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[Travis McGee]

Thanks for that history! My godfather, Albert Evans, later of Baltimore, was involved in building and testing high speed boats for the OSS during WW2. I knew he was down on Biscayne Bay and the Keys, but until your post, it was very murky and ill-defined. I had only heard that he was putting monster engines into speedboats for the OSS, and testing them etc. Now I know more about it. Thanks!

[Travis McGee]

We used chemicals such as “Sodasorb” and “Baralyme” for the CO2 scrubber. If any water got into the dry cannister full of chemical powder, you could be slurping a “caustic coctail” into your lungs.

The system had to be 100% leak-tight, including the seal of your lips on the mouthpiece. This became tricky at times, such as during a long (multiple hours) cold water attack swim, when your lips might start twitching from cold. Or in the summer, when stinging sea nettles draped across your face.

Frogmen are not sissies, that is for sure.

[Chode]

our Greatest Generation indeed...