Christian Lambertsen

"He wasn’t someone to let someone else do it."

When I was a child, my parents bought me a diving mask from Woolworth's.  It didn't fit too well, did not include a snorkel, and came with no directions as to how to keep it from fogging while underwater.  It was one of the best gifts I ever received.

I often used it underwater in Lake Erie, on the shores of which I grew up, to crawl along the bottom observing the carp and marveling at the rich variety of discarded beer cans, and would take it with me to the Jersey Shore in the summers, to see what life was like under the waves and in the midst of the forest of legs, ankles, and feet.

I would hold my breath for as long as I could, sometimes using a length of scrapped garden hose through which to breath, despite that it tasted of petroleum.  I longed for the day when I could afford underwater breathing equipment like my TV hero, Mike Nelson of Sea Hunt.  Eventually, that day would come and a remarkable world would be revealed. For this, I credit not just Lloyd Bridges' fictional character, but another who found joy and purpose in those fresh and salt water waves of Lake Erie and the Jersey Shore and freed divers from the tether.

Christian Lambertsen was born in 1917 in New Jersey where he spent many a summer in Barnegat Bay.  In attempting to stay underwater for as long as possible, he had a frustration similar to mine and any other child enthralled by the underwater flora, fauna, and geography.  In his case, he brought a bit more machinery to its address and used some surface muscle from friends and family.

While he and his grandfather were exploring the habitat for clams, Lambertsen used a length of hose attached to a bicycle pump operated from a boat above to feed him a supply of air that was retained in a simple rubber bladder. It must have been a bit like playing the bagpipes underwater.  While not ideal, it did give him the kernel of an idea he would study and perfect for remainder of his life.

Lambertsen would graduate from Rutgers University in 1939 with a degree in biology and then attend the University of Pennsylvania's medical school.  While there, recalling the curiosity of his childhood spent by and in the sea, he studied human respiration and environmental medicine, refining his bicycle pump air hose and rubber bladder idea.  In 1940, while not even an intern, he found time to submit his first patent application for the Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit, or LARU, a device for breathing underwater for extended periods without having to be tethered to a boat or air compressor.  It would eventually bear the secret military acronym of SCUBA, for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

An example of pre-LARU diving equipment

This required extensive experimentation, though, and, as is often the case with creative personalities, the inventor made himself the guinea pig.  With the help of the Ohio Chemical and Manufacturing Company, Lambertsen made several dives, sometimes at great risk and in no small amount of danger, in Lake Erie and other, smaller bodies of water, each time making small, but noticeable, improvements to his invention.

Lambertsen's original drawing for his patent application

This is where some explanation of terminology is needed.  There are two forms of underwater breathing apparatus.  Most people are more familiar with the "open circuit" configuration, that which was being perfected by Jacques Cousteau and his partner, Emile Gagnan, at approximately the same time as Lambertsen was creating the first version of the LARU.

An open circuit breathing apparatus relies on the diver inhaling oxygen or a similar gas mixture from tanks strapped to his or her back, and then exhaling the carbon dioxide through the mouthpiece into the water through a considerable release of bubbles.  A closed circuit system such as the LARU, better known as a re-breather, takes the exhaled carbon dioxide and scrubs from it the still-abundant oxygen that remains, then recycles it back to the diver's air supply.

In addition to reducing bubbling exhaust, the re-breather enables a diver to stay underwater much longer than does an open circuit system, and to dive more deeply without the need for time-consuming decompression.

An open circuit apparatus with bubbles.

A closed circuit re-breather.  See?  No bubbles.

For most divers, the open circuit apparatus, reliant on the Cousteau-Gagnon regulator mouthpiece, is generally used.  The system is simple and relatively economical.  Also, due to the limited supply of breathing gas in the tanks, open circuit divers are less likely to have the time to get into difficulty underwater with hypothermia, the bends, or rapture of the deep, as they must surface every 20 to 40 minutes.  It helps that the release of exhaled bubbles leaves a very obvious trail both in the water and on the surface, which can aid the "buddy system" common to diving.

However, what is convenient and helpful in peacetime may not be so in times of war.

Lambertsen had originally conceived of the LARU as a potential open water life-saving device that could also aid trapped miners to breathe.  With the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the United States now fully included in the world-wide conflagration, Lambertsen realized that his invention would enable a military diver to stay underwater for extended periods, dive deeply, and not give away his position through the release of bubbles.  A healthy swimmer could, at the depth of fifty feet and for over an hour and a half, cover a mile underwater and be undetectable.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Navy, after being introduced to the device, didn't share Lambertsen's enthusiasm.  There were still improvements to be made, apparently, so he went back to the literal drawing board.  A year later, in the swimming pool of a Washington D.C. hotel, the next demonstration went...um, swimmingly.  This time, though, instead of the Navy, it was a representative of the Office of Strategic Services who saw the LARU's advantages in covert warfare.  Ironically, a breathing apparatus designed for divers was rejected by the Navy, but accepted by the Army.

Just another day at the office for Dr. Lambertsen

As the war progressed, Lambertsen, having become a medical doctor, was commissioned as an officer in the Army Medical Corps.  With the Army's acceptance of the LARU, he was promoted to the rank of major and seconded to the OSS, the forerunner of what would one day be the CIA.  His orders were to continue to perfect the breathing apparatus and adjust and customize it for the various commando missions on which it would be employed.

As has been noted, and like many other inventors, Lambertsen was more than willing to test his invention himself, even in untoward circumstance.  While commanders on secret missions welcomed Lambertsen's participation, especially as he would be able to address any issues that might develop with the re-breathers in the field and, as a medical doctor, treat any wounds suffered in action, they came to realize, to their surprise, that Lambertsen's intention was to, in fact, accompany the commandos on their missions.  He did so with distinction during the war and, it is rumored, upon occasion in the Cold War, as well.

Returning to the University of Pennsylvania, he served a variety of professorships, from medicine to pharmacology to veterinary medicine, in each exploring how the bodies of humans and animals may survive in circumstances of extremis.  His research served not only the rapidly growing community of military, commercial, and recreational divers, but was of great use to NASA when adapting re-breather technology to the Mercury space capsules and early spacesuits.  He would found The Environmental Biomedical Stress Data Center at Penn and contribute to a vast body of discoveries in diving physiology, undersea and hyperbaric research and related medical treatments, and hydrospace, biomedical, and environmental sciences.  

So sensitive was much of Lambertsen's work that it remained classified until the mid-1990's.  He is credited with inventing the technology used by NASA, the Navy's Underwater Demolition Team, the Army Special Forces combat swimmers, and the US Coast Guard's rescue diver program.  The famous Navy SEALs used his re-breather design until the mid-1980's.  The Navy, which originally had no use for his invention [or for him, as he was rejected from their officer program due to allergies] now credits him as the "Father of the Frogmen" and the Army issued him a green beret with honorary status as a member of that elite force.

Christian Lambertsen eventually retired to the eastern shore of Maryland, where he died at the age of 93.  Much of his story may be found on the websites of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Army and the Navy, and the International Scuba Divers Hall of Fame.  Any one who has ever dived with the use of SCUBA, or who has been unfortunate enough to have needed a decompression chamber, or has marveled at the achievements of the space program, or who has simply flown in a passenger airline, has enjoyed at least a portion of what Lambertsen achieved, all from those casual days clamming with his grandfather.

Not bad for a Jersey Shore waterman.