Men of Honor: Story of Carl Brashear

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MIXED-GAS DIVING

As scientists and divers began to learn more about the mysterious effects of deep-water diving on human beings, they developed a different mixture of gases for people to breathe under water. Instead of using the same gases, in the same percentages, that divers breathe above water, Navy diving pioneers like Charles "Swede" Momsen (who invented the “Momsen Lung”) began to experiment with other types of gases - like helium.

Momsen, and others, discovered that helium mixed with oxygen was a much safer combination for divers than nitrogen mixed with oxygen. They also found that diving bells were good places for submerged divers to rest and communicate with the surface.

When divers are underwater, gases (including oxygen/helium mixtures) compress in their body. When they return to the surface, divers have to decompress. They do that by making periodic stops on their ascent to the surface or by using a diving bell. If there isn’t enough time for a slow return - or if a diver develops some kind of diving-related illness - treatment is in a hyperbaric chamber.

Carl Brashear mastered all of these mysteries of the deep. It took him more than one attempt, however. His first effort - in 1960 - was over quickly.

The stay was short. I flunked out of first class. Blew
it...First-class school was a hard school, very hard.

Carl had to study sophisticated subjects:

Physics. Medicine. Decompression. Treatments. Ratio
proportion, mixing gases to the proper ratio.

When he flunked out, he did not leave as a second-class diver. He left as a non-diver. He was devastated.

Man, I hit rock bottom. I said, "I’ve got to get off of this ship." [He had been assigned to the USS Nereus - AS-17.]

Undaunted, Carl applied extraordinary effort to graduate as a First-Class Diver. He ultimately completed 26 weeks at the diving school in Washington, D.C. where he qualified in a Navy "wet chamber" similar to the one in Panama City, Florida. Before he even started the program, he tried to improve in the areas where he had failed before:

I studied math from 1961 to 1963, day and night.

Carl finished third in a graduating class of seventeen. About fifty percent of his class had washed out.

Only three years later, while aboard the USS Hoist (ARS-40), Carl faced tragedy head-on. While helping to avert the damage potential caused by one of the worst nuclear weapons-related incidents in the history of atomic weapons, First-Class Navy Diver Carl Brashear became an amputee.