Episode Transcript
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0:00
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shoprite.com. ShopRite, check out Happy. What
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kind of fun is waiting for you at Kings Island?
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The holy cow are way too high and here comes
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the drop kind of fun. The
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make a splash all summer kind
0:26
of fun. I
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can't believe I ate that whole funnel cake. Let's
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get another kind of fun. But
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most importantly at Kings Island, you'll find for
0:35
the fun of it kind of fun. Don't
0:38
wait to start your fun this season.
0:40
Kings Island opens its gates April 20th.
0:46
This country is at war
0:48
with Germany. We shall go on to the
0:50
end. I
0:54
remember the sheets of flame that came up and almost
0:56
blinded us with my guns. Operation
1:07
Jubilee, the Dieppe raid on the coast of
1:09
France, was a disaster in 1942. However,
1:13
it did highlight the need for
1:15
more reconnaissance before any other amphibious
1:17
operations were mounted. In
1:19
London, a small group of eccentric
1:21
researchers experimenting on themselves from inside
1:23
pressure tanks in the middle of
1:25
the blitz explored the
1:28
deadly science needed to enable
1:30
the critical reconnaissance vehicles and
1:32
underwater breathing apparatus that would
1:34
enable the Allies future amphibious
1:36
landings, specifically D-Day. I'm
1:39
Angus Wallace and welcome to
1:41
another episode of the World
1:43
War II podcast. Joining me
1:45
today is Rachel Lance. Rachel
1:47
is an assistant consulting professor
1:49
at Duke University, where she
1:51
conducts research out of their
1:53
hyperbaric medicine facility. She's also
1:56
the author of Chamber Divers, the
1:58
untold story of the D-Day. scientists
2:01
who changed special operations
2:03
forever. Thanks for
2:05
joining me. So I think it is
2:07
easy to think of Scuba gear as
2:09
we know it today as having
2:11
been around for ages but what was it like
2:13
in 1939? Were there problems that needed
2:17
to be overcome? We can breathe
2:19
underwater but it's very clunky.
2:22
So Jacques Cousteau was actually
2:24
working on Scuba. He invented
2:26
the first free diving regulators
2:29
during World War II. So at the
2:31
same time as the story Jacques Cousteau
2:33
is over there in Nazi occupied brands
2:36
tinkering in his garage or wherever. I
2:38
like to think of it as a
2:40
garage but building the first devices that
2:42
we now use for modern Scuba. So
2:45
at the time of the chamber
2:47
divers and when they were starting
2:50
their work you really needed surface
2:52
supplied equipment. This is
2:54
exactly like the movie Men of Honor
2:57
with Cuba Gooding Jr. You have a
2:59
giant hard hat, you have this huge
3:01
get up with tons of lead, it
3:04
weighs hundreds of pounds, hundreds of kilos
3:06
even and it's
3:08
also tethered. So you have an
3:10
umbilical that connects you to a surface
3:12
ship and on that surface
3:14
ship your friends are constantly pumping air
3:16
down to you. Alright
3:18
so now we have this huge
3:21
visual of what this takes. It's
3:23
physically possible but it's not exactly
3:25
stealthy. You can't take this equipment
3:27
and go scout a harbor that
3:30
you're about to attack with it. Be
3:32
like don't shoot it asleep or just
3:34
hear a scouting mission we need some
3:36
beach information. What the Allies needed
3:38
was something that was more free swimming
3:40
and more undercover. Some of the
3:43
problems that they know they have
3:45
to overcome such as I
3:47
was going to start with decompression sickness
3:49
because I thought it was absolutely fascinating
3:51
which is I guess people know the
3:53
bends. That
3:55
was known not through diving because of bridge building.
3:57
Have I got that right? completely
4:00
bizarre. So the caissons were
4:02
the bridge supports. And they would sink
4:04
them down from the top. So they'd
4:06
be working inside these upturned bowls, where
4:08
there's basically air trapped in there, digging
4:10
out the dirt from the bottom. And
4:12
then they would just sink the bowl
4:14
down as they went. And
4:16
the caisson workers would have a
4:18
set of stairs inside or rudimentary
4:20
elevator for their means to come
4:22
up. But in order to
4:25
keep the water out of that bowl, you've got to
4:27
have it pressurized. And that
4:29
means that they're essentially scuba diving
4:31
put in a giant ridge
4:34
part. What was happening was these
4:36
caisson workers were coming up. And they were
4:38
getting sick. And they were getting hurt. When
4:40
it started out mild, they were like, oh,
4:42
he's walking funny today. That's where the name
4:44
The Bends comes from. People would bend their
4:46
back a little bit funny. And
4:48
it was similar to a posture that ladies
4:51
would use to accentuate these big, buffled gowns
4:53
they were wearing at the time. They
4:56
would come up from the deep. And then it
4:58
started getting worse. So as they
5:00
got deeper in these caissons, the
5:03
symptoms got worse and worse until eventually
5:05
they were getting paralysis. And then
5:07
people started dying. So that's the
5:09
first time that people start really realizing what decompression
5:11
sickness is and what it could do to the
5:13
body, which, meanwhile, people still
5:15
want to dive. People want to salvage
5:18
dive. And it's stopping that kind
5:20
of activity and that kind of progress, too. So
5:23
the Haldane family was the first
5:25
one to really figure out how
5:27
to prevent it. So what
5:29
causes compression sickness? Take compression
5:31
sickness. It's whatever gas you're
5:34
breathing at the time. Most commonly,
5:36
that's nitrogen because we're usually breathing
5:38
air. And what happens is
5:40
your body absorbs these gases like a
5:43
sponge. So even right now, Angus, right
5:45
now we're at the surface. If we
5:47
decompress from the surface, we would still
5:49
get decompression sickness because right now, we're
5:51
soggy with nitrogen. This is
5:53
actually a problem with fighter pilots and
5:55
with astronauts because when they want to
5:57
go to lower pressures, like, super high,
6:00
high altitude or outside the space station,
6:02
they actually need to decompress more slowly
6:04
using oxygen on the surface first, or
6:06
they'll get the same thing. They can
6:08
die in their fighter planes. So
6:12
the nitrogen comes out of your tissues
6:15
when the pressure is reduced and
6:17
it essentially forms bubbles. It's the
6:19
most common metaphor is opening a
6:21
soda can. You see no
6:23
bubbles, you open it, all of a sudden
6:25
the pressure has an escape, the bubbles form
6:27
and they come out. Bubbles in
6:30
the body are not good. They block the flow
6:32
of blood and we like blood. So
6:34
you mentioned the Haldan family, they tackle
6:36
this problem. I
6:39
guess we first meet young John, who's
6:41
Jack Haldan who will be working during the war.
6:44
Who are the Haldan families? How do their
6:46
family, how do they become to work
6:48
on this problem? They sort of work on this
6:50
because, and I'm gonna use this term very
6:52
lovingly, this is the biggest compliment I can
6:54
give. They're a pack of science
6:56
weirdos. These people just
6:59
love respiratory physiology. The
7:01
guy, the father, John Scott Haldan, which
7:03
their names are too close. He
7:05
regretted it later in life. He was like, this is
7:08
mistake. But he just
7:10
loved breathing and breathing physiology. Anytime there
7:12
was a mining accident in the UK,
7:15
he would like travel their right away
7:17
to work with the miners and try
7:19
and improve mining safety. During
7:21
World War I when there was
7:24
mustard gas, he actually had
7:26
his son Jack Haldan pulled from the
7:28
trenches. Okay, so first of all, he
7:30
had the power in British aristocracy to pull
7:32
his son from the trenches. And it
7:34
wasn't to keep him safe. It was because
7:37
they had a gas chamber in their living
7:39
room where they would expose themselves to us
7:41
or deaths on purpose. He
7:43
was like, son, you're in a place where you
7:45
might get this stuff. Come on home, we're gonna
7:47
test it on ourselves on purpose. So
7:50
these people are just very involved in breathing
7:52
and breathing physiology at a time period where
7:54
that field is developing as a science, which
7:56
is the late 1800s, early 1900s. So
8:00
when World War II kind of
8:03
rolls around, the son, J.B.A. Haldane,
8:05
is just, he lived
8:07
with this stuff. He saturated like
8:09
nitrogen, but with breathing physiology, he's
8:11
been living it his whole life. What
8:14
it means is his father sending him down with
8:16
age 12 to test him in the water with
8:18
it on or allowing him to. And I'm like,
8:20
whoa! Yeah, yeah. The
8:22
diving experiments where they're like, let's
8:24
see if our very first methods
8:27
for decompressing from D.C.
8:29
work safely. And
8:32
the adults go first, but then after the adults go
8:34
first, they're like, hey, kid, come
8:36
on over here. And 12-year-old J.B.A. Haldane
8:40
gets to do one
8:43
of the first early dives with
8:45
this new protocol. So... Let's
8:48
see if our theory works on children as well
8:50
as adults, even though their physiology must be slightly
8:52
different. My favorite part is this 12-year-old
8:54
is so sturdy and invested in
8:57
the science that his suit didn't
8:59
fit. So he's got
9:01
a water leak in the seas
9:03
off of Scotland, which
9:05
is just frigid. It's so cold. He's got
9:07
a water leak. The whole thing is leaking.
9:11
And he used this to come up because
9:13
he's having fun. So by the time they
9:15
pull him up, he's hypothermic. And this is
9:17
a 12-year-old kid who just really wanted to
9:19
go diving. So I kind of relate to
9:22
that. Is Haldane's first job
9:24
for the Admiralty, the role of
9:26
Navy, looking at the sinking of
9:28
the fetus? Is that how we
9:30
pronounce it? Only
9:32
four crew members survive. Is that where he
9:34
first becomes involved directly with the Admiralty, work
9:36
for the Admiralty? Yeah, but I
9:38
might take slight issue with your
9:40
phrasing. So you're right. We're going
9:43
to be a little pickier because
9:45
basically what happened is in the summer
9:48
of 1939, so Hitler's
9:50
already starting to rumble. People
9:53
know that something is coming, especially over in the
9:55
UK. In
9:57
short order, we have three submarines going. down
10:00
and nobody really talks about them.
10:03
So the French lost the
10:05
submarine Phoenix, which is the Phoenix
10:07
off the coast of Vietnam in
10:09
a training exercise. The Americans lost
10:12
the USS Squalas off the coast
10:14
of the East Coast, Atlantic coast
10:17
in a training exercise. And the
10:19
British lose the ASMS in a
10:21
training exercise off the coast of
10:23
England. So all three of these
10:25
submarines go down within a couple of weeks
10:28
of each other. They're all made in
10:30
June 1939 as the world is
10:33
preparing for war. So the allies, I
10:35
can't even imagine the stress in the
10:37
submarine community, they kept this quiet on
10:39
purpose so as not to induce a
10:41
lot of panic. But of course, there
10:43
are crews aboard the submarine. The
10:45
fetus alone had 103 people
10:47
on board. It was really overloaded because it
10:49
was the first time the submarine had been
10:51
used. So clearly these
10:54
countries have this moment where they're
10:56
hit with the realization that they
10:58
have built these things. And
11:00
they have no idea how to use them, how
11:03
to survive in them, or how to escape
11:05
from them. So the office beat
11:07
is true. Of the 103, only
11:09
four managers escaped successfully. The allies all thought
11:11
they had this problem handled. They have these
11:13
like rudimentary breathing apparatuses that are basically a
11:15
little leather bag with a bottle of oxygen
11:18
attached to it. And they were like, Oh,
11:20
it's fine. You just put this on, you
11:22
go out, you swim up, bam, we're good.
11:24
We'll pick you up on the surface. Have
11:26
a fun time. So they
11:28
realized all of a sudden that before they pick
11:30
up are basically on the verge of death anyway.
11:33
So something is awry with this plan. They have
11:35
no idea what they're doing. So JBS
11:38
Haldane, this guy who's grown up
11:40
diving, grown up in the gas
11:42
chamber in his family lab. I
11:44
said living room. It was they
11:46
had a, let's not understate, they
11:49
had an actual science lab in
11:51
their house. So this is kind
11:53
of their living room, but he
11:55
kind of steps up. And so
11:57
he would, it wasn't even necessary. his
12:01
job for the Admiralty, I think
12:03
they were floundering. And he saw
12:05
them floundering and he saw their
12:07
inaccurate explanations. And he saw people
12:09
saying things that he knew were
12:11
wrong. And he got together a
12:14
group of his buddies and they were like, no, no,
12:16
no, we're gonna prove what
12:19
happened and we're gonna prove it
12:21
on ourselves. So J.B.S. Helton
12:23
does this test with four other veterans from
12:25
the Spanish Civil War where he had volunteered
12:27
to fight and the five of
12:30
them put themselves in a chamber and they
12:32
simulate the conditions in this down submarine.
12:34
And so that is his first real work
12:36
for the Admiralty and he kind of inserts
12:38
himself into the proceedings and he's like, listen
12:41
up, here's what happened, here's
12:43
what you need to do. But
12:45
thankfully, thankfully they did. Thankfully they listened
12:47
to him. Well, so what did happen?
12:49
What was his conclusions? His conclusion was
12:52
that it had nothing to do with the
12:54
oxygen. The reason that so many people failed
12:56
to escape was because of the carbon dioxide.
12:58
This is a thing that a lot of people
13:00
forget inside and in closed space. We're all aware
13:03
of oxygen. We need it to live. We like
13:05
it. We want
13:07
it to keep coming. But we forget
13:09
that we're actually a means of production
13:11
here too. We take that
13:13
oxygen and we attach carbon to it
13:15
and then we exhale it back out.
13:18
And we usually forget about that
13:20
because we don't do anything else
13:22
with the carbon dioxide. But
13:25
in an enclosed space, that's actually what's
13:27
going to control how long you can
13:29
survive. So Haldane and
13:31
his compatriots were in this chamber. They were
13:33
breathing up CO2 and they recorded
13:36
what happened to them as they did it.
13:38
And then not only that, but they
13:41
tried to switch to their breathing apparatuses,
13:43
which were now pure oxygen, and
13:45
they all start just uncontrollably
13:48
vomiting. Well, I think one or
13:50
two escaped from the vomiting, but he still
13:52
felt pretty sick. So they
13:54
proved that not only do you have this
13:56
problem where carbon dioxide is becoming
13:59
incapacitated, Fascinating to these submariners. It's
14:02
affecting their cognition. It's affecting their
14:04
physical ability to save themselves And
14:07
you have to take that into account when you're planning
14:09
the escape But also when they
14:11
try and switch to these breathing apparatuses, they've
14:13
got they all of a sudden have
14:15
withdrawal Your body goes
14:17
into withdrawal and you start vomiting
14:20
because essentially because of the carbon
14:22
dioxide your bloodstream seem to fill
14:24
with acid When your blood
14:26
stream gets really acidic your body tries to
14:28
offload the acid in your stomach to
14:30
try and survive So if
14:32
you're projectile vomiting into your breathing apparatus,
14:35
it's not gonna work that well One
14:38
of the men who had tried to escape
14:40
the fetus Had pulled
14:42
his apparatus out of his mouth While
14:45
he was locked in the escape hatch and
14:48
the hatch had later filled with water So they
14:50
weren't really sure if he'd been vomiting or not
14:52
But these things had a strap to hold it
14:54
on your mouth And so they know that he
14:56
had voluntarily yanked it out of his mouth And
14:59
so that's what rendered that actually useless
15:01
and trapped the remaining 99 inside So
15:04
how Dane really elegantly showed using himself
15:07
and then testified in the court of
15:09
inquiry while he still had a headache
15:11
from the CO2 the night before that it was
15:13
actually the carbon dioxide that the admiral teeny
15:15
did to be paying attention to It's
15:18
from this place that's to work on Is
15:21
it can I actually the Sun committee and they're
15:23
looking at problems of breathing underwater? I
15:25
wonder how could he help because he
15:27
seems to have a laboratory full of
15:30
geneticists rather than necessarily People
15:33
who are experts in breathing and physiology
15:35
perhaps right so that they're at University
15:37
College London and all they
15:40
specialize in is genetics Which at
15:42
this point this is before? for Franklin
15:45
and Crick had figured out the structure of
15:47
DNA and so we don't know of the
15:49
gene the same way we think of it
15:51
today So geneticists at
15:53
that time essentially meant mathematician.
15:56
So these people were literally the
15:58
inventors of modern Most
16:01
of modern statistics comes from the
16:03
1930s from the study of genetics
16:06
and eugenics. So the geneticists
16:08
and the eugenicists are at war with
16:10
each other even within the halls of
16:12
the universities. And they have these
16:14
conflicting ideas and it's this very quiet, nerdy war
16:17
at that time. But it sort of sets the
16:19
stage for the brewing battle of World War II
16:21
that's going to come because, of
16:23
course, Hitler is on the eugenic side where
16:26
he thinks we should essentially be breeding people.
16:29
So the geneticists are saying, no, no, no,
16:31
we just need to use math. We're just
16:33
going to look at how genetics trace naturally
16:36
through the generation. They're using mostly
16:38
fruit flies. They're using mice. They're
16:40
trying to figure out how different
16:42
traits are inherited. They're working
16:44
with Haldane already in genetics because
16:47
he's been doing this as a kid, since he was
16:49
a kid too. And
16:51
Haldane kind of has this
16:53
realization like, my group can do
16:55
this. We have the mascots. Underwater
16:58
breathing physiology, as
17:00
someone who does this for a living, is
17:02
mostly math too. We still have
17:04
to do all these statistics. So
17:06
this group, all they needed to do was
17:09
convert from studying fruit flies to studying
17:11
their own bodies. They start putting themselves in
17:13
the chambers and then running the math on
17:15
themselves. And it's a really peculiar mix of
17:17
paper because he sponsors a number
17:20
of German Jews fleeing Germany
17:22
as well, doesn't he? He does. He
17:24
thought that was really important. One
17:26
of the things that's amazing about Haldane
17:29
is that he was extremely socially
17:31
awkward in a way that I
17:33
think is both
17:36
a downfall of his personality
17:38
and incredibly endearing. So
17:40
he's had these moments of incredible
17:43
difficulty where if people did
17:46
what he didn't like, things
17:48
like that, he would maybe explode at
17:51
them. It's possible today he
17:53
may have been considered for like an autism
17:55
spectrum diagnosis. I'm not qualified to make that
17:57
judgment, but I think it would be interesting.
18:00
to talk to a professional who was.
18:02
And he would also have these moments
18:05
where he just didn't understand
18:07
some of the meaner aspects
18:12
of human nature in the
18:14
sense that he didn't understand racism.
18:16
He wrote papers about how the
18:19
races were just genetic variation of
18:21
skin pigming patients. So why does
18:23
this matter? And the
18:26
same thing with sex. He was like,
18:28
you're not using these organs for science.
18:31
Like, so why does this matter? And
18:34
the same thing with religion as well. And
18:36
so he just, he seemed
18:38
like he mentally could not process
18:40
why these people were treated differently.
18:43
That made him really want to
18:45
help anyone who was
18:47
in this position of discrimination.
18:50
And so he actively worked to
18:52
bring over as many German Jews
18:54
as he could. And because
18:56
he was in a science lab, his
18:59
position was such that he could mostly
19:01
help scientists. So he would have this
19:03
excuse and he'd be like, oh yes,
19:05
Hans Grütteberg, I know him, he's great.
19:08
Come on over. Or like Hans Kelleman,
19:10
come on over. Ursula Phillips, come on
19:12
over. And so he was bringing over
19:14
these people who were actively
19:17
fleeing Hitler on the mainland.
19:19
He saved them. And their
19:22
children to this day, so yes, he
19:24
absolutely saved their lives. They came over and
19:26
then they were not only given a safe
19:28
place, well, relatively safe. The London was still
19:30
being bombed. But they were also being given
19:32
a lab where they could keep their children
19:35
in their work. And to a
19:37
scientist like, this is the
19:39
greatest gift, to be able to do
19:41
something where you're not only safe, but you're allowed
19:43
to do what you love. Like all these people
19:45
were fighting to be able to do what they
19:47
love, their science, their investigation. And so most
19:50
of them end up putting themselves in
19:52
the chambers where they are still very
19:54
much at risk of death in
19:57
order to help the Allied effort. Ursula
19:59
Phillips. She was a German
20:01
Jewish refugee who came over. She
20:04
was never allowed to know what they were working on. So
20:07
she puts herself in these chambers, lets
20:09
them do these experiments on her, is
20:11
consenting to it, is at very real
20:13
risk of death, has seen her colleagues
20:15
be seriously injured, has seen them break
20:17
their necks, has seen them dislocate their jaws. She
20:20
never knows, she never asks
20:23
what it's for. She just knows it's for
20:25
the Allied war effort. This place is
20:27
giving me a home. Perhaps we could
20:29
tease out some of the things that
20:31
we're putting themselves through, because it is
20:33
remarkable. Is it next to
20:36
them, they start looking at nitrogen narcosis? So
20:38
what's that and how does he go
20:40
about it? Because we have collapsed lungs
20:43
of things with nitrogen narcosis, don't we?
20:45
It's part of his testing. So
20:48
the nitrogen narcosis is one of my favorite things
20:50
in the world because it is the best excuse
20:52
in the universe to be drunk off your
20:54
rocker at work. Nitrogen narcosis
20:56
is essentially the idea that nitrogen
20:59
has a narcotic effect, meaning
21:01
the nitrogen gas that we breathe, it's 79% of
21:03
air, so we're breathing
21:05
in all the time. It actually has a
21:08
slight narcotic effect. And studies have shown we
21:10
have a little bit of narcosis every day
21:12
on the surface, so we're all just
21:14
a tad bit drunk on nitrogen right now. But
21:17
when you go on with the pressure
21:19
and you have a higher pressure of
21:21
nitrogen, that effect increases. And
21:24
the general rule of thumb that
21:26
divers talk about is something called
21:28
Martini's Law. This is not precise
21:30
science, but they're saying for every atmosphere
21:32
you go down, so every 10 meters you
21:35
go underwater, or 33 feet if
21:37
they're Americans listening, that's equal to one
21:39
martini. That is how drunk you
21:41
should expect to feel. So
21:44
by the time you're getting to 30 meters, 40
21:46
meters, you're pretty, you're pretty
21:48
affected. The
21:52
first thing these people studied was trying
21:54
to figure out what is causing this
21:56
effect and if there's a way to
21:58
avoid it. still don't know
22:01
what causes nitrogen that
22:34
causes tests. How did it get to the stage? Is that
22:36
how I was on the wrong thing they
22:58
were testing for? It's
23:00
remarkable the injuries and
23:03
the injuries that they do to
23:06
themselves whilst they're doing these testing. Okay,
23:08
so Jim Raddell did work on nitrogen narcosis
23:11
tests but at the time of his accident
23:13
he was looking at the effects of CO2
23:15
on our high pressure. That's another thing. Oxygen
23:18
poisoning. I didn't know
23:20
there was such a thing as oxygen poisoning. That's
23:23
something else they're asked to deal with. Is that
23:25
a big deal still? Do they crack that? Oh
23:27
no, it's not been cracked. It's
23:29
not been cracked. We just avoid
23:31
it. Oxygen
23:33
poisoning is still very much a
23:35
problem but now we just
23:38
take the policy of avoiding it and
23:41
actually as a result of the research
23:43
that I did for this book, I'm
23:45
going to be able to put out
23:47
a new paper in the
23:49
field with the database of the tests
23:51
from this experimental
23:54
series because they were previously classified.
23:56
They've never been published before and
23:59
this is a huge amount of new
24:01
data. This is more data than we've
24:03
collectively ever had in the world of
24:05
dye physiology before. So what they did
24:07
in these five years, they achieved more than
24:09
we've been able to achieve in the
24:11
80 years since. And a lot
24:13
of that was because they were able to
24:15
go into these extreme realms of danger.
24:17
Like we can't ethically do that when
24:20
there's no war. We know more about
24:22
oxygen toxicity now because of this group.
24:24
Yeah, James Riddell, when he was testing, he
24:26
was one of the first ones to get really
24:28
seriously entered. And that specific
24:30
test was not for nitrogen or co-cocetylate,
24:33
it was for the effects of carbon
24:35
dioxide under pressure. But it's the same
24:37
kind of physical idea, right? They're going
24:39
down to pressure, they're coming back up.
24:42
And what ends up happening is
24:45
while we normally just breathe
24:47
in and out, and so the
24:49
gas that's pressurized because we're breathing it
24:51
in at depth escapes normally through the
24:54
course of our breathing. James
24:56
Riddell had a small pocket in
24:58
his lung, whether that's from
25:00
some previous disease or some previous
25:03
just genetics. We really can't
25:06
know, but this is the thing that
25:08
can just, it can happen sometimes, unfortunately. That
25:10
small pocket in his lung retains
25:12
the pressurized gas that he breathed
25:14
in at depth. And while he
25:16
was ascending, it ruptured. His
25:19
whole lung didn't collapse right away. But
25:21
over the next few days, with every
25:24
breath he took, a little bit more
25:26
crept into his chest cavity instead of
25:28
being exhaled normally. So over time, he
25:31
had this huge gas pocket in his
25:33
chest that kept growing. And
25:35
it was not only collapsing his lung,
25:37
it was pushing his heart to the side.
25:40
So of course, like, this is a
25:42
fatal condition. If it's not treated, this
25:44
is 100% fatal if
25:47
it's not treated. Thankfully, he ends
25:49
up getting badgered into going to
25:51
the doctor. He thought he
25:54
just had like food poisoning. It
25:56
was an upset meat pie, but
25:58
it's significant other bad. him
26:00
to go to the doctor as a good significant
26:03
other always should and turned
26:05
out he had a club slug and of course since
26:07
it's the 1940s the doctor figured
26:09
this out by having him smoke a cigarette
26:11
while in the pulmonary health clinic.
26:13
But of course this revealed that
26:15
there was smoke going
26:17
into his chest cavity, the doctor is able
26:19
to help him. He did deal
26:21
with that club slug and the ruptured lung for
26:24
the rest of his life like it was always
26:26
a problem for him but he
26:28
survived. So he was kind
26:30
of the first one in the group to
26:32
suffer one of these
26:34
major injuries that could be life threatening and
26:37
after him they started falling one after
26:39
the other as they started getting into
26:41
more and more extreme experience but they
26:44
never stopped. We're gonna take a short
26:46
break we'll be back in a
26:48
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27:17
Nothing else comes close. Is
27:23
it summer of 42 which must be
27:25
after the D.F. parade perhaps? The
27:28
Royal Navy sent down Lieutenant Kenneth
27:30
Donald with his team of divers.
27:33
Does that help jumpstart everything forward
27:35
having backing like that from the
27:38
Royal Navy? Yes and no. It
27:42
helped in that they sent a bunch of people. So Kenneth
27:45
Donald and actually I like to give
27:47
credit to William O. Schilford because I
27:49
think he was the one really in
27:51
charge. Kenneth Donald in the
27:53
90s after everyone else had died
27:55
claimed that Kenneth Donald was in
27:58
charge the actual time period. records
28:00
indicate that it was Shelford running the
28:02
show and they
28:04
brought a lot of people. So that
28:07
was really valuable because the UCL
28:09
lab who've been doing all of
28:11
this on themselves, I still
28:13
feel they're physically exhausted. They've
28:15
been doing this on themselves multiple
28:17
times per week and they're spacing
28:19
it out based on how little
28:21
time they can give themselves that
28:23
their bodies can handle it. So
28:25
they basically are taking a minimum
28:27
amount of time that they can
28:29
to recover before they get back
28:31
in. So this group at that
28:33
point has experienced Randal's collapsed lung,
28:36
how Dane has broken his back.
28:38
He's literally fractured his spine. They've
28:40
been having seizures. There
28:43
have been multiple seizures and they don't
28:45
know what's coming around the corner for
28:47
them next. So when the
28:49
Royal Navy shows up, they finally did
28:51
this problem, the attention it can deserve.
28:53
It's no longer just this maverick group
28:56
of scientists testing on themselves. Although
28:58
they kept testing on themselves too,
29:00
the Royal Navy can contribute bodies.
29:03
They send a whole bunch of these divers
29:05
who have signed up for things
29:07
they weren't accurately told about and they get put
29:09
in the wet pot too. In
29:12
science, having more people is always better
29:14
science because the human body varies. Your body
29:16
is different from my body, it's different from
29:18
the next person who walked down the street
29:20
behind me. And so
29:22
when we are able to take into
29:24
account that variation, at least to
29:26
a degree we can, the science ends up being
29:28
stronger and more applicable to more people. But
29:30
on the other hand, Ken Donald seems to have been,
29:32
in my opinion, a very difficult person.
29:34
So he does end up stealing
29:37
credit for everything. One
29:39
of the UCL group, Dr. Helen Spurway, was
29:41
the one who did all of the math,
29:43
all of the analysis, all of the everything
29:46
for all of the data. And
29:48
Ken Donald simply took it and
29:50
plagiarized it and called it his
29:52
own. So I'm
29:54
sorry, that's upsetting, but
29:56
yes, the contribution of the bodies and the other
29:58
people who got it. in the team
30:01
were also, that's an amazing contribution
30:03
as well. They knew some of the risks.
30:05
They knew that their friends were being dragged
30:07
out unconscious and they still got in anyway.
30:10
He tries to remove Haldane from the team
30:12
at one point as well, which I find
30:14
incredible considering he must be Britain's preeminent expert
30:17
on the topic. He does. He tries
30:19
to remove Haldane from the team and unfortunately
30:21
he was successful. Thankfully,
30:23
this was toward the end where they're
30:25
doing the exploration that they needed. And
30:28
Donald decides that Haldane is just too
30:30
difficult to work with. So he holds
30:32
a secret meeting with the admiral team
30:35
and Donald is a military member.
30:37
So he has access. He has the ability
30:39
to do this. So since Donald
30:41
has greater access, he has the ability
30:43
to hold, call this secret meeting and
30:45
say, I can't work with this guy
30:47
around. And again, there is historical
30:49
acknowledgement that Haldane was a difficult personality,
30:52
but he, and like he said, he's
30:54
brilliant. He knows this stuff. He is
30:56
the expert. He's not only the British expert,
30:58
but he's the global expert in my opinion
31:01
at this time. And they
31:03
decide that Haldane has given
31:05
them enough. So
31:07
Haldane has given them enough information
31:10
that they can kind of wrap
31:12
up the experimental series. Donald will
31:14
just do a few more tests,
31:16
but Haldane has already taught him
31:18
how to run them. So Donald
31:21
does a few more tests and
31:23
then the admiralty in secret sends
31:25
Donald's remaining information to Haldane to
31:27
double check. So even
31:29
though they've listened to Donald, they'll be like, okay,
31:32
we'll take Haldane off the team. When
31:34
Donald's not looking, they're like, please, please
31:36
check him for, they still
31:38
asking Haldane to please review everything. And
31:40
because this guy is just really patriotic,
31:42
he knows this is a, this is
31:45
a terrible war. He was very anti-fascist
31:47
at the beginning, but he wants
31:49
the war to be over through fascist defeat.
31:52
So I'll put it that way. He's not anti-war and saying
31:54
like, don't fight them, but
31:56
he wants the war to be over. So he's willing to
31:58
do whatever he can to help. So of course he just
32:00
does it. Even though he's
32:03
known for being difficult interpersonally, he
32:05
was this huge team player from
32:07
start to finish. So I wonder when
32:09
we start to see the fruits of
32:11
some of their experiments being used within
32:13
the war effort. Almost immediately. So
32:16
one of the first things, and hopefully, I mean this is the
32:19
World War II podcast so we could be a little bit more
32:21
niche, but one of the first things
32:23
that came as a result, one of the reasons that came
32:25
as a result of their experiments was the ability to use these
32:28
X-craft. So these miniature submarines that
32:30
were built, they were very novel, they were
32:32
built in an almost emergency rush hurry like
32:34
five different shipyards, they were developing
32:36
them as they were using them. But
32:39
a lot of the times when you are dealing
32:41
with a smaller gas volume, your
32:43
problems of breeding physiology increase.
32:46
Because if you have a normal traditional submarine, they
32:48
can just be under water for an hour
32:50
or so and on a
32:52
dive and that's okay. They're just going
32:55
to breathe within that enclosed space. Like
32:57
if you're in an enclosed room, you're
32:59
probably fine. But if you
33:01
go from being in an enclosed room to holding
33:03
a plastic bag over your head, now all of
33:06
a sudden you need to be way more worried
33:08
about your gas supply. And
33:10
that's the same effect as creating a mini-sum.
33:12
So you go from a huge gas volume
33:15
to a small gas volume, now you
33:17
need to be really paying attention
33:19
to how you're managing your breathing
33:21
tasks. So the first experiments
33:23
that this group were doing were actually
33:26
looking at these gas volumes for these
33:28
tiny mini-subs. And they
33:30
were simulating the volumes of the
33:32
X-graphs using the hyperbaric chambers. So
33:35
they weren't necessarily going to pressure
33:37
for all of these, but they
33:39
were using these handy metal contractions
33:42
as a closed environment in which they could
33:44
breathe. There was actually
33:46
one really dramatic test
33:49
where they wanted to make sure
33:51
that everything worked when the submarines
33:53
were in water. They wanted to
33:55
make sure the thermal changes didn't
33:57
really affect it. Can't
34:00
be one hundred percent sure until you pass
34:02
the any apartments. So. They get
34:04
a crane operator to drops or
34:06
hyperbaric chamber into the harbor and
34:09
Suzanne Johnson Cbs have been and
34:11
Martin Case are sitting in there
34:13
for hours and they're trying out
34:16
the the sewer up the it's
34:18
if we call it sort of
34:20
as though Rp but is it
34:23
a zoo or like absorbent that
34:25
carbon dioxide. And so they're testing
34:27
out their calculations for how much does the
34:29
word these mini sub. Need to have
34:31
on board in order to last a certain amount of time.
34:34
To course Adidas homeless out there
34:36
and it's tiny metal tube said.their
34:38
bosses the source the crane operator
34:40
has low or they did as
34:42
a result bombing raids bash. The
34:45
crane operator partially raises now but
34:47
then run for south or so.
34:49
they're less. D easily for the
34:52
craves. Traps is a metal tube above
34:54
the harbor well bombs are falling a
34:56
rip off the how fast they because
34:58
it's no way of getting out. Successful.
35:01
Business or okay for yes, that
35:03
work was immediately applied to provide
35:06
a safe breathing apparatus inside the
35:08
Axe class which were that news
35:10
for all kinds of Mrs and
35:12
especially against the German vessel. That
35:14
her bed. And. You know
35:16
they met with varied levels of success at
35:18
first, but the the leader. Played a really
35:20
crucial role in marking the beaches at the day.
35:23
Isn't idiots way of explaining what
35:25
the So? Because by what what
35:27
what is it and if is
35:29
Suki got the carbon dioxide. Is.
35:32
It putting something else into the i would
35:34
suggest to the camp and dioxide. Houses.
35:37
The else jones's fussiness about what
35:39
it is and how it works
35:41
closes it's a silver. Okay. Civil.
35:44
Suits we still use a C
35:46
stuff today. Athletes: So. We silesia since
35:48
the other the vereen at it in
35:50
hospitals sushi overlaid on a ventilator. Whatever.
35:53
Still, Used to see such neck and the
35:55
first thing you have to understand is that
35:57
it looks like kitty litter. What
36:01
are your had? like twenty granules,
36:03
a dusty stuff and a lot
36:05
of friends with diverse it's divers
36:07
are using. Reading. Apparatuses that
36:09
we circulator air If they want to
36:12
get this stuff on airplanes we put
36:14
it in kitty litter boxes says that
36:16
security ask see requests said. And
36:19
it it is harmless. like to. Do
36:21
you think our famous a sister? They
36:23
don't have to explain our it begs
36:25
so anyway. It's it's it's. a gradual.
36:28
And thirty hockey granules. And it's
36:30
essentially to some material that likes
36:33
to publicly line with carbon dioxide.
36:36
So. There are two different kinds
36:38
of Lithium hydroxide. On the sodium
36:40
hydroxide stand, it's is a passive
36:42
chemical reaction. If you make sodium
36:44
chloride together or cook sodium including together
36:46
they're going to combine other old and
36:48
a salt. So. This stuff to come
36:51
by the on it's own with carbon dioxide
36:53
and so when you pass a C O
36:55
two rich air over it it's just like.
36:58
Whole. That suited right now. it's it's.
37:00
pretty awesome. Who. Really need to do
37:02
is make see that the current volume of it for
37:05
the elite that find that you want and then it
37:07
can be helpful to have like a little fan or
37:09
something to help sexually the air and pass. It drill
37:11
can be reactivated. Read: Once it's done, it's
37:13
done and spent. We throw it away. Once
37:15
it's done, we throw it away. On
37:17
its spent So is this is earth is
37:20
that? actually if you if you leave the
37:22
container l been Ill just like absorb C
37:24
O Two in the air of your lab
37:26
as he had to throw it away anyway
37:29
because you like that it's that it's full.
37:31
But the astronauts have a variant of it
37:33
called metallic oxides. That's. Sort.
37:35
Of like are a platinum coded metal
37:37
be that does the same thing and
37:40
that one you can regenerate so they
37:42
can use eat it up. You can
37:44
literally like put it in your oven
37:46
at all and that the car that's
37:48
our side will come back off of
37:50
that. says. they recycled are the same
37:52
as the x absurd got me when i start
37:54
thinking about all this was it kind of dates
37:57
know how long the have to be and was
37:59
because it's point, they have to
38:01
plan their day and they don't want to be on
38:03
some secret mission and find themselves at lunchtime having to
38:05
bob up to get a bit of
38:07
oxygen on board. They really have must have had
38:09
to be careful of exactly what they were doing
38:11
and when they could go up for take on
38:13
extra fresh air. That's exactly right. Your math
38:15
has to be spot on for these things because
38:18
carbon dioxide does not negotiate. You
38:20
are either going to die a
38:22
horrible death from CO2 or
38:24
you are going to perhaps
38:27
be a POW. Perhaps
38:29
the OPOW is
38:31
like I think what
38:33
everyone, I've experienced carbon dioxide, high
38:36
carbon dioxide and it's extremely uncomfortable.
38:38
It's very painful and it keeps getting worse.
38:41
So like low levels, you're okay. You're like, oh,
38:43
I'm just breathing a little heavy. It keeps getting
38:45
worse until everyone is panicking
38:48
because it has a psychiatric effect
38:50
too. There was a near
38:52
certainty that if they ran out of SOARV
38:54
and they had CO2 build up that
38:56
it was going to end poorly for
38:58
them and at a minimum, the X-graph were
39:00
going to be discovered as a tool. So
39:03
these CO2 calculations were incredibly key and on
39:05
top of it as well, you want your
39:07
crew to be functional. If
39:10
people are living at high CO2
39:12
levels, you get cognitive deficits. They're
39:15
not thinking so well after a while. In
39:17
COVID-19, a lot of this work seems
39:19
to be, I mean, it's all
39:22
on the show on day day. We
39:25
could always do a box ticking exercise. So the X-graph you
39:27
use on big day days, isn't there? Yes.
39:30
When we talk about day day and we talk about
39:32
war in general, we often focus on
39:34
what went awry. Here are the
39:36
biggest tragedies. And I think this is human
39:38
nature. We remember
39:40
the car that cut us off in traffic, but we
39:42
don't remember the 400s that were
39:44
polite driver. So
39:48
we have this evolutionary bias to think about the things
39:51
that went wrong, so we don't repeat it. In
39:53
day day, there are so many things that
39:55
went right. And so
39:57
I was trying to not only acknowledge the sacrifice.
40:01
and the horrible things that we do think
40:03
about when we think about that story, but
40:06
also to give some credit to
40:08
the way that proper planning and
40:10
proper science and self-sacrifice in advance
40:12
made some things go perfectly. So
40:14
the aircraft were used to mark
40:16
the British beaches and that navigation
40:18
went amazingly well. They had been
40:20
hanging out there for a couple
40:22
days below the surface of the
40:24
water, which even as a military
40:26
history nerd I'd never known about because
40:28
they had their carbon dioxide. And then the
40:30
morning of they were able to come
40:33
to the surface, use their beacons, use their
40:35
flags, guide everyone exactly on point. It's
40:38
in sharp contrast to the Americans, which
40:40
we had like infamously missed the landing
40:42
site at Omaha Beach. It said landed
40:44
right in front of the worst German
40:46
gun emplacement. So we have
40:49
this incredibly sharp contrast
40:51
here between proper
40:54
planning and navigation using science and
40:56
something that went horribly awry and
40:58
unfortunately led to lots
41:00
of death. And then on
41:02
top of it, the British were
41:04
using breathing apparatuses. So they were
41:07
diving underwater and they were, this
41:09
means the obstacles underwater and they
41:11
were doing that in the days
41:13
afterwards to clear the channels as
41:16
well. And the reason we never hear about
41:18
those divers is because not a
41:20
single diving accident happened. Everything
41:23
in terms of the diving on
41:25
D-Day went flawlessly. And it was
41:27
because they did this science in
41:29
advance. This group did it on
41:31
themselves. They tested it. Those divers
41:33
went in with scientifically based guidelines
41:35
for their own safety. And then
41:37
they were able to operate with
41:39
them and not a single one
41:41
got hurt. And we never
41:43
hear about it because it was a lot of fun.
41:46
Now, I think actually the Americans went
41:48
in with combat divers who were just
41:50
holding their breath and with satchels of
41:53
explosives and they didn't necessarily do so
41:55
well, which my grandfather was not
41:57
at D-Day, but this was his
41:59
job. The he peered yeah,
42:01
I never thought about divers, wear
42:03
bras, hold swimmers, Bullfight The
42:06
we're still doing. This is underwater
42:08
operation in general. Now. I'm
42:11
D day. They didn't opt
42:13
for underwater operation. So. The
42:15
records are pretty clear there are
42:17
properly trained a sliver there are
42:19
properly seen for underwater exclusive ordinance
42:22
handling but on a d as
42:24
he did. Such as the
42:26
tides were different were for such.
42:29
A lovely as if the American be
42:31
to that omaha here to the response
42:33
to the went in with the play
42:35
on for Dd to not do underwater
42:37
operations Scissor player from the start and
42:39
the than likely recorded their like now.
42:41
Take the army's it's still the army's birds because we're
42:43
to be on. Say I were not to be diving
42:46
for this one guy. So. The
42:48
me that so a thirty day because
42:50
as the way that the differences in
42:52
the water levels at that the dead.
42:54
And. That actually ended up working out
42:56
pretty well because the British did send
42:59
in divers with breathing apparatus has suffered.
43:02
Black. It pretty quickly became clear that
43:04
during the heat of the landing itself
43:06
there were so much ship traffic, the
43:08
underwater operations were really not safe to
43:10
see cause of the colors. And.
43:12
So those average become really created all
43:15
in the days afterwards and you see
43:17
people doing underwater operations on all the
43:19
beaches with the day as they were
43:21
mostly doing things when the tide's would
43:23
allow and then do to save in
43:26
the underwater operations for once the boat
43:28
traffic had cleared of it. Yeah that's
43:30
really it just because you look at
43:32
a D Day American Combat underwater combat
43:35
personal and is usually during the has
43:37
since with them but they didn't. Bring
43:39
the Penn State, They are. They did they, but
43:41
they left them in about. So. They brought their
43:43
underwater kit. that's the case they had it in
43:45
about what they were planning to. just be honest
43:47
thing. And you got these of scientists who
43:49
are extremely specialist in what they do. The
43:51
spent fifty. Five. years working
43:54
on on these problems of on
43:56
the water breathing and pressure and
43:58
presumably the old out of after
44:01
the war and highly paired employees
44:03
in industry doing this for a
44:06
living or employed by universities heading
44:08
up faculties who are specializing in
44:10
this field? No, yes, I wish.
44:13
Because half of them are women,
44:15
their contributions were never acknowledged. And
44:18
in general, their contributions went
44:20
largely unacknowledged. Some of them received a
44:22
letter of thanks from the Admiralty. But
44:25
basically, they were ignored. And a lot of
44:27
that, in my opinion, comes from Ken Donald
44:29
because he wanted to steal their work. Like
44:32
I said, he was an employee of the government. And so
44:34
he was able to claim it as his own and make
44:36
it classified. And so they were never able to see what
44:38
he'd done in protest. So Ken
44:40
Donald was given a very prestigious job
44:42
at a British Navy laboratory
44:44
as a high ranking scientist, in
44:46
respect of his supposed major accomplishments during
44:49
the war, where he quickly developed a
44:51
reputation for never getting anything done and
44:53
showing up to work quite drunk.
44:56
So the rest of them struggled, and especially
44:58
the women, especially the women who
45:00
did a lot of this work, like
45:02
Helen Sperwe and Elizabeth Sherman, who were
45:05
extreme contributors to this work. They
45:08
never got credit for their work. And
45:10
they never, they struggled with employment because they
45:12
were women. And that's not my
45:15
speculation. The records openly say, no, we don't want to
45:17
hire a woman. To me, this is a prime example
45:19
of what happens when we
45:23
don't address discrimination. The
45:25
Navy ends up with an
45:28
incompetent scientist rather than the one
45:30
who actually achieved the thing. And
45:33
that hurts the military personnel. How much of
45:35
the work was classified? Is that another issue?
45:37
All of the work was classified
45:40
until about two, some
45:42
of it got declassified in 1973. And then the
45:44
rest of it is declassified in 2001. I wonder
45:46
why it's kept so
45:48
under wraps for so long. I don't
45:50
know. I think because combat
45:53
divers were immediately known to
45:55
be a thing. Personally,
45:57
I think it was Ken Donald doing it
45:59
because he was involved in
46:01
those meetings to determine the classification level
46:03
because then in 1991 he published a
46:06
book where he again plagiarized everything and
46:08
took credit for all of it. So
46:10
I think he was waiting for the rest of the group
46:12
to die out because he was on
46:14
the younger side. I mean we must have
46:16
known about the enigma ship machine before we knew
46:18
the results of all these experiments. Right but
46:21
then the thing is like GBS Hall-Dane and
46:23
Hans Fairway both died in the 1960s so
46:27
the World War II documents that
46:29
were declassified in the UK kind
46:31
of on mass was in 1973
46:34
and so they died before that. At that point
46:37
it was a challenge of linking it together. So
46:39
part of this story happened
46:42
because I'm also a di-scientist.
46:44
Previous people have looked at
46:46
Hall-Dane's lab records and
46:48
previous biographers have looked at them and
46:50
not been able to piece together what he
46:53
was working on. So one
46:55
of the reasons that I was able
46:57
to do that was because I'm also
46:59
a di-scientist and so I was able
47:01
to look at these and
47:03
be like okay I know what's happening in
47:05
this experiment. I've run similar
47:08
less dangerous experiments and
47:11
that let me cross-reference it with
47:13
the relevant military reports. So
47:16
a lot of these military
47:18
reports would
47:20
not have otherwise been connected
47:22
with the story of
47:25
this particular lab. The reports just kind
47:27
of said like oh and then this
47:29
is your guideline. So it
47:31
was connecting all those pieces from
47:33
the multiple archives that was that
47:36
was kind of the key to telling
47:38
this. Yeah I think
47:40
you've done a great job of shining
47:42
a light in a completely overlooked corner
47:44
of the wall. We'll leave it there.
47:47
Thank you Rachel. I really enjoyed that.
47:49
Loyalistner, if you would like to know
47:51
more about these scientists the book is
47:53
Chamber Divers The Untold Story of the
47:56
D-Day Scientists Who Change Special Operations Forever.
47:58
For patrons of the world. the
48:00
podcast I'm a bit extra looking
48:02
at Horace Wright who spent his
48:04
time blowing himself up underwater during
48:07
the war so look out for
48:09
that. If you're not a patron
48:11
you can sign up at patreon.com/www.podcast
48:13
and is a big thank you
48:16
to patrons of the show I
48:18
could not do this without you
48:20
so that is patreon.com/www.podcast. Well
48:22
that is all for this episode I'm
48:25
Angus Wallace and
48:27
thanks for
48:31
listening So
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next party all summer kind of
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fun don't wait to start your fun this
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