# Modern Combat Diving



## Smurf (Sep 29, 2009)

When did US SOF units start using modern day rebreathers? I know the OSS used some in WWII, but I didn't think the UDTs and Marine Recon units were using it until the 50's- could someone clarify for me?


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## 8'Duece (Oct 1, 2009)

angryirishkid said:


> When did US SOF units start using modern day rebreathers? I know the OSS used some in WWII, but I didn't think the UDTs and Marine Recon units were using it until the 50's- could someone clarify for me?


 
Here's Wikis's timeline, but it doesn't really answer your question.  1943 apparently was the first time Lambertson trained USOSS. 



> Timeline of underwater technology
> Around 1620 in England, Cornelius Drebbel made an early oar-powered submarine. Records show that, to re-oxygenate the air inside it, he likely generated oxygen by heating saltpetre (sodium or potassium nitrate) in a metal pan to make it emit oxygen. That would turn the saltpetre into sodium or potassium oxide or hydroxide, which would tend to absorb carbon dioxide from the air around. That may explain how Drebbel's men were not affected by carbon dioxide build-up as much as would be expected. If so, he accidentally made a crude rebreather nearly three centuries before Fleuss and Davis.[3]
> 
> In 1853 Professor T. Schwann designed a rebreather in Belgium; he exhibited it in Paris in 1878.[4]
> ...


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