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A list of links to Wikipedia articles on movies, novels, TV series and shows, comics, graphic art, sculpture, games, myths, legends, fiction in general, and misconceptions that feature underwater diving, including hypothetical and imaginary methods, and other aspects of underwater diving which have become part of popular culture.
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One of several illustrations of Alexander the Great being lowered into the sea from a boat inside a transparent cylinder, interpreted as a glass diving bell. The style of the illustration varies with the era and culture of the artist, but the basic subject remains much the same.
Political cartoon depicting Grover Cleveland.
Mural art showing an underwater scene with scuba divers,
Early 20th century whimsical advertising illustration.
Painting on ceramic commemorating a North Sea commercial offshore diving incident in 1979.
The 1951 movie The Frogmen used three-cylinder aqualungs, as shown on the DVD cover. At the time DESCO were making three-cylinder constant flow breathing sets that lacked the demand valve of the aqualung,[ citation needed ] but they were rarely deployed in the war, and the preferred system in the US armed forces was the rebreather developed by Christian J. Lambertsen. [4]
The 1958 film The Silent Enemy with Laurence Harvey as Lionel "Buster" Crabb, describes his exploits during World War II. It was made following the publicity created by Crabb's mysterious disappearance and likely death during a Cold War incident a year earlier.[ citation needed ]
The 1955 film Above Us the Waves , based on the 1953 book of the same title, includes a reenactment of Operation Title, the attempted attack by British frogmen on the German battleship Tirpitz in 1942. The film is notable for the efforts made to be historically accurate. [5]
The 1965 James Bond film Thunderball depicts an extended underwater battle, featuring frogmen. [6]
In the 1966 sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage and its accompanying novelization by Isaac Asimov, the character of former navy veteran and, at the time of the action, government agent Charles Grant is referred to as a communications expert and experienced frogman. [7]
The film Submarine X-1 , made in 1969, loosely based on the real Operation Source, depicts British World War II frogmen's equipment inaccurately. The breathing sets shown are open-circuit and are merely a very fat cylinder across the belly, with a black single-hose second-stage regulator such as was not invented until the 1960s. Also shown were ordinary recreational scuba weight belts and diving half-masks with elliptical windows. The frogmen in the real war operation mostly used Sladen suits and an early model of Siebe Gorman rebreathers with a backpack weight pouch containing lead balls releasable by pulling a cord.[ citation needed ]
The 1972 movie Tintin and the Lake of Sharks featured some frogmen among Mr. Rastapopolus's conspiracy.[ citation needed ]
In the 2018 film Aquaman , the antagonist, Black Manta's father, Jesse, had given him a hunting knife during their mission that had been passed down from his father. Jesse mentions that Black Manta's grandfather was "one of the Navy's first Frogmen during WWII". [8]
Sea Hunt was an American action adventure television series that aired in syndication from 1958 to 1961 and was popular in syndication for decades afterwards as part of a wave of excitement around scuba diving following Cousteau's The Silent World. [1] [2] Vincent LoBrutto attributed the show's success largely to the audience's "fascination with the underwater world", and "the endless mystery of the seas" it set into scene. The series originally aired for four seasons, with 155 episodes produced. [3] It stars Lloyd Bridges as former United States Navy frogman, Mike Nelson, founding his status as a media personality. [1] [2]
Some scuba diving clubs have an entry class called "Tadpoles" for younger children who want to start scuba diving.[ citation needed ]
Many comics have depicted combat frogmen and other covert divers using two-cylinder twin-hose open-circuit aqualungs. All real covert frogmen use rebreathers because the stream of bubbles from an open-circuit set would give away the diver's position.[ citation needed ]
Many aqualungs have been anachronistically depicted in comics in stories set during World War II, when in reality at that time period aqualungs were unknown outside Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his close associates in Toulon in south France. Some aqualungs were smuggled out of occupied France during the war (these may have been Commeinhes regulators).[ citation needed ]
The movie The Frogmen , similarly, depicted frogmen using three-cylindered aqualungs, including on its movie poster. DESCO were making three-cylinder constant flow sets that lacked the demand valve of an aqualung, but they were rarely used in the war,[ citation needed ] and the preferred system was the rebreather developed by Christian J. Lambertsen.
Ian Edward Fraser V.C. in 1957 wrote a book Frogman V.C. about his experiences. Its dust cover depicted on it a frogman placing a limpet mine on a ship, wearing a breathing set with twin over-the-shoulder wide breathing tubes emitting bubbles from behind his neck. [9]
There have been many drawings (mostly in comics) of combat frogmen and other scuba divers with two-cylinder twin-hose aqualungs shown with one wide breathing tube coming straight out of each cylinder top with no regulator. [10] [11] [12]
This type of open-circuit scuba is very familiar in comics and other drawings, as a wrongly-drawn twin-hose two-cylinder aqualung, with one wide hose coming out of each cylinder top to the mouthpiece with no apparent regulator valve, much more often than a correctly-drawn twin-hose regulator (and often of such breathing sets being used by combat frogmen):[ citation needed ] It would not work in the real world. [13]
Design of fullface masks (underwater, land, gasmasks) in movies is sometimes constrained by desire to show the actor's face to the camera. There have been cases of fullface masks used in movie filming having a light inside shining on the actor's face so the face shows on camera better: a feature that is no use whatever in practical breathing mask use.[ citation needed ]
In Fantastic Voyage the diving sequences were filmed using Italian ARO oxygen rebreathers with the mouthpiece (and diving mask) replaced by a pseudo fullface mask not intended to be dived in, because the diving actors were out of water suspended from thin wires.[ citation needed ]
Common errors of fact and misunderstanding of the physics and physiology of diving in journalism and popular culture.
A scuba set is any breathing apparatus that is carried entirely by an underwater diver and provides the diver with breathing gas at the ambient pressure. Scuba is an anacronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Although strictly speaking the scuba set is only the diving equipment which is required for providing breathing gas to the diver, general usage includes the harness by which it is carried, and those accessories which are integral parts of the harness and breathing apparatus assembly, such as a jacket or wing style buoyancy compensator and instruments mounted in a combined housing with the pressure gauge, and in the looser sense it has been used to refer to any diving equipment used by the scuba diver, though this would more commonly and accurately be termed scuba equipment or scuba gear. Scuba is overwhelmingly the most common underwater breathing system used by recreational divers and is also used in professional diving when it provides advantages, usually of mobility and range, over surface supplied diving systems, and is allowed by the relevant code of practice.
The timeline of underwater diving technology is a chronological list of notable events in the history of the development of underwater diving equipment. With the partial exception of breath-hold diving, the development of underwater diving capacity, scope, and popularity, has been closely linked to available technology, and the physiological constraints of the underwater environment.
Aqua-Lung was the first open-circuit, self-contained underwater breathing apparatus to achieve worldwide popularity and commercial success. This class of equipment is now commonly referred to as a diving regulator, or demand valve. The Aqua-Lung was invented in France during the winter of 1942–1943 by two Frenchmen: the engineer Émile Gagnan and the Naval Lieutenant Jacques Cousteau. It allowed Cousteau and Gagnan to film and explore underwater more easily.
Freediving, free-diving, free diving, breath-hold diving, or skin diving is a form of underwater diving that relies on breath-holding until resurfacing rather than the use of breathing apparatus such as scuba gear.
A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantially unused oxygen content, and unused inert content when present, of each breath. Oxygen is added to replenish the amount metabolised by the user. This differs from open-circuit breathing apparatus, where the exhaled gas is discharged directly into the environment. The purpose is to extend the breathing endurance of a limited gas supply, and, for covert military use by frogmen or observation of underwater life, eliminating the bubbles produced by an open circuit system. A rebreather is generally understood to be a portable unit carried by the user. The same technology on a vehicle or non-mobile installation is more likely to be referred to as a life-support system.
A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes police or military work. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, combatant diver, or combat swimmer. The word frogman first arose in the stage name The Fearless Frogman of Paul Boyton in the 1870s and later was claimed by John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy and member of the OSS Maritime Unit, to have been applied to him while he was training in a green waterproof suit.
A full-face diving mask is a type of diving mask that seals the whole of the diver's face from the water and contains a mouthpiece, demand valve or constant flow gas supply that provides the diver with breathing gas. The full face mask has several functions: it lets the diver see clearly underwater, it provides the diver's face with some protection from cold and polluted water and from stings, such as from jellyfish or coral. It increases breathing security and provides a space for equipment that lets the diver communicate with the surface support team.
The Soviet, later Russian IDA71 military and naval rebreather is an oxygen rebreather intended for use by naval and military divers including Russian commando frogmen. As supplied it is in a plain backpack harness with no buoyancy aid. The casing is pressed aluminium with a hinged cover. It has a small optional nitrox cylinder which can be clipped on its outside to convert it to nitrox mode. It contains one oxygen cylinder and two absorbent canisters. In the bottom of its casing is an empty space which is intended for an underwater communications set.
The Clearance Divers Breathing Apparatus (CDBA) is a type of rebreather made by Siebe Gorman in England.
Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving where the diver uses an apparatus which is completely independent of surface supply to breathe underwater. The name "scuba", an acronym of "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was first used by Christian J. Lambertsen in a patent submitted in 1952. Scuba divers carry their own source of breathing gas, usually compressed air, allowing them greater independence and freedom of movement than surface-supplied divers, and longer underwater endurance than breath-hold divers. Although the use of compressed air is common, a mixture of air and oxygen called enriched air or nitrox has become popular due to its benefit of reduced nitrogen intake during long or repetitive dives. Breathing gas diluted with helium may be used to reduce nitrogen narcosis.
Siebe Gorman & Company Ltd was a British company that developed diving equipment and breathing equipment and worked on commercial diving and marine salvage projects. The company advertised itself as 'Submarine Engineers'. It was founded by Augustus Siebe, a German-born British engineer chiefly known for his contributions to diving equipment.
Defenses against swimmer incursions are security methods developed to protect watercraft, ports and installations, and other sensitive resources in or near vulnerable waterways from potential threats or intrusions by swimmers or scuba divers.
Aqua Lung International is a large and well-known firm which makes scuba and other self-contained breathing apparatus, and other diving equipment. It produced the Aqua-Lung line of regulators, like the CG45 (1945) and the Mistral (1955), among others. Until 2016, the company was a division of Air Liquide since its foundation in 1946. The company was sold to Montagu Private Equity in 2016.
The Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (LARU) is an early model of closed circuit oxygen rebreather used by military frogmen. Christian J. Lambertsen designed a series of them in the US in 1940 and in 1944.
The history of scuba diving is closely linked with the history of scuba equipment. By the turn of the twentieth century, two basic architectures for underwater breathing apparatus had been pioneered; open-circuit surface supplied equipment where the diver's exhaled gas is vented directly into the water, and closed-circuit breathing apparatus where the diver's carbon dioxide is filtered from the exhaled breathing gas, which is then recirculated, and more gas added to replenish the oxygen content. Closed circuit equipment was more easily adapted to scuba in the absence of reliable, portable, and economical high pressure gas storage vessels. By the mid-twentieth century, high pressure cylinders were available and two systems for scuba had emerged: open-circuit scuba where the diver's exhaled breath is vented directly into the water, and closed-circuit scuba where the carbon dioxide is removed from the diver's exhaled breath which has oxygen added and is recirculated. Oxygen rebreathers are severely depth limited due to oxygen toxicity risk, which increases with depth, and the available systems for mixed gas rebreathers were fairly bulky and designed for use with diving helmets. The first commercially practical scuba rebreather was designed and built by the diving engineer Henry Fleuss in 1878, while working for Siebe Gorman in London. His self contained breathing apparatus consisted of a rubber mask connected to a breathing bag, with an estimated 50–60% oxygen supplied from a copper tank and carbon dioxide scrubbed by passing it through a bundle of rope yarn soaked in a solution of caustic potash. During the 1930s and all through World War II, the British, Italians and Germans developed and extensively used oxygen rebreathers to equip the first frogmen. In the U.S. Major Christian J. Lambertsen invented a free-swimming oxygen rebreather. In 1952 he patented a modification of his apparatus, this time named SCUBA, an acronym for "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus," which became the generic English word for autonomous breathing equipment for diving, and later for the activity using the equipment. After World War II, military frogmen continued to use rebreathers since they do not make bubbles which would give away the presence of the divers. The high percentage of oxygen used by these early rebreather systems limited the depth at which they could be used due to the risk of convulsions caused by acute oxygen toxicity.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to underwater diving:
The following index is provided as an overview of and topical guide to underwater diving:
The following index is provided as an overview of and topical guide to underwater divers:
Underwater divers are people who take part in underwater diving activities – Underwater diving is practiced as part of an occupation, or for recreation, where the practitioner submerges below the surface of the water or other liquid for a period which may range between seconds to order of a day at a time, either exposed to the ambient pressure or isolated by a pressure resistant suit, to interact with the underwater environment for pleasure, competitive sport, or as a means to reach a work site for profit or in the pursuit of knowledge, and may use no equipment at all, or a wide range of equipment which may include breathing apparatus, environmental protective clothing, aids to vision, communication, propulsion, maneuverability, buoyancy and safety equipment, and tools for the task at hand.
