Recent Posts - page 2

  • Dressed For Success

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    One of the early, recreational scuba diving pioneers, Commandant Yves Le Prieur – the French Navy Commander who designed the single lens mask for use in submarine escape – had, in 1934, devised and patented a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus… Read More ›

  • An Artificial Gill

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    By 1974 the U.S. Patent Office had already awarded patents on, “two artificial gills which enabled a free swimming diver to extract oxygen dissolved in sea water for his respiration. Carbon dioxide elimination is accomplished through the same device. “In… Read More ›

  • D-day ‘Frogmen’

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    The first men ashore at ‘Gold’, ‘Sword’ and ‘Juno’ beaches on D-day, were divers of the Landing Craft Obstruction Clearance Units; a hundred and twenty ‘frogmen’ forming ten units (four from the Royal Navy and six from the Royal Marines)… Read More ›

  • Chariots of Fire

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    Inspired by the successful 1941 attack (carried out by Italian divers riding ‘chariots’ armed with detachable explosive warheads) on the British battleships, ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and ‘Valiant’, in Alexandria Harbour, the Royal Navy began to devote greater resources to training divers… Read More ›

  • “The Third Man Factor”

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    It’s not the sort of thing that people usually talk about, and in my case, it’s something that – at the risk of ridicule – I’ve confessed to very few, apart from my wife when I returned home on that… Read More ›

  • ‘Under Pressure’

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    Encouraged by the comments of a former U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote that,   “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…”, I have no hesitation in stating that Gareth Lock’s book,… Read More ›