When the redesigned diving bell was completed in late 1930, it was introduced as the McCann Submarine Rescue Chamber. He charged Lieutenant Commander Al McCann to make the changes he wanted and McCann was put in charge of the final revisions on the Momsen / McCann diving bell.
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Momsen stated the bell was unstable, tipped, and leaked, and had several changes in mind for the diving bell, but was sent to the Bureau of Construction and Repair to teach submariners how to use the Momsen lung before he could make the changes. He built a prototype, constructed from a water-tight aircraft hangar pirated from S-1 and tested it off Key West, Florida. Momsen returned to his diving bell idea in 1930. The Momsen lung was eventually supplemented by the Steinke hood and free-ascent techniques. The Momsen lung saved its first lives in October 1944, when eight submariners used it to reach the surface after Tang (SS-306) sank in 180 feet (55 m) of water in the East China Sea. In 1929, Momsen received the Navy Distinguished Service Medal for personally testing the device at a depth of 200 feet (61 m). Hobson, a civilian employee of the Bureau of Construction and Repair (later the Bureau of Ships). Besides providing oxygen for the ascent, it also allows a submariner to rise slowly to the surface, thus avoiding embolisms.īetween June 1929 and September 1932, Lieutenant Momsen developed the lung along with Chief Gunner's Mate Clarence L. The device hangs around the wearer's neck and is strapped around the waist. Two tubes lead from the bag to a mouthpiece: one with which to inhale air and the other to with which to exhale spent air. The Momsen lung contains a canister of soda lime, which removes poisonous carbon dioxide from the exhaled air and then replenishes the air with oxygen. The press enthusiastically received the device and they dubbed it the "Momsen lung", a name that stuck. Officially called the Submarine Escape Lung, it consisted of an oblong rubber bag that recycled exhaled air. Īfter the S-4 incident, Momsen began working on a device to help trapped submariners escape safely to the surface.
Rosenkotter exits the submarine's forward escape trunk wearing a "Momsen lung" during the submarine's sea trials in July 1930. Six sailors survived three days in the forward torpedo room, but had no way to escape. Shortly thereafter, in December 1927, another submarine, the S-4 (SS-109), sank off Cape Cod. He stated his case again, but to no avail. They had been disapproved as impractical. Shortly after he reported aboard, he came across his diving bell drawings. Momsen's next tour of duty took him to the Submarine Division of the Bureau of Construction and Repair. He waited more than a year for a response, heard nothing, and concluded there must have been something technically wrong with the concept. Momsen diagrammed his idea and sent it up the chain of command. Then, the hatch could be opened, and the trapped submariners could climb aboard. A watertight seal to the submarine could be achieved by placing a rubber gasket around the diving bell's bottom and reducing the air pressure once the bell was over the escape hatch. He conceived a diving bell, which could be lowered to a submarine in distress, mated to an escape hatch, and opened to allow trapped submariners to climb in. Momsen began to look for ways to rescue submariners. S-1 found the oil slick marking the spot where S-51 had sunk, but without any sonar, there was no way for his crew to locate her on the bottom, nor was there a way for trapped crewmen to escape. Momsen was ordered to take S-1 to search for the crippled submarine. On September 25, 1925, S-1 's sister ship, S-51 (SS-162), collided with freighter City of Rome in the vicinity of Block Island and sank in 130 feet (40 m) of water. It was aboard S-1 Momsen's attention became drawn to the urgent need for a way to rescue trapped submariners. A few years later, he was given command of S-1 (SS-105), one of the newest US Navy designed submarines of that time. 18 months later, he took command of the submarine O-15 (SS-76). In 1921, he entered the Naval Submarine School in New London, Connecticut, graduating in January 1922.
įrom 1919 to 1921, Momsen served on the battleship Oklahoma (BB-37). However, Momsen pursued another appointment to the Academy, received it, repeated his plebe year, and graduated in 1919 - one year early, due to the involvement of the United States in World War I. Naval Academy in 1914, but he was dismissed after a widespread cheating scandal during the spring of his first year there.
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