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I HAVE JUST BOUGHT THIS RUSSIAN-MADE IDA59 REBREATHER, on the Internet. It caught my eye because it was bundled together with a highly unusual submarine escape suit.
Some homework revealed that this rebreather had been used on the deepest-ever submarine escape, in July 1989. The sub had caught fire, and hadsunk with its entire crew.
Six officers rode the emergency escape pod up from more than 600m wearing the IDA59 units. At the surface, rough seas caused the pod to fall over, and it sank back down. Only Warrant Officer Slyusarenko survived the deep escape.
The submarine was a secret prototype called Komsomolets, or "Member of the Young Communist League". Powered by two hybrid nuclear reactors, it had an all-titanium hull and was much faster, and capable of diving to greater depths, than anything in the US arsenal at the time.
Komsomolets now sits broken in the Barents Sea, more than a mile beneath the surface. Eventually everyone may come to know the name of this sub, because if and when its plutonium warheads and reactors leak, the results could be catastrophic. The Arctic fishing industry will be hit first, but then, five other atomic-powered submarines lie dissolving in deep water around the world, so glow-in-the-dark fish 'n' chips will be the least of our concerns!
Experts initially thought that the titanium hull would protect the fish from fall-out forever, but they were overlooking the fact that steel components and alloys based on magnesium and aluminium corrode at enormous speeds in the presence of titanium. The most recent studies show enormous hull breaches already... oops!
The IDA59 is a closed-circuit trimix rebreather with a depth limitation of 300m! Made in 1960, the pint-sized unit is capable of adjusting gas flow rates automatically while descending and ascending, without any electronics.
The user manual states that non-strenuous work can be carried out down to 90m without additional tanks, but it would take a braver man than I to go deeper than 10m with it without taking numerous bail-out bottles! Its dinky scrubber canister has an apparent duration of 2.5 hours, though the term the manual uses is "life expectancy".
Russian rebreathers use a binary scrubber material called 03. This super-oxide compound actually produces oxygen as it absorbs exhaled carbon dioxide, so if you want to add some jalapenos to your life, you don't need to fill the oxygen bottle at all.
Unfortunately if this chemical gets wet, the by-product is so caustic that it can burn through glass. The recent fire aboard the MIR space station was started by the mishandling of this highly reactive compound.
On testing the unit, you immediately notice that only vertical swimming is possible. The horse-collar inhalation bag is placed such that horizontal movement is impossible unless you wear heavy anvil-style earrings.
The trimix supply tanks on this little gem are small enough to be refillable, even with pure helium, for under a fiver!
The escape apparatus comes with a retro-looking full-face mask that screws directly to the breathing loop. It even has a wiper blade that can be activated externally to clean a fogged-up face plate. It looks a bit Heath Robinson but it is very effective. The breathing valve or DSV (Dive Surface Valve) has a setting that allows direct atmospheric air breathing, even with the face mask on. The unit is extremely robust, and all the metalwork immaculate, even after 40 years.
A close-up of the DSV with hoses removed reveals the Russian version of a mushroom valve. In a western unit, these critical components are made of rubber and shrivel up after a season's diving, but the Soviet design is a sprung piece of finely milled mica glass plate.
This technique for directing airflow would have been prohibitively expensive, but utterly reliable and crafted by top Cold War-era engineers.
Today I passed on the wiper mask in favour of wearing the escape outfit, complete with monkey-boy gimp hood. Wearing the orange escape suit with integrated goggles would guarantee entry to any Tory gentlemen's club!
The baggy suit is designed for quick donning, the kind of "quick" you need when aboard a smoked-filled, sinking submarine. The front access panel is closed by a simple draw-string, and the suit, complete with three-finger gloves, would fit many different body types. Pulling on the gimp hood completes the ensemble.
I tried the suit first in Lake Starnberg, the house reef of Munich, Germany. Water temperature was a Baltic 7°C. On the right leg of the suit are two mini air tanks, akin to large soda siphons, designed to provide positive buoyancy once outside the crippled submarine. The whole outfit, including rebreather, is slim enough to allow anyone but a serious salad-dodger to escape, even through the torpedo tubes.
Ordinarily, I would have tested the emergency buoyancy devices strapped to my thigh, but the manual stated that ascent speeds of 3m per second were easily achievable. I had come up this fast before only while attempting to slow down open-water students during ascent training.
Putting on all this equipment was hot and hungry work. It was time for lunch. Escaping submariners would have been faced with the same dilemma - how to eat through an orifice no wider than a pound coin?
Someone with a college degree would have bought soup and a straw to slurp it through, or even Smarties. All I could manage was a banana. Peeling it with Bart Simpson fingers was difficult enough, but pushing it through the mouth-hole gave me flashbacks to the scene in Pulp Fiction in which Zed wakes up his leather-clad buddy.
After a disappointing and messy feed, it was time to test the escape suit. Gingerly, I shuffled through the trees that led to the freezing lake. The suit is made of a condom-thin material, and I was wearing my chunkiest undersuit to keep the cold out. The suit was so thin because it had to roll up small enough to fit into cramped crew quarters.
Waist-deep in the frigid lake, I could feel my left leg rapidly becoming as one with the water. A quick inspection found a thorn stuck through the boot of the suit. I had walked beside some holly bushes to reach the water's edge and Mother Nature had dealt the suit a kidney punch.
The insides of Russian submarines must be very smooth places. The escape suit was never really designed for bimbles in a lake or cruising a reef, though I reckon it would take pride of place in any dive-gear collection.
I conceded defeat, put my regular Otter drysuit back on and dived to test the IDA59 rebreather.
Considering its age, it is a remarkable piece of engineering. The materials used will likely last another 40 years, where modern scuba equipment is often useless after just 40 dives.
Follow the fate of the Komsomolets submarine at a fish 'n' chip shop near you - that's if the mad cow burgers or red food dyes don't get you first!
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Mark Ellyatt enjoys some fresh air
The front-mounted IDA 59 rebreather worn with a more orthodox drysuit.
Venturing into the 7°C lake - pity about that leak in the left leg of the suit.
This mask comes complete with wipers, but only one speed and no intermittent setting.
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