Dräger Barakuda Delphin 1

Dräger’s first sportdiving rebreather sold on civilian market

photpgraphs and text Jan Willem Bech 26-01-2010

I am very pleased I was able to buy a original Barakuda Delphin-1 rebreather. This extremely rare oxygen rebreather was actual the very first sportsdiving rebreather Draeger made. Here is some of the history of this absolute fantastic piece of equipment.

1951

In the spring of 1951 Jochen Bergann who founded Barakuda went to the Dräger factory in Lübeck to have his first conversations with Dr. Dräger about the production of a sportsdiving apparatus. Because Drägerwerk has been an important producer of Gasmasks in the second worldwar Dr. Dräger had doubts about the production of another piece of equipment that has been used in the war. Finally there was an agreement between Drägerwerk and the divingsport sector in Germany that lead to a 15 year during cooperation between the Draeger company and “Barakuda”.

1953

In 1953 BARAKUDA introduced the first sportsdiving rebreather called Delphin- I, a closed circuit Oxygen rebreather.

Therebreathersite Delphin 1 003 — A second unit the ” Tümmler”followed. In Italy the interest in rebreathers growed. Italian two hour units were designed. In Germany people started thinking about the dangers of the use of rebreathers by sportdivers. In 1953 Dräger developed a single hose regultor with a 5 liter cylinder. This apparatus was called the Delphin II and was produced during many years. The Delphin II was in use of sportsdivers but also the **Deutsche Lebens-Rettungs- Gesellschaft** **and water rescue teams.**

I am very pleased to show you on therebreathersite.nl a true Delphin one. Unfortunately hoses had to be replaced and the original cylindervalve is missing, but is gives a good impression of this old lady!

Therebreathersite Delphin 1 006 — Here is how she arrived. You can see the green hoses are disintegrated by UV light. Imagine these hoses are more than 50 years old!

Therebreathersite Delphin 1 007 — I had to replace the hoses with new ones.

Therebreathersite Delphin 1 011 — here you can see all the parts that have been degraded by UV light

Therebreathersite Delphin 1 012 — The device has a particularly small opening, so the work of breathing is likely to have been particularly high.

Therebreathersite Delphin 1 014 — after a long search and with the help of friends a managed to find a couple of nice hoses and the good material to make the hoses fit in the proper way

Therebreathersite Delphin 1 015 — I even managed to find a original Draeger mouthpiece!

Text photo, free translation: 250 German Mark is the price of the new diving apparatus of the German Lubeck Draeger Company. It allows 45 minutes under water time. In germany underwatersport is receiving increasing attention and popularity.

I hope you enjoyed this small adventure with this beatiful oxygen rebreather.

Therebreathersite was founded by Jan Willem Bech in 1999. After a diving career of many years, he decided to start technical diving in 1999. He immediately noticed that at that time there was almost no website that contained the history of closed breathing systems. The start for the website led to a huge collection that offered about 1,300 pages of information until 2019. In 2019, a fresh start was made with the website now freely available online for everyone. Therebreathersite is a source of information for divers, researchers, technicians and students. I hope you enjoy browsing the content!

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