Closed circuit diving for your eyes only
Normalair-Garrett Limited (NGL), or Normalair, was a British manufacturing company established in 1946 in Yeovil, Somerset, England, which manufactured high altitude life support equipment for the aerospace industry. Since 1999 it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc, known as Honeywell Aerospace Yeovil (HAY).
In 1979, Normalair designed the Deep Dive 500 diving system. The system was capable of providing closed-circuit breathing to a diver at 500m.
Like all closed circuit rebreathers, the Deep Dive 500 minimises the emission of bubbles and therefore makes it suitable for covert operations. The diver breathed an oxygen-helium mixture. Exhaled gas was not vented into the water, it passed through an absorbent (soda lime) which removed the harmful carbon dioxide. A little oxygen was then added to replace that which had been used up so that the gas could be safely rebreathed. The maximum operating depth of the system was 500 meters.
In 1981, Deep Dive 500 appeared in the James Bond Fil, ‘For your Eyes Only’. For dramatic effect the director had the set altered to ensure that it released bubbles.
I was able to publish the images of this set thanks to the help of David Dekker.
If you have any information available about this system please send it to jw.bech@quicknet.nl
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!