All I need is the air that I breathe.... at Tims Times

Just watched the film “Hunt for the Red October” again, I read the book when I was working in the US on a summer student visa in 1989 and loved it of course. It is my second favourite U-boat film, the favourite is of course Das Boot and having seen in real life the U-boat pens at Lorient and St. Nazaire, makes the film all the more real.

One of the cadets was in Submarines during his military service, it was his job to take care of the oxygen content of the air on board when the boat was submerged, they had liquid oxygen in pressure bottles which was vapourised to create breathable oxygen, they also had to get rid of the carbon dioxide in the air with lime, 1kg lime may absorb approximately 14 hours of expired CO2. But the downside is that once the lime is used up, the CO2 levels rise again. He told me about a Chinese sub that had been found drifting all of the crew at their stations dead…lack of oxygen but a peaceful death….. One of the instructions the U-boat commander had was that in the event that all the crew were going to die, he was to reduce the Oxygen level to give everyone an easy death. Apparently death by CO2 poisoning is a horrible way to go.