Photo above: director of the diving department at Draegerwerk Hermann Stelzner speaks with a diver who is wearing the Dräger Tauchretter Modell T2, which was developed in the nineteen thirties. The Tauchretter existed already in the years before the first world war but unfortunately I do not have any photographs of these early apparatus. Photo above: David L.Dekker collection.

Draeger rebreathers for ‘Swimdivers’

Photo above: the first version of the Dräger 138 rebreather as developed by Dräger in coöperation with the Austrian scientist Prof. Hans Hass from Vienna, Austria. Photo David L.Dekker

Photo above: a Draeger LAR5 O2 rebreather. Photograph David L.Dekker

‘DiveScrap’Index

the scrapbook of diving history

Draeger Tauchretter T2

It were the ‘Tauchretters’ which lead Dräger to the ‘hard hat’ scaphander with rebreather backpack. The heavy backpack for the copper helmet exists in several versions and most of those are described in the history chapter on Draegerwerk part 1: ‘1899 Draegerwerk’. Here I show just a few younger ‘Schwimmtaucher’ and ‘Kampfschwimmer’ rebreathers made by Draegerwerk; many more variations existed but I do not (yet) have photo’s of them.

Photo above: the second version of the Dräger 138 rebreather. Photo David L.Dekker

Draeger ‘138’

Dräger LAR

Photo below: a Dräger LAR5 / LARV. These O2 rebreathers were not only used by the German military, also the Dutch, English and US military as well as many others had adopted this apparatus. Since the late 1950’s developed for combat divers only, the Dräger LAR series. This is a LAR5 from the mid seventies, the LAR 1, 2 and 3 also existed. I don’t know about a LAR4 but a 6 and 7 were also made. The newest from the series of the LAR are the LAR 5000 and LAR 7000