FOIAWEAR — LAMBERTSEN / Father of the Frogmen Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 011

Before Dr. Christian Lambertsen, a military diver went underwater in a heavy metal helmet, breathing through a hose tied to a boat — and every breath announced itself as a trail of bubbles rising to the surface. Lambertsen changed all of it.

A medical student turned OSS officer, he built the LARU — the Lambertsen Amphibious Respirator Unit — a closed-circuit rebreather with a carbon-dioxide filter that let a diver re-breathe the same air and release no bubbles at all. With it, a swimmer could stay at 50 feet for 90 minutes and cover nearly a mile in silence. It was built for the OSS Maritime Unit, whose swimmers trained at Annapolis in 1943 and proved the gear in Operation Cincinnati in 1944 — slipping past the torpedo nets at Guantanamo Bay at night and leaving the Navy's sound detection gear none the wiser.

In 1952 Lambertsen put the name to it: "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus" — SCUBA — and went on to hold seven diving patents. His designs underpinned the Navy SEALs' gear into the 1980s, and in 2000 the SEALs honoured him as the "Father of US Combat Swimming." History remembers him as the "Father of the Frogmen."

The artwork is a stylised interpretation of a frogman and his closed-circuit rig; it is not a technical diagram.

The QR code on the front opens the CIA's article on Lambertsen, the source for everything above: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/christian-lambertsen-and-the-secret-story-behind-scuba/

This shirt is offered in both dark and light garment colours — the artwork in its light print on Black, Navy, Espresso, and in a matching dark-ink print on Light Green, Butter, Ivory.

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717 garment-dyed t-shirt. Heavyweight 6.1 oz/yd² (206.8 g/m²), 100% ring-spun US cotton, pre-shrunk, relaxed fit, double-needle stitched with no side seams and a sewn-in label. Offered here in Black, Espresso and Navy, sizes S–4XL. Printed on the front at 300 DPI; plain back. The main artwork prints at 10 × 10 in and the QR at 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, with like colours. Tumble dry low. Do not iron directly on the printed area.

FOIAWEAR is an independent brand and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Central Intelligence Agency or the United States government.