So March wrote, and he told Scoot plenty. He made the test in the pressure chamber sound much more harrowing than it had actually been, even inventing one man who passed out, bleeding profusely, in the middle of the test.
Then he felt better, and went down to dinner feeling once more that he was in the cream of the Navy. As he walked down the hill he heard the drone of an airplane motor overhead.
“Simple,” he said to himself. “See how easy it is? Just push a stick this way or that, just push a couple of pedals, and keep your eyes on a couple of dozen instruments. Why, in a sub we’ve got more instruments and dials than in twenty-five bombing planes!”
When he sat down next to Stan Bigelow, it was even better, for Stan agreed with him completely about the super-importance of the submarine service, thinking up a few additional reasons for its superiority over Naval Aviation that had not occurred to March. Then they began discussing the escape tower test the next day.
“Do you know much about this Momsen Lung they use?” Stan asked. “I saw some today when we took the pressure test, but I don’t know the details of how they work.”
“Yes, I read all about them a few years ago,” March answered. “They were invented by an Annapolis man—then Lieutenant Charles Momsen—not much more than ten years ago. And you know, Stan, that guy conducted every single experiment himself—wouldn’t let anybody else take the chance.”
“Boy, he should have got a medal for that!” Stan exclaimed.
“He did! Distinguished Service Medal,” March said. “And the Lung is one of the biggest things ever invented to make subs safer. Simple—really, like most good things. The good thing about it is that there’s no connection at all with the outside. Most such devices had a valve system for letting the exhaled air out into the water. But the valves jammed shut—or open—too often. There’s nothing like that to go wrong in the Momsen Lung.”
“How does it get rid of the carbon dioxide that you breathe out?” Stan asked.
“There’s a can of CO(2) absorbent inside it, that’s all,” March explained. “Of course, in time it wouldn’t absorb any more, but how long are you ever going to use a Momsen Lung at one stretch, anyway?”