A. I served in both capacities. For example, I have frequently gone to the altitude of 40,000 feet to study the symptoms of bends with an intermediate pressure device, which we produced in our laboratory. I have been to 47,500 feet on three or four occasions, on one occasion at 52,000 feet for half an hour. I have frequently been to 18,000 feet without supplemental oxygen in order to study the effect of the degree of oxygen lack present there for my ability to perform psycho-motor tests.
Q. Can you tell us approximately during what year you began these experiments of your own?
A. In 1939.
Q. 1939; did you at this time carry out explosive decompression experiments too? Witness, one moment please, the English for that is “explosive decompression.” That is thus the experiment in which one ascends slowly to a certain height, let us say 8,000 meters, and then all at once suddenly one is brought up to a height of 15,000 meters; that is, first slowly up to 8,000 and then suddenly to, let us say, 15,000—that is what I understand under the term “explosive decompression” experiment, and my question is: whether you also carried out such experiments and if so when and to what extent?
A. I carried out over one hundred experiments on explosive decompression in various laboratories on animals, the rabbit, the dog, the pig, and the monkey. I did not serve as a subject myself in experiments on explosive decompression, but a student who was trained with me in physiology, Dr. J. J. Smith, did the first experiments on explosive decompression in which human subjects were used, at Wright Field. I am familiar with the work which Dr. Hitchcock did on this subject at Ohio State University in which he studied some one hundred students under conditions of explosive decompression.
Q. To what altitude, Witness; to what maximum altitude did you carry your own explosive decompression experiments?
A. In animals it was up to 50,000 feet; in the case of human subjects, the maximum was 47,500 with pressure breathing equipment.
Q. This altitude you reached in your own experiments. Now, Doctor, it would interest me to know to what maximum altitude have any experiments in explosive decompression been carried in America; what do you know about this maximum altitude?
A. I believe that 47,500 or slightly above is the maximum.
Q. Witness, do you know the German Physiologist Dr. Rein; Professor Rein, do you know his name; R-e-i-n from Goettingen?