The sea is grey and choppy. There’s a splash. A body floats into view. An airman, forced to bail out of his burning plane, is bobbing up and down in the waves. His life jacket keeps him afloat, but he’s lying face down, arms and legs dangling helplessly beneath the water. In the standard wartime movie, this is the point at which the audience finally realises that the hero isn’t coming home, the Sun sinks into the sea and the credits roll. But this film is a record of a scientific experiment. Instead of the setting Sun, a young man in a one-piece swimsuit jumps into the water and pulls out the drowning man.
With the help of a wave machine, the swimming pool at Ealing film studios in west London does a good impression of the North Sea on a squally day. Warships have sunk in this pool. Spitfires have crashed into it. And actors playing heroes have slipped quietly beneath its waves. Cleared of model ships, planes and actors with stiff upper lips, the pool is an ideal place to perform tests that will contribute far more to the war effort. These experiments feature in a shaky, soundless film held in the archives of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland. The aim was to find a life jacket that would save unconscious pilots from drowning. Even this film had its hero. For accuracy’s sake, someone had to be thrown unconscious into the water to see if the life jackets worked. Gar Pask volunteered to go under.
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