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The hangar bay was alive with its normal controlled chaos. The Aviation Boatswain’s Mates were moving aircraft methodically, Sailors were pushing through a mid-day workout, and I dodged the wings of aircraft in route to my destination; the mysterious steel container sitting in hangar bay one.
Most of the time, the container is locked and adorned with warning signs that only add to the mystique. Not many people had any idea what the contents filling the container were. Rumors of what could be inside ranged from a back-up reactor to extra individually wrapped muffins. Intrigue surrounded this box but answers were missing.
Then the opportunity to find out what was inside finally came when Explosive Ordnance Disposal Liaison Officer, Lt. Michael Morrison, reached out and offered a first-hand look inside. The opportunity was too hard to pass up.
As I approached the box, three Navy Divers, a rating not normally seen on an aircraft carrier, walked out of the container. From a distance you could see light coming from the inside. As I moved closer, I saw what looked like a machine out of a science-fiction movie.
It was white, oddly shaped, and covered in knobs and tubes. In some aspects it resembled a small submarine with portholes to view a patient from the outside, tubes that pump oxygen into the sealed areas, and knobs that control the flow.
The machine inside the steel container was a far cry from the assumptions that were spreading throughout the ship.
“It’s called a transportable recompression chamber or TRCC for short,” said Senior Chief Navy Diver John Marshall. “It’s onboard because divers and aviators are both susceptible to decompression sickness which is basically a physiological event that can happen to your body due to a change in atmospheric pressure.”
The portable chamber is used to reverse the effects of major changes in altitude, with symptoms ranging from light-headedness to vertigo, which are often found in both aviators and divers and have similar cause.
“If you are level on the ground and then you go higher up in the air, the air is thinner. Essentially, you are experiencing less pressure on your body. If you are diving, you are going deeper down and experiencing more pressure on your body,” said Lt. Catie Garcia, one of two flight surgeons with Carrier Airwing (CVW) 9. “With that increased pressure it is allowing more nitrogen and oxygen to get into your blood stream. If you have less pressure on your body suddenly, that nitrogen that is in your blood stream will form little bubbles.”
According to Lt. Woody Parker, the other flight surgeon with CVW-9, having the chamber allows for a peace of mind for pilots onboard.
“The aviators will tell you they are glad it’s there,” said Parker. “It’s reassuring because they all have colleagues who have had issues, or it’s something that they are acutely aware of and concerned about. It’s a way to ensure that we are taking care of the warfighters who are out doing a job.”
The chamber itself is interesting. It’s manned by the divers onboard, Navy Divers Second Class Connor Skonieski and Brik Johnstone, and Marshall. Having gone through dive school, where they learned about compression sickness, makes members of their rating obvious choices to maintain the chamber. Their jobs range from the operation and maintenance of the machine as to determining if someone is in need of the chamber.
“We’re onboard because we are trained to recognize signs and symptoms of decompression sickness and to administer treatment inside the chamber,” said Marshall.
Skonieski opened the chamber so I could get a better view inside. It was small. The space didn’t seem capable of holding more than a single person, but Marshall explained that if done properly, it can hold a few patients at a time.
“There’s basically two locks to it,” said Marshall. “It’s meant to be isolated. You separate the two locks and treat two patients in each lock. You can do a total of four people.”
To better show how pilots or divers would fit into the chamber, Skonieski demonstrated the positioning of each person. Before entering, he made sure that he wasn’t wearing any fabrics that could cause a disturbance to the chamber and made sure he did not have any zippers on his clothes. The precaution ensures there is no chance of a spark from static electricity inside a chamber filled with pure oxygen. Apparently, it was basic science.
Skonieski crawled to the back and sat up against the wall of the chamber. Marshall explained that a patient can spend up to four hours in the chamber depending on the severity of the physiological episode. Once a patient is done with the chamber, they would be evaluated by one of the flight surgeons who would determine the amount of down time needed to recover.
“It depends on what symptoms they were having,” said Garcia. “If they were feeling a little tired and we weren’t sure it was due to whatever happened in the jet and they come out and they feel okay, then we might just do 24-48 hours of observation. If it was something more serious, like they were truly confused or having a lung related issue, then they might be down for a while.”
After talking with the divers and the flight surgeons it became clear that although they are glad this machine is onboard, they hope to never use it. In case they do, the divers stand watch around the clock and can have the chamber ready for a patient in approximately two minutes.
I thanked them for their time and watched as they closed up the steel container. Once again, left to conspiracy theorists to imagine what was inside. With this one mystery solved it was time to find the next.
For more news on John C. Stennis, visit www.stennis.navy.mil or follow along on Facebook at www.facebook.com/stennis74, Twitter @stennis74, or Instagram @stennisCVN74.
| Date Taken: | 10.31.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 11.29.2018 08:05 |
| Story ID: | 301559 |
| Location: | PACIFIC OCEAN |
| Web Views: | 90 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Recompression, by PO1 Benjamin Wooddy, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
