Shocking simulation shows how four divers suffered most gruesome death ever in Byford Dolphin tragedy
Each of the four divers suffered gruesome deaths, but one man's was more horrific than you could possibly have imagined.
You may have heard of the Byford Dolphin tragedy, which claimed the lives of five people in total, and has since served as a reminder of the importance of safety standards in the offshore oil industry.
Back in 1983, saturation divers Edwin Coward, Roy Lucas, Bjørn Bergersen, and Truls Hellevik met a horrific end alongside William Crammond, who was working as a tender.
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To understand why they died, we'll need to clarify what exactly 'saturation diving' is.
When you dive very deep underwater, you have to use a special mixture of oxygen and nitrogen.
This is held under pressure to help the body cope with the pressure exerted on it deep underwater, around 1,000ft below the surface.
To make it easier when conducting frequent maintenance and construction jobs, divers sometimes live in a pressurised container for days at a time.
This prevents them from having to repeatedly undergo the process of pressurisation and depressurisation.
But as the five occupants of this chamber found, this can be highly dangerous.
During their work, the group had been living in the pressurised facility including living quarters and an area called 'the diving bell'.
This was sealed off from the other units as it was where the divers could depressurise.
While the precise causes are not known, what we do know is that the diving bell was released before the doors were fully closed.
The result of this was that the area where the crew was living went from nine atmospheres to the surface pressure of one atmosphere in an instant.
Normally, divers require days to safely depressurise from the kind of depth they were working at, so you can imagine the horrific result.
Now, a YouTube channel, Storified, has demonstrated the divers deaths.
Speaking in the video, a narrator says: "The diving bell disconnected before the chamber doors fully closed, releasing an explosive depressurisation.
"The air pressure inside the bell instantly shifted from nine atmospheres - the pressure experienced while 297 feet below the water - to one atmosphere, the average air pressure on the surface.
"The explosive rush of air out of the chamber sent the heavy diving bell flying. The diving bell struck Crammond and Saunders, critically wounding them."
They continued: "The fate of the four divers inside was far worse. Lucas, Coward and Bergersen's blood 'boiled' instantly in their bodies as enormous amounts of dissolved nitrogen suddenly returned to their gaseous state. The divers died instantly.
"Hellevik suffered the worst death since he was closest to the connecting door. The pressure equalisation caused the door to chamber one to partially jam, causing Hellevik's body to be forced through a small 24-inch crescent-shaped opening with a tremendous force of 25 tons.
"The sheer pressure resulted in the horrific outcome of his internal organs bursting through his body through the opening."
There was just one survivor of the horrific incident - another tender named Martin Saunders, who was left in a critical condition in the wake of the disaster.
Joe Yates