Vintage Drager dive mask info needed.

[Mike Lev]

The person I bought this from said it came from a frogman in UDT 21 ww2 and he used it?Doesn't make to much sense.If it is that old why would a U.S. Frogman have a German mask during ww2?Any Drager experts?It has Drager Original on it and Unter with numbers 31179 under it.Unique band strap also.I have never seen a Drager dive mask.Just the full face ones?.

 

[David Wilson]

There's a 1956 Dräger diving suit catalogue on Luigi Fabbri's great Blu Time Scuba History site at https://blutimescubahistory.com/?q=en/tecnica/cataloghi-e-loghi/cataloghi-completi/dräger. Here are some images from it showing divers wearing "half-masks" (as against full-face masks)

The image above marked as page 4 illustrates Dräger's standard suit, which came complete with "Einfenster-Taucherbrille und Flossen" (single-window diving mask and fins). The strap attachments to the mask body do look similar to the ones in your pictures.

As for the history of Dräger diving half-masks, the evidence is sparse, although I admit I haven't looked deeply enough yet. I wonder whether the dating of the gear as "WW II" may be a loose description including the early years of Allied occupation of Germany during the 1940s and 1950s? This was also the time when Dunlop and Siebe-Gorman in the UK were manufacturing "Admiralty pattern" combat diver's masks and fins.

There are three images of a Dräger mask (marked Original Dräger) resembling yours on the Divescrap site at Draeger, Misc.

Have a look too at the 1961 Dräger catalogue on the Finnish diving museum site at http://www.sukellusmuseo.fi/esitteet/drager_englanti.pdf. Page 13 has a close-up of a Dräger mask and fins to see how closely the mask resembles yours. There's a great run of early Dräger catalogues from 1961 to 1978 on the CG-45 site at CG-45 - Downloads /downloads/Catalogs/DRAGER/. Bryan Pennington of Vintage Double Hose has a few Dräger printed items at https://personal.filesanywhere.com/fs/v.aspx?v=8d6d638a5f6075b5a46a. The 1977 Dräger catalogue can be found at VSC - sbírka potápěčské techniky. Official history of Dräger at https://www.draeger.com/Corporate/Content/the_history_of_draeger_2.pdf.

Hope this helps, or at least I've given you plenty of reading matter to be getting on with in the meantime!

 

[Sam Miller III]

@Mike Lev
@David Wilson

I was also curious.

Some where in the very distant past I recall seeing a strap arrangement similar or possibly the same as the Draeger mask

I have packed away a very complete German HoZee catalog from the early 1960s which as I recall had a very complete section on Draeger equipment - unfortunately at this time I can't located the catalog.

I also did a courtesy thumb through of all of Dr. Hans Hass's American printed books as well as a number of German printed books by Dr.Hass.

I also thumbed through Dr. Michael Jung's monumental book Ein Leben lang auf Expedition .
None of my resources had a picture of the Draeger mask

I have never been a student of diving masks, but some what interested in the broad spectrum of diving history, therefore I would defer to the catalogs unearthed by David Wilson as a positive identification.

Great find - but just where does it fit in the grand scheme of diving is a mystery yet to be solved ???

Good Luck and keep up the good work
SAM

 

[Mike Lev]

Hello David thank you very much for the infoSo cool!.I figured you might have some info on it.It being from Europe.Thanks to Sam also for checking your hunches also.I will have a more mysterious mask on this week.I asked a friend who is a big mask collector first for any info.Thanks so much again gentlemen your the best!

 

[axxel57]

The person I bought this from said it came from a frogman in UDT 21 ww2 and he used it?Doesn't make to much sense.If it is that old why would a U.S. Frogman have a German mask during ww2?Any Drager experts?It has Drager Original on it and Unter with numbers 31179 under it.Unique band strap also.I have never seen a Drager dive mask.Just the full face ones?.

That's from a Draeger Catalog from 1962, the mask looks pretty similar to me.....
And here from a 1961 Catalog.......
Sorry, have problems to upload the picture of that English Catalog for 'safety reasons'.
Send me a PM and I'll send you the catalog (s) if you are interested......

 

[Sam Miller III]

@axxel157
Good information - thanks for sharing -
It is as I recall the mask from a 1960s German HoZee catalog
Re Axel
When I was in my grad studies we had a number of Danish students 3 were named Axel and now I have a neighbor who has a son named Axel- who "just heard the name and liked it "
Can we assume you are also Danish ?

Sam Miller, 111

 

[David Wilson]

Here's the thirteenth page from the 1961 Dräger catalogue where the mask is illustrated and captioned:

The entire 1961 Dräger catalogue can be downloaded from the CG-45 site at http://www.cg-45.com/downloads/download.php?file=Catalogs/DRAGER/Drager 1961.pdf. The same site has Dräger catalogues from 1961, 1962, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1974, 1977, 1978: all accessible from CG-45 - Downloads /downloads/Catalogs/DRAGER/.

 

[Mike Lev]

View attachment 527848
That's from a Draeger Catalog from 1962, the mask looks pretty similar to me.....
And here from a 1961 Catalog.......
Sorry, have problems to upload the picture of that English Catalog for 'safety reasons'.
Send me a PM and I'll send you the catalog (s) if you are interested......

Hello Axel thanks for the info.Cool!

 

[axxel57]

I didn't know anymore where I had the catalogs from, but I have the same ones as mentioned by David, so I got them from the Dräger Site too.
Sam, you are geographically quite close, but I'm German, it's the name of my grandfather.....

 

[David Wilson]

I didn't know anymore where I had the catalogs from, but I have the same ones as mentioned by David, so I got them from the Dräger Site too.
Sam, you are geographically quite close, but I'm German, it's the name of my grandfather.....

My main source for Dräger catalogues has been the CG-45 site at CG-45 - Downloads /downloads/Catalogs/DRAGER/. I don't think Dräger archives the company's old catalogues on its website.

I too am named after my paternal grandfather. As a student and teacher of the German language, I can confirm that "Axel" is, or was, a popular German forename. When I briefly studied at a German university in the late 1960s, the name "Axel Springer" (above) appeared frequently in the news because he was a Hamburg newspaper publisher whose tabloid Bild was regularly attacked for its political views by the German student movement back then.