This helmet was made in Lynn Haven, Florida and was a prototype helmet for the US Navy but the Navy went on to use the Mk12 made by Morse Diving instead. Notice the similarities between this helmet and the Mk 12. Also notice the regulator on the back and what looks like two gas connections mounted on both sides of the back. It has a chin button inside with a lot of other plumbing installed as well as the comms. It was intended for use with the neck ring and a neckdam seal. Photo courtesy: Seahawk Company.

This attached photo was taken at the Man In The Sea Museum in Panama City, Florida USA. This is a rare example of George Swindell's earliest free-flow (open circuit) style dive hat from the middle 1960s. This type of hat latter evolved into the Advanced 2000 series, also called the Swindell Hat, Beckman Helmet and even a Beckman-Swindell. The shell was of hand-laid fiberglass and the metal parts were of machined brass. You can note that the shell dome is form fitting (like the human head); whereas latter Swindell hats were more vertical in the back of the shell. The hat is very much like latter Swindell hats, that is, it is slightly positive buoyant, it has an interrupted screw thread neck dam, a chin-button style exhaust and a jocking harness to hold the hat down on the head. George Swindell had some fiberglass delamination problems with these early hats and I always found them a bit uncomfortable to work in. I think this helmet was donated to the museum by the US Navy Experimental Diving Unit at Panama City. The Navy liked the Swindell hat as it could fit about any size head. One needs to take only a cursory look at the US Navy SSDS Mark-12 helmet to see that it was influenced by the Swindell hat.

This helmet was donated to the Man In The Sea Museum by the US Navy Experimental Diving Unit at Panama City Florida. I do not know what the helmet
was called, but it was built in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It has a fiberglass neck ring that attached directly to a dry suit and connections for a jocking harness to hold the hat down on the head. The transparent helmet part is cast from polycarbonate Lexan plastic. I know it is Lexan as the transparent
shell has bubbles and waves in the plastic. It is very hard to heat cast Lexan (as the Navy must have found out), because when you get it hot enough to mold it
will bubble up. This hat is an interesting but failed idea. 

# 3 about to go down.
Official US Navy photo

No, this helmet is not proof that Darth Vader served in the US Navy in the 1960s. It is an experimental diving helmet made for the Naval Coastal Systems
Laboratory (Experimental Diving Unit) at Panama City, Florida. It was donated to the Man In The Sea Museum. If you look carefully it uses many of the same
brass fittings that the latter Navy SSDS Mark-12 helmet used. It also is designed to be used with a mixed-gas recirculator backpack. The fittings on the back
of the hat are for flex hoses to connect to the back pack. the helmet shell is fiberglass. I think this is the ugliest helmet I have ever laid eyes on.   

This is another experimental diving helmet from the EDU. I think it was built and tested in the 1970s. It is an interesting configuration, but it is also the second ugliest helmet I have ever seen. The shell is fiberglass and the parts are of machined brass. The hat is a demand style helmet so it is close fitting and has a demand regulator. I do not know who built the hat for the EDU, perhaps Morse. If you look carelfully at the photo you can see that it too has
fittings that share features with the latter SSDS Mark-12 Navy helmet. So the Navy must have borrowed the features from this, and other helmets that it
liked, and put them in the SSDS Mk-12. The front facepiece port comes off and is held on with moveable pins just like the neck dam of the SSDS Mk-12. The nose clearing device inside the hat is machined from brass, and the hat has a side block air intake assembly not unlike that style seen in latter Kirby-Morgan demand type hats.   

This is the KMCSH-4. It was an early semi-closed mixed gas experimental hat built for the EDU by the Kirby Morgan company in the middle 1960s. The
Westinghouse Oceanic Division designed the experimental backpack helium-oxygen deep diving recirculator for the rig. Most people know Westinghouse as the builder of kitchen appliances, but in the 1960s and 70s they built experimental life support systems for underwater and outer space. Oddly enough they also built a few experimental stainless steel diving helmets with neck dams. I don't have a picture of any of the Westinghouse hats, I think only one or two were built. According to Joe's Savoie's wife (Joyce) Westinghouse engineers got Joe to act as their consultant (unpaid) and then they refused to give him any credit for influencing their helmet design. Anyway back to the KMCSH-4, which is now on display at the Man In The Sea Museum in Panama City, Florida USA. The hat is a fiberglass clamshell design. This simply means that it sealed around the diver's face and the helmet dome held the full face mask tight to the diver's head. Inside it is equipped with an oral-nasal mask. The side connections are for the hoses to the mixed gas recirculator. This hat was not very successful. 

This is the KMCSH-6. It was the final version of Kirby-Morgan's clamshell helmets. It was built for the EDU and the SeaLab Program in the middle 1960s.
None of the Clamshell designs worked very well so they were abandoned. It is fiberglass with a hinged head protector. The mask was built primarily for a
mixed-gas recirculator, but you can see in it features that were latter employed in the Kirby-Morgan Band Masks.

This mask is on display at the Man In The Sea Museum. Some people claim this is the Kirby-Morgan MM-3, and it may be. Others say it is an early General
Aquadyne rigid frame full-face mask (it is not a band mask). It has many of the features of the early General Aquadyne masks. The mask has a fiberglass frame with a sponge rubber face seal. The demand regulator looks to be the ScubaPro model, like GA used. It is equipped with an oral-nasal mask with microphone and the frame is fitted with ear speakers, again as used by GA.  The helmet dome is a padded head protector. I dove these masks many years and found them to work well. occasionally one still sees a General Aquadyne mask around the job site.  

This is an experimental diving hat built for the EDU by Morse Diving Equipment co. I don't know the exact date of manufacture, but I suspect the 1970s or
early 80s. It is on display at the Man In The Sea Museum. The influence of the early Kirby-Morgan helmets is obvious. This hat, which is designated PN:
608-5168070, and SN: ADI or AD1,  has a KMB superflow regulator attached to dual hoses intended for a backpack mixed gas recirculator. The shell is fiberglass with machined brass fittings.  

This is another view of the experimental Morse demand hat. You can see that the neck dam is held in place by a couple of cams with brass handles, and the
helmet is secured to the diver's head by a unique, adjustable brass slide retainer that was obviously influenced by the Kirby-Morgan toilet seat (retainer).
The cams are kept from coming unattached to the neck dam by pins not unlike those on the SSDS Mk-12 neck dam. An interesting feature inside the hat is that the head pad can be adjusted by an external handle on the port side of the hat; this feature is a copy of the General Aquadyne DMC-7 head pad securing
system, an excellent innovation.  

This is a homemade free-flow style diving helmet on display at the Man In The Sea Museum. I do not know who gave it to the museum or who made it. It has a crude, hand laid fiberglass shell with a thick lead ring at the bottom that secures a permanently attached neoprene neck dam. The shell is padded inside and
also has some lead in it. The intake valve is a commercial off-the-shelf, stainless steel Whitey needle valve. The outlet valve is an adjustable DESCO
exhaust valve (from a DESCO pot). The faceport must have been cut from a sheet of 6 mm thick Lexan. The hat was held on the diver's head by a jock harness. In the early days of commercial oil patch diving in the Gulf many divers simply could not afford, or could not find a neck dam style hat, so they made their own.  This lead to some rather strange innovation. I knew one diver who cut out the bottom of a pressure cooker and put on a fiberglass top and faceport. He then cut out the center of the lid and permanently attached a ring of lead and bolted on a rubber neck seal. Once he attached some fittings it worked pretty well (I dove it), but it was not the type of rig I would recommend be used by amateurs. PS, don't try this at home.    

This is me while I was in dive school at the Ocean Corporation at Houston, Texas. I have been told that this mystery helmet is a version of the Rat Hat, but it seems to have none of the features of the earlier Rat Hat. This free-flow hat belonged to the Ocean Corp. and we used it in the burning tank (underwater welding and cutting). The shell is/was fiberglass with chrome plated brass fittings. It had good balance and dove well. The neck dam had a couple of cam handles and the neck ring sealed on an O-ring. It used a jock harness to keep the hat down on the diver's head. Can anyone out there identify this hat?

This is another experimental helmet built for the Experimental Diving Unit by Morse Diving Equipment Company. It dates to the mid 1970s.
The regulator is very close in design to the US Divers valve as is the side block valve assembly.
 

The shell is made of yellow fiberglass and the metal parts are chrome brass and bronze.