Vice Admiral Charles Momsen began duty in the submarine service as Executive Officer of USS O-13 in 1922 and ended duty in 1953 as Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Fleet. In 1928, he created the submarine escape lung, a wearing breathing device that would come to be known as the "Momsen Lung.” For this development, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, with citation which states in part:

"During the early stages of its (the Lung's) design and development (he)...courageously, repeatedly and voluntarily risked his life in conducting experiments of a nature such that there was little or no information available as to their probable results. In the later tests of the device, when escapes were made from USS S-4 submerged to depths as much as 206 feet, he was not only the first person to venture the escape but also the leading and guiding spirit in all subsequent ones..."

In 1944, eight submariners survived the sinking of USS TANG (SS 306) by wearing Momsen lungs. Lieutenant Commander Charles “Swede” Momsen conceived the idea for a rescue chamber after USS S-51 (SS 162) was lost in a collision in 1925. Only three of the submarine’s 37 crew members escaped before it sank. In 1926, Momsen proposed the adoption of a diving bell for submarine rescue purposes to the Bureau of Construction and Repair. Then in December 1927, USS S-4 (SS 109) sank off Provincetown, Massachusetts, after being accidentally rammed by a Coast Guard destroyer. S-4’s crew survived the sinking but ran out of air as Navy divers worked desperately to reach them. The incident revived the diving bell project.

Under Momsen’s direction, the Bureau of Construction and Repair began developing the diving bell in 1928. After extensive bell testing and experimenting, Momsen was reassigned within the Bureau to design an underwater breathing apparatus for submarine escape — what became his most famous invention, the Momsen lung. The Bureau placed Lieutenant Commander Allan McCann in charge of the design revisions Momsen had planned for the rescue chamber. McCann directed the development of the chamber for a year and a half; once completed in 1930, the bell was introduced by the Navy as the McCann rescue chamber.