A 1988 article in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology outlines the Byford Dolphin autopsies. But really, proceed with caution, because it contains pictures of the victims’ bodies and the pieces of one diver — diver 4 — who was closest to the diving bell’s door when the chamber suddenly depressurized.
Diver 4 might have undergone the most gruesome fate, but thankfully didn’t feel anything or even know what happened. One of the diving bell’s two tenders — a person who positions it from the outside — opened one of the clamps on the chamber’s door for some unknown reason, and diver 4 blasted through a 23-inch opening and “completely disintegrated.” There was such an enormous pressure difference between the inside and outside of the bell that some of the remains shot up out of the water almost 32 feet and landed on the deck of the ship above.
This victim was shipped for examination in four plastic bags. His brain was missing, and his remaining organs had blown out from his torso along with his spine and ribs, leaving a hollow “empty sack” where everything used to be. Not every piece was found because some of him simply blew out into the ocean and vanished. The assembled, remaining pieces hardly resembled a person at all.
