Colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge ...

William Paul Fife USAF (Ret) (November 23, 1917 – October 13, 2008) was a

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...

officer that first proved the feasibility for

U.S. Air Force Security Service Initially established as the Air Force (USAF) Security Group in June, 1948, the USAF Security Service (USAFSS) was activated as a major command on Oct 20, 1948 (For redesignations, see Successor units.) The USAFSS was a secretive branch of the ...

airborne Communications Intelligence ( COMINT) collection and Fife is considered the "Father of Airborne Intercept". Fife was also a hyperbaric medicine specialist who was known for his pioneering research on pressurized environments ranging from high altitude to

underwater habitat Underwater habitats are underwater structures in which people can live for extended periods and carry out most of the basic human functions of a 24-hour day, such as working, resting, eating, attending to personal hygiene, and sleeping. In thi ...

s. Fife was a

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M Unive ...

Education

Fife began his training in

anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having i ...

from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seatt ...

in 1935 and had started his first year of

medical school A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, ...

when

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

began. Fife earned a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

from the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc Nike, Inc. ( or ) is a ...

in 1956. He later completed a Ph.D. in

physiology Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemic ...

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...

in 1962. Fife was a Certified Hyperbaric Technologist (CHT) through the National Board of Diving and Hyperbaric Medical Technology.

Military career

Fife left medical school and was commissioned

Second Lieutenant Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army unt ...

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

in June 1939. Fife then reported to the 15th Infantry at Fort Lewis, Washington for training in Aug 1940. After receiving his basic infantry training, he reported to the 60th Infantry at

Fort Bragg Fort Bragg is a military installation of the United States Army in North Carolina, and is one of the largest military installations in the world by population, with around 54,000 military personnel. The military reservation is located within Cu ...

in North Carolina where he served as an Assistant Operations Officer in September 1940. Fife volunteered for the 18th class of

Parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, w ...

Jump School in

Fort Benning Fort Benning is a United States Army post near Columbus, Georgia, adjacent to the Alabama– Georgia border. Fort Benning supports more than 120,000 active-duty military, family members, reserve component soldiers, retirees and civilian employee ...

, Georgia in April 1942. Following his training in May 1942, he joined the newly formed 503rd parachute infantry battalion as

Company Commander A company commander is the commanding officer of a company, a military unit which typically consists of 100 to 250 soldiers, often organized into three or four smaller units called platoons. The exact organization of a company varies by countr ...

. As Company Commanding Officer of the

503rd parachute infantry regiment 5 (five) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number, and cardinal number, following 4 and preceding 6, and is a prime number. It has attained significance throughout history in part because typical humans have five digits on eac ...

in Sept 1943, Fife led his company in a jump in the Markham Valley, New Guinea. This was the first successful airborne combat jump in the Pacific Theater of Operations. His first combat jump was planned with the ground

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § ...

500 feet lower than it actually was and Fife found himself in a

coconut tree The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family ( Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, the seed, or the ...

. Fife had completed 35 training and combat jumps by the time WWII ended. Fife reported to the U.S. Army FE Headquarters Office of Intelligence in January 1944 then to the 68th Airborne Air Control Squadrons (AACS) combat operations in SW Pacific in September. He then went on to the 141st AACS special ops in New Guinea & P.I. in January 1945. Fife reported to the AACS Headquarters Office of Intelligence in Washington, DC in August 1945. Hoping for a chance to ride in the planes more often, Fife transferred to the

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an ...

in November 1947 where he was immediately sent to the

Defense Language Institute The Defense Language Institute (DLI) is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) educational and research institution consisting of two separate entities which provide linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other ...

to learn Russian. He became the first Russian linguist of the USAF Security Service (USAFSS) command. Fife was among the first inductees to the Defense Language Institute Hall of Fame. Fife was sent to 1st Radio Squadron Mobile,

Johnson Air Base is a Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) base located in the city of Sayama, Saitama Prefecture, north of western Tokyo, Japan. It was the airfield for the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Academy until 1945, when it became Johnson Air Fo ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

during the Allied Occupation where he earned the unofficial title, "Father of USAFSS Command in the Far East". Part of his duties included intelligence briefings for General

Douglas MacArthur Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was ...

. Russian forces were beginning to build up and the Far East Air Force needs were changing, Fife proposed airborne Communications Intelligence ( COMINT) collection. In 1950, Fife planned and flew the first USAF Security Service

reconnaissance mission In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmishers, ...

s from

Kadena Air Base (IATA: DNA, ICAO: RODN) is a highly strategic United States Air Force base in the towns of Kadena and Chatan and the city of Okinawa, in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. It is often referred to as the "Keystone of the Pacific" because of its highl ...

over the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, i ...

with a wire recorder and jury-rigged receiver on an RB-29 air plane. As a result of these missions proved the feasibility for USAFSS airborne COMINT collection and Fife is considered the "Father of Airborne Intercept". He also managed to earn a first degree black belt. In 2006, Fife was inducted into the

Air Intelligence Agency Twenty-Fifth Air Force (25 AF), also known as Air Force Intelligence, was a numbered air force (NAF) within the United States Air Force (USAF), and served as the Air Force's premier military intelligence organization. 25 AF was established o ...

Hall of Honor. Fife was then sent to

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

where he served as USAFSS 1st RSM's liaison officer to Fifth Air Force Headquarters located in Kim Il-sung's palace and stayed until the then Capt. Fife, ordered the evacuation of USAFSS COMINT personnel as Chinese entered the

Korean War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Korean War , partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict , image = Korean War Montage 2.png , image_size = 300px , caption = Clockwise from top:{ ...

. Fife's position was the beginning of the future USAFSS Special Security Office program. In 1951, Fife set up USAFSS linguist team operations in

Pyeongtaek Pyeongtaek () is a city in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Located in the southwestern part of the province, Pyeongtaek was founded as a union of two districts in 940, during the Goryeo dynasty. It was elevated to city status in 1986 and is home t ...

with the 606th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron. Fife had a great respect for the Korean operators he worked with noting they were "the best I have ever seen". In 1951, Fife returned to Japan until transfer to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

shortly after

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

died.

Lieutenant Colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colon ...

Fife, with his wife Ann, served as Assistant Air Attaché at the U.S. Embassy with

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...

as a Russian expert. Following his time in Moscow, he spent time at

The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...

as the Intelligence Briefing Officer for General Twining and General LeMay.

Fife translated for President Dwight D. Eisenhower a radio transmission from a Soviet fighter pilot intercepted after shooting down a USAF

C-130 The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin). Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 was originally desi ...

ACRP (60528) over

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''O ...

in September 1958. In 1962, after obtaining his Ph.D., he served as Assistant Chief of the Aerospace Medical Research Division at

Brooks Air Force Base Brooks Air Force Base was a United States Air Force facility located in San Antonio, Texas, southeast of Downtown San Antonio. In 2002, Brooks Air Force Base was renamed Brooks City-Base when the property was conveyed to the Brooks Developm ...

San Antonio, Texas ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_ ...

where he performed research essential to the

space race The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the t ...

. His work was in cardiovascular responses and measurement tools critical for tests of

g-force The gravitational force equivalent, or, more commonly, g-force, is a measurement of the type of force per unit mass – typically acceleration – that causes a perception of weight, with a g-force of 1 g (not gram in mass measur ...

and near-vacuum survival. The Air Force did not have a training program in hyperbaric medicine so Fife was trained by the Navy. His first test dive was performed with Micky Goodwin and Robert Workman. Col. Fife retired from the Air Force in 1967.

Academic career

Dr. Fife joined the Texas A&M University Department of Biology faculty in 1967. In his time there he served as the Chairman of the Biology Department, Dean of Research and Vice President for Academic Affairs as well as chairman for numerous academic committees. Dr. Fife was instrumental in the founding of the

American Academy of Underwater Sciences The American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS) is a group of scientific organizations and individual members who conduct scientific and educational activities underwater. It was organized in 1977 and incorporated in the State of California ...

. He retired from Texas A&M in 1997.

Contributions to hyperbaric medicine

Fife was a pioneer in undersea medicine and served as director of the Texas A&M University

Hyperbaric Hyperbaric medicine is medical treatment in which an ambient pressure greater than sea level atmospheric pressure is a necessary component. The treatment comprises hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), the medical use of oxygen at an ambient pressure ...

laboratory. Fife was active with the HydroLab saturation diving research program funded by the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditi ...

. Fife was an

aquanaut An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as satura ...

having spent 28 days in saturation in the

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

performing physiology experiments. The first uses of hydrox, a gas mixture of

hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-to ...

and

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements ...

is used as a

breathing gas A breathing gas is a mixture of gaseous chemical elements and compounds used for respiration. Air is the most common and only natural breathing gas, but other mixtures of gases, or pure oxygen, are also used in breathing equipment and enclosed ...

in very

deep diving Deep diving is underwater diving to a depth beyond the norm accepted by the associated community. In some cases this is a prescribed limit established by an authority, while in others it is associated with a level of certification or training, an ...

are usually attributed to six ocean dive trials by the Swedish engineer, Arne Zetterström in 1945. Fife later showed that hydrox would allow divers to descend and work at great depths. Fife also developed the first decompression tables for the use of the mixture. The French engineering company COMEX (Compagnie maritime d'expertises) later applied Fife's work in developing their HYDRA dive series. Much of his other diving medical research was focused on women in diving and

spinal cord The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the sp ...

decompression sickness Decompression sickness (abbreviated DCS; also called divers' disease, the bends, aerobullosis, and caisson disease) is a medical condition caused by dissolved gases emerging from solution as bubbles inside the body tissues during decompressio ...

. Fife's interest in clinical hyperbaric medicine lead to several research projects to look for new indications for the use of

hyperbaric oxygen therapy Hyperbaric medicine is medical treatment in which an ambient pressure greater than sea level atmospheric pressure is a necessary component. The treatment comprises hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), the medical use of oxygen at an ambient pressure ...

. It has been estimated that about half of the 2,000 patient treatments done by his lab were for research. These projects included the treatment of: * squamous cell carcinoma in mice with hydrox; * migraine headache; * Post-polio syndrome; * Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; * radionecrosis; * brown recluse spider bites; * non-union fractures; * closed head injury; * Chronic Lyme disease. HyperTrak clinical documentation

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

, marketed by Intellicure, Inc., was started at Texas A&M University with Dr. Fife and David Walker in 1996.

Professional societies

Fife was a member of the

Aerospace Medical Association The Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA) is the largest professional organization in the fields of aviation, space, and environmental medicine. The AsMA membership includes aerospace and hyperbaric medical specialists, scientists, flight nurses, ...

, the

American Physiological Society The American Physiological Society is a non-profit professional society for physiologists. It has nearly 10,000 members, most of whom hold doctoral degrees in medicine, physiology or other health professions. Its mission is to support research an ...

Sigma Xi Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is a highly prestigious, non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a small group of graduate students in 1886 ...

and the

. He served on the executive committee of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society.

Awards

Texas A&M University presented Fife with the University Outstanding Award for Teaching in 1975. The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society conveyed their Paul Bert Award for Distinguished Research to Fife in 1983 and their

Oceaneering Oceaneering International, Inc. is a subsea engineering and applied technology company based in Houston, Texas, U.S. that provides engineered services and hardware to customers who operate in marine, space, and other environments. Oceaneering' ...

Award for Research in 1994. On his 78th birthday in 1995, Fife and a team from

Diving Diseases Research Centre Diving Diseases Research Centre (DDRC Healthcare) is a British hyperbaric medical organisation on Plymouth Science Park adjacent to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, Devon. It is a UK registered charity (no.279652) and was established in 1980 at ...

received "The Duke of Edinburgh's Prize of the

British Sub-Aqua Club The British Sub-Aqua Club or BSAC has been recognised since 1954 by UK Sport as the national governing body of recreational diving in the United Kingdom. The club was founded in 1953 and at its peak in the mid-1990s had over 50,000 members d ...

" which was presented by H.R.H.

Prince Philip Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 1921 – 9 April 2021) was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he served as the consort of the British monarch from E ...

for their work on "Men and Women in Diving".

References

External links

* by William P Fife, hosted by the

Rubicon Foundation Rubicon Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization devoted to contributing to the interdependent dynamic between research, exploration, science and education. The foundation, started in 2002, is located in Durham, North Carolina and is primari ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fife, William Paul 1917 births 2008 deaths University of Oregon alumni Ohio State University College of Medicine alumni Texas A&M University faculty Recipients of the Legion of Merit United States Air Force officers American medical researchers Defense Language Institute alumni People from Plymouth, Indiana Decompression researchers