Jacques-Yves Cousteau, officier de marine et cinéaste (1930-1950)

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This article sheds light on the life of Jacques-Yves Cousteau during his career as a naval officer. Since his midshipman cruise in 1932, he shows an interest for filming. Then he experiments undersea swimming and filming, improving equipment to this end. In 1941 and 1942 he is assigned to Naval intelligence, performing critical missions and making shooting for the first French underwater movie Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), sometimes as a cover. After the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon, he spends the year of 1943 shooting the movie Épaves (Shipwrecks) with his friend the “mousquemers”, in which they used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. Having thus demonstrated the advantages of this apparatus for refloating and sea demining, he is posted in 1945 as second in command of the Undersea Research Group. In 1947, Cousteau became commander of the sloop Élie Monnier and thus was entitled to be addressed as “commandant”. In 1950, he took unpaid leave from the French Navy and founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns.