Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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Within a few years, however, the restrictions imposed by World War II would be replaced by the flowering of modern surf culture. The end of the war in 1945 heralded momentous developments. Most obviously, materials and technologies developed during the war enabled advances in surfboard design. While solid wood boards that required nearly superhuman strength to carry were increasingly being replaced by hollow boards in the 1930s, war technologies were enabling even newer designs that drew on balsa, marine plywood, fiberglass, polyester resin, and polyurethane foam.¹⁴⁵ These lighter boards opened up the sport to countless newcomers. So, too, did the development of wetsuits—another beneficiary of war time technology, and one that was reciprocated when O’Neill began manufacturing “custom-tailored thermal barrier diving and surfing suits for [the] U.S. Navy.”¹⁴⁶ The American security establishment benefited from surfing in other ways, too. Agents of the Office of Strategic Ser vices, the war time intelligence agency that preceded the CIA, used paddleboards, which they rode as surfboards, as reconnaissance vehicles.¹⁴⁷ And it was announced in 1953 that an “underwater surfboard” had been developed with “potential value as a compact submarine for the [U.S.] Navy’s daring frogmen who swim in close to the enemy’s shores and ships.”¹⁴⁸