Raimondo Bucher

Raimondo Bucher was an Italian freediver and scuba diver who is remembered as a pioneer of Italian and world diving and of underwater photography and filming. Born in 1912 in Gödöllő in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to an Italian father, he trained as a pilot and became a flight and aerobatics instructor in the Italian air force. In 1949 he dived to 29 meters off Capri in front of a commission, and in 1950 he reached 30 meters, which the page describes as the first official freediving world record. In 1952 he improved the record to 39 meters. He took part in the national expedition to the Red Sea that produced the documentary Sesto Continente, appeared in it as himself, wrote several books on diving and trained his later wife Luciana Civico to a compressed air diving record. He died in Rome in 2008.