[2] Behnke separated the symptoms of Arterial Gas Embolism (AGE) from those of decompression sickness and suggested the use of oxygen in recompression therapy.

[1] Behnke graduated from Whittier College in 1925 and moved to San Francisco to attend medical school at Stanford University.

[1] Behnke joined the United States Navy and completed his internship at the Mare Island Naval Hospital in 1930.

[1] In addition to his other duties, Behnke spent time covering medical watch on USS Ortolan, a submarine rescue ship, where he performed his first hard hat dive.

[1] In 1932 Behnke wrote a letter to the Surgeon General that was published in the United States Naval Medical Bulletin outlining the possible causes of arterial gas embolisms he was seeing related to submarine escape training.

[1] Brown sent Behnke to do postgraduate work at the Harvard School of Public Health and research on diving and submarine medicine with fellow student Charles W.

[citation needed] Lieutenant junior grade Behnke was then sent to Pearl Harbor in 1935 to the Submarine Escape Training Tower.

[4] Evidence of the effectiveness of recompression therapy utilizing oxygen was later shown by Yarbrough and Behnke and has since become the standard of care for treatment of DCS.

[11] Taking advantage of the positive public support for Navy diving following the Squalus rescue, Behnke contacted Franklin D. Roosevelt and with Presidential interest known, received approval for the construction of his research laboratory (NMRI).

[1] On December 7, 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor began, Behnke was at sea on USS Lexington and immediately reassigned to medical posts around Hawaii.

[1] Behnke focused his interest in how physical fitness and fat content effects inert gas elimination and started projects to evaluate this relationship.

His research lead us to consider him the "modern-day father" of human body composition for "his pioneering studies of hydrostatic weighing in 1942, the development of a reference man and woman model, and somatogram based on anthropometric measurements underlie much current work in body composition assessment"[5][12] In 1942 Behnke made the first proposal for operational saturation diving and its economic benefit pertaining to work in caissons and pressurized tunnels.

[14] In 1950, Behnke earned the Navy and Marine Corps Medal "for saving the life of a civilian skin diver who surfaced too quickly off Monterey.

[17] The bends prevention and safety program for crews working in underground caissons to build the Bay Area Rapid Transit system was designed by Behnke in 1964.