United States Navy SEALs
The United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land 'Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs', are the United States Navy's primary special operations force and a component of the United States Naval Special Warfare Command. Among the SEALs' main functions are conducting small-unit special operation missions in maritime, jungle, urban, arctic, mountainous, and desert environments. SEALs are typically ordered to capture or kill high-level targets, or to gather intelligence behind enemy lines.
SEAL team personnel are hand-selected, highly trained, and highly proficient in unconventional warfare, direct action, and special reconnaissance, among other tasks like sabotage, demolition, intelligence gathering, and hydrographic reconnaissance, training, and advising friendly militaries or other forces. All active SEALs are members of the U.S. Navy.
History
Origins
Although not formally founded until 1962, the modern-day U.S. Navy SEALs trace their roots to World War II. The United States military recognized the need for the covert reconnaissance of landing beaches and coastal defenses. As a result, the joint Army, Marine Corps, and Navy Amphibious Scout and Raider School was established in 1942 at Fort Pierce, Florida. The Scouts and Raiders were formed in September of that year, just nine months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, from the Observer Group, a joint U.S. Army-Marine-Navy unit.Scouts and Raiders
Recognizing the need for a beach reconnaissance force, a select group of Army and Navy personnel assembled at Amphibious Training Base Little Creek, Virginia on 15 August 1942 to begin Amphibious Scouts and Raiders training. The Scouts and Raiders' mission was to identify and reconnoiter the objective beach, maintain a position on the designated beach prior to a landing, and guide the assault waves to the landing beach. The unit was led by U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant Lloyd Peddicord as commanding officer, and Navy Ensign John Bell as executive officer. Navy Chief Petty Officers and sailors came from the boat pool at U. S. Naval Amphibious Training Base, Solomons, Maryland, and Army Raider personnel came from the 3rd and 9th Infantry Divisions. They trained at Little Creek until embarking for the North Africa campaign the following November. Operation Torch was launched in November 1942 off the Atlantic coast of French Morocco in North Africa.The first group included Phil H. Bucklew, the "Father of Naval Special Warfare," after whom the Naval Special Warfare Center building is named. Commissioned in October 1942, this group saw combat in November 1942 during Operation Torch on the North African Coast. Scouts and Raiders also supported landings in Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, Normandy, and southern France.
The second group of Scouts and Raiders, code-named Special Service Unit No. 1, was established on 7 July 1943, as a joint and combined operations force. The first mission, in September 1943, was at Finschhafen in Papua New Guinea. Later operations were at Gasmata, Arawe, Cape Gloucester, and the east and south coasts of New Britain, all without any loss of personnel. Conflicts arose over operational matters, and all non-Navy personnel were reassigned. The unit, renamed 7th Amphibious Scouts, received a new mission, to go ashore with the assault boats, buoy channels, erect markers for the incoming craft, handle casualties, take offshore soundings, clear beach obstacles, and maintain voice communications linking the troops ashore, incoming boats and nearby ships. The 7th Amphibious Scouts conducted operations in the Pacific for the duration of the conflict, participating in more than 40 landings.
The third and final Scouts and Raiders organization operated in China. Scouts and Raiders were deployed to fight with the Sino-American Cooperative Organization. To help bolster the work of SACO, Admiral Ernest J. King ordered that 120 officers and 900 men be trained for "Amphibious Raider" at the Scout and Raider school at Fort Pierce, Florida. They formed the core of what was envisioned as a "guerrilla amphibious organization of Americans and Chinese operating from coastal waters, lakes, and rivers employing small steamboats and sampans." While most Amphibious Raider forces remained at Camp Knox in Calcutta, three of the groups saw active service. They conducted a survey of the upper Yangtze River in the spring of 1945 and, disguised as coolies, conducted a detailed three-month survey of the Chinese coast from Shanghai to Kitchioh Wan, near Hong Kong.
Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDUs)
In September 1942, 17 Navy salvage personnel arrived at ATB Little Creek, Virginia for a week-long course in demolitions, explosive cable cutting, and commando raiding techniques. On 10 November 1942, the first combat demolition unit successfully cut cable and net barriers across the Wadi Sebou River during Operation Torch in North Africa. This enabled to traverse the water and insert U.S. Rangers who captured the Port Lyautey airdrome.In early May 1943, a two-phase "Naval Demolition Project" was directed by the Chief of Naval Operations "to meet a present and urgent requirement". The first phase began at ATB Solomons, Maryland with the establishment of Operational Naval Demolition Unit No. 1. Six officers and eighteen enlisted men reported from the Seabee's NTC Camp Peary dynamiting and demolition school, for a four-week course. Those Seabees, led by Lieutenant Fred Wise CEC, were immediately sent to participate in the invasion of Sicily. At that time Lieutenant Commander Draper L. Kauffman, "The Father of Naval Combat Demolition," was selected to set up a school for Naval Demolitions and direct the entire Project. The first six classes graduated from "Area E" at NTC Camp Peary. LCDR Kauffman's needs quickly out-grew "Area E" and on 6 June 1943, he established NCDU training at Fort Pierce. Most of Kauffman's volunteers came from the navy's Civil Engineer Corps and enlisted Seabees. Training commenced with a grueling week designed to filter out under-performing candidates. Eventually given the name "Hell Week" by NCDU recruits, this rigorous course was integrated into UDT training and remains a part of modern-day Navy Seal training today.
By April 1944, a total of 34 NCDUs were deployed to England in preparation for Operation Overlord, the amphibious landing at Normandy. On 6 June 1944, under heavy fire, the NCDUs at Omaha Beach managed to blow eight complete gaps and two partial gaps in the German defenses. The NCDUs suffered 31 killed and 60 wounded, a casualty rate of 52%. Meanwhile, the NCDUs at Utah Beach met less intense enemy fire. They cleared of beach in two hours, another by the afternoon. Casualties at Utah Beach were significantly lighter with six killed and eleven wounded. During Operation Overlord, not a single demolitioneer was lost to improper handling of explosives. In August 1944, four NCDUs from Utah Beach plus nine others participated in the landings Operation Dragoon in southern France. It was the last amphibious operation in the European Theater of Operations. Once the European invasions were complete, Rear Admiral Kelly Turner requisitioned all available NCDUs from Fort Pierce for integration into the Underwater Demolition Teams operating in the Pacific Theater.
Thirty NCDUs had been sent to the Pacific prior to Normandy. NCDUs 1–10 were staged on Florida Island in the Solomon Islands during January 1944. NCDU 1 went briefly to the Aleutians in 1943. NCDUs 4 and 5 were the first to see combat by helping the 4th Marines at Green Island and Emirau Island. A few were temporarily attached to UDTs. Later NCDUs 1–10 were combined to form Underwater Demolition Team Able. Six NCDUs: 2,3, 19, 20, 21 and 24 served with the Seventh Amphibious Force and were the only remaining NCDUs at the end of the war. The Naval Special Warfare Command building is named for LTJG Frank Kaine CEC commander of NCDU 2.
Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs)
The first units designated as Underwater Demolition Teams were formed in the Pacific Theater. Rear Admiral Kelly Turner, the Navy's top amphibious expert, ordered the formation of Underwater Demolition Teams in response to the failed invasion at Tarawa and the Marines' inability to clear the surrounding coral reefs with Landing Vehicle Tracked. Turner recognized that amphibious operations required intelligence of underwater obstacles. The personnel for these teams were mostly local Seabees or others that had started out in the NCDUs. UDT training was at the Waipio Amphibious Operating Base, under V Amphibious Corps operational and administrative control. Most of the instructors and trainees were graduates of the Fort Pierce NCDU or Scouts and Raiders schools, Seabees, Marines, and Army soldiers.When Teams 1 and 2 were initially formed, they were "provisional" with 180 men in total. The first underwater demolition team commanders were CDR E.D. Brewster UDT 1 and CDR John T. Koehler UDT 2. The teams wore fatigues with life-vests and were not expected to leave their boats—similar to the NCDUs. However, at Kwajalein Fort Pierce protocol was changed. Admiral Turner ordered daylight reconnaissance and CEC. ENS Lewis F. Luehrs and Seabee Chief William Acheson wore swim trunks under their fatigues anticipating they would not be able to get what the Admiral wanted by staying in the boat. They stripped down and spent 45 minutes in the water in broad daylight. When they got out they were taken directly to Admiral Turner's flagship to report, still in their trunks. Admiral Turner concluded that daylight reconnaissance by individual swimmers was the way to get accurate information on coral and underwater obstacles for upcoming landings. This is what he reported to Admiral Nimitz. The success of those UDT 1 Seabees not following Fort Pierce protocol rewrote the UDT mission model and training regimen. Those Seabees also created the image of UDTs as the "naked warriors". At Engebi CDR Brewster was wounded and all of the men with ENS Luehrs wore swim trunks under their greens.
After the operations in the Marshall Islands, Admiral Turner restructured the two provisional UDT units and created 7 permanent units with an allotted size of 96 men per team. In the name of operational efficiency, the UDTs were also made an-all Navy outfit, and any Army and Marine Corps engineers were returned to their units. Moving forward, the UDTs would employ the reconnaissance method made successful in Kwajalein – daytime use of swimsuits and goggles instead of the Scouts and Raiders method of nighttime rubber boats. In order to implement these changes and grow the UDTs, Koehler was made the commanding officer of the Naval Combat Demolition Training and Experimental Base on Maui. Admiral Turner also brought on LCDR Draper Kauffman as a combat officer.
Seabees made up the vast majority of the men in teams 1–9, 13, and 15. Seabees were roughly 20% of UDT 11. The officers were mostly CEC.
At war's end 34 teams had been formed with teams 1–21 having actually been deployed. The Seabees provided over half of the men in the teams that saw service.
The UDT uniform had transitioned from the combat fatigues of the NCDUs to trunks, swimfins, diving masks and Ka-bars. The men trained by the OSS had brought their swimfins with them when they joined the UDTs. They were adopted by the other teams as quickly as Supply could get them.
These "Naked Warriors", as they came to be called post-war, saw action in every major Pacific amphibious landing including: Eniwetok, Saipan, Kwajalein, Tinian, Guam, Angaur, Ulithi, Peleliu, Leyte, Lingayen Gulf, Zambales, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Labuan, and Brunei Bay. By fall of 1944, the UDT's were considered an indispensable US military special operations unit, and Navy planners in the Central Pacific relied heavily on the UDT's reconnaissance reports and demolition activities to clear the way for landings.
The last UDT operation of the war was on 4 July 1945 at Balikpapan, Borneo. The rapid demobilization at the conclusion of the war reduced the number of active duty UDTs to two on each coast with a complement of seven officers and 45 enlisted men each. However, the UDTs were the only special troops that avoided complete disbandment after the war, unlike the OSS Maritime Unit, the VAC Recon Battalion, and several Marine recon missions.
Because they were so integral to the success of missions in the Pacific during the war, the U.S. Navy did not publicize the existence of the UDTs until post-war. During WWII the Navy did not have a rating for the UDTs nor did they have an insignia. Those men with the CB rating on their uniforms considered themselves Seabees that were doing underwater demolition. They did not call themselves "UDTs" or "Frogmen" but rather "Demolitioneers" which had carried over from the NCDUs and Lt Cdr Kauffman's recruiting efforts from the Seabee dynamiting and demolition school. The next largest group of UDT volunteers came from the joint Army-Navy Scouts and Raiders school that was also in Fort Pierce and the Navy's bomb disposal school in the Seabee-dominated teams.
For the Marianas operations of Kwajalein, Roi-Namur, Siapan, Tinian, Eniwetok, and Guam, Admiral Turner recommended sixty Silver Stars and over three hundred Bronze Stars with Vs for the Seabees and other service members of UDTs 1–7 That was unprecedented in U.S. Naval/Marine Corps history. For UDTs 5 and 7 every officer received a silver star and all the enlisted received bronze stars with Vs for Operation Forager. For UDTs 3 and 4 every officer received a silver star and all the enlisted received bronze stars with Vs for Operation Forager. Admiral Richard Lansing Conolly felt the commanders of teams 3 and 4 should have received Navy Crosses. As the first to often make amphibious landings, the UDTs began making signs to welcome the Marines, indicating they had been there first, to foster the continued friendly rivalry. In keeping with UDT tradition, UDT 21 created a sign to greet the Marines landing in Japan. For Operation Beleaguer UDT 9 was deployed with the III Amphibious Corps to Northern China. In 1965 the UDT 12 put up another beach sign to greet the Marines at Da Nang.
Operation Crossroads UDT 3 was designated TU 1.1.3 for the operation. On 27 April 1946, seven officers and 51 enlisted embarked at CBC Port Hueneme, for transit to Bikini. Their assignment was to retrieve water samples from ground zero of the Baker blast.