As mentioned in the post about Florida’s Houses of Refuge, the U.S. Navy Seals were “born” along the Atlantic Coast just north of Stuart in Fort Pierce. WWII was underway, and much of the fighting was done in the Pacific on the sea and its islands. The invasions of North Africa and Europe were being planned. New ways of meeting the advances of the enemy were needed, so here we are at the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum to start learning about these advances.
We stood a little straighter as we walked toward the entrance.
In this post we’ll cover the beginning of the Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) during WWII and how they became the Navy SEALs at the start of the Vietnam War. Future posts will cover Vietnam to 9/11 and 9/11 on, plus how the SEALs train and the Medal of Honor winners. Some displays outside show how the SEALs have operated over the years.
We came here a couple of years ago and were so impressed by what we saw that we decided to return so we could show it to you. The museum is set up to first show us all about the SEALS today and then go back in history. We decided to turn it around so we could take you through the exhibits chronologically so you can see how the Navy SEALS have evolved since the 1940s.
WWII
Naval Special Warfare started here at Fort Pierce, probably because of the warm weather.
The SEALs predecessor units included the Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDU), Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT), Scouts and Raiders (S&R), and the office of Strategic Serveries Maritime Units (OSSMU). While names can change over the years, the one term that identifies all men from these units is FROGMAN.
Scouts and Raiders (S&R) training at Fort Pierce in 1943. I remember my dad talking about his job in the Army was to physically train soldiers for going overseas during the early 1940s. He said that one of their exercises was to carry logs like these men are—in their everyday uniforms and wearing boots!
The OSS (predecessor of the CIA) was formed in June 1942. Its commission was to coordinate espionage and sabotage activities behind enemy lines. A year later, it was reorganized and became the Maritime Unit (MU) that was responsible for planning and coordinating clandestine infiltration of agents, supplying resistance groups, sabotage, and developing special equipment for maritime operations from the sea. Duties they still have today.
S&R began training at Little Creek, Virginia, in August 1942. Their job was to reconnoiter enemy beaches and guide Allied assault forces through maritime barriers and obstacles on the way to the targets. (You’ll see such obstacles in the next post.) They conducted pre-assault operations at Normandy several days before D-Day on June 6, 1944.
Naval Special Warfare was critical to successful amphibious landings like the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942, the first operation in which U.S. troops saw action in the Mediterranean, African, and Middle East theaters. This landing set the standards for other landings during the war. S&R units identified the best sites for landing craft, critical for the invasion of Normandy.
Draper Kauffman was recognized as the “Father of Underwater Demolition.” His information can be read more easily in the next picture.
After learning how to dispose of ordinances that haven’t exploded, he was tasked with assembling and training Naval Combat Demolition Units to clear obstacles for amphibious landings. Here at Fort Pierce, he originated the precursor of today’s SEAL training, or BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition).
Admiral Kauffman and his top officers went through the same rigorous training and exercise as the trainees. This example of equal footing is still followed today.
A fort was in this area as far back as 1838 during the Second Seminole War. When the WWII base was established here in 1943 because of its year-round warm weather and isolated beaches, more than 130,000 young American servicemen started calling the area home.
The new program benefited from ready access to supplies of boats, munitions, and U.S. Naval Engineers—or Seabees—who produced the German and Japanese obstacles used for demolition training. The trainees were organized into Naval Combat Demolition Units.
These units operated in both the European and Pacific theaters, and their most notable operation was the Allied invasion of Normandy, or D-Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history. After D-Day, most NCDU units would merge into the Underwater Demolition Teams. Those teams that didn’t merge had their final combat operation in June 1945 when they supported the Australian landings in Borneo.
This path from the parking lot shows you how close we were to the beach where they trained.
All I had known about the Seabees was from the musical South Pacific. Here’s the rest of the story.
Many of the founding NCDU members came from the Naval Construction Engineers called the Seabees. During WWII, more than 325,000 men served with this group. They fought and built on 6 continents and more than 300 islands, following on the heels of the Marines and landing where needed. They built major airstrips, bridges, roads, warehouses, hospitals, gasoline storage tanks, and housing.
The 1011 Seabee Detachment, stationed at Fort Pierce, built the beach obstacles for NCDU training operations and constructed the obstacles displayed outside the museum that you’ll see in the next post.
While segregation was the norm in the U.S. military, the NCDUs and UDTs didn’t follow suit. Little is known about the African American men who served on the teams during WWII, but records do list some of their names.
A number of Native Americans also served on the teams, including the Navajo code breakers.
To get men is shape and let them earn the privilege of joining these units, “Hell Week” was instituted in June 1943. The 6-week S&R training was condensed into 1 week to better prepare more NCDU men for the invasion of Europe.
Hell week was a 20-hour tactical problem that included jumping off landing craft and swimming to shore, digging a foxhole, and destroying beach obstacles. Also included was non-stop physical activity of swimming, rubber boat paddling, mangrove penetration, and beach reconnaissance. This week is still part of BUD/S training and continues to be one of the toughest military training required.
The heavy losses at Normandy and early Pacific theater battles brought a new directive from Admirals Nimitz and Turner in December 1943. They determined that 100-man Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs) were needed for future invasions of other Japanese-occupied islands.
Swimming became the standard way to approach beaches, and the base in Hawaii was the location for extensive swimming instruction and advanced training.
story behind the end of the war
I’d always heard that one of the main reasons for the atomic bombs being released over Japan was the horrendous loss of life that would have happened if the war had continued. Here are some of the numbers.
The war kept on going and going in the Pacific. A November 1945 operation was intended to capture the southern third of the southermost main Japanese Island, and a March 1946 operation was planned for invading the main island, including Tokyo and the industrial core of Japan.
More than 4.5 million U.S. servicemen were to take part in these invasions. An estimated 28 UDT teams of 100 men each were scheduled to invade mainland Japan. Conquering Japan would cost between 1 and 4 million American causalities, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities. The estimates for Japan was 5 to 10 million fatalities. With the fierce fighting already encountered, the Americans believed that the Japanese civilians would mount a large-scale attack in defense of their Emperor.
Instead of these invasions, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 6, 1945. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered 5 days later on August 14, 1945.
Between August 14 and September 2, after the atomic bombs were dropped, 2 UDT teams went ashore to seek and destroy Japanese beach defenses.
cast & recovery
During WWII, the UDT teams developed a method of deploying and recovering SEALs from the water that makes it hard for enemy gunners to hit swimmers and boats in the water. This method is still used today.
Deployment: an inflatable boat small (IBS) is attached to a powerboat speeding along offshore at up to 20 knots. The SEALs jump from the powerboat to the IBS in rapid succession and “cast” themselves into the water to form a straight line by rolling from the IBS while holding their face masks.
Recovery works in reverse. Each SEAL prepares for pickup by raising one arm and kicking hard with his fins to lift himself high in the water. Another SEAL in an IBS, towed by a powerboat at around 15 knots, recovers the SEALs in the water using a rubber hoop, called a snare, to catch them by the arm and haul them aboard one by one.
The snare is a handmade improvised piece of equipment for retrieving men from the water into a fast-moving boat. A SEAL with his arm upraised is caught with the hoop (snare) and hauled aboard.
post WWII
After WWII, the Navy teams kept busy for the second half of the century until their most challenging work began on 9/11. While Barney and I lived through the times when these men were facing the following challenges, I don’t remember many of the details, so this section of the museum was so helpful. Hope you find it helpful and informative too!
Korean War– 1951
The conflict in Korea changed the scope of the UDTs from amphibious reconnaissance and clearing mines and obstacles. Now their mission was to gather intelligence; rescue POWs; covertly infiltrate naval areas like straits, channels, sounds; and destroy such enemy infrastructures as ships, tunnels, railroads, bridges, and harbor facilities.
For the 3 years of the Korean War, UDTs proved their versatility and laid the groundwork for their capabilities that would eventually transform the units into the Navy SEALs.
After Korean civilians and a Marine division was evacuated from Hungnam, a UDT detachment wired and detonated over 20 tons of explosives around the harbor in a single shot, destroying docks, buildings, supplies, and any material that the Marines hadn’t taken with them. This record still stands for the largest detonation by man-fused munitions.
beginning of SEAL teams– 1961
President Kennedy asked the armed services to develop an unconventional warfare capability, and the U.S. Navy was ready to respond. In January 1962, SEAL Team One was commissioned on the West Coast and Seal Team Two on the East Coast. The name came from the elements where they would be operating: SEa, Air, Land. The initial members were picked from the existing UDTs.
Their mission? Conduct counter-guerilla warfare and clandestine operations in maritime and riverine environments. They soon saw action in Vietnam and earned the reputation as fierce, highly skilled, and feared warriors. A reputation they still have today.
Cuba‘s Bay of Pigs– 1961
After 2 years of trying to push Fidel Castro from power in Cuba, the U.S. government developed plans for a full-scale attack. Funded by the CIA, 1400 Cubans who had fled the country when Castro took over were trained by the U.S. military, including UDTs, to overthrow Castro. These exiles attacked at the Bay of Pigs and were greatly outnumbered and forced to surrender within 24 hours. A sad story for these exiles.
Other covert missions in Cuba that included UDTs and early SEAL teams, were attempted between 1962 and 1965. These unsuccessful operations are still classified SECRET today.
Cuban Missile Crisis – 1962
This crisis in October 1962 brought us closer to nuclear war than ever before, and SEALs and UDTs were involved. President Kennedy had to choose between accepting nuclear missiles in Cuba or escalate to a nuclear attack, which would have caused over 100 million deaths on both sides.
Since both options were unacceptable to the U.S. and to the USSR, President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed that the Soviet Union would withdraw their nuclear missiles from Cuba, and the U.S. would withdraw their nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy. We also agreed that we would never invade Cuba without direct provocation. The famous nuclear “hotline” between the White House and the Kremlin was created during this agreement.
SEALs and Vietnam
While the start of the conflict in Vietnam started in the mid-1950s and the Marines first waded ashore in March 1965, the SEALs were probably first sent there in 1965 too. For them, this was a jungle war. The next post covers how the SEALs operated in Vietnam and other locations in the last half of the 20th century.
