United States Naval Special Warfare Command

The United States Naval Special Warfare Command (USNSWC), also known as (NAVSPECWARCOM and WARCOM), is the naval component of United States Special Operations Command, the unified command responsible for overseeing and conducting the nation's special operations and missions.

Originating in the unconventional naval units formed during the Second World War, WARCOM was established on 16 April 1987 at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado in San Diego, California. Its mission is to provide leadership, doctrinal guidance, resources and oversight to special operations carried out in maritime and littoral environments. WARCOM specializes in a broad range of tactical areas, including unconventional warfare, direct action, counterterrorism, special reconnaissance, and personnel recovery.

WARCOM is organized primarily around eight Navy SEAL teams, three Special Boat Teams, and various supporting commands, totaling approximately 9,200 personnel. Units can operate independently, as part of navy carrier battle groups and amphibious ready groups, or integrated with other US special operations forces. By utilizing navy's ships, submarines, and overseas facilities, WARCOM forces can be deployed rapidly around the world.

Background

Today's US Navy special warfare operators can trace their origins to the Scouts and Raiders, Naval Combat Demolition Units, Office of Strategic Services Operational Swimmers, Underwater Demolition Teams, and Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons of World War II. In the Vietnam era, the Navy drew most of its SEALs from the Underwater Demolition Teams; from the early 1960s up until 1983 the SEAL Teams and UDTs coexisted. Navy SEALs typically traced their origin to the Scouts and Raiders while the Underwater Demolition Teams traced theirs to the Navy Combat Demolition Units (the Navy drew its UDTs from NCDUs). However, in 1983 the Underwater Demolition Teams were merged with the SEAL Teams. This, in turn, merged their ancestry. While none of those early organizations have survived to present, their pioneering efforts in unconventional warfare are mirrored in the missions and professionalism of the present naval special warfare members.

To meet the need for a beach reconnaissance force, selected Army and Marine Corps personnel assembled at Amphibious Training Base Little Creek, Virginia, in August 1942 to begin Amphibious Scouts and Raiders (Joint) 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.

A detailed history of Naval Special Warfare, including writings by members who've served in the various NSW units, is available at the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum website, while the facility itself has an extensive collection of related artifacts on display.

World War II

By the time the United States became involved in World War II, Adolf Hitler and the Axis forces had control over a large portion of Europe, Asia and North Africa. If the Allied forces were to stand a chance, there would have to be several full-scale landings. The U.S. Navy decided that to do the job right required sending in their own. They needed men to reconnoiter the landing beaches, take note of obstacles and defenses and ultimately guide the landing forces in. Later, during the war, the Army Engineers passed down demolition jobs to the U.S. Navy. They were to clear any obstacles and/or defenses in the nearshore area, beginning a tradition that continues today.

Scouts and Raiders

The Navy Scouts and Raiders were created before the Navy Combat Demolition Units (NCDUs). The Scouts and Raiders were first formed 15 August 1942, nine months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, from the Observer Group, a joint Marine Corps–Army–Navy unit. The Observer Group was the first unit trained in amphibious reconnaissance. They trained in inflatable boat insertions from submarines around the Chesapeake Bay and at the Amphibious Training Base (ATB) Little Creek in Virginia and in Fort Pierce, Florida. They were training for an intense clandestine mission in North Africa.Bruce F. Meyers, ''Swift, Silent, and Deadly: Marine Amphibious Reconnaissance in the Pacific, 1942–1945'', (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004).

With US Marines limited to the Pacific Theatre of Operations, the Observer Group was disbanded, with the Marine Corps counterpart forming the Amphib Recon Company; the Army/Navy unit formed the Scouts and Raiders with the Army later leaving. The U.S. Navy began the Scouts and Raiders to provide reconnaissance and raiding missions to support amphibious landings. The unit could conduct raids and sabotage missions from a pair of men to platoon-sized operations.

The unit continued its deployment to North Africa as planned, where they earned eight Navy Crosses. Robert Halperin, a former NFL football player and future Olympic medalist, received a Presidential Citation and the Navy Cross for his work during the amphibious landings in French Morocco. This was just the first of many war-time missions for the versatile Scouts and Raiders.

= First group

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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.

= Second group

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A combined operations joint US-Australian unit, Special Service Unit No. 1 (SSU 1), was established on 7 July 1943. Its first mission, in September 1943, was at Finschafen on New Guinea. Later operations were at Gasmata, Arawe, Cape Gloucester, and the East and South coast of New Britain, all without any loss of personnel. Conflicts arose over operational matters, and the unit was dissolved.

The US Navy personnel from SSU 1 became the basis of the 7th Amphibious Scouts. They received a new mission, to go ashore with the assault boats, buoy channels, erect markers for the incoming craft, handle casualties, take offshore soundings, blow up 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.

Scout landings were done at night during the new moon. The men were brought to a lagoon by submarine and came ashore with rubber paddle boats. (Goodyear invented inflatable rubber boats just for this purpose.) They would bury the boats in the sand and begin recon. Their mission was to clear the area prior to the main Naval landing which would then take over the island. They stayed from three days to as long as seven days engaging in covert operations and "taking no prisoners". They had learned martial arts (judo) and were armed with Thompson submachine guns, sidearms and knives. The entire Navy Scouts program was strictly volunteer, since it was considered too dangerous to order men to do this job. When the island was secured, they would transmit code to the sub, which would pick them up the next night. A typical loss would be 12 men going in and 3–5 coming back alive. Sometimes only one would come back.

= Third group

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The third Scout and Raiders organization deployed to fight with the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) in China. Admiral Ernest J. King ordered that 120 officers and 900 enlisted sailors be trained for "Amphibious Roger" at the Amphibious Roger school at Fort Pierce, Florida in order to support this mission. 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." Elements of the third Scouts and Raiders saw active service conducting surveys of the upper Yangtze River in the spring of 1945 and, disguised as coolies, conducting a detailed three-month survey of the Chinese coast from Shanghai to Kitchioh Wan, near Hong Kong. The majority of the force remained garrisoned at Camp Knox in Calcutta, India.

Naval Combat Demolition Units

In September 1942, 17 Navy salvage personnel arrived at ATB Little Creek, Virginia for a one-week concentrated course on demolitions, explosive cable cutting and commando raiding techniques. The units were organised into six-man teams of an officer, a petty officer and four seamen using a seven-man LCRS inflatable boat to carry their explosives and gear.

On 10 November 1942, this first combat demolition unit succeeded in cutting a cable and net barrier across the Wadi Sebou River during Operation Torch in North Africa. Their actions enabled to traverse the river and insert Army Rangers, who proceeded to capture the Port Lyautey aerodrome.

Plans for a massive cross-channel invasion of Europe had begun and intelligence indicated that the Germans were placing extensive underwater obstacles on the beaches at Normandy. On 7 May 1943, Lieutenant Commander Draper L. Kauffman, "The Father of Naval Combat Demolition," was directed to set up a school and train people to eliminate obstacles on an enemy-held beach prior to an invasion.
On 6 June 1943, LCDR Kaufmann established Naval Combat Demolition Unit training at Fort Pierce. 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, in the face of great adversity, 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, NCDUs from Utah Beach participated in the landings in southern France, the last amphibious operation in the European Theater of Operations.
NCDUs also operated in the Pacific theater. NCDU 2, under LTjg Frank Kaine, after whom the Naval Special Warfare Command building is named, and NCDU 3 under LTjg Lloyd Anderson, formed the nucleus of six NCDUs that served with the Seventh Amphibious Force tasked with clearing boat channels after the landings from Biak to Borneo.

OSS Operational Swimmers

Some of the earliest World War II predecessors of the SEALs were the Operational Swimmers of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS. Many current SEAL missions were first assigned to them.
OSS specialized in special operations, dropping operatives behind enemy lines to engage in organized guerrilla warfare as well as to gather information on such things as enemy resources and troop movements.

British Combined Operations veteran Lt Cdr Wooley, of the Royal Navy, was placed in charge of the OSS Maritime Unit in June 1943.
Their training started in November 1943 at Camp Pendleton, California, moved to Santa Catalina Island, California in January 1944, and finally moved to the warmer waters of The Bahamas in March 1944. Within the U.S. military, they pioneered flexible swimfins and diving masks, closed-circuit diving equipment (under the direction of Dr. Chris Lambertsen), the use of Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (a type of submersible), and combat swimming and limpet mine attacks.

In May 1944, General Donovan, the head of the OSS, divided the unit into groups. He loaned Group 1, under Lieutenant Arthur Choate, Jr., to Admiral Nimitz, as a way to introduce the OSS into the Pacific theater. They became part of UDT-10 in July 1944, with Lt. Commander Choate commanding the unit. Five OSS men participated in the very first UDT submarine operation with the in the Caroline Islands in August 1944.

Beach Jumpers

Beach Jumper Unit One was formed at the Amphibious Training Base at Camp Bradford, Virginia on 16 March 1943 for deception operations to simulate large scale amphibious raids and invasions.

Underwater Demolition Teams

On 23 November 1943, the U.S. Marine landing and the subsequent battle at Tarawa Atoll emphasized the need for hydrographic reconnaissance and underwater demolition of obstacles prior to any amphibious landing. After Tarawa