Why Do the Navy’s Frogmen Fight on Land？
Episode Stats
Summary
Now, when you think of the Navy Seal, you ll think of elite special operators who ve been tasked with commando-type missions in conflict zones from central Africa to Afghanistan to Afghanistan, which raises a question you may never have thought about but seems quite obvious and interesting once you do wait: why are members of the navy a waterborne military force operating hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean?
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now when you think
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of the navy seals you think of elite special operators who've been tasked with commando-type
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missions in conflict zones from central africa to afghanistan which raises a question you may
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never have thought about but seems quite obvious and interesting once you do wait why are members
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of the navy a waterborne military force operating hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean this
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question spurred my guest a former navy seal himself to explore the answer in his book by
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water beneath the walls the rise of the navy seals his name is benjamin milligan today we discuss the
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history that explains why the navy became the branch of the military that supplied this famous
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go anywhere force and how men who started out as sailors became involved in land-based operation
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ben details the predecessors of the seals which took the form of various commando-type units that both
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the army and marines experimented with but ultimately scuttled and how the navy which had played a
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supporting role in all these units ended up being the one to continue to develop them
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we discuss how the naval combat demolition units or ncdu's and underwater demolition teams or udt's
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that were birthed during world war ii would ultimately lead to the creation of the navy's
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frogmen as we know them today along the way ben shares details the unique characters who shaped
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the unit's trajectory including the surprisingly bookish commander who created the most legendary
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part of the seals training hell week after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is
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ben milligan welcome to the show thanks very much so you are a navy seal and you just published a book
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it's called by water beneath the walls the rise of the navy seals and this is an in-depth history
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of the origins of the seals and what's funny or interesting interesting and funny that there was
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a question from your grandma about your service as a seal that kick-started this book what was that
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question and then how did that send you in a deep dive under the history of the navy seals
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uh the question was uh what the hell were you doing in iraq i mean she knew that i was in the navy she
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knew i was a sailor and for her she you know she'd grown up during world war ii she had seven brothers
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that were all in the navy during world war ii she'd been to my bud's graduation in 2001 and you know
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there she had kind of gotten you know a reinforcement of the idea that you know the navy is connected to
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the water which we all know that it is i suspect she'd seen the introduction video to all the uh the
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guests kind of show what the graduates have just gone through they you know it shows surf torture and
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surf passage and underwater knot tying and drown proofing and all that stuff and the diving i don't
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know if she just didn't notice all the hiking and the machine guns and and everything but she i think
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until the day she died she thought that i was you know something like a rescue swimmer so it wasn't a
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totally off the wall question yeah she she was curious and you know my my response to her was
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maybe sort of a condescending you know i'm not a sailor i'm a seal fully expecting that she would
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know the difference but she yeah i don't know if it was the the way that i answered the question
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because i'm very close to my grandma and uh or what but the question just sort of stuck with me it
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didn't come back or i didn't come back to it really until 2011 after the extortion uh one seven
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tragedy when all the seals of gold squadron were shot down in afghanistan they started to really
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think what are we or what are the seal teams doing you know so far removed from the water i mean that
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was three months and four days after seals had killed osama bin laden both of these events the
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greatest victory in the war on terror and then the you know the the largest loss of life for american
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forces in afghanistan they they happened more than uh 600 miles away from the closest salt water
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and they were both held by uh a navy unit so that was a question that i felt like i had to get the
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bottom of and in getting to the bottom of the question in your book by tracing the history of
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the seals one thing you do is to get beyond the kind of myth of how the seals came about
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what do you think that myth is yeah the the myth is is always been that the frogmen created themselves
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like they sort of self-actualized a generous appraisal for you know everybody wants to
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you know assume that their success is due to their own effort and struggle or whatever and so the
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origin story or the creation myth is that enterprising frogmen after world war ii were looking for a
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mission or looking to stretch the boundaries of maritime warfare and they just kept following the
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enemy inland and you know this was always done against the navy's wishes you know there was always a
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hostile bureaucracy trying to keep the seals contained to the water not seals necessarily but
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udt or the frogmen and then when kennedy came along he you know authorized you know this encroachment by
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the navy and then after that you know authorization and the seals even pushed the breadth of their
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mission even further but the more i thought about it and in fact like when i was doing the initial
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research for the book i was just sort of keeping like a a timeline on a word document this timeline
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just kept getting bigger and bigger every day and the one thing i started to really notice is
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this didn't happen accidentally and it didn't happen against the navy's wishes the navy doesn't
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work like that the military doesn't work like that the military is it's the most hierarchical
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institution in in the government so i mean nothing happens without the by with and through or the
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approval of uh you know senior leadership so the one thing that i noticed is that you know this would
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not have happened if the navy had not championed the idea itself and that means the navy's planners
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the top leaders in the navy so i realized fairly early on that this seal origin story or the seal
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creation myth was just that it was a myth you know i think it it resonated or i think it persisted for
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such a long time because you know if you are a seal or if you are in special operations just generally
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you've had experiences with conventional troops or conventional sailors you know who have not always
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had the highest opinion of elite troops and so you know that i that myth was just reinforced time
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after time when in fact it's you know that that grain of truth is just that it's just a grain it's not
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uh it's not the real the real story the real story is much richer and much uh much more interesting
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all right so the seals specialize they what would you call commando or raider type operations just big
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picture for those aren't familiar i mean i think we kind of know what the difference is but what is the
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difference between like raider warfare and traditional warfare yeah it's like you know
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like pornography almost you kind of know it when you see it but i mean the word commando came out of
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the boer war churchill sort of coined it to describe the the afrikaner troops that would raid in the
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middle of the night and then disappear into the darkness but you know we've had there have been
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raiders throughout history you know whether they were plains indians or vikings or whatever soldiers
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can be raiders sailors have been raiders we've always had raiders in warfare but yeah so
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in when world war ii starts the british expeditionary force had just been chased off
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the continent by the germans and churchill's purpose in creating you know his commandos was to
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you know one restore the morale of the british people and two to achieve more with less you know
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some sort of strategic impact with the few troops that he had so the only way that he could really do
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that was with a series of you know lightning raids up and down the coast so that's where we get the term
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commando and that's what commando operations really are it's just you know instead of
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regular troops they they may you know perform a behind the lines action or something like that but
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often more often than not they're holding ground after they've you know advanced to something raiders
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don't do that or commandos don't do that or at least the traditional understanding of the the term so
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commandos or raiders they they strike behind the lines and you know usually a vulnerable target and then
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once they've achieved their objective then they usually are you know fleeing back into the
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darkness okay so uh the british military sort of kick-started the whole commando type warfare
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in world war ii is out of necessity didn't have enough troops they had to get the most bang for
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their buck then the u.s military saw this and was like hey maybe we should try that but i think okay
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so you sort of yeah sort of like that but we can talk about that yeah but i think that's interesting
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here you make this one of the points you make is to understand why the navy ended up creating a
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special forces unit capable of operating on land sea and air you have to understand you have to
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explore like why didn't the army or why did the marine corps come up why weren't they able to come
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up with commando units and so yeah let's start there so the point i'm making the book is that you
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know the well the reason that the the navy created a unit that could go anywhere or a commando unit that
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could go anywhere is not in spite of the army and navy it's actually because of them when when you
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look at the you know bin laden raid bin laden raid occurred in abadabad pakistan i think the last time
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i looked it was abadabad was something like 800 miles away from the closest saltwater if you were
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planning that that mission not knowing anything about you know the u.s military or its history or
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its order of battle you wouldn't choose a navy unit you wouldn't expect to choose a navy unit so it's a
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totally unexpected or the why is why how did a navy unit you know come to be relied upon by the u.s
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military is such a go anywhere commando force instead when you phrase it like that you have to
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you know assume that the rest of the you know the sentence is implying that instead of the army or the
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marine corps you know these institutions that are the traditional owners of land operations
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what i found was when i like like i said when i was laying that timeline out i i noticed the army
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and the marine corps always had this very sort of haphazard relationship with commando type operations
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they'd sort of want them at one point they were trying to fill you know some sort of need or they
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would create them not necessarily for the same reasons that churchill wanted them for their own
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peculiar reasons they were creating commandos for for a purpose and then you know they would commit
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them to action usually that action would lead to some sort of disaster and then the army would say
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well you know let's back off that idea and they would just disband the unit and each time well not
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each time but almost every time the navy had sort of come to expect that the army or the marine corps
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was going to be a partner when it came to commando type rating because the the navy was usually you know
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sort of in the wings of all these operations and each time the army or the marine corps pulled the rug out
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of these operations the navy was just left holding the bag so the navy just can continue to when the
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army or the marine corps left they would just push just a little bit further a little bit further each
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time try you know not necessarily with a long-range idea that they were going to create a go anywhere
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commando force but they were just trying to solve a problem and that problem was filling a gap and
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they would just continue to fill that gap and ultimately after 30 years the seals are created
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well and you do a good job of exploring the the marine corps and the the army's sort of forays
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into commando type warfare during world war ii and what i found interesting with each one it seems like
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in the navy was involved somehow and like you said each time these units would get disbanded but it
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seemed like like whatever like the the raider unit learned like the navy got to keep and it sort of just
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kind of got baked in into their into their curriculum so like the first one you highlight is donovan's
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raiders this is a marine corps unit that would try to dabble in commandos type warfare what was their
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story like what was their objective and what was the result of that unit okay so the marine corps raiders
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are the first commando force that the u.s military creates in world war ii the reason that they create
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them is because of really one personality and that personality is evans carlson he's uh he's had a
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not a not a checkered history with the marine corps but sort of an unusual history he was he serves in
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nicaragua and sort of a guerrilla war he is attached to mao's communist army in china on mao's flight from
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the nationalists and in china so carlson comes up with this idea you know he wants to create a marine
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unit that is similar to you know the chinese guerrillas that he serves alongside in the 30s
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until world war ii kicks off he's befriended president roosevelt's son jimmy roosevelt jimmy
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roosevelt sends a letter to the commandant and he wouldn't normally any junior officer wouldn't
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normally you know get the time of day from the commandant but you know this junior officer happens
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to be the president's son so the marine corps very reluctantly the marine corps has no interest
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in fielding commandos throughout the marine corps history they've sort of been the navy's go
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anywhere force but after world war ii they've proven that they can be as capable as the u.s army
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so the marine corps doesn't really want commandos but carlson jimmy roosevelt are pressuring the
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marine corps commandant to do it and the navy sort of picks up on this idea and the navy's like well
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we really could use a unit that could go out there into the pacific stretch the japanese out across the
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pacific so that's that's essentially what happens you know the navy kind of forces the marine corps's
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hand the navy and the marine corps never like i said they never really want these guys and then on
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their first raid evans carlson leads this pretty dramatic raid you know some two thousand miles
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into the northern pacific into the gilbert islands that make an island and the raid is you know the
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main reason that it's a disaster is because of carlson's leadership he he loses confidence he
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thinks that at different points in the battle he loses track of a lot of his men he thinks that
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jimmy roosevelt's going to get captured ultimately he resolves that he's just going to surrender to the
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japanese but he can't even surrender to the japanese because the guys that he sends with the
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surrender note to the japanese commander another group of his raiders end up killing that messenger
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so the raid just turns into a disaster he ultimately i think he loses something like 18 raiders or
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something like that and then uh another 12 are left behind to be you know captured and ultimately
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beheaded and the marine corps sees this and they ultimately decide well you know we didn't want these
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guys to begin with so they petitioned the navy to get rid of them and the navy does but that doesn't
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solve the problem that the navy's had which is we you know the navy really wants you know some sort of
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unit that can go into the pacific accomplish more with less spread the japanese out this cycle it almost
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repeats itself time and time again you know throughout this commando history or throughout the american
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special operations at least until the end of vietnam well and another experiment that the navy
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did commando warfare with it was with the army it was the uh creation of the army scouts and the navy
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so this is so they're called the army scouts but like the navy played a role like what was the navy's
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role in the army scouts each aspect of amphibious warfare kind of plays a part in creating a different
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sort of unit so the marine corps raiders are created because they the navy wants to stretch the japanese out
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they want to accomplish more with less behind the lines type raids the army navy scouts and raiders
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are created because the army and the navy realized that they are about to embark on a campaign across
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the world literally around the entire world where in almost each instance where they're going to
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confront the enemy they're going to have to land on an enemy beach which for a a military that's never
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done that for a military that you know during the first world war had uh had landed on the coast
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comfortably and walked down numerous gang planks they never had to land on an enemy beach or anything
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like that this is a terrifying prospect one of the most troubling parts of of that whole process of
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amphibious warfare is trying to determine how you're going to land on the right beach you know there's
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scant charts that are available you know there's you know a lot of these beaches they don't they're not
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lit you've got to figure you got to come up with a unit that you know can identify beaches and then
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signal the landing fleet to where those beaches actually are because you can't land an army on the
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backside of that beach you know there's no exits to move trucks move tanks move anything you definitely
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can't land on a beach where the the sand is too soft you know for tank treads or something like that
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so that's what the army navy scouts and raiders are are meant to accomplish so they they create this
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joint unit they divide the you know the both halves of this unit into a distinct army and navy sides
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the army are going to be these you know scout slash raiders that are going to be the ones that are
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landed on the beach identify the beach and then signal the landing fleet the navy part of this
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program is going to be the unit that basically just shuttles these scout raiders back and forth
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but after the invasion in north africa and after sicily the army realizes well we have more than
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enough folks that are capable of identifying beaches or signaling the landing fleet so they pull
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out of the entire program basically leaving the entire curriculum for you know that the army and navy
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had been developing together with the navy and the navy doesn't feel like abandoning this program
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the navy you know sees opportunities throughout the world throughout the pacific south pacific central
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pacific and employing troops like these so the navy maintains the curriculum but when the army leaves
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now there's no more agreement that prohibits the the navy from fielding its actual scouts so you know
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no longer are they scout officers and scout boat crews but they the navy becomes in fact scouts and actual
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raiders so this is kind of you're starting to see the encroachment into the to the land right it's
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just that you know that that little that little nudge you know that like i said the navy never sets
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out with this plan in 1942 to create a commando force or you know go anywhere commando force the navy
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just you know continuously solves individual problems that just keep pushing the navy further and further
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ashore another experiment with commando warfare during world war ii again by the u.s army was darby's rangers
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what was their mission and how do they perform as a unit and what ended up happening to them
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yeah so i don't know if you've ever seen the uh the james garner movie you know darby's ranger so
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darby is one of the you know all-time legends in american special operations history and deservedly so
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he's a larger than life character he's from arkansas he was an artillery officer before the war and he's a
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totally irrepressible guy like he's uh one of the you know folks when i was researching and and
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digging into the letters of the of the folks that i was writing about like he's a guy that you just
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you can't help but like him i don't like to admit liking a character or disliking a character i don't
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want the to convey any of that to the reader he's very difficult not to like him in part because he's
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just so so brave uh such an advocate for his guys and time and time again during the war he turns down
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promotions simply because he wants to stay with his rangers the rangers are created for sort of a
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specific purpose by george marshall george marshall has grown into the legend you know you don't ever
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want to criticize george marshall i'm not criticizing him but he has priorities for the army that aren't
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necessarily beneficial to the rangers so the priority that he has when he creates the rangers
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is to get as much combat experiences as they can that they can pass along to the rest of the infantry
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and then really just to you know support the infantry in whatever way the division commanders want
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so on the one hand you've got darby who's in a sort of this archetypal commando and on the other
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hand you've got george marshall you know the level-headed constantly preoccupied with his army
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and between these two the rangers are ultimately broken just by the the competing you know objectives
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of these two men and that breaking happens when by early early 1944 you know the rangers have
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stopped being commando raiders and they've really turned into like spearheaders for the regular
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infantry they're not really operating as a small unit anymore they're operating in regiment-sized
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units and they're taking not just a small fort here or an artillery battery there or something like
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that like they did in the beginning but the army is committing them to take and hold entire towns and
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the raid that they get sent on which isn't a raid at all is this raid on cisterna in italy after the
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invasion of anzio and it's a you know biggest disaster in american special operations history two
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battalions are destroyed and the remnants are captured and uh frog marched off into captivity
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with the germans it's a real trap i mean when when you when when i was you know researching this in the
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national archives you can see the transcript of darby communicating with his frontline leaders and i don't
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know how they kept this transcript but it's there and you can read page after page of it and
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it's uh it's when you're going through these pages i mean it's hard to not get emotional yourself because
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you see what's happening to these guys and the lengths that they're going for each other and then after
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you know this terrible debacle the army decides well you know we we don't need rangers in this
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theater anymore anyway so we're going to disband the whole program
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all right so yeah we're seeing over and over again both the army and the marine corps they they try
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they experiment with it they realize it doesn't work and i think a point you make is that part of
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the problem with the army and the marine corps is that they had already had like a culture of
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infantry like that's what you do and so they'd often they create these commando units but then
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they'd end up treating them like infantry soldiers like regular infantry soldiers and like the navy
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they didn't have that what would we call it mindset and so they like they were they were
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completely open to the idea of yeah we could do commando type stuff right i mean the the army is always
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you know the army and the marine corps they always think that you know raiding is really just it's an
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activity that any infantry troops can can perform as long as they're given enough preparation rehearsals
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special equipment or whatever and so you really shouldn't pull troops out of the regular line of
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battle to do this mission and and they had you know relatively good reason to think so i mean every
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great raider in history whether it was nathan bedford forest or ulrich dahlgren or whatever all these
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folks from you know the american civil war they hadn't just been raiders they had raid they had
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raided throughout the war but after their raids they would often just fall back in line with their
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regular cavalry or infantry regiments so why wouldn't they think so but the navy didn't have this legacy
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the navy you know isn't constantly preoccupied with its infantry they don't really the army doesn't
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want to create an elite branch because they don't want to take all the best soldiers out of their
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infantry companies and put them into an elite unit then you have you know nothing but so-so troops and
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the infantry regiments or the navy doesn't have the problem they're never trying to you know rob
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peter to pay paul a unit like this can exist alongside the navy whereas it really can't or it
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couldn't at the time but you know in the army or the marine corps we're gonna take a quick break for
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your words from our sponsors and now back to the show all right so with all these experiments
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experiments with um special warfare with a within the army and the marine corps the navy was there
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somehow either working with them directly or just their support and then when those got disbanded the
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navy ended up with the curriculum and they saw an opportunity like hey we can actually do what they
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were trying to do and then you really start seeing like an invert i guess encroachment on the land
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with a guy named draper kaufman and this guy has an incredible story i mean i i couldn't like this
00:23:15.020
real like this guy sounded it sounded made up so what's his story and how did he pave the way
00:23:19.520
for the navy creating like a like a an explicit like yeah we are a commando unit separate from the navy
00:23:25.520
or it's part of the navy but it's distinct from a sailor yeah he draper kaufman is uh next to evans
00:23:31.980
carlson evans carlson might be the weirdest guy in the book but draper kaufman is easily easily
00:23:37.000
second draper is uh nobody that i you know look at in the book or or spent a lot of time
00:23:43.420
reading reading their mail i didn't i didn't find anybody as peculiar as as kaufman he's a he's a
00:23:49.380
totally bookish guy when you look at him and you see pictures of him you're like you you wouldn't
00:23:53.340
you know think twice of him he looked he looks like a clerk but nobody that i found you know so
00:23:59.220
oblivious to danger he was just constantly putting himself in tight spot after tight spot volunteering
00:24:05.140
for the most dangerous assignments anyway so draper kaufman is a gets uh dumped from naval service he
00:24:12.880
goes to the naval academy he gets dropped from the navy after he graduates from the naval academy
00:24:17.280
because he's got bad eyesight there you know the navy at the time was trying to cut costs in any way
00:24:22.360
that they could so which is a crushing you know blow to draper kaufman who you know his entire life
00:24:29.040
all he's ever wanted to do is be like his dad who's a famous destroyer skipper you know he's a
00:24:33.900
you know surface surface fleet sailor that's all draper wants to be and then suddenly he's cut off
00:24:38.520
from his dream job so you know he spends the next five years just kind of trying to figure out what
00:24:43.340
to do with himself he's working for a shipping company manages to get himself sent over to germany
00:24:47.360
where he witnesses a couple of his speeches by adolf hitler realizes this man is a monster just from
00:24:52.600
the tempo of his speeches he can't speak german but he realizes this is a this is a threat to the
00:24:57.760
world so he comes back he wants to volunteer for the uh the french army the only thing that he can
00:25:03.760
do as an american and the you know the french army is volunteer for the ambulance corps which is
00:25:09.180
mentioned a lot people talk about draper's biography what they don't you know mention is that draper had
00:25:13.640
to it's not like you you signed up for the french army he had to pay the french army to join and he had
00:25:19.500
to pay them you know it was essentially the cost of a house uh to join so he bankrupts himself just
00:25:24.920
for the opportunity to fight against the germans becomes an ambulance driver like hemingway in world
00:25:29.520
war one and he lands in his uh first assignment on the day that the germans invade in 1940 and so he
00:25:36.680
you know a handful of americans he gets to see or he's a participant in the war literally the war's
00:25:42.100
opening days and fights continually pushes himself out there rescuing french soldiers and in the process
00:25:48.480
of this he comes across this unit that he really respects called the corps franck really their only
00:25:53.280
motto was we never leave a man behind and draper sort of adopts that philosophy for himself and
00:25:59.040
finds himself rescuing uh french soldiers behind enemy lines and predictably gets captured by the
00:26:04.060
germans and stuffed in a pow camp the only way that the germans ultimately let him go is if he promises
00:26:09.000
that he'll never take up arms against the german empire again he signs the paperwork he gets released
00:26:13.900
the only country that he's allowed to go to is the united states of course he jumps on a
00:26:17.580
portuguese freighter sailing for great britain and enlists immediately in the royal navy
00:26:21.940
but the royal navy they block him too from service in uh the royal navy from a ship because of his
00:26:28.780
eyesight so he does the next most dangerous thing he volunteers for british bomb disposal
00:26:34.380
and he fights throughout the blitz doing nothing but disarming bombs ultimately he gets pulled back
00:26:40.560
into the american navy not necessarily against his will because he's always wanted to come back to the
00:26:44.380
american navy but it's a pretty dramatic he gets pulled back in he ends up going out to pearl harbor
00:26:49.180
right after right after the attack disarming a bomb making a huge name for himself winning a navy
00:26:53.520
cross and he's placed in charge of the navy's bomb disposal group where he comes up with he he knows
00:27:00.500
that this is you know really really dangerous really hard work and he he needs to create a curriculum as
00:27:06.520
quickly as possible that can prepare his men to take out of the obstacles that hitler is setting up on the
00:27:12.220
beaches in france and belgium so he he goes to the scouts and raiders school in fort pierce florida
00:27:16.720
he he sees their eight-week curriculum their eight-week conditioning curriculum which is
00:27:21.100
a boat races telephone pole type calisthenics it's all sorts of you know sort of miserable
00:27:26.460
things that the scouts and raiders have come up with but it's you know it's an eight-week period
00:27:30.320
and kaufman knows he doesn't have eight weeks to prepare his men so what he does the next best
00:27:34.960
thing is he compresses all eight weeks of these calisthenics and into a single horrible week that we
00:27:41.440
now know is hell week and it's a you know a sleepless five days he sends a couple of groups
00:27:46.580
through this program and it's you know he loses more than half of them each time he does it and
00:27:51.260
ultimately being kaufman he can't do anything but submit himself to the own course and he puts himself
00:27:56.720
through hell week he has his guys running through it everybody thinks the entire time he's not an athlete
00:28:00.880
he's not not anywhere close to what you'd consider a frog man today and he makes it through his own
00:28:07.940
program and he creates the men ultimately that lead the uh invasion into omaha beach and utah beach
00:28:14.300
in normandy all right so this bookish guy with bad eyesight was the one who created hell week
00:28:18.840
yeah you can believe it it's kind of a combination of the scouts and raiders who had you know they'd
00:28:24.400
come up with the individual you know evolutions and then draper kaufman who has the idea to put it
00:28:28.900
all together and the reason he wants to put all this stuff together is he's trying to recreate the hell
00:28:33.720
of combat that he has experienced and he knows combat better than anybody else in the u.s military
00:28:38.400
at that point he knows you know how little sleep you get during it how little food you can never
00:28:43.460
you're going to be constantly wet cold miserable chafed and he's trying to put guys through that
00:28:48.440
just like he experienced it in france and in the blitz so what was their what was their job the uh the
00:28:54.220
naval combat demolition units what were they doing at uh on d-day their explicit mission that was that
00:28:59.280
they were to destroy the obstacles on hitler's atlantic wall and obstacles were a variety of
00:29:04.720
things and the germans had ingeniously placed these obstacles in the surf zone so they were
00:29:10.300
impervious to destruction by american bombers you can't blow up something if it's underwater at least
00:29:16.680
from uh with a bomber the navy knew that they were going to have to remove each of these obstacles
00:29:21.500
by hand so that's what draper was preparing them for so after their this hell week period they they got
00:29:28.460
a very intense course on all the bomb disposal work that he had been doing in uh britain and then
00:29:34.220
you know not just bomb disposal but you know learning how to blow up obstacles and all various types
00:29:39.260
and so this was a big success right like they they it actually worked what they were doing
00:29:43.860
it was a monumental success when you saw you know how terrible the combat was at omaha beach and you saw
00:29:50.600
all the naval units that were had been engaged in that combat and and you saw how well the ncdu's
00:29:56.700
performed where you have the the army planners that are disbanding ranger units um or the marine
00:30:02.360
corps disbanding raider units because they don't perform effectively after omaha beach the navy commander
00:30:08.060
puts the uh ncdu's in for one of three naval issued presidential unit citations and the navy seeing how well
00:30:16.560
that this curriculum does they can't bring themselves to disband it so even though the the mission that
00:30:22.560
the ncdu's have been created for is no longer there i mean the hitler's atlantic wall has been
00:30:27.960
breached the the navy realizes that you know there's lots of opportunities for combat left in this war
00:30:33.000
we're not getting rid of this program yeah so then they started getting shifted to the pacific theater
00:30:37.960
what were they doing there so like i said each of these units gets created for a slightly different
00:30:43.000
reason so in the pacific it's always been said that the underwater demolition teams are created
00:30:47.600
after the horrible battle at tarawa in which uh the most dominant uh feature of that battle is this
00:30:55.020
coral reef that prevents the landing craft from landing the marines at the beach which is true
00:31:00.240
but not exactly because the they had anticipated that this coral reef was going to block them at
00:31:04.940
tarawa so they had created or they had repurposed this sort of amphibious tractor to carry the marines
00:31:10.340
in in fact these amphibious tractors are lvts they lead the invasion into tarawa the problem is that
00:31:16.000
the navy doesn't like carrying these things they're they're they're very slow they delay
00:31:19.980
everything from fighter aircraft bomber aircraft and naval gunfire they're just cumbersome to carry
00:31:26.100
on ships so the navy would much rather carry these higgins boats because they're faster they can
00:31:31.300
resupply better so the marine corps you know sees this coral as a problem whether there's a technical
00:31:36.800
solution you know just bring more lvts the navy sees the coral as a cancer that it wants to cut out
00:31:41.980
nobody wants to do that more than this guy admiral kelly turner who's the commander of the fifth
00:31:47.120
amphibious force he's probably the most cantankerous frustrated person in the history of the navy
00:31:53.020
frustrated is not the right word he's a he's a frustrated general he he has this idea that the
00:31:58.480
marine corps is is the navies to command and that he should be in command of all marine corps operations
00:32:04.960
even when they're ashore the thing that really bothers him is when he can't get the marine corps to
00:32:10.020
let him use the marine corps reconnaissance troops to figure out where the coral is so he can plan his
00:32:15.220
invasions around it so his solution to that is to create his own reconnaissance troops and that's
00:32:18.900
how the udt are created so the udt aren't quite created to destroy obstacles because the japanese
00:32:24.260
weren't putting obstacles up like the germans were on the atlantic wall there's just there's just this
00:32:28.100
problem of coral and an equally bigger problem that the marine corps won't let the navy
00:32:33.220
be in charge of its own reconnaissance or its marine corps reconnaissance troops so kelly turner
00:32:38.000
he's like well if you're not going to let me have yours i'm going to make my own and he does he
00:32:41.460
creates uh the underwater demolition teams and creates them right about the same time he's getting
00:32:46.340
ready to send them on their first real underwater demolition mission when draper kaufman shows up so
00:32:51.840
draper kaufman who's the founder of hell week and the ncdu's he shows up in the pacific right at the
00:32:57.300
same time and he leads these udts into saipan proves their indispensability and not only that but proves
00:33:03.620
their indispensability at tinian which essentially means that the udt are going to be a permanent
00:33:07.960
fixture in the navy's order of battle until the end of time or at least until the end of amphibious
00:33:13.000
warfare navy won't go anywhere without the udts after that was there any moments during the pacific
00:33:18.040
theater where you saw the udts like they weren't just demolishing coral but they were actually going
00:33:22.840
on land and there were yeah there were there were instances i mean there were instances of ncdu's
00:33:27.400
going ashore and going past the beachhead in normandy there's a couple instances where the udts are
00:33:33.020
doing the same thing the first udts the udts one and two they actually were a hodgepodge not just of
00:33:38.540
navy sailors and ncdu guys but they were navy cbs they were there were marines there were army
00:33:44.320
soldiers they'd come up with this hodgepodge unit because they were valuable as demolitioneers they
00:33:49.120
were going ashore and helping the army blow up bunkers and everything else once the udt has become
00:33:53.560
an all-navy unit then they really the navy's really trying to keep them from going ashore and a
00:33:58.980
handful of udt swimmers that actually do go ashore and follow the marines on saipan kaufman gives them
00:34:04.260
a uh a choice of either leaving the udt forever or spending five days on burial duty and uh they pick
00:34:10.800
uh they pick the burial duty kaufman i think he keeps them he makes them do three days and then he
00:34:16.120
pulls them back yeah okay so the udd there was this was a successful thing like unlike other things in
00:34:22.300
the army and the marines like this was an actual success what happened after world war ii like where did
00:34:27.640
i mean if they didn't disband them what were what was the navy doing with these guys right so after
00:34:32.680
world war ii world war ii ends every american special operations unit every raider unit is disbanded by
00:34:38.280
december of 1945 i think the the last ranger battalion is disbanded in december of 45 so there's
00:34:44.060
there's no more commandos in the u.s military the only special operations unit to survive disbandment
00:34:49.560
after world war ii is the udts so when the korean war starts and all the you know the the army is
00:34:57.340
getting kicked to hell all the way back to the pusan perimeter the navy's trying to everybody's
00:35:01.800
trying to think of anything that they can possibly do to you know to stop this route to help cut the
00:35:06.520
knees out of the koreans that are forcing them back so the navy seeing the geography of korea sees that
00:35:11.720
you know there's mountains in the center and all the highways and railways are sort of pushed to the
00:35:15.600
edge of the of the peninsula which affords the navy this huge opportunity to you know start
00:35:20.560
bombarding railways or sending enterprising sailors ashore to blow up tunnels blow up bridges blow up
00:35:26.060
whatever they can to halt the supplies that are supplying the north koreans that are threatening
00:35:30.080
to push the americans and south koreans into the sea so the only units that are available at this
00:35:35.040
time that are actually in country are the udt so the first raiders to go ashore in the korean war
00:35:41.480
not exactly the first but the first ones that are continually used are the these udts who've never
00:35:46.860
been trained to do it they're beach markers cable layers they're they've never done this before so
00:35:51.980
their their first raids are predictably amateurish but they quickly figure out how to do this i just
00:35:57.700
out of necessity all right so the korean war pushed these guys further and further inland basically yeah
00:36:03.300
and it proves that uh the navy needs a force like this so the incheon invasion presents an opportunity
00:36:08.140
for not just a you know hydrographic reconnaissance which is what the udts have perfected in world war ii
00:36:12.880
but it you know because of the the the layout of incheon it's a it's a harbor cluttered with these
00:36:18.320
cluttered with these small little islands and there's pockets of troops that are you know hostile
00:36:23.320
to the north koreans hostile to communists so the the navy sees an opportunity the navy and the cia
00:36:28.980
they see an opportunity to send a couple of guys into these islands to mobilize some resistance
00:36:33.140
and not just that but to get information about what the actual port of incheon looks like because
00:36:39.540
nobody really i mean some people know but there's not charts there's not a lot of intelligence to
00:36:45.680
support the invasion so they send one american naval officer and a handful of south korean sailors
00:36:51.980
to mobilize a guerrilla band of raiders to go from island to island get as much intelligence as
00:36:58.100
possible and then send that information back to the fleet and the only way that they're able to do
00:37:02.000
this and the naval officer that they pick is just this uh one of the probably the forest comp of the
00:37:07.080
korean war he manages to be everywhere at least for the navy in the those of that initial year
00:37:11.460
he collects all this information but does it by raiding island after island after island with his
00:37:17.680
ragtag group of korean guerrillas and at the end of this two week long you know series of raids he
00:37:23.480
ultimately lights the way for the entire landing fleet by climbing to the top of this abandoned
00:37:28.640
lighthouse and lighting the wick so we have the the udts going further and further inland because of
00:37:34.000
the korean war like so the korean war ends kind of it's like well it followed intents and purposes it
00:37:39.380
was over and then during the 60s you start seeing the build-up to the vietnam war and this is when
00:37:44.420
you start seeing the udt transform and actually turn into what we now know as the seals what was
00:37:50.960
going on there and when did we start actually calling these guys navy seals there's sort of a
00:37:56.780
lot going on in this interwar period everybody's trying to figure out uh so the army after the korean
00:38:01.740
war so that there's this whole experience with the rangers in korea as well where the rangers are
00:38:07.400
recreated the army recreates them and they ultimately decide they don't want rangers they
00:38:11.240
want some sort of uh force that can go in and mobilize an entire population or you know something
00:38:16.920
more akin to the oss uh jedbergs in world war ii so the idea of guerrilla war counter guerrilla war is
00:38:23.380
sort of on everybody's mind everybody's you know sort of thinking because there's now nuclear weapons are
00:38:28.740
they're a part of strategic decision making they've uh sort of forced an uncomfortable truce between
00:38:33.900
major powers so now combat's being pushed back down into the mud it's being fought by proxies
00:38:39.240
and guerrilla units so in the 1960s or in the in the late 1950s a couple of people are noticing this
00:38:45.560
probably best of all and as far as the navy goes the the one who notices this uh and then you know
00:38:51.540
reorients the navy to deal with it is chief of naval operations at the time who is uh arlie burke who is
00:38:57.360
if there is a he's probably the most consequential personality when it comes to the creation of the
00:39:03.600
team he's never been a member of any of the the navy's elite branches he's never been a pilot
00:39:08.340
he's never been a submariner he was never in the udt never does anything in world war ii that would
00:39:12.920
suggest that he was going to be an advocate for you know guerrilla or counter guerrilla or commando
00:39:17.300
type operations the one thing that is distinct about early burke is that he is a he's a surface sailor
00:39:23.440
but he is as aggressive a sailor commander as anyone since john paul jones he is you know in each
00:39:31.700
interwar period everybody's always predicting that the navy's going to be relegated to become sort of
00:39:36.540
a merchant marine because the air force can transport troops better than the navy can there aren't any
00:39:41.000
you know massive navies like the german navy or the japanese navy so you don't need as many
00:39:45.540
destroyers and submarines and all the all the rest arlie burke doesn't see that you know future for the
00:39:50.100
navy arlie burke sees a navy as offensively oriented as any that he served with in in world war ii so he
00:39:56.700
refuses to consign the navy to that future so he's constantly looking for opportunities to push his
00:40:02.280
men or his sailors ashore to find and chase the enemy wherever the enemy goes so even before kennedy
00:40:08.220
comes into office everybody tributes all the creation of special operations or special forces
00:40:12.500
to kennedy but burke is already orienting his staff to come up with plans to create a unit that can sort
00:40:19.160
of be the focal point of all the navy's previous unconventional warfare experiences you know the scouts
00:40:24.940
and raiders the ncdus the udts the the navy's uh gorillas in china during world war ii he's funneling
00:40:30.600
all these things into one you know single compact unit one of the reports that i found or i stumbled
00:40:35.880
across and that the navy yard you can see the first instance where they are proposing what to call this
00:40:40.820
unit and the guy just sort of casually you know says that this unit could be called a seal unit you
00:40:45.500
know for their sort of universal capability and you know seal being a contraction of sea air and land
00:40:51.180
all right so that's the creation of the seals but then they when they first start seeing action
00:40:56.680
that's the vietnam war that's when they're put to the test right yeah and it's it doesn't go well
00:41:01.680
so they i mean the the navy had under arlie burke anyway the navy had never really had
00:41:08.600
desire to create a version of the army special force they didn't really want to create like
00:41:13.160
uh guerrilla leaders or anything like that the navy in keeping with the navy's rating you know
00:41:18.020
throughout history the navy wants commanders they want raiders they want guys that can you know land
00:41:22.120
on a coast raid an installation and then escape back to the to sea so that's how the seals are
00:41:26.720
originally oriented and each one of these direct action or commando type missions the seals are
00:41:31.540
raiding like a command post or a naval battery or a truck park or something like that some some
00:41:37.180
installation and when the seals show up in vietnam there isn't any of those vietnam they don't
00:41:42.280
have you know there's no there's no infrastructure there so the first seal commander who shows up he
00:41:47.880
leads his men into these patrols into the swamps of the the rungsat special zone which is this
00:41:52.620
little corner of tidewater just to the south and east of saigon and like i said they don't find any
00:41:58.060
of the stuff that they've been training to uh take out so he i think he starts going into saigon
00:42:04.020
he ends up shacking up with the nerfs all of his guys end up trying to do the same thing and the
00:42:08.860
navy planners see what these seals are doing and they predictably you know outraged they can't believe
00:42:14.280
that there's a navy unit that's not contributing to the mission even though the mission hasn't been
00:42:18.700
particularly defined for them so the navy's ready to kick the seals out of the country and who knows
00:42:23.080
what would have happened to the seals whether they would have gotten disbanded like all the other units
00:42:27.180
in special operations it's hard to know what we do know is they didn't and the reason that they didn't
00:42:32.580
is because the person in charge of all udt and seals at that time was this guy named phil buckloo
00:42:39.200
who had risen to command them who himself had been one of the the navy's first scouts and raiders and
00:42:45.000
then you know after he had proven himself as one of the navy's best beach markers he had gotten sent
00:42:50.700
to china where he had led guerrillas the last year of world war ii so the decision ultimately falls to
00:42:56.120
this this one person this this one sailor who never served a day on a ship and he decides well he
00:43:02.580
says let's uh let's give the seals a second chance we're going to change the leadership and see if we
00:43:06.740
can't fix it and uh they send in a new commander for a new detachment and that new detachment they
00:43:12.300
they essentially arrive in vietnam commander looks at you know his men he says this isn't the war we
00:43:17.040
we we planned for this isn't the war we trained for but this is the only war in town and we're not going
00:43:21.740
to let it go to waste and uh night after night after night he sends his guys into the swamp and they
00:43:28.240
they learn how to become what they never thought that they would become and that's these guerrilla hunters
00:43:33.460
essentially and how did the seals change after vietnam after vietnam i i don't know that they
00:43:39.220
have i mean i think that the the seal teams are essentially what they became you know in 1968
00:43:45.180
i mean the the center of gravity is still about the same i mean we're we're we're on the cusp of a
00:43:51.320
probably a new shift in what seals are just because we're starting to move away we've moved away
00:43:57.680
from afghanistan moved away from iraq likely that we're going to be at least orienting more toward
00:44:04.340
these you know the art you know traditional big power adversaries china and russia so it'll be
00:44:09.520
interesting to see what the seals are ultimately become but if uh combat moves inland again i mean
00:44:14.540
just knowing what i know of the seal teams knowing what their you know their you know cultural center
00:44:19.100
of gravity is what their history is you know knowing that they're they have this you know sort of
00:44:23.460
insatiable bias for action i i don't uh i don't see the seals changing much i think they'll adapt
00:44:29.240
as they always have but that uh like i said like i said that you know the seals become the seals i mean
00:44:33.740
the seals are created in 62 but they don't really become the seals that we know today you know the
00:44:38.180
go anywhere capture code commando for us until like 1968 uh that's where the institutions hardens into
00:44:43.120
what it is it took a long time even that there was all those different iterations and it all came
00:44:48.900
together slowly yeah it does and it doesn't happen because anybody's like like i said nobody's nobody
00:44:54.520
has a vision for it you know each instance where you know the army rangers or the marine corps raiders
00:44:59.540
or the army rangers again or army special forces or army partisans or whatever each of the people
00:45:05.400
that come along whether it's carlson pedicord darby john mcgee and korea aaron bank after korea they all
00:45:12.860
sort of have these castles in their mind of what they want to create and they have they've got uh you know
00:45:18.000
elaborate objectives for these missions elaborate organizational charts to go with them you know
00:45:22.160
everybody that creates these army or marine corps units they're very entrepreneurial they just seem
00:45:26.540
to always have been just slightly ahead of their time whereas the navy you don't really have a have
00:45:32.460
a plan i don't know if that's a feature of the navy being so bad at history or so bad at forward
00:45:37.220
planning but they're just you know solving incremental issues and i just sort of it didn't happen
00:45:42.100
accidentally because you know the navy was very decisive there was always somebody that was
00:45:45.740
decided that the navy was going to move in you know a certain direction but it is a bit haphazard
00:45:50.180
if that makes sense yeah well this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn
00:45:55.140
more about the book in your work i have a limited social media presence i'm on instagram b milligan
00:46:00.620
three i got three little guys and then i'm on twitter ben h milligan the book though is available
00:46:06.740
on amazon signed copies that are available through my local bookstore here prairie path books
00:46:11.700
well ben milligan thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thank you and it's been great
00:46:16.080
had fun my guest today was benjamin billigan he's the author of the book by water beneath the walls
00:46:20.440
it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere make sure to check out our show notes
00:46:23.520
at aom.is slash seals where you can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic
00:46:27.480
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check our website at
00:46:38.340
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