The Art of Manliness - Why Do the Navy’s Frogmen Fight on Land？

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now when you think

00:00:11.040 of the navy seals you think of elite special operators who've been tasked with commando-type

00:00:15.040 missions in conflict zones from central africa to afghanistan which raises a question you may

00:00:19.700 never have thought about but seems quite obvious and interesting once you do wait why are members

00:00:24.120 of the navy a waterborne military force operating hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean this

00:00:29.920 question spurred my guest a former navy seal himself to explore the answer in his book by

00:00:33.680 water beneath the walls the rise of the navy seals his name is benjamin milligan today we discuss the

00:00:38.480 history that explains why the navy became the branch of the military that supplied this famous

00:00:42.140 go anywhere force and how men who started out as sailors became involved in land-based operation

00:00:46.920 ben details the predecessors of the seals which took the form of various commando-type units that both

00:00:51.480 the army and marines experimented with but ultimately scuttled and how the navy which had played a

00:00:56.320 supporting role in all these units ended up being the one to continue to develop them

00:00:59.720 we discuss how the naval combat demolition units or ncdu's and underwater demolition teams or udt's

00:01:05.600 that were birthed during world war ii would ultimately lead to the creation of the navy's

00:01:09.540 frogmen as we know them today along the way ben shares details the unique characters who shaped

00:01:13.800 the unit's trajectory including the surprisingly bookish commander who created the most legendary

00:01:17.880 part of the seals training hell week after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:22.660 ben milligan welcome to the show thanks very much so you are a navy seal and you just published a book

00:01:39.720 it's called by water beneath the walls the rise of the navy seals and this is an in-depth history

00:01:44.800 of the origins of the seals and what's funny or interesting interesting and funny that there was

00:01:52.200 a question from your grandma about your service as a seal that kick-started this book what was that

00:01:57.700 question and then how did that send you in a deep dive under the history of the navy seals

00:02:02.120 uh the question was uh what the hell were you doing in iraq i mean she knew that i was in the navy she

00:02:09.720 knew i was a sailor and for her she you know she'd grown up during world war ii she had seven brothers

00:02:15.440 that were all in the navy during world war ii she'd been to my bud's graduation in 2001 and you know

00:02:21.620 there she had kind of gotten you know a reinforcement of the idea that you know the navy is connected to

00:02:26.920 the water which we all know that it is i suspect she'd seen the introduction video to all the uh the

00:02:32.900 guests kind of show what the graduates have just gone through they you know it shows surf torture and

00:02:37.860 surf passage and underwater knot tying and drown proofing and all that stuff and the diving i don't

00:02:43.480 know if she just didn't notice all the hiking and the machine guns and and everything but she i think

00:02:49.560 until the day she died she thought that i was you know something like a rescue swimmer so it wasn't a

00:02:54.460 totally off the wall question yeah she she was curious and you know my my response to her was

00:03:00.900 maybe sort of a condescending you know i'm not a sailor i'm a seal fully expecting that she would

00:03:06.600 know the difference but she yeah i don't know if it was the the way that i answered the question

00:03:12.800 because i'm very close to my grandma and uh or what but the question just sort of stuck with me it

00:03:18.400 didn't come back or i didn't come back to it really until 2011 after the extortion uh one seven

00:03:24.360 tragedy when all the seals of gold squadron were shot down in afghanistan they started to really

00:03:29.840 think what are we or what are the seal teams doing you know so far removed from the water i mean that

00:03:34.620 was three months and four days after seals had killed osama bin laden both of these events the

00:03:39.620 greatest victory in the war on terror and then the you know the the largest loss of life for american

00:03:45.120 forces in afghanistan they they happened more than uh 600 miles away from the closest salt water

00:03:50.320 and they were both held by uh a navy unit so that was a question that i felt like i had to get the

00:03:57.360 bottom of and in getting to the bottom of the question in your book by tracing the history of

00:04:02.020 the seals one thing you do is to get beyond the kind of myth of how the seals came about

00:04:06.800 what do you think that myth is yeah the the myth is is always been that the frogmen created themselves

00:04:13.780 like they sort of self-actualized a generous appraisal for you know everybody wants to

00:04:19.220 you know assume that their success is due to their own effort and struggle or whatever and so the

00:04:25.220 origin story or the creation myth is that enterprising frogmen after world war ii were looking for a

00:04:30.660 mission or looking to stretch the boundaries of maritime warfare and they just kept following the

00:04:36.380 enemy inland and you know this was always done against the navy's wishes you know there was always a

00:04:41.360 hostile bureaucracy trying to keep the seals contained to the water not seals necessarily but

00:04:46.040 udt or the frogmen and then when kennedy came along he you know authorized you know this encroachment by

00:04:52.380 the navy and then after that you know authorization and the seals even pushed the breadth of their

00:04:57.660 mission even further but the more i thought about it and in fact like when i was doing the initial

00:05:02.040 research for the book i was just sort of keeping like a a timeline on a word document this timeline

00:05:07.240 just kept getting bigger and bigger every day and the one thing i started to really notice is

00:05:11.280 this didn't happen accidentally and it didn't happen against the navy's wishes the navy doesn't

00:05:16.260 work like that the military doesn't work like that the military is it's the most hierarchical

00:05:21.480 institution in in the government so i mean nothing happens without the by with and through or the

00:05:27.400 approval of uh you know senior leadership so the one thing that i noticed is that you know this would

00:05:32.800 not have happened if the navy had not championed the idea itself and that means the navy's planners

00:05:38.400 the top leaders in the navy so i realized fairly early on that this seal origin story or the seal

00:05:44.560 creation myth was just that it was a myth you know i think it it resonated or i think it persisted for

00:05:49.900 such a long time because you know if you are a seal or if you are in special operations just generally

00:05:55.180 you've had experiences with conventional troops or conventional sailors you know who have not always

00:06:01.820 had the highest opinion of elite troops and so you know that i that myth was just reinforced time

00:06:08.300 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

00:06:14.460 uh it's not the real the real story the real story is much richer and much uh much more interesting

00:06:18.720 all right so the seals specialize they what would you call commando or raider type operations just big

00:06:26.460 picture for those aren't familiar i mean i think we kind of know what the difference is but what is the

00:06:30.620 difference between like raider warfare and traditional warfare yeah it's like you know

00:06:36.240 like pornography almost you kind of know it when you see it but i mean the word commando came out of

00:06:41.360 the boer war churchill sort of coined it to describe the the afrikaner troops that would raid in the

00:06:47.560 middle of the night and then disappear into the darkness but you know we've had there have been

00:06:50.900 raiders throughout history you know whether they were plains indians or vikings or whatever soldiers

00:06:55.680 can be raiders sailors have been raiders we've always had raiders in warfare but yeah so

00:07:00.040 in when world war ii starts the british expeditionary force had just been chased off

00:07:04.500 the continent by the germans and churchill's purpose in creating you know his commandos was to

00:07:10.840 you know one restore the morale of the british people and two to achieve more with less you know

00:07:16.400 some sort of strategic impact with the few troops that he had so the only way that he could really do

00:07:22.440 that was with a series of you know lightning raids up and down the coast so that's where we get the term

00:07:27.720 commando and that's what commando operations really are it's just you know instead of

00:07:31.900 regular troops they they may you know perform a behind the lines action or something like that but

00:07:37.240 often more often than not they're holding ground after they've you know advanced to something raiders

00:07:41.760 don't do that or commandos don't do that or at least the traditional understanding of the the term so

00:07:47.800 commandos or raiders they they strike behind the lines and you know usually a vulnerable target and then

00:07:55.180 once they've achieved their objective then they usually are you know fleeing back into the

00:07:59.720 darkness okay so uh the british military sort of kick-started the whole commando type warfare

00:08:06.520 in world war ii is out of necessity didn't have enough troops they had to get the most bang for

00:08:10.120 their buck then the u.s military saw this and was like hey maybe we should try that but i think okay

00:08:17.040 so you sort of yeah sort of like that but we can talk about that yeah but i think that's interesting

00:08:21.740 here you make this one of the points you make is to understand why the navy ended up creating a

00:08:28.280 special forces unit capable of operating on land sea and air you have to understand you have to

00:08:34.580 explore like why didn't the army or why did the marine corps come up why weren't they able to come

00:08:39.920 up with commando units and so yeah let's start there so the point i'm making the book is that you

00:08:44.800 know the well the reason that the the navy created a unit that could go anywhere or a commando unit that

00:08:50.200 could go anywhere is not in spite of the army and navy it's actually because of them when when you

00:08:55.320 look at the you know bin laden raid bin laden raid occurred in abadabad pakistan i think the last time

00:09:00.440 i looked it was abadabad was something like 800 miles away from the closest saltwater if you were

00:09:05.720 planning that that mission not knowing anything about you know the u.s military or its history or

00:09:10.120 its order of battle you wouldn't choose a navy unit you wouldn't expect to choose a navy unit so it's a

00:09:15.000 totally unexpected or the why is why how did a navy unit you know come to be relied upon by the u.s

00:09:22.120 military is such a go anywhere commando force instead when you phrase it like that you have to

00:09:27.920 you know assume that the rest of the you know the sentence is implying that instead of the army or the

00:09:32.940 marine corps you know these institutions that are the traditional owners of land operations

00:09:38.880 what i found was when i like like i said when i was laying that timeline out i i noticed the army

00:09:45.600 and the marine corps always had this very sort of haphazard relationship with commando type operations

00:09:50.800 they'd sort of want them at one point they were trying to fill you know some sort of need or they

00:09:55.840 would create them not necessarily for the same reasons that churchill wanted them for their own

00:09:59.720 peculiar reasons they were creating commandos for for a purpose and then you know they would commit

00:10:05.300 them to action usually that action would lead to some sort of disaster and then the army would say

00:10:10.100 well you know let's back off that idea and they would just disband the unit and each time well not

00:10:15.080 each time but almost every time the navy had sort of come to expect that the army or the marine corps

00:10:20.540 was going to be a partner when it came to commando type rating because the the navy was usually you know

00:10:26.780 sort of in the wings of all these operations and each time the army or the marine corps pulled the rug out

00:10:31.780 of these operations the navy was just left holding the bag so the navy just can continue to when the

00:10:36.900 army or the marine corps left they would just push just a little bit further a little bit further each

00:10:40.700 time try you know not necessarily with a long-range idea that they were going to create a go anywhere

00:10:46.080 commando force but they were just trying to solve a problem and that problem was filling a gap and

00:10:50.860 they would just continue to fill that gap and ultimately after 30 years the seals are created

00:10:56.000 well and you do a good job of exploring the the marine corps and the the army's sort of forays

00:11:02.640 into commando type warfare during world war ii and what i found interesting with each one it seems like

00:11:07.380 in the navy was involved somehow and like you said each time these units would get disbanded but it

00:11:13.920 seemed like like whatever like the the raider unit learned like the navy got to keep and it sort of just

00:11:19.880 kind of got baked in into their into their curriculum so like the first one you highlight is donovan's

00:11:27.560 raiders this is a marine corps unit that would try to dabble in commandos type warfare what was their

00:11:34.300 story like what was their objective and what was the result of that unit okay so the marine corps raiders

00:11:42.540 are the first commando force that the u.s military creates in world war ii the reason that they create

00:11:47.520 them is because of really one personality and that personality is evans carlson he's uh he's had a

00:11:52.780 not a not a checkered history with the marine corps but sort of an unusual history he was he serves in

00:11:58.540 nicaragua and sort of a guerrilla war he is attached to mao's communist army in china on mao's flight from

00:12:06.000 the nationalists and in china so carlson comes up with this idea you know he wants to create a marine

00:12:12.700 unit that is similar to you know the chinese guerrillas that he serves alongside in the 30s

00:12:17.040 until world war ii kicks off he's befriended president roosevelt's son jimmy roosevelt jimmy

00:12:22.280 roosevelt sends a letter to the commandant and he wouldn't normally any junior officer wouldn't

00:12:26.660 normally you know get the time of day from the commandant but you know this junior officer happens

00:12:30.880 to be the president's son so the marine corps very reluctantly the marine corps has no interest

00:12:36.480 in fielding commandos throughout the marine corps history they've sort of been the navy's go

00:12:40.980 anywhere force but after world war ii they've proven that they can be as capable as the u.s army

00:12:46.940 so the marine corps doesn't really want commandos but carlson jimmy roosevelt are pressuring the

00:12:52.020 marine corps commandant to do it and the navy sort of picks up on this idea and the navy's like well

00:12:56.560 we really could use a unit that could go out there into the pacific stretch the japanese out across the

00:13:01.700 pacific so that's that's essentially what happens you know the navy kind of forces the marine corps's

00:13:05.800 hand the navy and the marine corps never like i said they never really want these guys and then on

00:13:10.320 their first raid evans carlson leads this pretty dramatic raid you know some two thousand miles

00:13:16.580 into the northern pacific into the gilbert islands that make an island and the raid is you know the

00:13:21.700 main reason that it's a disaster is because of carlson's leadership he he loses confidence he

00:13:27.040 thinks that at different points in the battle he loses track of a lot of his men he thinks that

00:13:32.100 jimmy roosevelt's going to get captured ultimately he resolves that he's just going to surrender to the

00:13:36.880 japanese but he can't even surrender to the japanese because the guys that he sends with the

00:13:41.660 surrender note to the japanese commander another group of his raiders end up killing that messenger

00:13:47.040 so the raid just turns into a disaster he ultimately i think he loses something like 18 raiders or

00:13:53.560 something like that and then uh another 12 are left behind to be you know captured and ultimately

00:13:59.320 beheaded and the marine corps sees this and they ultimately decide well you know we didn't want these

00:14:04.720 guys to begin with so they petitioned the navy to get rid of them and the navy does but that doesn't

00:14:10.220 solve the problem that the navy's had which is we you know the navy really wants you know some sort of

00:14:15.960 unit that can go into the pacific accomplish more with less spread the japanese out this cycle it almost

00:14:22.480 repeats itself time and time again you know throughout this commando history or throughout the american

00:14:27.280 special operations at least until the end of vietnam well and another experiment that the navy

00:14:32.600 did commando warfare with it was with the army it was the uh creation of the army scouts and the navy

00:14:39.280 so this is so they're called the army scouts but like the navy played a role like what was the navy's

00:14:43.680 role in the army scouts each aspect of amphibious warfare kind of plays a part in creating a different

00:14:50.780 sort of unit so the marine corps raiders are created because they the navy wants to stretch the japanese out

00:14:56.620 they want to accomplish more with less behind the lines type raids the army navy scouts and raiders

00:15:02.900 are created because the army and the navy realized that they are about to embark on a campaign across

00:15:09.820 the world literally around the entire world where in almost each instance where they're going to

00:15:14.220 confront the enemy they're going to have to land on an enemy beach which for a a military that's never

00:15:20.240 done that for a military that you know during the first world war had uh had landed on the coast

00:15:25.400 comfortably and walked down numerous gang planks they never had to land on an enemy beach or anything

00:15:30.100 like that this is a terrifying prospect one of the most troubling parts of of that whole process of

00:15:35.340 amphibious warfare is trying to determine how you're going to land on the right beach you know there's

00:15:39.820 scant charts that are available you know there's you know a lot of these beaches they don't they're not

00:15:44.120 lit you've got to figure you got to come up with a unit that you know can identify beaches and then

00:15:49.360 signal the landing fleet to where those beaches actually are because you can't land an army on the

00:15:53.480 backside of that beach you know there's no exits to move trucks move tanks move anything you definitely

00:15:58.640 can't land on a beach where the the sand is too soft you know for tank treads or something like that

00:16:03.920 so that's what the army navy scouts and raiders are are meant to accomplish so they they create this

00:16:09.640 joint unit they divide the you know the both halves of this unit into a distinct army and navy sides

00:16:15.620 the army are going to be these you know scout slash raiders that are going to be the ones that are

00:16:20.640 landed on the beach identify the beach and then signal the landing fleet the navy part of this

00:16:25.620 program is going to be the unit that basically just shuttles these scout raiders back and forth

00:16:30.040 but after the invasion in north africa and after sicily the army realizes well we have more than

00:16:37.540 enough folks that are capable of identifying beaches or signaling the landing fleet so they pull

00:16:42.240 out of the entire program basically leaving the entire curriculum for you know that the army and navy

00:16:47.680 had been developing together with the navy and the navy doesn't feel like abandoning this program

00:16:52.180 the navy you know sees opportunities throughout the world throughout the pacific south pacific central

00:16:57.780 pacific and employing troops like these so the navy maintains the curriculum but when the army leaves

00:17:02.780 now there's no more agreement that prohibits the the navy from fielding its actual scouts so you know

00:17:08.980 no longer are they scout officers and scout boat crews but they the navy becomes in fact scouts and actual

00:17:14.700 raiders so this is kind of you're starting to see the encroachment into the to the land right it's

00:17:19.780 just that you know that that little that little nudge you know that like i said the navy never sets

00:17:24.240 out with this plan in 1942 to create a commando force or you know go anywhere commando force the navy

00:17:29.600 just you know continuously solves individual problems that just keep pushing the navy further and further

00:17:35.920 ashore another experiment with commando warfare during world war ii again by the u.s army was darby's rangers

00:17:42.700 what was their mission and how do they perform as a unit and what ended up happening to them

00:17:47.820 yeah so i don't know if you've ever seen the uh the james garner movie you know darby's ranger so

00:17:53.600 darby is one of the you know all-time legends in american special operations history and deservedly so

00:18:00.140 he's a larger than life character he's from arkansas he was an artillery officer before the war and he's a

00:18:05.760 totally irrepressible guy like he's uh one of the you know folks when i was researching and and

00:18:11.780 digging into the letters of the of the folks that i was writing about like he's a guy that you just

00:18:15.860 you can't help but like him i don't like to admit liking a character or disliking a character i don't

00:18:23.020 want the to convey any of that to the reader he's very difficult not to like him in part because he's

00:18:29.140 just so so brave uh such an advocate for his guys and time and time again during the war he turns down

00:18:35.940 promotions simply because he wants to stay with his rangers the rangers are created for sort of a

00:18:41.320 specific purpose by george marshall george marshall has grown into the legend you know you don't ever

00:18:46.860 want to criticize george marshall i'm not criticizing him but he has priorities for the army that aren't

00:18:53.360 necessarily beneficial to the rangers so the priority that he has when he creates the rangers

00:18:57.800 is to get as much combat experiences as they can that they can pass along to the rest of the infantry

00:19:04.060 and then really just to you know support the infantry in whatever way the division commanders want

00:19:09.480 so on the one hand you've got darby who's in a sort of this archetypal commando and on the other

00:19:14.740 hand you've got george marshall you know the level-headed constantly preoccupied with his army

00:19:19.460 and between these two the rangers are ultimately broken just by the the competing you know objectives

00:19:25.940 of these two men and that breaking happens when by early early 1944 you know the rangers have

00:19:33.260 stopped being commando raiders and they've really turned into like spearheaders for the regular 0.58

00:19:38.760 infantry they're not really operating as a small unit anymore they're operating in regiment-sized

00:19:43.400 units and they're taking not just a small fort here or an artillery battery there or something like

00:19:48.080 that like they did in the beginning but the army is committing them to take and hold entire towns and

00:19:54.340 the raid that they get sent on which isn't a raid at all is this raid on cisterna in italy after the

00:20:00.400 invasion of anzio and it's a you know biggest disaster in american special operations history two

00:20:06.020 battalions are destroyed and the remnants are captured and uh frog marched off into captivity

00:20:12.760 with the germans it's a real trap i mean when when you when when i was you know researching this in the

00:20:18.880 national archives you can see the transcript of darby communicating with his frontline leaders and i don't

00:20:25.540 know how they kept this transcript but it's there and you can read page after page of it and

00:20:31.240 it's uh it's when you're going through these pages i mean it's hard to not get emotional yourself because

00:20:37.640 you see what's happening to these guys and the lengths that they're going for each other and then after

00:20:43.120 you know this terrible debacle the army decides well you know we we don't need rangers in this

00:20:48.780 theater anymore anyway so we're going to disband the whole program

00:20:51.800 all right so yeah we're seeing over and over again both the army and the marine corps they they try

00:20:58.060 they experiment with it they realize it doesn't work and i think a point you make is that part of

00:21:02.620 the problem with the army and the marine corps is that they had already had like a culture of

00:21:06.160 infantry like that's what you do and so they'd often they create these commando units but then

00:21:10.620 they'd end up treating them like infantry soldiers like regular infantry soldiers and like the navy

00:21:16.080 they didn't have that what would we call it mindset and so they like they were they were

00:21:21.380 completely open to the idea of yeah we could do commando type stuff right i mean the the army is always

00:21:27.280 you know the army and the marine corps they always think that you know raiding is really just it's an

00:21:32.120 activity that any infantry troops can can perform as long as they're given enough preparation rehearsals

00:21:37.180 special equipment or whatever and so you really shouldn't pull troops out of the regular line of

00:21:42.760 battle to do this mission and and they had you know relatively good reason to think so i mean every

00:21:47.620 great raider in history whether it was nathan bedford forest or ulrich dahlgren or whatever all these

00:21:55.080 folks from you know the american civil war they hadn't just been raiders they had raid they had

00:22:00.500 raided throughout the war but after their raids they would often just fall back in line with their

00:22:04.700 regular cavalry or infantry regiments so why wouldn't they think so but the navy didn't have this legacy

00:22:11.100 the navy you know isn't constantly preoccupied with its infantry they don't really the army doesn't

00:22:15.940 want to create an elite branch because they don't want to take all the best soldiers out of their

00:22:20.700 infantry companies and put them into an elite unit then you have you know nothing but so-so troops and

00:22:26.520 the infantry regiments or the navy doesn't have the problem they're never trying to you know rob

00:22:30.460 peter to pay paul a unit like this can exist alongside the navy whereas it really can't or it

00:22:35.320 couldn't at the time but you know in the army or the marine corps we're gonna take a quick break for

00:22:38.800 your words from our sponsors and now back to the show all right so with all these experiments

00:22:45.240 experiments with um special warfare with a within the army and the marine corps the navy was there

00:22:50.980 somehow either working with them directly or just their support and then when those got disbanded the

00:22:57.000 navy ended up with the curriculum and they saw an opportunity like hey we can actually do what they

00:23:01.420 were trying to do and then you really start seeing like an invert i guess encroachment on the land

00:23:08.260 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 0.99

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 0.73

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 0.99

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 0.73

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 0.64

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 0.72

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 1.00

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 0.64

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

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00:47:12.300 but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - November 10, 2021

Why Do the Navy’s Frogmen Fight on Land？

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