First SEALs

by Patrick K. O'Donnell

  Taylor also saw the opportunity to open up a new dimension of warfare, one that would become a hallmark of the U.S. Navy SEALs: parachute insertion. Taylor was one of the first OSS officers to document this groundbreaking method of delivering underwater commandos to the target, stating, “Underwater operatives and equipment might be landed by parachute to attack targets in inland waterways, such as hydro-electric dams on a lake or important locks in canals. Such an approach offers a unique technique in the penetration of enemy defenses.” Several months later Taylor’s innovative ideas were incorporated into the Maritime Unit training manual, which included an exercise to destroy a canal by parachuting underwater swimmers into the target, where they would don rebreathers and plant limpet mines along the enemy-held waterway.

  AFTER THE ASSAULT ON Salerno in September 1943, the Allies trained a significant focus on Italy. Determined to remain in the midst of the fighting, Jack Taylor requested and received a transfer to Italy to set up Maritime Unit operations in the port city of Bari on the Adriatic Sea to implement the plans he hatched with Hayden and Tofte to complete the supply service to the Yugoslav partisans. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the partisans numbered about 180,000 men. Joining forces with the Loyalist troops led by Draza Mihailovic, Yugoslavia’s insurgent troops embarked on a series of military operations that tied up roughly fifteen German divisions. The Allies wanted to keep those German troops in Yugoslavia rather than fighting in Italy or on the Eastern Front. In this context, supplying Tito’s forces became a key priority for the Allies and the OSS.

  Taylor’s request for transfer was helped along by a letter from the British governor general of the island of Samos, which thanked the OSS and expressed “his appreciation for the services rendered and for the medical supplies.” According to official MU history, “It was experience of this type that caused Lieutenant Taylor to be appointed OSS Operations Officer at Bari when the decision was made in December, 1943, to establish a base there to service Yugoslav partisans.”

  As Taylor was leaving for his new post in Italy, additional Maritime Unit men from Washington arrived at the Greek Desk in Cairo to augment Taylor’s command of one. Along with the men, word came that the long-awaited high-speed boat would also arrive, on loan from the U.S. Army. Taylor’s parting words to his replacements were “sign for it in my name before they change their mind.”

  TAYLOR WOULDN’T BE heading to Italy alone: Hayden, Tofte, and Smith would accompany him, although it looked at first as though Hayden would be taking part in a very different mission. Initially Hayden received orders for a proposed mission in the Greek isles. Handing the former leading man “a formidable sheaf of documents, Colonel Guenther advised, ‘I suggest, lieutenant, that you study these intelligence reports. Familiarize yourself with the situation in Greece. But I warn you, you will find it a most complex situation.’”

  Weeks passed, and no one in command followed up with Hayden, who was under the impression he was taking “a group of escapees from Greece fitting out a cargo ketch, and running her up through the Greek Islands.” Guenther, after returning from Washington, finally informed him that “The British have that mission sewn up.”

  “I see,” responded Hayden.

  “Well, [Hayden], a report has just come in that there is a man named Tito up in Yugoslavia. They say he’s a Communist, but apparently he’s in control of quite a large guerrilla organization, so why don’t you hop up to Bari, Italy . . . and see whether you can be of some service.”

  With a “fistful of orders,” Hayden joined Taylor, Smith, and Tofte, and they departed for Bari.

  *The Italians, who had broken from the Axis not long after the Allies landed at Salerno, Italy, on September 9, 1943, surrendered to the Allies. To prevent Italy’s collapse, the Germans quickly occupied Rome and other portions of the country with their forces. For several weeks the Italians were unsure of their alliances. Later the Italian change of allegiance would provide a unique opportunity for MU’s underwater operations.

  9

  TREASURE ISLAND

  BACK IN THE UNITED STATES, under Woolley’s direction, the original handful of combat swimmers multiplied, morphing into Operational Swimmer Groups I, II, and L, comprised of thirty to forty men per unit.* Woolley’s vision of creating combat swimmers on par with the Italians was becoming a reality. With Christian Lambertsen finally graduated from medical school, the newly minted naval captain joined the OSS on a full-time basis. He would play a key role in the swimmer groups’ ongoing development as well as the continuing development of the LARU.

  Recruiting men to utilize the rebreather equipment proved a challenge. Instead of looking for former Navy divers, who often used hardhat-like diving equipment and worked on everything from submerged wrecks to ship repairs below the waterline, the OSS wanted expert swimmers. The MU didn’t want average swimmers who needed instruction; they sought out the best in the world—Olympic-caliber swimmers and national champions. The OSS knew these men were in excellent physical condition and were experienced in the use of swim fins and face masks. A large number of these world-class swimmers were, in fact, Southern California “beach rats.” Undoubtedly spurred on by Taylor’s early experience testing the rebreather in the waters of Santa Monica with Wadley and Peterson, OSS combed the beaches as well as the Coast Guard and Navy ranks, looking to recruit lifeguards and expert swimmers. One Southern California beach rat, James Eubanks, later reflected,

  I was a lifeguard in L.A. County. If you’ve seen Baywatch on TV, it was Baywatch minus the babes. We had a boat named Baywatch, but we didn’t have girls in the lifeguard towers. Prior to the war, I was a diver who won quite a few rough-water swim meets. The Coast Guard put out a call for expert swimmers to help with operating landing craft since we knew surf conditions. Two of us volunteered. They gave us a Second Class Boatsman rating. After boot camp, they placed me as a swimming instructor and I couldn’t get off the base camp. After several months of boring duty (with the Coast Guard), we received notice that the OSS wanted volunteer swimmers for hazardous work with a ten percent chance of coming back. It sounded like a good way to get off the base, and a way into the war, so I volunteered.

  After Raider training at Camp Pendleton, which included small-boat handling and beach assaults, additional training commenced at Catalina Island on the West Coast on the leased grounds of a former Boy Scout camp. MU dubbed the facility “Area WA.”

  OSS Maritime Unit underwater training then migrated to the sun-swept beaches of the Bahamas, specifically Treasure Island, a spit of land only two and a half miles long and three hundred feet wide. Only an elderly black caretaker and his family occupied the limestone-formed island. The remote location offered security from the prying eyes of the Bahamians and the unlikely prospect of German spies.

  In sharp contrast to the chilly, polluted Potomac River in which earlier swimmer training took place, the pristine, crystal waters of the Caribbean offered excellent visibility. The men were hit with a massive amount of vivid sensory detail, including gorgeous reefs and a variety of colorful, exotic fish. They frequently encountered a four-foot barracuda “who was jokingly named Horace.” One operative recalled, “He seemed to take great delight in rushing at a swimmer and then stopped about three feet away to work his jaws. As soon as the swimmer made a flick at him with a spear, he would dash off with a swish of his tail.”

  Though Horace never posed a problem, the sharks did. As one OSS swimmer colossally understated, the sharks caused “a certain amount of consternation” as they approached many of the swimmers. In a display of true OSS ingenuity, the operatives invented a solution for the unwelcome interlopers: shark repellent. One version included copper acetate powder that was capsulated in a cloth sack. When a menacing shark approached, the swimmer released the powder, creating a dark cloud in the water similar to the inky fluid a squid emits.

  The men continued their diving near Treasure Island, where they found an old shipwreck that proved “ideal for planting limpet mines and other
underwater demolitions.” At Nassau, Operational Swimmer Group II was split into two groups of twenty men each. The final training exercise was a mission to penetrate American harbor defenses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This exercise, code-named “Operation Cincinnati,” would serve both to gauge the effectiveness of the Swimmer Group and to test the Navy’s vulnerability to these types of attacks.

  Each of the swimmers was outfitted with fins and mask, waterproof wristwatch and compass, an M-3 grease gun in watertight covers, and a waterproof flashlight. They carried with them the explosives in special containers, and some also had sidearms. John Booth, a blue-eyed northerner and national champion swimmer who commanded the attacking “Red Group,”* recalled the mission:

  CATALINA ISLAND-TREASURE ISLAND-PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS

  The first few days were spent in dispatching swimmers with cable and bolt cutters against standard A/T and A/S nets to determine whether or not it was possible or plausible to have swimmers cut the cables in the net. It was possible to do this and if better and newer cutters had been available, it would have been easier. Next, the swimmers were sent out with Composition “C” [explosive] and primacord and ½ lb. of “C” was placed under each buoy (15) and all charges were put on a main line. The net sank immediately and only two charges failed because of faulty primacord. This was an A/T net. It was possible for swimmers to swim over or climb over all types of nets and booms and under A/T nets or through the overlap. A/S nets presented no obstacle to swimmers. The mesh is 1' x 2' at the smallest and is possible to swim through. Lifting A/T nets by means of a block and tackle was tried. It is possible to lift the net within 8' or 10' of the surface, but it takes about eight or ten men and two blocks. The breach thus made is about 8' wide at the top and 20'–30' at the bottom.

  Seven-man LCRs, flying mattresses, and 2-man kayaks were taken across the anti-motor boat boom without too much trouble. There were two problems testing the net and boom and harbor defenses. The first time two 7-man LCRs and fourteen men left a submarine 100 yards off the A/S net, negotiated all of the harbor defenses, attacked target and returned to submarine without being detected. The second time six men and one LCR left from a point 1000 yards off net, negotiated net and harbor defenses, paddled for seven hours around harbor, coming as close as 75 yards to some ships, bivouacked for one day on shore, attacked ships and installations in harbor, and returned to rendezvous without being detected.

  President Roosevelt also noted the success of the mission and noted in his report, “In these tests, the lengthy training showed commendable results, because the swimmers were able to circumvent the net defenses in each instance. An additional point of value was proof that the Navy sound detection gear did not reveal the presence of underwater swimmers.”

  This mission, although it seemed fairly insignificant at the time, was actually tremendously groundbreaking, laying the foundations for America’s future combat swimming programs, including the U.S. Navy SEALs. Lieutenant Commander Michael Bennett, U.S. Coast Guard, would later note, “The exercise was the first of its kind in an actual maritime environment and took place almost 40 years before the Navy commissioned a US Navy officer from SEAL Team Six to set up Red Cell teams in 1984 to ascertain the Navy’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks.”

  AFTER EXTENSIVE TRAINING on the West Coast and in the Bahamas, the three swimmer groups were finally ready for overseas deployment. Lieutenant Arthur Choate, a former Wall Street millionaire, headed Group I, the first to deploy into combat.

  Headquarters initially allocated Choate’s group to the Aegean. Plans were underway to send them to the island of Karavostosi to concentrate attacks on German shipping on the island of Rhodes. They hoped the combat swimmers could also work with the British, specifically a commando group known as Force #133, and focus on German targets along the Thracian coast. However, Donovan personally interceded and canceled the planned deployment of Choate’s group, sending them to Hawaii instead, where they would enter the Pacific war.

  Lieutenant Frederick James Wadley, whom Taylor had met back in the winter of 1942 in Santa Monica while testing Browne’s Aqualung, commanded L Group. Wadley’s group included former Navy diver John P. Spence as well as one of the OSS’s first frogmen, Norman Wicker. The group was sent to England, where they would train and prepare for missions related to the invasion of Normandy.

  Operational Swimmer Group II, led by Dr. Lambertsen himself as well as senior combat swimmer John Booth, headed to the Far East to operate out of Ceylon, running missions into Burma and Malaysia.

  *Eventually a fourth group made up of many men from the L-Unit would be formed into Operational Swimmer Group III.

  *John Booth passed away in 2012. He was a lifelong friend of the author and would frequently stay at his residence on his many trips from Rhode Island to Florida. I will never forget what Booth, ever the optimist, told me after my divorce: “I was divorced around the same age you are [thirty-five]. You are in your prime and at the height of your power!”

  10

  THE YANKEE, OPERATION AUDREY, AND THE BOOT

  NOVEMBER 1943, BARI HARBOR, ITALY

  Hayden, Taylor, and Smith looked over the long, local fishing boat covered in layers of grime as she wearily rocked in Italy’s Bari Harbor. The repurposed, aging craft with a sloping deck and broad bow was outfitted with a radio antenna resembling a crucifix that incongruously stood more than ten feet above the pilot’s cupola. Fifty-two feet long, fourteen feet wide, with a German two-cylinder eighty-horsepower engine, the Yankee was a far cry from the sleek, high-speed boat Taylor envisioned to be the ideal vessel for engaging in covert, treacherous missions across the enemy-infested waters of the Adriatic Sea. Even with a .50 bolted to her foredeck, she didn’t look like a boat built for war. However, such prosaic features would make it easier for the craft to fit in with the local vessels and avoid suspicion. In spite of her unimpressive appearance, Hayden took a liking to the boat and promptly christened her the Yankee, after another vessel he had sailed.

  Taylor and Hayden, both experienced men of the sea, would captain the Yankee on numerous operations, aided by a crew of eleven: pilot Voyeslav Ivosevitch, one Marine sergeant, eight partisan seaman-gunners, and a cook named Tony. Taylor and Hayden would also use the craft to run supplies to Yugoslavia for Tito’s partisans. The Yankee would also play a big role in Smith’s life. He didn’t know it yet, but for Lloyd Smith the Yankee represented his ticket out of the most dangerous mission of his life.

  As in Cairo, Jack Taylor was the first MU representative to set foot in Bari, Italy, a new theater of OSS operations. Since their landings in Salerno in September, the Allies had been slowly clawing their way up the spine of the Italian boot: the Fifth Army and Americans on the western side with the British Eighth Army on the east coast facing the Adriatic. The OSS established a base in Bari. Recently liberated by the Allies, the port lay on the heel of the Italian boot with a key entry on the Adriatic. Because of Italy’s recent switch to the Allied side, “everything was in turmoil . . . to find lodgings was difficult; to visit the officials and make arrangements necessary to procure labor, fuel, transport, berthing for ships, and so forth seemed at first impossible,” recalled one OSS agent.

  Despite the challenges, Taylor, Hayden, and Tofte got to work almost immediately. Their first task was to build a fleet for a clandestine supply operation dubbed “Operation Audrey.” The Yankee was but one craft, and they would need dozens to carry out their plans.

  WHEN ITALY SURRENDERED to Allied forces on September 3, 1943, the Italian army still occupied much of Yugoslavia.* Tito’s partisan forces who sided with the Allies quickly disarmed many of the Italian troops, taking their weapons and artillery for themselves. After the Italian surrender, mountains of equipment, including shoes, uniforms, rations, and weapons stored in warehouses in Sicily, fell into Allied hands. Tofte, Taylor, and Hayden immediately recognized that this gear would well serve and support the guerrilla forces fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia. Tofte, Ar
ea A’s former hand-to-hand combat instructor and now a major in the OSS, was charged with managing supply runs in the Adriatic to distribute the seized largesse to the Yugoslav partisans.

  The gargantuan task included a laundry list of activities: establishing the supply line, finding and mapping minefields in the Adriatic, assembling a fleet and crews for forty vessels, arranging for maintenance and fuel of the ships, acquiring weapons and other supplies for Tito’s forces, finding food and housing for all the personnel required for the supply operation, establishing security and armed guards, organizing recordkeeping for the supply mission, and attending to innumerable other small details. Obtaining the necessary supplies for maintenance activities proved especially difficult. The OSS requested materials from the British and other U.S. military sources of supply; if that failed, they turned to the black market. One report noted, “It has simply been a beg, borrow and steal policy to keep these vessels running.”

  Despite the challenges, the new base was quickly up and running. The OSS recruited partisan laborers, who did much of the work, toiling “virtually without a rest.” “[In] the next few days, coal, repairs, and ship stores for the battered little partisan boats arrived.” According to official records, “Within three weeks, the OSS officers made a complete reconnaissance, gathered considerable intelligence, established bases and trans-shipping facilities, and procured a fleet of small ships. In another six weeks, they had set up a supply service more than able to handle all that the Allies were at the moment prepared to send or Tito to receive.” This small group of men, placed in the right area with the superb ability to innovate and improvise, would have a distinctive impact on the war in the Adriatic.