Finding the passage at last, they headed upstream, scouting for Japanese activity. Not too far ahead, they observed an enemy patrol boat approach their position. “We were along the banks in our kayaks,” remembered Booth. “They missed us as they went by.” The swimmers completed their reconnaissance and turned around. After nine more brutal hours of paddling, they returned safely to base.
Upon reading the mission report, one of the British officers assigned to work with the MU asked, “Why didn’t you put a grenade in that Japanese boat?”
Annoyed, Booth immediately shot back, “What does clandestine mean?”
Later he noted, “We weren’t there for a shoot ’em up; we were there to get information. These were second generation British officers who were trying to make a name for themselves, earn medals, and they died by the bushel.”
LATER DURING THE SUMMER of 1944, a separate group of OSS swimmers, led by Chris Lambertsen and Lieutenant John Booth, known as Operational Swimmer Group II (OSG II), headed for the Pacific, independent of the group that became part of UDT 10. The swimmer commandos first went to Burma. Due to a lack of Japanese shipping targets, their primary task would be to conduct reconnaissance along the Arakan Coast, but they also assisted with transporting agents, particularly when operatives were to be dropped off on a beach that needed to be scouted ahead of time. The swimmer commandos were combining intelligence gathering with special operations much like their later-day SEAL counterparts. To assist with their mission they brought with them a variety of gear, including LARUs, a submarine, fast patrol boats, and two-man kayaks, as well as the “Sleeping Beauty” submersible. Booth, assigned to pilot the underwater craft, didn’t feel it was up to the task of navigating the treacherous Pacific waters. “It ran pretty good, but it wasn’t good enough to risk my life with it,” he explained. “The batteries leaked acid, and the currents were too strong in Burma.” He continued, “These days, most high school projects are more advanced. However, the mission and the tactics we were developing helped pioneer underwater demolition.”
The Burmese mission also helped modern military forces, like the SEALs and the Green Berets, understand the need for local language experts. When the MU team returned to the Burmese coast for additional intelligence gathering, they encountered a group of natives in a canoe. Unfortunately none of the Americans spoke Burmese fluently. Booth put his pistol to the head of one of the men in the craft. “Where are the Japanese?” he recited in Burmese. It was one of the few questions he knew. But when the scared villager responded, Booth “was lost.” He later remarked, “It was kind of ridiculous. A lot of stuff we did, the Special Forces refined.” Today Special Operations forces typically have at least two men on a team who speak the native tongue.
OVER THE NEXT YEAR, the MU conducted a number of other missions in the region, including several that involved OSS operative Walter Mess. A former lawyer from northern Virginia, Mess headed off to war at the age of twenty-eight, and the OSS soon recruited him. (Later he would become a prominent real estate mogul involved in the development of the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., and live to the ripe old age of ninety-eight.) He transported Booth and the men of OSG II on many occasions. Of his time in the Pacific, Mess recalled, “Shooting wasn’t our mission. Our mission was taxi driver. Our mission was not to fight, but we were prepared to do it.” Many of the transportation assignments required the MU operatives to memorize elaborate course changes and follow a path based on dead reckoning. “Many of the missions were fifty to seventy miles behind the lines, moving up shallow chaungs,” explained Mess. “Try picturing running a patrol boat up Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park River without attracting attention.” Somehow the teams managed it, moving “silently at night right through Japanese gun emplacements and encampments.” Mess added, “I still remember going by the Japanese camps at night seeing the soldiers and their fires.”
MU operatives were routinely assigned to protect SO agents who were returning from completed missions. Mess recalled, “If we were under fire, we would use a bicycle tire to snatch the men. They would stick their arms up, and we’d hook them with the bicycle tire and swing them into the boat, using the bicycle tire as a hook.”
Although many of the MU missions on the western coast of Burma involved transporting agents and swimmers into and out of the country, they did get to employ their swimming skills on a few occasions. In January 1945, the Allies began the invasion of Ramree. In preparation for the assault the OSS set up a new base of operations in the coastal town of Kyaukpyu. Believing the area around the main jetty was mined, the OSS sent John Booth and three other swimmers on a reconnaissance mission. Using their LARUs and other underwater gear, the four men determined that there were no active mines in the area. However, they did discover “several wires and old wreckage,” which they removed. As a result, they were able to bring boats safely into the area.
The swimmers also took part in several operations to determine whether various beaches were suitable for use in invasions. On January 25–26, a team of ten, including Booth, Eubank, and Lambertsen, conducted a reconnaissance of Sagu Island off the Burmese coast. PT boats took the men into the vicinity of the area, then they switched to kayaks before swimming the final leg of the journey. Again their underwater equipment proved invaluable as they were able to find a suitable beach, which the British forces used for their landing.
During the course of their operations, Lambertsen continued to enhance the capabilities of the LARU. As the rebreather evolved, the men conducted even more difficult missions and remained underwater for longer periods of time. As a scientist and a medical doctor, Lambertsen was also reporting the impact of underwater activity on the human body. His extensive scientific research and the ongoing development of his device helped set the stage for future underwater activities by the SEALs and would be invaluable to the military and underwater diving in general.
On the same day as the Sagu Island mission, another MU officer assisted in a similar underwater reconnaissance effort on Ramree Island. He and another OSS operative also gathered intelligence on both Ramree and neighboring Cheduba Island that proved valuable to the Allies. Two admirals with the Royal Navy thanked the men personally for their services and “expressed a desire to use the facilities of the [OSS] again.”
The MU continued to work very closely with the British throughout this time. On another occasion Booth and four other swimmers using their rebreathers surveyed a British minesweeper that had sunk after running aground. They were able to provide a detailed report to the Royal Navy commander, who “expressed his appreciation and satisfaction.”
In February, MU swimmers, including Booth, took on a vital reconnaissance mission. Utilizing their kayaks, they penetrated deep up two of the coastal rivers to determine their feasibility as an invasion route. They successfully “obtained hydrographic and coastal intelligence of value to Allied forces, and later used in planning of invasion of Burma mainland at this point.” They also encountered Japanese patrols. They not only avoided detection, they “also learned of [the Japanese] tactic of maintaining sentry platforms on banks of chaungs.” The mission required the swimmers to spend long stretches of time in their kayaks, at one time paddling for sixteen hours straight.
AFTER THE BRITISH LAUNCHED two spectacular raids on Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbor in 1943 and 1944, sinking several enemy vessels, OSS put out requests for additional swimmers to target Japanese shipping. The MU chief in Southeast Asia noted, “This area abounds in reconnaissance and similar raids, which can best be carried out by swimmers and that enthusiasm exists in Allied High Command relative to the possibilities.” Accordingly, the OSS sent another swimmer group to the region in October 1944: Operational Swimmer Group III (OSG III). The combat swimmers arrived first in Ceylon. The group included many former members from L-Group in London, such as Gordon Soltau.
OSG III conducted missions in Burma and in Sumatra. One operation, dubbed “Sugarloaf 2,” sent operatives to an isla
nd off the west coast of Sumatra to conduct reconnaissance of a site for a possible Allied airfield. The swimmers worked closely with OSS’s SI group, utilizing British submarines to put agents ashore, often in rubber boats, on islands swarming with Japanese troops.
Many of the British subs used to transport the MU men on missions were nothing more than rotting tubs that should have been headed for the scrap yard instead of embarking on covert missions. For instance, the Severn lost her port engine, followed by the radar, refrigerators, and air conditioning, while en route to the mission pinpoint. The MU operatives aboard the vessel had to endure spoiled food and temperatures averaging 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In a scene that could have been ripped from the film Das Boot, they also endured “a siege of depth charging by the enemy.”
The MU also conducted “prize crew” operations, a euphemism for “snatching” local natives and their boats to glean intelligence on Japanese troop strength in the native’s home area. The OSS illegally pressed some Sumatrans into service as agents working for the OSS, and sent them through a “rugged training course” in Ceylon.
One series of operations that involved an eclectic group of natives pressed into service by the OSS was known as the Caprice Missions. Launched from a British submarine, the small group of local agents infiltrated a tiny Japanese-held island off the east coast of Sumatra by rubber boat. They went by code names. For example, “Johnny” was a former member of the Dutch Army, and “Redja” was a native Sumatran who had lived in New York for a time and “jumped ship from the luxury liner Marnix in New York City.” “Biden” was a fisherman before the war, and “Tdar” was a “paddy [rice] farmer.” However, shortly after going ashore, the Japanese captured them. OSG III immediately put plans in motion to get them out.
MANY OF THE MU operatives thrived on the dangerous missions. Walter Mess summed up the feelings of many operatives when he explained, “You are not alive, unless you are living on the edge. And living on the edge like these swimmers and the rest of those men, you are alive. I mean you are alive.” He added, “I think that was the most fun I had in my life.”
*It’s probable that the Navy took away the equipment after Choate, citing equipment failures and a lack of training, refused to go on a reconnaissance mission that the Navy had ordered UDT 10 to undertake. OSS’s MU chief in Washington disagreed with Choate’s assessment and said that the men were trained for exactly that type of recon mission. The incident went all the way up the chain of command to Donovan and almost led to Choate’s removal.
Hollywood dentist Jack Taylor, then a lieutenant commander, was a lifelong adventurer, expert swimmer, sailor, pilot and—arguably—the first SEAL. Taylor did it all—Sea, Air, and Land operations—swimming above and below the water and parachuting behind enemy lines into Austria.
One of the only Americans to survive Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Jack Taylor spent months at the work camp, during which he was under the constant threat of execution. The Germans routinely worked their prisoners to death, and hundreds died every day from starvation alone.
Commander H.G.A. Woolley, a British Navy veteran of World War I and a Hollywood screenwriter, advised the OSS on amphibious special operations throughout World War II. A true visionary and “out-of-the-box” thinker, Woolley’s leadership served as the mainspring behind the Maritime Unit (MU) and America’s first underwater combat swimmer program. (National Archives, courtesy of B. Danis)
All photos from National Archives unless otherwise noted.
Doctor Christian Lambertsen (later known as “Dr. Scuba”) personally models the rebreather he developed. Lambertsen pioneered rebreather and SCUBA technology and is credited by many with coining the iconic acronym. When he invented the Lambertsen rebreathing device, he was a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (LARU) was a revolutionary closed-circuit breathing device that allowed divers to swim more than a mile underwater without coming up for air. Unique for the time, it eliminated the telltale bubbles that could give away the presence of an underwater combat swimmer.
The components of the LARU. The earliest versions of the rebreather were constructed from an old World War I gas mask and a common bicycle pump. The innovative device evolved over time, and America’s combat swimmers used components of the pioneering device well into the 1980s.
A leading man in Hollywood films both before and after the war, Sterling Hayden, also known as John Hamilton, was a Marine who served in the OSS alongside Jack Taylor, conducting missions in the Adriatic. His film credits include Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove and Captain McCluskey in The Godfather. (Columbia Pictures)
An expert sailor and unsung hero of the war, Lieutenant Ward Ellen, USNR, helped shape the Maritime Unit. He captained OSS boats on numerous missions until a shipboard explosion left him severely wounded.
A curious photo of one of the vessels considered for use in training missions by the OSS. Lacking sufficient funds but not ideas or initiative, the Maritime Unit deployed two rotting cabin cruisers that played the role of submarines in training exercises in the Potomac near the covert facility known as “Area D.”
The OSS and Dr. Lambertsen not only developed a precursor to SCUBA (the LARU), they also created a variety of other diving and special operations gear for combat swimming, including a novel inflatable two-man surfboard with a silent, battery-operated motor that stealthily propelled teams to their targets.
The two-man surfboard carries swimmers equipped with a rebreather during a training exercise in Helford, England. The OSS worked closely with the British in planning highly dangerous missions in German-occupied France.
A two-man rubberized kayak invented by the OSS. The handling of these small craft required highly specialized training, which was provided by the OSS Maritime Unit. Operatives used these lightweight craft on intelligence-gathering missions in the Pacific.
The “Sleeping Beauty” or Motorized Submersible Canoe was a craft developed by the UK’s SOE for underwater use. The 12-foot-long submersible weighed 600 pounds and carried a 24-volt electric motor that could propel it at speeds up to 3.5 knots. Today’s SEALs use a modernized version of the same device, which they call a SEAL Delivery Vehicle or SDV.
The Sleeping Beauty in action. Testing by the Maritime Unit proved that the vehicle could be successfully launched from a submerged submarine, allowing combat swimmers to approach targets without ever surfacing.
Combat swimmers in special wetsuits developed by the Maritime Unit. The term “frogman” allegedly originated when someone spotted swimmer John P. Spence in the green suit and yelled, “Hey Frogman!”
OSS combat swimmers trained for a variety of missions, including underwater sabotage by planting limpet mines on the hulls of enemy ships. True visionaries, the Maritime Unit saw the possibilities of parachuting teams to an underwater target, much like today’s SEALs, putting them decades ahead of their time.
Maritime Unit combat swimmer. The OSS recruited world-class swimmers—many of them Olympic competitors or national champions—for its Maritime Unit.
A “chariot,” or human torpedo, developed by the innovative Italians of Decima MAS. The 24-foot, 1.6-ton torpedoes, also known as maiali (pigs), sank several British warships in Alexandria Harbor in December 1941, setting off an underwater arms race among the world’s major powers. Unlike the Italian program, which had frogmen riding on the surface of the water and diving under for a short time to set charges, the OSS developed a novel, breakthrough approach that utilized combat swimmers who would stay underwater for an extended period of time and cover distances over a mile using a rebreather designed by Dr. Christian Lambertsen.
Additional views of the chariot. The Italians used these vehicles to sink two Allied battleships in Alexandria Harbor, immediately altering the balance of power in the Mediterranean.
Members of the San Marco Battalion, elite Italian commandoes who initially fought for the Axis, but later provided expert assistan
ce to the MU. They frequently transported covert agents into hostile territory.
Special operators of the San Marco Battalion working with the OSS. Although they had once been enemies, the two groups put their differences aside to accomplish missions that represented the Maritime Unit’s “most valuable work.”
A MAS boat, a high-speed torpedo boat used by members of the San Marco Battalion under the command of the Maritime Unit in Italy. The highly maneuverable boats were ideal for covert operations in the Aegean.
A caïque. The MU utilized the small, wooden-hulled vessels extensively for covert operations in the Mediterranean. Weighing 10 to 40 tons, the boats had auxiliary sails, but most were powered by gasoline engines and carried crews of two to six.
The Maritime Unit’s caïque fleet would eventually swell to thirty-six boats, which were captained and operated by their local owners. “Some of these men showed great loyalty and daring in their operations under OSS; others (occasionally the same ones) were masters of smuggling, thievery, and goldbricking.”
This photo captures a typical covert OSS operation across the Adriatic. These missions were often perilous because Axis craft occupied the waters and German planes patrolled from the skies above.
Hans Tofte, “the world’s second best killer.” As a trainer for the OSS, he helped turn Ph.D.s into men and women who could win a bar fight. He later served in the CIA.
First SEALs Page 13