by Couch, Dick
“We had no status, no standing,” “They were in small detachments”: ibid., p. 146.
“harassment of the enemy, hit-and-run raids”: Kevin Dockery, from interviews by Bud Brutsman, Navy SEALs: A Complete History (Berkley Books, 2004), p. 282.
“The first SEALs in combat”: Carol Fleisher interview with Tom Hawkins.
“three SEAL [Team Two] Platoons handled themselves”: Kevin Dockery, Navy SEALs: A History Part II: the Vietnam Years, p. 180.
Chau Doc operation details and quotes: Drew Dix and Maggie O’Brien, in Oral History for Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_nA8e0YDfI; Dockery, Navy SEALs: A Complete History, pp. 404–421.
Kuykendall operation: Carol Fleisher interview with Hal Kuykendall.
“We like to grab people”, “Both SEALs and PRUs killed many VCI”: Dale Andradé, Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War (Lexington Books, 1990), p. 193.
“where principle is involved, be deaf”: Karel Montor, Naval Leadership: Voices of Experience (Naval Institute Press, 1998), p. 523.
Kerrey operation: Kerrey Oral History for Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAFZUOo8pY.
In April 2001, the New York Times and 60 Minutes ran stories about a raid Kerrey and his SEALs conducted on February 25, 1969, to capture a Viet Cong leader, an operation that occurred three weeks before his Nha Trang operation, during which up to twenty civilians were reportedly killed. Eventually, the story receded into the historical mist of countless other tragedies of the Vietnam War.
Norris and Thornton operations details and quotes: Carol Fleisher interviews with Tom Norris and Michael Thornton. Thornton also recalled later being the inspiration for an iconic SEAL expression when he was a SEAL training instructor in 1983: “I was leading PT [physical training] and somebody yelled, ‘Instructor Thornton, when are we gonna have an easy day?’ And I said, ‘The only easy day would be yesterday.’ ” In Thornton’s honor, the class inscribed a PT platform with the words, “The only easy day was yesterday,” which became a widely used SEAL axiom. “Yeah, there’s no easy days,” Thornton noted to Fleisher. “No use looking in the rear view mirror because that’s gone. You better be looking forward.”
Spence Dry and Operation Thunderhead: Carol Fleisher interview with Moki Martin; Michael G. Slattery and Gordon I. Peterson, “Spence Dry: A SEAL’s Story,” The Naval Institute: Proceedings, July 2005; Kevin Dockery, Operation Thunderhead: The True Story of Vietnam’s Final POW Rescue Mission—and the Last Navy Seal Killed in Country (Penguin, 2008), passim.
SEALs freed some 152 Vietnamese captives, counting for 48 percent of POWs freed during the war: ibid., p. 226.
“By the end of 1970 SEALs,” “I would like to have a thousand more like them”: Dale Andradé, Ashes to Ashes, p. 199.
“Some people have said that if there were more SEALs”: Carol Fleisher interview with Tom Hawkins.
“tactic in search of a strategy”: Gormly, Combat Swimmer, p. 153.
“Although they were highly successful in their own districts”: Bosiljevac, SEALs: UDT/SEAL Operations in Vietnam, p. 179.
“For the most part, we were relegated to the Navy river patrol”: Gormly, Combat Swimmer, p. 153.
At least one SEAL proposed coordinated program of POW hunts: Veith, Code-Name Bright Light, p. 264.
Note on SEAL training from SEAL historian Tom Hawkins: “It was not known as BUD/S training until 1972, when all training was moved to Coronado. Little Creek training was called UDTR or UDT Replacement training. Coronado training was called UDTB or UDT Basic training. SEAL qualification training was accomplished at the unit level until 1972. When combined at the school in Coronado 1972 the name BUD/S was adopted. SEAL qualification continued at the unit level for several years after the school was established. Today, SEAL Qualification Training (SQT) is accomplished after BUD/S and only then can you go to a SEAL or SDV Team. SDV personnel receive yet another course of instruction before going to the team.”
CHAPTER 6
Events, details, and quotes of operation at Grenada radio tower and escape to the ocean in this chapter: interview with SEAL veteran of Grenada, and “Naval Special Warfare Lessons Learned Case Study: Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada)” [unclassified, undated, c. 1995], Naval Special Warfare Command Historical File. Jason Kendall is a pseudonym.
William McRaven comments: commencement address at the University of Texas, May 17, 2014.
“It seemed like half the tough guys”: Rorke Denver and Ellis Henican, Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior (Hyperion, 2013), p. 106.
“one screw-up after another”: interview with SEAL veteran of Grenada.
“Our Intel had been atrocious”: Dockery, Navy SEALs: A Complete History, p. 603.
“We were like slow-moving turtles”: Gary Ward, “Fury on Grenada,” VFW Magazine, November 2013.
“A lot of our tactics, techniques, and procedures”: interview with SEAL veteran of Grenada.
Gormly details and quotes on Grenada operation: Robert A. Gormly, Combat Swimmer: Memoirs of a Navy SEAL (Dutton, 1998), pp. 180–199; Dockery, Navy SEALs: A Complete History, pp. 590–596.
Details and quotes of Sir Paul Scoon’s experiences at Governor-General’s mansion during Grenada invasion: Paul Scoon, Survival for Service: My Experiences as Governor General of Grenada (Macmillan Caribbean, 2003), pp. 139–153.
“We achieved our mission, but took heavy casualties”: John T. Carney Jr., Benjamin F. Schemmer, No Room for Error: The Covert Operations of America’s Special Tactics Units from Iran to Afghanistan (Random House, 2007), pp. 110–111.
“I think we learned a lot about ourselves”: interview with SEAL veteran of Grenada.
Achille Lauro operation: Gormly, Combat Swimmer, pp. 208–218.
Quotes and details of SEAL operations in Panama: interviews with Adam Curtis and four SEAL veterans of the operation; Orr Kelly, Brave Men, Dark Waters (Presidio, 1992), pp. 1–4 and 216–234; Kevin Dockery, Navy SEALs: A Complete History (Berkley Books, 2004), 644–667; Malcolm McConnell, Just Cause: The Real Story of America’s High-Tech Invasion of Panama (St. Martin’s Press, 1991), passim.
“If the mission was to take and hold the airfield”: David Evans, “A Miscalculation Of Mission For The Seals In Panama?” Chicago Tribune, February 9, 1990.
“In Panama we violated our own doctrine,” “They over-planned this operation”: interviews with two SEALs who were on active duty in 1989.
Stubblefield letter: Orr Kelly, Brave Men, Dark Waters, pp. 231, 232. Kelly wrote of what he saw as a historical inability of the SEALs to learn from failure. “In the past,” he argued, “the SEALs have not been very good at learning from their experiences, especially when things went wrong, and applying those lessons to plans for the future. The failure of UDT Sixteen during World War II at Okinawa is never spoken of. Neither is the SDV operation in 1972 in which Spence Dry lost his life. The SEALs took part in Urgent Fury in Grenada in 1983, but it was not until 1989, six years later, that three officers who served in that operation met with SEALs, other than their colleagues in Team Six, and shared their experiences. A meeting devoted to the SEAL participation in Just Cause, the invasion of Panama, was held shortly after the operation. But most of the SEALs present found the briefing unsatisfactory, and a few were so disturbed that they walked out.” (Brave Men, Dark Waters, p. 245.)
“ass-end destroyed”: Mir Bahmanyar, SEALs: The U.S. Navy’s Elite Fighting Force (Osprey, 2011), p. 80.
Mina Saud operation details and quotes: interview with Tom Dietz. During the first Gulf War, the SEALs also seized an Iraqi oil platform and took twenty-three prisoners; captured Qarah Island, the first Kuwaiti territory to be liberated by the allied forces; and rescued a USAF F-16 pilot who was shot down and bailed out into the Gulf.
Mogadishu details: Carol Fleisher interview with Rick Kaiser.
“never used even once to track down t
errorists”: Newsweek, May 5, 2014.
SEAL Gulf operations during oil embargo: interviews and reporting by Dick Couch for Down Range. Sean Yarrow and Don Latham pseudonyms. On February 2, 2000, a highly dramatic SEAL operation occurred near the Persian Gulf when the Russian tanker Volgoneft-147, suspected of smuggling Iraqi oil in violation of United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolutions, was intercepted by a U.S. Navy cruiser. The Russian ship refused to obey orders to stop, so a heavily armed team of ten Navy SEALs fast-roped to the deck from helicopters and seized the vessel at gunpoint.
CHAPTER 7
Details and quotes of SEAL operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in this chapter, unless otherwise sourced: interviews and reporting by Dick Couch for his books Downrange and The Sheriff of Ramadi. In 2005–2007 Couch embedded with the SEAL platoon stationed in Ramadi, Iraq. In this chapter, the names Randy Lowery, John Seville, Jack Williams, Sean Smith, Lars Beamon, Chuck Forbes, Lou Taladega and Jim Collins are pseudonyms.
Development Group missions publicly described by U.S. Navy: “NSW Command Brochure,” dated May 9, 2014: http://www.public.navy.mil/nsw/news/Documents/ETHOS/Brochure.pdf.
“In the SEAL teams, you train and train”: Carol Fleisher interview with SEAL.
Phillips rescue detail is from contemporaneous press accounts.
“We think we found Osama bin Laden”: Mike Allen, “Osama bin Laden Raid Yields Trove of Computer Data,” Politico, May 2, 2011.
“What SEALs are good at”: CBS 60 Minutes, September 24, 2012.
Details of bin Laden raid are from contemporaneous press accounts and two books on the operation: Peter L. Bergen, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad (Random House, 2012); and Mark Bowden, The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden (Atlantic Press, 2012).
Jessica Buchanan quotes and rescue details: Jessica Buchanan, Erik Landemalm, and Anthony Flacco, Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six (Simon & Schuster, 2013), pp. 242–267; Charlie Rose, May 15, 2013; CBS 60 Minutes, May 12, 2013.
EPILOGUE
Detail on knife ceremony, “On clear days, visitors to Rosecrans can often see”: Ethos, Issue 22, 2013.
McRaven’s apology is from contemporaneous press accounts, the accuracy of which McRaven confirmed to us by e-mail.
“There are a lot of mission areas out there”: “Calland: SEALs Focus Is On Terrorism, Core Missions, Interoperability,” Defense Daily, July 10, 2003.
Daniel Murphy comments: NBC Nightly News, May 3, 2011; CBS News, The Early Show, October 22, 2007.
APPENDIX A
http://www.public.navy.mil/nsw/Documents/USSOCOM_OrgChart.pdf.
APPENDIX B
http://www.public.navy.mil/nsw/news/Documents/ETHOS/Brochure.pdf.
APPENDIX C
Hawkins’s sources include:
Sue Ann Dunford and James Douglas O’Dell, More Than Scuttlebutt—The U.S. Navy Demolition Men in WWII (2009) (http://ncdu-udt-ww2.com/).
“Hidden Heroes: Amphibious Scouts of Special Services Unit #1,” June 2007, by Teresa “Pat” Staudt and Hank Staudt. A self-published research project provided to the Navy Historical Society.
Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, to Vice Chief of Naval Operations: Subject: Naval Demolition Units Project, May 6, 1943, Serial 01398 (National Archives, Textual Reference Division, Military Reference Branch, Suitland, Md.).
Vice Chief of Naval Operations to Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks: Subject: Personnel for Naval Demolition Units, May 15, 1943, Serial 01911223 (National Archives, Textual Reference Division, Military Reference Branch, Suitland, Md.).
Officer in Charge of Naval Demolition Unit to COMAMPHIBFORLANT: Subject: Recommendations for Naval Demolition Units, organization, training, and equipping of permanent units, May 27, 1943 (National Archives, Textual Reference Division, Military Reference Branch, Suitland, Md.).
Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, History of the Amphibious Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet, “History of Naval Combat Demolition Training and Experimental Base, Kihei, Maui, T.H.,” Section 150C, 166 (The Naval History and Historical Command, Washington, D.C.).
APPENDIX D
http://www.public.navy.mil/nsw/pages/ethoscreed.aspx
INDEX
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
Abbas, Abu, 149
Abrams, Creighton W., 92
Acheson, Bill, 24
Achille Lauro (ship), 148–49
“actionable intelligence,” 81
Adkin, Mark, 137n
Afghanistan
al-Qaeda in, 185, 186, 188–202
casualties in, 202, 207, 235
CIA in, 186, 187, 188
civilians in, 127, 257
combat leaders’ responsibilities in, 116
FBI in, 193, 195, 201
as focus of SEAL operations, 185
as ground campaign, 187
helicopter crash in, 248
impact on individual SEALs of missions in, 258
intelligence in, 94, 186, 190
Norgrove mission in, 248
Northern Alliance fighters in, 187–88, 189
Operation Anaconda in, 204–6
Operation Red Wings in, 127, 238, 239
and Russia, 190–91
SEALs as mountain fighters in, 185
Zhawar Kili cave complex in, 190–204
Africa
al-Qaeda bombing of U.S. embassies in, 169, 184, 191
See also specific nation
Agat (Guam), 28
Aidid, Mohamed Farrah, 165–66, 167
Air Force, U.S.
in Afghanistan, 187, 189, 195, 200, 201, 202
“best practices” of, 165
Combat Control Team of, 155, 195
in Grenada, 139, 140
in Iraq, 214, 220, 226
Kennedy’s orders to, 256
and Omaha Beach, 5
in Panama, 155, 156
SOCOM and, 154
in Vietnam, 91
al-Qaeda
in Afghanistan, 187, 188, 190–206
in Iraq, 219–34, 239, 245, 247
as new threat, 165
and Qala-i-Jangi prisoner revolt, 188
role of SEALs in dealing with, 186
and Somalia attack, 164–68
training camp for, 190–204
and World Trade Center bombing (1993), 165, 169
al-Qaeda (cont.)
Zhawar Kili cave stronghold of, 190–204
See also bin Laden, Osama; specific attack
Alpha 117 (ship) mission, 184
Amorelli, Joe, 4
Amphibious Ready Groups: SEALs deployment with, 185
Anbar Province (Iraq). See Ramadi, Battle of
Andrade, Dale, 100, 117
Angaur Island: UDT operations on, 33–34, 44
anti-amphibious assault mine: at Wonsan Harbor (Korea), 46–47, 48–49, 57
antiterrorism missions, 261. See also specific mission
APD (Amphibious Personnel Destroyer), 50–51
Apocalypse Now (movie), 33
aqualung, 56
Arlington National Cemetery, 69
Army Corps of Engineers: on Omaha Beach, 7
Army, North Vietnamese (NVA), 79, 99
Army, People’s Revolutionary (Grenada), 143, 145, 146
Army Rangers, U.S., 138, 157, 166–67, 248
Army, U.S.
in Afghanistan, 187, 188, 189, 195, 248
“best practices” of, 165
and Grenada invasion, 139, 142, 144,
in Iraq, 207, 220, 222, 223, 224–25, 227–30, 233, 236, 237, 238
on Iwo Jima, 37–38
Kennedy’s orders to, 64, 256
on Okinawa, 38
on Omaha Beach, 1–15
in Panama, 157
on Saipan, 27
SEALs rela
tionship with, 224, 227–30, 238
SOCOM and, 154
and SOCOM as SEAL-centric, 257
in Somalia, 166–67
in Vietnam, 91, 94, 95–96, 99, 118, 265
See also specific unit
Ashby, Edwin R., 39, 43–44
Associated Press, 166
Atcheson, George, 50–51, 53
atomic bomb, 43
Bahrain: SEALs in, 182–83
Bainbridge, USS, and Phillips rescue, 249
Bajema, Mike, 224, 225, 227–28, 238
Barbey, Daniel, 35
Basham, Jack, 37
Bass, Stephen, 188
Bay of Pigs (Cuba), 63, 70
Beamon, Lars, 224–25, 226, 227, 236, 237, 238
Beausoleil, Randy Lee, 159
Begor, USS: in Korean War, 51, 52, 53
“behind-the-gun” technique, 175–76. See also CQD
Belgian Gates (Omaha Beach), 9, 10
Biden, Joe, 252
bin Laden, Osama
and Alpha 117 mission, 184
killing of, 187, 246, 247, 249–52, 257, 260
and Shawar Kili cave complex, 190
and Somalia attack on U.S. soldiers, 165
Binder, David, 168
Bishop, Maurice, 123, 137n
Black Hawk Down (book/movie), 167
Black, Robert A., 33
Blessman, USS: at Iwo Jima, 37
Boat Support Unit One: in Vietnam War, 98, 208
Boat Support Unit Two: in VietnamWar, 98, 208
Boat Team 5 (NCDU): on Omaha Beach, 4, 13
Boat Team 11 (NCDU): on Omaha Beach, 2
Boat Team 14 (NCDU): on Omaha Beach, 2
Boat Team 15 (NCDU): on Omaha Beach, 2
Bobby (SEAL in Iraq), 243, 244
Boeing 737 flight, Egypt Air: terrorists and, 148–50
Boink, Louis, 85
Bonelli, Garry, 262–68
Bosiljevac, T.L., 85, 118–19
Bosnia, 168–69
Boswell, QM2, 54
Bridges, Lloyd, 138
British
in Afghanistan, 188
in Bosnia, 168–69
See also Marines, British Royal; Navy, British Royal
Bronze Star awards, 44, 116
Brown Water Navy, 110, 118
Bruhmuller, Bill
and Cuban operations, 59–60, 61, 62, 71, 72–75
and founding of Navy SEALs, 67
military career of, 69
as “plank-owner,” 67