First SEALs (20 page)

In July 1944, L headed back to the States, likely bringing with them a special piece of equipment that the MU and the SEALS that followed them would adapt. Similar to the “pigs”
Decima MAS
used, the “Sleeping Beauty,” or Motorized Submersible Canoe, was a craft the UK's SOE developed for underwater use. The twelve-foot-long submersible weighed six hundred pounds and carried a twenty-four-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.

AUGUST 11, 1944, THE WATERS OFF THE SOUTHEAST TIP OF PELELIU, SOUTHWEST PACIFIC

A handful of men inflated their rubber boats on the surfaced deck of the U.S. submarine
Burrfish
. Their faces blackened with paint, the detached OSS swimmers of Navy Underwater Demolition Team 10 (UDT 10) quietly paddled their craft under the cover of darkness toward the shore. Time after time they changed course to evade the numerous Japanese patrols before eventually making their way to the beach. Exiting the boats, the OSS swimmers crept along the shoreline, taking measurements and observing the conditions. It was one of the more pioneering recon operations of the Pacific War.

Now finished with their work, one of the men chanced a little noise. He tapped a prearranged signal with his KA-BAR knife onto one of the large chunks of coral in the bay. No one heard the soft sounds except the sonar operator of the USS
Burrfish
, and the team of swimmers slipped back into the water to rendezvous with their submarine. This endeavor, the first mission that involved American combat swimmers launched from a submarine was a success: the men determined that the beach on Peleliu was suitable for landing craft. Weeks later, based on the information obtained by the
combat swimmers, the Allies successfully conducted a massive invasion of the island.

T
HE
MU
ALSO DEPLOYED
combat swimmers in the Pacific Theater. Initially, neither Admiral Chester Nimitz nor General Douglas MacArthur was interested in utilizing agents from a rival branch of government. However, at the urging of General Donovan, a number of OSS combat swimmers did see action after they became part of UDT 10.

The Navy was compelled to strengthen the UDT program in the aftermath of the bloody battle at Tarawa, a small chain of islands in the central Pacific. The Americans sent in landing craft to storm the beaches, but unbeknownst to them, reefs blocked the way, preventing the boats from reaching their intended destination. The men inside the crafts became sitting ducks for the entrenched Japanese forces on the shore, resulting in hundreds of Marine and Navy casualties.

Determined to learn from the catastrophe at Tarawa, the Navy bolstered its training schools. The curriculum trained recruits in the art of underwater demolition, hydrographic surveys, and reconnaissance. In the summer of 1944, Major General Donovan and Admiral Nimitz of the U.S. Navy met, and Donovan offered Nimitz the use of the MU. In order to strengthen the UDT, the Navy brought in twenty-seven OSS operatives from Operational Swimmer Group I. OSS Lieutenant Commander Arthur Choate, a multimillionaire and Wall Street investor, was placed in charge of the team, and four other OSS officers provided additional leadership. The OSS Swimmer Group I arrived in Hawaii in June before heading out on a convoy destined for the Solomon Islands.

The MU training program was far superior in many ways to that of the Underwater Demolition Teams. MU combat swimmers were highly trained and superbly skilled in raiding techniques,
infiltration and exfiltration, intelligence gathering, underwater operations, and land and sea sabotage. They used rebreathers, while the UDT used only face masks and snorkels. Furthermore, the MU's familiarity with weapons was superior. Some had been to parachute school, and all were trained in hand-to-hand combat. As one historian observed, “
the [OSS swimmers] were much more like the Navy SEALs would be than the UDT men were by then.” Another area in which the OSS swimmers were more advanced than their Navy counterparts was in the use of swim fins. Although the Navy had fins, most of the UDT teams were swimming either barefoot or in athletic shoes. After the OSS taught the Navy UDT swimmers how to use fins effectively for both swimming and moving across the coral reefs, the commander of the Hawaii training school placed a massive order for more fins for all of the UDT team members. However, before their first mission, the Navy stripped Choate's men of most of their high-tech equipment and forced them to conduct swimmer missions with just face masks and fins.
*
The LARUs were put into storage in Honolulu, and the loss helped to set the UDTs' use of rebreathers back by many years.

AUGUST 18, 1944, NEAR THE ISLAND OF YAP, SOUTHWEST PACIFIC

In the dead of night, the submarine
Burrfish
surfaced near the small, verdant island now transformed into a highly fortified Japanese stronghold. A handful of men, their faces blackened with grease,
exited the vessel and inflated their rubber boat. In pitch darkness they paddled their craft toward the shore as quietly as possible, amidst strong gusts of wind. Time after time they were forced to change course to evade numerous enemy patrols. Armed only with grenades and razor-sharp KA-BAR knives, five swimmer commandos—John Ball, Robert Black, Emmet Carpenter, Howard Roeder, and John MacMahon—set out to survey the beach and determine whether it was suitable for a landing. Earlier, the men, detached from UDT 10 and comprised mostly of OSS swimmer commandos, had launched the first successful swimmer-born recon mission from the
Burrfish
, but this night off Yap would prove fateful.

About a quarter mile from shore the men encountered a reef, where they stopped paddling and dropped anchor. Ball stayed with the boat while the other four slid silently beneath the high, white-capped breakers, equipped only with face masks and flippers. Making their way as discreetly as possible through the rough ocean water and powerful undertow, they struggled to swim toward the enemy-infested beach, taking measurements and observing the conditions along the way. Carpenter soon returned to the boat “
in distress and too tired to swim further.” He and Ball waited patiently in the craft for their comrades to return.

The time designated for returning to the sub came and went. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Fifteen. Twenty. At thirty minutes past the deadline Ball and Carpenter risked detection and paddled the boat to within one hundred yards of the beach. For fifteen more minutes they frantically searched in vain for their missing comrades. Eventually “
they abandoned all caution and flashed their flashlight all around in hope of picking up the other three men. They had no success.”

Ball and Carpenter reluctantly returned to the sub without the other swimmers. It wasn't until later that they discovered what had happened to Roeder, MacMahon, and Black. After surveying the beach, the commandos attempted to swim back out to the reef
and rendezvous with the boat. But the wind and breakers made the swimming difficult, and the men failed to locate Ball and Carpenter. They had no choice but to return to the island. Dripping wet and wearing only their swim trunks and camouflage paint, they avoided detection for an entire day and returned to the water that night, hoping for a boat to pick them up.

On the
Burrfish
the surviving swimmers pleaded with the captain for another chance to pick up their comrades. They rightly believed that if the three were still alive they would return to the reef again that night. However, the surf conditions had grown even worse, and the captain didn't want to lose any more of the commando swimmers. He gave the men up for lost and headed for the sub's next mission.

Roeder, MacMahon, and Black again returned to hide on the island, but they were found and captured on the evening of August 20. Their captors brutally tortured and interrogated them and transmitted their findings in a report that the Americans intercepted. The swimmers were never heard from again.

T
HE CLOUD OF THEIR DISAPPEARANCE
hung over UDT 10 as the rest of the team on board the destroyer
Rathburne
prepared to support the invasion of Peleliu and Angaur. The OSS operatives traded in their LARUs and other high-tech underwater spy gear for KA-BAR knives, swim trunks, and plastic pads with wax pencils. Although trained as special operators, their key duties were underwater demolitions and hydrographic survey. The assignment didn't sit well with some of the swimmers, who had been trained for more complex work, but they carried out their mission as ordered.

On September 14, 1944, the swimmers left the
Rathburne
on a mission to survey a landing on enemy-occupied Blue Beach on Angaur, part of the Palau Island group. Angaur and the nearby island of Peleliu were assaulted at heavy cost to secure the flank of U.S. forces for the upcoming attack on the Japanese-held
Philippines. UDT 10 team member Robert Kenworthy recalled, “
I jumped up like on a diving board, curled my body, and dove into the water. This was in broad daylight; we were at least 300 yards from the beach, all the while avoiding getting shot.” But the water offered little safety. “As we were approaching the beach, we were expecting them to open fire, but they were waiting for us to get closer,” said Kenworthy.

After all their months of training, the swimmers felt “
perfectly at home in the water,” but that didn't mean the swim to Blue Beach was comfortable. Kenworthy noted, “The water was mighty cold but crystal clear. But we were used to it. Fifty-four-degree water after several hours becomes very untenable. Your testicles climb up inside. It's later when they come down that it is not very nice.”

As they closed in on the beach, the swimmers suddenly encountered the intense fire they had been dreading. “
Just remembering it makes the hair stand up on my arms,” recounted Kenworthy. “We were about 75 to 125 yards away from it when all hell broke loose. I turned my head and from the right end of the beach I saw three Jap soldiers push palm fronds aside and open fire. We were caught right between the two machine guns. Then came several [unreadable] Wildcats (our own planes) firing, accidentally strafing us. Bullets were hitting the water all around us.”