by Couch, Dick
The eighty-two-day-long campaign turned into the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. The U.S. Navy alone suffered its worst losses of the war, with 5,000 killed and 29 ships sunk, much of the damage inflicted by swarms of Japanese suicide plane attacks. “I was never so happy to leave a place as I was to leave Okinawa,” remembered Draper Kauffman, “and those terrible kamikazes.”
With the capture of Okinawa, the Americans finally had a huge naval and air base close to the heart of Japan. In August 1945, all twenty-eight UDTs were sent to Oceanside, California, for cold-water training to prepare for a planned November attack on Japanese beaches for the final invasion, of Japan itself.
That invasion never came, as the atomic bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki that August forced Japan’s surrender. The American B-29 Superfortresses that dropped the weapons flew out of bases on islands previously held by the Japanese and had been captured with the critical help of the UDTs.
The history books record that the Japanese Empire surrendered to General Douglas MacArthur and the Allies aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. But there was at least one earlier surrender encounter of Japanese military personnel to American forces on the Japanese Home Islands. On August 28, 1945, a Japanese Army Coast Artillery major formally presented his sword to Lieutenant Commander Edward Porter Clayton, USN, of Underwater Demolition Team 21. This impromptu ceremony was held on the beach near a small fort near the entrance to Tokyo Bay and at least one photograph was taken of the event.
The World War II demolition men were definitely a breed apart from the regular Navy. “We didn’t look very much like any sailors that had been seen before and that rankled some people in command,” remembered UDT man Edwin R. Ashby. “Some admiral made a comment to Kauffman that he considered us ‘the most unruly bunch of Navy men’ he’d ever seen in his life and he didn’t know what he would ever do with us. And Kauffman answered that officer with, ‘Yes, sir, but they got the job done.’ ‘Yes,’ the admiral said, ‘I hate to admit it, but they did.’ So even in those early days we were not accepted well by the regular Navy. When we went on board our ships, the APDs, we went around in our shorts. The regular crew had to keep their uniforms and hats on as per regulations. We just didn’t comply with that sort of thing very much. That did raise some resentment among the rest of the Navy.”
And as UDT Commander Francis Douglas Fane wrote, “The UDTs were always the despair of more conventional Navy officers. The demolitioneers were, almost to a man, Reserves. They sometimes made mistakes of administration or discipline or form; but their very unconventionality and originality worked amazingly well in the pinches.” He added that the demolitioneers found that “there is no place for epaulets on a wet, sunburned shoulder, but there is plenty of room for mutual confidence and genuine discipline when officer and enlisted man alike know that the other will get every man back, or drown trying.”
A total of some 3,500 UDT sailors served in the UDTs in World War II, and they took part in nearly every major amphibious operation in the Pacific, including Eniwetok, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Angaur, Ulithi, Peleliu, Leyte, Lingayen Gulf, Zambales, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Labuan, Brunei Bay, and Borneo. Eighty-three of them died. They were one of the most heavily decorated American combat units in the war, and their recognition included 750 Bronze Stars, 150 Silver Stars, a Navy Cross, and several Presidential Unit Citations.
The distant forefathers of the U.S. Navy SEALs helped pave the way to the liberation of Asia and the Pacific and the Allied victory of World War II, but like the SEALs, they did their work in a veil of secrecy. They sought no publicity and during the war they were mostly unknown outside the U.S. military. As the U.S. commander of amphibious forces in the Pacific, Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, put it: “owing to the classified nature of their work,” the UDTs “were unknown to the public.” He added, “Their work greatly eased the landing of troops and cargo and reduced casualties, making them invaluable to the amphibious forces. And they never let us down.”
In the thick of battle, the UDT and NCDU demolitioneers, Scouts and Raiders, and OSS Operational Swimmers laid the earliest foundations for what would become one of the most legendary special operations forces in military history: the U.S. Navy SEALs.
Photo Insert A
The precursor units of the U.S. Navy SEALs were born in World War II. They include the Naval Combat Demolition Unit demolitioneers, the Scouts and Raiders, the OSS Maritime Unit swimmers, and the combat swimmers of the Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs), here pictured in 1955 in an operation to support the evacuation of Taiwanese forces from the Tachen Islands near the Chinese mainland. Their legacy continues with the men of today’s SEAL Teams. (U.S. Navy)
One of the first glimpses of the Scouts and Raiders, one of the earliest precursor units of the SEALs, during rubber boat training at Fort Pierce, Florida, late 1943. (U.S. Navy)
An Office of Strategic Services Maritime Unit diver trains with the Lambertsen Amphibious Respirator Unit, or LARU. The LARU was a pure-oxygen rebreather and first-generation SCUBA.
Fort Pierce, Florida, 1944: Lieutenant Commander Draper Kauffman (center, front) and fellow officers flank one of the first graduating classes of Naval Combat Demolition Unit demolitioneers, predecessors of the Navy SEALs. (U.S. Navy)
The “Naked Warriors”—early UDT members at Fort Pierce, Florida. (U.S. Navy)
NCDU boat artwork. (U.S. Navy)
Naval Combat Demolition Unit boat crew, Fort Pierce, July 1944. As SEALs do today, NCDUs trained in boat crews. (U.S. Navy)
Hand-to-hand combat instruction at Fort Pierce, 1944. (U.S. Navy)
Training at Fort Pierce, 1944. Seventy years later, such log drills are still a part of Basic Underwater Demolition/Seal training. (U.S. Navy)
Loading beach obstacles with explosives charges and tying into the trunk line. (U.S. Navy)
Surface tender at work during diver training, Fort Pierce. (U.S. Navy)
UDT members in beach-obstacle demolition training in Maui, Hawaii, summer 1945. (U.S. Navy)
German officers inspect defenses on the beaches of Normandy, 1944. NCDU members had to blow gaps through these obstacles while under fire. (German Federal Archives)
Nazi-installed Omaha Beach obstacles in a photo taken by a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft flying at high speed and low altitude, May 6, 1944, a month before D-Day. NCDU demolitioneer Ken Reynolds and his teammates had to clear these obstacles so the landings could proceed. (National Archives)
Demolitioneers train with hose charges for beach obstacle clearance. (U.S. Navy)
Ken Reynolds, one of the first Navy demolitioneers on Omaha Beach. (Courtesy of Ken Reynolds)
U.S. military planning chart for D-Day assault landings on Omaha Beach, indicating the sixteen gaps that needed to be blown open by joint Army-Navy demolition teams. (Naval Special Warfare Command Historical Files)
UDT-15 combat swimmers watching combat operations after completing their reconnaissance and demolition work at Balikpapan, Borneo, on July 1, 1945, one of the final UDT operations of World War II. (SEAL Museum)
An underwater demolition swimmer after setting charges off Balikpapan, 1945. (U.S. Navy)
LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel) with a crew of UDT demolitioneers is lowered over the side of a fast amphibious transport in the Pacific. (U.S. Navy)
Tools of the explosives trade: matériel used by NCDU and UDT personnel to demolish and clear landing zone obstacles during World War II. (U.S. Navy)
A Demolitioneer making up his explosive charges prior to going ashore to clear a landing beach. (U.S. Navy)
Wiring explosives to underwater coral growth, which posed a threat to Allied landings in the Pacific, and trapped thousands of Marines at the tragic landings at Tarawa in 1943. (U.S. Navy)
A typical World War II sight as demolition charges placed by Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs) cleared a path for many Marine and Army landings in the Pacific. (U.S. Navy)
Beach obstacle demo
lition prior to landings at Guam, July 1944. (U.S. Navy)
On August 28, 1945, a Japanese Army Coast Artillery major formally presented his sword to Lieutenant Commander Edward Porter Clayton of UDT-21. This impromptu ceremony was held on the beach near a small fort at the entrance to Tokyo Bay and is believed to be the first such surrender ceremony on the Japanese home islands. (National Archives)
Friendly rivalry: Team 21 “welcomes” the U.S. Marines to Japan. (U.S. Navy)
Korean War, 1950: UDT frogmen in dry suits launch rubber boats and conduct mine-hunting operations in Wonsan Harbor. (U.S. Navy)
Helicopter used by UDTs for mine-spotting in the waters off Korea, 1952. Korea marked the first use of helicopters to support Naval Special Warfare operations, and the first limited UDT operations beyond the beach onto land warfare. (Courtesy of Dick Lyon)
UDT operator Dick Lyon and Navy explosives expert Dick Edwards approach an enemy surface mine marked by a helicopter-dropped signal flare in the waters off communist-held North Korea, 1952. (Courtesy of Dick Lyon)
UDT-5 Lieutenant Dick Lyon with the Soviet-made underwater mine he recovered under fire off Wonsan Harbor, Korea, 1952. Today, at age ninety-one, Rear Admiral Lyon (Ret.) assists in training the new generation of Navy SEALs. (Courtesy of Dick Lyon)
Russian packing slip found inside Soviet-made naval mine recovered by UDT-5 frogman Dick Lyon off the shore of communist-held Korea. (Courtesy of Dick Lyon)
UDT combat swimmers test themselves and their dry suits during polar training operations. (U.S. Navy)
UDT training, Little Creek, 1947. Here frogmen work to load a beach obstacle with demolitions to open a path for friendly troops and armored vehicles (U.S. Navy)
UDT frogmen in U.S.-occupied Japan, 1950, conducting beach survey training. (U.S. Navy)
UDTs train in beach obstacle demolition, Little Creek, Virginia. (U.S. Navy)
CHAPTER 3
HOT WAR, COLD WATER
WONSAN HARBOR,
NORTH KOREA, MARCH 1952
THE FORCE:
One UDT-5 demolitioneer and 1 U.S. Navy bomb disposal expert
THE ENEMY:
North Korean coastal sentries
THE MISSION:
Locate, disable, and recover Soviet-made mine
There was a bomb ten inches from Lieutenant Dick Lyon’s face.
The Underwater Demolition Team-5 sailor was eight feet underwater and one hundred yards off North Korean territory, and he was staring at a horned object the size of a large beach ball; it carried a payload equivalent to forty-four pounds of high explosive. This was enough firepower to blow a hole in a medium-sized steel-hulled warship. It was a Soviet-made prototype RMYaM contact mine designed to cripple incoming landing craft, and Lyon was swimming in a submerged forest of the devices.
The mine was live. If he knocked one of the mine’s protruding contact horns, or if a tidal surge pushed him against it, Lyon told us, “I was going to say my prayers very rapidly, because I was going straight to heaven, or wherever it is Navy frogmen go.”
Dick Lyon was carrying no weapons or tools other than a Ka-Bar knife strapped to his ankle and a pair of twenty-four-inch bolt cutters in his hands. He had no formal training in mine handling and recovery. He wasn’t wearing scuba gear, and no protection other than a face mask and flimsy green dry suit that offered little protection against the near-freezing water. He recalled, “I went down a couple of times always to get the layout of the area and to make sure the current would not take me into the mine.”
A few yards away, crouched down in a highly visible small yellow rubber boat, was a U.S. Navy EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) expert named Dick Edwards. The mission was for Lyon to swim down eight feet to cut the mine loose from the mooring cables that held it to the ocean floor, and guide it to the surface. Then and he and Edwards would gently tow it to their host ship and then to a nearby Allied-controlled island to be defused and analyzed, to improve the chances that U.S. and South Korean forces could land on the beaches of strategic Wonsan Harbor at some point in the future and try to complete the liberation of the Korean Peninsula.
Three weeks earlier, at the American base at Camp McGill in nearby Japan, which hosted UDT-5, Lieutenant Lyon was called into the office of Lieutenant Commander Louis A. States, a veteran of World War II service with UDT-11 in Okinawa and elsewhere.
“I want to let you know,” said the commander, a southern gentleman with a heavy North Carolina accent, “that you’re the strongest swimmer we have on the team.” This was an understatement. Before joining the joint Navy-Army Scouts and Raiders force in World War II, Lyon was captain of the Yale championship swimming team of 1943, and was a world record holder in the four-man 100-meter freestyle relay.
“Sure, skipper,” said Lyon of the compliment after a wary pause. “What are you leading up to?”
His commander replied, “We’ve got intelligence with regard to a new small, shallow water anti-amphibious assault mine which is planted inside Wonsan Harbor, which is a huge harbor on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula. What we need is for somebody to go in and get ’em. They’ll take bolt cutters, go down under the mine, cut the mine mooring cable and attach a towing line to it and with the help of the EOD officer, tow it to one of the little islands and render it safe. Then we’ll ultimately transport it back to Indian Head, Maryland,” to the headquarters of the Navy’s mine planning and analysis efforts.
The North Korean communist forces held the harbor of Wonsan and the land around it, but American and South Korean forces held the waters off the harbor in a tight blockade, and controlled several nearby islands. Navy minesweepers and UDT teams had conducted minesweeping operations around Wonsan since the early days of the war, but this new intelligence suggested the North Koreans had planted a new, highly compact mine close to shore that was harder to spot and could play havoc both with minesweepers and assault craft attempting to land.
“We had control of that harbor so that any shipping of armament and supplies coming out of Wonsan, which is a pretty good-sized city, were not being made,” recalled Lyon. “We controlled the harbor itself. That’s one of the reasons that we had a Republic of Korea [military] detachment along with our Marine Corps detachment on the island of Yodo. We felt relatively secure where we were on those islands, as they were under Allied control. How smart were the North Koreans? Not very damn smart. They could have made it very difficult for friendly (locals) to be out there on those little islands. They could have made trouble for them all the time but they did not.”
Now, after pinpointing the location of the mines from a helicopter, Lyon was underwater, and face-to-face with his prey.
He dove and surfaced several times to make sure he had lined up the delicate operation perfectly. Finally he dove fully under the mine and got to work trying to sever the thick mooring cable that anchored the device to the ocean floor. He was about eight feet below the surface, and the mine was at about six feet underwater.
But suddenly Lieutenant Lyon noticed impact trails of bubbles shooting down from the water surface above him. That could only mean one thing: North Korean troops had spotted him from the shoreline, and they were opening fire. The next time he came up for air, he would be in their sights.
Then he sensed something else—his fingers and limbs were slowly locking up from the shock of the frigid 36-degree water he had been submerged in for almost twenty minutes. Very soon, he realized, the onset of hypothermia would immobilize him completely, and he would be helpless if the ocean current pushed him into the mine.
If he didn’t surface in the next few seconds, he would drown.
“Why am I really doing this?” Lyon thought. “What in the world has brought me to this?”
AFTER WORLD WAR II and the massive peacetime demobilization of the U.S. military, the combat strength of the Underwater Demolition Teams was cut by almost 95 percent. The remaining Pacific Fleet UDTs 1 and 3 were based at Coronado Amphibious Base, near San Diego, and the Atlantic Fl
eet UDTs 2 and 4 were based at the Little Creek Amphibious base, near Norfolk, Virginia.
When the Korean War erupted in June 1950, there were only eleven UDT men available in the region, a training detachment from UDT-3, based in Japan. Eventually, three UDT teams with a total strength of fewer than three hundred men joined the fight, but this would be an entirely different war than what they had been trained for, calling for new tactics, new skills, and new weaponry. The UDTs made things up as they went along, found new missions, and improvised their way into the next stage in the evolution of Naval Special Warfare. As UDT Lieutenant Ted Fielding explained, “We were ready to do what nobody else could do, and nobody else wanted to do.”
Beginning in August 1950 and continuing off and on through late 1952, U.S. Navy UDT personnel conducted onshore raids on the Korean mainland to harass the North Korean war machine by blowing up railroad facilities, capturing prisoners, and harassing coastal targets. These were the first true commando-style operations by the UDTs, who until this point were primarily naval beach reconnaissance specialists and shallow-water demolitioneers. In these early “over the beach” operations, the UDTs teamed up with CIA personnel, South Korean naval commandos, U.S. Marine reconnaissance experts, and British Royal Navy commandos.
