Special Ops: Four Accounts of the Military's Elite Forces

by Orr Kelly

  Williams: We had no idea it was going to be quite that fast a ride.

  Maguire: The German swimmers had not done this either. They were able to use the fact that we were there to train with them to get the submarine. Nobody was really up on that. We were the most experienced. So we kind of talked to the guys on the submarine and got a pretty good routine. We got it down pretty good.

  Williams: We did two or three rehearsals. I got so, once we got in there and knew the torpedo door was shut, I just had my breathing bag down to nothing. In case they did it before they gave the signal, I was ready for them.

  Maguire: He held one hand on his mouthpiece and the other hand on my arm. I did the same thing. Just in case it blew out, we had a signal, “I’ve just blown out my bag. I need to buddy breathe.” Once you had one good rig, you were okay. If you blew out both bags, you were dead. It was as simple as that. But we felt comfortable with it. It was a risk, but, too, we’re in the risk business.

  You have to consider the times. We still considered war with the Soviet Union, if not likely, at least a possibility. Training was very arduous and very serious. We took risks.

  Williams: Just like coming in, going out was also a good ride. You get loaded from the inside for the actual op. You go back in the tube the same way you came out. You’re laying there, they close the torpedo door on the inside. They give a signal and they flood it. You’re sitting there in water now. They give the signal they’re going to pressurize. The pressurization was just as fast as the decompression. You go from the surface, zero feet, to eleven meters at the snap of a finger. You have to be clearing your ears, waiting for it to happen, or you can rupture an eardrum. The ride down to depth was just as good as the ride coming up. Once they had it pressurized, they would open the doors and everyone starts floating out.

  Was the inside of the tube greasy?

  Maguire: Yeah, and pitch-black. Absolutely no light whatsoever. We had lights in there for the rehearsal and our lights would not shine on anything. Even a flashlight would just be absorbed.

  Once we got in the submarine, we had a two-day transit to the target. I forget where it was that we linked up. It was pretty much in the western part of the Baltic. Probably around Denmark. We transited to Olpenitz.

  The transit was interesting. The submarine had a very small crew, about twenty-one people. The racks were in the mess deck and the mess deck was in the torpedo room. I mean, this submarine is tiny, tiny, tiny. The sausages hung everywhere.

  Williams: It reminded me of the movie Das Boot.

  Maguire: Absolutely professional. You really felt like you were part of an outstanding—I mean, these guys were good. The commanding officer of the submarine was very impressive.

  Williams: He was young.

  Maguire: I think he couldn’t be over thirty-five. The white cap with the scrambled eggs, beard, turtle neck, and the jack boots. Absolutely professional. Those guys were right on the money.

  Williams: Just like being in the movies.

  I think one of the most interesting things, showing they were squared away and really professional, was when we were in the target area where we were going to get inserted—they had the subchasers, the old diesel-powered subchasers.

  Maguire: They knew we were coming. They had been alerted.

  Williams: I remember we were in the process of putting our rubber wet suits back on to insert. All of a sudden, everyone said, “Stop what you’re doing. Freeze. Freeze. Don’t move.” I can remember sitting there with my rubber half on and the U-boat bottoming out on the bottom of the Baltic. And all you can hear is those engines. Like in the old U-boat movies. You could hear those engines get louder, right overhead. I was thinking, okay, a depth charge should be next.

  Maguire: They ate four meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner and midrats. They only had about six racks. The mess area was also the berthing area which was also the torpedo area. So they were either setting up for a meal, serving the meal, or breaking down from the meal. So the racks were only up for no more than one hour at a time. We put up with that for two days before we had to do the mission. It was a lot of fun. We just sort of sat up, drank coffee, ate sausage, and ate cake.

  Williams: I remember wandering around in there, I found an empty rack someplace else. I crawled in that empty rack. I was like, I’ve got to get some sleep. And every time I’d fallen asleep, they were going raus, raus. It was always, what? Time to eat, you know. So I get in this rack and it had a dry blanket and I’d been wet for a day and a half. In the torpedo room it was basically raining all the time. And I was laying in this rack and I was sleeping good and all of a sudden I heard raus, raus. And I was like, what, time to eat? And he says, “No, you’re in my rack.” And I had to get up.

  Maguire: When it came time to do the mission, we fine-tuned it with the officer of the submarine who was in tactical command. We had the limpet mines pre-staged on the outside of the submarine. They put blankets all over the deck. As we got dressed, we had men holding us. The submarine was tactical. We were going into the high-threat area. With the ASW [antisubmarine warfare] vessels and ASW aircraft against us. As we went in, the guy in control, when we were in a high-threat situation, he would just bottom out the submarine. You could feel the destroyers and the ASW aircraft coming closer. You could hear the ping. There was absolute quiet.

  Then once they went by you, the commanding officer would give the signal to continue getting us dressed. We put the weight belts on ever so quietly. They opened up the torpedo tube. They start loading you. They pick you on up and silently start loading you in. There’s no talking. We know the courses, we know the speed. Finally, I’m in there and the commanding officer comes to me and says: “Right now, our present location is such and such, your target bears so and so, here at this distance. Good luck and good hunting.”

  It was good. And they put us right on the money. We flooded, instant pressurization, just like ka-boom. And then it was time to go to work.

  One German swim pair tore a life jacket on the way out so they had to abort the mission. They tried it for awhile. The submarine had left. Once they tried to do a turtle back, they found they had a catastrophic failure. Turtle back is where you inflate the life jacket and just lay on your back and you’re still maintaining your course. The driver is still driving. But you’re conserving your O2. You’re swimming tactically.

  Williams, the stronger swimmer, was the “driver,” holding a board with a compass. He had the entire course—all of the compass headings he would use over the next six hours—memorized. Maguire followed close behind, linked to Williams by a cord.

  Williams: We were two miles out from the harbor at that point, in total darkness. The water was pretty flat, a one- to three-foot chop. It got ealmer as the night went on. There had been storms during the day. But as we came out, it was pretty calm.

  You’re ready at any time. If a patrol boat comes, you deflate your life jacket and sink out of sight.

  Maguire: We’ve got our canteens and our food. We’re taking our time, taking a look at the harbor. We’re drinking water, eating food. We try to finish one canteen before the swim and then we flood the canteen with saltwater because you use that canteen as ballast. That’s part of your trim.

  Williams: We sat there about five hundred yards outside the harbor. You could see the opening into the harbor, just barely, in the darkness. We had a power bar and then a canteen of water between the two of us.

  Maguire: And then all of a sudden a patrol boat came up on us. Obviously he didn’t see us, but we decided, hey, it’s time to go to work. We made an emergency descent, put our rigs on, purged, and started the swim from there.

  Was the harbor blacked out?

  Williams: It was blacked out for a ten-mile radius.

  Maguire: You know, these people went to war twice in this century so they play these exercises for real.

  Williams: All your channel lights, all the navigational aids were blocked out. All lights.

  Magui
re: Street signs had been removed on the base.

  Williams: They had even turned off a lighthouse on a point.

  Maguire: They issue a notice to mariners: In this place for such and such a time, we’ll be conducting an exercise. Or they might go as far as to move the navigational aids. They take this very seriously. They had two world wars and they’re not far from East Germany.

  Williams: After we had locked out of the German U-boat, I remember checking the bearing they had given us to the harbor. And I remember looking at that bearing and thinking, I don’t see anything we’re supposed to see. And then we looked around and it was all dark over there. The harbor was like a dark hole in a dark hole. That had to be it.

  Maguire: We just went for the nothing. We started swimming for the black hole.

  Williams: The success or failure of the mission is based on that bearing we got off the German U-boat commander. If he’s right or wrong, that’s going to be the success of the mission.

  Maguire: We had a good first leg, from two miles out. One of the German swim pairs went on dive status before we did. They just never found the harbor. They spent a significant amount of time in the water and finally suffered hypothermia and had to get out. They had to get on out and one of them was hospitalized for hypothermia. The water temperature was forty degrees. But it didn’t seem that bad.

  Williams: I think it was because of the adrenaline rush.

  Maguire: It was as black as could be. No bioluminescence, no ambient light. Even after your eyes really got adjusted, even after an hour into the swim, I still couldn’t see anything. All I could see was a faint glow off his compass.

  Williams: It was so dark, I had that compass against my face mask and that was all I could see.

  Maguire: When we got into the threat area you could see the flares going up in the air. They didn’t do that initially. And we were concerned. For the two-mile swim in, we didn’t see anything. All of a sudden flares started going off. And then our concern was that one of the swim pairs was compromised. Should we continue with it or get the hell out? No one was compromised yet, I believe. It was just that they knew we were coming and damnit, they were going to catch us. There’s a great incentive for them, the people guarding the port, to catch Kampf swimmers and to catch SEALs. It would be a great loss of face when this is your job, this is what you do for a living, and guys can get into your harbor when you know they are coming. So there was a real incentive for them to catch us.

  Were you in contact with the other swim pairs?

  Maguire: No, never. Once you’re gone, you’re on your own. And that’s why you have to make sure the guys you’re going with are reliable. Because if one swim pair is compromised in the swim, there’s a chance they’re going to set up the harbor defense and kill everybody.

  Williams: In this exercise, the senior swimmers [in rank] are not necessarily your better guys. Ron Pierce was an E-6. The thing is, they are better divers so they are more reliable. You like to have someone in there who is a chief or above, even an officer, just for the planning phase, for liaison with the submarine. And then you’re on your own. But there have been times when it was a chief or even an E-6 who was the senior guy out there. That’s a lot of work for an enlisted guy to be doing all the liaison work. We were lucky Mr. Maguire was out there, one of the top-notch divers in our platoon.

  What time was this swim?

  Williams: I want to say we hit the dive status between ten and eleven at night. When we launched from the sub it was about seven-thirty or eight o’clock. At seven-thirty we loaded tubes. We were out of the tubes by about eight and started to turtle back by about eight-fifteen. It was about an hour and a half turtle back so it was right around ten when we started dive status. At the five-hundred-yard mark it was a good ten or ten-thirty. Then we dove for almost a good four hours. Then we swam for another two and a half hours, basically, to get to the extract point.

  We were hitting targets of opportunity. Basically, our plan was to come to a place where we could have a shallow water peek underneath the quay wall. We took a look to see what we could see that would be a good target. Lo and behold, it was kind of a good thing that we had the target of opportunity because they had taken all the ships out of the harbor as a ship defense. There were no targets.

  Maguire: Everybody plays over there. So we came in from sea, from the German U-boat, and we were able to find the target because the whole city was blacked out. We just went for the darkest center of the beach. And all the local police were notified. All the harbor was notified. And there were also ASW aircraft chasing the submarine on the way in. Subchasers were out after us. So from start to finish it was pretty sporty.

  Williams: We hit the only target that was in the harbor, which was a salvage tug. That was the target that we took. It was about the three-hour-and-fifty-five-minute mark, I think, that our scrubbers [the lime canisters that purify the oxygen] started failing. At that point we were about halfway out of the outer harbor. I just immediately did a ninety-degree turn and took us to the quay wall. That was part of our plan. If we had a problem it would be in that area. So the plan was to get over to the quay wall, come up, see if it was safe, see if there were any patrols on the quay wall area. Basically, it was fairly large boulders at the water level and then it went to a wall that went up about seven or seven and a half feet and on top of that was a road. That was the outer harbor quay wall area. What we did was a ninety-degree turn, went over and hit that, came up, assessed that it was safe, that there were no guards right there in that area.

  You have an opening to the harbor which is maybe 100 to 150 yards wide. And in that opening, you have these two quay walls which come around. And there are boulders at the bottom of the quay, which are humongous. Then basically a concrete wall that comes up about seven feet. It is wide enough that vehicles could drive down to the sentry post.

  I pulled my buddy up, Mr. Maguire, and told him my scrubber has quit working. I have a serious … like, you know, somebody has hit me in the head with a sledgehammer. He said the same thing. He said, “Yeah, I think I’ve got one too. My scrubber’s quit.” By that time, in that water, it should have quit.

  Maguire: It was about forty degrees.

  Williams: It should have quit long before that. What happened was that the canister had basically stopped scrubbing out the CO2. We were getting a CO2 buildup in our bodies. There are symptoms you are trained to notice. It was a pretty definite symptom. Instead of pushing and possibly going unconscious, we went over and got on fresh air. About the only thing you can do at that point. We could have kept going. We still had oxygen but we would have been making a mass of bubbles then. [If they breathed the oxygen and then expelled the carbon dioxide into the water.]

  Maguire: There were guards all over the harbor, picket boats. They were shooting off flares all night. At the mouth of the harbor there were security guards. We never would have been able to make it through.

  Williams: What we did was take off our Draegers and our life jackets and fins and put them all on the buddy line, which is what keeps us connected underwater. In case one of us should go unconscious, you’re attached by a buddy line. For about ten or fifteen minutes we sat there and assessed to make sure there weren’t any patrols around.

  Maguire: There were guards everywhere. So we just sat back among the boulders and sat there listening and seeing what was what. We still had some time left on our window for the rendezvous with the fishing boat. We took our rigs off. Then we went on over, dragged the rigs, and got on the other side.

  Williams: I pushed him up on the high wall. He crawled up.

  Maguire: Then I pulled him up and we crawled across.

  Williams: Then we just dropped down on the other side. Which basically was open water at that point. So all we had to do was put our gear back on and swim back out.

  Maguire: It was at this point in time things got tough. I had broken my back and my pelvis about six months earlier.

  How did you do that?
<
br />   Maguire: Fast-roping. The line broke. We do it regularly now. But we had just got it in the team and the line was defective and it parted and a bunch of us got banged up. So it was okay. They gave me thirty days off and I was able to watch Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo. And then come on back.

  I was fine until we made it to the primary extraction point and the extraction vessel was in the wrong place. We didn’t know what the heck to do. There was one boat out there. He wasn’t where he was supposed to be. It was about another mile to a mile-and-a-half swim. We just figured, hey, we have to go for it. We had to do some real good swimming at this point. Willie’s an Olympic swimmer. I was a college swimmer, but not an Olympian. To tell you the truth, I was just about being towed at this point.

  Williams: You said, “I don’t think I can make it that far because my hip is killing me.”

  Maguire: My hip had finally given on out. My accident was on Halloween and this is the first of April.

  Williams: I was like, you aren’t going to quit on me now, damn you. I didn’t want to be a failure. I wanted to do the whole thing and make the extract. We swam away from where that boat was supposed to be to make it to the extract point.

  Maguire: That’s the way it is. We’ve got a civilian picking us up. Who knows what the problem is? He’s got to be in the fishing area. Or maybe security moved him to there.

  Williams: I remember that. I was a lot discouraged. But I was real determined because I’m competitive. I don’t like to lose or get beat on anything. He was going, “Hey, my hip is hurting me. I don’t know if I have enough left in me to go that far.”