The The BLAST Journal of Navy Frogmen-Past and Present 1st Quarter 2001 Volume 33, Number 1 BLAST Publisher UDT-SEAL Association, Inc. 1st Quarter 2001 Volume 33 Number 1 Officers Tom Hawkins President Frank Walters Vice President Robin King Secretary-Treasurer Marge Boesch Corporate Memory Bob Rieve Executive Director Board of Directors ARTICLES Shawn Adkins Bill Barth Rudy Boesch Norm Carley Bob Clark Bobby Cox Joe Dearing Tom Hawkins Dick Johnson U.S. Navy Beach Jumpers of WWII John Kirby Jack Lynch Pete Poillon 8 Tom Richards Don Tilton Frank Walters 18 Life and Times in Beach Jumpers BLAST Staff Tom Hawkins Marge Boesch 20 Beach Jumpers at the Heart of the Cuban Missile Marilyn Carley Rima Magee Contributing Members Crisis October 1962 Design and Layout: Tom & Marilyn Chuck Detmer: SEAL Stories Lowell Gosser: Logo Designer 21 Life and Times in Beach Jumpers Advertising Information Memories of Beach Jumper Unit ONE Bobby Cox: (757) 363-7490 22 Chapter Coordinator Bob Rieve: (757) 363-7490 23 Life and Times in BJU-1 Small Stores Coordinator Carlin Birkey: (757) 340-9331 Scholarship Program 24 A Small Party Called Beach Jumpers Chairman: John “Fly” Fallon Coordinator: Marge Boesch 29 RADM Albert M. Calland, III Financial Advisor Randy Wise: (757) 473-1320 36 BUD/S Graduation Remarks UDT-SEAL Association P.O. Box 5365 Korea In Perspective Virginia Beach, VA 23471 41 FROGPHONE: (757) 363-7490 FROGFAX: (757) 363-7491 42 Korea Remembered FROGNET: [email protected] FROGPAGE: www.udt-seal.org 44 The Korean Service Medal The BLAST is published quarterly by the UDT-SEAL Association, the national fraternal organization of U.S. Navy Frogmen. The UDT-SEAL Association is a private, non- 58 The Loss of “Doc” D’Angelo profit association incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia and guided by a Constitution and By-Laws adopted by its members. Photos, manu- scripts, and other editorial materials can only be accepted DEPARTMENTS at the contributors risk. We will, however, sincerely endeavor to return all materials when so requested. Material published is subject to editing to fit BLAST style and standards. All rights reserved. Contents may not be 2 President’s Corner reprinted without one huge Mother May I or Request Chit. Move? Deployed? Transferred? Wife or girl friend kick Mail Call 4 you out? Whatever the reason, don’t lose touch with your fellow Frogs. Send your name and new address 33 SEAL Ink to the Association now. We don’t need any more lost swim buddies. Learn, remember, and live the legacy! 34 NSW Wife of the Quarter BLAST Disclaimer: Opinions expressed throughout this SEAL Story of distinctive publication for Navy Frogmen are not the 35 opinions of the BLAST. If you agree with them, they are the opinions of the writer. If you disagree, they are someone else’s opinions. Unless stated, we neither endorse nor Cover: (Inset) RADM Albert M. Calland, III, Commander, Special Operations guarantee items displayed in paid advertisements. HooYah! Command Central. BJU-2 Cover Photo compliments of Bernard Wolf. represented the synergistic synthesis of the twin origins, combined to implement the tactical details of strategic cover and deception PRESIDENT’SPRESIDENT’S plans in support of amphibious landings. Perhaps the best way to explain their mission is through the words of the “father” of World War II military deception, Brigadier General Dudley Clarke, who commanded the British A-Force deception agency: Deception begins, as it were, at the base of a triangle, and concentrates all its efforts toward a single point, the senior mem- Corner bers of the enemy’s intelligence staff, ideally, their chief. If the deceivers can make him believe the authenticity of their ersatz evidence, while concealing its origins, they’ve accomplished their By Tom Hawkins goals. UDT-SEAL Association Deception is an art, not a science. Those who practice it must President be adept at making something out of nothing; to conceive their own original notion, and then clothe it with realities till eventu- This BLAST contains our long promised Beach Jumper Unit ally it appears as a living fact. And so deception staffs should edition. The BJUs were a fascinating organization that, like many comprise imaginative, creative people who also have an adequate special Navy units, was formed out of need within the Amphibious knowledge of the targeted enemy intelligence organization’s na- force during WWII. The BJUs were dissolved after the war, but ture. reformed again for Korea. After that, they became an integral part The head of the deception department can be likened to the of Navy doctrinal planning. author and producer of a play, charged by the impresario Com- After they were reformed in the early 1950’s, they were orga- mander-in-Chief to execute the kind of play he needs, and its re- nized as a part of the Atlantic and Pacific Amphibious Training quired aim. Upon approval of the final version, he leaves the rest Commands, but took their tasking from the Fleet Commanders. to his deception master and his staff specialists. During the period of the Viet Nam War, the BJUs were a fully The Commander must insure that the deception plan is aimed integrated component of Naval Special Warfare Groups Atlantic at the proper objective, for only then can it hope to achieve the and Pacific. desired result, i.e. influencing the enemy’s actions. (Letter, Briga- Shortly after formation of the SEAL Teams in 1962, the Navy dier Dudley Clarke, to Major General Lowell Rooks, U.S. Army, established the Naval Operations Support Groups (NOSG’s) in the Undated) Atlantic and Pacific Fleets (later to be called NSW Groups Atlan- This book (Seaborne Deception) will concern itself with tic and Pacific). Within the Amphibious Force, the NOSGs were seaborne deception primarily, the “making of something out of designed to organize the Navy’s “Unconventional Warfare” force nothing” as practiced by the Beach Jumpers as the central element then being demanded by President Kennedy. NOSG component of diversionary missions in support of U.S. and Allied amphibious commands included the UDT and SEAL Teams, newly formed operations. Boat Support Units (BSUs), and Beach Jumper Units. The “deception master” was Lt. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., USNR, Interestingly, the most notable Beach Jumper of the post-war the actor-turned-naval-officer who not only founded the Beach period, Captain Phil Bucklew, of Scout and Raider fame during Jumpers but planned their Mediterranean theater missions, which, WWII, became the first Commander, Naval Operations Support appropriately enough, comprised several theatrical aspects: the Group, Pacific. Returning to his roots in naval special warfare, he dramatic dialectic of illusion versus reality and magical conjur- became an exceptional leader in the modern-day NSW commu- ing. For in a very real sense, on the “stage” of the Mediterranean nity—in command of NOSGPAC and later as the NSW proponent “theater,” the Beach Jumpers, under Fairbanks’s direction, played in the Pentagon. The NSW Training Center in San Diego is named their assigned roles, creating and sustaining an illusory reality with in his memory. special devices and equipment to divert, confuse, and deceive the During the early 1960’s, Captain Bucklew and a small as- enemy “audience.” As with any good drama, the plots were multi- signed staff were sent to Viet Nam to assess the overall naval out- layered and mutually reinforcing. In the process of devising them, look for improved support of Unconventional Warfare. The result Fairbanks maintained close liaison with A-Force, with whose de- was “The Bucklew Report” that helped CINCPACFLT and the ception plans his had to agree, theirs in turn concocted in concert OPNAV Staff in Washington design an overall naval strategy for a with the global strategic scheme of Col. John Bevan’s London “brown-water” Navy. I’ll stop at that, since it is easy to get too far Control Section. (See Anthony Cave Brown’s book, Bodyguard of off the subject here. Lies, for a history of wartime global deception.” The definitive book on the BJs is entitled, “Seaborne Decep- Radio and radar countermeasures and deception, or RCM, as tion, The History of the U.S. Navy Beach Jumpers,” by John B. practiced by the Beach jumpers, can be seen as a World War II (“Barry”) Dwyer. Since his “Preface” provides such an exceptional naval version of what today is called “stealth.” and concise compilation of facts, I am going to borrow it to intro- To the degree that they conducted it, they were pioneers in duce this exceptional community of men to those of you who don’t that revolutionary technology. And while Brigadier Clarke cor- know about them. rectly described deception as an art, some of the best brains from “This is the story of the U.S. Navy’s tactical cover and decep- Stevens Institute of Technology, Bell Telephone Laboratory, tion units, the Beach Jumpers. These units were unique for several Harvard, the Naval Research Lab, and scientists and engineers reasons, one being their dual genesis. One was conceptual-organi- working under the aegis of the NDRC developed and produced the zational under Commander, Amphibious Force, Atlantic Fleet; the technical weapons needed to conduct the deceptive art of RCM. other was technical, and involved the government’s Office of Sci- Those tactics successfully employed by the Beach Jumpers in entific Research and Development, specifically its National De- the Mediterranean were suited to that theater’s requirements. When fense Research Committee’s (NDRC) Divisions 15 and 17, which the scene shifted to the Pacific, they had to be altered accordingly were responsible for radio and radar countermeasures and decep- to meet its particular strategic demands, especially in the field of tion, and the Naval Research Laboratory.