, a
rebreather originally conceived in 1910 by
Robert Davis as an emergency submarine escape set. In ancient
Roman and
Greek times, there were instances of men swimming or diving for combat, sometimes using a hollow plant stem or a long bone as a
snorkel. Diving with snorkel is mentioned by
Aristotle (4th century BC). The earliest descriptions of frogmen in war are found in
Thucydides'
History of the Peloponnesian War. The first instance was in 425 BC, when the
Athenian fleet besieged the Spartans on the small island of Sphacteria. The Spartans managed to get supplies from the mainland by underwater swimmers towing submerged sacks of supplies. In another incident of the same war, in 415 BC, the Athenians used combat divers in the port of
Syracuse, Sicily. The Syracuseans had planted vertical wooden poles in the bottom around their port, to prevent the Athenian
triremes from entering. The poles were submerged, not visible above the sea level. The Athenians used various means to cut these obstacles, including divers with saws. It is believed that the underwater sawing required snorkels for breathing and diving weights to keep the divers stable. Also, in the writings of
Al-Maqrizi, it is also claimed that the naval forces of the
Fatimid Caliphate, in an engagement with
Byzantine forces off the coast of
Messina henceforth referred to as the
Battle of the Straits, employed a novel strategy with strong similarities to modern-day frogmen tactics. In the writings of
Heinz Halm, who studied and translated the writings of Al-Maqrizi and other contemporary Islamic historians, it is described: "They would dive from their own ship and swim over to the enemy ship; they would fasten ropes to its rudder, along which earthenware pots containing
Greek fire were then made to slide over to the enemy ship, and shattered on the sternpost." Apparently, this tactic succeeded in destroying many Byzantine vessels, and the battle ended in a major Fatimid victory; according to the Arab historians, a thousand prisoners were taken, including the Byzantine admiral, Niketas, with many of his officers, as well as a heavy Indian sword which bore an inscription indicating that it had once belonged to
Muhammad. The Hungarian
Chronicon Pictum claims that
Henry III's 1052 invasion of
Hungary was defeated by a skillful diver who sabotaged Henry's supply fleet. The unexpected sinking of the ships is confirmed by German chronicles. On 4 November 1918, during World War I, Italian frogmen sunk the Austro-Hungarian ship
Viribus Unitis. Italy started World War II with a commando frogman force already trained. Britain, Germany, the United States, and the
Soviet Union started commando frogman forces during World War II.
First frogmen The word
frogman appeared first in the stage name
The Fearless Frogman of
Paul Boyton, who since the 1870s broke records in long distance swimming to demonstrate a newly invented rubber
immersion suit, with an inflated hood. nicknamed
muta gamma used by these divers. Later they were nicknamed "
Uomini Rana," Italian for "frog men", because of an underwater swimming
frog kick style, similar to that of frogs, or because their fins looked like frog's feet. This special corps used an early oxygen rebreather
scuba set, the
Auto Respiratore ad Ossigeno (A.R.O), a development of the
Dräger oxygen
self-contained breathing apparatus designed for the mining industry and of the
Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus made by Siebe, Gorman & Co and by Bergomi, designed for escaping from sunken submarines. This was used from about 1920 for
spearfishing by Italian sport divers, modified and adapted by the Italian navy engineers for safe underwater use and built by Pirelli and SALVAS from about 1933, and so became a precursor of the modern diving rebreather. For this new way of underwater diving, the Italian frogmen trained in
La Spezia,
Liguria, using the newly available
Genoese free diving spearfishing equipment;
diving mask,
snorkel,
swimfins, and rubber
dry suit, the first specially made
diving watch (the luminescent
Panerai), and the new A.R.O. scuba unit. This was a revolutionary alternative way to dive, and the start of the transition from the usual heavy underwater diving equipment of the
hard hat divers which had been in general use since the 18th century, to self-contained divers, free of being tethered by an air line and rope connection.
Wartime operations After
Italy declared war, the
Decima Flottiglia MAS (
Xª MAS) attempted several frogmen attacks on British naval bases in the Mediterranean between June 1940 and July 1941, but none were successful, because of equipment failure or early detection by British forces. On September 10, 1941, eight
Xª MAS frogmen were inserted by submarine close to the British harbour at
Gibraltar, where using
human torpedoes to penetrate the defences, sank three merchant ships before escaping through neutral Spain. An even more successful attack, the
Raid on Alexandria, was mounted on 19 December on the harbour at
Alexandria, again using human torpedoes. The raid resulted in disabling the
battleships and together with a
destroyer and an
oil tanker, but all six frogmen were captured. Frogmen were deployed by stealth in
Algeciras, Spain, from where they launched a number of
limpet-mine attacks on Allied shipping at anchor off Gibraltar. Some time later they refitted the interned
Italian tanker Olterra as a mothership for human torpedoes, carrying out three assaults on ships at Gibraltar between late 1942 and early 1943, sinking six of them.
Nazi Germany raised a number of frogmen units under the auspices of both the
Kriegsmarine and the
Abwehr, often relying on Italian expertise and equipment. In June 1944, a
K-Verband frogman unit failed to destroy the bridge at
Bénouville, now known as
Pegasus Bridge, during the
Battle of Normandy. In March 1945, a frogman squad from the
Brandenburgers was deployed from their base in Venice to destroy the
Ludendorff Bridge over the
Rhine which had been captured by the US Army in the
Battle of Remagen. Seven frogmen swam downriver to the bridge carrying explosives, but were spotted by
Canal Defence Lights. Four died, two from
hypothermia, and the rest were captured. The British
Royal Navy had captured an Italian human torpedo during a failed attack on Malta; they developed a copy called the
Chariot and formed a unit called the
Experimental Submarine Flotilla, which later merged with the
Special Boat Service. A number of Chariot operations were attempted, most notably
Operation Title in October 1942, an attack on the
German battleship Tirpitz, which had to be abandoned when a storm hit the fishing boat which was towing the Chariots into position. Operation Principal in January 1943 was an attack by eight Chariots on
La Maddalena and
Palermo harbours; although all the Chariots were lost, the new
Italian cruiser Ulpio Traiano was sunk. The last and most successful British operation resulted in sinking two
liners in
Phuket harbour in
Thailand in October 1944. Royal Navy divers did not use fins until December 1942. Late in the war, the
Imperial Japanese Navy formed a
Special Attack Unit of suicide divers, called
Fukuryu ("crouching dragons"). The were to be armed with a 10kg mine on a long pole for use against Allied landing craft. Equipment consisted of a loose wet suit, a large rigid helmet and tanks attached back and front. It was intended that in the event of an invasion (
Operation Downfall), they could wait underwater for up to ten hours, close to the shore and protected from bombardments by submerged concrete shelters. A training program was run at
Kawatana and
Yokosuka, during which there were many fatal accidents caused by the rudimentary equipment. Some 1,200 divers had completed the course by the end of the war, with a further 2,800 still in training.
Wartime developments In 1933 Italian companies were already producing underwater oxygen rebreathers, but the first diving set known as SCUBA was invented in 1939 by
Christian Lambertsen, who originally called it the Lambertsen Amphibious Respirator Unit (LARU) and patented it in 1940. He later renamed it the Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, which, contracted to SCUBA, eventually became the generic term for both open circuit and rebreather autonomous underwater breathing equipment. Lambertsen demonstrated it to the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) (after already being rejected by the U.S. Navy) in a pool at a hotel in Washington D.C. OSS not only bought into the concept, they hired Lambertsen to lead the program and build up the dive element of their
Maritime Unit.
John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy, was the first man selected to join the OSS group. The
Shayetet 13 commandos of the
Israeli Navy have carried out a number of underwater raids on harbors. They were initially trained by veterans of
Xª MAS and used Italian equipment. As part of
Operation Raviv in 1969, eight frogmen used two human torpedoes to enter Ras Sadat naval base near
Suez, where they destroyed two
motor torpedo boats with mines. During the 1982
Falklands War, the
Argentinian Naval Intelligence Service planned an attack on British warships at Gibraltar. Code named
Operation Algeciras, three frogmen, recruited from a former anti-government insurgent group, were to plant mines on the ships' hulls. The operation was abandoned when the divers were arrested by Spanish police and deported. In 1985, the
French nuclear weapons tests at
Moruroa in the Pacific Ocean was being contested by environmental protesters led by the
Greenpeace campaign ship, . The
Action Division of the French
Directorate-General for External Security devised a plan to
sink the Rainbow Warrior while it was berthed in harbor at
Auckland in
New Zealand. Two divers from the Division posed as tourists and attached two limpet mines to the ship's hull; the resulting explosion sank the ship and killed a Netherlands citizen on board. Two agents from the team, but not the divers, were arrested by the
New Zealand Police and later convicted of
manslaughter. The French government finally admitted responsibility two months later. In the U.S. Navy, frogmen were officially phased out in 1983 and all active duty frogmen were transferred to SEAL units. In 1989, during the
U.S. invasion of Panama, a team of four U.S. Navy SEALs using
rebreathers conducted a combat swimmer attack on the
Presidente Porras, a gunboat and yacht belonging to
Manuel Noriega. The commandos attached explosives to the vessel as it was tied to a pier in the
Panama Canal, escaping only after being attacked with grenades. Three years later during
Operation Restore Hope, members of
SEAL Team One swam to shore in Somalia to measure beach composition, water depth, and shore gradient ahead of a Marine landing. The mission resulted in several of the SEALs becoming ill as Somalia's waters were contaminated with raw sewage. In 1978, the U.S. Navy Special Operations Officer (1140) community was established by combining Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and Expendable Ordnance Management officers with Diving and Salvage officers. Special Ops Officers would become qualified in at least two functional areas - normally EOD or Diving and Salvage, and Expendable Ordnance management. Officers trained in diving and salvage techniques were now allowed to follow a career pattern that took advantage of their training, and Unrestricted line officers were now permitted to specialize in salvage, with repeat tours of duty, and advanced training. Career patterns were developed to ensure that officers assigned to command were seasoned in salvage operations and well qualified in the technical aspects of their trade. "The combination gave a breadth and depth of professionalism to Navy salvage that had not been possible before." ==Gallery==