Frogman
A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military, and in some European countries, police work.
US and UK forces use these official definitions for mission descriptors:[citation needed] Anti-frogman techniques are security methods developed to protect watercraft, ports and installations, and other sensitive resources both in or nearby vulnerable waterways from potential threats or intrusions by frogmen.
Frogmen on clandestine operations use rebreathers, as the bubbles released by open-circuit scuba would reveal them to surface lookouts and make a noise which hydrophones could easily detect.
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.
Britain, Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union started commando frogman forces during World War II.
[10][verification needed][need quotation to verify] 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.
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.
[15] 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.
[16][17] 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 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.
[25] The OSS was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency; the maritime element still exists inside the CIA's Special Activities Division.
[30] 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, Rainbow Warrior.
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.
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.
Special Ops Officers would become qualified in at lease two functional areas - normally EOD or Diving and Salvage, and Expendable Ordnance management.
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.
