Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00If you lived before our time, who would you be?
00:14What if you could choose from a thousand yesterdays when the past was today and the new took your
00:21breath away?
00:22Who would you be?
00:23How would you live?
00:24Who would you love?
00:25Living every generation before us, remembering for generations to come, the History Channel,
00:37where the past comes alive.
00:41Hello, I'm Roger Mudd.
00:42Welcome to the History Channel.
00:45For more than three centuries, America's military has employed special operations forces, beginning
00:50with Rogers Rangers in the 18th century.
00:53The youngest of these special ops are the U.S. Navy SEALs, an acronym for Sea Air Land.
00:59Developed primarily for counter-guerrilla work in Vietnam, SEALs are frequently and
01:03clandestinely delivered by submarine.
01:06Our program examines some of the top secret missions of the submarine fleet, from underwater
01:11eavesdropping to enemy infiltration and deception.
01:15Join us now as the History Channel presents Silent Service, Submarine Special Ops.
01:20Unseen and unheard, the modern submarine is the most feared warship in the sea.
01:28Yet for all its deadly efficiency, there are objectives for which only specialized craft
01:33are suited.
01:34For a select breed of underwater warrior, diminutive size is but the means to an end.
01:42From manned torpedoes to combat submersibles, the submarines of special operations.
01:48Next on Silent Service.
01:54In the nighttime sky, off an undisclosed coastline, a helicopter races over the sea to a critical
02:13rendezvous.
02:18Maneuvering with only the aid of night vision goggles, the aircrew must distinguish the
02:23dark shape of a U.S. submarine from the surrounding blackness of the ocean.
02:31Such nocturnal encounters are not unusual in the covert world of special operations.
02:38On this mission, a U.S. Navy SEAL team is being retrieved by air.
02:49The large cylindrical chamber on the casing of the submarine identifies this vessel as
02:54being configured for special operations, that is, to carry SEAL commandos and their equipment.
03:05This chamber, or dry deck shelter, is 38 feet long, 9 feet in diameter, and weighs 30 tons.
03:13It can house up to 20 SEALs and their inflatable rafts, or a single swimmer delivery vehicle,
03:20or SDV.
03:21The dry deck shelter allows us to get the most bang for the dollar.
03:26It allows us to get more people out, more equipment out, allows us to get our swimmer
03:30delivery vehicle out.
03:31I mean, all those things we can't do on a regular submarine.
03:34We really need that dry deck shelter to do all those things.
03:39The Mark 8 SDV is a fiberglass, electrically powered, combat submersible.
03:45Eight SEALs wearing self-contained breathing apparatus are carried by the SDV when total
03:51underwater concealment is required.
03:55The swimmer delivery vehicle provides the Navy SEALs a means of clandestinely inserting
04:00anywhere in the world.
04:02We can leave from any port in the United States, transit to an objective area, walk out utilizing
04:07our dry deck shelter and our swimmer delivery vehicle, and go do the mission we need to
04:11go do, and come back home.
04:13The Navy has been pretty public about its ability to get people secretly from one point
04:22to another using submarines, and the SEALs are brought to places where the United States
04:28wants SEALs to be.
04:31The tiny SDV and its cargo of SEAL commandos reflect the extraordinary activity that defines
04:38the world of special operations.
04:43Since the dawn of armed conflict, special operations have been undertaken during hostilities
04:49and periods of non-violence that fall outside the scope of standard military doctrine.
04:59Such operations are conducted in secret, and are always distinguished by special training
05:04and preparation, and sometimes equally specialized equipment.
05:11Nowhere is this more true than in the hidden and secret realm of submarine special operations.
05:18You can think of four or five things that maybe a submarine could do, and you can bet
05:22that the submarines are doing it.
05:26As early as the American Revolutionary War, a pedal-driven single-man craft called the
05:31Turtle attacked a British warship in New York Harbor.
05:36By today's standards, that mission was a special operation, and although unsuccessful,
05:42the legend of the Turtle inspired the pioneers of undersea warfare.
05:48A submersible attack vessel was seen as the ideal method of striking at the enemy's fleet
05:54while immobilized in port.
05:56But practical development of the submarine languished until the end of the 19th century.
06:04Submarine technology advanced rapidly after 1900.
06:08Navies built ocean-going submarines armed with self-propelled torpedoes to attack ships
06:13on the open sea, instead of sneaking into ports in the dead of night.
06:18By 1914, Germany, Britain, and the United States all operated such vessels.
06:25The outbreak of war found other uses for submarines, for stealthy special missions.
06:33In one of the first such operations on record, in 1916, a German submarine delivered to Southern
06:40Ireland the Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement and two companions.
06:47Casement had failed to win from Germany full diplomatic support for the cause of Irish
06:51independence, but he did secure from the Germans 20,000 rifles and over 100,000 rounds of ammunition
07:00later delivered by sea.
07:02The famous IRA Easter uprising of 1916 was crushed by the British.
07:09Casement was arrested and executed.
07:14Meanwhile in the Adriatic, the naval standoff between Italy and Austria spurred a revival
07:19of interest in harbor penetration and covert operations.
07:24The Italians took the lead in developing specialized underwater craft for these missions.
07:30On the western side you had the Italian battle fleet, and on the eastern side you had the
07:34Austro-Hungarian fleet, and neither would come out, they were too afraid of each other.
07:39So the Italians resolved to take the initiative by using submarines for special purposes.
07:45They developed a human torpedo, the Mignata.
07:50The Mignata, or leech, consisted of the shell of a conventional torpedo modified with a
07:56compressed air tank to power a 40 horsepower motor which turned an enlarged propeller.
08:03At three to four knots, the craft had a range of some nine miles, moving just below the
08:09surface of the water. It could not submerge.
08:13Grasping handholds, two crewmen straddled the torpedo using their arms and legs like
08:18canoe paddles to steer.
08:22The Mignata's detachable warhead consisted of two metal canisters, each containing 375
08:29pounds of explosive. Built into each canister were magnetic clamps that could be attached
08:35to the hull of an enemy ship. A time fuse provided for a delayed detonation of up to
08:41five hours.
08:45On the night of October 31st, 1918, the Mignata was towed to within 500 yards of the entrance
08:53to the Austrian anchorage in Pola, in what is now Croatia.
08:59Lieutenant Commander Raffaele Rosetti and Lieutenant Raffaele Paolucci, the craft's
09:04inventors, succeeded in sinking two ships, including the Austrian battleship Viribus
09:11Unitis, a remarkable accomplishment for which both were awarded medals and by special decree
09:18a financial reward.
09:24Italy alone, among First World War combatants, developed and successfully used submarine
09:30weapons for special operations.
09:33Two decades later, another generation of underwater warriors would carry forward the pioneering
09:39work of Rosetti and Paolucci, creating a successor to the Mignata that would influence naval
09:46operations in yet another global war.
09:52The heritage of Italian naval special operations in the First World War witnessed a renaissance
09:57during the interwar years. The creation of a dedicated special attack unit once again
10:04put Italy at the forefront of submarine special operations.
10:12By the time war broke out in September 1939, fascist Italy had joined with Germany in a
10:18pact of steel.
10:22The 10th Light Flotilla, or Decima Mass, became a covert elite organization, specializing
10:28in manned torpedoes and assault frogmen.
10:33The Mignata of World War I evolved into the SLC, Siluro Alenta Corsa, slow-running torpedoes
10:42more commonly called the Maiale, or Pig, by the crew who manned it.
10:49The craft could submerge to a depth of 100 feet for short periods, the two crewmen breathing
10:55from a six-hour supply of bottled oxygen.
11:01Having approached a target ship, the single explosive warhead was detached and slung by
11:06cables beneath the hull, rather than magnetically attached to it. The time fuse could be delayed
11:13for up to five hours.
11:19The Maiale achieved their greatest success against British warships based in Alexandria,
11:24Egypt in December 1941.
11:29Two of the Maiale placed their charges under the battleships Queen Elizabeth and Advaliant,
11:36and both charges went off. The third placed its charges under the tanker Sagona, which
11:42was also damaged. Now the battleships weren't sunk, but they were incapable of operations
11:48for some months.
11:53On the morning after the attack, the commander of the British Mediterranean fleet made a
11:57point of personally taking the salute as the Royal Navy White Ensign was raised aboard
12:03the Queen Elizabeth.
12:07The spectacle was a public relations ploy for the benefit of the press corps and access
12:12agents. Queen Elizabeth was actually flooded below decks and resting on the bottom.
12:20Meanwhile the British, having recovered several sunken Maiale from the Mediterranean, had
12:27developed their own version of the manned torpedo, called the Chariot. Their primary
12:32target was the German battleship Tirpitz, sister of the Bismarck. Referred to as the
12:39Beast by Winston Churchill, the Tirpitz was safely ensconced in a Norwegian fjord, posing
12:45a constant threat to North Atlantic convoys bringing war material to Russia.
12:52The Chariots, it must be said, didn't do very well in northern waters. Largely because
12:57it's okay to expect a guy to sit in a wetsuit on one of these things in the Mediterranean,
13:01but north of the Arctic Circle, it's a very, very different matter. There was only one
13:06Chariot operation against the Tirpitz, and that was in 1942.
13:15On that ill-fated mission, a Norwegian fishing trawler secretly carrying two Chariots was
13:21engulfed in heavy seas just nine miles from the Beast's lair. The Chariots broke loose
13:27and sank to the bottom. The mission was aborted. But already in development was another means
13:34of striking at the Tirpitz, a class of midget submarine that would prove to be one of the
13:39most effective weapons ever built for the Royal Navy. They were called X-Craft.
13:47The X-Craft was a true submarine, diving to more than 300 feet for up to 12 hours, a limit
13:54imposed by carbon monoxide buildup. It carried a crew of four, three to operate the boat
14:01and a diver, equipped with breeding apparatus, who exited and entered through a so-called
14:07wet-dry chamber. X-Craft did not carry torpedoes as in conventional submarines, but rather
14:15two detachable side cargos, each consisting of a time-delayed, two-ton explosive charge.
14:24The principle was that you went under the bow of your target, dropped one side cargo,
14:29then went round under the stern and dropped the other side cargo, and these exploding
14:34would break the back of the ship.
14:37On September 11th, 1943, six X-Craft departed their base in northwest Scotland, each towed
14:45behind a mother submarine, destination Norway and the Tirpitz. The mission was called Operation
14:53Source. By the time the X-Craft arrived in attack position in the early hours of September
15:0022nd, the treacherous sea had exacted a heavy toll on the small boats.
15:07Of the six, two were lost on the voyage out. One simply disappeared. One had a series of
15:14mechanical breakdowns and returned. However, two of the X-Craft did reach the Tirpitz.
15:19They successfully manoeuvred underneath her and left their side cargos, which duly detonated.
15:25However, both X-Craft were later detected and sunk.
15:30For the price of nine men killed and six taken prisoner, the Tirpitz was so heavily damaged
15:36that she was put out of action for more than seven months. Operation Source would be recognized
15:43as one of the most daring and successful special operations in the history of naval warfare.
15:51Specially modified X-Craft were also used in the war against Japan. Twenty-year-old
15:56Bill Morrison was anxiously preparing to take one of the new X-Craft to the Pacific as second
16:02in command. On the morning of March 6th, 1945, a routine training dive in a Scottish
16:09lock turned into a terrifying ordeal that disrupted those plans and came within a breath
16:15of taking his life. While conducting depth gauge calibrations,
16:22Morrison's craft, the XC-11, had unwittingly drifted from her practice area. Nearby, a
16:30harbor defense ship had been laying a buoy. The vessel's engines were stopped. There was
16:36no audible warning of its presence to the five-man crew of the XC-11 as it surfaced.
16:44Only moments before, by pure luck, Morrison had received permission to go forward to the
16:50XC-11's wet, dry chamber, because that was where the toilet was.
16:56There was an engine starting up of a boat. At that million-to-one minute and chance,
17:03she had finished her job, started up her engine, and her propeller ripped a huge hole in her
17:09pressure hull. And a column of water, about 12 inches broad, came cascading into the control
17:15room. Now, I was in the escape chamber. The captain shouted to me, open the hatch and
17:20get out, Bill. I'm going to break surface. We'll all scramble out.
17:24The XC-11 was flooding too fast. Stern down, the craft plunged deeper and deeper. The electrical
17:32fuses blew. Darkness enveloped the crew.
17:36We were fast becoming almost perpendicular, and I couldn't open the hatch. I was forcing
17:42it with my head and shoulders, with all my strength. I couldn't open it against the pressure
17:46of water. And the air that was left in the escape chamber was slowly being compressed,
17:52and I was breathing my last, keeping my head and mouth in this air pocket, breathing.
17:59When suddenly we hit bottom, leveled out, and the hatch, I had the clips off, the hatch
18:05automatically opened, and I was shot up in this bubble of air. I then tried to grab someone
18:12else from the control room but couldn't get hold of anyone. I then shot up myself. That's
18:17all I remember, because I remember trying to hold my breath and being in great pain
18:22with the pressure of the air that was in my lungs, trying to hold it. And I should
18:25have been releasing it slowly, but I tried to hold it. That's when I went unconscious.
18:31The next thing I remember was that I came to about three quarters of an hour later on
18:35the deck of the ship that sunk us, being given artificial respiration.
18:42Morrison and a petty officer named Swatton were the only two survivors of the XC-11.
18:48They had extricated themselves from a watery tomb 210 feet below the surface.
18:55Thirty years later, 1973, it was established by the Royal Navy and the Guinness Book of
19:02Records as a world record for an escape from a sunken submarine without escape apparatus,
19:09what they call a free ascent.
19:13The irony of Bill Morrison's near-death experience does not end with a fortuitous
19:17toilet break. An old sailor's custom holds that no ship or boat should be named after
19:24the devil. Morrison's commander had challenged that convention when he named the XC-11 Lucifer.
19:32When informed of the lieutenant's decision, a grizzled, petty officer's only comment
19:37was, no good will come of it.
19:43All special operations in World War II were conducted by means other than manned torpedoes
19:48and midget subs. Conventional submarines were also used to land and recover commando units
19:55and special agents.
19:59As the Allied counteroffensive took shape in the Pacific, the British faced an occupied
20:07fortress Europe across the English Channel. Submarines of the Royal Navy were enlisted
20:13to infiltrate personnel up and down the Atlantic coast, as well as into Italy, Crete, and North
20:19Africa.
20:22One of the most ingenious of these operations was a deception undertaken in April 1943 to
20:29mislead the Germans about future Allied plans in the Mediterranean, specifically to draw
20:35attention away from Sicily. It was devised by British naval intelligence and called Operation
20:42Mincemeat.
20:45The body of a man in his thirties was located at a London morgue. This was an ideal candidate,
20:52for his death had required no autopsy. Externally, at least, there was nothing about the cadaver
20:58that was inconsistent with drowning at sea, following an aircraft mishap.
21:09Operation Mincemeat called for the corpse, dressed in military uniform and carrying forged
21:14documents, to be found in such a way as to make the Germans believe they had stumbled
21:19on a great intelligence coup. It was decided that the body should be discovered in Spain.
21:26While technically neutral, the government of Francisco Franco owed its existence to
21:32German intervention during the Spanish Civil War.
21:37The town of Huelva, on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar, was selected as the
21:42point of insertion. Wind and tide conditions were optimal for a body to drift towards the
21:48shore, particularly if it was wearing an inflatable Mae West life jacket.
21:55Furthermore, British intelligence knew that a German agent was very active in Huelva,
22:02and there was little doubt that this agent would be alerted to the presence of a drowned
22:06British officer, and be given access to any official documents.
22:13The anonymous corpse was provided with the wholly fictitious identity of a serving officer,
22:19Major William Martin, Royal Marines.
22:23And he was provided with complete documentation, identity card, a wallet full of money, theatre
22:29tickets, stamps, all the kinds of things that you or I carry around with us, including a
22:33letter from his bank manager complaining that he was overdrawn.
22:38He was also carrying a briefcase which was chained to his wrist, in which were a number
22:44of fake letters, but signed by very senior people in the Allied High Command, which would
22:50give anyone reading them the impression that the Allied attention was focused on the Peloponnese
22:58rather than Sicily.
23:01Major Martin was packed into a specially built airtight canister, labelled as Meteorological
23:07Instruments.
23:09On April 18th, 1943, he was dispatched to the submarine HMS Seraph, scheduled to depart
23:16the next day for Gibraltar.
23:19Lieutenant Norman A. Jewell commanded the Seraph.
23:23Just before I left harbour to go to Mediterranean, from alongside the depot ship, the container
23:34was lowered into the submarine.
23:39Seraph's crew were told that the metal canister contained secret weather reporting instruments
23:44that were to be floated experimentally off the coast of Spain.
23:49A. Jewell knew what was really in the container, and was given precise instructions on where
23:54to deposit Major Martin, but nothing more.
23:58I knew that there were Germans in Spain, trying to get as much knowledge as they could of
24:06what was going on.
24:08I knew that they wanted some message to be picked up from the body, yes.
24:13But what it was, I had no idea.
24:18At 4.30am on April 30th, 1943, Seraph surfaced off the coast of Spain.
24:25The canister was brought up from below deck.
24:29I had to tell the officers then what to expect.
24:32My first lieutenant and myself took the boats off the top, and brought the body out, and
24:43put him down on the casing.
24:46A. Jewell, Seraph's commanding officer, was given very specific orders about where the
24:51body was to be dropped, when the body was to be dropped, in order that the tides would
24:55take it into the beach.
24:57He only deviated from those orders once, and that was as the body was being cast into the
25:04sea, he read the burial service.
25:06He felt it was appropriate.
25:10After Jewell and his officers sworn to secrecy, the words from Psalm 39 held a special significance,
25:17as the unknown soldier drifted toward the Spanish coast.
25:22I will keep my mouth, as it were, with a bridle.
25:26While the ungodly is in my sight, I held my tongue, and spake nothing.
25:31Major Martin had gone to war.
25:38Subsequent radio intercepts confirmed that the Germans believed the authenticity of Major
25:42Martin's documents.
25:44The deception worked.
25:47An entire panzer division was sent to Greece to build up defenses there.
25:52British intelligence sent a cryptic message to Winston Churchill, then in Washington.
25:57Mincemeat swallowed whole.
26:01On July 9th, 1943, as Allied armies stormed ashore at Sicily, they faced a German force
26:08that had been considerably depleted since the serif had cast off its deceitful cargo.
26:15Thousands of British and American troops would owe their lives to this masterful ruse.
26:21The body that assumed the identity of Major William Martin is still buried in the cemetery
26:26in Huelva.
26:27However, in 1995, the British Public Record Office finally divulged what has been called
26:34the best-kept secret of World War II, the true identity of the man who never was.
26:42In life, he was a mentally ill vagrant from a village in South Wales who had committed
26:47suicide by drinking rat poison.
26:50His name was Glindur Michael.
26:54In January 1998, the final postscript to the story of Operation Mincemeat was added
27:00to the gravestone in Huelva.
27:03Glindur Michael served as Major William Martin.
27:10The Allies were not alone in using submarines to infiltrate agents into enemy territory
27:15during World War II.
27:18The Germans initiated a plan of sabotage against the American war effort, particularly aluminum
27:24production.
27:25The plan was called Operation Pastorious.
27:31In June 1942, two four-man teams of saboteurs reached the eastern seaboard of the United
27:37States, one in Long Island, New York, the other near Jacksonville, Florida.
27:46The FBI apprehended the eight men before they could do any harm.
27:50The U-boats were subsequently executed as spies.
27:55But the German Kriegsmarine showed little interest in developing specialized underwater
28:00craft as long as the U-boats were sinking Allied ships in the Atlantic.
28:08It was only in 1943, after the U-boats had been largely driven from their killing grounds,
28:15that the Germans looked to alternative measures.
28:21In desperation, they created the Kverband, or small battle unit.
28:28German special underwater craft were created to interrupt Allied cross-channel supply lines.
28:37The first to see action were a series of manned torpedoes.
28:41Such submarine torpedoes were modified with rudimentary cockpits for a single operator.
28:48Another torpedo, this one to be launched against the enemy, was suspended beneath the pilot
28:53vehicle.
28:56In other words, he had to be his own commanding officer, navigator, weapons engineer, and
29:01engineer officer.
29:02It's just too much for one person to do.
29:05Sometimes the torpedo didn't release, in which case both torpedo and operator would be carried
29:11to destruction.
29:16Not until the two-man, Type 27 submarine, called the Seehund, or Seal, did the Germans
29:22possess an effective midget submarine capable of extended operations.
29:28The Seehund was designed to be an actual attack submarine, armed with torpedoes, not explosive
29:35charges.
29:37The Seehund was a scaled-down real submarine, which had been designed the regular way as
29:43any other submarine in the German Navy.
29:46And it was designed to dive down to 30 meters, that is roughly 100 feet.
29:54But actually, Seehunde could dive down to a depth of almost over 70 meters.
30:01The Seehund embodied a level of engineering sophistication not found in its predecessors.
30:0639 feet long and 5 feet wide, the craft displaced 15 tons when armed with two torpedoes, which
30:14were carried externally.
30:17One young lieutenant assigned to the Seehunds was Arnold Krug.
30:25The small boats were developed because their silhouette was much smaller, which meant visual
30:31detection by airplane was less likely than it was for large boats.
30:38Also the time it takes to get underwater was much shorter.
30:41A diving maneuver with a large boat took 25 seconds, but the Seehund, 5 seconds.
30:50Gone.
30:52The Krug, too, consisted of a commander, in most cases a junior-grade lieutenant, and
30:59an engineering petty officer.
31:02The commander navigated, trimmed the boat, and aimed and fired the torpedoes, while the
31:07engineer steered the course, controlled diving and surfacing operations, and monitored the
31:13oxygen supply.
31:16Just training on the midget submarine was an exhausting and dangerous process.
31:21Crews were given chocolate and caffeine pills to stay awake for as long as 72 hours.
31:27Sleep could be deadly.
31:28A wrong valve setting or oxygen system malfunction generally spelled disaster.
31:40There were trips of two to three days.
31:42Many went to the bottom to sleep, and who did not set the controls the right way.
31:48Unfortunately, they died.
31:53So it was very cramped.
31:55They couldn't move in the boat, so the only possibility to move in the boat was for the
32:03commanding officer, who had the possibility to stand up in his seat and look through the
32:09perspex dome in the conning tower hatch outside.
32:13The engineer could hardly move in the boat.
32:17And they sat there sometimes for up to five, six days.
32:25Beginning in January 1945, between 70 and 90 Sehunds, operating from their base in Holland,
32:33were deployed against Allied shipping.
32:35The Sehund is, of course, a weapon built for relatively close range sea warfare.
32:48It's clear that our area of operation back then could only be the channel.
32:53Our targets were the links between Britain and the invasion front.
32:57We weren't able to do much more.
33:03The Sehunds were hunted by Allied anti-submarine forces, including British and American aircraft
33:09and dozens of escort vessels, all bent on sending the Germans to the bottom of the sea.
33:18Sehunds carried out 142 operational sorties, the final ones within days of Germany's surrender
33:26on May 8, 1945.
33:28They had sunk nine Allied ships and damaged three others, against the loss of 35 Sehunds.
33:36Not a record to be scoffed at, when considering that many were victims of bad weather and
33:40accidents, not Allied countermeasures.
33:49They certainly had a fair chance, and they would have improved.
33:53If there had been enough time to train the crews, and if the whole program would have
33:58started a year sooner, and if, and if, and later in America we saw that it was actually
34:05the most advanced midget submarine in existence.
34:08The Sehunds story did not end with the collapse of the Third Reich.
34:15In the summer of 1945, the U.S. Navy brought two of the captured German midget submarines
34:21to the United States for evaluation.
34:25Arnold Krug and Joachim von Parpart were among the former Kaverbahn sailors chosen to accompany
34:32the Sehunds to Key West, Florida.
34:39There were certain restricted areas which had been especially established so that nobody
34:43would get in our way.
34:45After all, we had to dive again and again.
34:48We went to these restricted areas and then did what they wanted us to do, diving, firing
34:53torpedoes and so on.
34:57Sometimes we had fun with it, when we had to practice these simulated attacks on American
35:01battleships.
35:02We would dive down on one side, cross underneath, reemerge on the other side, and then mockingly
35:07wave to them.
35:08They were astonished and didn't even know where to look.
35:12The Sehund, shown here running on the surface, is returning to Key West after a day of performing
35:18for the U.S. Navy.
35:20The confident young man at the front of the conning tower is Arnold Krug.
35:28I never got to see this film afterwards.
35:31I only saw it for the first time four or five years ago, thanks to Mr. Mattes, and I had
35:37to run it two or three times until I recognized myself again.
35:44Krug's Sehund survives to this day.
35:47It is currently on blocks in Quincy, Massachusetts, alongside the cruiser USS Salem.
35:54Almost 60 years after it went to war, this Sehund is awaiting restoration to its former
36:00state.
36:01Fortunately for the Allies, the Sehund arrived too late for Nazi Germany, but it would influence
36:08submarine special operations for years to come.
36:15In the years following World War II, both Britain and the United States expressed some
36:20interest in developing midget submarines for special operations.
36:25The British maintained their X-craft fleet.
36:28There are rumors, never confirmed, that they were used in espionage in the Baltic against
36:35Soviet targets there.
36:36There was also a plan called Operation Kudgel, which would involve them leaving a nuclear
36:41weapon inside a Soviet harbor.
36:44So they had a number of uses, but for financial reasons, in 1958, they were axed.
36:52Reports that the Soviets were regularly employing midget submarines in fleet exercises caused
36:57great concern in the United States.
37:01This fostered development of a technically advanced midget submarine to examine not only
37:06the state of U.S. harbor defenses, but also the potential of attacking Soviet submarine
37:12bases.
37:15The X-1, designed and built by the Fairchild Corporation of Long Island, New York, was
37:20launched in September 1955.
37:24One month later, X-1 became the only midget submarine ever commissioned in the U.S. Navy.
37:31The craft was 49 feet long, 7 feet wide, and displaced 36 tons.
37:38She carried a crew of four.
37:40Armament consisted of either conventional or nuclear mines, which could be laid at the
37:45entrance to a Russian harbor.
37:49But the X-1's power plant was plagued with problems from the outset.
37:55Fairchild had designed a dual-cycle diesel that functioned normally on the surface, but
38:00burned a mixture of diesel fuel and hydrogen peroxide when submerged.
38:05It didn't need an external air supply to run this engine when the boat was submerged, and
38:11it was very fast.
38:12However, hydrogen peroxide is extremely volatile, and after an explosion in which the boat was
38:18actually blown into two pieces, the experiment with this craft was not repeated.
38:26The demise of the X-1 ended the American midget submarine program.
38:32The advent of the nuclear-powered submarine, with its almost unlimited operational capabilities,
38:38was far more attractive to the submarine community.
38:43During the height of the Cold War, nuclear-powered attack submarines, SSNs, performed underwater
38:50intelligence gathering, surveillance, photographing, and intercepting electronic communications
38:57in countless, highly classified missions.
39:01Operations that navies on either side of the Atlantic will not acknowledge.
39:05Of all the places in the government where you might have secrets, the submarines seem
39:11to keep the secrets the longest and deepest and the best.
39:16The 1980s saw an increased emphasis on counterterrorism and commando-style special operations.
39:24The U.S. Navy converted at least four of its older Ethan Allen and Lafayette-class SSBNs,
39:31nuclear ballistic missile submarines, into dedicated platforms for as many as 67 SEAL
39:38commandos.
39:39No information concerning their employment has ever been released.
39:43The last of these SSBN conversions, the USS Kamehameha, a submarine which first entered
39:50service in 1965, was decommissioned in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in August of 2001.
39:57Kamehameha, at 36 years old, was the third oldest ship of the United States Navy.
40:02The crews, over the 36 years, have done a tremendous job of keeping that submarine in
40:06tip-top shape.
40:07We were operating on it until the day that it went out of commission.
40:12Kamehameha's great advantage, besides underwater endurance, was her cavernous interior space,
40:18originally designed for 16 Polaris ballistic missiles.
40:23She could also accommodate two dry-deck shelters for SDVs and other equipment.
40:30The Kamehameha gave each man his own rack.
40:33It provided us the ability to have physical training equipment on board so the guys could
40:38stay in shape.
40:39It provided us mission planning areas so we could plan instead of planning our missions
40:43on top of a torpedo.
40:47With the anticipated departure of Kamehameha in mind, the Navy configured five Los Angeles
40:52class fast attack submarines to carry dry-deck shelters for special operations.
40:59Additionally, a new attack submarine of the Seawolf class, the USS Jimmy Carter, is currently
41:07undergoing extensive modifications for special missions.
41:10But the real future for submarine special operations lies with the Virginia class attack
41:16submarine and a new combat submersible, the Advanced Seal Delivery System, or ASDS.
41:25Virginia class submarine is the first submarine ever designed with special operations, Navy
41:30special operations, in mind.
41:32This submarine was built from the ground up asking us, Naval Special Warfare SEALs,
41:38what we wanted in a submarine.
41:39It has a nine-man lock-in, lock-out chamber and the first six Virginia class submarines
41:44will all be able to host the dry-deck shelter and the ASDS.
41:49The Advanced Seal Delivery System is 65 feet long, weighs 55 tons, and is air transportable.
41:56It is the first US miniature combat submarine to join the fleet since the ill-fated X-1 program.
42:07The ASDS provides a dry compartment for more than twice the number of SEALs than the older
42:12wet SDVs.
42:16Special operation commandos will be transported into forward areas at higher speeds and over
42:22longer distances.
42:26When my SEALs get in the SDV and they go forward to conduct their operations, they're exposed
42:31to the temperatures of the water, whether it be hot water or very cold water.
42:35While the ASDS is a mini-submersible, then the SEALs that are on board that ASDS will
42:42be at one atmosphere, will be dry as they insert into the target area before they have
42:46to lock out of the ASDS and go conduct their operations.
42:50So our SEALs will get to the objective area better rested, better cared for prior to going
42:55to do their missions that they have to do.
43:00As Kamehameha returned to Pearl Harbor from her last mission, she passed ASDS number one,
43:06heading out the channel for testing in the open sea.
43:10It was a remarkable moment, a symbolic passing of the torch from proven combat veteran to
43:16a new breed of warrior.
43:19The Virginia-ASDS combination represents the state-of-the-art in special operations submarines.
43:27It is the ultimate expression of a concept developed during two world wars and honed
43:33in clandestine missions all over the world.
43:38The ASDS and its contingent of underwater warriors are the spiritual heirs to the Italian
43:45De Cimamas and an idea born in the Adriatic and proved in the Mediterranean half a century
43:52ago.
43:57Advanced communication technology has made underwater eavesdropping more difficult than
44:01ever.
44:02The National Security Agency has experimented with a new type of surveillance, reportedly
44:08a spy sub that could tap into fiber optic cables on the ocean floor.
44:13The tap went undetected, but officials at NSA say the sheer volume of data carried by
44:19those cables makes it almost impossible to process.
44:22For the History Channel, I'm Roger Mudd.
44:25Thanks for watching.