Clearance diver
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A Clearance Diver was originally a specialist naval diver who used explosives underwater to remove obstructions to make harbours and shipping channels safe to navigate, but later the term "clearance diver" was used to include other naval underwater work. Units of clearance divers were first formed during and after the Second World War to clear ports and harbours in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe of unexploded ordnance and shipwrecks and booby traps laid by the Germans.
The first units were Royal Navy Mine and Bomb Disposal Units. They were succeeded by the "Port Clearance Parties" (P Parties). The first operations by P Parties included clearing away the debris of unexploded ammunition left during the Normandy Invasion. Six groups of Clearance Divers including Commonwealth and European allied forces were in operation by 1945.
Naval work diver training is much longer and harder than sport diver training and has much stricter entry requirements.
For a long time navies used the old-type heavy standard diving dress when work needed doing underwater. During and after World War II some of them started using frogman-type gear when frogman's kit became available. Later they started often using open-circuit scuba gear for work diving.
In some navies including Britain's, work divers must have a line and a linesman when possible.
[edit] Nations with naval work diving groups
[edit] Australia
The Royal Australian Navy's Clearance Diving Teams (CDTs) also serve as combat divers.
[edit] Britain
British Royal Navy naval work divers are officially called Clearance Divers.
During WWII they at first often used the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus and no diving suit, and no swimfins and they swam by breast stroke.
- 1942 December 17: (ref. Decima Flottiglia MAS#1942): 6 Italians on three manned torpedoes attacked Gibraltar harbor. A British patrol boat killed one torpedo's crew (Lt. Visintini and Petty Officer Magro) with a depth charge. Their bodies were recovered, and their swimfins were taken and used by two of Gibraltar's British guard divers (who dived with Davis Escape Sets and (up to here) breast stroke swimming and no fins) (Sydney Knowles and Commander Lionel Crabb). This was the first known British frogman use of swimfins, rather than a Sladen suit and weighted boots riding a Chariot.
- 1944 November: In Livorno in Italy an Italian frogman called Vago came over and joined them and brought them two Decima Flottiglia MAS issue oxygen rebreathers, which proved better in use than Davis Submerged Escape Apparatuses and lasting longer on a dive. He also brought them an Italian light 2-piece frogman's drysuit: before then they dived with their skin exposed. [1]
For a long time they usually used the Siebe Gorman CDBA rebreather.
In the 1990s they used a type of automatic mixture rebreather which is so heavy that on surfacing after a dive even a very physically fit naval diver preferred to remove the rebreather while still in the water and have it craned out separately.
Other combinations of kit used in the past by British work divers were:-
- Sladen suit and weighted boots and Siebe Gorman Salvus.
- Sladen suit and weighted boots and aqualung. According to a 1950s British naval diving manual, this was the only approved way to use the aqualung.
See http://www.mcdoa.org.uk/RN_Clearance_Diving_Branch.htm .
[edit] Canada
See Canadian armed forces divers
[edit] Estonia
EOD Tuukrigrupp - EOD Clearance Diver UNIT
[edit] France
France's Clearance Divers are called the Plongeurs Démineurs (link in French).
[edit] Germany
Minentaucher is Germany's Clearance Diver force.
[edit] Norway
Norway's naval work divers and Clearance Diver force is called Minedykkerkommandoen = "the mine diver command".
[edit] Sweden
Sweden has had a clearance diver division since 1952.
[edit] USA
See Underwater Demolition Team - US Navy, 1943 -1967
[edit] References
- ^ pp 16-20, issue 41, Historical Diving Times, ISSN 1368-0390
