A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a military capacity which can include combat. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, or combatant diver, or combat swimmer.
"Combat swimming" is often used to mean "combat diving", but according to some strictly speaking means surface swimming without a breathing apparatus for coastal or ship infiltration. Such actions are a historical form of "frogman" activity and an important feature of naval special operations.
The term '"frogman" is often popularly used to refer to a civilian scuba diver. The word arose around 1940 from the appearance of a diver in shiny drysuit and large fins. Though the preferred term by scuba users is "diver", the "frogman" epithet persists in informal usage by non-divers, especially in the media and often in reference to professional scuba divers such as in a police role. Some sport diving clubs include the word "Frogmen" in their names.
In the U.S. military, divers trained in scuba or SCUBA who deploy for military assault missions are called "combat divers". This term is used to refer to the Navy SEALs, elements of Marine Recon, Army Ranger RRD members, Army Special Forces divers, Air Force Pararescue, and the Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) units.
In Britain, police divers have often been called "police frogmen". The first British police diver was Ian Fraser, a policeman who, needing to search underwater for evidence of a body, did not use a drag but went home and fetched his sport scuba gear.
Some countries' frogman organizations include a translation of the word "frogman" in their official names, e.g. Denmark's Frømandskorpset and Norway's Froskemanskorpset; others call themselves "combat divers" or similar. Others call themselves by indefinite names such as "special group 13" and "special operations unit".
Many nations and some irregular armed groups deploy or have deployed combat frogmen.
The first well-known frogmen were the navy diver members of World War II Italian commando frogmen, now ComSubIn, being part of Decima Flottiglia MAS, nicknamed "Uomini Rana", Italian for "frog men", because of an underwater swimming frog kick style, similar to that of frogs.[1] Originally these divers were called "Uomini Gamma" because they were members of the top secret special unit called "Gruppo Gamma", which originated from the kind of Pirelli rubber skin-suit[2] nicknamed muta gamma used by these divers, but Uomini Rana was afterwards commonly used. This special corps used an early scuba set which did not make bubbles, called A.R.O (from Auto Respiratore ad Ossigeno), an evolution 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,[3] 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 build by Pirelli and SALVAS from about 1933, and so became a precursor of the modern rebreather.[4][5][6][7]
For this new way of underwater diving, the Italian frogmen trained in La Spezia, Liguria, using the local Genoese newly diffused spearfishing free diving equipment (diving mask, snorkel, swimfins, wetsuit), the first specially made diving watch (the luminescent Panerai), and the new scuba unit.[8] This was a revolutionary alternative way and the start of the transition from the usual heavy underwater diving of the hard hat divers (the only method used from 18th century) to self-contained divers, free of being tethered by an air line and rope connection.
In 1933 Italian companies were already producing underwater oxygen rebreathers, but the first scuba diving set is generally recognised inside the USA as being invented in 1939 by Christian Lambertsen, who dubbed it the Lambertsen Amphibious Respirator Unit (LARU).[9]
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.
Military diving is a branch of professional diving carried out by armed forces. They may be divided into:
These groups may overlap, and the same men may serve as assault divers and work divers, as in the Australian Clearance Diving Team (RAN).
Training armed forces divers, including combat divers, is often harder, longer, and more complicated than civilian sport scuba diver training, typically takes several months full-time, and the trainees must be at full armed forces fitness and discipline at the start. It needs much higher levels of fitness, and during the course there is often a high elimination rate of trainees who do not make the grade. For more details see the articles on each nation's frogman group below and their external links.
Typically, a frogman with closed circuit breathing equipment will stay within 8 metres (26 ft) due to the risk of oxygen poisoning. For comparison, trained and properly educated recreational divers with open circuit equipment can dive to 50 metres (160 ft) or more.
For example, the PADI Open Water Diver (the most basic rank) course takes 5 dives in a swimming pool and 4 dives in open water (i.e. sea, lake, etc.); after the course the qualified diver is allowed to dive to 18 metres (60 ft). The next step (Advanced Open Water Diver) allows him to dive to 30 metres (100 ft). A further Deep Diver speciality course allows him to dive to 40 metres (130 ft) maximum, which is considered safe for civil scuba diving. European agencies commonly impose a 50 metres (160 ft) maximum on recreational diving. This can be compared with military frogman training courses as described in some of the articles about national military frogman bodies included or pointed to below, and their included external links.
In some cases, well-trained and experienced amateur divers can - legislation permitting - be capable of accomplishing tasks that regulations forbid professional divers from undertaking. As an example, Simon Mitchell was able to conduct a search for the engine of a crashed helicopter at 74 metres (243 ft), when naval or police divers could not.[10]
Frogmen's breathing sets on covert operations should have particular features.
USA frogmen's rebreathers tended to have the breathing bag on the back before enclosed backpack-box rebreathers became common.
A frogman's breathing set should:
As a result, the frogman's breathing set should be fully closed circuit rebreather, preferably not semi-closed circuit and certainly not open-circuit scuba, because:
Combat frogmen sometimes use open-circuit scuba sets during training and for operations where being detected or long distance swimming are not significant concerns.
The Russian IDA71 military and naval rebreather is a typical frogman set:
Some frogmen use an ordinary diving mask; some use a fullface mask, which is less easily lost underwater. The older type of British frogman's and naval diving mask was full face and had a mouthpiece inside it.
Some frogmen use a mouthpiece and noseclip or a mouth-and-nose (orinasal) breathing mask instead of a diving mask with eye windows, and special contact lenses to correct the vision refraction error caused by the eyeballs being directly submerged. This is to avoid a searchlight or other lights reflecting off the mask window and thus revealing his presence, but it exposes the eyeballs to any pollution, poison, or organisms in the water.
The United States military has adopted Oceanic/Aeris's "Integrated Diver Display Mask". It is a basic "Heads-Up Display" that lets divers monitor depth, bottom time, tank pressures, and related information while leaving their hands free for other tasks.
Another problem with a frogman who may have to come ashore and operate on land is the awkwardness of walking on land in fins, unless he plans to discard his kit and return to base by some other way than by diving, or if the frogmen plan to take and hold a position on land until other troops arrive. Some sport diving fins have the blade angled downwards for more effective swimming, but this makes walking on them more awkward.
The usual solution is for the frogman to take his fins off and carry them, but that takes time and occupies a hand carrying them unless he can clip them in to his kit or thread an arm through the fins' straps. Nowadays all fins can be clipped onto a belt without having any disadvantages.
Another type of fin that frogmen could use would have a lockable hinge which on land can be unlocked to let the fin blade hinge up out of the way when walking: for example Flipfins.
The first type of British naval swimming fin had a short blade which was even shorter at the big toe side: this made walking on land easier for such purposes as creeping up on a sentry from behind on land, but reduced swimming speed.
The frogman's diving suit should be a tough scratch-and-cut-resistant drysuit (perhaps reinforced with kevlar), and not a soft foam wetsuit. A wetsuit can be worn under the drysuit as a warm undersuit. In very warm water, a thin tough drysuit can be worn with no undersuit.
For Bomb Disposal Operations, Canadian Naval Divers wear Bomb suits.
It should not have obvious bright colored patches, unit badges or the suit's maker's advertising. Diving sea-police types, however, may find that a unit badge is useful.
Weapons that can be carried by a frogman include:
Frogmen may approach their site of operation and return to base in various ways including:
The U.S. and U.K. forces use these official definitions for mission descriptors:
A new English translation of the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea uses the word frogman uniformly and wrongly to mean a diver in standard diving dress or similar, to translate French scaphandrier.
Ancient Assyrian stone carvings show images which some have supposed to be frogmen with crude breathing sets. However, the "breathing set" was merely a goatskin float used to cross a river, and its "breathing tube" was to inflate it by mouth. See timeline of underwater technology.
Many comics have depicted combat frogmen and other covert divers using two-cylinder twin-hose open-circuit aqualungs. All real covert frogmen use rebreathers because the stream of bubbles from an open-circuit set would give away the frogman's position.
Many aqualungs have been anachronistically depicted in comics in stories set during World War II, when in reality, at that time period, aqualungs were unknown outside Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his close associates in Toulon in south France. Some aqualungs were smuggled out of occupied France during the war (these may have been Commeinhes aqualungs), but the aqualung for the most part was not a player in combat in World War II.
The movie The Frogmen also made this mistake, using three-cylindered aqualungs, as seen in the movie poster. DESCO were making three-cylinder constant flow sets that lacked the demand valve of the aqualung, but they were rarely deployed in the war, and the preferred system was the rebreather developed by Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen.[12]
After Ian Edward Fraser in 1957 wrote a book, Frogman V.C., about his experiences, whoever designed its dust cover depicted on it a frogman placing a limpet mine on a ship, wearing a breathing set with twin over-the-shoulder wide breathing tubes emitting bubbles from behind his neck, presumably drawn after an old-type aqualung. [1] [2].
The film Submarine X-1, made in 1969, loosely based on the real Operation Source, gets British wartime frogman's equipment very wrong and anachronistic. The breathing sets shown were open-circuit and were merely a very fat cylinder crosswise across the belly, with a black single-hose second-stage regulator such as was not invented until the 1960s. Also shown were ordinary sport scuba weight belts and ordinary eyes-and-nose diving masks with elliptical windows. The frogmen in the real war operation mostly used Sladen suits and an early type of Siebe Gorman rebreather.
There have been thousands of drawings (mostly in comics, some elsewhere) of combat frogmen and other scuba divers with two-cylinder twin-hose aqualungs shown wrongly with one wide breathing tube coming straight out of each cylinder top with no regulator, far more than of twin-hose aqualungs drawn correctly with a regulator, or of combat frogmen with rebreathers. See this image for the correct layout of an old-type aqualung.
Another common mistake when drawing a diver standing on land or on deck with a bulky backpack breathing set is to show him standing vertically, whereas in reality he would lean forwards somewhat, as the weight of a backpack breathing set (20 kg or more with big twin air cylinders) pushes his center of gravity backwards. The same often happens with a film actor wearing mockup non-metal air cylinders (in somewhat the same manner as an actor carrying an empty suitcase or wearing an empty camping backpack).
Frogman-type operations have featured in many comics, books, and movies. Some try to reconstruct real events; others are completely fictional. Some make mistakes as described above. Examples are:
In ancient Roman and Greek times, etc., there were many instances of men swimming or diving for combat, but they always had to hold their breath and had no diving equipment, except sometimes a hollow plant stem used as a snorkel.
The first known frogmen-type operations using breathing apparatus were by the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS, which formed in 1938 and was in action first in 1940. See Timeline of underwater technology and each of the nations' frogman unit links below.
In 1942, a young physician named Christian J. Lambertsen invented the first Self-contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA) and demonstrated it to OSS (after already being rejected by the U.S. Navy) in a pool at a hotel in Washington D.C.[13] OSS not only bought into the concept, they hired Dr. Labertsen to lead the program and build-up the dive element of their maritime unit.[13] The OSS was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency and the maritime element still exists inside their Special Activities Division.[14]
See also: Lionel Crabb, a frogman who spied on a Soviet warship in Portsmouth, UK.
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.
The Buzos Tácticos is Argentina's combat frogman force.
The Clearance Diving Team (RAN) is Australia's combat frogman and underwater work force. The Australian SAS also undertakes water operations.
The Special Forces Group (Belgium) has a specialized diving company for education and training of combat swimmers.
Refer to the 1967 animated film.
Croatian BSD's 3rd Company is specialized for seaborne operations and is responsible for training of combat swimmers and divers.
They played a major role on the War of attrition and the Crossing of the Suez Canal on 6 October 1973, by obstructing the oil pipes that would pump burning oil from Bar Lev Line to the canal.
During Eritrea's war of independence against Ethiopia, the rebel forces had a combat frogman force. After the war, some of those frogmen were retrained as dive guides for the sport scuba diving tourism trade.
The Finnish Navy has trained Finnish combat divers since 1954. Conscripts and career military are eligible to apply for the training. Annually, about 20 conscripts are trained for diving duties. Applying for combat diver training is voluntary, and the selection criteria are stringent.[15] The conscript divers are trained either for anti-mine or for commando operations, while career personnel may also be trained for deep-sea diving duty.[16] All conscript divers receive at least NCO training during their 12-month service period.
The MCU is the elite naval special operations unit of the Indian Navy that undertakes underwater combat.
The TNI-AL/Indonesian Navy Underwater Combat Unit is called Kopaska.
Shayetet 13 is the elite naval commando frogmen unit of the Israeli Navy. The unit is considered one of the primary Special Forces units of the Israel Defense Forces. The unit is one of the most secretive in the Israeli military. The details of many missions and identities of active operatives are kept highly classified.
King Abdullah II of Jordan is a qualified frogman.
Malaysia Royal Malaysian Navy has a navy special force his called Paskal and Royal Malaysia Police has a team of special elite force VAT 69 frogman able to run their operations It includes frogmen.
The Dutch Amphibious Reconnaissance Platoon is part of the Special Forces unit of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps.
The New Zealand Navy trains all NZ Army, NZ Police, and NZ Customs divers. The NZSAS's Amphibious Troop act as an elite Frogman Force. Military Dive Training support is also supplied to Singapore, Malaysia, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa.[17]
Norway's commando frogmen corps is called Marinejegerkommandoen, "the naval ranger command", which is something like the British SBS.
Norway has a clearance diver group called Minedykkerkommandoen, "the mine diver command".
Pakistan's SSG has a naval unit modeled on the US Navy SEALs. The SSGN has headquarters in Karachi headed by a Pakistan Navy Commander. It has a strength of one company and is assigned to unconventional warfare operations in the coastal regions. During war, it is assigned to Midget submarines. All other training is similar to the Army SSG with specific marine orientation provided at its headquarters.
"Special Forces Combat Divers"
Three Polish military divisions train and deploy frogmen in military operations. Most known are GROM water operations detachment, 1 Pułk Specjalny Komandosów's frogmen company and Naval Special Operations Unit "MJDS "Formoza"". Polish frogmen operators are confirmed to use these weapons:
The Polish SF uses e.g. R.C.H OXY-NG2, Aqua Lung Amphora closed-circuit apparatus.
Spain has been training combat divers and swimmers since 1967. Two units in the Spanish Navy currently operate under a Naval Special Warfare mandate:
There are working plans to fuse the two units into a single "Naval Special Warfare Unit" (UGNE), while maintaining their functional distinctiveness.
Underwater search and Finding Commership is the unit that gives diving services in Turkey. It also gives deepwater diving and mine diving lessons to officers and petty officers. They become 1. Class Divers. Su Altı Taaruz commandos are high level divers.
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