French commando frogmen
- For other nations' commando frogmen, and information about frogmen in general, see Frogman.
France has a large commando frogman tradition. Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a naval officer in World War II and helped much to set up France's commando frogmen. France further developed the role of commando frogmen in the First Indochina War.
Since the 1950s, the commando frogmen of the French Navy have been together in the Commando Hubert, the only Commando marine having combat swimmers. They operate from the ship Le Malin, and this is a very elite special forces unit.
The French intelligence service DGSE has also combat-swimmers brought together in the Centre Parachutiste d'Entrainement aux Opérations Maritimes (CPEOM, "maritime operations training parachutist center") at Roscanvel. First, the two unit were one.
While these are the only French combat-diver units, other French units have divers, including:
- the military engineer units of the French Army have two types of divers:
- the spécialistes d'aide au franchissement (SAF, "specialists for help in clearing"): swimmers trained to recon and clear banks and bridges to permit their use by military vehicles.
- the nageurs d'intervention offensive (NIO, swimmers ""for offensive actions"): they accomplish missions similar to combat swimmers but in rivers and estuaries, to destroy bridges inside enemy territory for example and belong to an engineer-regiment.
- some commando units like the commando group of the 2nd foreign parachutist regiment and the special unit forces of the Army and the Air Force have combat swimmers.
- the GIGN and RAID counter-terrorist groups have divers trained to assault a hijacked ship.
List of operations
Not all of these operations involved diving.
See also
External links