Home : Armed Forces : The Navy :Amphibious Scouts And Raiders
To aid the new Amphibious Force in conducting its mission of landing troops on enemy beaches, a number of specialized units were created. Rear Admiral Henry K. Hewitt was assigned to command the Amphibious Force of the Atlantic Fleet in late April 1942. It would be Admiral Hewitt who would first take the Amphibious Force into combat. To best prepare the force for future operations, Admiral Hewitt was put in charge of all amphibious training for his command. Even the Army units who were to conduct the actual landings were placed temporarily under Hewitt's command for training. The mission was still a new one, but the military situation in the European theater and the diplomatic situation among the Allies was heating up rapidly by the early summer of 1942. Landing craft of any type were still few in number in all of the Navy fleets in early 1942. Trained personnel who knew how to operate in the surf zone along the shore, and who could teach others the same skill, were in even shorter supply than the landing craft. Experienced rough-water Coast Guard chief petty officers were among the first instructors at the new Amphibious Training Base (ATB) at Solomons Island, Maryland, on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. The Coast Guard chiefs and their students made up what was called the Boat Pool at the Solomons ATB. A number of the Boot Pool's chief specialists had been instructors in the Navy's Physical Training Program, nicknamed "Tunney's Fish" after their commander, former world heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney. The very strong and fit chief specialists quickly learned the handling characteristics of a number of landing craft. All of the Boat Pool people would operate the available landing craft at all hours of the day or night, practicing maneuvering, signaling, and assaulting the beach itself. Just the year before, fleet training exercises had demonstrated the need to do amphibious reconnaissance prior to a landing. A Marine Scout-Observer group assisted in the landing exercises and was instrumental in developing some of the techniques for amphibious reconnaissance. Additionally, an Army group experimented with various small craft, conducting beach examinations and hydrographic soundings at likely training sights along the Maryland coast. The seven-man inflatable rubber boat was a direct result of the Army experiments, the lead NCO of the unit working with engineers and production people from Goodyear to produce the now common small boat. By the middle of 1942, the Marine Corps was committed to actions in the Pacific at Guadalcanal and elsewhere. Marines who had been assigned to the Amphibious Force were moved to other assignments, leaving the landing force actions to the Army. With the Marines went their Scout-Observer group, leaving a gap in the intelligencegathering capabilities of the Atlantic Amphibious Force. The Army NCO who had earlier worked with the Army group conducting amphibious reconnaissance experiments and who had been instrumental in developing the seven-man inflatable rubber boat was now a commissioned lieutenant. Lieutenant Lloyd Peddicord was called in to the headquarters of the Atlantic Fleet Amphibious Force at Norfolk, Virginia, and given the assignmerlt of developing a new reconnaissance school on an immediate basis. The new school was to be located at the nearby Naval Amphibious Base (NAB) being built at Little Creek, to the east and slightly south of Norfolk. The decision was made to call the new school the Amphibious Scout and Raider School (Joint). Men from the Army's Third and Ninth divisions would be trained in small boat work, including the new rubber boats, physical training, working with and from landing craft, observation and scouting of beaches and shorelines, and raiding techniques against different types of objectives. The Navy contingent at the Scout and Raider School would take many of the same courses as the Army students, but with much less emphasis on land combat and raiding. Instead, the Navy personnel would be trained to become experts in the small boat handling, including landing craft and rubber boats. The school emphasized the study of navigation and operations in poor conditions and at night, as well as signaling, communications, and gunnery. Small-arms and hand-to-hand combat were taught to all of the Scout and Raider students. The new school was formed on 25 August 1942 by the order of Admiral Hewitt. The first training classes began 1 September 1942. Among the first personnel arriving at the new school were forty sailors from the Boat Pool at Solomons, Maryland, as well as ten of the chief specialists. These naval personnel made up ten Scout boat crews of four men and a Scout boat officer. The Navy group was under the command of Ensign John Bell, USNR. Lieutenant Peddicord was the officer-in-charge of the new Scouts and Raider School. The basic objective of the school was laid out by Lieutenant Peddicord. The Army and Navy men would be trained to scout out and locate landing sites on selected beaches just prior to a planned invasion. The men would go ashore at night, scout the areas, and set up signaling locations. The signals would be used to guide in the waves of landing craft for the invasion. Both the Army and Navy personnel in the new Scouts and Raiders (S&R) unit conducted a number of exercises and demonstrated their abilities to a number of officers from both services, including Major General George S. Patton Jr. Most of the Navy personnel not only had their own mission to learn, they also had to teach these same skills to the members of the Army contingent. In a very short time the school was closed at Little Creek and all of the S&R personnel assigned to Operation TORCH, the upcoming Allied landings in North Africa. The doors at the S&R School had hardly been closed when class number two was mustered to begin training. Army troops who were to join the second S&R class were delayed, as was the start-up date of the training. As these events were taking place in the U.S., Operation TORCH was unfolding in North Africa. The Scouts and Raiders continued their operations in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters well after their initial operations in North Africa. The actions in the Mediterranean continued with additional personnel being trained at North African bases as well as at Fort Pierce. The Scouts and Raiders operated heavily in support of actions in the Italian campaign, especially during the several amphibious landings in Italy. The emphasis during the Italian operations was on scouting and reconnaissance duties. A few S&R personnel were involved with hands-on intelligence gathering operations off the beaches of France in preparation for D day. For the Normandy landings themselves, S&R personnel were available and were primarily involved with leading the initial landing craft waves in to shore. Operating from command ships, the S&R personnel were not able to use the most efficient means at their disposal to guide in the craft by infiltrating the beach areas the night before and setting up signaling stations. The first group included Phil H. Bucklew, the "Father of Naval Special Warfare," after whom the Naval Special Warfare Center building is named. Commissioned in October 1942, this group saw combat in November 1942 during OPERATION TORCH, the first allied landings in Europe. Scouts and Raiders also supported landings in Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, Normandy, and southern France. S&R personnel in the Mediterranean theater also operated as part of the Operation DRAGOON forces. Emphasis at the Scout and Raider School after the Normandy and Atlantic operations were completed was on training an officer corps in Scout and Raider skills. Once qualified, the officers would be able to act in a staff capacity for operations in the Pacific theater. Staff duty not being something that held a lot of appeal to many S&R School graduates, a number of the officers managed to get into the field and operate as often as they could. A second group of Scouts and Raiders, code-named Special Service Unit #1, was established on July 7, 1943, as a joint and combined operations force. The first mission, in September 1943, was at Finschafen on New Guinea. Later ops were at Gasmata, Arawe, Cape Gloucester, and the East and South coast of New Britain, all without any loss of personnel. Conflicts arose over operational matters, and all non-Navy personnel were reassigned. The unit, renamed 7th Amphibious Scouts, received a new mission, to go ashore with the assault boats, buoy channels, erect markers for the incoming craft, handle casualties, take offshore soundings, blow up beach obstacles and maintain voice communications linking the troops ashore, incoming boats and nearby ships. The 7th Amphibious Scouts conducted operations in the Pacific for the duration of the conflict, participating in more than 40 landings. The third Scout and Raiders organization operated in China. Scouts and Raiders were deployed to fight with the Sino-American Cooperation Organization, or SACO. To help bolster the work of SACO, Admiral Ernest J. King ordered that 120 officers and 900 men be trained for "Amphibious Roger" at the Scout and Ranger school at Ft. Pierce, FL. They formed the core of what was envisioned as a "guerrilla amphibious organization of Americans and Chinese operating from coastal waters, lakes and rivers employing small steamers and sampans." While most Amphibious Roger forces remained at Camp Knox in Calcutta, three of the groups saw active service. They conducted a survey of the Upper Yangtze River in the spring of 1945 and, disguised as coolies, conducted a detailed three-month survey of the Chinese coast from Shanghai to Kitchioh Wan, near Hong Kong. Today's Naval Special Warfare operators can trace their origins to the Scouts and Raiders, Naval Combat Demolition Units, Office of Strategic Services Operational Swimmers, Underwater Demolition Teams, and Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons of World War II. While none of those early organizations have survived to present, their pioneering efforts in unconventional warfare are mirrored in the missions and professionalism of the present Naval Special Warfare warriors.
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