Tag Archives: Green Beret

Green Beret dive teams before they were actually Green Berets

Posted on by Leave a comment

This Big Picture film on Special Forces Amphibious Training in 1956 Okinawa is insightful.

Of note is the fact that the “fighting frogman” detachment receives instruction in conducting water insertion and demolition training off the coast of White Beach aboard a U.S. Naval ship while wearing their floppy Lovat Scouts-style green berets– which was not officially approved for wear by the Army until 25 September 1961 in an evolved, more close-fitting, format.

The tactics covered are classic late WWII/Korean War-era UDT team and Marine recon evolutions. Good stuff regardless.

Those triple tank rigs, tho…

Thanks, Jeff!

The SF carrying buoy tenders

Posted on by 2 comments

Recently two tactically loaded Zodiac rigid-hulled inflatable boats containing nine Army Green Berets and three communications specialists made a beach landing and stormed Camp Rilea, an Oregon Army National Guard Training Center in Warrenton, Oregon.

How the ribs got to the area from over-the-horizon was via the USCG buoy tender Fir.

Soldiers from the U.S. Army 10th Special Forces Group, out of Army Base Fort Carson, Colo., prepare their Zodiac rigid-hulled inflatable boats for deployment while aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Fir, a 225-foot Sea-going Buoy Tender during transit off the northern coast of Oregon, June 22, 2016. The cutter supplied equipment storage and deployment during a joint-agency operation. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Class Levi Read.

Soldiers from the U.S. Army 10th Special Forces Group, out of Army Base Fort Carson, Colo., prepare their Zodiac rigid-hulled inflatable boats for deployment while aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Fir, a 225-foot Sea-going Buoy Tender during transit off the northern coast of Oregon, June 22, 2016. The cutter supplied equipment storage and deployment during a joint-agency operation. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Class Levi Read.

Sure, it’s a training exercise involving National Guard SF guys, but it shows how such assets could be used if needed in an asymmetric maritime environment such as seizing oil rigs, conducting raids or recon on offshore islands and coastal zones, etc.

It should be noted that the Coast Guard uses the 225-foot Juniper-class seagoing buoy tenders such as Fir in conducting sovereignty and fishery patrols of outlying Pacific territories with allied shipriders and along the Alaskan Arctic coast.

If things go squirrely, say with non-nation actors, pirates or other rogues in those areas that a small group of pipehitters could fix and naval assets are not available, it’s clear that some may see NG SF ODAs or the Coast Guard’s own MSST units carried from buoy tenders as a low-tech option.

Then there is always the Persian Gulf as well…

Horse soldiers

Posted on by Leave a comment

Going back to the days of Gen. Washington’s Continental Dragoons and pre-Revolutionary War militia units such as the Philadelphia Light Horse there have always been equestrians in the U.S. Army.

They kept up this tradition for well over 170 years of taking horses into battle.

While the remaining “official” cavalry units in the military were switched to motors in the first part of WWII, it is believed the irregular horsemen of the 10th Mountain Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, 10th Mountain Div carried out the last cavalry charge in the Army when they rushed a German position in April 1945.

However, that was not the end of Uncle’s horses.

The Marines still train for pack horse use in Mountain Warfare School. Several Army posts in the Western States (Bliss/Huachuca/Carson) have had or currently maintain ceremonial Horse Cavalry Detachments. The Caisson Platoon endures with he Old Guard and sadly is one of the most heavily worked details in the military.

SF famously used shaggy Afghan ponies in the effort to help Dostum’s Northern Alliance in the days after 9/11 and have the monument to prove it.

Speaking of which…

Man don't those white horses glow at night! Green Berets from 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) ride horses to travel through rough terrain during a site reconnaissance training exercise on March 1, 2016 in Nevada. (U.S. Army photo by 3rd SFG (A) Combat Camera)

Man don’t those white horses glow at night! Green Berets from 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) ride horses to travel through rough terrain during a site reconnaissance training exercise on March 1, 2016 in Nevada. (U.S. Army photo by 3rd SFG (A) Combat Camera)

A Green Beret from 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) practices horse riding techniques, February 26, 2016 in Nevada. (U.S. Army photo by 3rd SFG (A) Combat Camera)

A Green Beret from 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) practices horse riding techniques, February 26, 2016 in Nevada. (U.S. Army photo by 3rd SFG (A) Combat Camera)

Plumber’s Dream, Nazi Nightmare : The STEN gun

Posted on by Leave a comment

When the chips were down in World War II, the British Army needed a reliable submachine gun that could be mass-produced without tying down vital munitions factories that were already overstretched. This led to a gun, designed as an emergency weapon, which has become a classic of modern firearms design.

When Hitler invaded Poland in Sept. 1939, that country’s allies, Britain and France reluctantly declared war on Nazi Germany. Fast forward nine months and the Germans had defeated and occupied not only Poland, but also Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and France, leaving the Brits to face Hitler’s immense military machine alone.

Worse, in the evacuation of the British Army from France at Dunkirk, the Tommies had lost much of their pre-war armament.

This left the country in dire need of firearms to equip not only the regular forces, but also a rapidly growing Home Guard ready, as Winston Churchill promieed at the time that, “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

But they needed a good, cheap gun, and lots of them.

sten gun assembly girl
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com