Growing up the movie “Attack Force Z” one of my favorite movies and still is. I have always wanted to an old school WW2 operation doing an insert by Klepper kayaks and blow-up a ship in a harbor or a bridge. You know like Cockleshell heroes or Attack Force Z  

SOE-Australia (SOA) was a WWII Special Forces and covert operations organization operating in the Pacific theater behind Japanese lines. It was made up of men and women from Australian, British, New Zealand, Canadian, South African, Indonesian, Timorese and Malay. SOA fought a secret, undercover war against the Japanese occupying force on the islands north of Australia. With the success of the British SOE unit in the European theater, Winston Churchill ordered that a similar unit be formed in the pacific. SOA was made up from many different units like the Royal Australian Navy’s  Coastwatcher’s, a propaganda unit the Far Eastern Liaison Office (FELO), the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/SIA), a Dutch East Indies intelligence unit (NEFIS), the United States’ Philippine Regional Section (PRS, operating in the southern Philippines) and an Australian/British Special Operations group, which was to carry out missions behind enemy lines. The SOA took part in hundreds of covert operations against the Japanese and were directly responsible for eliminating thousands of enemy troops and sinking tons of ships and supplies, they paid a high price with more than eighty SOA commandos losing their lives. To maintain security, the SOA was given a cover name – Inter-Allied Services Department (IASD, mostly referred to as the ISD). It had British SOE agents that had escaped Singapore and the Dutch East Indies before it fell to the Japanese. That helped get it up and running.

SOA operators could operate in parties as small as two men, ISD Operatives faced overwhelming odds against a barbaric and increasingly desperate enemy. They conducted similar operations as many other SF groups in WWII. From Jedburgh’s type of missions (training indigenous guerrilla forces) to conduct direct action missions and raiding targets of opportunity. They also performed special reconnaissance missions close to enemy forces behind the lines.

The ISD men kept quiet about their exploits for over 50 years, and even today, the full story has never really been made public. The whole story of ISD operations during WWII is one that has been largely overlooked and misunderstood for the past 75 years. One of the main reasons for this is the misunderstanding that ISD was named Z or M Special Unit. The Z and M just referred to their administrative arm of the units. Z Special Unit was also used for requisitioning stores and transport through Australian Army channels. There are cases where Colonels were removed from transport aircraft to make room for ISD Corporals. Such was the administrative power of the Z Special Unit. So, this is how it was broken down, for Australian Army personnel and civilians assigned to ISD, and later to SRD, and as such, Z Special Unit appears on the service records of every Australian soldier who was assigned to either of those organizations. Another reason for some of the confusion is that in early 1943 the SOA was giving a new code name the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), and the term SOA was only to be used at the highest level. Z Special Unit does not appear on the service records of RAAF, RAN or British, NZ, Canadian, or South African personnel assigned to ISD or SRD since they weren’t enlisted in the Australian Army. However, Z Special Unit or Z Force became a common term in the post-war years, even among SRD Veterans. Although it is historically inaccurate to refer to the Special Operations as Z Special Unit. So, where do M Special units fit in? During the war an Allied Special Forces Reconnaissance Team under the command of the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD.) It was the successor of the Coastwatcher’s unit. Raised in Queensland, Australia, in 1943, the unit operated behind enemy lines for long periods in the Pacific theatre, collecting intelligence such as enemy troop movements and shipping details. It was disbanded at the end of the war in 1945.  

Unlike its sister unit, M Special Unit wasn’t as well known for direct action missions. Z Special Unit was comprised of about 81 members and generally inserted via small boat, submarine, or airplane and conducted quick hit and run missions. They would also conduct intelligence-gathering operations. M Special Unit, on the other hand, operated behind enemy lines for extended periods and did long-range intelligence collection; as such, they tried to go undetected and, as such rarely engage the enemy.  

Also, all personal assigned to ISD were still listed as attached to the parent unit they came from. The reason for this was to help maintain secrecy. It was also used as a way to hide the funding for the ISD. As one of the best ways to keep something secret is never to show that money is going to them. The units never had an official insignia. You will often see a Z of M with a dagger through it. This was not made until 1970 and unfortunately, is mistaken for the units WWII symbol. 

One of ISD/SRD’s most famous Operations was called Jaywick. They used a 68-ton wooden ship. British authorities had seized the Kofuku Maru in Singapore following Japan’s entry into the war. In 1943 she was renamed Krait and assigned to the SRD. The objective of Operation Jaywick was for SRD members to attack Japanese shipping in Singapore. SRD commandos paddled into Singapore harbor in kayaks and attached limpet mines to Japanese enemy shipping. The stealthy raiders sank seven ships and about 39,000 tons of supplies and equipment before escaping home to Australia. By the time they returned nearly seven weeks later, the crew of 14 had carried out one of the most successful clandestine raids in Australian history. Throughout the war, the 70-foot wooden-hulled boat involved in the Jaywick raid, MV Krait, sank more shipping than any other ship in the Australian navy.  

In a subsequent mission to Jaywick called Operation Rimau, the raiding party was detected by the enemy, hunted down and executed. Seventeen of SRD members lie in graves at Kranji War Cemetery in Singapore. In Operation Copper, eight men landed on an island off New Guinea to disable enemy guns before the Allied landing. Discovered by the Japanese, three commandos were captured, tortured, and executed. Four others escaped and fled out to sea, but only one made it home.

No matter what their name was or what they are called now, the units of WWII are the forefathers of today’s Special Forces in Australian and New Zealand and helped end the war.

www.australiansas.com/Establis%20SF

As far back as 3000 B.C.E (5000 years), people were going after natural sponges off the coast of Crete and breathing through the world’s first snorkel tube that they made from hollow reeds. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, recalled instances of divers breathing through a device similar to the trunk of an elephant.

In later years, the Assyrians developed an alternative snorkel device. They filled animal skins with air to breathe from under water. Aristotle wrote about divers who used a tube that led from the surface to the divers below. The consummate Renaissance Man, Leonardo Da Vinci, had many designs that he called diving or underwater apparatuses. He designed a self-contained dive suit and even sketched diving gloves with webbed fingers. Technically, they could be considered the first fins.

The development of the diving bell, which contained air bubbles for divers to inhale while underwater, was overseen by Alexander the Great.

• 900 B.C.E- Assyrian divers used animal skins filled with air to lengthen the time they could spend below the water’s surface.

• 333 B.C.E Alexander the Great encourages divers to develop and use the first diving bell — a large bell-shaped object that trapped air in the top of the bell (and a person) to submerge and maintain the ability to breathe.

• 1538- Greeks in Spain (Toledo) submerge themselves in a large diving bell-like gadget to the bottom of the Tagus River, only to emerge later with dry clothes and a still-burning candle.

The same concept allows modern-day snorkelers to breathe air from the surface with their face submerged. Modern rubber and plastics make equipment durable and comfortable while offering maximum safety. Snorkels have significantly improved their function and use with the advances in rubber and plastic composite materials. The most popular snorkel is the J-shaped plastic tubes connected to the diver’s mask by a flexible strap or clip assembly.

Snorkels for diving

The snorkel makes it possible to breathe safely on the surface without using the air in your tanks. When choosing a snorkel, think first about what you want to use it for and how it will most. The diameter is critical because it minimizes your effort while using it. Most snorkels are brightly colored, so dive boats can easily spot them and you, more importantly.

Free-diving Snorkels

Free-diving snorkels are often the simplest models. They are made without a complex purging system and valves to limit breathing noise; snorkels are also shorter to quickly expel water from the tube and easily tuck away. They usually have a slightly larger diameter to ventilate between two dive immersions properly. They are one of the best for Combat swimmers to use, as they are small and can be packed away quickly and come in dark colors.

Types of Snorkels

There are four common types of snorkels, and each has its advantages and disadvantages.

Classic

The classic snorkel, also called a J-style snorkel, is a plastic tube with a mouthpiece attached. This snorkel is usually slightly bent, but it can also be made to fit a more specific shape. The SCUBAPRO Apnea snorkel can be rolled up and easily stored in a pocket or attached to the sides or bottom of a Rebreather. This is the one best suited for combat swimmer operations.

Flexible Snorkel

The flexible snorkel has a purge valve. This snorkel has a flexible portion and a rigid portion, as well as a one-way valve located at the bottom that makes it easier to expel any water that may get into the snorkel. The added flexibility allows divers to fit the snorkel better around their masks and faces. The purge valve at the bottom of the mouthpiece helps ensure uninterrupted breathing as it flushes water out every time you exhale.

Simi Dry

The semi-dry snorkel is a mix of a classic and dry snorkel. The top features a splashguard, and sometimes even a flexible tube and a purge valve. The splashguard at the top helps prevent splashes or sprays of water quickly entering the tube. It doesn’t stop all the water from entering, especially if you fully submerge yourself underwater or if water covers the top like in a high wave.

Dry

The dry snorkel has a valve at the top of the snorkel. The valve blocks water and air when the snorkel is submerged—and a purge valve at the bottom. They are great for snorkeling on the surface and occasionally diving without worrying about constantly clearing water out of the tube. When used for diving, the advantage is that divers don’t have to clear them of water when they reach the surface.

As with semi-dry snorkels, the one-way purge valve at the bottom allows the user to flush water out with a few quick exhalations easily. While the dry snorkel is more convenient and efficient, it can also have its drawbacks. The valve at the top of the snorkel can sometimes become blocked. The dry snorkel may also be more buoyant underwater.

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“Been to Disney World one too many times? Have we, Captain Ron?”During the American Revolution, George Washington, while serving as head of the Continental army during the siege of Boston in 1775, started using pirates to help attack the British where they were most vulnerable on the sea. “Finding that we were not likely to do much in the land way, I fitted out several privateers, or rather armed vessels, on behalf of the Continent. With an offer of a percentage of spoils as an inducement, the call for citizen sailors to hijack inbound supply ships tapped the same vein of self-interest and comradeship that had led the colonies to seek independence in the first place.” Although private piracy proved detrimental to the Royal Navy, it ultimately helped turn the British public against the war.

“He said gorilla. Not guerrilla. Guer, go. HUGE difference kids,” Martin Harvey

A pirate is a seaman who threatens, seizes, or destroys any ship at high seas and often even harbors at the shore. Besides, they have been involved in many other criminal activities, such as piracy and the slave trade. Without any legal rights, the pirates are doing it for personal reasons. And they were regarded as criminals in all countries because those attacks were illegal acts. Piracy was punishable by death almost everywhere during the times when it was at its height. The critical difference between them and the privateers or buccaneers, about whom we can also claim that they were some sort of pirates, but not treated like criminals, is also the legality of their acts.

The U.S. allowed about 1,700 private warships to cruise the ocean, searching for British prizes during the Revolution, when a cash-strapped Congress could not launch an efficient navy of its own at the time. These revolutionary privateers carried congressional commissions, effectively legalized pirates, which outlawed attacks on neutral ships and prisoners’ mistreatment but otherwise allowed them free rein to rob and plunder. Most privateers were motivated by greed as much as by patriotism.

However, Washington was also outfitting a fleet of lightly armed schooners, and the debate over the navy took place in Congress. Although most members thought the idea of a navy insane, the Marine Committee was formed to oversee the production of 13 frigates.

Meanwhile, with its deep-rooted culture of fishing, shipbuilding, and ocean trade, Massachusetts considered whether to unleash its citizens by allowing state-sponsored privateering. Throughout history, governments at war have used the authority under international law to authorize independent operators to transport enemy merchant cargoes. There had already been incidents off the Massachusetts coast of scavenging looting crews abandoning ship down one side as local marauders clambered up the other side wielding clubs and cutlasses; the loot from these raids had to give them visions of bigger gains to come. To legalize privateering, the government would provide the colony with an instant navy for little to no cost.

In March of 1776, Congress followed suit and ordered that all British ships be considered “fair game for civilian warships.” After months of bitter debate on the general theme of business and patriotism, Philadelphia leaders embraced trade, going so far as to provide signed preprinted applications for commissions complete with blank spaces where names of ships, captains and owners could be inserted with minimal fuss. An early proponent of privateering, John Adams, appreciated, “I was always extremely interested in it.” Privateers had to pay monetary obligations to ensure their proper conduct under regulations. Although it is only fragmentary, incomplete information, more than 1,700 Letters of Marque were granted during the American Revolution. Approximately 800 privateers were commissioned and are frequently attributed with burning, looting, and capturing around 600 British ships.

Following congressional recognition of privateering, privateers flocked from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Most had reputations for contraband, quirkiness, and eccentricity until this point. Most privateers just smuggled items throughout the Royal Navy’s blockade.

Weapons shortages resulted in delays in securing gunpowder, but some, like the Brown brothers, managed to solve the problem by converting their iron foundry to cannon-making. The Brown brothers were accused of charging ‘extortioners’ prices for guns for Congress’ frigates, giving preference to their vessels and advertising for crews with promises of quick fortunes, congenial captains, ample alcohol, and a thrilling opportunity to smite “the tyrant’s pilferers.”

Privateering was a natural fit for the brothers, and they immediately began cutting gun ports through the trade ships’ bulwarks and clearing holds to make room for more crewmen needed to sail the captured prizes home for auction. They were also named a member of the congressional committee that oversaw Congress’ frigates’ construction.

In 1777, the Ranger, an 18-gun sloop captained by a young John Paul Jones, sailed across the Atlantic with a vow “to draw off the enemy’s attention by attacking their defenseless structures,” a plan fulfilled the following spring in his daring hit-and-run raid on the British port of Whitehaven. However, Richard Grenville’s prediction that he would do infinite damage to their shipping was realized by the pirates he so loathed. While still skeptical of America’s ability to defeat them on the battlefield, the British were forced to concede one point about the rebel privateers that diplomats on the European Continent had noted in July 1776: “What is certain on the side of the Americans is their activity at sea and the ships of the Crown they are capturing.”.

In the Caribbean alone, whose position as the hub of Britain’s New World trade made it the primary hunting ground for at least a hundred New England privateers by May 1776, maritime losses reached over $2 million within a year. Royal Navy captains in the West Indies learned that a storm was approaching, but their superiors had no clue. “Time is running out,” they urged their companion, “for our journey to the English Channel.”

Before then, most American vessels carried goods such as tobacco and paper to trade for European munitions. The privateers among them were adventurous predators who might provision in French and Spanish ports but rarely sold prizes there (doing so violated those nations’ neutrality agreements with Britain), instead dispatching them back to America for appraisal and auction.

The first ship that sailed into Europe was the 16-gun Continental brig named Reprisal. Under its captain, Lambert Wickes, and carrying Benjamin Franklin to France to serve as an ambassador, the Reprisal sailed to Europe in December 1776 to join the endeavor to create an international alliance. Reprisal then set out to plunder the seas, capturing 13 merchant vessels before being chased into a French harbor by an enemy frigate.

Small privateers like Retaliation and most other ships were forced to flee before a frigate’s firepower, which could hurl a barrage of hurtling metal from up to two dozen 12-pound cannons mounted along each side. The frigate HMS Brune, for instance, destroyed a 12-gun schooner with a single broadside and significantly damaged a 9-gun schooner. In trying to treat the wounded among Volunteer’s crewmen, the boarding party found the vessel “so much damaged that we hardly had time to get them all on board before she sank.” Similarly, a Boston privateer, Speedwell, carrying 14 guns and 90 men, took a frigate’s broadside “between wind and water” (the portion of the hull usually below the waterline but exposed to the air the vessel is heeled over in the wind). The study revealed that “she was lost at sea immediately, and all her crew perished during the voyage.”

On May 17, 1777, another American captain, Gustavus Conyngham, sailed aboard Surprise with 25 men from the French port of Dunkirk and intercepted Prince of Orange, a mail steamer plying between Holland and the British port of Harwich.

In the late 1700s, British political and military leaders denounced the Revenge’s hit-and-run combat style and the many other warships now swarming European waters. For the people in Parliament, the pirates were an immoral group of terrorists to be exterminated. One report of the capture of a supply ship alleged that “rebels stripped the killed and wounded, robbed every article of clothes, bedding, and provisions belonging to the sick, burned the cutter and added every insult to the distress.” And any foe that would, “against the laws of God and Man,” fire on a vessel under a flag of truce deserved, it was declared in Parliament after one such incident, “all the horrors of rebellion,” by which was meant no mercy.

Privateers comprised two distinct ventures. A Letter of Marque permitted merchants to attack any hostile vessel they encountered along their commercial voyage. A privateer commission was issued to those who were commissioned to attack enemy merchant shipping. The primary objective was to engage a lightly armed commercial ship.

Privateers of every type of vessel were pressed into service. The largest 18th-century ship was the 600-ton, 26-gun ship Caesar out of Boston. Simultaneously, crew sizes were as little as a few men in a whaleboat and as high as 200 aboard a fully equipped privateer. Vessels designated for Privateering and Letters of Marque were launched from places up and down the east coast.

Privateers didn’t usually fly the black pirate flags; they flew a flag that looked very similar to the “Don’t tread on me flag.” Privateers that could effectively convince their opponent that the opposition was futile did the best. When that plan failed, it often resulted in extremely violent fighting with unpredictable results. Many of the pirates were captured or sank when the situation wasn’t going their way. Most did not raise the pirate flags that we know of today, but there were two basic types, Black and Red, if they did. The black was raised when you planned to raid the ship but didn’t plan on killing everyone and the Red Flag or “no quarter giving” or “the blood flag” meant they planned to kill everyone, and no mercy was to be given. It also didn’t always have to have a skull and bones. It was up to the captains what it would look like, and most pirates didn’t fly them. Those flags were used truly by pirates not necessarily by privateers.

Despite all the hardships, the crippling of British commercial shipping was highly effective, and fortunes destined to aid the founding of the new Republic were made. It is estimated that American privateers’ total economic damage was about $18 million, or about $302 million in today’s dollars during the war.

George Washington recognized early in the war that his best strategy was to “sink Britain under the disgrace and expense of war.” To survive against the formidable British military, countless small- and large-scale offensive operations needed to be conducted and maintained to keep the enemy off balance, under strain, and demoralized.

SCUBAPRO Sunday is a weekly feature focusing on maritime equipment, operations and history.