It’s not hard to say that anyone who wanted to be in military Special Forces when they were a kid has watched the movie Gung Ho! So, in honor of Evans F Carlson’s Birthday on the 26th. He was one of the best leaders in military history and helped build today’s Special Forces foundation. He spends over two years in China with the guerrilla, learning unique tactics that he would bring to the U.S. to help fight the Japanese in WW2. We need more leaders like this in the world.

Evans F Carlson enlisted in the U.S. Army at the age of 16 and began his military career in 1912. He served in the Philippines, Hawaii, and Mexico, and less than a year after leaving active duty, he reenlisted in time for the Mexican punitive expedition. During his military service, he was wounded in action in France and was awarded a Purple Heart. He was promoted to Captain in May of 1917 and was made a lieutenant in December of 1917. After the war, he entered the Marine Corps as a private and gained the rank of second lieutenant the following year. Meanwhile, in Nicaragua, he was awarded the first of three Navy Crosses. In 1940, he became an observer in China during the years leading up to World War II and was impressed with the guerrilla warfare being waged against Japanese troops. While he was in Japan, he became convinced that Japan would attack the United States.

He advised General Douglas MacArthur of an impending invasion in the Philippines and the need for guerrilla units in case the Japanese army attacked. However, MacArthur ignored his recommendation.

Carlson returned to the United States and joined the United States Army again. Carlson and Merritt Edson advocated the use of guerrilla warfare as part of the Allied Pacific War effort. After Edson was assigned the 1st Raider Battalion, Carlson received command of the 2nd Raider Battalion.

Approximately 7,000 applied for enlistment in the 2nd Raider Battalion, but many people that applied were rejected. He asked each candidate about the political significance of the war. He later said he favored men with initiative, adaptability and held democratic views. James Roosevelt, the son of Franklin D. Roosevelt, became Carlson’s assistant.

The Raiders learned the tactics employed by the Red Army against the Japanese. This practice involved learning how to kill people silently and quickly. To more effectively imitate the guerrillas of China, Carlson eliminated the privileges of officers. The same level of nutrition, wearing the same clothing, and carrying the same equipment were all factors.

Carlson’s field research into the Red Army convinced him that trust in the men in battle improved their performance and the belief in a better pollical system. So, he would provide information on how undemocratic governments are under Nazi Germany and Japan. Also, he encouraged the men to discuss their vision of a functioning society after the war.

In August of 1943, Carlson and 222 marines left Pearl Harbor and landed on Makin Atoll. After two days of battle, Carlson’s men destroyed the radio station, burned the radio station’s equipment, and captured documents. Thirty marines were among the first to die during the Battle of Tarawa. As a result of this raid, the Japanese fortified the Gilbert Islands.

On 4 November 1943, the Raiders landed on Guadalcanal. During the next 30 days, Carlson’s man killed over 500 enemy soldiers and only lost 17. Carlson had been wounded and was forced to return to the United States for medical treatment.

Carlson’s superiors expressed concern about his unorthodox tactics and ideas. They were also concerned about his relatively close relationship with Agnes Smedley. This radical journalist was involved in campaigning for USA support of communist forces in China to help them defeat the Japanese Army in Asia.

In May of 1943, Carlson was promoted to be the Raider Regiment’s executive officer and was stripped of the direct command of his battalion during the Guadalcanal campaign. Carlson was also upset with his superiors by becoming involved in a controversial project of publishing pamphlets on the contribution of the Afro-Americans in the war. Carlson eventually returned to action in November 1943 at the battle of Tarawa. On Saipan, he received severe wounds when trying to rescue a radio operator who the Japanese had shot.

Carlson eventually returned to action at Tarawa in November 1943. During the Battle of Saipan, he was injured while rescuing a radio operator who the Japanese had shot. Being injured caused him to have to retire from the United States Marines after the war.

Below is the movie.

warfarehistorynetwork.com/2015/07/27/evans-carlson-forms-carlsons-raiders

With four Republican Guard heavy divisions and the equivalent of a fifth, made up of commandos, Iraq invaded Kuwait on 02 August 1990. Then U.S. President George H. W. Bush quickly said that the United States didn’t condone Iraq’s actions.

During Operation Desert Shield, President Bush formed a coalition (“a collation of the willing” Chapelle) of 35 countries to protect Saudi Arabia and then free Kuwait. On 06 August, the U.S. sent troops to Saudi Arabia, the 82nd Airborne Division and Special Forces were some of the first on the ground (I am sorry if I missed other groups). This began a buildup of combat power in the region, which at its peak had about 600,000 U.S. troops there at one time.

During Desert Shield, some smaller operations took place, including Visit Board Search and Seizure (VBSS), Special Reconnaissance looking for SCUDS and Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR), and running around in Desert Patrol Vehicles (DPVs they would be the first forces into the city of Kuwait) but indeed General Schwarzkopf was not a fan of any Special Forces. He didn’t want to use them for anything. He even had operators from Delta guarding him. On 17 January 1991, Desert Shield turned into Desert Storm with the start of the air campaign. More than 18,000 air missions were flown and more than 116,000 combat air sorties by the U.S. and between 32-40 other countries, including several Arab countries. They dropped 88,500 tons of bombs on the enemy.

On 28 February 91, the ground war started again; a lot of groups played different roles in the invasion. Special Forces Groups conducted special reconnaissance, CSAR, and Direct-Action missions.

Naval Special Warfare (NSW) Group One had run NSW Task Group Center based out of Ras Al-Mishab. There were SEAL platoons from almost all west coast teams, including a Platoon for SEAL Team Five and a boat Det from Special Boat Unit 12.

One of the Platoons from SEAL Team Five and the High-Speed Boat (HSB/ HSAC )Det from SBU-12 was tasked with conducting an over the horizon beach attack to fool the Iraqis into thinking a full-scale amphibious landing was going to happen. To help with this, over the horizon, off the coast of Kuwait, was an armada of ships, each carrying approximately 17,000 Marines, all ready to land on the beaches. But, the only amphibious assault of Kuwait would be carried out by a half-dozen Navy SEALs. Lt. Tom Dietz (the only reason I am using his name as this is well documented) and five other SEALs would drive up the coast from Ras al-Mishab in a pair of Fountain-33 HSBC as the sunset on Saturday, 23 February, the day before the allies were scheduled to commence the ground campaign. The Fountains, propelled by 1,000-horsepower MerCruiser engines, sped up the Kuwaiti coastline at 40 miles per hour. This might sound fun, and at first, it is, but it is not the best on the knees. That night, the water temperature was a bone-chilling 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the gulf. It was even more concerning because it was plagued with mines. The SBU 12 boat guys sailed blindly, with their lights turned off, knowing that if their thin-shelled boats encountered a mine, it would not end well for them. When they entered the minefield, they traveled slowly at first; then, after some talking realized fast or slowed if they hit a mine, it would be not good, so travel fast was decided to be the best plan.

Dietz’s speedboat came to a halt 15 miles off the coast of Kuwait at approximately 10 p.m. His team was able to free the Zodiac rubber raiding boat attached to the bow. After swimming up to Kuwaiti beaches in stealth for a month, searching for prospective amphibious landing sites, the SEALs discovered that all of them were well fortified and mined, indicating that they would be difficult to reach. Dietz’s two motorized Zodiacs made their way gently to the coast, halting every few miles so the commandos could look and hear what was going on.

The F470 Zodiac stopped about five hundred yards from the beach, and the swimmer were launched. Each carried haversack with C4, which they would use to string buoys out along the swim to the beach. These buoys with a diameter of four feet would give the impression that the buoys were marking impending amphibious ships. The beach charges were set for 1 a.m. local time about 3 hours before the Collation forces began breaching the minefields along the Kuwait border on Sunday, 24 February. This would give the Iraqis time to move troops east to the coast, where the fake invasion was thought to be happening. The importance of time could not be overstated. For the Iraqis to respond effectively, they must be allowed to do so by moving forces east in response to the diversion rather than reinforcing soldiers in the west, where the actual attack would occur.

The SEALS kept an eye on the coast while swimming toward the beach together. Each swimmer had an MP5 with them, and SBU-12 HSP was slowly making their way towards the beach to help in an emergency and for a follow-on mission after the platoon was back to the F470s. The team would stop and look at the beach with a pocket night-vision scope every hundred yards. In the early 90s, items like that were not as waterproof as they are now, so it was stored in a good old plastic bag. They even made all black surfboards sent from Coronado to carry radios. Because of the smoke from the oil wells burning, the night seemed even more ominous. The sand on the beach was white and looked like it had just snowed out even though it was sand.

The crew split out on the shoreline and unloaded its haversacks in around a foot of water. The rest of the team followed suit. Dietz instructed the timers to be set by using hand signals. The SEALs exfilled keeping an eye on the beach. After closing in on the Zodiacs, the HSBC opened up on the shore with their .50-caliber machine guns for half an hour in an attempt to make the Iraqis think a more significant force was attacking the coastal fortifications. Two-pound charges were dropped off the sides of the boats and exploded every five minutes. Around the same time, the USS Missouri battleship opened up with her 16in guns, firing 2700lbs shells over the heads of the guys in the boats. They were firing at the Iraqi command bunkers near the Kuwaiti coastline, helping with the illusion that an American-led amphibious assault on occupied Kuwait would be on the horizon. At precisely 1 a.m., explosives on the beach went off. Dietz radioed back the code word “Pamela,” meaning “mission completed.”

After a brief pause, Missouri fired once more into Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. This time, the Marine Corps dispatched ten helicopters to mimic a landing force on the ground in Iraq. The Iraqis launched anti-ship missiles at Missouri, but a British ship intercepted and destroyed the lone missile that posed a severe threat to the warship. Coalition jets were able to locate and destroy the missile launch point quickly.

As a result of the bombardment’s effectiveness, Iraqi troops sought to surrender to the drone (from the USS Missouri) that flew back over the target area, waving little white flags. For the first time in history, troops would try and surrender to a drone.

Hundreds of lives were saved during Desert Storm due to this fictitious amphibious assault by Naval Special Warfare. After six weeks of air attacks, the ground campaign only took 100 hours before Kuwait was freed. On 28 February, a ceasefire was established, effectively putting an end to the hostilities until Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein agreed to the peace agreement provisions. The coalition forces suffered a total of 300 casualties in the combat, which is significantly less than the number of deaths they would have suffered if the Iraqi troops had been permitted to concentrate on the actual threat.

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