We should all live so long — and well
January 31st, 2012 | Amphibious operations Historical Marine Corps Navy Photos Seabees SEALs SURFLANT World War II | Posted by Bill McMichael
Reaching 100 years of age is remarkable enough. But the Navy made it extra special for a former Navy Seabee Dec. 2.
Retired Capt. James R. Mims, the nation’s oldest living Seabee, was made an honorary member of Amphibious Construction Battalion 2 by the unit’s top sailor, Command Master Chief (SCW) Johnny DeSarro, during Mims’ 100th birthday party, held at the Oaks Country Club in Richmond, Va.. Mims also received a U.S. flag flown over the Capitol building, a birthday greeting from President Obama and a very cool commemorative paddle.
Retired Capt. James R. Mims stands with Command Master Chief (SCW) Johnny DeSarro (left) and Senior Chief Builder John Woolston, PHIBCB 2 Operations Chief, at his 100th birthday party after receiving a commemorative paddle custom-designed by Woolston. // U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class (SW/AW) Jonathan Pankau
Mims has experienced some remarkable moments in his life. In DeSarro’s words, Mims “served at Okinawa during World War II, swore in the first 25 frogmen, known today as Navy SEALs, and met and spoke with Adm. Ben Moreell” — the father of the Seabees.
DeSarro wanted to hear more about all that, so he returned to Richmond Dec. 19 to meet Mims at his hangout — a local restaurant called Joe’s Inn, where Mims goes every Friday for a meeting of the Bon Air Rotary Club — where he has a 56-year perfect attendance record.
Amphibious Construction Battalion 2 Command Master Chief (SCW) Johnny DeSarro and retired Navy Capt. James R. Mims sits down for breakfast at Joe's Inn, a local Richmond restaurant, during a Dec. 19 meeting discuss his history and experiences as the world's oldest Seabee. // U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class (SW/AW) Jonathan Pankau
Naval Surface Force Atlantic released the Mims story on the day after the start of Bold Alligator, the largest Navy-Marine Corps amphibious exercise in a decade. The timing was splendid because Mims had some stories to tell about one of the biggest amphibious assaults in history.
Mims was a Civil Engineer Corps cargo officer during that mission and his task that day was to rendezvous with the main Seabee camp, according to the story, by SURFLANT Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class (SW/AW) Jonathan Pankau.
“We rode on a (Landing Ship Tank) from Saipan to Okinawa in 1945 on an Easter Sunday morning,” Mims told Pankau. “There were 1,400 ships in that operation and we had some Marines in an Army DUKW (a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck used for transporting goods and troops over land and water and for use approaching and crossing beaches in amphibious attacks) heading for the east side of the island,” said Mims.
Their mission was to trick the enemy by drawing fire to their location on the eastern coast of Okinawa and to delay Japanese reserve troops, according to Pankau. The main landing force assaulted the beach on the western coast that Easter Sunday, supported by the 2nd Marine Battalion’s effective decoy tactics.
“About halfway to the shore we started drawing fire so the LST driver turned around to lay down a smoke screen,” Mims told Pankau. “We repeated this several times to draw the fire away from the west. The Army guy driving the LST wouldn’t go all the way to the beach so we had to jump out and wade through the water while the enemy was laying down strafing fire by us.”
Exhaustion set in after two days of combat without sleep and Mims found an abandoned fox hole to take shelter in. As he looked up from his fox hole, a formation of Japanese fighter planes passed overhead.
“I don’t know whether they were kamikazes or what but they flew so low I could see the first pilot’s face. I’ll never forget the smile on his face,” Mims told Pankau.
Earlier, Mims had a brush with another seminal moment in naval history: The forming of the Navy SEALs.
Today’s SEALs trace their lineage to a group of volunteers selected from the Seabees in the spring of 1943, according to Naval Special Warfare Command. Mims was the enlisting officer for the first 25 frogmen, according to the story.
“I was at Camp Perry at the time and a lieutenant said to me ‘I want you to go out there and swear in those frogmen.’ And so, as a junior lieutenant, I went out there and swore them in and then I said, ‘What’s a frogman?’ Turns out they were the beginning of the SEALs.”
Mims had no idea that he swore in the original 25 frogmen until he saw a familiar name in an obituary in the Richmond paper naming one of the first frogmen. He later saw them in action and described the night operation he witnessed, where the frogmen pulled onto the beach in rubber rafts. They performed reconnaissance missions and set up targets for bombing and troop placements. Mims laughed, Pankau wrote, as he recalled the sign they left up for the Marines that said, “What kept you?”
DeSarro said that making a Mims an honorary member of the unit was special.
“We (Seabees) are fiercely proud of our heritage and we are very protective of anything that ties us to our history,” DeSarro said. “Making the paddle for him ties us back, in a big way, to our legacy and our heritage.
“Everything we do as Seabees, we do to live up to the expectations of our predecessors,” he said. “We bear the burden of carrying on the Seabee tradition that men like Capt. Mims laid out before us.”
Rudy’s one-liners
January 27th, 2012 | Don't ask Historical Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek - Fort Story Naval special warfare Navy Photos Retired Navy SEAL Team 2 SEALs Traditions | Posted by Bill McMichael
Retired Master Chief Rudy Boesch earned more than a few laughs Friday during his remarks at the East Coast SEALs’ celebration of the SEALs’ 50th anniversary (the West Coast SEALs marked it two weeks ago), both centered around his post-SEAL Team 2 days.
The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act helped spark the 1987 formation of U.S. Special Operations Command. That same year, Boesch, coming up on 26 years as a member of SEAL Team 2, was one of three senior military enlisteds called to Coronado to interview with Gen. James Lindsay, the command’s first commander-in-chief — as the position was then known – to become the command’s first senior enlisted adviser.
Retired Master Chief Rudy Boesch at the East Coast SEALs' 50th anniversary celebration Jan. 27 at Joint Expeditionary Base - Little Creek. //U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Meranda Keller
“People were telling me that I would have to study ’cause I might get asked questions like, `Who was the president of Zimbabwe?’” He paused for effect and then added, offhandedly, “To this day, I don’t know who it is.” After the laughter subsided, he added, ”I wasn’t going to study to find out.”
When Boesch’s turn came to be interviewed, he said, “The general asked me how the hell I managed to stay in the military for so long. At that time, I had 42 years in it. Since I had a few more years in the service than he did, I told him that if he hired me, he would find out because he was going to have to do the paperwork to keep me in the service.”
After the laughter subsided, Boesch said, “He thumped me in the chest and hired me right on the spot.”
Boesch’s closing one-liner also drew laughs, but not for a joke the Navy would be pleased to hear expressed in a year following the reversal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays in the military.
“In 2000, I tried out for the first Survivor series on TV, and the rest is history,” Boesch told the crowd. “Some of the people in here have been asking me if I keep in touch with anybody in the Survivor [series].” He paused. “I don’t write to queers. ” He made it clear that he was talking about “homosexuals.”
New oldest Frogman – and that’s no bull
August 26th, 2011 | Admirals Historical Navy SEALs | Posted by Gidget Fuentes
Navy SEAL and Adm. Eric T. Olson salutes the flag during his Aug. 22 retirement ceremony at Naval Base Coronado, Calif.//Navy MC2 Chad J. McNeeley
The Aug. 22 retirement of Adm. Eric T. Olson marked the end of the Navy SEAL officer’s 38-year naval career – and the passing of the title of longest-serving SEAL.
Olson, a 1973 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, became a SEAL officer in 1974, an achievement that led to a storied career and command at nearly every level, from SEAL team to Naval Special Warfare Command and ultimately to his most-recent job as head of U.S. Special Operations Command, the Tampa, Fla.-based headquarters for the military’s joint special operations forces. For nearly two years, Olson also held the title of “Bull Frog,” the moniker and honor given by the UDT/SEAL Association to the SEAL who has served the longest time on continuous active duty in naval special warfare. Olson, the first Navy SEAL to reach the four-star rank, also is the first SEAL to lead the nation’s commando forces. But he’s not the last. Earlier this month, he handed over SOCOM’s reins to another experienced SEAL, Adm. William H. McRaven.
Adm. William "Bill" McRaven./DoD photo
In fact, McRaven, also a former commander of Naval Special Warfare Command and most recently commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, also follows Olson in holding the title of Bull Frog – and he gets to share it with another Navy SEAL. That is Cmdr. Brian Sebenaler, who serves as Naval Special Warfare Command’s training and readiness officer and, like McRaven, graduated with Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL’s Class 95.
Both men will share the title as the 15th Bull Frog. The names of the officers, who combined have served 70 years as SEALs, are engraved in the Bull Frog trophy, which will be kept at the association’s new UDT-SEAL Heritage Center in Norfolk, Va.
According to the association, the nickname hails back to the old days of UDT swimmers, who were nicknamed “frogmen.” The team boss was known as the Bull Frog, a moniker adopted by Rear Adm. Richard “Dick” Lyon, the original and first Bull Frog. But it wasn’t until 2007 when the Navy “officially” recognized the title with an official instruction signed off by another veteran SEAL, now-Vice Adm. Joseph Kernan, who headed the Coronado command at the time.
A unit by any other name …
May 17th, 2011 | Entertainment Navy SEALs | Posted by Gidget Fuentes
The trouble with secret military units – the type the U.S. government refuses to acknowledge even exist, like, say, Delta Force or Area 51 – is this: Just how is the public, including the news media, supposed to identify them accurately if there is no official logo or name? Without it, chances are good that some might get it wrong.
That’s apparently what happened when German television station N24 aired a report May 5 on the May 1 killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs. The station used what it believed was an official logo of the classified secret unit known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group or SEAL Team 6.
The problem? The logo, which features an eagle holding a trident similar to that depicted in the Navy SEAL Trident warfare pin worn by SEALs and on team patches, represented fighters living in a different century and universe. The logo used apparently was created by a “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” fan to represent the Maquis, a band of 24th century rebel fighters.
One clue that the logo was wrong might have been the Klingon skull and eyepatch. Another hint that screamed out to Scoopdeck is the phrase “SEALS TEAM VI.” Real SEAL teams are referred to as “SEAL Team (fit number here).”
A day after the German news report aired, a blogger on the Star Trek fan site, http://trekmovie.com, reported on the error, and poked some fun with it. The international blogosphere had a field day with the mix-up, too. “Maquis Special Forces took down Bin Laden?” one site asked, dryly. “Osama Bin Laden was killed by Star Trek rebels,” proclaimed a headline. “Star Trek terrorists killed bin Laden,” said another. The Fox News channel picked up the story several days later.
A military surplus shop owner holds up a SEAL Team 6 patch.//The Associated Press/
While Naval Special Warfare Command, U.S. Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command don’t acknowledge the existence of a unit called SEAL Team 6, and has no publicly-available official unit logo, a SEAL Team 6 patch can be bought online at various online sellers and local military surplus stores. Just assume, of course, that it’s legit. Die-hard collectors might want to scoot out to the surplus store and grab those patches while you can.
And hurry. Just two days after bin Laden’s demise, The Walt Disney Co. asked the federal government to let it trademark the name, SEAL Team 6, according to MediaBistro. Disney Enterprises, Inc., a Burbank, Calif.-based entertainment company submitted three applications on May 3, asking to trademark the unit’s name for three purposes:
1. Clothing, footwear and headwear.
2. Entertainment and education services.
3. Toys, games and playthings; gymnastic and sporting articles (except clothing); hand-held units for playing electronic games other than those adapted for use with an external display screen or monitor; Christmas stockings; Christmas tree ornaments and decorations; snow globes.
Snow globes. Imagine Mickey Mouse with an M4A1 and .45 cal pistol. Really. Well, perhaps a modern-day Captain Hook. According to Media Bistro:
“For all we know Disney has been working on an animated feature about a team of anthropomorphic seals in search of adventure, but given the timing of the application that seems…unlikely.”
It’s not clear yet whether Disney Nation will succeed where others haven’t. A check of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office online search page found that in 2002 and 2004, NovaLogic, Inc., of Calabasas, Calif., tried to trademark SEAL Team 6 for computer and video game purposes and for games and action figures, but it dropped the request in 2006. But, then again, if the government doesn’t say that a unit by that name exists, would it object to a trademark request by Disney, or anyone else? And, if so, would that open the floodgates to others who also want to capture – and capitalize on – the namesakes and historic achievements of military units who selflessly serve their nation, even those that officially do not exist?
A good day for a swim?
October 29th, 2010 | Photos SEALs The Pacific Training | Posted by Gidget Fuentes
There is just something about Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training that is, well, photogenic. The grueling, six-month training course at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, Calif., is no vacation at the beach. Mother Nature at times makes it much more interesting. With ocean temperatures in the mid-60s – that’s relatively mild for the Pacific Ocean along Southern California – the chill isn’t as much a worry as the surf itself, as what students with Class 286 encountered during “surf passage” training Oct. 27. It’s known as “surf torture” for good reason.
Students with BUD/S Class 286 face off against the Pacific during surf passage training Oct. 27 at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, Calif.//Navy photo by MC2 Kyle Gahlau
Yesterday was the easy day. Students with BUD/S Class 286 tackle the tides during surf passage training Oct. 27 in Coronado, Calif.//Navy photo by MC2 Kyle Gahlau
Did a SEAL submarine McChrystal?
September 23rd, 2010 | leadership SEALs | Posted by Phil Ewing
"OK, we're set -- if any of the pirates are still alive at the end of this, we'll call their operational practices 'outmoded' and say, 'why're you guys still stuck in an 18th century Mercantilist mindset?' Got it?" "Hoo yah!" // MCC Kathryn Whittenberger / Navy
A Pentagon probe has cleared retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his former senior aides of having uttered the ungentlemanly remarks that brought down his career, reports say. So who did make them, or at least some of them? A Navy SEAL officer, according to the New York Times:
The Army review has been turned over to a higher-level inquiry by the Pentagon’s inspector general, because the matter involves not only a four-star general but several subordinates outside the Army. The Army report, which has not been released, points some blame at a midlevel Navy special warfare officer who served as an aide to General McChrystal, according to Army, Pentagon and other military officials. But that officer was never interviewed by the Army’s investigators, and so was blamed based on the comments of others. The officer has told Navy officials that he did not make the offending comments, according to Pentagon officials.
The Army report, if accurate, would be the latest evidence that Rolling Stone hasn’t been exactly forthright in its description of the aides who made the “bite me” and “clown” comments. The magazine has called them “the general’s closest and most senior advisers,” but according to Army Times’ own Sean Naylor, who is pretty wired in the spooky world of special operations, the quotes came from “his most junior staff — men who “make tea, keep the principal on time and carry bags — who had no reason to believe their words would end up in print.”
At least it’s a new idea for the next recruiting campaign: “Navy SEALs: We can take out a four-star general without firing a shot.”
Cause and effect
July 22nd, 2010 | Photos SEALs | Posted by Phil Ewing
Cause:
MCC Stan Travioli / Navy
Effect:
MCC Robert Fluegel / Navy
A SEAL sniper in Virginia Beach, Va., demonstrated last week what could happen to your head — as represented here by a watermelon mounted on a dummy — if the United States of America doesn’t like you.
Power projection points to pending problems
June 17th, 2010 | Life at Sea Maritime operations Navy SEALs Submarines | Posted by Lance Bacon
For the first time ever, all four guided missile subs are deployed to an AOR. We’re not talking about being underway at the same time, and sea trials don’t count. We’re talking about being on the tip of the spear. For you strategists out there, that equals a combined 616 Tomahawk cruise missiles on station, and the ability to deploy up to 264 special ops forces.
The historic mark was hit June 10, according to this Navy release. In the article, Rear Adm. Frank Caldwell, commander of Submarine Group 9 said “… back in the mid 90’s this was just a power point presentation.”
While a commendable feat, the fact that all four SSGNs are out also points to a growing problem.
Seven in Seven
May 7th, 2010 | Carriers Congress Foreign navies leadership Life at Sea Maritime operations Naval Academy Navy NECC Officers Sea Air Space SEALs Ships Submarines The Middle East Washington | Posted by Lance Bacon
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead meets sailors and their families at Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, Tenn. Roughead was in Millington to get a first-hand look at damage sustained from flooding. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ronda Spaulding)
Defense Secretary Robert Gates dropped the bomb of the week. In his first invitation to the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium, Gates suggested a need for cutting carriers, sinking SSBN(X) and eliminating Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles. You can read Gates’ speech here, and find out how this affects you in Monday’s edition of Navy Times.
Speaking of amphibious operations, the personnel bubbas in Millington are starting to dry out. Two days of rain dumped more than 14 inches in the area. A levee couldn’t hold the water back and the base was flooded. This delayed one promotion board and threw many administrative matters into chaos, but the crew weathered the storm in true Navy fashion.
Here’s seven stories in seven minutes from the past seven days that you may not have seen, but are worthy of notice:
SEALs tighten ties with India
April 26th, 2010 | Foreign navies leadership Maritime operations Navy SEALs Ships Submarines The Pacific | Posted by Lance Bacon
Members of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team Two prepare to launch one of the team's SEAL Delivery Vehicles from the attack submarine Philadelphia in 2005. Similar deliveries will likely be used in joint training with India currently underway. (Photo by Chief Photographer's Mate Andrew McKaskle)
Earlier this month, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead visited the naval forces of India to strengthen the maritime partnership.
Now, the SEALs are getting in on that action.
The Indian newspaper The Telegraph reported today that the cruiser Shiloh, destroyers Chaffee and Lassen, frigate Curts, attack submarine Annapolis, two P3C Orions and a 28-member special forces team haved teamed with the Indian Navy to practice anti-submarine warfare and special operations in the 14th Malabar exercise.
The United States is the only country with which India conducts large-scale naval exercises, and this is the first time we’ve sent SEALs to participate in the exercise, scheduled to run through May 2.
The Indian Navy has a destroyer, three frigates, a submarine, Sea Harrier fighters and various helicopters from its Western Fleet participating in the bilateral exercise.