U.S. Navy Underwater Swimmers School; Key West, Fla... Some interesting events...

Date:   7/24/2005 8:54:03 PM ( 19 y ago)

Back to my Navy years, and some of the actives with the underwater swimmers...

Well Key West is a gates place to swim and dive...  We are talking SCUBA, here folks...Well every service sent it people here to train, now there are other swimmer schools; one is in San Diego, CA... Another is in Hawaii, ect... Today we are looking at the Key West Naval Station only...

Key West was the only place in the conterminous United States that stayed in "Whites" years round.. Navy white uniforms....  The Marines at the gates were also tropical uniforms and worn some different style tropical helmets.. We used to see a lot of the Green Barre Special Forces and other troops over on the main base... {We were stationed over at the Naval Axillary, but went over to get uniforms, and other supplies.. }

The underwater swimmers would use LCVP's to go out and jump into the clear waters...  It was nice since we could get used but still good tanks and regulators for almost nothing, from base surplus store..   So it was a good time for a swimmer like me...  So having swimmers around was nothing new, in Key West..

Well the destroyers were over by ourselves, and some of the Underwater swimmers wanted to test on what they had been trained to do blow up ships, and sneak on board and play havic...  So one nite, I had duty,{this meant I stood armed sentry on board the ship} and the O.D. was a mustang, [BTW O.D. is the Officer of the Deck; he is in command when the Capitan is away or busy with other duties... A mustang is a L.D.O. which is a Limited Duty Officer, who is a Line Officer, promoted from the Enlisted ranks and limited to 06 or Commander...]  So this O.D. was not your everyday Jo average, he knew people, and was sharp.. He found out that we targeted to be boarded by a FROGMAN as they were called in those days...

The swimmer was to board the ship undetected and go to the Ward room and get a cup of coffee, this would demonstrate that he could have blown the ship up if he had wanted... Well our mustang LDO was not going to let this happen on our watch... So he called all the Duty section standing sentry patrols, and told us to be especially watchful for Frogmen....  It was about 20:00 Hrs. {8PM for those who don't know read real time} I was Patrolling on the pier side just at the breakwater section..  I heard a noise above the waves lapping the pier...  Sounded like " Glub, Glub, Help" ...  I shined my light down at the water line by the pier and sure enough there caught between the pier and one of our fenders{these are used to keep the ship from rubbing up against the pier} was one of our underwater swimmers...  The waves motion had caused him to lose his air piece and he was getting dunked by every wave... 

I shouted do you surrender, of course he had no choice, and I called the OD...  Boy he was happy, we had caught the suc***...  Now we had to get about twenty guys up on the pier to push the ship out so the Frogman could be freed...  He was glad I had seen him an he could have drown as the tide was coming in...  SO you see unusual and some times fun things do happen.... 

Will pick up another unusual frogman happening on our next meeting, this one is really weird, so look forward to telling you soon....  

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