Underwater Demolition Team - Naval Combat Demolition Units

Naval Combat Demolition Units

It became apparent that in addition to the Scouts and Raiders, a group of specialists to destroy obstacles was required. In late 1942, a group of Navy salvage personnel received a one-week concentrated course on demolitions, explosive cable cutting and commando raiding techniques. During Torch, this unit cut the cable and net barrier across a river in North Africa, allowing Rangers to land upstream and capture an airfield.

In 1943, the Navy decided to create a large dedicated force for such tasks: the Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDU). On May 7, Admiral King, the CNO, picked Lieutenant Draper L. Kauffman USNR to lead the training, which was based at Fort Pierce.

The expansion of the force meant recruitment beyond the pool of experienced combat swimmers. Most of Kauffman's volunteers came from the Seabees (the Navy's Construction Battalions), the U.S. Marines, and U.S. Army combat engineers. Training commenced with one grueling week designed to "separate the men from the boys". Some said that "the men had sense enough to quit, and left the boys." It was and is still considered the first "Hell Week."

Kauffman's experience was at disarming explosives; now he and his teams were learning to use them offensively. One innovation was to use 2.5-pound (1.1 kg) packs of tetryl placed into rubber tubes, thus making 20-pound (9.1 kg) lengths of explosive tubing that could be twisted around obstacles for demolition.

At the beginning of November 1943, six men from Kauffman's Naval Combat Demolition Unit Eleven (NCDU-11) were sent to England to start preparations for the Normandy invasion. The NCDU teams were to clear the beaches of obstacles for the invasion force. Later NCDU-11 was enlarged into 13-man assault teams. Weeks before the invasion, all available Underwater Demolition men were sent from Fort Pierce to England. By June 1944, 34 NCDU teams were deployed in England.