World War II
During World War II, Coast Guard divers served a number of military missions. Coast Guard hardhat divers were assigned to many of the service’s 180-foot buoy tenders serving overseas, in Alaska and in home waters. These divers supported maintenance of floating aids to navigation and salvage work, especially in the Pacific where buoy tenders were fleet workhorses for a variety of salvage, ATON, and search and recovery work. For example, with the help of divers, buoy tender Ironwood raised a Japanese mini sub in the shallows at Guadalcanal. To perform their wartime missions, buoy tenders throughout the Pacific theater relied heavily on divers.
In 1942, Coast Guard hardhat divers were assigned to the Washington Navy Yard’s Naval School, Diving and Salvage. Designated as Diver Second Class, these Coast Guardsmen served in several Navy salvage operations including the wreck of USS Lafayette. Transferred to the Navy in 1941, the former passenger liner S.S. Normandie burned and capsized at her pier in New York and required a massive salvage effort to refloat her. Scores of Coast Guard divers proved instrumental in salvaging the Lafayette, which was refloated and ultimately scrapped.
During the war, Coast Guard personnel also performed classified subsurface missions. These missions included intelligence gathering for the Office of Special Services (OSS), predecessor to the CIA. The OSS conducted different kinds of missions and one of those missions was maritime operations. To do this, the OSS created Maritime Units (MUs). In April 1942, the MUs began training operations to train agents to infiltrate by sea. Later in the war, maritime operations became more strategic as Allied forces advanced into enemy territory.
The Coast Guard, Navy and the Marine Corps were the principal sources for personnel required for MU activities. Competent men with special skills were also taken from Army and civilian sources. MU personnel participated in maritime sabotage by ferrying demolitions parties to targets or target areas. Swimmers formed Special Maritime Groups trained to conduct underwater sabotage. The duties of MU individuals included staff work at Washington, D.C., and the MU field base; assisting in instruction in special MU techniques; maritime operations; and special underwater swimming operations.
The OSS underwater swimmers, or “frogmen,” had training facilities at Prince William Forest Park in Virginia; Smith Point on the Potomac River, in Maryland; the Bahamas; and the California coast. One key piece of equipment for OSS underwater swimmers was a breathing apparatus invented by Dr. Christian Lambertsen. The Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (LARU) was the first unassisted diving capability employed by the U.S. It allowed MU swimmers to stay under water to a depth of 50 feet for as long as 90 minutes, allowing them to swim underwater about a mile. By August 1944, the OSS had 226 men assigned to the MU. Of these, about 75 were Coast Guardsmen and another 40 Coasties were attached to OSS’s West Coast training units.
Cold War
During the Cold War, the Coast Guard adapted to new threats and vulnerabilities. The service innovated new units to fulfill new functions. Worries about Soviet infiltration from the sea by covert teams led the Coast Guard to develop a Reserve special unit called Coastal Forces with the enlisted rating of Coastal Forceman. These personnel trained with Marine Corps units and received military scuba diving training as well. The force and its rating were later scrapped, and personnel were folded into the Port Securityman rating.
Vessels arriving from a Communist port or suspected of carrying cargo from a Communist country had to be inspected in the first U.S. port entry by the Coast Guard and Customs agents. As a test case, the Coast Guard developed a diving program at the Captain of the Port (COTP) office in San Francisco in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. COTP divers were trained at the U.S. Naval School Underwater Swimmer in Key West, Florida. They surveyed ship hulls for anything suspicious and performed underwater maintenance and repairs on Coast Guard vessels.
1970s-1990s
Over the years, Coast Guard divers have been assigned with vessels, specialized units, at bases, and at stations. They have conducted helicopter and afloat recoveries, body recoveries, vehicle recoveries, collapsed bridge salvage, environmental surveys, and oil spill responses. For example, in 1978, Pacific Strike Team divers performed an underwater assessment of the 253-foot Glacier Queen, which sank and was leaking oil into Alaska’s Seldovia Bay.
During the 1980s, the Coast Guard Diving Program continued to make great strides. In 1981, Surface Supplied divers were consolidated into the National Strike Force’s Atlantic Strike Team (AST). It also established a Liaison Office complete with Coast Guard diving instructors, at the newly opened Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center (NDSTC) in Panama City, Florida.
Coast Guard divers were involved in several high-profile operations during this period. In 1982, during a heavy snowstorm, numerous Coast Guard units were involved when Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. AST divers assisted in the rescue of five surviving passengers and the recovery of the aircraft’s wreckage. AST divers were also deployed in 1986 in response to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster where they completed a survey of the Shuttle’s crew compartment and the recovery of all remaining debris. In the mid-1990s, in concert with Army and Navy divers, Coast Guard divers undertook a nation-wide program to recover batteries disposed of around floating and fixed aids to navigation. It was a massive joint service effort.
Ice Diving Operations
The Coast Guard has had an ice-diving capability since the 1950s. In 1957, the Coast Guard cutters Bramble, Spar and Storis were selected to conduct the high latitude Northwest Passage Expedition. Their personnel complement included Coast Guard divers. These divers wore an early form of dry suit to maintain body temperature in waters that could register below freezing.
The mission of this ambitious expedition was to force a passage along the northern shore of Canada from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. The Coast Guard cutters had light ice breaking capabilities which included an ice-belt at the waterline and a reinforced bow. During the voyage the divers were used to conduct underwater inspections and hull repairs for the cutters. The success of the mission distinguished one of the vessels, CGC Bramble, as the first surface ship to circumnavigate the North American continent.
In the 1960s, the Coast Guard continued to grow its diving capability for ice and cold-water operations. In 1965, the operation of icebreakers was permanently transferred to the Coast Guard from the Department of the Navy through a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). Mission tasking assigned to the Coast Guard by the MOA included diving, underwater demolition, salvage, and underwater repair including rescue towing operations.
In June 1967, during ice operations at McMurdo Station Antarctica, Coast Guard divers aboard icebreaker Glacier did extensive Antarctic diving operations. These divers served as part of the International Weddell Sea Oceanographic Expedition. During the 1972 Operation Deep Freeze deployment, the McMurdo Station’s ship mooring facilities received considerable attention from Coast Guard divers deployed from icebreaker Staten Island. This included an underwater examination of the ice substructure of the shoreline.
Over the past decades, Coast Guard ice divers have conducted ATON support; vessel inspections; equipment recovery and repair; and science and engineering support for Arctic and Antarctic operations. Today, Coast Guard Dive Instructors from the NDSTC Liaison Office provide the only formal military ice diving course for the U.S. military. Held at Camp Riley, in Minnesota, this instruction trains federal and military divers for deployments to the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
Recent History
Beginning in 2002, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Coast Guard divers were assigned to Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSSTs). The MSST divers conducted underwater inspections of piers and ships, underwater investigations, ship husbandry, ATON operations, archeological surveys, and a wide array of search and recovery missions.
In 2006, due to a catastrophic mishap on board the icebreaker Healy, it was decided to remove the divers stationed on board icebreakers. A cross-directorate study team, which included the Navy and other sources of diving expertise, evaluated the requirements, management, and policy guidance of the Coast Guard’s Diving Program. The objective of this was to improve training, preventative maintenance, supervision, and oversight of the program. The study validated Coast Guard dive mission requirements; however, MSST dive teams were disestablished, and two Regional Dive Lockers were established in 2008 at Portsmouth, Virginia, [Regional Dive Locker East (RDLE)] and San Diego [Regional Dive Locker West (RDLW)]. This change shifted divers from collateral duty to primary-duty divers. District 14 Juniper-Class Buoy Tenders retained their on-board collateral duty diver capability, but the RDLs absorbed the operational responsibility for polar icebreakers and MSST dive teams.
Recent years have seen improvements in the Coast Guard Diving Program. In 2013, Coast Guard divers started using a new tool to help them carry out their underwater missions. The Extreme Lightweight Diving System, or XLDS, allows divers to stay underwater longer and work in harsher conditions. The XLDS is a portable console used to deliver air from tanks on the surface to divers through an umbilical air hose coupled to a hard hat-like metal helmet. In 2015, the Diver (DV) enlisted rating and Chief Warrant Officer – Diving (DIV), specialties were established to help manage diver’s careers and retain diving expertise. At the same time, Regional Dive Locker Pacific (RDLP) was established in Honolulu, and all collateral duty diving capabilities came ashore from the District 14 cutters. In 2023, transportable hyperbaric recompression chambers were assigned to the three RDLs as well as the “dunker” tank at the Aviation Technical Training Center in Elizabeth City, N.C. This capability puts Coast Guard Diving on par with other federal and military diving communities and sets the stage for the development of future Coast Guard Master Divers.
For over 80 years, Coast Guard divers have provided undersea and maritime capabilities that span a wide spectrum. World War II missions included infiltration and sabotage operations under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), USS Lafayette salvage operations and hardhat divers. During the Cold War, missions included underwater vessel inspection for suspicious or radioactive material in support of the Cold War. In recent years, the Diving Program’s duties have grown to include not only ATON but also ship husbandry; underwater hull inspections and repair functions for our icebreaking and cold-water missions; pier and ship sweeps for terrorist threats; marine debris recovery; salvage and recovery; search and recovery; hazardous materials and oil recovery support; and archeological surveys. The Coast Guard Diving Program has come a long way and continues to grow in scope and responsibilities.
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