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Frogman is a popular term for a scuba diver. The word arose around 1940 from the appearance of a diver in shiny wetsuit and with large fins on his feet. The term preferred by scuba users is 'diver', but the word "frogman" persists in usage by non-divers, especially in the media, often to refer to professional scuba divers in organizations such as the police. Usual usage of the word "frogman" also tends to imply diving for action, often in combat; such divers are also sometimes called combat diver or combat swimmer.
In the US Military, divers trained in scuba or CCUBA who deploy for military assault missions are called "combat swimmers". This term is used to refer to the Navy SEALs, the Marine Recon swimmers, the Army Ranger swimmers, and the Navy Explosive Ordinance Dispoal (EOD) units. In Britain, police divers have often been called "police frogmen". The first British police diver was a policeman who, needing to search underwater for evidence or a body, did not use a drag but went home and fetched his sport scuba gear. See also Ian Edward Fraser. Some countries' frogman organizations include a translation of the word "frogman" in their official names, e.g. Denmark's "Frømandskorpset" and Norway's "Froskemanskorpset"; others call themselves "combat divers" or similar. Others call themselves by indefinite names such as "special group 13" and similar.
Defending against frogmenSee anti-frogman techniques for details of detecting and combatting unwelcome frogman and scuba diver incursions. Types of armed-forces diversMilitary diving is a branch of professional diving carried out by armed forces. They may be divided into:-
These groups may overlap, and the same men may serve as assault divers and work divers, as in the Australian Clearance Diving Team (RAN). Frogman trainingTraining armed forces divers, including combat divers, is far harder, longer, and more complicated than civilian sport scuba diver training, typically takes several weeks full-time, and the trainees must be at full armed forces fitness and discipline at the start. It needs much higher levels of fitness, and during the course there is often a high elimination rate of trainees who do not make the grade. For more details see the articles on each nation's frogman group below and their external links. This contrasts with civilian sport scuba diving training which tends to be one evening a week, being 30 to 60 minutes swimming pool time, followed by two hours or so of dry meeting (often in a social-club-type environment with an open bar). The general environment at sport dives is liable to encourage what a naval diver-trainer would call "a casual tourist-type attitude to being underwater", rather than a disciplined attitude of obeying orders and not being distracted; some naval diver-trainers prefer, or will only accept, trainees who have no previous scuba diving experience. [1] For example, the PADI Open Water Diver (the most basic rank) course takes 5 dives in a swimming pool and 4 dives in open water (i.e. sea, lake, etc.); after the course the qualified diver is allowed to dive to 18 meters = 59 feet depth. The next step (Advanced Open Water Diver) allows him to dive to 30 meters = 98 feet, which is considered safe for civil scuba diving. EquipmentFor scuba diving gear in general, see Scuba set. Breathing setsImage:MDK dykker 370 17268a.jpg Norwegian frogman from "Minedykkerkommandoen". He seems to be wearing an SDBA or Siva S-24 rebreather. It should be possible to replace this fair use image with a freely licensed one. If you can, please do so as soon as is practical. Frogmen's breathing sets on covert operations should have particular features.
USA frogmen's rebreathers tended to have the breathing bag on the back before enclosed backpack-box rebreathers became common. Features neededA frogman's breathing set should:-
Not open-circuit scubaAs a result, the frogman's breathing set should be fully closed circuit rebreather, preferably not semi-closed circuit and certainly not open-circuit scuba, because:
Link to French Wikipedia image of frogman with "Oxygers" rebreather
Combat frogmen sometimes use open-circuit scuba sets during training and for operations where being detected or long distance swimming are not significant concerns. The Russian IDA71The Russian IDA71 military and naval rebreather is a typical frogman set:-
MasksMost frogmen use a full face diving mask instead of separate mouthpiece and mask. The older type of British frogman's and naval diving mask was full face and had a mouthpiece inside it. Some frogmen use a mouthpiece and noseclip or a mouth-and-nose (oro-nasal) breathing mask instead of a diving mask with eye windows, and special contact lenses to correct the vision refraction error caused by the eyeballs being directly submerged. This is to avoid a searchlight or other lights reflecting off the mask window and thus revealing his presence, but it exposes the eyeballs to any pollution, poison, or organisms in the water. The United States military has adopted Oceanic/Aeris's "Integrated Diver Display Mask". It is a basic "Heads-Up Display" that lets divers monitor depth, bottom time, tank pressures, and related information while leaving their hands free for other tasks. FinsAnother problem with a frogman who may have to come ashore and operate on land is the awkwardness of walking on land in fins, unless he plans to discard his kit and return to base by some other way than by diving, or if the frogmen plan to take and hold a position on land until other troops arrive. Some sport diving fins have the blade angled downwards for more effective swimming, but this makes walking on them more awkward. The usual solution is for the frogman to take his fins off and carry them, but that takes time and occupies a hand carrying them unless he can clip them in to his kit or thread an arm through the fins' straps. Another type of fin that frogmen could use would have a lockable hinge which on land can be unlocked to let the fin blade hinge up out of the way when walking. The first type of British naval swimming fin had a short blade which was even shorter at the big toe side: this made walking on land easier for such purposes as creeping up on a sentry from behind on land, but reduced swimming speed. Diving suitsThe frogman's diving suit should be a tough scratch-and-cut-resistant drysuit (perhaps reinforced with kevlar), and not a soft foam wetsuit. A wetsuit can be worn under the drysuit as a warm undersuit. In very warm water, a thin tough drysuit can be worn with no undersuit. It should not have obvious bright colored patches, unit badges or the suit's maker's advertising. Diving sea-police types, however, may find that a unit badge is useful. Tools and weapons carried underwaterWeapons that can be carried by a frogman include:
Transport for frogmenFrogmen may approach their site of operation and return to base in various ways including:
Types of frogman operations
Mission descriptionsThe U.S. and UK forces use these official definitions for mission descriptors:-
Derivative word usages
Errors about frogmen found in public mediaWrong use of the word "frogman"A new English translation of the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea uses the word "frogman" uniformly and wrongly to mean a diver in standard diving dress or similar, to translate French scaphandrier. Supposed ancient scuba divers/frogmenAncient Assyrian stone carvings show images which some have supposed to be frogmen with crude breathing sets. However, the "breathing set" was merely a goatskin float used to cross a river, and its "breathing tube" was to inflate it by mouth. See timeline of underwater technology. Mistakes in fictionAqualungsMany comics have depicted combat frogmen and other covert divers using two-cylinder twin-hose open-circuit aqualungs. All real covert frogmen use rebreathers because the stream of bubbles from an open-circuit set would give away the diver. Many aqualungs have been anachronistically depicted in comics in stories set during World War II, when in reality aqualungs were unknown outside Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his close associates in Toulon in south France. Although some aqualungs were smuggled out of occupied France during the war (these may have been Commeinhes aqualungs), the aqualung for the most part was not a player in combat in World War II. The movie The Frogmen also made this mistake, using three-cylindered aqualungs. DESCO were making three-cylinder constant flow sets that lacked the demand valve of the aqualung, but they were rarely deployed in the war, the preferred system being the rebreather developed by Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen. Drawing and artworkThere have been thousands of drawings (mostly in comics, some elsewhere) of combat frogmen and other scuba divers with two-cylinder twin-hose aqualungs shown wrongly with one wide breathing tube coming straight out of each cylinder top with no regulator, far more than of twin-hose aqualungs drawn correctly with a regulator, or of combat frogmen with rebreathers. See this image for the correct layout. This recent painting or CGI-type image on a website advertising the CSDS-85 frogman-detector sonar shows (bottom left corner) a frogman using open-circuit scuba complete with bubbles carrying a flying-saucer-shaped object which is likely meant to be a limpet mine. Movies and fictionFrogman-type operations have featured in many comics, books, and movies. Some try to reconstruct real events; others are completely fictional. Some make mistakes as described above. See also:-
HistoryIn ancient Roman and Greek times, etc, there were many instances of men swimming or diving for combat, but they always had to hold their breath, and had no diving equipment, except sometimes a hollow plant stem used as a snorkel. See the first part of the page at this link (in Portuguese). The first known frogmen-type operations using breathing apparatus were by the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS, which formed in 1938 and was in action first in 1940. See Timeline of underwater technology and each of the nations' frogman unit links below. Nations with military diving groupsItaly started World War II with a commando frogman force already trained. Britain, Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union started commando frogman forces during World War II. ArgentinaThe Buzos Tácticos is Argentina's combat frogmen force. AustriaSee Military of Austria#Austrian commando frogmen. AustraliaThe Clearance Diving Team (RAN) is Australia's combat frogman and underwater work force. BrazilSee Brazilian commando frogmen. CanadaCanada has Clearance Divers serve in operational Fleet Diving Units. They are also responsible for training the unrelated Combat Divers which is a Occupation Sub-Specialization (OSS) in its Army Combat Engineering Regiments. Clearance Divers are considered among the most skilled underwater operators in the world. They are trained in:-
Their motto is "Strength in depth". DenmarkEritreaDuring Eritrea's war of independence against Ethiopia, the rebel forces had a combat frogman force. After the war, some of those frogman were retrained as dive guides for the sport scuba diving tourism trade. Image:Sukeltajasiivet.jpg Finnish diver insignia FinlandThe Finnish Navy has trained Finnish combat divers since 1954. Conscripts and career military are eligible to apply for the training. Annually about 20 conscripts are trained for diving duties. Applying for combat diver training is voluntary, and the selection criteria are stringent.[1] The conscript divers are trained either for anti-mine or for commando operations while career personnel may also be trained for deep-sea diving duty.[2] All conscript divers receive at least NCO training during their 12-month service period. FranceGermanyIndiaThe MCU is the elite naval special operations unit of the Indian Navy that undertakes underwater combat. See MARCOS. IndonesiaThe TNI-AL/Indonesian Navy Underwater Combat Unit is called Kopaska. IsraelIt is reported that Israel's combat frogmen are among the most effective compared to their numbers and are said to have been in many operations. They started in 1948. See Shayetet 13. ItalyMalaysiaMalaysia has a special-forces naval unit called Paskal. It includes frogmen. MexicoSee Fuerzas Especiales. NetherlandsThe Netherlands's Amphibious Reconnaissance Platoon is part of the Special Forces unit of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps. New ZealandSee http://www.navy.mil.nz/visit-the-base/rnzn-college/dive-school.htm . The New Zealand Navy trains all NZ Army, NZ Police, and NZ Customs divers. Military Dive Training support is also supplied to Singapore, Malaysia, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. NorwayNorway's commando frogmen corps is called Froskemanskorpset = "the frogman corps". It is part of Marinejegerkommandoen = "the marine hunter command", which is something like the British SBS. Norway has a clearance diver group called Minedykkerkommandoen = "the mine diver command". PakistanPakistan Army's SSG also has a unit in the Pakistan Navy modeled on the USA Navy SEALs: NSSG, otherwise known as SSGN. The SSGN currently has a headquarters in Karachi headed by Pakistan Navy Commander. It has a strength of one company and is assigned to unconventional warfare operations in the coastal regions. During war it is assigned to Midget submarines. All other training is similar to the Army SSG with specific marine oriented inputs provided at its Headquarters. PhilippinesFor the Philippines' military frogman corps, see Special Action Force. PolandThree Polish military divisions train and deploy frogmen in military operations. Most known are GROM water operations division, 1st special commando regiment and Special Operations Section of Polish Navy - Formoza. Polish frogmen operators are confirmed to use these weapons:
The Polish army uses French OXY-NG2 closed-circuit apparatus. PortugalSee Destacamentos de Mergulhadores Sapadores RussiaTamil EelamThe Sea Tigers (sea branch of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have frogmen. See Sea Tigers#Frogmen United KingdomSee:-
United States
US Army Engineer Divers- Trained in underwater construction, Salvage, Demolitions, Hydrographic survey, Hyperbaric chamber opeations, Beach and river recon, bridge recon, underwater cutting and welding, side scan sonar operations, mine and countermine operations, search and recovery operations and ships husbandry operations. Army divers use both surface supplied "Hard hat" and scuba to perform thier missions. US Army Engineer Divers are the swiss army knife of military diving.
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