Throughout the second world war submarines weren’t the only operational units under water. All sides of the war had special units that would operate under the water to either avoid detection and sneak up on enemy or to sabotage enemy structures and ships. These units were commonly called the Frogmen and are the predecessor of many of the modern naval special forces such as the Navy SEALs.
Suggestions for the divers of each nation in game:
USA:
Spoiler
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Underwater Demolition Team (UDT):
This unit was created by United States Navy in 1942. In 1942, the Army and Navy jointly established the Amphibious Scout and Raider School at Fort Pierce, Florida. Here Lieutenant Commander Phil H. Bucklew, the “Father of Naval Special Warfare”, helped organize and train what became the Navy’s ‘first group’ to specialize in amphibious raids and tactics. -
Special Service Unit No. 1:
Special Services Unit No. 1 (SSU 1) was a short lived special forces unit during World War II. A combined operations unit, it included both US and Australian personnel. SSU 1 undertook amphibious reconnaissance missions, to gather intelligence about proposed amphibious landing sites.
Formed in July 1943, SSU 1 trained initially at Cairns, Australia, in martial arts, hand-to-hand combat, rubber craft operation, jungle survival training, pidgin English, map making, oceanography and marine biology (i.e. recognizing underwater coral formations and other sea creatures).
Missions were undertaken at Finschhafen, Arawe, Gasmata and Cape Gloucester, without any casualties.
US Navy personnel from SSU 1 subsequently became the basis of the 7th Amphibious Scouts.
Germany:
Spoiler
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Kleinkampfmittelverband/K-Verband:
Admiral Karl Dönitz orders Vice-Admiral Hellmuth Heye to create a special unit. It is originally named Kleinkampfmittelverband (“small ordnance association”) but it is better known under the name of K-Verband or Meereskämpfer (ocean warriors). Its first men, including von Wurzian, were trained by experienced Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS men. -
SS-Jagdkommando Donau:
It was a special unit within the German Waffen-SS during World War II. This unit was part of the broader SS-Jagdverbände, which were special forces units trained for unconventional warfare, including sabotage, reconnaissance, and guerrilla tactics⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾. The SS-Jagdkommando Donau specifically focused on underwater operations and combat diving.
These units were involved in various covert operations and played a significant role in the German military’s efforts to disrupt enemy activities and gather intelligence. The training for these units was rigorous and included skills such as demolition, hand-to-hand combat, and the use of specialized equipment. -
Marine Einsatzkommando (MEK):
Three German frogman units called “Marine Einsatzkommando” (MEK) became active. Each unit had one officer and 22 men. These units were formed in June 1944 and were involved in various underwater demolition and sabotage operations such as the destruction of bridges over Orne River or severely damaging the cruiser ORP Dragon and sinking the destroyer HMS Isis. They also attacked and destroyed destroyed the Vascouy coastal artillery battery position.
Japan:
Spoiler
- Fukuryu:
Fukuryu (Japanese: 伏龍, Hepburn: Fukuryū) (also known as suicide divers and kamikaze frogmen) were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units prepared to resist the invasion of Japan’s Home islands by Allied forces. Six thousand men were planned to be trained and equipped with diving equipment for the role. They would use attack mines affixed to bamboo poles.
USSR:
Spoiler
- рота особого назначения, Rota Osobogo Naznacheniya (RON):
On 22 October 1938, during wargaming between units of the Russian Pacific Fleet in Vladivostok, a group of Soviet military divers exited a Shchuka-class submarine (hull number 112) through a torpedo tube. They succeeded in infiltrating the naval base, where they completed certain acts of sabotage. These combat divers were equipped with oxygen rebreathers, dry suits, handguns and grenades. Soviet combat divers were also quite successful during World War Two. They performed a variety of missions numbering well over 200 operations including instances of combat with German Frogmen at a Tsemes Bay seaport at Novorossiysk which resulted in some knife battles underwater. However the operations consisted of more than just combat operations and demolitions. There were many rescue missions which also included female divers recovering weapons and other military equipment from sunken cargo ships. Other operations also included making minor repairs of ships that were afloat and clearing approaches to wharf facilities at the sites of fords across the Volga river. There were also operations which involved recovering the dead that were present on sunken ships or in the Volga river.
Other nations such as Italy and UK had Frogmen too, but for the sake of simplicity I’ve included Frogmen of each nation. However they can be added as premium or event squads to the game later (British Frogmen for the US and Italian ones for Germany)
What unique features and advantages would the Frogmen squads have?
Spoiler
I think the addition of such units combined with maps that have amphibious routes would create a nice opportunity for the divers to shine. They can have better swimming speed and stamina than other squads and can hold their breathe longer, they could also be given a feature to use their weapons while in the water so for example if they see an enemy on land they can stop swimming forward and use their weapons to kill the enemy and if the enemy returns fire, they can just dive back down and hide. They could also contain various classes of soldiers in the squad which also get the divers abilities (like in machine gun squads where an engineer would be able to build heavy machine gun nests). This could be useful to for example have the engineer dive across a lake and build a rally point behind the enemy lines and cause a flank or if there’s a tank or stationary gun firing at friendlies an AT soldier in diver squad could swim and sneak up to the target and destroy that tank or gun.
Please let me know what you think about this idea and add more information or correct my post if I had mistakes in it. Thanks for reading