ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The United States Navy SEALs [] are a special unit of the U.S. Navy. They are subordinate to the United States Naval Special Warfare Command (NAVSPECWARCOM), which has its headquarters in Coronado, California and is itself part of the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

The term “SEAL” is an acronym of the words Sea, Air, Land (sea, air, ground) which express the locations of the Special Forces. It also corresponds to the English term for seal and is pronounced as such.

The unofficial motto of the unit is: The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.

History

Prehistory
The origins of the U.S. Navy SEALs lie in the Navy Combat Demolition Units (NCDU), which were actually a naval ordnance clearance service whose task was to clear beaches and clear obstacles before landings, such as during World War II during Operation Overlord. The members of the NCDU were mostly made up of pioneer battalions (SEABEES) of the United States Navy. There were two different teams – the NCDUs, which were mainly deployed in Europe, and the UDTs (Underwater Demolition Teams), which worked in the Pacific War Zone. The UDTs differed from the NCDUs mainly by their lighter equipment, so the UDTs often wore only swimwear and fins during simple missions. In Japan, the UDTs were involved in almost every landing operation, and their strength was about 3000 men by the end of the war. During the war in Korea, however, they often operated on land.

Due to the failed landing in the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the looming Cuban crisis, the inability of the then-lead CIA to carry out such special operations originally intended for them was revealed. To close this operational gap, US President John F. Kennedy ordered the establishment of new military special forces, which is why the US Navy began to set up its SEAL teams. The designation SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) marked the environments in which they would later operate. Finally, on January 1, 1962, SEAL Team 1 was set up in Coronado, California on the Pacific Coast and Team 2 in Little Creek, Virginia on the East Coast. Many members of the UDT were taken over directly, but it still remained. The number of members was initially small, with ten officers and 50 SEALs each. Immediately after they were set up, a large equipment purchase and the practice of old tactics as well as the development of new tactics took place. techniques.

Vietnam War

From 1963, first used under the command of the local CIA resident as a trainer of South Vietnamese troops, especially the “Vietnamese SEALs” Lien Doc Nguoi Nhia (LDNN) and Provincial Reconnaissance Units in Da Nang, the SEALs were assigned to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), the military in 1964