OSS

How Special Forces operators commemorate their lineage

What a better way to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day then by jumping into Normandy?

Green Berets assigned to the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) conducted static line and free-fall parachute drops on a drop zone in Normandy, France, last week. The Air Force’s 352nd Special Operations Wing and 86th Airlift Wing provided three MC-130J Commando II aircraft for the drop. In total, close 135 American paratroopers jumped, some with the exact same gear their forefathers used on D-Day.

“Overall it was a great jump. It was smooth and went as planned,” said a Green Beret from the 10th SFG in a statement to DVIDS. “It’s an outstanding experience to be able to honor the paratroopers who jumped into France during World War II.”

The local mayor, David Nicholas, said: “We invited them because it’s a very good opportunity to have them jump at Avranches to start the World War II commemorations and celebrations leading up to the anniversary of the liberation of Avranches. It’s also good because today we are opening a new exhibition about World War II in Normandy at the history museum.”

The 10th SFG was the first Special Forces Group to be activated in 1952. Its area of operations includes Europe and North Africa. It has a battalion forward-deployed to Germany.

Representing the French military, Sgt. Maj. Pierre-Andre Integlia, who is the senior non-commissioned officer of the French airborne section of the French Military Academy, said: “We’re here to facilitate the exercise, and work in accordance with the civilian authorities as part of the French and American partnership for D-Day celebrations. It’s a privilege to help commemorate the Allied veterans and their part in the liberation of France.”

Another 10th SFG operator said the jump was a way to trace back their unit’s lineage, and specifically Jedburgh teams of the Office of Strategic Services, which is considered the predecessor of both the CIA and the U.S. Special Operations Command.

“We’re celebrating their combined effort to liberate Western Europe with local forces,” added the operator, who had to remain anonymous for operational security reasons. “The airborne operation celebrates the long relationship between America and France and 10th SFG’s commitment to continuing the tradition of training and working with our allies in Europe.”

In addition to these commemorative jumps, 600 movie theaters across the U.S. will be screening the critically acclaimed movie, “Saving Private Ryan.”

This article was written by Stavros Atlamazoglou at NEWSREP

Feature image: A Special Forces soldier from the U.S. Army’s 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) prepares to land on the drop zone near Mont Saint Michel, Avranches, France on May 18, 2019. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Alexis K. Washburn).

Research & Development Branch of OSS, and America’s “Q”

During World War II, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) was the United States first foray into the intelligence business. Prior to the war, the intelligence services for the US didn’t exist, much to the chagrin of their British allies just as the war began. It had no overall direction, planning or control and was done on an ad hoc basis.

But William Donovan changed all of that, he built an organization from scratch and before the war’s end which had over 13,000 agents and support personnel under his command all over the globe.

OSS intelligence operations and Guerrilla Warfare experts in the Operational Groups and Jedburgh Teams were the most well known of the OSS operatives. OSS was the forerunner of today’s CIA and the US Army Special Forces. And both share their lineage with OSS.

But one of the more intriguing and interesting branches of OSS was the Research and Development Branch. The mission of the Research and Development (R&D) branch was to develop devices to help undercover OSS agents, enhance intelligence gathering, or to facilitate sabotage operations.

For anyone who has ever liked and watched the James Bond films, (raises hand) the R&D Branch was the American version of “Q-Branch” where Bond would get his wonderful gadgets that seem so far-fetched at times but were rooted in fact.

The OSS R&D Branch in actuality worked very closely with the British and together they developed, refined and/or contracted to provide intelligence and Special Operations operatives the tools they’d need.

The OSS under Donovan didn’t work like the typical Army bureaucracy and Donovan would open his door to anyone he felt could help his fledgling operation. But he found the right man to lead R&D. Donovan hired Boston chemist Stanley P. Lovell to head up the R&D Branch, and Donovan humorously called him his “Professor Moriarty.” Moriarty was a devious criminal character from the Sherlock Holmes books. He was described by Arthur Conan Doyle as this:

“The man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in the University town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and come down to London. He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city…

— Holmes, “The Final Problem”

Lovell lived up to his Moriarty and “Q” reputation. He developed some very intriguing pieces of equipment, including silenced pistols and submachine guns. The latter of which the M-3 Grease gun was used by Special Forces during the Vietnam war.

OSS Suppressed Grease Gun

OSS Pistol & Tire Puncturer

OSS developed explosives disguised as lumps of coal (“Black Joe”) or mule turds and even Chinese flour, which the troops called “Aunt Jemima.” The flour could even be baked and eaten in an emergency. R&D also developed chemical and pressure activated firing devices and clock timers that enabled an operative to set an explosive charge, and leave the area and be clear when the explosives detonated.

One of the more ingenious ideas was the “Beano” hand grenade. The Beano grenade was made by the Eastman Kodak company. And Lovell’s men designed the grenade around the American pastime of baseball. It was the size and weight of a traditional American baseball, with the thinking that any red-blooded American boy knows how to throw a baseball.

It was held with two fingers on a weighted and knurled “butterfly cap” and the arming pin was removed. Once thrown, the cap detached from the body of the grenade and a length of nylon string would unwind until a secondary arming pin attached to the far end of the cord was pulled, arming the grenade to detonate upon impact with a hard surface.

The original grenades were 5.5 ounces which were eventually deemed too light. So the later models were upped to 12 ounces. The problem was the arming switch deployed too quickly and ended up injuring more Americans than Germans.

Grenade & Button Compass

Matchbox Camera

Other ingenious gadgets included buttons with compasses inside to aid in escape and evasion, playing cards that concealed maps, a 16mm Kodak camera in the shape of a matchbox as well as German and Japanese identity cards, rations cards, passes and counterfeit currency.

In the official OSS history that has been published by CIA, they describe the mission of R&D and how it pertained to the agents:

…each agent had to be equipped with clothing sewn exactly as it would have been sewn if it were made in the local area for which he was destined; his eyeglasses, dental work, toothbrush, razor, brief case, travelling bag, shoes, and every item of wearing apparel had to be microscopically accurate.

One of OSS’ better projects was headed up by a Washington DC physician named Christian J. Lambertsen who developed an oxygen rebreather set (the Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit). This Scuba-type system was used by OSS and headed up by Lambertsen in the OSS Maritime Unit.

They also came up with different explosive devices such as Limpet mines and others such as communication devices, beacons, and wiretap gadgets. Of course, as every spy novel has ever shown, OSS had their tasteless poison “L” pills to allow an agent to kill himself rather than be captured.

One of the sillier projects was the exploding candle. A French or European operative was supposed to lure a German officer to a bedroom for a roll in the hay. Then to set the mood, they were to light this candle and make their escape while the German lay in a state of relaxation. When the candle burned down to a bit, they would explode.

So, the next time you watch James Bond have his normal interaction with “Q-Branch” you can know that although the tongue-in-cheek humor is designed for just that but that many of the gadgets you see aren’t so far-fetched after all. And they’re all based on true facts and operations. Except maybe for the Aston-Martin which….doesn’t really lend itself to the big city background. But I’d still love to take one for a spin.

Photos: CIA, OSS archives, AP

“The Catcher Was a Spy” Moe Berg, OSS, A Swing, and a Miss

Like most Special Forces guys, especially of my generation, I can’t get enough of OSS (Office of Strategic Services) from World War II. OSS was the “Greatest Generation” version of both CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) as both sprang forth from the extraordinary organization that General William “Wild Bill” Donovan built from scratch. With the help of the British, and learning on the fly, the United States had, for the first time, a professional intelligence organization and a military force that was expert in the art of Unconventional Warfare.

Donovan attracted all types of people, making OSS quite the eclectic organization. He was looking for “PhDs who can win a bar fight.” Moe Berg fit the bill to a tee. A professional athlete, Berg, although far from a star, played major league baseball for 15 seasons as a catcher, no mean feat, as well as being one of the few Jewish players in MLB. He was also a brilliant scholar and could speak 10 languages, seven fluently and graduated from both Princeton and the Sorbonne and studied law at Columbia at a time when Jews didn’t attend in large numbers.

The story of Berg who spied for America before Pearl Harbor on a “goodwill” tour of Japan with other major league ballplayers in the 1930s and joined OSS during the war is well known among the avid readers within the intelligence and SOF communities. But to many, he was an unknown. This film that came out this summer, changed that to a degree.

Director Ben Lewin, based his film off of the bio of Berg, Nicholas Dawidoff’s 1994, The Catcher Was a Spy. He assembled a great cast featuring two of my favorite actors, Paul Rudd, who is fantastic as always as Berg, Mark Strong, and a very good supporting cast with Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Connie Nielsen, Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson, who I had the pleasure of working with on a Mossad film (The Debt) and Giancarlo Giannini.

I wanted to like this film, no…I wanted to love this film, as anyone who loves seeing anything about OSS in print or film does. But it doesn’t ever reach that level. In baseball parlance, unfortunately, the film is a “can of corn.”

The film goes out of its way to portray Berg as the enigma that he was. He was an introvert, a scholar and a Jew in the world of professional baseball where those traits were in short supply. But the film takes his solitary life a step farther. Lewin depicts Berg as a closet homosexual, although there has never been any evidence that Berg was.

However, the stretch isn’t too far between being a catcher in the MLB and a spy. After all, catchers are always trying to hide their signals to the pitcher from prying eyes by putting them down between their legs. And if anyone watches games closely, they’ll put down multiple signs to throw off anyone stealing them, in a simplistic but effective code.

Berg, excellently played by Rudd, is finishing up his career with the Red Sox and is ready to go into coaching when the winds of war start to blow before WWII. Touring Japan with other big leaguers, Berg snuck on top of a hospital and filmed the harbor and naval shipyards after reading about the Japanese Empire expanding. His prewar footage of Japan’s military facilities, put him on the radar of Donovan, played by Jeff Daniels. Berg is brought into OSS in early 1943.

After doing deskwork, Berg was assigned to the Special Operations Branch (SO). He was a paramilitary operations officer in OSS that would today be part of the CIA Special Activities Division.

Later he was placed in the OSS Secret Intelligence branch (SI) on the Balkans desk. Berg parachuted into occupied Yugoslavia to evaluate the various resistance groups operating against the Nazis. He met both Draža Mihailović and Josef Tito.

In the film, they touch on his next assignment. While the US is rushing forth with the Manhattan Project, the government is worried about the Nazis getting the bomb first. Werner Heisenberg (Strong), is one of the leading scientists in Germany’s quest for the bomb. While the threat is significant enough, there is some doubt about how close the Germans are. So, if they are close, Berg’s mission is to assassinate him.

He travels with another scientist (Giamatti) and a military escort (Pearce) to Zurich where Heisenberg is and he has to make a determination whether or not to kill him

Miller is cast as Berg’s long-time girlfriend, whom he keeps, like everyone else at arm’s distance. When asked point blank by Daniels if he is “queer”, Rudd/Berg answers, “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

When Berg finally meets Heisenberg, the two dance around in a nicely crafted scene where neither is willing to give much. Berg is looking for anything to confirm that the Nazis are ready to construct the atomic bomb and he’ll be tasked with killing him. While a great scene and expertly played, the film lacks the suspense we’d normally see in a spy film.

The aloofness and repressed part of his supposed homosexuality is the basis for Lewin’s assertion of proof of Berg’s bona fides as a spy. The scene where he sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic was a good one, Berg, despite his closeted personal life, is a patriot and that explains part of his motivation.

But overall, the film was too thin and it could have been much, much better. Especially with the outstanding cast that they surrounded the director with.

Berg was an intriguing character. He was intensely personal and tried to go to work for CIA after the war, but then only getting one contractor type of assignment. He never married and lived with his brother for several years before he was asked to leave, He then moved in with his sister, where he stayed until passing away at the age of 70 in 1972.

He was described as moody and snappish by his family. After WWII, he felt he lost the ability to follow his calling for his second career in the CIA. He was quoted however that, “I’d rather be a ballplayer than a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court” when someone accused him of wasting his talents on baseball.

He was awarded the Medal of Freedom for his service in OSS, but he turned it down. His sister eventually accepted it on his behalf.

He was cremated after his death and had his ashes scattered over a mountain in Israel. His baseball card is on display at CIA Headquarters.

Photos: Wikipedia/IFC Films

Originally published on Special Operations.com

Robin Sage Begins June 9th, Time For the SF Students to Step Up

The Special Forces rite of passage is about to begin for the next class of SF candidates. The final training in Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) for prospective SF soldiers is the Unconventional Warfare (UW) exercise “Robin Sage”, which we went over in detail in an earlier post, that you can read here:

The prospective Green Berets put all their training together and infiltrate into the fictional country of Pineland via an airborne operation. The SF candidates must raise and train a guerrilla force that will fight the enemy government troops and attempt to restore the friendly Pineland government.

The exercise’s notional country of Pineland encompasses Alamance, Anson, Cabarrus, Chatham, Cumberland, Davidson, Davie Guilford, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Scotland, Stanly, and Union counties. Throughout the exercise, Special Forces candidates and Robin Sage role-players not only conduct training missions such as controlled assaults and key-leader engagements but also live, eat and sleep in these civilian areas.

Robin Sage, derives its name from the town of Robbins, N.C., a central area of operations for the exercise, and former Army Colonel Jerry Sage, a World War II veteran and an Office of Strategic Services, or OSS officer who taught unconventional warfare tactics. Steve McQueen’s character Hilts in the film “The Great Escape” was based off Sage.

This current version of the UW exercise has been in use with only slight changes since 1974. To succeed, the prospective SF troops need to accomplish a few key tasks.

Build Popular Support with the Civilian Populace
Make Rapport with the target audience (Guerrilla Force)
Be an effective teacher and train the resistance force

Building Popular Support with the Civilian Populace: What makes Robin Sage so realistic? The civilian community in “Pineland” is nearly totally immersed in the operation. Not only have the citizens of the operational area given their support for the exercise, they’ve become deeply involved.

Many of the role players have been involved with the course for several years and they pass along to their children the drive to carry on and to take over the role of underground or auxiliary in the exercise. And they have proven time and again just how important having popular support in the UW area of operations is to mission success.

These role players help to ferry supplies and equipment, move troops in covered trailers around the operational area as well as provide an early warning network for the guerrilla force. As it is with all people who live in the country, nothing happens out there without all of them knowing about it and they invariably warned the good guys.

And make no mistake, the Special Forces students are the “good guys” in this exercise. It strikes home how important having popular support is when either helping or countering a resistance movement. It is a lesson all SF troops need to learn. No one can make a move in the operational area without the civilians knowing about it. And if they are for you, they will prove invaluable. If the team loses popular support, they are likely done.

Make Rapport With the G-Force: Building rapport with the locals that the SF team will train with, by and through is, among the most important tasks they will encounter. The ability to build rapport both with their foreign partners and with their team members is essentially the difference between Special Forces and all of the others. Alone, an SF team is just 12 men, but working with their foreign partners, they become force multipliers.

SF candidates will quickly learn that learning to communicate and respect the ways of the target audience, obeying their social graces as it is imperative. That is just the first step. Learning to make rapport with the local forces isn’t easy to teach and it is even harder to learn. Some guys are naturals at it and should always be out front, especially during the early “feeling out” process.

The ability to build a solid base of trust is one of the key skills learned by Special Forces troops in complex, austere environments. It can’t be massed produced or pushed thru a shake and bake course. Having troops just show up on the doorstep in the middle of a third world country and have them fall at your feet isn’t realistic and doesn’t happen.

Rapport building begins with checking your ego at the door and operating instinctively. Many times there won’t be a right or wrong answer and frequently the SF candidates will be forced to make difficult and complex decisions. The hallmarks of a successful Special Forces soldier is a mature, versatile and flexible operator in any environment. Being able to adapt to cultures other than our own is the true mark of building trust and reliability that our by, with and through the local forces that will mark a successful operation.

The interaction with host nation troops, both soldiers and leaders require a need for tact and diplomacy. Hammering home the message to the lower rank and file of the guerrilla force is quite different than that to a Colonel or politician/tribal elder that you’ll encounter. A career diplomat once told me the art of diplomacy is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in a way that they’ll enjoy the trip.

One of the best team sergeants I ever knew and a man I consider a tremendous mentor said, the best way to make rapport sometimes is to just shut up and listen. For the SF candidates, there is a time for talking and a time for listening. And when it is time to listen, they need to do so as if their collective lives depend on it. Because they do.

Be An Effective Teacher, Training the G-Force: As we’ve said here numerous times, teaching is an art in Special Forces. Unfortunately teaching and training a guerrilla force isn’t as sexy as taking down a target on a DA (Direct Action) mission and no one wants to see that…right? People want to see a video of guys “doing operator shit” with plenty of cool toys complete with heavy metal music overdubbed while the bad guys bite the dust.

While DA missions are linear and much easier to judge the success or failure of, the true art of a Special Forces A-team lies in their ability to teach an allied soldier or guerrilla fighter to do those same Direct Action missions. Setting up intelligence early warning networks or leading a dedicated guerrilla force to succeed in the Unconventional Warfare (UW) environment isn’t as tangible, nor as sexy. But it is the difference between winning and losing in the UW environment.

We all remember our time in Robin Sage as it was the final test before joining the Regiment, where the real learning begins in earnest. And my primary instructor at Robin Sage, Paul W. not only knew his subject matter extremely well, he knew the operational area as well as the locals and we as a team soaked up his lessons like a sponge. He would always answer questions framed around a question of his own and said frequently that “this is a thinking man’s game.” At the time, we didn’t completely get it but he was right.

And everything centered around the three primary tasks listed above. They were all interdependent on one another. Of course, there are several other things that the students will have to accomplish, but these three are keys to getting a successful operation conducted in Robin Sage and walking across the stage and becoming part of the best Regiment in the military.

Photo: US Army

Originally published on Special Operations.com and written by STEVE BALESTRIERI

Grease Gun: Examining the M3/M3A1 Submachine Gun

Compared to most U.S. infantry weapons of World War II, the M3 submachine gun is not especially well known. This is even more remarkable given that it is the longest-serving SMG in U.S. military history, having been used from 1942 to 1992.

The M3’s resemblance to the tool used to lubricate automobiles resulted in its nickname, the “Grease Gun.” Many of those who do recognize the M3 may know it more by that title than its official designation. The M3 has been portrayed onscreen a few times, including the film “The Dirty Dozen” and in HBO’s “Band of Brothers.”

A New Direction

Development of the M3 began in 1941 when the U.S. Army Ordnance Board became interested in an inexpensive, mass-produced submachine gun akin to the British Sten Gun. This in itself was quite a turnaround as, unlike many European armies, the U.S. Army had never really been especially enamored with SMGs. At the time, the U.S. submachine gun was the Thompson, which had been adopted to a large extent because it was available and already in production at the start of the war.

The Thompson was effective but heavy and expensive. Based on a list of requirements submitted by the Army, specs were developed for an all-metal weapon, chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge, capable of either semi- or full-auto fire, having a low cyclic rate and capable of being inexpensively mass produced. The original specifications had offered .30 Carbine as an alternative to .45 ACP, but the pistol caliber was chosen. To save costs, the capability of firing on semi-auto was eliminated, so the M3 could only be fired on full-auto.

Continue reading on Tactical-Life

*Photo courtesy of Tactical-Life/Ken MacSwan

OSS weapons ingenuity: The secret gear of America’s WWII spies

General Donovan motivated the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) research and development branch to fabricate weapons in-house for officers in the field. These weapons ranged from the amazingly complex to the remarkably fundamental. OSS guns and blades were intended for simple but effective use. American servicemen going into harm’s way had a variety of ingenious places to hide small, even miniature, compasses for escape and evasion—in combs, razors, uniform buttons, or, as seen here, in cufflinks.

The Eastman Kodak Company developed and manufactured the camera below for use by the OSS. It was made in the shape of a matchbox common in that era. It could be disguised by adding a matchbox label appropriate for the country in which it was to be used.

The camera used 16mm film. It was deployed “behind the lines” by resistance personnel in World War II for target recording and propaganda photography. Designed to be operated with a minimum of user-adjustable settings, the camera featured rugged construction and controls that could be operated by “feel.”—Central Intelligence Agency website

The caltrop was “the simplest weapon we ever made” according to Dr. Stanley Lovell, author of “Of Spies and Stratagems.” No matter how the caltrop is tossed, it will land with one of its four prongs up. Whatever rolls over it will be punctured or injured. It is effective when many are scattered onto enemy roadways or airport runways.

Historically, caltrops have been found in Babylonian tombs, were used against medieval knights on horseback, and were found in archaeological digs at Jamestown.—Central Intelligence Agency website

The video below shows an early version of a collapsible baton, pop gun, and concealed compass, to name a few of the OSS’s tools of the trade.

*Featured image courtesy of macdonaldarms.com

Originally published on SOFREP and written by DREW DWYER