Death From Below: The True Story of Confederate Frogmen during the 2nd Great War.
A post-war artists conception about the Confederate Navy's underwater special forces unit called the 12th Special Assault Flotilla.
While in Cuba during his election campaign in 1932, future President Jake Featherston would witness a couple of fishermen diving in the water to hunt fish, in which they would dynamite. While thinking about the whole thing later that evening, the good fairy would strike, in which Featherston thought about an idea of a new Confederate special forces unit that could attack enemy vessels at their anchorage without the enemy knowing it until it was too late. After getting into power in 1934, the Snake would propose this idea to the Confederate Admiralty, but most of the Admiralty would have negative thoughts about it. They thought that this very idea was a dumb one at best, plus the Admiralty would be in more favor of building new Capital Ships and Cruisers to compete with the Union Navy. However, some of them would at least take the President's idea and thought it was an idea worth trying. Under the direction of Vice Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, an experimental unit led by Captain Michael Jolson would practice and test this concept by placing dummy explosive charges on ships at the Tampa Naval Base. Finally on May 5th, 1937, the Kimmel would show off this new unit to the Confederate Admiralty and to President Featherston in order to prove the concept of assault divers. The divers would plant real demolition charges on an old Confederate Navy torpedo boat, the former CSS TB-11, in the Bay of Guantanamo. The divers would end up planting the charges and in turn, the charges would detonate and sink the ship. This demonstration would stun the Admirals there, though they would still dislike the concept, would at least let the project go forward.
An artist's rendition of a Mk I "Pig" manned torpedo moving covertly through a Union controlled port.
The next problem for the new Assault Swimmer unit was the delivery vehicle for both them and the limpet mine, and more importantly, a way to transport them to the edge of enemy territory. As for the transport, they both used modified auxiliary cruisers and modified submarines to carry the delivery vehicle and their crew of two frogmen each. The problem of said delivery vehicle was eventually solved the development of the Special Underwater Mine Transport or SUMT Mk I, or more famously known as the Pig, which was the intended codename of the vehicle.
The Auxiliary Cruiser CSS Ares, which along with the Auxiliary Cruiser CSS Port of Spain, they would serve as a point where the Frogmen and their Pigs would depart from to attack enemy ships at a port. The CSS Ares would be destroyed in a friendly fire incident by the submarine CSS Dogfish on June 4th, 1942 off the coast of New York.
A photo of the SS Port of Spain before here requisitioning by the Confederate Navy, circa 1937. The Port of Spain would serve on various covert Confederate operations throughout the war before her loss at the hands of Union Navy aircraft off the coast of Florida in late 1943.
A diagram of the CSS Sargo, one of the many submarines that would be modified to carry the pigs in pods mounted onto their decks, and the mines.
The first ever combat mission conducted by the 12th Special Assault Flotilla was during the Invasion of Haiti, the CSS Port of Spain positioned itself outside of Port-au-Prince posing a merchant ship from Panama. From there, the frogmen led by Captain Jolson infiltrated the harbor and planted limpet mines on the ships of the Haitian Navy. The following morning, the day of the invasion, the mines would detonate and the whole Haitian Navy would be sent to the bottom of their home base. Afterwards, the unit from the auxiliary cruisers Ares and Port of Spain would attack Union Naval Vessels in New York harbor on December 4th, 1941, in which they would plant mines of the Aircraft Carrier USS Oriskany, the Battleships New Mexico, Nevada, and Oregon, and the Heavy Cruiser the USS Portland along with the Fleet Refueling Ship USS Winniebago. In the morning all of the mine would detonate, destroying the Winniebago (which would set the destroyer USS Gridley on fire, which was moored alongside the tanker) and damaging the Oriskany, New Mexico, Nevada, and Portland, while the mines of the USS Oregon would fail to detonate. The damaged ships would spend several months at the New York Naval Yard undergoing repairs. As a result of the raid, on New Years Day 1942, President Featherston would award Captain Jolson with the Medal of Valor, the highest award for non-Freedom Party members of the Military and also make Jolson an honorary member of the Party.
A photo of two Confederate Navy sailors preparing a Frogmen (who in this photo is believed to be Captain Jolson) for an operation in New York harbor, circa 1942.
Things took a down turn for the unit when on July 18th, 1943, the submarine CSS Grouper, which was carrying Jolson and his team, was sunk by the Union destroyers USS Hobbs and USS Johnston, killing all aboard (including the Frogmen.) The unit would still conduct missions against the Union Navy in the Atlantic and Caribbean, but was not as efficient as when Jolson led them. The unit would ultimately be made into infantrymen on the ground and fought at Mobile against the Union Army in 1944. Frogmen operations would also extend to the rivers and lakes within the United States and the Confederacy during the war, under the formations of the 14th and 15th Special Assault Flotilla, in which they would be more successful than their Blue Water counterparts as they would prove to be a nuisance to the Union Army and Navy not only mining their boats, but also going ashore and attacking critical Union positions such as supply depots and communications centers.