Dictionary:
frog·man (frôg'măn', -mən, frŏg'-) ![]() |
| WordNet: frogman |
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
someone who works underwater
Synonyms: diver, underwater diver
| Wikipedia: Frogman |
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A frogman is someone who is trained to dive or swim in a military capacity which can include combat. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver or combatant diver or combat swimmer. Strictly speaking, "combat swimming" refers to surface swimming without a breathing apparatus for the purposes of coastal or ship infiltration. Such actions are a historical form of "frogman" activity and an important feature of naval special operations.
In popular usage, the term '"frogman" also often refers to a civilian scuba diver. The word arose around 1940 from the appearance of a diver in shiny drysuit and large fins. Though the preferred term by scuba users is "diver", the "frogman" epithet persists in informal usage by non-divers, especially in the media and often in reference to professional scuba divers such as in a police role. Also, some sport diving clubs include the word "Frogmen" in their names.
In the U.S. 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 Ordnance Disposal (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#Scuba diving.
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 "special operations unit".
Many nations and some irregular armed groups deploy or have deployed combat frogmen.
Anti-frogman techniques are security methods developed to protect watercraft, ports and installations, and other sensitive resources both in or nearby vulnerable waterways from potential threats or intrusions by frogmen.
Military 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).
Training armed forces divers, including combat divers, is often 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 much more casual. 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 metres (60 ft). The next step (Advanced Open Water Diver) allows him to dive to 30 metres (100 ft). A further Deep Diver speciality course allows him to dive to 40 metres (130 ft) maximum, which is considered safe for civil scuba diving. European agencies commonly impose a 50 metres (160 ft) maximum on recreational diving. This can be compared with military frogman training courses as described in some of the articles about national military frogman bodies included or pointed to below, and their included external links.
None of this should underestimate the abilities of well-trained and experienced amateur divers who may be capable of accomplishing tasks that regulations forbid professional divers from undertaking. As an example, Simon Mitchell was able to conduct a search for the engine of a crashed helicopter at 74 metres (240 ft), when naval or police divers could not.[1]
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.
A frogman's breathing set should:
As 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:
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 IDA71 military and naval rebreather is a typical frogman set:
Some frogmen use an ordinary diving mask; some use a fullface mask, which is less easily lost underwater. 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.
Another 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. Nowadays all fins can be clipped onto a belt without having any disadvantages.
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: for example Flipfins.
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.
The 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.
For Bomb Disposal Operations, Canadian Naval Divers wear Bomb suits.
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.
Weapons that can be carried by a frogman include:
Frogmen may approach their site of operation and return to base in various ways including:
The U.S. and UK forces use these official definitions for mission descriptors:
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.
Ancient 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.
Many 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 frogman's position.
Many aqualungs have been anachronistically depicted in comics in stories set during World War II, when in reality, at that time period, aqualungs were unknown outside Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his close associates in Toulon in south France. Some aqualungs were smuggled out of occupied France during the war (these may have been Commeinhes aqualungs), but 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, as seen in the movie poster. DESCO were making three-cylinder constant flow sets that lacked the demand valve of the aqualung, but they were rarely deployed in the war, and the preferred system was the rebreather developed by Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen.[3]
After Ian Edward Fraser in 1957 wrote a book, Frogman V.C., about his experiences, whoever designed its dust cover depicted on it a frogman placing a limpet mine on a ship, wearing a breathing set with twin over-the-shoulder wide breathing tubes emitting bubbles from behind his neck, presumably drawn after an old-type aqualung. [2] [3].
There 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 of an old-type aqualung.
This recent illustration on a Web site advertising the CSDS-85 frogman-detector sonar shows (bottom left corner) a frogman using open-circuit scuba complete with bubbles, carrying a disc-shaped object which is likely meant to be a limpet mine.
Frogman-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. Examples are:
In 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.
Italy 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.
The Buzos Tácticos is Argentina's combat frogman force.
The Clearance Diving Team (RAN) is Australia's combat frogman and underwater work force. The Australian SAS also undertakes water operations.
The Special Forces Group (Belgium) has a specialized diving company for education and training of combat swimmers.
Croatian BSD's 3rd Company is specialized for seaborne operations and is responsible for training of combat swimmers and divers.
They played a major role on the War of attrition and the Crossing of the Suez Canal on 6 October 1973, by obstructing the oil pipes that would pump burning oil from Bar Lev Line to the canal.
During Eritrea's war of independence against Ethiopia, the rebel forces had a combat frogman force. After the war, some of those frogmen were retrained as dive guides for the sport scuba diving tourism trade.
The 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.[4] 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.[5] All conscript divers receive at least NCO training during their 12-month service period.
The MCU is the elite naval special operations unit of the Indian Navy that undertakes underwater combat.
The TNI-AL/Indonesian Navy Underwater Combat Unit is called Kopaska.
His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan is a qualified frogman.[citation needed]
Malaysia has a special-forces naval unit called Paskal. It includes frogmen.
The Netherlands's Amphibious Reconnaissance Platoon is part of the Special Forces unit of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps.
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.[6]
Norway's commando frogmen corps is called Marinejegerkommandoen, "the naval ranger command", which is something like the British SBS.
Norway has a clearance diver group called Minedykkerkommandoen, "the mine diver command".
Pakistan's SSG has a naval unit modeled on the US Navy SEALs. The SSGN has headquarters in Karachi headed by a 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 orientation provided at its headquarters.
Three 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.
Spain has been training combat divers and swimmers since 1967. Two units in the Spanish Navy currently operate under a Naval Special Warfare mandate:
There are working plans to fuse the two units into a single "Naval Special Warfare Unit" (UGNE), while maintaining their functional distinctiveness.
The Sea Tigers (sea branch of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have frogmen for suicide runs.
Underwater search and Finding Commership is the unit that gives diving services in Turkey. It also gives deepwater diving and mine diving lessons to officers and petty officers. They become 1. Class Divers. Su Altı Taaruz commandos are high level divers.
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| Translations: Frogman |
Français (French)
n. - homme-grenouille
Deutsch (German)
n. - Froschmann
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - βατραχάνθρωπος, αυτοδύτης
Italiano (Italian)
sommozzatore
Português (Portuguese)
n. - homem-rã (m) (mergulhador)
Español (Spanish)
n. - hombre rana
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - grodman
中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
蛙人
中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 蛙人
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) غطاس,
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - איש-צפרדע
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![]() | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Frogman". Read more | |
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