Navy Divers by Gregor Salmon

[covediver]

This recently published book tells the story of Austrailian Navy's Clearance Divers, a small and unique unit which combines salvage, ship repair, explosive ordinance disposal, and marine counter terror funcitions. The story starts in World War II with the arrival of Australian Naval personnel in Great Britain where they immediately are assigned to mine deactivation duties. A few interesting tidbits in this book that were new to me was the extent in WWII that German's used their mines on terrestrial targets and that the mines often had anti-deactivation technology or boobie traps built in to thwart mine deactivation. The book catalogs the early development of the clearance teams, their unique duties, and the evolution of their assignments over time. The history teams intersects with American contemporary history on a couple of occasions. Much of the book is devoted to the deployment of the teams during the Vietnam conflict, when the author relates how they were an almost defacto unit within the USN effort. A second intersection is the Gulf War where the unit cleared Iraqi ports. The third is the contemporary conflict in Iraq and the Middle East in which the clearance divers skill in deactiviating improvised explosive devices made them important players in combat operations far from the sea.

The book is an easy read. It gets into the details of training and operations without the mind numbing detail of a book like the "Naked Warriors" by Francis Fane and Don Moore and it avoids a lot of the personal detail of an autobiography like "Just a Sailor" by Steven Waterman or the excellent "Diver" by Tony Groom. It also completely avoids the sillyness of self promotion of anything written by Richard Marcinko.

A non-Australian reader will find the book interesting but may want a map to put place names into context.

 

[Rufus0]

The thread is a collection of 21 short stories that take you on my adventures from the Inner Harbor of Baltimore to the Coral Sea in Australia.​

 

[MSltr]

A good read; and very interesting. I had the good forturne to particpate in an military exchange and attend the Australian Center for Defence and Strategic Studies. The fittest officer in our class by far was a clearance diver-CPT (RAN) Russ Baker. After reading this book I can understand why.