Sunday, October 10, 2010

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE: Impassable Barrier or Infiltration

Route

Surmounting water “barriers” has been an infiltration staple

throughout military history when it comes to delivering a surprise
attack to the enemy from an unexpected and/or undefended direction.

This was but one of the reasons that the Japanese were able to
hopscotch down the Malay Peninsula during WWII to defeat a
superior British and Commonwealth force. Only a narrow strip of land
along one coast was accessible at all; the mountainous interior really
was impenetrable jungle. Fine new surfaced roads the British had
built for the rubber plantations provided a route right down the main
invasion route. The British-commanded forces would make
roadblocks and defenses at likely choke points, their flanks, they
thought, protected by “impenetrable jungle” and swamps that no
modern, mechanized European army could have maneuvered
through. Their flanks were always turned, and another withdrawal
necessary, during which infiltrators would make their own roadblocks
and ambushes.

Allied Intelligence, especially after the campaigns in Malaya and

Burma, amassed considerable information on the Japanese’ use of
infiltration tactics, especially in conjunction with waterways of various
types.

“Regardless of whether these frontal attacks were made, the

Japanese nearly always moved patrols around the flanks of our
forces, and, in many instances, patrols crept through gaps in our
lines to reach the rear. The patrols usually were small, numbering
from two to a few dozen men. They were lightly dressed, and
generally were armed with light machine guns and grenades. Each of
the men carried enough compact food to last for several days. By
collecting food from the countryside, they often had enough to last
much longer. These men had been trained and hardened to
withstand many discomforts. All, or nearly all, were expert swimmers
and handlers of small boats. They had been instructed to look upon
woods and water as things to assist them--not as obstacles…

In their infiltration tactics, the Japanese moved fast at certain times

and very slowly at others. They stood in rice-field ditches for hours,
up to their necks in water, waiting for targets to appear. They lay
hidden in underbrush for long periods waiting for chances to advance
without being seen…

By Water Craft

The Japanese look on water as a highway, not as an obstacle. In

both Malaya and Burma, the Japanese employed small specially-
designed river boats and small confiscated civilian boats to infiltrate
patrols to the flanks and rear of defending forces. The patrols,
sometimes composed of large numbers of troops, generally moved at
night. When they moved in daylight, air protection was afforded them.
Such movements were possible very often because of the large
number of rivers and inlets in Malaya, particularly along the west
coast. A succession of infiltrations by boats down the west coast
aided greatly in forcing several British withdrawals. The boats usually
hid in numerous well-covered inlets by day and traveled close to the
coast line at night until reaching their destination. In some cases the
Japanese used rafts made of bamboo poles.”

Not even ice-cold swift-running rivers proved to be an impassable

barrier. Against the United Nations forces in the Korean War, when
they depended upon such rivers to anchor their lines or provide a
front-line defensive barrier, the Commies found a way to surmount
the rivers. At times, both North Korean and ChiCom soldiers stripped
naked, with their cloths held over their heads, and waded or swam
such icy barriers. Light infantry weapons and equipment and
individual gear were ferried across on floating logs. Once on the far
shore, they quickly donned their warm, quilted winter clothing and
went to work. Working with minimal materials, their engineers
nonetheless built temporary bridges capable of supporting infantry,
oxcarts and pack animals, and even light vehicles.

While the Viet Cong were also known for the use of sampans and
small waterways throughout the Mekong Delta, Marine Intelligence
noted also their simple but ingenious river-crossing techniques.

“…the Viet Cong, in heavily patrolled areas, do not always use boats
as a means of crossing rivers. In areas where rivers are rather wide,
the Viet Cong will tie or strap their weapons across their backs,
inflate an easily obtainable plastic bag and float slowly across with
only their heads showing. To mark the point where the individual is to
land, the Viet Cong have used the technique of placing a simple
bicycle taillight reflector mounted on a bamboo stick at the desired
landing point. On moonlit nights, the reflector provides adequate light
for navigation purposes. Tinfoil has also been used as a means of
providing an unattended navigation light.”

Colonel David Hackworth noted this about the VC’s ability to exfiltrate
as well as infiltrate: “When the attempt is made to seal in the enemy
troops, one small opening left in the chain of force, such as a ditch,
the palm grown slope of a canal bank, or a drainage pipe too small
for an American to venture, will be more than enough to suit their
purpose. They will somehow find it; there is nothing that they do
better by day or night. It is as if they have a sixth sense for finding the
way out and for taking it soundlessly. They are never encircled so
long as one hole remains.”
 Whoa! Smells like Politics down here!

Culverts, storm drains, drainage pipes, irrigation tunnels and

especially sewers have provided hidden routes into and out of a wide
variety of places, even those considered impregnable. King Richard
the Lionhearted built his “impregnable” castle, Chateau Gaillard, in
1189. The castle fell, in part, because of a single French peasant
soldier nicknamed Bogis, found an unguarded sewage chute. It was
30 feet long and just barely big enough for a man to fit through and,
of course, full of raw sewage. Under cover of darkness, Bogis and a
small team of soldiers penetrated the castle via this route, setting
fires and causing a panic amongst the defending English, who
retreated to the castle keep.

When a handful of Jewish resistance fighters took up guerilla warfare

against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, the sewer system was not
only their last refuge but also provided routes for them to move freely
under the very noses of the Germans. Troops, tanks, and artillery all
proved ineffective against the guerillas. Only the Medieval expedient
of completely and totally flooding all the sewers full of water ended
resistance.
In August of 1942, a team of German and Finnish troops used the
seemingly endless and bottomless Finnish lake and muskeg country
to penetrate 125 miles behind Russian lines to blow up bridges on the
Soviet Murmansk-Leningrad railroad, the Soviets’ vital main supply
line. They used boats, outboard motors, and paddles to navigate
rivers, lakes, streams, swamps and overland portages from one body
of water to the next to penetrate deeply and silently. A climactic
nighttime raid from the rivers destroyed all but one of the targeted
bridges.

On the other side of the Eastern Front coin, Soviet partisans and
encircled troops made great use of the vast swamps of the Pripet
Marshes and the wet, boggy forests of the region. From these places,
they could infiltrate German rear areas to conduct raids, plant mines
and commit sabotage. Tanks could not operate where they did, aerial
spotting was difficult due to the forest canopy, and in many cases
artillery made little impression, the muck swallowing the shells and
muffling them

The Russians were also fond of river infiltration.

“During the night of 21-22 August [1941], three men, residents of

Svidovok and Dakhnovka, swam across the Dnepr with the aid of
fascine-type rafts made of reeds and twigs, and reached the Russian
regimental command post. They brought information about German
troop dispositions, including the assumed location of command posts
and heavy weapons.

Upon receipt of this information the Russian regimental commander

decided to send reconnaissance patrols across the river in an effort
to gain more details. As an initial step, the covering forces on the
three islands were reinforced. From his reserve battalion the
regimental commander then selected 40 men who appeared to be
best suited for the task of gathering information behind enemy lines.
Two reconnaissance detachments, each composed of 1 officer, 3
noncommissioned officers, and 16 men, were organized. Each man
was armed with a sub-machinegun and three hand grenades, and
each wore a light-weight fatigue uniform and straw shoes. The men
ranged in age from 16 to 30 and were all excellent swimmers.
Standing by on the east bank of the river were eight flat-bottomed
boats to carry the patrols to the hostile shore by way of the islands.
Each boat was manned by two native fishermen who alternately
propelled and steered by means of a scull oar, taking full advantage
of the current.”

Some Spetsnaz methods of infiltrating by water.

Although this initial combat reconnaissance failed, it opened the way

for further scouts and infiltrations that were eventually successful.

Muskeg, marsh and swamp all often have muck and silt in which no
vehicle can operate. Likewise, tidal flats and low rivers expose hard-
to-navigate deep mud conditions. In the Boundary Waters of northern
Minnesota, this is known colloquially as “loon shit”. Even men on foot
can hardly move in it, sinking in to the knees or even the waist with
every step, losing boots, floundering, and becoming quickly
exhausted.

Russian Spetsnaz Special Forces, below, developed a method using

snowshoe-like devices and walking sticks equipped with wide baskets
to greatly distribute their weight and enable them to move across
such terrain where no infiltration would be thought possible.
 When even loon shit can be crossed, no place is safe.

An NVA sapper, sappers being among the elite of those forces,

described some of the training they went through to move silently in
mud and water.

“Wading through mud, we were taught to walk by lowering our toes

first, then the rest of the foot. Picking our feet up, we would move
them around gently, then slowly pull the heels to avoid making
noises. If you just pulled them up, without first moving then around,
you’d make sounds. The same thing would happen if you didn’t put
your toes down first. We used the same methods for walking through
water.”

In 1939, the Soviets also began developing the underwater bridge as

a means of infiltrating larger units without revealing the structure to
aerial observation and thus interdiction. This remained a standard
tactic through the end of the Cold War. The VC and NVA were to
make use of this same subterfuge decades later in Vietnam.

“Noteworthy, too, was their camouflage of river crossings by the

construction of underwater bridges. For this purpose they used a
submersible underwater bridging gear, which could be submerged or
raised by flooding or pumping out the compartments. The deck of the
bridge was usually about 1 foot below water level, and was thus
shielded from aerial observation.”

The last thing one usually associates with the Iran-Iraq border is
water infiltration but actually, in addition to the desert, there was a
vast series of marshes. When the surviving Iranian militia-type forces
finally got tired of losing thousands of men in futile screaming banzai-
type frontal attacks over open ground against well-equipped and dug-
in modern Iraqi armored forces, they retreated to the marshes. After
scratching their turbans a bit, they decided maybe another tactic
besides frontal assaults over open desert might be in order. In the
marshes, the poorly-equipped militia could act in a capacity
somewhere between light infantry and guerillas. Here, they held their
own against their heavily armed and technologically advanced
enemy.

THIS is IRAN?!?!

Endless seas of standing water and connecting waterways and tall,

dense expanses of reeds provided excellent cover and concealment
for the Iranians, who learned to move in small patrols on foot and in
native-built and small motor-powered boats. The marshes were
impenetrable to Iraqi armor and mechanized forces, and their artillery
shells and bombs disappeared into the bottomless muck with little or
no damage.
“Iran used the lessons learned in this area to launch one of the most
successful attacks of the war farther south. While launching a
diversionary attack north of Basra, Iran launched a commando raid
using Basij frogmen, boats and pontoon bridges to cross the Shatt Al

Arab and take the Al Faw peninsula. Their attack took advantage of
darkness and rain and totally surprised the Iraqi defenders, many of
whom fled their posts. The Iranians quickly established a bridge head
and reinforced the peninsula. They dispersed their defenses and dug
in quickly. They made all troop and supply movements at night to
prevent the Iraqis from acquiring artillery targets. This attack provided
one of the greatest demonstrations of the Iranians’ potential in light
infantry attacks in difficult terrain.”

Afghanistan is another place not often thought of when it comes

water infiltration and exfiltration, but it has happened. In May 2005,
Taliban insurgents, rather than disappear into the mountains, put up
fierce, near suicidal fighting defense in and around the village of
Bulac Kalay. It turned out that the terrorists sacrificed themselves so
that their high-ranking leadership could escape by floating down the
snow-melt swollen Arghandab River.

The Green Zones of Afghanistan are kept green and cultivated by a

series of underground irrigation canals and tunnels. The Mujahideen
and now the Taliban have used these to move freely undetected. In
one case in 2005, a small Taliban force escaped from American
forces by fleeing up an irrigation tunnel that brought snow-melt water
down from the mountains. Once out, they flooded the tunnel to very
effectively deter any pursuit.

The Mujahideen used an unusual water-borne method to attack an

outpost: “Abdul Wali, a Mujahideen from Kandahar, was known for
his creative bomb-making. Once in 1986, he sent a floating bomb
down the Nosh-e Jan creek (which runs in the western suburbs of
Kandahar city from northeast to southwest) to destroy a government
outpost at a hotel'. Abdul Wali strapped a 250 kilogram bomb onto
some truck tire inner tubes. He measured the distance from the
outpost to his release point upstream where he would launch his
floating bomb. The bomb was hooked to a wire whose length was the
length from launch point to outpost. Once the floating bomb stretched
out the full length of the wire, it was exactly under the outpost. Abdul
Wali remotely-detonated the bomb and destroyed the outpost.”

This is not to say that only eastern forces make use of this principle.

British General James Wolfe, during the French & Indian War, had
unsuccessfully shelled and attacked the French fortress at Quebec
for several weeks. Finally, he landed troops up the river from Quebec,
coming ashore in the darkness of night and ascending a little known
goat trail up the cliffs and bluffs of the riverside. From luck as much
as skill, the move succeeded and led to the climactic battle of the
Plains of Abraham, the capture of Quebec, and the eventual French
defeat.

Very important dead white guy American publik skools don't

teach about anymore.

George Washington, of course, used small, fragile wooden boats to

cross through the ice cakes of the Delaware River to attack and
defeat the Hessians at Trenton on Christmas night 1776. Before that,
an amphibious exfiltartion saved Washington’s fledgling American
Army when it was being surrounded and trapped with its back to the
water by the British Army after the Battle of Brooklyn. Marblehead
boatmen, using small wooden boats, muffled oars, and a foggy night
successfully evacuated the American forces from right under the
noses of the British.
Special operations during World War Two from the British
Commandos provided some of the first offensive actions against the
then-victorious German juggernaut. Courtesy of the Royal Navy, the
commandos landed on the coasts of Norway and France to conduct
reconnaissance and raids on important targets. In the Pacific, the US
Marine Raiders paddled silently ashore in rubber boats to infiltrate
Japanese-held islands, clandestinely launched from USN submarines
which had already infiltrated Japanese naval and air defenses.

The damage done was less a victory than the morale and
propaganda value to American and Commonwealth citizens in that
their military forces were “striking back” and “taking the offensive”
against enemies that had formerly seemed unstoppable.

The small patrol boats of the “Brown Water Navy” in Vietnam utilized
the myriad waterways of the Delta to appear wherever they wished
with considerable mobile firepower. From here the modern Navy
SEALs were born, and since then they have become the premiere
Special Forces to turn infiltration by water into an art. They can even
infiltrate and take deep water drilling rigs in the open ocean
undetected.

U.S. Navy SEALs infiltrating stealthily ashore somewhere in

Vietnam. Note the bare feet and non-standard (i.e., ones that
function in a harsh battlefield environment) weaponry.
Likewise, Marine Force Recon and Rangers are no strangers to
rubber boats and water infiltration. The Sealous Scouts in Rhodesia
sometimes even used collapsible klepper kayaks to infiltrate Africa
rivers, an extremely dangerous endeavor in itself what with the
Hippopotamus’ penchant for attacking and sinking small watercraft.
The jolly-looking hippo actually kills more people in Africa than do
lions and crocodiles and snakes, oh my.

Small boats can also find themselves able to come and go virtually at
will in many places around the world…the deltas of mighty rivers,
fjords, mangrove swamps, vast northern lake country waterways, the
channels among the islands along the coast of British Columbia,
Alaska, etc.

Many such waterways, especially at certain times of the year, come

accompanied by other forms of moisture…rain, fog, snow, mist…
known as “infantry sunshine”. In at least one publicized case, a Coast
Guard helicopter equipped with FLIR lost a drug-runner’s small boat
on the open ocean in what was termed an “ocean haze”.

So water doesn’t always have to be a barrier to overcome or

circumvent. To the underdog or small force, it can instead become an
asset rather than a liability, and a route to what cannot otherwise be
accessed. It is not necessarily easy, but can be easier than the other
options.

http://benandbawbsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/water-water-everywhere-impassable.html