WWII Frogman (1st Navy Seal)ELITE Albert Stankie Battle of Iwo Jima SIGNED PHOTO

Description: This listing is for the following autographed 4x6 photograph: BIO: Albert Stankie Battle of Iwo Jima his ship was struck by a Japanese kamikaze plane carrying a 500- pond bomb resulting in the loss of 26 of his Frogman Team. WWII Frogman (1st Navy Seals) member of the elite WWII Navy (UDT) Underwater Demolition Team. Before there were Navy Seals, there were Frogmen. The Frogmen were clandestine, covert missions, stealthy, clandestine, covert missions, slippery, fearless. These volunteers cleared the path by whatever means necessary for the soldiers to follow. The training to become a frogman included learning how to place explosive devices on bridges supports and enemy obstacles. They came to Hutchinson Island during WWII as boys, volunteers for a new kind of secret warfare. Those who made it through the brutal training shipped off to some of the bloodiest places on earth, armed with nothing more than a bathing suit, a face mask, fins and a knife. They went by many names from Frogmen, Scouts, Raiders, Naval Combat Demolition Units, Underwater Demolition Teams but all would become known as the legendary frogmen of WWII. Their job was to sneak and peek to scout enemy positions from the sea, blow up anything that got in their way and clear a safe path for those American soldiers who would follow. THIS IS AN AUTHENTIC HAND AUTOGRAPHED 4x6 PHOTOGRAPH. I ONLY SELL AUTHENTIC HAND AUTOGRAPHED MEMORABILIA. PLEASE NOTE this 4x6 photograph was printed in the early 2000’s and then personally hand autographed. I do not sell reprints or facsimile autographs. When you bid on my items you will receive the real deal authentic hand autographed items. You will receive the same signed photograph that is pictured in the scan. If you have any questions feel free to e-mail me. I currently have other rare autographed military and historical signed items available. Please take a look at my other auctions of rare military and historical autographed items. WWII Frogman (1st Navy Seal’s) WWII Frogman (1st Navy Seals) member of the elite WWII Navy (UDT) Underwater Demolition Team. Before there were Navy Seals, there were Frogmen. The Frogmen were stealthy, slippery, fearless. These volunteers cleared the path by whatever means necessary for the soldiers to follow. The training to become a frogman included learning how to place explosive devices on bridges supports and enemy obstacles. They came to Hutchinson Island during WWII as boys, volunteers for a new kind of secret warfare. Those who made it through the brutal training shipped off to some of the bloodiest places on earth, armed with nothing more than a bathing suit, a face mask, fins and a knife. They went by many names from Frogmen, Scouts, Raiders, Naval Combat Demolition Units, Underwater Demolition Teams but all would become known as the legendary frogmen of WWII. Their job was to sneak and peek to scout enemy positions from the sea, blow up anything that got in their way and clear a safe path for those American soldiers who would follow. During WWII frogmen is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, combatant diver, or combat swimmer. The word frogman first arose in the stage name the "Fearless Frogman" of Paul Boyton in the 1870s and later was claimed by John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy and member of the O.S.S. (precursor of the CIA) Maritime Unit, to have been applied to him while he was training in a green waterproof suit. First Frogmen: The word frogman appeared first in the stage name The Fearless Frogman of Paul Boyton, who since the 1870s broke records in long distance swimming to demonstrate a newly invented rubber immersion suit, with an inflated hood. The first modern frogmen were the World War II Italian commando frogmen of Decima Flottiglia MAS (now "ComSubIn": Comando Raggruppamento Subacquei e Incursori Teseo Tesei) which formed in 1938 and was first in action in 1940. Originally these divers were called "Uomini Gamma" because they were members of the top secret special unit called "Gruppo Gamma", which originated from the kind of Pirelli rubber skin-suit nicknamed muta gamma used by these divers. Later they were nicknamed "Uomini Rana," Italian for "frog men", because of an underwater swimming frog kick style, similar to that of frogs, or because their fins looked like frog's feet. This special corps used an early oxygen rebreather scuba set, the Auto Respiratore ad Ossigeno (A.R.O), a development of the Dräger oxygen self-contained breathing apparatus designed for the mining industry and of the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus made by Siebe, Gorman & Co and by Bergomi, designed for escaping from sunken submarines. This was used from about 1920 for spearfishing by Italian sport divers, modified and adapted by the Italian navy engineers for safe underwater use and built by Pirelli and SALVAS from about 1933, and so became a precursor of the modern diving rebreather. For this new way of underwater diving, the Italian frogmen trained in La Spezia, Liguria, using the newly available Genoese free diving spearfishing equipment; diving mask, snorkel, swimfins, and rubber dry suit, the first specially made diving watch (the luminescent Panerai), and the new A.R.O. scuba unit. This was a revolutionary alternative way to dive, and the start of the transition from the usual heavy underwater diving equipment of the hard hat divers which had been in general use since the 18th century, to self-contained divers, free of being tethered by an air line and rope connection. Wartime Operations: After Italy declared war, the Decima Flottiglia MAS (Xª MAS) attempted several frogmen attacks on British naval bases in the Mediterranean between June 1940 and July 1941, but none were successful, because of equipment failure or early detection by British forces. On September 10, 1941, eight Xª MAS frogmen were inserted by submarine close to the British harbour at Gibraltar, where using human torpedoes to penetrate the defences, sank three merchant ships before escaping through neutral Spain. An even more successful attack, the Raid on Alexandria, was mounted on 19 December on the harbour at Alexandria, again using human torpedoes. The raid resulted in disabling the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant together with a destroyer and an oil tanker, but all six frogmen were captured. Frogmen were deployed by stealth in Algeciras, Spain, from where they launched a number of limpet-mine attacks on Allied shipping at anchor off Gibraltar. Some time later they refitted the interned Italian tanker Olterra as a mothership for human torpedoes, carrying out three assaults on ships at Gibraltar between late 1942 and early 1943, sinking six of them. Nazi Germany raised a number of frogmen units under the auspices of both the Kriegsmarine and the Abwehr, often relying on Italian expertise and equipment. In June 1944, a K-Verband frogman unit failed to destroy the bridge at Bénouville, now known as Pegasus Bridge, during the Battle of Normandy. In March 1945, a frogman squad from the Brandenburgers was deployed from their base in Venice to destroy the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine which had been captured by the US Army in the Battle of Remagen. Seven frogmen swam 17 kilometres (11 mi) downriver to the bridge carrying explosives, but were spotted by Canal Defence Lights. Four died, two from hypothermia, and the rest were captured. The British Royal Navy had captured an Italian human torpedo during a failed attack on Malta; they developed a copy called the Chariot and formed a unit called the Experimental Submarine Flotilla, which later merged with the Special Boat Service. A number of Chariot operations were attempted, most notably Operation Title in October 1942, an attack on the German battleship Tirpitz, which had to be abandoned when a storm hit the fishing boat which was towing the Chariots into position. Operation Principal in January 1943 was an attack by eight Chariots on La Maddalena and Palermo harbours; although all the Chariots were lost, the new Italian cruiser Ulpio Traiano was sunk. The last and most successful British operation resulted in sinking two liners in Phuket harbour in Thailand in October 1944. Royal Navy divers did not use fins until December 1942. Wartime Developments: In 1933 Italian companies were already producing underwater oxygen rebreathers, but the first diving set known as SCUBA was invented in 1939 by Christian Lambertsen, who originally called it the Lambertsen Amphibious Respirator Unit (LARU) and patented it in 1940. He later renamed it the Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, which, contracted to SCUBA, eventually became the generic term for both open circuit and rebreather autonomous underwater breathing equipment. Lambertsen demonstrated it to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) (after already being rejected by the U.S. Navy) in a pool at a hotel in Washington D.C. OSS not only bought into the concept, they hired Lambertsen to lead the program and build up the dive element of their Maritime Unit. The OSS was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency; the maritime element still exists inside the CIA's Special Activities Division. John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy, was the first man selected to join the OSS group

Price: 99.99 USD

Location: Historical Treasures

End Time: 2025-01-30T22:40:33.000Z

Shipping Cost: 3.5 USD