This Day in History: “The Father of Naval Special Warfare”

On this day in 1992, the “Father of Naval Special Warfare” passes away. Phil Bucklew has been credited with laying the groundwork for many aspects of today’s naval special forces, including the Navy SEALs.

The former Cleveland Ram had been coaching a football game when Pearl Harbor was attacked. News of the Japanese assault was soon announced over the stadium’s loudspeakers. “We were down in the bar [after the game],” he later described, “and someone said, ‘Let’s all join the service.’ I expressed a preference for the Navy.”

Bucklew was among the first to join the newly formed Navy Scouts and Raiders.

“Scouts and raiders were trained to identify and reconnoiter the objective beach,” a Naval History and Heritage Command summary explains, “maintain a position on a designated beach prior to a landing, and guide the assault to the landing beach.”

Bucklew was soon scouting beaches in North Africa, Sicily, and Anzio, but he is perhaps best known for the reconnaissance he conducted before D-Day.

Indeed, he made several middle-of-the-night trips to Normandy to obtain information: He retrieved samples of sand so military planners could determine if the beach would support heavy weapons. He timed Nazi patrols, and he determined water depths at various locations.

When D-Day finally arrived, Bucklew was among those guiding the first wave of landing craft to Omaha Beach.

“I was nervous about this,” he said. “I knew what was coming and our responsibility to guide . . . . I must have been 10 miles offshore when all hell cut loose . . . . there were explosions, various types, flares going.”

He was hearing the noise of a diversionary Army Ranger operation nearby.

“The flares in the black of night and the confusion worried the daylights out of me as to whether I was on the [right track] . . . I was never more relieved than to see that Vierville Church steeple that I had seen during the recon . . . . When I saw that steeple, I was probably the most relieved person in the world even though that was just the beginning of the fight.”

Bucklew not only guided landing craft, but he also rescued drowning men. “I had a scare there,” he laughed. “I was on my belly on the bow of my boat, pulling people up . . . . I took a fragment cut [from flak] on my bald head! I had taken my helmet off because I was hanging over the side. Learned a good lesson . . . I didn’t do that again.”

Bucklew earned his second Navy Cross that day.

After the war, Bucklew returned home, became a Navy ROTC instructor, and resumed life as a football coach.

Well, at least, he tried to. Naturally, the Navy needed his help a few years later, and Bucklew ultimately served in both Korea and Vietnam. “I was one of the few people on active duty with a WWII background in the special operations field,” he explained.

Those must have been interesting years?! He was working with the CIA and alongside Korean intelligence officers. He was head of an Amphibious Intelligence School for a time. He conducted reconnaissance in Vietnam. He oversaw early SEAL and underwater demolition teams.

He wrote the 1964 “Bucklew Report” detailing how the North Vietnamese were moving supplies and men. He also detailed communication gaps undermining our own forces before ending his naval career with a stint at the Pentagon.

Since Bucklew’s 1969 retirement, the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California, has been named for him, among other honors.

Perhaps Rear Admiral H.W. Howard III said it best: “Our community’s forefather, Captain Phil Bucklew, set the standard for grit, gallantry and creative problem solving that defines the Naval Special Warfare community and is so critical to our mission success.”

Primary Sources:

• Adam Baum, The unbelievable true story of Ohio’s Phil Bucklew, and his decades of Navy service (Cincinnati Enquirer; May 25, 2022)

• Blake Stilwell, ‘The Father of Naval Special Warfare’ Almost Changed the History of the Vietnam War (Military.com; June 14, 2021)

• Bud Hyland, SEALs: the Birth of the Navy’s ‘Special Warfare’ Force (Military Heritage Mag., August 2001) (reprinted HERE)

• Columbus Mileposts: Dec. 30, 1992 | Navy man guided landings on D-Day (Columbus Dispatch; Dec. 29, 2012)

• History (Naval Special Warfare site)

• Interview #2 with Captain Phil H. Bucklew, USN (Retired), Captain Bucklew’s residence in Fairfax, Virginia, April 3, 1980. Interviewed by John T. Mason, Jr.  (available on SoundCloud, HERE)

• Naval Special Warfare (Naval History and Heritage Command)

• Phil Hinkle Bucklew (U.S. Navy Memorial)

• U.S. Naval Institute Oral Histories (Bucklew, Phil Hinkle, Capt., USN (Ret.))