An unusual sight some 80 years ago this month. Likely on the Wurm River system near recently captured Aachen, Germany, March 1945, we see a great period original Kodachrome capturing U.S. Army Engineer diving unit personnel, complete with a Mark V dive helmet and suit.
Official wartime caption: “These men are members of the 1058th Port Construction Company engaged in repairing a railway bridge destroyed by the F.F.I. to prevent the Germans from retreating. Two locomotives were steamed up by the local F.F.I. and sent careening down the track into the river.”
Clik here to view.
U.S. Signal Corps Photo C-885. U.S. National Archives. Digitized by Signal Corps Archive.
L-R: Albert Boettner, Bronx, N.Y., assistant to diver; Michael Obrine, diver; E. L. Kennedy, Jackson, Miss., assistant to diver. Note that Boettner is outfitted with a black leather German officer’s sidearm holster, likely holding a P-38.
The 1058th Engineer & Port Construction Repair Group, formed at Camp Gordon Johnston, Florida, one of 11 272-man units (numbered 1051-1061) stood up specifically to repair captured waterway infrastructure in Europe post D-Day. Each company contained 16 Navy-trained salvage divers.
As noted by U.S. Army Deep Sea Divers:
The first Army Divers were trained by the U.S. Navy at Pier 88, on the North River in New York City beside the berth where the former liner “Normandy” was laying on her side after burning and sinking. The school later moved to the New York Naval Shipyard in Bayonne, New Jersey.
The strenuous training took 14 weeks and consisted of underwater welding and burning, rigging, the use of pneumatic tools, and various other skills that would be invaluable to them in the months to come.
Upon graduation from the Navy School of Diving and Salvage as Navy certified Second Class Divers, these Army Divers were sent to Fort Screven, Ga. in 1943 where they established and operated the U.S. Army Engineers Diving and Salvage School under the command of A.L. Mercer, Capt. C.E.
The curriculum at this school was patterned after the Navy school but stressed underwater welding, burning, rigging, and added the underwater use of explosives for demolition.
The divers of the 1058th were particularly busy in the ETO from July 1944 through VE-Day in rebuilding the port of Granville, the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen (where its commander and seven men were killed by a left-behind German demo charge), and in the construction of the “Roosevelt” road bridge over the Rhine and Lippe rivers.
Today, the Army still has about 150 dive billets in its engineer units.
Clik here to view.
U.S. Army divers with the 7th Engineer Dive Detachment, 84th Engineer Battalion, 130th Engineer Brigade, partner with Philippines service members for a port clearance operation during Salaknib 2024 in Basco, Philippines, May 25, 2024.
And they still break out the old gear, with the “Krakens” of the Hawaii-based 7th Engineer Dive Detachment using it to inter remains of Pearl Harbor vets on Battleship Row.
