Assault Craft Unit ONE
During amphibious operations of World War II, the Shore Party was an integral part of a combat division and organized around a Marine Pioneer Group or an Army Combat Engineer Group. In both services, Army and Marine, the Shore Party formed the nucleus to which the various land and naval elements were assigned for an operation. The naval elements included the Underwater Demolition Team, a Naval Pontoon Unit, and a Boat Pool.
It quickly became apparent that separate organizations were essential to ensure the mass movement and orderly flow of troops, equipment and supplies, through the surf zone, onto the hostile shore, and across the assault beaches to achieve the success of the amphibious operations. To accomplish this task, units called Beach Parties were formed and were composed of members of the ship's crew. When the landing of the troops from their ship was complete, the beach party returned to the ship.
In order to keep the initial landing beaches open to be used as temporary ports for bringing in supplies, a navy shore unit, independent of any specific ship was needed. The Naval Beach Battalions (NBB) were formed to fill this gap. A NBB was composed of 3 companies; 3 platoons to each company. Each of these 9 platoons had four sections: communications, medical, small boat repair, and hydrographic. Their specific duties were to handle all ship to shore communications from the beach, mark and clear sea lanes for landing craft, perform repairs on damaged boats, and arrange evacuation of casualties from the beach.
Each sector of an invasion beach assigned to a regimental combat team was run by a "Battalion Beach Group", composed of an Army Engineer Special Brigade and its assigned NBB platoon. The beachmaster was the commander of the NBB, and was in charge of everything up to the high tide line. The beachmasters have been called the "traffic cops of the invasion", as they were the ones that directed the actual landings of every craft, no matter how large or small.
Post-war analysis led to the Chief of Naval Operations' (CNO) decision on 19 July, 1948 to commission Navy Beach Groups (NBG) as afloat commands. The NBG mission is to provide naval elements to the Amphibious Task Force to support the landing of a Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) or to the Maritime Pre-positioning Forces to offload equipment and supplies for a Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF). A Beachmaster Unit was later commissioned for the purpose of maintaining the special teams to control boat traffic and conduct boat salvage operations in the surf.
BMU-1 was commissioned at the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado, California, 13 July 1949.
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