DRAPER KAUFFMANN – THE FOUNDER OF THE US NAVY SEALS

In my novels I usually base my more significant characters on real people.  This was so in the case of my WW2 novel on the Royal Navy’s mine disposal teams, They Have No Graves as Yet.  In it one of my hero’s two best friends is a USN officer I have called, Johnny ‘Red’ Johnson.  Johnson’s character was inspired by the USN officer, Draper Kauffmann.

Kauffmann did serve with the RN after being refused a commission by the USN on the grounds of poor eyesight (he wore glasses).  Initially, he crossed the Atlantic in 1940 to France in order to drive an ambulance with the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps, but after 16 months, he became a prisoner-of-war of the Germans for two months.  Following his release as a neutral, he made his way to Britain and volunteered to serve with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve.  There he became a Rendering Mines Safe (RMS) officer and spent the height of the London Blitz working for a Land Incidents Section, defuzing bombs and magnetic mines, an activity, as my novel describes, requiring almost suicidal courage and certainly, nerves of steel. 

He learned much from his Royal Navy RMS colleagues and his proficiency was recognised by the USN when they offered him a commission in their reserves – and just in time.  Just a month after he returned to the US, he was defuzing a bomb following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, for which he was awarded the Navy Star.  He was then asked to found the USN’s Bomb Disposal School.  Nearly 18 months later, he organised the first USN Combat Demolition Units, the forerunner of the SEALs and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander (just three years earlier he had been a lowly Sub Lieutenant (Ensign) in the Royal Navy).  Kauffmann served the rest of the war in the Pacific commanding or directing the Combat Demolition Units and earned another Navy Star for gallant service.

Following the war, Kauffmann had demonstrated his worth to the USN and was not only retained on a regular commission, but promoted and awarded command of a series of ships, divisions and flotillas, and he reached the rank of rear admiral.  One of his appointments as an admiral was as the Superintendent of the US Naval Academy.  Clearly, his poor eyesight never held him back from reaching the highest echelons of the US Navy!