The Canteen Watch & The OSS Maritime Unit - Forefathers Of The Navy SEALS

When it comes to Watches of Espionage, dive watches reign supreme. The history of watches like the Rolex Submariner and the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms is well-known and backed by celebrated connections to amphibious SpecOps, including the French Commando Hubert and the US Navy SEALs. But over a decade before these watches were introduced, a pioneering dive watch was developed for and utilized by some of America’s earliest frogmen, many of whom served with the OSS or Office of Strategic Services’ lesser-known MU or Maritime Unit.

The predecessor of virtually all modern maritime SOF units today, the MU’s history is extraordinary and overlooked. To shine a light on these operators and operations, some of which helped to win the Second World War, we asked our friend Jacob Van Buren, a passionate scuba diver and nautical historian, to share not only a brief history of the OSS MU but also the story behind one of history’s least-understood dive watches, the so-called “Canteen” produced by Elgin, Bulova, and Hamilton.

The pioneering “Canteen” wristwatch with its screw-down crown cover. (Photo Credit: Brock Stevens/Ed Hicks, Warpath Military Collectables)

How The Birth Of US Maritime SpecOps Inspired A Pioneering Dive Watch

By Jacob Van Buren

The PBY Catalinas amphibious aircraft flew in low, touching down gently in a quiet cove at Chance Island. The long flight from Ceylon to the Arakan Coast of Burma—roughly 1,300 miles from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Maritime Unit’s base of operations across the harbor at Trincomalee—proved more amenable to the amphibious aircraft’s occupants than the troublesome British submarines that had a nasty habit of breaking down.

US Navy Reserve Lieutenant Kenneth Pier, the Maritime Unit’s acting commanding officer in the theater and accompanying this mission, ordered two of his men and “Chee Chee”, the Chinese radio operator, to begin unloading the rubber boats. We can’t be sure, but there’s a strong chance these early maritime operators were equipped with a novel “Canteen” wristwatch that served as the United States’ earliest military dive watch.

A declassified photo from an OSS MU manual appears to show the BUSHIPS Canteen watch in action. (Photo Credit: CIA)

The Catalina’s crew—detached from British Special Duty Squadron 628—looked out from positions along its wings, submachine guns scanning the shore for threats. While transferring one of the automatic weapons, 2LT Fine accidentally caught its trigger. A burst of automatic fire roared. Every beating heart in the cove stopped. Was it five shots or six? Crewmembers anxiously examined the Catalina; none of the bullets had made contact with the airframe. In an instant, the Office of Strategic Services Maritime Unit’s mission—covert reconnaissance of the Burmese coast as part of the British 15th Corps’ Second Arakan Campaign—was jeopardized.

A PBY Catalina pictured during the Second World War.

In stories that are all but untold today, the China-Burma-India Theater marked just one area of operations for one of the foremost progenitors of modern special operations. Before CIA, there was the OSS. With American intelligence deficiencies plainly and painfully obvious at the start of the Second World War, William J. Donovan—a New York lawyer who won the Medal of Honor leading infantry in France during the First World War—was tasked with organizing a plan for a modern American intelligence service.

Inspired by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and Special Operations Executive (SOE), the eventual Office of Strategic Services—a rather innocuous name for an organization that was anything but—was born. Nominally a civilian organization, the OSS was organized under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and composed of both civilian and military personnel from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.

The LARU or Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit was a pioneering underwater breathing apparatus.

Much like the nautical capabilities of CIA’s modern Maritime Branch, the OSS saw the need to be able to conduct amphibious operations and created the Maritime Unit to handle these missions in June 1943. The Maritime Unit, referred to internally as the MU, proved more than ready to meet its charter. Its members were recruited from a diverse range of backgrounds, including Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard personnel. All were volunteers. Its eventual five operational units were deployed to the European, Mediterranean, China-Burma-India, and Pacific theaters.

Considered one of the forerunners of the modern SEAL Teams, the MU also developed and fielded specialized equipment that would revolutionize naval special warfare. Dr. Christian Lambertsen, a Captain in the United States Army Medical Corps attached to the OSS, developed a series of rebreathers he named the Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (LARU). The LARU proved revolutionary—providing a diver the ability to swim to a maximum depth of 50 feet for up to 90 minutes, creating the foundation for the modern combat diver. In 1952, Lambertsen settled on a new name for his invention—Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, or SCUBA.

Pages from an early OSS manual showing an operational swimmer’s equipment. (Photo Credit: CIA)

Lambertsen trained MU personnel in Burma on the use of the LARU with swim fins, an innovation that the MU introduced to the US Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs), as well as on the British submersible Sleeping Beauty. This precursor to the modern SDV (SEAL Delivery Vehicle) was pioneered by the Royal Navy and MU combat swimmers. Though it was never deployed in combat operations, this “submersible canoe” highlighted the potential military applications of the technology.

Sleeping Beauty was an underwater vehicle built by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and later used by the OSS MU.

MU Swimmers were deployed using innovative new techniques, like kayaks, inflatable rubber rafts, PBY Catalinas, and submarines, to conduct vital survey missions ahead of landings. The disastrous landings during the 1943 invasion of Tarawa, during which almost 1,000 Marines were killed and another 2,000 were injured in part due to a lack of tidal data from hydrographic reconnaissance, showed the need for accurate intelligence leading up to these crucial battles, directly leading to the creation of the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams. MU members assigned to UDT-10—comprising the majority of the team’s swimmers—took part in a secret submarine mission in 1944 to survey potential beachheads before the 1944 invasion of Peleliu in the Palau archipelago.

An OSS Operational Swimmer training with the Lambsertsen breathing apparatus.

Five men of UDT-10—two of whom were MU personnel—set out on the night of 18 August 1944 from USS BURRFISH, paddling their rubber raft towards the beach on Gagil Tomil in the Palau archipelago. It should have been a routine mission. Weather conditions that night proved rough. One of the swimmers lost his fins while deploying the raft. Once they began the slow, deliberate journey to the beachhead, they discovered an additional problem: an offshore barrier reef. The last thing the frogmen needed was for the boat to be carried to shore by the breakers. Making a quick decision, the raft was anchored with one man left aboard.

Fifteen minutes later, two swimmers returned: one exhausted from the formidable breakers. The other man then swam back to the beach in search of the other two frogmen. The three were never seen again. Japanese communications later revealed that they had been captured and were supposedly transported to Palau, though the primary theory is that they were executed by their captors. Their remains have not been located. Largely unheralded today, the exploits and heroism of the OSS Maritime Unit altered the course of US SpecOps forever, backed by a combination of bravery, cunning, and novel equipment.

The US Military’s First Underwater Wristwatch

An Elgin BUSHIPS Canteen watch. (Photo Credit: Brock Stevens/Ed Hicks, Warpath Military Collectables)

Timekeeping is crucial to successful underwater operational scenarios. As the US Military experimented with maritime special operations, a need arose for sturdy, waterproof wristwatches. Enter the Bureau of Ships. Responsible for the procurement, design, construction, repair, and management of ships and shipyards, the Bureau of Ships (BUSHIPS) functioned as a catch-all organization that led the control of naval supplies. It exists as the Naval Sea Systems Command, or NAVSEA, today.

Faced with the growing need for a wristwatch capable of handling the intense conditions faced by the Naval Combat Demolition Units, Underwater Demolition Teams, and the OSS Maritime Unit, the groups that would eventually morph into the modern SEAL Teams, they issued the FSX-797 specification—the Navy’s first specification for a submersible wristwatch.

An early OSS document detailing the required equipment for OSS MU boat crewmen.

The result was a marvel of wartime ingenuity. The dial and case are essentially that of an A-11, the U.S. military’s high-grade pilot’s watch during the war. Featuring large, luminous numerals and hands, the watch was designed for legibility. From there, watchmakers soldered on the crystal to help prevent water intrusion and modified the case’s right side to accommodate a second, larger crown that locks over the setting crown. This additional crown was attached via a tiny length of chain, resulting in the watch’s enduring nickname: the “Canteen.” Produced primarily by Elgin, with other examples known from Hamilton and Bulova, the total production figures of the BUSHIPS Canteen are unknown. With accurate movements and a simple khaki canvas strap, these tiny 32mm watches went off to war, blending into the uniform (or lack thereof) of a swimmer.

Divers from a Naval Combat Demolition Unit. Several Canteen watches are visible.

The large Panerai watches fielded by the Axis powers may have had more enduring appeal in the hearts and minds of watch enthusiasts; this did not stop the BUSHIPS Canteen from seeing service through the end of the Second World War and into the Korean War before being rendered obsolete by its successors. Its now-meager 50 ft of water resistance proved adequate for the Navy’s needs, allowing combat swimmers to embark on some of the earliest maritime Special Operations missions.

Following the Korean War’s stalemate in 1953, the Canteen’s nearly decade-long service history ended with the introduction of the timepieces that have defined the dive watch—the Rolex Submariner and the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. Water-resistant to more than three times the Canteen’s upper limit, they blazed a path forward for the next generation of special operations personnel. The Canteen has remained an affordable alternative to these military-issued Rolex, Tudor, Blancpain, and Benrus dive watches issued to divers and special operators, with provenance to match any of them. In its small way, it proved crucial to the success of the war effort as the intrepid frogmen wearing them scouted beaches, planted explosives, and cleared harbors that helped turn the tide of the war.

Early Underwater Demolition Team members wearing the BUSHIPS Canteen watch.

The Office of Strategic Services was promptly dissolved following the end of the Second World War. Its legacy in intelligence and special operations, however, lives on. Alumni of the OSS—from Julia Child to members of the Studies and Observations Group to Directors of CIA—went on to shape the outcome of the twentieth century. From an early underwater breathing apparatus in the Lambertsen rebreather to pioneering underwater diver-delivery vehicles to a humble wristwatch adapted to amphibious use, the OSS Maritime Unit’s pioneering innovations set the stage for the maritime operations of modern special forces as well as the contemporary diving industry.

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