Chronology of U.S. Special Operations Forces

By Merrie Monteagudo

August 26, 2015

U.S. special operations history: Milestones and missions 

1670s: Benjamin Church of Massachusetts, captain of the first Ranger force in America, adopted American Indian tactics in the conflict known as “King Phillip’s War.”

1750s: Maj. Robert Rogers of New Hampshire organized and led a company of colonists known as Rogers’ Rangers against the French in Canada during the French and Indian War. Rogers’ 28 Rules of Ranging became a blueprint for Ranger fighting tactics.

Rogers’ 1759 raid on the Abenaki Village of St. Francis in Quebec inspired James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel, “The Last of the Mohicans.”

1775: Notable Ranger companies fought for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, including “Morgan’s Riflemen” led by Capt. Daniel Morgan of Virginia and the South Carolina company led by Capt. Francis Marion, known as the “Swamp Fox.”

1805: During the Barbary Coast War, Marine 1st Lt. Presley O’Bannon led seven Marines and a band of mercenaries in a successful attack on the port city of Derna, Tripoli, in what is now eastern Libya, to rescue the crew of the American frigate Philadelphia who had been captured by pirates.

O’Bannon and his men are immortalized in the Marines’ Hymn, “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.” Like later special operations troops, these early Marines were an elite force operating behind enemy lines against overwhelming odds.

1860s: During the Civil War, the Union fielded the 1st and 2nd Regiments of United States Sharpshooters organized by Hiram C. Berdan of New York. The best-known Rangers were led by the Confederate Col. John S. Mosby.

1866: One year after the Civil War ended, Congress authorized the president to enlist a limited number of American Indians as Army Scouts. In the 1890s, the Army enlisted scouts in units attached to the regular Army infantry and cavalry.

1890: Army Scouts were authorized to wear the branch of service insignia of crossed arrows. During World War II, crossed arrows were worn by officers and enlisted personnel assigned to the First Special Service Force. The crossed arrows became part of the insignia of the Army Special Forces in 1984.

March 1937: Marine Corps 1st Reconnaissance Battalion activated at Quantico, Va. The 1st Recon was deployed to the Caribbean and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1940.

1942: The Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. special operations, was created to run guerrilla campaigns behind enemy lines during World War II. Elite military units modeled on British Commandos — including Marine Raiders and reconnaissance companies, Army Rangers, Special Reconnaissance Units (Scouts), Air Commandos, Amphibious Scouts and Raiders and Naval Demolition Units (“frogmen”) — were activated throughout the war.

February 1942: Marine Corps 1st Raider Battalion activated under Lt. Col. Merritt Edson followed by the 2nd Raider Battalion under Lt. Col. Evans Carlson, earning them the nicknames Edson’s Raiders and Carlson’s Raiders. The four Marine Raider battalions created during the war were disbanded by February 1944.

April 18, 1942: Airmen of the Army Air Forces, led by Lt. Col. James H. (Jimmy) Doolittle, conducted a daring bombing raid on Japan. Doolittle’s Raiders boosted American morale following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

June 1942: United States’ 1st Army Ranger Battalion activated in Northern Ireland under Maj. William O. Darby. Six Ranger battalions were formed for war service.

Soldiers who completed the rigorous British training won the right to wear the British Commando green beret, although it did not become the official headgear worn by Army Special Forces until 1961.

July 1942: Formation of 1st Special Service Force, a joint American-Canadian commando unit established under Lt. Col Robert T. Frederick. The Devil’s Brigade was a precursor to modern U.S. and Canadian special forces.

August 1942: Selected Army, Navy and Marine Corps personnel began exercises at the Amphibious Training Base in Little Creek, Va. The Army and Navy jointly established the Amphibious Scout and Raider School at Fort Pierce, Fla.

Phil H. Bucklew, known as the “Father of Naval Special Warfare,” led the first group of amphibious Scouts and Raiders. He was a professional football player before joining the Navy.

August 1942: Carlson’s Raiders lost 30 men in an assault on Makin Island that was intended to keep Japanese reinforcements from reaching Guadalcanal.

September 1942: In a pivotal special operations battle during the Guadalcanal campaign, Edson’s Raiders and Marines of the 1st Parachute Battalion defended a ridge overlooking a critical airfield against a much larger Japanese force.

Sept. 25, 1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, establishing a large-scale ground training facility for Marine island-hopping operations in the Pacific.

November 1942: Amphibious Scouts and Raiders were first deployed in Operation Torch, an invasion of North Africa.

January 1943: Marine Corps Amphibious Reconnaissance company activated at Camp Elliott in the Kearny Mesa area. Training also took place at Camp Pendleton.

February 1943: Raider Training Center established at Camp Pendleton to train qualified replacements for battalions overseas.

June 1943: Lt. Cmdr. Draper Kauffman established Naval Combat Demolition Unit training at Fort Pierce. That same month, the secretary of the Navy authorized the establishment of an amphibious training base in the San Diego area.

Kauffman, who was born in San Diego, is given credit for “hell week,” a grueling one-week training course meant to eliminate all but the best candidates.

August 1943: Army Air Force Lt. Col. Donald Flickinger, Sgt. Harold Passey and Cpl. William McKenzie parachuted into the dense jungle of Burma to rescue a group of men, including CBS reporter Eric Sevareid, who had bailed out of a stricken C-46. That jump led to the birth of Air Force pararescue.

November 1943: Heavy losses during the amphibious assault at Tarawa emphasized the need for a combat force that could clear water hazards ahead of landings. Shortly afterward, 30 officers and 150 enlisted men began training as Underwater Demolition Teams, also called “frogmen,” at Hawaii.

Jan. 30, 1944: The Army Ranger force lost two battalions at the Battle of Cisterna in Italy.

Jan. 31, 1944: Frogmen saw their first combat during Operation Flintlock in the Marshall Islands.

Feb. 24, 1944: Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill’s commando force, nicknamed “Merrill’s Marauders,” began an arduous campaign through the jungles of northern Burma. In five major and 30 minor engagements, the 5307th Composite Unit (provisional) disrupted Japanese supply and communications lines before being disbanded Aug. 10, 1944. Every member of the unit received the Bronze Star.

March 29, 1944: The first American air commandos, along with British “Chindit” commandos, launched a dramatic aerial invasion of Burma as part of a successful attempt to push back Japanese forces and re-establish the land route between India and China. The 1st Air Commando Group provided fighter cover, airstrikes and transportation for “Wingate’s Raiders,” a British force operating behind enemy lines.

June 6, 1944: Special forces units played key roles in the Normandy landings. Naval demolition units cleared obstacles from the beaches and Rangers scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc. At Omaha Beach, Maj. Gen. Norman Cota yelled, “Rangers, lead the way!” to soldiers of the 5th Battalion, coining the Rangers’ future motto.

During the assault, 37 men from the Naval Combat Demolition Unit were killed and 71 wounded, making D-Day the single deadliest day in the history of Naval Special Warfare.

June 14, 1944: Navy divers scouted and cleared planned landing beaches for the invasion of Saipan. Following the success at Saipan, the Navy’s underwater demolition teams were involved in most of the major amphibious landings in the Pacific during World War II.

Jan. 30, 1945: In one of the most daring raids of the war in the Pacific, Army Rangers, Scouts and Filipino guerrillas liberated more than 500 Allied prisoners of war from a Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan.

May 1946: The Army Air Force established the Air Rescue Service, known at the time as para-jumpers or PJs, the highly trained combat medics of the Air Force Special Operations community.

1950: Army Ranger Training school established at Fort Benning, Ga. Fifteen Ranger companies were formed during the Korean War.

September 1950: Underwater demolition teams scouted landing sites and cleared the harbor of mines before the surprise amphibious assault on the port of Inchon on Korea’s west coast.

June 20, 1952: The Army’s 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) was formed at Fort Bragg, N.C. under Col. Aaron Bank, who was called “the father of the Green Berets.”

June 1957: Marine Corps 1st Force Reconnaissance Company activated at Camp Pendleton under the command of Maj. Bruce F. Meyers. In 1958, half of the company transferred to Camp Lejeune to form the 2nd Force Recon Company.

May 1961: President John F. Kennedy sent 400 Green Beret special advisers to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers.

April 1962: U.S. Air Force re-established and activated the 1st Air Commando Group.

January 1962: Two Navy Sea, Air, Land (SEAL) operating teams were established. SEAL Team 1 formed in Coronado to support the Pacific Fleet under the command of Navy Lt. David Del Giudice. SEAL Team 2 was established in Little Creek, Va., to support the Atlantic Fleet, under the command of Navy Lt. John Callahan.

One of the first missions was a reconnaissance of the Havana Harbor. SEAL units were deployed extensively to conduct training and counter-guerrilla operations during the Vietnam War.

June 6, 1962: Speaking to the graduating class at West Point, Kennedy outlined his strategic vision for special forces in unconventional warfare.

“This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origins: won by subversives, insurgents, assassins, won by ambush instead of combat, by infiltration instead of aggression,” the president said.

July 1963: Special operations teams began organizing and training tribesman in the Central Highlands of Vietnam into the Civilian Irregular Defense Group.

July 6 1964: In the Battle of Nam Dong, Capt. Roger C. Donlon, commander of a 12-man Army Special Forces team of Green Berets, led a successful defense against a much-larger Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army attack. Donlon was awarded the war’s first Medal of Honor for his actions.

1966: Marine Force Recon, operating under the code name “Sting Ray,” began conducting clandestine patrols behind enemy lines near the Laotian, Cambodian and North Vietnamese borders.

March 1966: “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” written by Robin Moore and Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, topped the U.S. music charts and enshrined a patriotic image of the special forces soldier in popular culture.

The lyrics included: “Fighting soldiers from the sky / Fearless men who jump and die / Men who mean just what they say / The brave men of the Green Beret.”

Feb. 7, 1968: Vietnamese tanks overran the U.S. Army Special Forces camp at Lang Vei, near Khe Sanh.

July 4, 1968: “The Green Berets,” a film loosely based on a book by Robin Moore, was released starring John Wayne as a colonel in Vietnam and David Janssen as a newspaper correspondent who questioned the war’s wisdom.

1969: Army Col. Robert B. Rheault and five of his men were accused of murder and conspiracy in the death of a suspected South Vietnamese double agent in what became known as the Green Beret Affair. Although charges were dismissed, the case was used as a discrediting tactic against special operations forces.

Nov. 21, 1970: Special operations troops conducted a rescue operation to free Americans from captivity at Son Tay in North Vietnam, only to find the POWs had been moved from the camp. Despite rescuing no prisoners, the raid was considered a tactical success.

1978: Delta Force, a full-time Army counterterrorism unit, was formed by Col. Charlie Beckwith after numerous, well-publicized terrorist incidents in the 1970s.

1979: In Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now,” Martin Sheen played an Army captain sent upriver in Vietnam to assassinate a renegade special forces colonel played by Marlon Brando. In the film, the overt patriotism and adulation of the special forces reflected in “The Green Berets” is replaced by a stark moral ambiguity.

April 1980: A desperate mission to rescue 53 American hostages from Iran ended in failure and the deaths of eight servicemen, but was a turning point for U.S. special forces after a decline in the 1970s.

October 1980: In the wake of the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt, SEAL Team Six was created as a maritime counterterrorism unit under Cmdr. Richard Marcinko. (In 1987, SEAL Team Six was dissolved and U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU, took its place.)

October 1981: Army 160th Special Operations Aviation Battalion, also known as Night Stalkers, was officially created at Fort Campbell, Ky. Today’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) was activated in June 1990.

1982: “First Blood,” a film based on the David Morrell novel, starred Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, a troubled Vietnam War veteran and former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier. The film spawned thee sequels.

March 1983: All Air Force Special Operations were transferred from the 23rd Air Force in Illinois and based at Hurlburt Field, Fla., as the 1st Special Operations Wing.

Oct. 25, 1983: Special operations units suffered comparatively heavy casualties as part the U.S. invasion of Grenada. The mixed outcome highlighted command and control problems in the special forces.

January 1984: Department of Defense created the Joint Special Operations Agency to coordinate counterterrorist military units in each of the armed services.

June 1985: After Lebanese hijackers seized TWA Flight 847 en route from Cairo to San Diego and murdered U.S. Navy diver Robert Stetham, anti-terrorist Delta Force units were dispatched to the Mediterranean but never engaged the hijackers, who shuttled the aircraft between Beirut and Algeria over 17 days before releasing the hostages.

April 16, 1987: U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, was established at MacDill Air Force Base, near Tampa, Fla., to provide a uniform command for Air Force, Army and Navy special operations resources. Naval Special Warfare Command was established in Coronado.

September 1987: SOCOM’s first tactical operation involving Navy SEALs and Army Special Operations aviators working together took place during the Iran-Iraq War while the American military was protecting Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. On Sept. 21, the Iran Ajr, an Iranian ship, was disabled by Army special operations helicopters and boarded by SEALs after it was caught laying mines.

Dec. 1, 1989: Army established the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Dec. 20, 1989: Shortly before the U.S. invasion of Panama, members of Delta Force freed American Kurt Muse from a heavily guarded prison near Gen. Manuel Noriega’s headquarters. During Operation Just Cause, four SEALs were killed and eight wounded at Paitilla airfield trying to capture Noriega’s personal jet.

May 22, 1990: Air Force Special Operations Command was established.

1991: During Desert Storm, the first war with Iraq, special operations forces participated in search-and-rescue and missions and combat operations including the capture of oil platforms used by Iraqi soldiers as anti-aircraft positions and efforts to stop Scud missile attacks on Israel by tracking the mobile missile launchers and calling in airstrikes behind enemy lines.

Jan. 21, 1991: An American Navy pilot was rescued in the Iraqi desert by an Air Force team after an Iraqi missile brought down his F-14 60 miles northwest of Baghdad. Two days later, SEALs jumped into the water and rescued an Air Force F-16 pilot who had bailed out over the gulf.

Jan. 31, 1991: Air Force SpecOps AC-130 Spectre gunship shot down in the Persian Gulf, killing all 14 aboard, including Sgt. Damon Kanuha, 28, of San Diego.

Oct. 3, 1993: A failed operation to capture warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Mogadishu, Somalia, led to the deaths of 18 Army Rangers and Delta Force special operations soldiers, an incident recounted in the book and movie “Blackhawk Down.”

1997: In the Ridley Scott film “G.I. Jane,” Demi Moore played a female naval intelligence officer assigned to train for a spot as a SEAL.

1999: During the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia and Kosovo, Air Force commandos rescued an F-117A pilot who was shot down near Belgrade on March 27 and an F-16 pilot shot down in western Serbia on May 2.

November 2001: U.S. Green Berets linked up with Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum to capture Mazar-e Sharif, the first major victory for the U.S.-led coalition in the war in Afghanistan.

December 2001: Afghan forces under the coordination of U.S. special operations teams overran the Taliban mountain stronghold known as Tora Bora, but top al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, escaped.

March 4, 2002: Seven Americans were killed and 11 were wounded when Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and pilots and Air Force combat controllers and pararescuemen fought against entrenched al-Qaeda fighters atop a 10,000-foot Afghan mountain called Takur Ghar at the outset of Operation Anaconda in eastern Afghanistan.

August 2002: Sony released the video game “SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs,” which was partially created at Sony’s San Diego offices using a Navy SEAL from Coronado.

March 2003: Unlike in Operation Desert Storm 12 years earlier, special operations forces played an integral role in the invasion of Iraq. Attack helicopters from the Air Force 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Night Stalkers) struck Iraqi positions along the southern and western borders. The 352nd helped open the northern front, flying in elements of the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group to Kurdish-held locations while the 5th Group was on the ground in western Iraq. Naval Special Warfare secured offshore oil terminals and infrastructure and cleared Iraqi waterways.

April 2003: Army Rangers and other special operations troops rescued 19-year-old Pfc. Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital.

Dec. 13, 2003: A covert joint special operations team captured former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole at a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.

2004: Journalist Evan Wright published “Generation Kill,” a book based on the experiences of Marines from the 1st Recon Battalion during the U.S. military’s invasion of Iraq the year before. It was adapted as an HBO miniseries in 2008.

September 2004: Nine SEALs and another sailor were accused of beating an Iraqi detainee who died in CIA custody in 2003 at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. One officer was charged with a crime, and later acquitted.

June 28, 2005: Three Navy SEALs — Lt. Michael Murphy and Petty Officers Danny Dietz and Matt Axelson — were killed during a covert mission in Afghanistan. Eight SEALs and eight Army Night Stalkers also died when their rescue helicopter was shot down. The events of the ill-fated mission were chronicled in the book “Lone Survivor” by Marcus Luttrell, which was adapted into a film of the same name and in the e-book “Operation Red Wings: The Rescue Story Behind Lone Survivor” by Peter Nealen.

Feb. 24, 2006: Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command was officially activated at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

June 2006: Special operations forces led the hunt ending in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

April 12, 2009: SEAL snipers killed three Somali pirates and rescued an American cargo-ship captain, ending a five-day standoff. The event was dramatized in the 2013 film “Captain Phillips.”

Feb. 21, 2010: Hellfire missiles launched by U.S. special operations helicopters killed as many as 27 civilians in three trucks in Uruzgan Province, central Afghanistan, after Predator drone operators mistook them for the Taliban.

Nov. 9, 2010: The “Call of Duty: Black Ops” video game sold more than 5.6 million copies worldwide within 24 hours of going on sale.

May 2, 2011: SEALs stormed a fortified compound in Pakistan and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Aug. 6, 2011: Eight Afghans and 30 Americans, including 22 Navy SEALs, died when their helicopter was shot down in the United States’ single deadliest day of the decade-long war in Afghanistan. It was the single largest loss of life for Naval Special Warfare since World War II.

Jan. 25, 2012: SEALs parachuted into Somalia and rescued two aid workers being held hostage.

February 2012: “Act of Valor” movie premiered, featuring active-duty U.S. Navy SEALs as actors.

September 2012: Ex-SEAL Matt Bissonnette published “No Easy Day” under the pen name Mark Owen. It was a military memoir about the mission that killed Osama bin Laden.

December 2012: “Zero Dark Thirty” premiered, depicting the epic manhunt for Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and his death at the hands of Navy SEALs.

February 2013: A former Navy SEAL anonymously detailed the bin Laden raid in Esquire magazine.

February 2013: Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered all U.S. special operations forces to leave a province west of Kabul, alleging that they had been involved in the torture and murder of innocent people.

Oct. 5, 2013: U.S. special operations forces launched raids in Libya and Somalia. Members of Delta Force seized the militant known as Abu Anas al-Libi outside his home in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. Hours earlier, a Navy SEAL team swam ashore and raided the villa of an al-Shabab commander in a predawn firefight on the coast of Somalia.

March 2014: Navy SEALs seized a rogue oil tanker controlled by armed Libyan militiamen.

June 2014: Delta Force operatives, supported by FBI agents, captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, a suspected ringleader of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, in a secret raid in Libya.

Sept. 1, 2014: U.S. special operations forces in Somalia killed Ahmed Abdi Godane, leader of the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab. Godane had claimed responsibility for the Sept. 21, 2013, attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 67 people.

November 2014: The movie “American Sniper” was released; it was based on former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s book of the same name.

Nov. 16, 2014: The militant group Islamic State beheaded Peter Kassig, a former U.S. Army Ranger turned aid worker who had been captured while delivering relief supplies to refugees in Syria.

Dec. 6, 2014: American photojournalist Luke Somers and a South African teacher were killed during a U.S.-led raid to free them from al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in Yemen. On Nov. 25, U.S. special operations forces and Yemeni soldiers had freed eight hostages in a raid near the Saudi border, but Somers was not at that location.

June 19, 2015: Marine Corps holds ceremony to add “Raider” to the formal names of its special operations units, resurrecting a moniker made famous by World War II units that carried out high-risk amphibious and guerrilla operations.

Sources: News reports, Department of Defense, official histories published by the U.S. Special Operations Command, Air Force Historical Research Agency, U.S. Army Special Forces Command, Naval Special Warfare Command, Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, “U.S. Special Forces: A Guide to America’s Special Operations Units — The World’s Most Elite Fighting Force” by Samuel A. Southworth and “Elite Warriors: 300 Years of America’s Best Fighting Troops” by Lance Q. Zedric and Michael F. Dilley.