![]() ![]() (Some swimmers caught the bullets in their fingers and tucked them into their pockets as souvenirs. The men realized that enemy bullets slowed down a few feet beneath the ocean surface, allowing the swimmers to hold their breath and dive underneath the sinking ordnance. “They are not ours.”Īs tall columns of water lifted up like fire hydrants and bullets raked the surface of the lagoon, the swimmers porpoised underwater to escape. “Those are not shorts, they are overs,” his executive replied calmly. “Tell those damned ships to knock off the shorts!” Kauffman barked. Believing it was Navy gunfire, Kauffman lifted the aerial of his cracker-box radio and furiously called up his executive officer, who was relaying coordinates to the warships from a landing craft. Kauffman’s raft was speeding shoreward when a line of shells splashed close astern. Waves spattered over the edges of the rubber rafts as they puttered across the lagoon. (The buddy he’d selected was farsighted, but also color blind, prompting a running joke that Kauffman’s buddy would describe the shore objects, and Kauffman would tell him the color.) Kauffman-who suffered terrible eyesight-wore his Coke-bottle glasses taped to his face in case he needed to plunge into the ocean. ![]() Each raft held an officer and his swim buddy, who shared a radio and binoculars. ![]() Kauffman and fellow officers rode ahead of the swimmers on motorized black rubber rafts, dubbed “flying mattresses,” helping coordinate the covering fire. They’d also painted black lines every twelve inches on their necks, torsos, and legs, turning their bodies into yardsticks for taking measurements in the shallows. Each pair carried a reel of fishing line for measuring water depth and balsa floats for marking underwater hazards. In advance of the Saipan reconnaissance, Kauffman and fellow officers had divided the swimmers into “buddy pairs,” directing them to always work together and to help each other in case of trouble. GIs admiringly called them “Half fish, half nuts.” Decades later, the daring swimmers would give rise to the Navy SEALs. Outfitted with just swim trunks, fins, and dive masks, the frogmen participated in nearly every major amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater. But the contributions of the UDT were invaluable. To this day, few people know about the unit, in large part because its existence was kept top secret during the war to prevent the Japanese from devising a countermeasure. It was the first large-scale daylight operation by the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT), an elite unit of frogmen assigned to scout enemy-held Pacific islands and blow up coastal defenses ahead of Allied landings. Lashed to their belts were sheave knives, as well as small charges of rubber-cased explosives for detonating mines. Some wore knee pads and baby blue canvas shoes for crawling over the sharp coral reef. ![]() The men wore swimming trunks and were covered from head to toe in blue paint to provide camouflage in Saipan’s lagoon. on June 14, eight days after the Normandy invasion, Lieutenant Commander Draper Kauffman and his team of frogmen motored in four landing craft toward the calm, turquoise, saltwater lagoon of Saipan. Jason Whitham and Brock White made this game.At 9 a.m. Check out Stickman World War for a very similar game with modern graphics and campaigns! Browse strategy and stickman games for more. These newer games also innovated and refined the format. Since Stick War was released many years ago, several new titles have emerged that take influence from it. Each believes that their way is the only way, and is dedicated to teaching their policies to all other nations through what their leaders claim as divine intervention. Proud of their unique craft, these nations have become obsessed to the point of worship, turning weapons into religion. Each society has developed its own unique way to wage war. In a world called Inamorta, you’re surrounded by discriminate nations devoted to their nation’s technology and struggle for dominance. Your only chance to defend, is to attack first. This makes you a mark for infiltration by the surrounding nations. Your way of peace and knowledge means your people do not worship their weapons as gods. You are the leader of the nation called “Order”. Your goal is to destroy the enemy statue and move on to conquer the next nation. Each stick figure can be individually controlled. Click campaign to start your Stick War journey! You can create units by following the short tutorial at the start. ![]()
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