TAYLOR-JACK

FIRST  NAVY  SEAL

Although the Navy SEALS were not formed until many years after his Navy service, Jack Hendrick Taylor is often informally referred to as the “first Navy Seal” because of his accomplishments during World War II.  He was born on October 9, 1908 in Manhattan, Kansas, and prior to World War was a well-established dentist with a practice in Los Angeles.  He was also a well-known yachtsman, having participated in five California-to-Honolulu yacht races and two in Bermuda.  He was a licensed pilot as well.

When World War II began, Dr. Taylor cast aside an assured commission in the Navy Medical Corps and became a line officer in 1941 wanting to serve in combat.  His first assignment was to a submarine chaser, but his reputation as a seaman preceded him into the Navy and William J. Donovan, Director of the newly formed Office of Strategic Services and whose daughter had been a patient of Dr Taylor, recruited Taylor into the OSS who needed men who were familiar with small boats and could navigate unknown coastlines in the night and slip ashore into enemy-held lands.  In early 1942 Taylor was one of the first three officers assigned to an OSS group that later became known as the Maritime Unit.  By the autumn of 1942, they were experimenting with equipment that provided capabilities to perform missions involving underwater sabotage and managed to accomplish underwater swims of over a mile staying submerged for extended periods which was an extraordinary accomplishment at the time as self-contained breathing underwater was a new concept.

By December 1943, Taylor arrived in Turkey where he organized OSS operations in the region.  During the following 18 months, Taylor conducted over 14 sorties into the hostile shores of Corfu, Yugoslavia, and Albania.  In late 1944 he was reassigned to Bari, Italy, and soon thereafter led a group of four OSS operatives who were to engage in sabotage, espionage, and rescues behind enemy lines.  Taylor and his team parachuted into Austria behind Nazi lines for the purpose of gathering intelligence of airfields, fortifications and any slave labor camps.  Unfortunately, their presents became known to the Germans and they were captured as they were about to hike out of the country.  Taylor was taken to Gestapo headquarters in Vienna and tortured, but he gave up no useful information and was kept in solitary confinement for several months.  He was then sent to Mauthausen, a slave labor camp where his weight plummeted from 165 to 114.  With his keen eye for detail and sharp memory, he collected and memorized information which later became critical during trials concerning German atrocities he had seen and experienced first-hand.    After the war he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and returned to Europe to testify against the Nazi’s at the Nuremberg Trials, where he was credited with providing critical information concerning atrocities committed by his captors.  He was subsequently awarded the Navy Cross for “extraordinary heroism”.

Following the war, Taylor quickly faded into civilian life, and following a failed business venture to establish a marine specialties company, he resumed his dental orthodontist practice in Santa Monica, California.  On May 10, 1959, LCDR Jack Hendrick Taylor was killed.  Available historical records are contradictory concerning his death as some records report he died in an airplane crash and others say it was an automobile accident.  He was survived by his wife, daughter, parents, and sister.  He is buried at Resurrection Cemetery in Montebello, California.  Jack Taylor did it all – under, on and from the sea, parachuting from the air, and operating on land behind enemy lines.  Although he served 20-years before the Navy SEALS were formed, he certainly served in the finest tradition of any past or current SEAL member and is thus embraced as America’s first true maritime Special Operations Commando.

NAVY  CROSS  CITATION

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Lieutenant Jack Hedrick Taylor (NSN: 0-178727), United States Naval Reserve, for extraordinary heroism and distinguished service in the line of his profession as Chief of the Maritime Unit, Office of Strategic Services Detachment, United States Armed Forces, in the Middle East, from September 1943 to March 1944.  Lieutenant Taylor personally commanded fourteen separate sorties to the Greek and Balkan enemy-occupied coasts.  This activity was carried out despite intense enemy efforts to prevent any kind of coastal traffic whatsoever.  Lieutenant Taylor, through clandestine operations, deserving of the highest commendation, and careful planning and skillful navigation effected numerous evacuations of intelligence agents, doctors, nurses and downed airmen.  Tons of arms, ammunition, explosives, and other military supplies were delivered to Marshall Tito and other resistance forces through the efforts of Lieutenant Taylor.  For three months, at all times surrounded by enemy forces, and on three occasions forced to flee from enemy searching parties, Lieutenant Taylor and his intelligence team operated in Central Albania and transmitted by clandestine radio important information regarding enemy troop movements, supply dumps, coastal fortifications, anti-aircraft installations and other military intelligence of great value to the Allied forces.  Parachuting into enemy territory on the night of 13 October 1944, with a team of three American deserter-volunteers he had personally trained and briefed, he began a secret intelligence mission to Austria.  Handicapped from the very start by failure of their plane to drop radio equipment, living in constant danger of capture and the physical and mental strain on his men; the courage and energy of Lieutenant Taylor prevailed and throughout the remainder of October and November the mission collected target intelligence of the highest value to the Allies.  On 30 November, the eve of their departure for Italy, the party was captured by the Gestapo.  Through four months of imprisonment in Vienna and one month in the Mauthausen prison camp, he was subjected to the customary interrogation methods of the Gestapo.  During his capture, Lieutenant Taylor injured his left arm seriously.  With this handicap and also being forced to exist on starvation ration and to work at hard labor he resisted all attempts to force him to divulge security matters.  At Mauthausen he was the trusted confidant of hundreds of prisoners.  On 28 April he was to be executed, but his death warrant was removed and destroyed by a friendly worker in the camp office.  After rescue on 5 May 1945 by the first American reconnaissance party to reach Manthausen, he returned to the prison camp shortly thereafter where he spent three weeks supervising the collection of detailed evidence of SS atrocities there.  The JAG, AFHG, Caserta pronounced this material to be the finest and most complete War Crimes dossier they had ever seen.  Lieutenant Taylor personifies the highest type of American Officer.  His heroic actions, his courage and fortitude during periods of extreme stress, and the brilliant results of his operations have been an essential aid to the victory of Allied Arms.

                          

                          TESTIFYING AT MUREMBERG TRIALS, GERMANY

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)