{"id":13573,"date":"2018-10-16T03:57:17","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T07:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=13573"},"modified":"2018-10-16T12:01:18","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T16:01:18","slug":"brick-mans-classified-missions-helped-save-thousands-of-lives-in-wwii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2018\/10\/brick-mans-classified-missions-helped-save-thousands-of-lives-in-wwii\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick Man’s Heroic Classified Missions Helped Turn the Tide of WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Charles<\/a>

Charles Vorndran, of Brick, reminisces about his World War III heroics. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

A series of ultra-secret missions carried out in the Mediterranean Sea and Europe\u2019s Atlantic coast began with a 14-year-old building a wooden boat to go fishing in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Brick resident Charles Vorndran, now 94, would later take the lessons he learned from boating in the Garden State and use them to conduct some of the world\u2019s first instances of modern psychological and electronic warfare in World War II. His then-classified missions are credited with saving thousands of Allied lives and serving as one of the building blocks to modern Navy SEAL teams.<\/p>\n

Vorndran was going to be an American hero no matter what. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he rushed to a U.S. Army Air Corps recruiting station. But since he was only 16-years-old, he needed his parents\u2019 signature to join. They didn\u2019t give in. But two years later, a new mission would await.<\/p>\n

After Vorndran joined the U.S. Navy and completed boot camp Newport, R.I., he expected to become a Naval Aviator. But before the eight month waiting period was over, he had transferred to radio school. After graduation five months later, he saw a poster tacked onto a bulletin board. It said: \u201cThe Navy is requesting volunteers for prolonged, hazardous, distant-duty for a secret project.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother guy and I saw the sign,\u201d recalled Vorndran. \u201cI was only 18, so I didn\u2019t know any better and we signed up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cproject\u201d for which Vorndran signed up would turn into one of the most immensely complex operations of the European theater \u2013 and it included training not unlike the kind that today\u2019s special operators experience. Vorndran\u2019s mission, he soon found out, would be to lead about 20 small boats close to the shoreline of enemy territory and utilize a combination of lights, explosions, electronic jamming equipment and sounds to fool the enemy into believing an invasion was underway. Meanwhile, Allied troops would be conducting a real invasion at another location.<\/p>\n

The group of men responsible for the missions would become known as the Beach Jumpers. But before they could undertake some of the most isolated and dangerous missions of the war, the group had to learn from the best. Vorndran soon met famed Navy Lt. (and Hollywood actor) Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who personally trained the American sailors based on techniques he had developed in England.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was all top secret,\u201d said Vorndran. \u201cAdmiral Fairbanks had done it in England, and he came here and was our instructor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rigorous preparation for the audacious plan took place at the Amphibious Training Base at Camp Bradford, Va. By the end, Vorndran found himself a member of Beach Jumper Unit One, the first of 11 such units to be formed during the war. The training was excellent, he said, but his team would be tasked with deadly missions on a frequent basis. In addition to the psychological and electronic warfare components, his missions also included navigating, at night, deep into enemy waters to drop off spies or collect intelligence \u2013 all with a team of only 20 men in small, inflatable boats. His first missions were in northwest Africa and the western Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d take it to within 100 yards of the beach, if we could get that close,\u201d Vorndran said. \u201cWe\u2019d drop them off, and maybe two weeks later, we\u2019d pick them up. Then we\u2019d turn the information over to the Navy.\u201d<\/p>\n

PT Boat (File Photo)<\/p>\n

\"PT<\/a> PT Boat (File Photo)<\/figure>\n

The Beach Jumpers started out their missions in what were known as \u201ccrash boats,\u201d modified 83-foot PT boats, as well as 63-foot double-hulled wooden air-sea-rescue boats. They were outfitted with twin .50 caliber machine guns, 3.5-inch window rockets, plus explosive packs and torpedoes. Each boat was manned by a six-man crew. The most important tool, however, were the \u201csmoke pots\u201d that each sailor carried with them when they boarded the smaller boats to take them near shore.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d pull the fuse out and drop if off, all while going 15 or 20 miles per hour in the inlets,\u201d said Vorndran. \u201cThey\u2019d light up as soon as they hit the water, and that would stop the Germans from seeing us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vorndran\u2019s boat was almost always the most exposed, despite the precautions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always in the second boat and they\u2019d be shooting at the first boat, but weren\u2019t able to see it, so the shells would be closer to us,\u201d he said. \u201cI never got hit, but once [a bullet] came past and knocked my helmet off the side of the boat. It was like a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Beach Jumpers\u2019 missions pioneered modern special warfare. Pointing to a conference table in a room at Brandywine Living at The Gables, where he now lives, Vorndran said the boats would include an electronics suite about equivalent to that size. The equipment consisted of a multi-component \u201cheater,\u201d a wire recorder, five-phase amplifier, ZKM jamming transmitters and a 1,000-watt 12 horn speaker. The speakers would transmit sounds that ranged from bombs exploding, to radio chatter, to men yelling, to anchors dropping in the water. The small boats also carried MK-6 Naval balloons, which intentionally increased the size of the boats\u2019 radar cross sections in order to trick the Axis troops into believing a much larger fleet of ships was offshore.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d put a stick of dynamite on the balloons if the wind was right, and we\u2019d point them toward shore,\u201d he said. \u201cThen they\u2019d explode. The people thought they were shells.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the team\u2019s first such missions was near Cape San Marco, Italy, where the Beach Jumpers successfully convinced the enemy to stage about 100 miles from the actual landing area of an Allied invasion force. That force was launching Operation Husky, where the Allies took Sicily. Had it not been for the Beach Jumpers, thousands of casualties could have resulted as American troops would have met an exponentially larger enemy on shore. It was later found out that their efforts diverted an entire German division away from the real landing site.<\/p>\n

\"U.S.<\/a> U.S. Navy Beach Jumper Patch (File Photo)<\/figure>\n

On another mission, Vorndran and his team were ordered to destroy a German radar station along the French coast. The team snuck through an inlet, detonated the smoke bombs to avoid giving away their location, and fired rockets at the tower, destroying it. They then had to make an escape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to run from two German E-boats, which were like small destroyers, but with 5-inch guns,\u201d he said. \u201cWhile we were trying to get out, we were greeted by two British PT boats that diverted them, and we were able to get away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The missions ran from 1943 through the end of the war. Along the way, the Beach Jumpers received additional training as their assignments became more dangerous.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked with the underwater demolition teams, which became the original SEALs,\u201d said Vorndran. \u201cWe trained them and they trained us. Our boats were tied up right next to theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vorndran was trained in advanced hand-to-hand combat, including the ability to disarm an enemy who was pointing a gun at him.<\/p>\n

The Beach Jumpers\u2019 heroic skillset was never used in any meaningful way in the Pacific theater, mainly due to the geography and decisions made by Navy leadership at the time. After the allied victory in Europe, Vorndran was transferred to Okinawa and resumed his role as a radio operator since that position was in high demand.<\/p>\n

The Beach Jumpers\u2019 final mission was supposed to consist of training Austrlian sailors in their techniques, but the plan never materialized, and the war against Japan ended with the the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<\/p>\n

Through all his dangerous missions, Vorndran said he was never scared. A Jersey boater, of course, is rarely deterred by rough seas and inlets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 14 when I built my first boat. We had a summer bungalow and we did a lot of fishing and hunting, all that stuff,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWe were so used to boating, it was fine \u2013 it was just like driving a car. We were getting shot at with these shells, and they would come right over our boat. But none of us got scared because we were patriotic. Real America.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also credits his advanced special warfare training with keeping he and his team members safe. The only worry he had was that his sister might not have been able to handle losing him. His parents, he said, understood what was at stake.<\/p>\n

Still, Vorndran only began telling his story recently after knowledge of the Beach Jumpers, which were reacted for the Korean War, became public knowledge in the Internet era.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow the secret\u2019s out, I guess,\u201d he said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil eight to ten years ago, he never talked about it,\u201d said Terry Vorndran, Charles\u2019 son, who also lives in Brick and took on his father\u2019s love of boating.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe always said he did top-secret stuff in the Navy, but he was never able to tell us because it was classified,\u201d his daughter, Cheryl said.<\/p>\n

Charles Vorndran went on to have careers in rail transportation and insurance sales, among a few other jobs along the way. His grandson has served in the U.S. Marine Corps and has deployed to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Thinking back on his Navy career, there are two recurring themes: excellent training and an unwavering sense of patriotism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe training was go great,\u201d he said, explaining that at the time, \u201ceveryone wanted to do something for their country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vorndran also keeps one vital statistic in his head whenever he talks about his service: its length.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree years, 22 days and six hours,\u201d he said with a smile.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A series of ultra-secret missions carried out in the Mediterranean Sea and Europe\u2019s Atlantic coast began with a 14-year-old building a wooden boat to go fishing in New Jersey. Brick resident Charles Vorndran, now 94, would later take the lessons he learned from boating in the Garden State and use them to conduct some of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[3498,3496,24,3497,1895,694],"class_list":["post-13573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-in-brick","tag-beach-jumper-interview","tag-beach-jumpers","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-charles-vorndran","tag-u-s-navy","tag-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/vorndran_beach_jumper_wwii3.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-3wV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}