Colonel Aaron Bank (November 23, 1902 – April 1, 2004) was the founder of the US Army Special Forces, commonly called Green Berets. is the 327th day of the year (328th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1902 (MCMII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the U.S. Special Operations Force. ... The United States Army Special Forces —Special Forces or SF — is an elite Special Operations Force of the United States Army trained for unconventional warfare and special operations. ...

Biography

World War II career

Col. Aaron Bank is best known as founder of American Special Forces, commonly known as the "Green Berets." He is also famous for his exploits as an OSS officer, parachuting into France to coordinate and activate the French resistance and organizing an operation intended to capture Adolf Hitler. During his retirement years, Col. Bank played a quiet but critical role in warning the nation about the risks of terrorism ^{[citation needed]} and modern technology and he is largely responsible for the high level of security at U.S. nuclear power plants since the early 1970s.

As a young man, Bank was schooled in Switzerland and worked as chief life guard at an upscale resort in Biarritz. This explains his unusual fluency in French and German, a skill which had much to do with his later activities as a special operations commander. Biarritz (French: Biarritz, pronounced ; Gascon Occitan: Biàrritz; Basque: Miarritze) is a town and commune which lies on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France. ...

He enlisted in the Army in 1939, then volunteered for special operations work. He was in his late thirties, and thought "too old" for combat, but he was an unusually athletic man and so was accepted into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Special Forces, and Navy SEALs. ...

The OSS conducted both espionage operations (SI Branch) and special operations (SO Branch), for sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Bank was assigned to SO Branch, and on July 31, 1944 led the Jedburgh Team PACKARD, parachuting into Lozere Department of France and linking up with French Resistance. The Croix de Lorraine, the symbol of the resistance chosen by de Gaulle French Resistance is the name used for resistance movements during World War II which fought the Nazi German occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy regime. ...

At the time of Operation Anvil, also known as Operation Dragoon (the Allied invasion of Southern France approximately six weeks after the D-Day invasion at Normandy), Bank and his French partisans drove the German forces away from the beachhead ahead of the Allied troops, liberating a number of French towns before the regular forces arrived. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Combatants United States1 United Kingdom2 Free France3 Germany Commanders Lt. ...

In late 1944 and early 1945, Bank led "Operation Iron Cross," which evolved into a plan to capture or kill Adolf Hitler. The OSS actively recruited German POWs who were opposed to Hitler to form a special forces unit, outfitted with SS uniforms and highly trained in "raid and snatch" techniques. (The OSS found many willing volunteers amongst former German soldiers, primarily former German Communists, who vigorously opposed Hitler.) This unit was trained as parachute infantry and was intended for insertion into the expected "Alpine Redoubt" on the Austrian/German border, where senior Nazi officials were planning to make their last stand against the advancing Allied armies. Hitler redirects here. ...

Hitler was expected to flee from Berlin and retire to the Alpine Redoubt before the Soviets could enter the capital city, so General William Joseph Donovan, head of the OSS, issued this order: "Tell Bank to get Hitler." For other people with similar names, see Wild Bill Major General William Joseph Donovan, KBE United States Army (January 1, 1883 – February 8, 1959) was an American soldier, lawyer and intelligence officer, best remembered today as wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). ...

Iron Cross was canceled almost on the eve of execution because intelligence showed that Hitler had remained in Berlin. (He committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945.) Additionally, the 101st Airborne was advancing so rapidly they were expected to capture the non-existent Alpine Redoubt before Iron Cross could be executed.

With the capitulation of Germany in May, 1945, Bank was reassigned to the Pacific theater, where he was inserted into Indo China and linked up with Ho Chih Minh, then leading the resistance to the Japanese. Bank spent considerable time traveling through Vietnam with Ho and was impressed with Ho's manifest popularity among the Vietnamese population. Bank advised the OSS of Ho's great popularity, recommended that Ho be allowed to form a coalition government, and predicted that Ho would win a popular election overwhelmingly if one was conducted.

It is not known whether Bank's recommendations reached President Harry S. Truman, but American policy was contrary: Ho was a long-time Communist, having joined the party in the 1920s in Paris, and therefore was considered unacceptable as leader of a coalition government. Some French "Vichy" military forces remained in Indo China, and the United States now consented to the use of these residual forces to block Ho and reinstate IndoChina as a French colony. President Truman and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower provided financial support to the French, thus leading to the Indochina War and ultimately the Vietnam War. For other persons named Harry Truman, see Harry Truman (disambiguation). ... Dwight David Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American General and politician, who served as the thirty-fourth President of the United States (1953–1961). ... The Indochina War was an almost thirty year war in Vietnam between 1946 and 1975, affecting the three Indochinese nations, namely Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000...

Post-war activities and the founding of the Special Forces

After the war Bank remained in the Army and became a leading advocate for the formation of a professional Special Forces division, equivalent to the SO branch of OSS. Russ Volckmann (who had been a guerilla in the Philippines) and Bank were instrumental in convincing the Army it needed such a force. The primary place such elements would be deployed, they thought, was behind the "Iron Curtain," in the Eastern European nations dominated by the Soviet Union, where there was a real possibility of a local resistance movement arising. Warsaw Pact countries to the east of the Iron Curtain are shaded red; NATO members to the west of it — blue. ...

In 1952, Colonel Aaron Bank became the first commander of the Army's first Special Forces unit, called the 10th Special Forces Group. (This number was selected to confound the Russians with suspicions of nine more such units.) In establishing the 10th, he was as flexible as he had been with Iron Cross, drawing upon former members of the "1st Special Service Force" known as the Devil's Brigade, as well as veterans of the OSS, the Parachute Infantry units, and guerilla elements in the Pacific. The 10th Special Forces Group was formed on June 19th, 1952, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with Colonel Aaron Bank in command. ... Shoulder sleeve patch of the 1st Special Service Force. ...

Using the training and strategies and the lessons learned during World War II, Bank created an elite unit of men skilled in foreign languages (to interface with foreign insurgents,) the arts of sabotage and stealth tactics, the use of explosives for demolition, amphibious warfare, rock climbing, jungle warfare, mountain fighting and as ski troops. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

Special Forces today are still all volunteer and organized into "A teams," as Aaron Bank organized his men in the 10th Special Forces group in 1952, with two experts in every specialty. They still undergo an arduous training process in which large numbers of men fail or quit, as Aaron Bank required of the men of Operation Iron Cross.

Special Forces today acknowledges the paternity of Col. Bank with great pride.

Col. Bank was commended by President George W. Bush in 2002, the year he celebrated his hundredth birthday, for developing the unconventional warfare programs and techniques that were used in toppling the Taliban. George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the forty-third and current President of the United States of America, originally inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ... A centenarian is a person who has attained the age of 100 years or more. ... Unconventional warfare (UW) is the opposite of conventional warfare. ... The Taliban (Pashto: , also anglicized as Taleban) are a Sunni Muslim Pashtun movement [2] that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when their leaders were removed from power by a cooperative military effort between the Northern Alliance, United States, and the United Kingdom. ...

Later years

Aaron Bank retired from the Army in 1958, and remained a vigorous man well into his eighties, swimming several miles a day in the Pacific Ocean near his home in San Clemente, California. Location of San Clemente within Orange County, California. ...

In the early 1970s, Col. Bank began a personal investigation of the lack of security at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is a few miles south of San Clemente. Col Bank determined that the San Onofre plant was protected by one private security guard with a sidearm, as if the only concern was civilian theft. Col. Bank concluded that a single special forces soldier could overcome this guard, seize the plant and destroy it with a small quantity of explosives. The consequence could be a Chernobyl-type accident (known as the "China Syndrome"), whereby the damaged plant would spew radioactivity into the atmosphere and contaminate thousands of square miles, including the nearby Los Angeles basin. The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a nuclear power plant located on the Pacific coast in San Onofre, California. ... This article is about the city of Chernobyl. ... Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station consisted of two pressurized water reactors manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox each inside its own containment building and connected cooling towers. ...

Col. Bank became alarmed at the recklessness of the civilian operators of San Onofre, and actively lobbied, then testified before a closed session of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, warning of the dangers of terrorist sabotage at San Onofre. As one of the world's leading experts on the sabotage of electric generating facilities, Col. Bank spoke with great authority -- but the AEC ignored him and did nothing. Shield of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. ...

Col. Bank then shared his concerns with an investigative journalist, who wrote an exposé of poor security at San Onofre for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1974. This led to a Congressional investigation and further secret testimony by Col. Bank before a Congressional committee. This time, Col. Bank's testimony was heeded, and Congressional pressure forced the AEC and its successor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to act. The U.S. nuclear power industry was ordered to spend billions of dollars implementing anti-terrorist security measures at commercial nuclear reactors nationwide, including on-site security squads with automatic weapons, remote scram capabilities (to take control of the plant from a distance and shut it down in the event of an attack) and the use of "red teams" to probe defenses and thereby eliminate vulnerabilities. Cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists with the famous Doomsday Clock set at seven minutes to midnight. ... NRC headquarters in Rockville, MD. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or NRC) is a United States government agency that was established by the Energy Reorganization Act in 1974, and was first opened January 19, 1975. ... A SCRAM is an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor - though the term has been extended to cover shutdowns of other complex operations, such as server farms and even large model railroads (see Tech Model Railroad Club). ...

Personal life

Colonel Bank married his wife Catherine in 1948, and they raised two daughters, Linda and Alexandra. He wrote a book, From OSS to Green Berets: the Birth of Special Forces, which describes his exploits in France and Indochina and his role in founding the Special Forces. He died on April 1, 2004 in Dana Point, California at the age of 101. He is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California. is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Location of Dana Point within Orange County, California. ... At 921 acres, Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California is the third-largest cemetery managed by the National Cemetery Administration, and since 2000 has been the most active in the system based on the number of interments. ... Nickname: Location in the state of California Coordinates: , Country State County Riverside Government  - Mayor Ron Loveridge Area  - City  78. ...