#1 What is a Navy SEAL or Navy SWCC?

We talk with two senior operators about what it means to be a SEAL or SWCC, what they do, and how they became leaders among America's elite special warfare warriors. For more info visit www.SEALSWCC.com.

(Series Intro):

Welcome to “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” the official Navy SEAL podcast, a new series brought to you right from the origin of the Navy SEALs in Coronado, California.

We created this as an official source of information for anyone who’d like to learn more about Naval Special Warfare. Throughout the series we’ll give you suggestions for on getting into mental and physical condition, navigate the recruitment process, and dive into important aspects of the Special Warfare Ethos.

I’m Daniel Fletcher. Today we start at square one by sitting down with a SWCC Master Chief and a Navy SEAL Senior Chief, to learn the fundamentals of Naval Special Warfare. Today, and throughout this series, active duty operators’ names may be changed for security reasons.

 00:01:00:07

DF: First of all, I’d like to thank you guys for both taking the time to join us. I know you guys are very busy. If you could just start off and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do, kind of your title, and then we’ll dig in and find out a little bit more about what you’re doing in terms of the details and stuff like that. So, Jack, I’ll let you go ahead and start.

 00:01:16:20

J: How you doing, my name’s Master Chief Jack, and I’m a Special Warfare Combat Craft Crewman, also pronounced SWCC [SPELLS]. I’ve been in the Navy for about 25 years now. I actually started off in the fleet. I was assigned to the USS Nimitz for my first five years of my career, where later, I went through SWCC training with Class 33.

 00:01:38:25

DF: Okay, go ahead, Chad.

 00:01:39:20

C: Yeah, I’m Senior Chief Chad. I came in the Navy in ’96, went through BUDS in ’97 and have been serving just over 21 years now at Team 3, Team 7, have been in overseas tours.

 00:01:53:19

DF: If you could maybe real quickly tell me a little bit about yourself and what brought you to make the decision to become a Special Forces operator, maybe a little bit about your background, that would be great. If you could start, Chad, from the SEAL perspective, that would be great.

 00:02:06:00

C: So, I was, I was in college. It was near completion of my degree, which I did complete before I joined the Navy, but I just had an epiphany on a backpacking trip. And you know, I was studying criminal justice getting my bachelor’s degree, realizing that the, the avenues to actually have a career in criminal justice would probably be with the prison system, which means, you know, as you graduate into the prison system and look at the infrastructure of how you promote there, you’re going to be in an office behind a desk. And any selection of career that I chose within my degree was going to get me behind a desk in an office somewhere. So, I just had an epiphany on a backpacking trip and decided that my career needed to change. My mindset needed to change, and I needed to do something that was going to get me out from behind a desk, ultimately speaking. So, I literally came back off that backpacking trip and went into a recruiting office and told the recruiter I’d like to join the Navy. I thought about being a pilot and went into the room where they show you the videos of all the different things you can, the cool things you can do in the Navy, and the first thing he popped in was the SEAL recruiting video. And so, four hours and 23 seconds later, I walked out of his office, and said, “That’s what I want to do.” I grew up kind of in an elite soccer environment. I was pretty good at soccer, played with the best of the best soccer players in Texas, and what was kind of troubling for me is, you know, e(continued)