Warship Wednesday, June 19th Carriers Under the Sea
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, June 19th
Here we see the Sen Toku I-400-class (I-yonhyaku-gata Sensuikan) giant submarine aircraft carrier I-401 at sunset. It’s an appropriate picture as the submersible was at the time one of the last remaining units of the WWII Imperial Japanese Navy left afloat in the world. The IJN’s battle flag was the now-infamous Rising Sun, and this beautiful picture was taken of the I-401 at sunset, as a captured prize ship of the US Navy, sitting in Pearl Harbor in 1946.
In 1942, the war in the Pacific was still winnable for Japan, and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto conceived of a class of huge submersible warships, 18 overall, that could carry an armada of 54 submarine-launched attack floatplanes to attack far off strategic US targets such as the Panama Canal, or fuel manufacture/storage facilities on the West Coast, or logistical hubs like American Samoa. Furthermore, the ships would be capable of circumnavigating the earth 1.5 times (37,000 miles!) on one full load of fuel, which would enable even targets on the US East Coast within the reach of the Japanese Navy.
To make such a capable submarine in 1942 under wartime conditions was a challenge. Nevertheless, you have to admire the audacious plan. Each of these I-400 boats had to be some 400-feet long with a very wide beam to be able to carry and launch up to three combat airplanes. This gave them a displacement of some 6700 tons and an immense crew of over 140, including air wing. When you compare this to the subs of the time, they are super-sized. Even looking at today’s HY-80 steel nuclear propelled boats, the I-400s are larger than many of the modern hunter-killer of the sea. For example, the backbone of the US Navy since 1976, the “688 Boats” of the Los Angeles class SSNs have a length of 362 feet and a surfaced displacement of 6.082-tons.
The Germans helped a lot with the design, giving the Japanese the plans for the aircraft catapult as well as supplying them with snorkels and periscopes. Unlike many subs of the day, the I-400s had both air and surface search radars as well as a primitive radar warning receiver and sonar absorbing anechoic tile.
The I-400s had a huge armament punch. Not only could they carry a trio of M6A1 Seiran (Mountain Haze) attack planes, each of which could carry a 1800-pound bomb or torpedo load out to 300-miles from the submarine and return, but the ship itself carried 8 21-inch torpedo tubes, with 24 Type 95 torpedos, a 140mm deck gun and a number of 25mm cannons for small surface ships and aircraft defense. The Type 95 is considered by many to be the best torpedo of WWII, being an advanced design of the famous Long Lance, it had a 51-knot speed and a 1200-pound warhead, a performance envelope that is still formidable today.
The Seirans were to be launched via a 85-foot long compressed-air catapult mounted on the forward deck. A well-trained crew of four men could roll a Seiran out of its hangar on a collapsible catapult carriage, attach the plane’s pontoons and have it readied for flight in approximately 7 minutes. Although to get all three airplanes off the boat took up to 30-minutes.
The Gatun Locks at the Panama canal were supposed to be the I401s first target
Well, all did not go as planned for the I-400s. After Yammoto was killed in 1943, the Japanese Navy saw little use for the program and started slowly canceling the ships. Just three I-400s were finished and only two, I-400 and I-401, ever went to sea. Their primary reason for being, the Seiran float-plane, had only 28 examples made.
Commissioned 8 January 1945, I-401 was a late comer to the war. Already the US Navy had recaptured the Philipines and was breathing hard on the Japanese home islands. By June the two boats and a crew of float plane pilots were practising on wooden mock-ups of the Panama canal locks in preparation for their first attack. At the last-minute, the plan was halted and the two I-400s were sent to attack Ulithu Atoll, the forward base of the US Navy’s fast carriers. At any given time the US Navy had up to a dozen carriers there on “Murders Row”, taking a break from the war. To give the six Seirans a fighting chance against up to 2000 US aircraft and thousands of anti-aircraft guns in the atoll, they were painted in US markings and refitted as kamikaze aircraft.
Murderers Row at Ulithi atoll was the target of two submarines and six Seiran floatplanes.
While at sea on the way to the atoll, the war ended and the I-400 and 401 surrendered to US forces. Both ships shot away their torpedoes, threw their artillery shells overboard, and shot their unmanned floatplanes off the deck into the deep ocean. I401 surrendered to the USS Segundo (SS-398), a Balao-class submarine less than half her size.
The floatplanes on the I400 and 401 were given US markings and looked almost like a P-51 with a set of floats.
Both the I400 and I401 were taken to Pearl Harbor by prize crews where they were inspected at length by the US Navy. Odds were they would have been kept for years, and one of them may have even still been around as a trophy ship had the Soviets not wanted to inspect them. To prevent the Russkis from getting to the amazing Japanese-German hybrid tech of the I400s, the Navy sunk them as targets off Hawaii in 1946.
The US navy had these ships for almost nine months, and they would probably be gracing a museum somewhere today, had it not been for the Russians.
The I-401 was rediscovered in 2005 about a mile off Barber’s Point in 2600-feet of water. A few of her parts were saved prior to sinking, including the 140mm gun sight which is currently displayed at the Yokohama WWII Japanese Military Radio Museum.
The only remaining Seiran floatplane, captured intact at the Aichi Aircraft Factory following the end of the war in August 1945, is at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on current display.
True to Yammaoto’s vision, at least one Seiran made it all the way to Washington DC, just not how he thought it would.
In a twist of fate, the USS Segundo (SS-398), captor of the I-401, was herself sunk as a target by the USS Salmon (SSR/SS/AGSS-573), a Sailfish-class submarine, in 1970, her usefulness past. It should go without saying that the Salmon likewise was sent to the bottom 5 June 1993, as a target by the US Navy. History is funny like that.
Specs
Displacement: 5,223 long tons (5,307 t) surfaced
6,560 long tons (6,665 t) submerged
Length: 122 m (400 ft)
Beam: 12 m (39 ft)
Draft: 7 m (23 ft)
Propulsion: Diesel-electric
4 diesel engines, 7,700 hp (5,700 kW)
Electric motors, 2,400 hp (1,800 kW)
Speed: 18.75 knots (21.58 mph; 34.73 km/h) surfaced
6.5 kn (7.5 mph; 12.0 km/h) submerged
Range: 37,500 nmi (69,500 km) at 14 kn (16 mph; 26 km/h)
Test depth: 100 m (330 ft)
Complement: 144
Armament: • 8 × 533 mm (21 in) forward torpedo tubes
• 20 × Type 95 torpedoes
• 1 × 14 cm/40 11th Year Type naval gun
• 3 × 25 mm (0.98 in) 3-barrel machine gun
• 1 × 25 mm machine gun
Aircraft carried: 3 × Aichi M6A1 Seiran sea-planes
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO)
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
I’m a member, so should you be!
The MAT-49: The best gun France ever made?
The words “great French weapons” are not often seen in the same sentence. Haunted by the adoption of several dated and troubled designs such as the disastrous Chauchat light machine gun, the pipsqueak M1892 revolver and the ‘also-ran’ MAS-49/56 battle rifle, the French military is not renowned for their modern small arms. The MAT-49 subgun, however, is something of the exception to the rule.
After World War 2 the French military, devastated and largely disarmed by the German occupation of 1940-44, had to be remade from scratch. One of the most widely spread weapons of the previous war was the submachine gun and France needed them badly. The French national arms concern Manufacture Nationale d’Armes de Tulle, better known as MAT, started working on the design. Adopted in 1949, the designation became the MAT-49 for obvious reasons.
And it wasn’t half-bad. (the rest at my column at Guns.com)
The M50 Reising Submachine Gun: HnR does a subgun
You have heard of the M3 Grease Gun, the M1 Carbine, the Garand, the Tommy gun, and almost every other firearm that the US military used in World War 2. Nevertheless, one gun you may not have heard of is the quirky little series of subguns produced by H&R. These guns, named after their inventor, Eugene Reising, were one of the great shouldn’t have beens of the War.
This Coast Guard beach patrolman of WWII is probably better served by the dog than the M50
In 1940, with the clouds of war gathering on the horizon every arms engineer was looking to build the next great gun. Eugene G. Reising came across the idea to produce a simple submachine gun that could be made cheaper that the then current issue Auto Ordnance M1928A1 Thompson. The Thompson was a beautifully brutal weapon that was made famous in the Prohibition era. The problem with the Thompson was that it was a heavy beast, at nearly 11-pounds empty. Furthermore, beauty was expensive—making the Tommy gun almost $225 per copy, which, over 70 years ago, was a sizable sum. Reising was a pretty clever engineer and had previously worked with John Browning on several designs. He thought he could do better than the Tommy gun and started work on his design….
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
The M60 Machine gun: It’s ‘The Pig’, man!
Using a mash up of technology garnered from WWII, the US military selected a compromise general-purpose machine gun in 1957 that remains in limited service to this day. This gun, officially known as the M60, has been carried my many, loved by most, and hated by some. No matter which one of these categories a soldier fell into though, they all called it ‘the pig’.
In the late 1950s, the US Army was in the process of converting their arsenal from the tried and true .30-06 round (that had gotten it through both World Wars and Korea) to the shorter and more controllable 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge. The first step? Replace its WWII era small-arms with more modern equipment to shoot this new round. The vaunted M1 Garand and M1 Carbine were to be replaced by the M14 battle rifle. Then there was the 19-pound Browning M1918 BAR, a myriad of submachine guns, and the 31-pound M1919 Browning Light Machine gun that needed a replacement. The 1950s replacement for all of them was to be the M60.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
The M60, and a puppy.
Warship Wednesday, June 12 The Tsars Lost Eagle
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, June 12
Here we see the Tsar’s mighty new battleship Orel (Russian for Eagle) in all of her black-painted brooding majesty as she sat at Krondstadt harbor in 1904. She looks like a ship in morning and for good reason, her country is at war with upstart Imperial Japan and she was soon to sail to the far off Pacific to put things right.
Built at the Galerniy Island Shipyards, Saint Petersburg, she was brand new, only completed finally in October 1904. A Borodino-class battleship, she was the pinnacle of pre-dreadnought design. Weighing in at nearly 15,000 tons full load, she was armed with four 12-inch guns and a dozen six inchers besides a huge battery of smaller 75 and 47mm rifles to ward away torpedo boats. She could make 18-knots which was pretty fast for these types of ships. The thing is, to get this fast, she was comparatively lightly armored. It had long been a rule of thumb to armor battleships against the same size cannon they carried in inches (example, since she had 12-inch guns, her main belt should be 12-inches thick, with turrets and conning tower a little heavier). Instead, the Orel had a belt that ran 5-7 inches and her strongest armor was on her two main turrets of just 10-inches.
Oh well, you can’t have everything. At least it was good German Krupp armor and not that junk Harvey stuff. Trust me, where she was going, she was gonna need it.
The Orel’s path was the long blue line. Sucks to be a Baltic battleship wih short legs on an 18,000 mile shakedown cruise
Still with her paint wet and her crew largely as new as the ship itself, her shakedown cruise was epic. She joined the 27 other Baltic fleet ships in the force designated as the 2nd Pacific Squadron (the first was trapped at Port Arthur by the Japanese) and set sail 18,000 miles to break the siege of that far off port. During the epic voyage, which predated that of the Great White Fleet by a half decade, Orel was overloaded with coal at all times which made keeping sea hard and limited the vital underway training her crew needed to simply shoveling coal.
Some 2000 tons overloaded with coal piled on deck, stacked in every compartment, and even piled around the shells in the magazines, this is how the Orel looked for most of her first and final voyage for the Tsar. Pretty safe freeboard!
Two months at sea and still more than 10,000 miles away, Port Arthur surrendered to the Japanese. Instead of logically turning back for the Baltic, the fleet under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky pressed on, coaling at French ports around the world. By May 1905 the Russian fleet was trying to run the Straits of Tsushima between Japan and Korea. With a sneak attack preceded by seven months of foreshadowing, Japanese Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō met the 28 Russian ships with 89 of his own, a great tactical position, and all guns and tubes loaded.
The Orel had a pivotal part in the worst naval defeat in history.
The resulting battle, known as the ‘Battle of Tsushima’ in most of the world and ‘Holy Shit We Just Lost a Whole Fleet’ in Imperial Russia, was possibly the most one-sided naval engagement in history. Of the 8 Russian battleships in the line, 7 were sent to the bottom along with over 4300 brave Tsarist sailors. The Japanese lost a couple torpedo boats and 117 sailors.
But what about the 8th battleship?– well, that’s the Orel‘s story.
She was itching to get in the fight and fired the first shots of the battle. She got her licks back from the Japanese. During the battle, Orel was hit by no less than five 12-inch, two 10-inch (254 mm), nine 8-inch (203 mm), 39 six-inch shells, and 21 smaller rounds or fragments. Although the ship had many large holes in the unarmored portions of her side, she was only moderately damaged as all of the four (one 12-inch and three 6-inch) shells that hit her side armor failed to penetrate.
The left gun of her forward 12-inch turret had been struck by an eight-inch sell that broke off its muzzle and another eight-inch shell struck the roof of the rear 12-inch turret and forced it down, which limited the maximum elevation of the left gun. Two six-inch gun turrets had been jammed by hits from eight-inch shells and one of them had been burnt out by an ammunition fire. Another turret had been damaged by a 12-inch shell that struck its supporting tube. Splinters from two 6-inch shells entered the conning tower and wounded Captian Nikolay Viktorovich Yung badly enough he was unconscious for the rest of the battle and later died of his wounds. Casualties totaled 43 crewmen killed and approximately 80 wounded.
Seven month old battleship…slightly used.
A battered wreck that had taken tremendous punishment, the remaining crew pulled down her flag to stop the fight. Captain Yung’s body was buried at sea with full military honors after the surrender. As far as I can tell, it was the last time in Naval history that a capital ship was captured at sea after a battle.
The Japanese took her into service as the battleship Iwami although she needed nearly two years in shipyard before she could serve again under her new flag. Her British made Bellville boilers were replaced by Japanese-built Miyabara boilers as well as her whole above-deck superstructure rebuilt. As her secondary armament was French made by Canet, the Japanese replaced it as well.
She continued to be used as a coastal defense ship throughout World War One and then as the flagship of the 90,000 man Japanese Army force that landed in Vladivostok during the Russian Civil War (1917-21)– just to rub the Russians faces in it a little further.
Odds are the Japanese would have kept her around as a trophy till this day but the battered and rebuilt warship’s tonnage counted against her in the Washington Naval Agreement, and she was disarmed used as a target ship for aircraft (see December 1941 for how that worked out) and her remains scrapped in 1925. Ironically, her service with the Japanese Navy was for almost twenty years while her service with the Russians was only seven months, and she spent most of her time in Russian waters flying the banner of the Rising Sun.
Specs
Displacement: 14,151 long tons (14,378 t)
Length: 397 ft (121.0 m)
Beam: 76 ft 1 in (23.2 m)
Draft: 29 ft 2 in (8.9 m)
Installed power: 15,800 ihp (11,782 kW)
20 Belleville boilers
Propulsion: 2 shafts, 2 Triple-expansion steam engines
Speed: 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Range: 2,590 nmi (4,800 km; 2,980 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement: 28 officers, 826 enlisted men
Armament: 2 × 2 – 12 in (305 mm) guns
6 × 2 – 6 inches (152 mm) guns
20 × 1 – 75 mm (3 in) guns
20 × 1 – 47 mm (1.9 in) guns
4 × 1 – 15 in (381 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor: Krupp armor
Belt: 7.64–5.7 inches (194–145 mm)
Deck: 1–2 inches (25–51 mm)
Turrets: 10 inches (254 mm)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO).
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm .
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
I’m a member, so should you be!
So, You Want to Buy a Flamethrower?
So, you’re telling us you’re done with cartridge-fired weapons?!? You’ve had your fill of rimfire, centerfire, shotguns, bows, and slingshots and, while nice, they have left you cold and wanting? Well, what better way to add a little renewed warmth to your shooting life than a gun that literally shoots flames? And would you believe getting your hot little hands on one may be a lot easier than you think…
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
Warship Wednesday, June 5 The Graf
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, June 5
Here we see the Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee as she looked at her finest at the Coronation Review for English King George VI at Spithead in May 1937. Just 17-months old in this picture, she would become one of the most hunted of all German ships in the beginning of World War Two just two years later– by the very fleet she steamed with on this day.
Laid down at Reichsmarinewerft, Wilhelmshaven on 1 October 1932, she was the first new German ‘battleship’ since the 1919 Treaty of Versailles to replace the 30-year old pre-dreadnought battleship SMS Braunschweig. Officially weighing just 10,000-tons (the treaty limit) and classified simply as a ‘Armored ship’ (Panzerschiff), she was portrayed as simply a really big cruiser.
However her full load displacement was nearly 17,000-tons (the same as an early WWI battle cruiser) and she carried a half-dozen 280mm (11-inch) SK C/28 naval guns, whereas most cruisers had nothing larger than 8-inches. Western media called her and her other two Deutschland class sisters ‘pocket battleships’ as they could effectively sink any warship but.
The ship’s hull was constructed with transverse steel frames; over 90 percent of the hull used welding instead of the then standard riveting, which saved 15 percent of her total hull weight. This savings allowed the armament and armor to be increased. The hull contained twelve watertight compartments and were fitted with a double bottom that extended for 92 percent of the length of the keel. Four sets of 9-cylinder, double-acting, two-stroke diesel engines further saved weight over huge oil-fired turbines while also giving the ship an amazing 10,000-mile range. This made her the perfect long range surface raider.
When the clouds of war started to form in 1939, Admiral Raeder sent the Graf Spee out to the Atlantic so that she would not be caught in the Baltic and bottled up by the Royal Navy. For the first four months of the war she ranged the South Atlantic, sinking nine Allied merchant ships as a surface raider. She was encountered by the three British cruisers: HMS Exeter (10,000-tons, 6×8-inch guns), HMNZS Achilles and HMS Ajax (9700-tons, 8×6-inch guns). In the resulting running Battle of the River Plate on 13 December 1939, the Spee gave better than she got. All three British smaller British cruisers were badly mauled, suffering over 100 casualties.
However one of Exeter‘s 8 inch shells had penetrated two decks before exploding in Graf Spee’s funnel area—destroying her raw fuel processing system and leaving her with just 16 hours fuel, insufficient to allow her to return home. With her legs cut off, her desalination plant wrecked, her kitchen burnt and 70% of her 11-inch shells expended, Spee made for Uruguay where she hoped to either make repairs or be interned. However the Uruguayans ordered her to sea in 72 hours into the waiting arms of the British fleet. British Intelligence deceived the Germans into believing that a much larger force lay just offshore, ready to destroy the battered Graf Spee when she emerged.
Rather than suffer outright defeat to a seemingly superior force, the ship’s captain, Hans Langsdorff ordered her evacuated and scuttled. After all, the ship herself was named after a German admiral who was killed at sea in defeat by a larger British force in the First World War. Landing most of his crew ashore, he sailed her to the edge of Montevideo harbor and blew her magazines.
More than 1000 of her crew were interned in Argentina during the war while Hans Langsdorff himself shot himself while wearing his dress uniform.
She has been slowly salvaged by various countries and teams since 1939 but most of the ship is still in Montevideo. Her 660-pound, nine foot wide eagle figurehead was recovered from the stern of the ship in 2006 by a team of divers who loosened 145 bolts to free the ornament.
Odds are, no one has seen the last of the Graf.
Specs
Displacement: Design:
14,890 t (14,650 long tons; 16,410 short tons)
Full load:
16,020 long tons (16,280 t)
Length: 186 m (610 ft 3 in)
Beam: 21.65 m (71 ft 0 in)
Draft: 7.34 m (24 ft 1 in)
Propulsion:
Eight MAN diesel engines
Two propellers
52,050 shp (38,810 kW)
Speed: 29.5 knots (55 km/h)
Range: 8,900 nautical miles (16,500 km; 10,200 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Complement: As built:
33 officers
586 enlisted
After 1935:
30 officers
921–1,040 enlisted
Sensors and
processing systems: 1940:
FMG 39 G(gO)
1941:
FMG 40 G(gO)
FuMO 26
Armament: As built:
6 × 28 cm (11 in) in triple turrets
8 × 15 cm (5.9 in) in single turrets
8 × 53.3 cm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes
Armor:
main turrets: 140 mm (5.5 in)
belt: 80 mm (3.1 in)
deck: 45 mm (1.8 in)
Aircraft carried: Two Arado Ar 196 seaplanes
Aviation facilities: One catapult
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization
(INRO)
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
I’m a member, so should you be!
Wandering around Grenada MS
Spent a good bit of time doing some training around the Camp McCain area recently. Mc Cain is now a National Guard base but several outlying areas are forgotten. On a long lunch I wandered around in the woods near Grenada Lake and stumbled over the old POW camp from WWII.
The camp housed upto 7700 German and Italian POWS, many former members of the Afrika Korps captured in 1943. These soldiers were not paroled and sent back home till 1946.
Row after row of concrete post blocks. These were the foundations for the wooden barracks that housed the EPWs. There are dozens of sets of these stretching through the woods for miles.
the barracks skeletons are all clustered around a large concrete slab building, perhaps 200-feet long with a 18-inch tall step-up. Odds are this was the Dining facility/auditorium.
Hmm…rows of 55-gal drums cut in half and buried in the ground..yup, I know a latrine when I see one!
Demolished pillboxes on the outskirts are just missing the M1919 Browning Light Machine guns to be effective again…and some slight repair.
Cast off items like old bottles, buckles, etc abound in the leaves. I left them as I found them tho. bad juju.
The forests have closed in on the camp with hardly any sunlight reaching the floor. In time even these remains will be lost, the memory of this WWII site lost in the leaves.
The Remington-Keene Repeating Rifle: A highly collectible, bolt action nightmare
In the 1870s, Remington was hurting and they needed something new to help get them out of the hole. Their main rifle, the single-shot Rolling Block, was suffering in sales against new-fangled repeaters by Winchester and Sharps. It was then that they stumbled upon a guy in New Jersey by the name of Keene who had some interesting ideas about bolt-actions.
Today we are well versed in bolt-action rifles but in the 1870s, the world was split between lever actions like the Winchester 1873 and single-shot falling block designs. There were a few turn-bolt actions out there, like the Berdan and the 1871 Mauser, but these were single-shot guns as well.
What was revolutionary for a repeater was using a turn-bolt that not only loaded and unloaded the rifle, but fed from a magazine. New Jersey based firearms designer John W. Keene had perfected a bolt-action system for a rifle and magazine but lacked the means to produce his gun. This led to a mutually beneficial arrangement and the Remington-Keene repeating rifle was born.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
A Wall of Heroes
(hattip georgy-konstantinovich-zhukov)
These 80 silver goblets commemorate the 80 men who flew the Doolittle Raid against Japan in April 1942.
At every reunion, the surviving Raiders meet privately to conduct their solemn “Goblet Ceremony.” After toasting the Raiders who died since their last meeting, they turn the deceased men’s goblets upside down. Each goblet has the Raider’s name engraved twice — so that it can be read if the goblet is right side up or upside down. When there are only two Raiders left, these two men will drink one final toast to their departed comrades using the 1896 Hennessy kept in the center.
Apparently there are four still alive, but just a month ago, in April, they decided to hold one final anniversary and toast using the Hennessy later this year between the four of them, rather than wait for it to just be two.
And some people think a hero is just a sandwich.
Goodreads
