laststandonzombieisland

After winning the Spanish American War (1898) by default and defeating the basically third rate Spanish Navy the United States was seen as an emerging naval power by old Europe. Another shock was given the old world naval powers of Europe when the Russian Navy, a second rate force that only ranked behind that of Britain, Germany and France, was bested soundly by the almost infant Japanese Navy in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).

A hundred years ago this week Teddy Roosevelt announced to the world that the United States Navy was ready to take the fight to the sea anywhere it may be. Concerned over Japans new prestige in the Pacific and wanting to make it known to Europeans of every inclination that the US Navy was able to project its countries power, the Great White Fleet took to the sea. This fleet of four battleship squadrons with escorts, their hulls painted white with red white and blue banners on their bows, embarked on a 43,000 mile voyage around the world visiting six continents in two years. Their 14,000 sailors included men who had served in the Civil war over forty years before and had seen first hand how the fleet had changed since the age of iron cannons, wood and sail.

Teddy would be proud to know that today the Great White Fleet, now painted haze gray, is still on patrol a hundred years later.

The Lend Lease Program started nine months before Pearl Harbor (when the United States was at peace) and lasted throughout 1945, providing the “Arsenal of Democracy” to cash strapped pro-US Allies including over $30 billion worth of equipment to Britain (which was finally paid off on December 29, 2006) as well as smaller amounts to France, China and a multitude of other states. Arguably the most important share of the Lend Lease money went in the form of $11 billion to Uncle Joe Stalin’s Soviet Union. It was the Soviet Union that held the bulk of the German Army at bay from 1941-45 and was the first into Berlin. This aide to the Soviets included 375,883 trucks, 51, 503 Jeeps, nearly four hundred ships and almost 15,000 aircraft. Almost everything including half of the aircraft were crated and transported across the ocean in the holds of cargo vessels. The other half were flown almost straight into combat. This meant that no less than 7926 airplanes flew under their own power from their US factories to the battle fronts over the skies of the Soviet Union. American pilots brought airplanes from Great Falls, Montana to Fairbanks, Alaska, where Soviet pilots switched crews and ferried them along the Soviet leg of the route to Krasnoyarsk and then to battlefront airstrips.

This little known story is chronicled on the new Lend-Lease section of the airforce.ru website A monument has recently been erected in Fairbanks including a pair of bronze pilots, one Soviet and the other American to commemorate this effort.

Military working dogs have been a formidable force multiplier since the time of the Romans. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like those who have gone before them, they took their war dogs with them. Some of them have not come back. Four have been killed. Army Cpl. Kory Duane Wiens and his dog Cooper were buried together after they were killed in the same bomb in the town of Muhammad Sath, Iraq. Air Force handler TSgt Jason Norton was killed on convoy duty without his dog. Marine Sgt Adam Cann was killed in 2006 and his partner, Bruno, continues to serve. Then you have Marine Cpl Dustin Lee who was killed by 73mm rocket in Fallujah. Corporal Lee’s dog, a seven year old German Shepard named Lex, was also wounded but survived and has been reassigned.

Corporal Lee’s family would like to be reunited with Lex, his war dog, his buddy, and tragically, his last companion. The marines contend that they are too short of military working dogs (only 170 dogs in the entire marine corps of nearly 200,000 men and women) to cut Lex’s leash and allow the Lee family to adopt him. President Clinton signed a law permitting military dogs to be adopted once they can no longer perform their military duties; however there has not been a case of a late handler’s family trying to adopt his surviving dog.

The Lee family is fighting to bring him home and have some 3,000 supporters.

*UPDATE- on December 21st, Lex was adopted by the Lee family. It is the first time a military working dog was allowed to go to a slain serviceman’s survivors

History pops up where you least expect it.

In Helsinki, the capital of Finland, Wednesday a harbor dredge pulled up more than a dozen Tsarist era artillery rounds. Finland was part of Russia from 1809-1917, much to their dismay. The rounds were found only 100 feet (33~meters) from shore stuck in the mud. According to a military spokesman, the shells were well packed in rusty metal boxes and had markings dating from 1913. The spokesman stated, “The shells were in good shape and they were shining”.

Looking at the picture they appear to be light shells. Large numbers of small Nordenfeld and Hotchkiss Gun were removed from Russian destroyers in 75mm and 57mm caliber. These guns were posted around the sea line for use by Tsar Nicholas II’s army as ranging guns for coast defense batteries and counter Zeppelin/anti-aircraft weapons in the latter part of the war. (St Petersburg and the surrounding large cities in the Baltic Sea area were often targeted by German Zeppelins and large reconnaissance aircraft). The Finnish coastline was sprinkled with Tsarist artillery batteries, due to the fact that the Kaiser’s large navy enabled him to embark a potential amphibious assault almost at will. Vladimir Yakubov’s page on the Russian 75mm Canet gun lists the cartridge for that weapon as having a projectile length (not the entire round just the part that flies out of the barrel) of some 2.7 calibers minimum, which would be on the order of almost nine inches long. From the scale of the picture included in the linked news article above these could more likely be 57mm rounds.

Kind of interesting, too bad they are undoubtedly getting blown up as unexploded ordinance, they would make a nice display piece somewhere.