Monthly Archives: July 2013

Israel Hits Syria Slinging Popeyes from German Dolphins

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“According to several sources vetted by DID, “on July 5/13, the Syrian port city of Latakia experienced major explosions at an arms depot. Israel hasn’t taken responsibility for the attack, but many sources attribute it to them. Initial reports suggested that the Israeli air force flew from bases in Turkey to launch the strike, flying over the Mediterranean and staying out of Syrian air space. Now, reports have surfaced that the strike was launched from a Dolphin Class submarine offshore. ”

The Dolphin is a greatly modified class of six Type 209 submarines made by the Germans for the Israeli Defence Forces. The first two, built in the late 90s were donated, and the rest built slowly with the last, a currently unnamed unit, slated for delivery in 2014.

Isnt it cute

Isnt it cute

These 200-foot 1800-ton boats are smaller than the fleet boats of WWII, but can make patrols of up to 50-days at sea, covering as many as 10,000 nautical miles. They are armed with 6 × 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes for a payload of up to 16 US Mk48 and German Atlas Elektronik DM2A3 fish or sublaunched Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and 4 × 650 mm (26 in) torpedo tubes for launching swimmer vehicles and mines.

 

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Their names are very interesting and resemble those typically chosen by Tsarist Russian subs.

Dolphin
Leviathan (trans. “Whale”)
Tekumah (trans. “Revival”)
Tannin (trans. “Crocodile”)
Rahav (trans. “Demon”}

While the Germans only sent the boats capable of firing 533mm torpedoes, the Israelis about ten years ago converted them to fire the Popeye Turbo SLCM – A suspected stretched version of their locally designed Popeye Turbo air to surface missile, for use as a submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM). It was widely reported in a US Navy observed 2002 test in the Indian Ocean to have hit a target at 1500 km, it can allegedly carry a 200-300 kg conventional or nuclear warhead.

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It is suspected that the stretched Popeye Turbo is the primary strategic second strike nuclear deterrent weapon which can be fired from the 650mm secondary torpedo tubes of the Israeli Dolphin class submarines. It is believed that the SLCM version of the Popeye was developed by Israel after the US Clinton administration refused an Israeli request in 2000 to purchase Tomahawk long-range SLCM’s because of international MTCR proliferation rules.

The Israelis, however, are mum on dolphins, popeyes, and other such things….

The M3 Submachine gun: Let’s get greasy

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World War 3 just broke out, soldier, and Soviet T72s are streaming over the wall into West Germany. You take to your high tech, M1 Abrams
tank to greet the Pinkos behind 4.5-inches of reinforced steel but when you take fire and have to bail out, what protection do you have then? Well, just remember to grab your gas mask (dirty Russians) and your new old best friend—the vintage M3 Grease Gun left over from the last World War. As they say in America “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, right? While the M3 never had to serve in WWIII, it was a war baby of a previous conflict. Just months after the US entered the Second World War; the Army was in dire need of a small, compact submachine gun to equip drivers, squad leaders, tank crewmen, and others who just didn’t have the space to store full sized rifles or carbines. After seeing the crude effectiveness of the British STEN design when compared to their own wooden-stocked Thompsons, the US Army asked for the new submissions to be as simple as possible, and use all metal construction.
grease gun

The dynamic duo of George Hyde and Frederick Sampson, engineers for the Inland Division of GM (yes, that GM) kicked around a few concepts before they settled on the gun that would become the M3.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

m3greaserww2

Human Powered Chopper Finally!

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The rules of the American Helicopter Society Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Challenge , specify that the craft must fly for 60 seconds, must rise to an altitude of at least 3 meters (about 10 feet), and must remain within a horizontal area no bigger than 10 meters by 10 meters (33 feet by 33 feet).

Sounds doable right?

Well hundreds of teams have been working on it for *33 years* and finally just pulled it off last week.

On June 13th, 2013, the AeroVelo Atlas Human-Powered Helicopter captured the long standing AHS Sikorsky Prize with a flight lasting 64.1
seconds and reaching an altitude of 3.3 metres.

Surviving a Riot

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With today’s uncertain times, the prospect of civil unrest is rearing its head. Here are a few things to keep in mind if this beast ever comes back to the United States.

What, me worry?

Today we see amazing footage on our televisions and mobile devices of frightening riots but these are in exotic far off lands such as Turkey, Egypt, and Greece. We say to ourselves, this could never happen here. However, it has in our near past. Even if you forget the madness of the more recent 1992 LA Riots, all you have to do is Google the 1967 Detroit Riots in which 467 were injured or the Newark riots of the same year to see this is very, very possible here.

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The National Guard only put down the 1967 Newark riots after the liberal use of force. In a week-long bout of civil unrest, the New Jersey State Police reported firing 2,905 rounds; the National Guard fired 10,414.

While many of these came about from racial tensions, some riots, such as the 1999 Seattle WTO events, in which 157 anarchist protestors where arrested, can be blamed on anything from political unrest or simple crimes of opportunity as after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 New Orleans.

LA-riots-via-AFP
(For the first couple of days in a large scale civil unrest event, the police and National Guard may only be there to wish you the best of luck)

During the LA Riots, the vaunted LAPD abandoned entire areas of the city until National Guard forces could be mobilized and sent to restore order. This could be several days. The established start of the LA Riot was at about 5:30 PM on April 29, 1992 when, at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues beer cans were thrown by crowds at passing motorists. This soon ballooned out of control and evolved into a full-blown riot with huge parts of the city totally lawless. It wasn’t until the afternoon of the next day that the first National Guard units were deployed to the city. An estimated 12,000 US Marines and California National Guard then fought what some have called the Battle of LA for four days until relative peace was returned to the city although a curfew and armed military patrols continued for some time.

What do you do if 911 doesn’t work?

Armed volunteers take position behind cabbage boxes as they guard California market from approaching looters during the second day of the Los Angeles Riots in Koreatown, Los Angeles
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com

The APS Russia’s Underwater Assault Rifle: What frogmen bring to pool parties

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If you drive a mini-sub to work, learned Russian as your first language and have a closet full of wetsuits, odds are you may have a working knowledge of the Avtomat Podvodnyj Spetsialnyj better known in the west as the APS. It’s the world’s only known underwater assault rifle and its James Bond-style interesting.
First off, it’s important to remember that this weapon wasn’t a prototype that looked revolutionary on paper only to never get used; it was designed in the 1970s, placed into production at the TsNIITochMash plant and issued for use to untold thousands of Russian military types. The Soviets in the 1970s were anxious to build the world’s largest navy and were running a very close second to the US fleet. With more than 300 submarines and up to 50 at sea at any time, the Soviet Red Banner Fleet, led by the iconic Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, felt the secret to a communist victory on the waves was in operating under them.
Of course, you couldn’t have the largest submarine fleet in the world without a huge legion of underwater commandos—who needed guns.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

APS being fired underwater note the shell casing

50 Caliber Bans

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The Fifty-caliber rifle has taken the country by storm in recent years, gaining fast attention for those who have found an interest in extremely long-range marksmanship. These guns, who pose no overt threat to the safety of the republic to itself, are now the subject of another sort of attention. That of anti-gunners who have chosen to pick on this chambering to test that oh so subtle of dangerous beasts: the caliber ban.
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com

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Vintage Canadian Sparrows….

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Sea Sparrow Missile Launch off Puerto Rico sometime before 1992 by the Canadian destroyer HMCS Iroquois. Iroquois (DDG 280) is a Tribal -class destroyer that has served the Canadian Forces since 1972. She is 5100-tons and 425 ft OLA, about the size of a Perry class FFG that is of the same vintage design. She commissioned 29 July 1972,  and had a TRUMP refit in 1992 in which she traded her Sea Sparrows for SM-2MRs via a VLS system. At 41 years sold she is still kicking and is assigned to Maritime Forces Atlantic (MARLANT) homeported at CFB Halifax.

Warship Wednesday, July 17 Frigate tuned Superyacht

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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,  July 17

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Here we see the HMCS Stormont (Pennant number K327) of the Royal Canadian Navy having fun in the North Atlantic during WWII. She was one of 151-River class frigates built during the war for the Royal Navy and her Commonwealth allies. These hearty little escort ships held the line across the Atlantic, dropping depth charges and hedgehogs on every periscope sighting they could find.

She escorted convoys on the Murmansk run to the Kola Inlet and to Gibraltar. She also served as one of 57 RCN vessels to support Operation Neptune, the amphibious invasion of Normandy, France that were part of D-Day

After the war, the Stormont was not needed and she was stricken from the fleet on 9 November 1945 and placed in reserve for ten years.

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What a difference a coat of paint makes!

Sold for just $34,000 she became a personal yacht to a Greek shipping magnate Ari Onassis who converted her into the mega luxury yacht Christina, named after his daughter. The ship was luxuriously equipped as such and included a mosaic swimming pool which drained and rose to deck level to create a dance floor.

christina-o-swimmingpool-dana-jenkins

christina20o201

Ari, and later wife Jackie Kennedy-Onassis spent their best years onboard the vessel. For a time, after Ari died in 1975, the yacht was used by the Greek government as the President Yacht with a naval crew under the name Argo. By the 1990s she was back in civilian livery renamed the Christina O with Panamanian registry. She is currently for sale for $32.4 mill if you are interested . “The yacht can accommodate 34 guests and has a library, sports lounge, spa room and beauty salon. Yacht broker Nicholas Edmiston to the Associated Press that he thinks there are about 10 people who might want to buy the Christina O — are you one of them?”

Jackie and Ari on the Christina

Jackie and Ari on the Christina

Of the 151 Rivers, just the Stormont/Christina remains at sea. No less than 17 of the class were destroyed in combat between WWII and the Suez while the survivors served in no less than 22 navies as late as the 1980s. Only one, HMAS Diamantina, formerly of the Royal Australian Navy, is preserved as a museum ship at the Queensland Maritime Museum in Brisbane, Australia.

hms_whirlwood_f187_river_class_frigate_a-26396

Specs (until 1946)
Displacement:     1,445 long tons (1,468 t; 1,618 short tons)
2,110 long tons (2,140 t; 2,360 short tons) (deep load)
Length:     283 ft (86.26 m) p/p
301.25 ft (91.82 m)o/a
Beam:     36.5 ft (11.13 m)
Draught:     9 ft (2.74 m); 13 ft (3.96 m) (deep load)
Propulsion:     2 x Admiralty 3-drum boilers, 2 shafts, reciprocating vertical triple expansion, 5,500 ihp (4,100 kW)
Speed:     20 knots (37.0 km/h)
20.5 knots (38.0 km/h) (turbine ships)
Range:     646 long tons (656 t; 724 short tons) oil fuel; 7,500 nautical miles (13,890 km) at 15 knots (27.8 km/h)
Complement:     157
Armament:

2 x QF 4 in (102 mm) /45 Mk. XVI on twin mount HA/LA Mk.XIX
1 x QF 12 pdr (3 in / 76 mm) 12 cwt /50 Mk. V on mounting HA/LA Mk.IX (not all ships)
8 x 20 mm QF Oerlikon A/A on twin mounts Mk.V
1 x Hedgehog 24 spigot A/S projector
up to 150 depth charges

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