The U.S. Navy’s latest weapon is an electromagnetic railgun launcher. It uses a form of electromagnetic energy known as the Lorentz force to hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7. Engineers already have tested this futuristic weapon on land, and the Navy plans to begin sea trials aboard a Joint High Speed Vessel Millinocket in 2016.
Since 1951, three letters have come to represent a revolution in close quarters combat and a solid candidate for the most recognizable gun silhouette on the planet, so let’s take another look at the Uzi, one of the most successful, infamous and beloved firearms of the 20th century.
In the late 1940s, a nascent Israel faced enemies on all sides. Carved out of the former British colony of Palestine, the country was surrounded by hostile Arab countries that would just as soon see their new nation neighbor stomped flat. Making matters worse, Israel needed weapons to defend against bad intentions and no one would sell any to them, leaving them with no choice but to make their own. And for this, they turned to a young officer with an interesting background.
uzi armed Israeli tankers are reviewed by Gen. Chaim Bar-Lev, the Chief of Staff for the IDF
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com
In the latest from the US 6th Fleet, the Aegis destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) is headed through the straits at Istanbul to the Black Sea. Of course, Cook is on a routine inter-operational training mission with NATO allies etc and not there due to the whole Ukraine-Russia tiff.
Crimea, what’s a Crimea?
Donald Cook is the first of four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to be forward-deployed to Rota, Spain, in support of the President’s European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) to ballistic missile defense in Europe. More here
Back in the 1940s, GIs often found themselves in possession of surplus pieces of clear plastic. This soon led to the phenomena that was the clear 1911 grip and its offspring the sweetheart grip. And they never really went away.
Clear plastic Plexiglas became one of the wonder weapons of the Second World War. It was used in windows on vehicles and, due to its lightweight and malleability, began appearing on warplanes used by both sides, covering canopies, gun turrets, and aircraft viewing ports.
The thing is thousands of planes were shot down, wrecked, and otherwise left for so much scrap across every theatre of war. This left those precious clear plastic bubbles and windows up for grabs and soon enterprising soldier-craftsmen turned figured out that they could turn these into replacement grip plates for 1911-style handguns.
1911 Closeup of pistol handle w. photo of girlfriend of Lt. John Ernser, 26, leader of the US infantry engaged in attacks of German fortification positions at the Italian front
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk
Lewis Thornton Powell was born in rural Randolph County Alabama, (they have always been old school there, having just repealed Prohibition in 2012) on April 22, 1844 to a local Baptist Minister, Lewis Powell suffered a kick from a donkey as a teen that left his face and his jaw distended, which gave his face an eternally quizzical look.
When the Civil War started, Lewis at age 17 joined up with the local 2nd Florida Infantry near his new home in Jasper, Florida (ministers then as now often moved). The 2nd Florida was soon assigned to E.A. Perry’s newly formed Florida Brigade alongside the 5th and 8th Florida. Perry’s Brigade served under Anderson’s Division of Longstreet’s First Corps, of the Army of Northern Virginia.
They fought in the Battles of Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Antietam from Aug-Sep 1862. In November of that year Lewis was sent to hospital with an undisclosed illness. As cholera, dysentery and diarrhea killed thousands in the ranks at that time, its likely he suffered from one of these. One Colonel David Lang took command of the Florida Brigade and led the 2nd Florida, with Lewis back in the ranks at Fredricksburg in Dec 1862 and Chancellorsville in May 1863. Under Col. Lang’s command the Florida Brigade fought at Gettysburg in July 1863. There Lewis was wounded in the wrist and sent once again to hospital.
A Union one.
You see, he had been captured. Nevertheless, Lewis soon escaped, met up with partisans of Col John Mosby’s 43rd Battalion of Virgina Cavalry and from there was seconded to the Confederate Secret Service under the name Lewis Paine. On April 14, 1865, Powell/Paine was assigned to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward. It was to be a three-way decapitation of the government with Seward gone, John Wilkes Booth killing President Lincoln, and a third conspirator killing the Vice President.
Upon arriving at Seward’s home, armed with a knife and a Whitney cap and ball revolver, Powell/Paine attempted to kill the Secretary, but found himself in a struggle with not only the statesman but also his two grown sons (one of whom was a West Point graduate and a decorated Colonel in the Union Army), a military corpsmen, and a visiting messenger from the State Department.
In the five on one fight, where Powell/Paine’s revolver jammed, he lost but fled, with Seward and company bruised and beaten but alive.
Powell in wrist irons aboard the monitor USS Saugus, photographed by Alexander Gardner, 1865. It was just after his 21st birthday. You can’t unsee this guy’s stare.
Powell in wrist irons aboard the monitor USS Saugus, photographed by Alexander Gardner, 1865. What a haunting guy.
He was soon caught, imprisoned on a series of US Navy monitors, then, with co-conspirators David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt, hung from the neck until dead on July 7, 1865. He took five minutes to suffocate on the rope. In his defense at the trail his attorneys tried to argue first that he was insane then that he was acting as a soldier, attempting to complete his duty as he had been ordered. Both of which failed.
His body was lost to time, but his skull was kept for medical examination. Found in a dusty collection in the Smithsonian in 1992, he was finally interred in a grave in a military grave in Florida.
Here we have the last of the Tico-class Aegis guided missile cruisers, and quite possibly the last US Navy cruiser ever to be commissioned, the USS Port Royal (CG-73).
As s side note, I still have the christening coin for this ship as I was the cadet commander of the NJROTC unit that served as a color guard during the ceremony in 1992 when she was being built at Ingalls in Pascagoula. As a kid, in one way or another, I saw almost every CG47, DD963, LHA and LHD being born right before my eyes growing up in that sleepy little town.
But back on subject.
Commissioned in 1994, she is not quite 20 years old and is the newest cruiser in the US fleet. Optimized for ballistic missile defense, she can pluck rogue ballistic missiles and low-orbit satellites out of the sky if needed, which makes her very special. However she was grounded in 2009 about a half-mile south of the Honolulu International Airport’s Reef Runway.
PEARL HARBOR (Feb. 7, 2009) The Pearl Harbor-based guided-missile cruiser USS Port Royal (CG 73) takes a starboard list as the USNS Salvor (T-ARS 52) tries to free the ship after it ran aground Feb. 5 about a half-mile south of the Honolulu airport while off-loading personnel into a small boat. The salvage ship USNS Salvor (T-ARS 52), which included an embarked detachment of Mobile Diving Salvage Unit (MDSU) 1 personnel, the Motor Vessel Dove, and seven Navy and commercial tugboats freed Port Royal off a shoal on Feb. 9. (U.S. Navy photo/Released)–click to embiggen
Now the Navy, although the ship has been repaired, wants to decom her early, citing the whole “Well, even though the shop fixed it, it’s still been wrecked, so we are just leery of it” thing. I mean who wants a cruiser with a bad Carfax right?
Well, the GAO says nope. Nope. Nope.
“GAO recommends the Secretary of Defense direct the Secretary of the Navy to reevaluate the decision to decommission the Port Royal in light of the Navy’s 2013 assessment and internal and external experts’ assessments subsequently provided to the Navy. The Department of Defense concurred with GAO’s recommendation, and the Navy has subsequently decided to retain the Port Royal and place it in a phased modernization program along with several other ships.”
So far, the Navy isn’t feeling it.
Heck, I’ll make em an offer right now….
With roots dating back to the 1890s, the Winchester Model 62 was the best of a long line of .22 caliber pump action rifles. These handy guns put food on the table, taught many a young shooter, and proved the weapon of choice for those who would plink tin cans, clay ducks, or spin the pinwheels at carnival shooting galleries on warm summer days.
In the year 1890, a few things happened at Winchester. The company picked up a new president, Mr. TG Bennett. One of the first things that Bennett did was look at the company’s dated line of 1870s lever action rifles and shake his head. They needed new rifles, better rifles and to come up with new ideas he reached out for new blood. It was then, while making moves to diversify this line, Bennett contracted with a young gunsmith by the name of John Moses Browning. That very year the new Model 1890 slide-action .22 rimfire rifle was introduced.
Spawned from Browning’s drawing board, this gun was a super simple pump-action rifle, the first of its kind, and it was fast, light, and accurate to boot. This gun was modified in 1906 with a rounded barrel as the logically named Model 1906. The Models 1890 and 1906 combined proved wildly successful with over 1.6-million of the handy shooters made by 1932 and inspiring such imitation as the Colt Lightning.
By 1932, Browning was called to the great gun shop in the sky, as had Bennett, but Winchester still wanted to update the then-classic Model 1890.
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com
If you have read a lot of this blog, you know that I’m a huge Primary Weapons System fan. And here is the latest episode of Half Cocked. By the way, probably NSFW.
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 April 9, The Last Ride of the Yamato
Here we see the massive mega battleship Yamato of the Imperial Japanese Navy fitting out at Kure DY in 1941. Up until 1934 the Japanese paid lip service to the various Naval Treaties that limited the size and number of warships in the world’s navies. For instance, the huge cruisers designed in this period were ‘officially’ under 10,000-tons (although they rose to almost twice this amount when fully armed, loaded, and armored in WWII). The official limit on battleship size was 35,000-tons and Western ships, such as the new USS Washington class in the US and the HMS King George V-class battleships in the UK.
Well in 1934 Japan dropped out of the agreement and the gloves came off. They soon designed the largest battle-wagon in the world.
Ever.
At full load these ships would top out at 72,000-tons. The next closest rival in size was the US Iowa class, which at their heaviest displacement pushed some 50,000-tons on a hull that was about twenty feet shorter. However the Yamato was twenty feet *wider* and as such was a very beamy girl. She also drew more than 35-feet of seawater under her hull, which limited her moorings considerably.
On sea trials Oct 1941
These ships were amazingly armored, more so than any ship before or since. This included :
650 mm (26 in) on face of main turrets (YES, 26-inches!)
410 mm (16 in) side armor belt
200 mm (7.9 in) central(75%) armored deck
226.5 mm (8.92 in) outer(25%) armored deck
As point of reference the second place winner for the most armor carried was on the USS Iowa class battlewagons, which had some 19.7-inches on turret faces and a 12-inch belt.
Port side shot sea trials
These ships could put up some lead, carrying an amazing 205 pieces of artillery from the giant 18.1-inch main guns (the largest in the world)
to a huge array of AAA weapons. This included (in 1945):
9 × 46 cm (18.1 in) (3×3) (firing 3,000-lb shells)
6 × 155 mm (6.1 in) (2×3)
24 × 127 mm (5.0 in)
162 × 25 mm (0.98 in) Anti-Aircraft (52×3, 6×1)
4 × 13.2 mm (0.52 in) AA (2×2)
In short, these ships were massive war-engines and are seen by many as the pinnacle of battleship design (no offense to the Iowas). I mean 18-inch guns, 26-inches of armor, come on. As further protection against aircraft, her 18-inch guns could fire special “Common Type 3” anti-aircraft shells, known to the Japanese as “Sanshiki“. These shells contained over 900 incendiary tubes each capable of shooting 16-foot flames in all directions once the shell exploded. Not something you would want to fly into.
Five of the class, Yamato, Musahsi, and Shinano (along with two hulls, “Warships No 111″, and “797“) were envisioned for the Combined Fleet, with Yamato being laid down in 1937. The last two never were never finished while Shinano was converted to an aircraft carrier.
Commissioned 16 December 1941, Yamato came out of the yard a week too late for Pearl Harbor. As flagship of the fleet until 1943 when her sister ship Musashi was completed, she spent the first part of the war in such duty appropriate for such a large ship– being the primary ride of Adm. Yamamoto, from which he lost the Battle of Midway from her decks.
After 1943 she was relegated to a high-speed, heavily armored transport, running troops and valuables from island to island just ahead of Adm Nimitz’s oncoming horde that was the US Navy. Ironically her giant guns were useless to the Japanese at Guadalcanal as only armored piercing shells, made for sinking ships, and not HE shells for shore bombardment were in use at the time. If there had been, the Marines on Henderson Field may have had a very different outcome.
She dodged several torpedoes from US submarines until the end of 1943 when USS Skate (SS-305) pumped a fish into her. Damaged but not sunk (I mean come on she was 72,000-tons!), she next appeared in the pivotal battles in the Philippines in 1944. There she helped escort Ozawa’s Mobile Fleet during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, then caught up with the half-dozen small US Jeep carriers of Taffy 3, firing at the 7800-ton Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Gambier Bay on 25 October 1944.
It was during that engagement that, while firing shells marked with dye to better call shot from individual guns, an American sailor called out “They are shooting at us in Technicolor!”
The stricken Gambier Bay on fire, left, with Yamato, circled, right
The Yamato closed to within point-blank distance of Gambier Bay, now dead in the water, and shelled the tiny flat top until she sank with great loss of life. It was one of the few recorded instances of a battleship sinking a carrier in warfare. Carriers, however had already had their way with the class, sinking Yamato‘s sister ship Musashi the previous day during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, taking 17 bomb and 19 torpedo hits, with the loss of 1,023 of her 2,399-man crew. This left Yamato an orphan of her class, as Shinano, converted to an aircraft carrier, had been sunk earlier that month, the largest naval vessel to have been sunk by a submarine.
Retiring from the Philippines, Yamato was almost all that was left of the Japanese fleet that was still battle worthy, forming a reserve with the old WWI-era battleship Nagato and the fast battleship Kongo. Well, Kongo was sunk by USS Sealion (SS-315) on 21 November, leaving just Nagoto who was soon to be relegated to coast defense only, and Yamato as the IJN’s last capital ships.
In April 1945, with the US invasion of Okinawa, the Emperor demanded action from what was left of the Navy. This led Vice Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, and Chief of Staff of the Combined Fleet, Vice Admiral Seiichi Ito to scrape together all he could to sail against the Americans.
This meant the Yamato.
Her battle fleet was simply the 6000-ton Agano-class light cruiser Yahagi and 8 destroyers. Since it was to be a one-way mission, the naval kamikaze strike against a fleet that outnumbered it by a factor of at least 6:1, Ito would personally command it.
Dubbed “Operation Ten-Go” (Heaven One), the fleet sortied on 7 April directly towards Okinawa. There it was soon confronted by over 400 carrier based strike planes of Adm. Marc Mitscher’s fleet of 11 flattops, more than the Japanese had at Pearl Harbor against eight battleships.
It was not a long engagement.
By 1200 the first aircraft appeared over Yamato. By 1400 the cruiser Yahagi, riddled with bombs and torpedoes, sank along with half of the destroyer screen. By 1420, Yamato was dead in the water, her rudder shot away, her superstructure ablaze.
She has suffered more than 11 torpedo hits and six bomb hits. At 1423, one of the two bow magazines detonated in a tremendous explosion. The resulting mushroom cloud—over 3 miles high—was seen 180 miles away on Kyushu and was the funeral pyre for some 3000 of her crew, more than was lost by the US Navy in all of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Although the undamaged half of the destroyer screen stood by to pick up the crew from Yamato, Admiral Ito, still alive, chose to go down with the ship.
Just ten U.S. aircraft were shot down by anti-aircraft fire from the Japanese ships; with 12 airmen killed. The Japanese suffered over 4000 casualties proving the last surface engagement by battleships versus carriers at sea and closing an era in Naval warfare forever.
This massive waste of such a magnificent ship for little conceivable gain helped ensure the future use of the Atomic Bombs on Japan, as the US felt that further resistance in the Home Islands, even if obviously futile, would be expected.
Meanwhile, the Japanese navy then went about the act of destroying all the information they had on the huge battleships including models, plans and images, so that it could not fall into US hands after the war. That is why few wartime images exist of this ship, other than those taken by US Navy fliers.
Her wreck was found in 1982, broken into two large pieces much like the Titanic was, at rest under 1100 feet of seawater.
The Japanese have a particular affinity for this ship. The word Yamato, since it harkens back to old feudal Japan, has great significance. This makes Yamato akin to the names Plymouth, Philadelphia, or Washington in the US. A huge (and we mean huge) 1:10 scale model of the Yamato has been constructed in Japan and is a very popular attraction there. ‘
A recent book and film on the vessel proved hugely successful in Japan.
Then there is the whole Space Battleship Yamato series of manga, based extremely loosely on the ship.
It seems after all that the Yamato is very far indeed from her last ride.
Specs:
Displacement: 65,027 tonnes (64,000 long tons)
71,659 tonnes (70,527 long tons) (full load)
Length: 256 m (839 ft 11 in) (waterline)
263 m (862 ft 10 in) (overall)
Beam: 38.9 m (127 ft 7 in)
Draft: 11 m (36 ft 1 in)
Installed power: 150,000 shp (111,855 kW)
Propulsion: 12 Kampon boilers, driving four steam turbines
Four three-bladed propellers
Speed: 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph)
Range: 7,200 nmi (13,334 km; 8,286 mi) at 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph)
Complement: 2,500–2,800
Armament:
(1941) 9 × 46 cm (18.1 in) (3×3)
12 × 155 mm (6.1 in) (4×3)
12 × 127 mm (5.0 in) (6×2)
24 × 25 mm (0.98 in) (8×3)
4 × 13.2 mm (0.52 in) AA (2×2)
(1945) 9 × 46 cm (18.1 in) (3×3)
6 × 155 mm (6.1 in) (2×3)
24 × 127 mm (5.0 in) (12×2)
162 × 25 mm (0.98 in) Anti-Aircraft (52×3, 6×1)
4 × 13.2 mm (0.52 in) AA (2×2)
Armor: 650 mm (26 in) on face of main turrets
410 mm (16 in) side armor
200 mm (7.9 in) central(75%) armored deck
226.5 mm (8.92 in) outer(25%) armored deck
Aircraft carried: 7
Aviation facilities: 2 aircraft catapults
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