Why so expensive? Well as my homie Ian over at Forgotten Weapons points out, when the Maxim silencer was on the market, they only cost like $7 and the 1934 NFA establised a $200 tax on them so most people that had em dummied up or threw them out. So finding one that is registered and transferable is uber-rare. As such, you can bet 90% of the auction price is for the Maxim and not the lever gun, nice though it is.
In the 15th Century the Swiss Army had the reputation of somewhere north of Israeli special forces and just shy of Mandalorians. Swiss mercenary regiments for for about 300 years or so were the norm in European armies for shock troops and detachments to be sent far, far away and left to their own devices.
In fact, Cat Island, an isolated and forlorn strip of nothing just off the Mississippi Coast where I grew up, although French after 1699, was garrisoned by Swiss troops back in the day and metal detector fanatics are constantly tearing up the dunes looking for old remnants out there.
Medieval/Renaissance Swiss mercenaries. They may have dressed like Liberace, but they could fight
Anyway, would the Swiss fight to the death for a bit of gold?
Absolutely.
During the sacking of Rome on May 6, 1527, 189 Swissmen under one Captain Kaspar Röist held off a force of Hapsburg troops ten times their number to allow Pope Clement to beat feet. They nearly perished to a man and the man in the funny hat got away with his life. To this day, the Papal guard are made up of Swiss volunteers– the oldest continually operational military unit in modern history.
Well, on 10 August 1792, some 20,000 French Republican National Guards and others stormed the palais des Tuileries which was garrisoned by a handful of Royalist volunteers and 900~ Swiss dogs of war.
Again, like the sack of Rome, the Swiss fought like men possessed but could not hold back the sea.
Storming of Tuileries portraying the massacre of the Swiss Guards, by Henri-Paul Motte, 1892. Click to big up
How did it go for them?
As British historian Nesta Webster says in her book Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette during the Revolution:“Could [Louis XVI] imagine…that the mob, not content with venting their fury on the Chateau, would massacre not only the Swiss Guard, men of the people who had remained at their posts, but even the luckless servants in the kitchens of the Palace? The horrors committed on this 10th of August were such as no human mind could possibly have conceived.” 900 Swiss guards were brutally killed, many tortured, some roasted, mutilated, decapitated, with their limbs distributed throughout Paris. Children played ball in the streets with the heads of the brave Swiss, and the steps of the Tuileries ran with blood, like some gruesome altar of human sacrifice. People dipped bread into the blood of the victims.
I guess that’s why the Pope still keeps these guys around and Hitler never crossed that border…
Swiss Soldiers from the Gebirgs Infantry Battalion 85’ training with the Light Machine Gun 05 (FN Minimi). All members of the Papal Swiss Guard are drawn from volunteers who have a clean service record with the Swiss Army
The Imperial German Army in 1914 was actually an army of confederated German speaking countries that had formed after 1871. The Prussians, augmented by a number of minor states such as Hamburg and Anhalt, made up the bulk and provided some 19 Corps including the Guards, the I-IX, XIV-XVIII, XX, and XXI. Bavaria had three independent corps (I, II and III Bavarian Army Corps) as well as their own air force.
The Royal Saxon Army supplied two Corps, the XII and XIX. Würtemburg marshaled its forces into the XIII Army Corps. The Grand Duchy of Baden provided the lansers for the XIV Army Corps. Each corps had two divisions and each division had four infantry regiments organized in two, two regiment brigades.
As each of the states had their own regiments that were part of the larger national army, they carried two names. For instance, the 4th Regiment of the Royal Saxon Army was also the 103rd Regiment of the Imperial German Army.
Which explains the below:
“A portrait of a Saxon infantryman with the 4th Regiment Royal Saxon Army, 103 Infantry Regiment of the German Reich (Kgl. Sächs. 4. Infanterie-Regiment Nr.103), possibly taken in his garrison at Bautzen, Eastern Saxony, circa 1916. He wears the model 1907/10 Feldrock tunic with the belt buckle with the Saxon motto, ‘Providentiae Memor’ (Providence Remember), and is armed with a Gew. 98 mauser rifle fitted with a S98/05 bayonet. (Image courtesy of the Drake Goodman Collection, colorized by Benjamin Thomas.)”
Well, it seems they finished the target barge up, towed her out towards the Straits of Hormuz, and went at it with missiles, rockets and small fast attack craft (which the footage looks kinda creepy of that mind you).
Anyway, the Iranians were super psyched, saying, “The message of these wargames is that others should pay good heed to the point that they should not take any action near the Islamic Republic’s security circle,” Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Guard’s chief commander said.
“We believe (Iran) to be the defenders of the Strait of Hormuz’ security and showed this in our wargames today.”
To which Big Blue replied after watching the tape of the JV’s scrimmage :
Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, the spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, downplayed the attack on the mock ship, saying the U.S. military was “not concerned about this exercise.”
“We’re quite confident of our naval forces’ ability to defend themselves,” he said, according to AP. “It seems they’ve attempted to destroy the equivalent of a Hollywood movie set.”
Before the X. D. was imported to the U.S., Springfield Armory had a plan for a very different series of handguns. Dubbed the Bobcat, Firecat, and Lynx, these handguns of SA’s “R” series were chambered from .25ACP to .45S&W, but good luck finding any…
The concept
Springfield Armory as we know and love it today sprouted up in the 1960s in Illinois and cut their teeth making M14 series rifles (what we know today as the M1A series) but soon branched out to 1911-style pistols. To liven things up they even imported a modular framed semi-auto from West Germany (the Omega) and a CZ-75 clone in 9mm from Italy (the P9).
With these guns moving out of the stable in the 90s, Springfield wanted something else besides their .45s and, as the X. D. was still unheard of, they went for a trio of very different guns to replace them. Imported as kits from European makers, they were to be assembled in the U.S. with nice extra touches like natty wood grips, park’d finishes and SA roll marks, then distributed through their existing network.
Debuted in their 1992 Catalog, they sounded like a great idea, “The biggest news from Springfield was the introduction of the ‘R’ series pistols. These four guns — the Panther, the Firecat, the Bobcat, and the Lynx — are based on the Astra automatic pistols, but with a few custom modifications, like Commander-style hammers, checkered walnut grips, and low-profile white-dot sights. The Panther comes in 9mm, .40S&W and .45ACP; the Firecat is chambered in 9mm and .40S&W; the Bobcat is made for .380ACP; and the Lynx chambers .25 auto.”
The thing is, it just didn’t work out…
The Astra A-70, I mean the Springfield Armory Firecat!
Looks like GSA is selling a UH-60A, the first generation of the Blackhawk utility chopper as-is (looks beat as shit), where is (Huntsville), how-is (come and get it), through their online auction. This is kinda rare as usually the DOD gets rid of their surplus choppers via Foreign Military Sales or donations through the 1033 program to LE end-users. Likely this former casevac bird has seen better days and the Mexicans and Forestry Service are better off without it.
For the record its a Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk Medium Lift Utility Helicopter: S/N: 83-23859 and it appears that the bird was offered for 15 days along with 7 others for donation or transfer earlier this month and apparently no one wanted it. Its builder number was 70-684 and it was originally went to the Air Force when it left the factory 20 years ago.
However bids are just up to $200,000 with 6 days left and if you can get a good viable airframe and turbine for that, even putting twice that much in parts and labor into it (get Sikorsky on speed dial) could make a viable commercial whirly bird…or epic bug out vehicle…just saying.
I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic films (hey, I write gun stuff and zombie books, go figure).
One of the neater of the breed I just saw was Young Ones (its on Netflix). The sci-fi film is set in a post-drought apocalypse U.S. and has the always under-appreciated Michael Shannon as the main character. Overall the film isn’t that bad as depressing-ass, end-of-the-world stuff goes. Heck, when you compare it to the rest of the genre, is actually pretty good.
Anyway, Shannon gets big points for using this bad boy throughout:
As far as I can tell its a Short Magazine Lee Enfield MkIII in .303 British (originally) that has been chopped down, its forearm removed, its stock replaced by a side folding tubular one, and a Mossberg 500 12-gauge riot gun fitted underneath.
In the film its simply called “the dually” and as you can see from this image with Shannon’s son using it, the folding stock has a pistol grip but the shotty does not.
Sure it probably weighs 16-pounds, kicks like a mule, and is front heavy, but you got 10+1 .303’s and another 6+1 12’s when needed.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off 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. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday Feb. 25, 2015 A Narcissus in Tampa
Painting by Rob Gelhardt
Here we see the wooden hulled steam-powered gunboat USS Narcissus as she appeared during the Civil War. She was a needed addition to a fleet that was very much overtaxed.
When the U.S. Navy plunged headlong into the Civil War in 1861, the Navy List held the names of 90 vessels, only 42 of which, less than half, were in commissioned service. Even these ships were spread all over the world (9 were in the African Squadron, 3 in the Med, 3 in Brazil, 5 were in Japan or the East Indies, et.al) . Those ships in U.S. waters were hardly ready for modern naval combat on any scale. Compared to the giant Royal Navy who had a staggering 53 steam-powered ships of the line (that mounted between 60 to 131 guns and weighed between 2400 to 4200 tons), the largest ships in the U.S. service were five 1800-ton sail frigates which mounted but 50 guns each. Indeed, the French and Russians outmatched the U.S. Navy as well.
However, with a need to blockade some thousands of miles of coastline from Maryland to Mexico while chasing down Confederate raiders on the high seas, the force soon formed four powerful blockade squadrons as well as the Mississippi River Squadron to help strangle the South in Gen. Scott’s “Anaconda plan.”
By the end of the war in 1865, the Union Navy ballooned to 671 ships on its list and its rolls contained 84,000 sailors and another 13,000 Marines. They did this by a massive shipbuilding program in every yard north of the Mason-Dixon Line as well as taking up ships from trade.
The Narcissus was one of the latter.
Built as the civilian steam tug Mary Cook in East Albany New York to move ships out of port, she was completed in the summer of 1863. That year she was purchased by Navy buyers and, after adding a 20-pounder Parrott rifle to stern deck and a 12-pounder to her bow, the little 81-foot vessel was named, for reasons unknown, the USS Narcissus. This moniker was only used this one time in the Navy (*however a USCG buoy tender, WAGL-238, did repeat it in the 20th Century).
A rather interesting single-cylinder inverted steam engine fed by a coal boiler drove her at 14-knots, which was PT-boat fast for her day.
Commissioned 2 February 1864 at Brooklyn Naval Yard, she left for the Gulf of Mexico where she was to join Rear Admiral David Farragut’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron. The admiral’s father, George Farragut, had died at Pascagoula Mississippi in 1817 and as a young boy; David hung around New Orleans and the Mississippi Sound, which made it something of a bittersweet homecoming for him to be in charge of the squadron tasked to blockade those waters.
Farragut
Speaking of which, the Narcissus, due to her shallow 6-foot draft, was perfect for patrolling inside the waters of the Sound. Shallow draft schooners from Pascagoula and Biloxi ran the blockade with great regularity even while the Union fleet controlled Ship Island, which closed in half of the Sound. One of the most notorious, the 180-foot blockade-runner Fox, had only just been burned by her crew while hard aground off Pascagoula’s front beach (the wreckage of which can still be seen off 11th Street at low winter tide). However, there were others to pick up the Fox‘s slack.
Within weeks, the little Narcissus was victorious. On Aug. 24, 1864 she captured the confederate schooner Oregon in Biloxi Bay while under the command of 56-year old recessed U.S. District Judge and then-Acting Ensign William G. Jones. The Oregon had scrapped before with the steamer USS New London and Farragut had long ached to either catch or sink her. So, mission accomplished.
It was just after this prize that the little gunboat was ordered to Mobile Bay, the location of some very hot action when Farragut “dammed the torpedoes.” And by torpedoes, we mean floating naval mines. It would be Narcissus’s job to become one of the first mine-sweepers in history and, as the joke goes, any ship can be a minesweeper once.
As you may have guessed she caught a mine, (we mean torpedo) right in the teeth while off the Dog River Bar in Mobile Bay in 7 December and sank in the shallow mud there. Jones reported: ”. . . the vessel struck a torpedo, which exploded, lifting her nearly out of water and breaking out a large hole in the starboard side, amidships . . . causing the vessel to sink in about fifteen minutes.”
While Jones and the crew, which suffered no losses, were reassigned around the squadron, the Narcissus was raised for salvage. She was at Pensacola Naval Station when the war ended, undergoing repairs. Made seaworthy, she received her last crew.
She wasnt the last Union steam tug/minesweeper to hit bottom in Mobile Bay. On 12 April, the day Mobile finally surrendered, USS Althea struck a torpedo in the Blake River and sank while dragging primitive sweep gear in an effort to clear the channels of explosive devices. Like Narcissus, she was raised and repaired.
The two battered tugs were ordered to the East Coast for decommissioning and disposal. The two unlucky ships became separated off Tampa, Florida in a storm on the night of Jan. 3/4, 1866. It was then that Althea grounded on a sandbar and the two ships exchanged signals in the howling wind and rain but when the dawn came, the Althea, after working herself free, only found bodies and floating wreckage of her companion.
It is believed that Narcissus, under Acting Ensign Isaac S. Bradbury and with a 28-man crew, hit a shifting bar 1.5 miles northwest of Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay and her boiler exploded, destroying the vessel. No living crew members were ever recovered.
Although her war was short, the hardy tug survived a rebel torpedo, supported the capture of Fort Morgan, helped close off the Mississippi Sound, and in the end gave her charges over to the sea in what could be taken as some of the last casualties of the Civil War.
Her wreck has always been known to some extent, lying in pieces along the sandy bottom off Tampa in just 15 feet of water. Texas A&M extensively mapped the site in 1999, however, most relics of the vessel are long since gone, ether carried away by divers over the years or by Union troops who salvaged her cannon and anything else useable back in the 1860s.
Florida’s Underwater Archeological Preserves and the Florida Aquarium maintain excellent relics to include sheathing, lanterns, and other items that were recovered. Her rare steam engine, anchor, and screw rest remarkably intact along the ocean floor.
On Jan. 15, 2015, the inshore construction tender USCGC Vise (WLIC-75305), dropped a reef ball monument on the site of USS Narcissus
As for former U.S. District Judge and former U.S. Navy Acting Ensign William Giles Jones? He liked Mobile Bay so much that he remained there after the war and took up private practice as a lawyer, dying at age 80. Althea, the Narcissus‘s traveling companion, was sold in December 1866 in New York and remained in service as a commercial tug until the turn of the century.
Specs
Displacement: 101 long tons (103 t)
Length: 81 ft. 6 in (24.84 m)
Beam: 18 ft. 9 in (5.72 m)
Draft: 6 ft. (1.8 m)
Depth of hold: 8 ft. (2.4 m)
Propulsion: Steam engine
Speed: 14 kn (16 mph; 26 km/h)
Complement: 19 officers and enlisted
Armament: 1 × 20-pounder Parrott rifle, 1 × heavy 12-pounder
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/
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.
Aperture sights, often just called “peep sights” have been around on Marlin rifles both from the factory and as an aftermarket accessory for more than a century. These sights are, for many, the best alternative to optics and have proven themselves for generations in both target and hunting applications.
What are they?
Vintage Redfield peepsight on a Marlin 336
Basically speaking, peep sights work through a theory called parallax suppression (for an excellent 23-page explanation of just what that is click here). The concept goes that the human eye will immediately jump out to and focus the front sight when looking through a very small, sometimes pinhole-sized, rear sight. The smaller the peephole, or aperture, the more it will force the shooter’s pupil to focus.
These sights have been around since the time of the Civil War and hunters in the late 19th Century often used tang-mounted peep sights to take plains buffalo (bison) down at ranges out to a half mile with huge .45-70 and .45-100 rounds. At the same time, the practice of Schuetzen societies, in which polite city folk in silk and tweeds would gather to fire hyper-accurate target rifles at extreme distances or at tiny targets that simulated those same distances was very popular on the East Coast. Like the hunters, these recreational shooters used peep sights.
They proved so popular that most modern military rifles dating from the M1 Garand to the M14 and M16 use a small and often adjustable rear peep sight to help force the eye to the front post, making it more accurate.
Further, Marlin has a long history with these…
Marlin 1897 Bicycle gun with an optional factory Lyman peep sight.
click to big up. You have to admit, the F-15C was, with the possible exception of the F-14, one of the sexiest air superiority fighters of the past 40 years.
NAHA, OKINAWA, Japan — Lt. Gen. Paul Hester (in foreground), 5th Air Force commander, and 67th Fighter Squadron commander Lt. Col. James Browne fly their F-15C Eagles from the 18th Wing, Kadena Air Base, Japan, near the coast of Naha, Okinawa, Japan, during a training mission. (U.S. Air Force by Master Sgt. Marvin Krause. 2/10/2003)
