Warsaw Pact compatible Imperial Japanese Army LMG
Integral Arms over in Louisiana, a Title II manufacturer specializing in suppressors and full auto stuff, took a transferable Japanese Type 96 LMG and converted to take AK mags and shoot 7.62x39mm
Monthly Archives: February 2015
The ins and outs of SIG pistol mag types
When you have something as straightforward as a handgun magazine, you would figure that there isn’t much room for error in your selection. However, when you are a SIG owner and you understand that it’s a Swiss design made in Germany and New Hampshire, you can see how things would get a little pear shaped. With that being said, let us cut through the chaff and get down to the heart of the matter.
German mags
You have to realize that Sigs imported into the U.S. from overseas were typically made in West Germany (back when there was a Berlin Wall) due to Swiss export restrictions. The maker back then was the German firm of Sauer & Sohn, which is where the term “Sig-Sauer” came from. In 1990, SIG began their U.S. manufacturing center in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1990 but for years continued exclusively making some models just in a now-unified Germany.
As a by-product of this, most Sig mags in the country made before 1999 are of German origin. Some mags were only made in Germany, such as those for the SIG P-225/P6. They can be readily identified by a triple S Sauer logo (which dropped off in 1994 to accommodate a date code, more on that later).
Besides the logo, the words “Made in West Germany” for bodies assembled before 1990 and “Made in Germany” between 1991 and current are evident on the right hand side of the magazine body. These mags also have a slightly lower feed lip, a zipper-back assembly, and witness holes on the spine of the magazine.
Then there are Italian mags, fake mags, coating differences, dates, etc.
To find out the rest, try my column at University of Guns
Three war cats in formation
Three Grumman-designed fighters of the Confederate Air Force in flight (front to back): A General Motors FM-2 Wildcat (although painted as an F4F-3 of the USS Ranger’s airwing, VF-4 “Fighting Four” squadron), a Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat, and a Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat. The lineage is unmistakable. U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.7383.025
Warship Wednesday Feb. 18, 2015 Marshal Massena of Gallipoli
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. 18, 2015 Marshal Massena of Gallipoli
Click to bigup
Here we see the Charles Martel-class pre-dreadnought battleship of the Navy of the French Republic, Marshal André Masséna. Just about one of the coolest late-19th century warwagons, she is a classic of Edwardian naval tumblehome hull architecture.
This 11,000-ton, 369-foot warship today would be classified as a cruiser or even a Zumwalt-class destroyer, but in 1892, she was an ass kicker. An incredibly complicated system of two dozen Lagrafel d’Allest water-tube boilers fed manually by coal pushed three triple expansion engines that could propel her and her near sisters at about 17-ish knots, which was pretty good for the day.
in port
If she had to fight, a pair of 12”/40 caliber (305mm) Modèle 1893 guns, mounted in single turrets fore and aft, could hole an enemy ship with a 770-pound AP shell out to 13,00 yards. These were backed up by another pair of 10-inch guns, 16 smaller mounts and, like most battleships of the era, had submerged torpedo tubes. She was made to be able to slug it out, being fitted with up to 18-inches of steel plate armor.
A great overhead shot. Note the armament plan, with the two 12-inchers fore and aft and two single 10-inchesr port and starboard.
Laid down at Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire in 1892, she was named after André Masséna, Duc de Rivoli, Prince d’Essling, one of Napoleon’s original 18 Marshals. Of course Massena turned his back in little N when the Bourbons came back to power and kept it turned during the 100 Days, but hey nobody is perfect.
The namesake battleship was commissioned in June 1898, after five years on the builder’s ways. Coming out during the Spanish-American War, in which most of the ships in combat were armored cruisers smaller and less heavily armed than Masséna, her design was felt validated.
French pre-dreadnought battleship Masséna, alongside one of her sisters
She spent the next decade in happy peacetime maneuvers, gunnery trials, and practice. However, by 1908 a funny thing happened. You see after the Russo Japanese War of 1904-05, dreadnoughts of her type were hamburger. In fact, four Russian Borodino-class battleships, themselves actually more modern versions of the Masséna and her sisters, lasted just minutes in combat. With the all-big-gun HMS Dreadnought being commissioned in 1906, she was further made obsolete.
Masséna was sitting in French mothballs when World War One erupted and she was eventually dusted off. Even old battleships are useful in a Great War after all. She was to be used to help force the straits to the Bosporus during the Gallipoli Campaign in late 1914 along with her recently recalled sisters.
Note the hull shape
There, Bouvet, one of these sisterships struck a mine and sunk in just two minutes during operations off the Dardanelles on 18 March 1915. That was indicative of campaign. When that whole thing unraveled, Massena, the 17-year-old bruiser was scuttled in shallow water and used as a breakwater to help evac the ANZAC/French forces in 1916. In 1923, the postwar French Naval Bureau sold the hulk, which they still technically owned, to breakers for scrap.
Her three surviving near sisters in French service, Charles Martel, Jauréguiberry, and Carnot, were out of front line service after Gallipoli and scrapped before the next war, the class forgotten.
As for Masséna himself, his sabre is on display at the musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Neuchâte
Specs
Charles Martel class line drawing as commissioned. Image from Shipbucket
Displacement: 11,735 tons (11,550 long tons)
Length: 112.65 m (369 ft. 7 in)
Beam: 20.27 m (66 ft. 6 in)
Draft: 8.84 m (29 ft. 0 in)
Propulsion: Three triple expansion engines
Speed: 17 kn (31 km/h; 20 mph)
Complement: 667
Armament:
2 × 305 mm/40 (12 in) Modèle 1893 guns
2 × 274 mm/45 (10.8 in) Modèle 1893 guns
8 × 138 mm/45 (5.5 in) Modèle 1888 guns
8 × 100 mm (3.9 in) guns
4 × 450 mm torpedo tubes (submerged)
Armor:
Belt: 450 mm (18 in)
Turrets: 400 mm (16 in)
Conning tower: 350 mm (14 in)
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.
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Its not cold till you have to saw your kraut
German mountain troops (Gebirgsjägers) in World War II sawing frozen sauerkraut apart for dinner. Once you get it out of the barrel, you are only getting started. The Gebirgsjäger served on all fronts but this image was likely taken of units attached to the 20th Mountain Army under Colonel-General (Generaloberst) Eduard Dietl, which was stationed in far northern Norway in Finland opposing the Soviets 1942-45. Hattip Lone Sentry.
Marlin Model 90: The New Haven Double Barrel
With a company, that has a history now in its third decade; it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Marlin has made everything from break-top revolvers, to machine guns for the military, to rifles in calibers from .17HMR to .458 Magnum. They have even made some shotguns to include a very nice boxlock double
These guns came about in 1936 when Sears asked Marlin to build an over-under shotgun to compete with the Browning Superposed and Winchester 21. Mr. Ole Horsrud produced the very modern design that consisted of a removable trigger/hammer pack that fit very neatly into the finely shaped receiver.
Double triggers worked each barrel in turn and the American walnut stock and forearm was every bit as nice as those found on their competitors were. They were light, at just 6.25 pounds and handy with a 14-inch pistol grip buttstock. The gun was designated the Model 90 while Sears branded these guns as “Ranger” models before World War II, and “J.C. Higgins” afterward…but thats not all…
Russki spooks off Florida Coast again
Looks like the darling of the Russian Navy, the Vishnya-class intelligence collection ship Viktor Leonov (SSV-175) is poking around the waters off Kings Bay, Georgia and the Northern Florida Coast doing its part to keep tabs via SIGINT and COMINT as well as her extensive sonar suite on the goings on of the U.S. Navy’s boomers opertaing in the Atlantic.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Lenonov, a 3500-ton frigate sized AGI originally built in Poland back when the Warsaw Pact was seen and being seen to be doing her thing.
“It’s been all in international waters and all perfectly legal,” said a defense official familiar with efforts to monitor the ship. “But it’s interesting that it is operating, collecting on us where it is.”
This week, the Leonov was spotted anchored about 22 miles off the Florida coast, southeast of Kings Bay.
It reportedly left Cuba on Jan. 22, and its movements since then have not been made public.
A devil’s wedge
A group of U.S. Marines pose for the camera in 1918 just months before the end of World War One.
Note the campaign hats of the sea soldiers in the front rank doffed to the deck. As the legend has it, German troops facing the Marines at the Battle of Belleau Wood that year termed the leathernecks “Teufel Hunden” or devil dogs. This has stuck for the past 97 years.
Lack of water bringing lakeborne B-29 to the surface
With Nevada (and much of the rest of the Midwest) suffering from a historic drought, a B-29 lost in the extreme depths of Lake Meade is now closer than ever to the surface.
“On June 21, 1948, the B-29 took off and headed east toward Las Vegas. Its five-man crew prepared a highly-classified device mounted in a clear dorsal dome atop the bomber’s fuselage.
The device, known as a “sun-tracker,” was a new kind of missile guidance system. There’s little publicly known about it, but a 1954 patent application suggests the sun tracker allowed a missile to get its elevation and orientation from sighting the sun. The device came from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
Testing the sun tracker required the B-29’s crew to fly a risky course — repeatedly ascending to 35,000 feet before plunging to 100 feet above Lake Mead’s surface.”
Well the thing hit and sank in over 300-feet of water. This largely put it off limits to most recreational divers, but now with the drought its in less than a third that...the rest here
Feds going after M855 Greentip 5.56mm ammo
If you are a Mini-14, AR or SR-556 owner, odds are you are constantly on the lookout for good deals on ammo and one of the best in recent years has been various versions of the military standard ‘green tip’ 5.56mm. Well, it looks like the Obama administration is pulling at a few threads here to try to do away with this common load and now is your chance to do something about it.
When Eugene Stoner came out with his AR-15 rifle in the 1960s, it was a civilian sporting rifle that was later adopted, in a select-fire version, by the U.S. Air Force Security Forces in Vietnam, then by the Army and the entire U.S. military proper soon after. By the 1970s, other countries were jumping on board with rifles of the same caliber, as of course, if the Americans were using it, it had to be good stuff. This is where the Belgian FNC, the Austrian Steyr AUG, and French FAMAS came in at, following soon by the South Korean Daewoo rifles, and those from HK and Enfield.
However the round used by the U.S. military, the 55-grain M193, which was known for its fragmentation upon impact, was considered too inhumane to use in warfare by our more cosmopolitan Western European allies and a Belgian-designed cartridge with a 62-grain bullet that used a mild steel tip over a lead core to help hold it together was adopted as NATO standard in 1977. This more “humane” round, known in Europe as the NATO SS109, is designated M855 in U.S. military use and is known by its green-painted tip.
Now, some 38 years after this standardized loading was adopted by the U.S. and her Allies, and has been in widespread manufacture worldwide, making it a common import and domestic sporting round, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives wants to rule it “armor-piercing” although, technically, its not.
More in my column at Ruger Talk