Happy Halloween, all
May the Great Pumpkin bring you everything you ever wanted.
Monthly Archives: October 2017
There is salty, and then there is this guy
Found on Reddit
Indigenous member of U.S. Army Special Forces-organized MIKE force smoking his pipe after a firefight. Vietnam, mid-1960’s. Note the WWII-surplus Marine “duck hunter” camo and post-1944 modified M1 Carbine. I would imagine this fellow was probably pretty hard to kill.
Made up mostly of Montagnard hill people and other ethnic minorities, the Mobile Strike Force Command grew out of the armed hamlet program and CIDG units of the pre-Tet phase of the U.S. involvement in South Vietnam.
Note the SF advisor with the in-country made skull and crossbones MIKE Force patch
A Rimau Z-man’s vest gun
Here we see Australian War Memorial collection item REL/12244, a Colt semi-automatic vest pocket pistol.
Blued frame stamped on the left side with Colt’s Pt.A.MFG.Co HARTFORD CT USA and Patent dates 1896 – 1910 with the rearing horse trademark. On the right side COLT AUTOMATIC CALIBRE .25. Black plastic grips with ‘Colt’ and the horse trademark.
This pistol belonged to Sergeant David Peter Gooley, A.I.F. who joined the Z Special force in June 1944. He was a member of the Operation Rimau party which was captured and executed at Singapore by the Japanese on 7 July 1945
Rimau saw 23 commandos on a “borrowed” Malay junk sink 3 Japanese ships. Of the party, 10 were killed during the op or died in custody while the remaining 13, Gooley included, were executed a month before the cessation of hostilities
Imperial Forces send up
With Halloween creeping in and having some Episode IV withdrawal, I worked up my own version of a blended bad Stormtrooper helmet with some psychedelic and sugar skull overtones.
Even got some 501st Legion guys (Vader’s Own) to pose with the final version.
A history of a site in three flints
These three gunflints represent the types of flintlock strikers found at Los Adaes, the capital of Tejas— Spanish Texas– on the northeastern frontier of New Spain from about 1729 to 1770, now part of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. A mission built nearly opposite of the French frontier fort at Natchitoches, the Spanish outpost was a crossroads of sorts between the two colonial empires in the 18th-century– with the British very much on the horizon as well.
The dimensions of the gunflints, left to right are: 2.56 x 3.10 cm, 2.56 x 3.20 cm, and 2.79 x 2.07 cm. Photo credit: Don Sepulvado. Source: Williamson Museum, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana
The first gunflint is called a “spall” type gunflint, because it was made from a large flake or spall knocked off a nodule of flint. This is the easiest type of gunflint to make, but it is not the most efficient use of flint.
The second gunflint is called a “blade” type gunflint because it is made from a blade or long rectangular flake struck from a flint core. It is possible to make more blade gunflints from a flint nodule than it is to make spall gunflints.
The blade gunflints made of the honey-colored flint are commonly associated with the French.
The blade gunflint made from the dark-colored flint is commonly associated with the British.
According to researchers, “Blade and spall gunflints made from honey-colored flint are common at Los Adaes, while blade gunflints made of dark-colored flint are rare at Los Adaes. Flint or chert from the Americas was also used for gunflints at Los Adaes.”
Following the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the Spanish withdrew into Texas, with San Antonio named the new capital, and Los Adaes fell into disrepair as the French moved in.
I have to admit, apocalypse builds are growing on me…like mold
Just in time for Halloween of course, these two rifles, an AR flattop build constructed with a split wooden stock around the buffer tube and what used to be an Ottoman Turkish Mauser, seem like they are a step away from being shiny and chrome. But before you reach for the blood pressure meds about hacking up the vintage bolt-gun, the creator cautions the Mauser was on its last legs and was no longer collectible, and of course, AR components are almost dirt cheap these days.
Is that a rake?
The AR reminds me of this SIG 542 (an early 7.62x51mm variant that eventually shrunk down into the SIG 550), in use in the Tchad army in the 80s.
The Swiss made these with all plastic furniture, so the wood is very Sahara “after market”
Anyway, more in my column at Guns.com
Onyx on the rocks, err ‘impact hydrography’
While the RN committed a number of sexy modern nuclear-powered attack submarines to the Falkland Islands conflict in 1982– and they proved effective in making the Argentine Navy return to port after HMS Conqueror sank the WWII-era cruiser ARA General Belgrano with 323 lost at sea (among the bulk of that service’s losses in terms of humans on the butcher’s bill)– there was one creepy little diesel boat poking around close to shore.
El Snorkel has a great article from Lt Cdr Andy Johnson Submarine, Commander HMS ONYX (S21) during the conflict. An Oberon-class submarine, she was but 241-feet long and weighed only 2,400-tons, smaller than a WWII U.S. Navy fleet boat.
Commissioned in 1967, she had a cramped crew of 6 officers and 62 men and made the slow transit from the UK some 8,000nm south to the Falklands MEZ with a special 5 man diving chamber 10 MK 24, 2 Mk 20 and 11 Mk 8 torpedoes aboard.
She stopped halfway at windswept Ascension and picked up a team of British frogmen, flown ahead to await their ride south.
At Ascension Island, 12 May 1982, ONYX boarded SAS and SBS special forces personnel and supported them during a series of operations. IWM photo
Her shallow operating depth allowed her to creep in close to shore for commando and surveillance work in relatively uncharted areas where a nuke boat would be hard pressed. Officially, “her ability to operate silently close inshore enabled her to play an important role. In addition to providing a submarine deterrent and enforcing the exclusion zone surrounding the Islands, ONYX undertook reconnaissance, taking periscope photographs of enemy installations and likely landing areas for Special Forces operations.”
And it was sometimes very hairy.
From Johnson:
An effort to complete a reconnaissance mission at short notice nearly ended the patrol. Many of the charts used to navigate in those waters had not changed significantly since James Cook had first drawn them. The occasional soundings he made at that time were undoubtedly adequate for his small sailing vessel. They scarcely matched the requirements of a 2,500 ton submarine two centuries later. In consequence, ONYX discovered an uncharted pinnacle of rock in a most dramatic fashion – by running in to it whilst dived. Although everyone reacted admirably and control was quickly regained, it is probably safe to say the only people on board who appeared really calm were our ‘guests’ from special forces. Not entirely due to their steel nerves – no-one had time to explain to them what had happened! This piece of ‘impact hydrography’ put two out of the six forward torpedo tubes out of action. This was serious enough in itself, but was made worse since the two affected tubes were those used exclusively for wire guided torpedoes. As a result, the fore-ends’ crew had to reorganise our full torpedo load. This was akin to playing solitaire. However, they first had to make a free ‘hole’ by moving tons of additional equipment out into the rest of the submarine. Even then there were still weapons weighing tons suspended in mid-air as the reshuffle continued.
Pretty nice for a ‘Make Offer’ MiG
Raptor Aviation has a Polish-made Lim-5, which was a licensed variant of the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 attack aircraft designed to use an afterburner, up for grabs in a “Make Offer” sale. Located in the U.S., the Warsaw Pact combat aircraft was made in 1960 but has had the same owner in the West for the past 23 years and has been refurbished.
The Polish-produced fighter, NATO designation Fresco-D, is kinda rare as the line just numbered about 500~ out of a total MiG-17 production worldwide of over 10,000.
This particular specimen was active in the Polish Air Force until 1966 when it was pulled and transferred to a mechanic training school where it sat until 1993 and was subsequently sold to a collector in the West– and it is now up for grabs.
Scorpions on the Canadian Plains
Here we see some very groovy light tanks, characterized as Alvis Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) CVR(T)s, specifically FV101 Scorpions.
Crown Copyright
The handy 8-ton Scorpion was meant to replace the humble Ferret of the 1950s. Designed in the 1960s and placed in production in 1973 for armored recon units of the British Army, Scorpion capable of making 50mph on prepared roads while cross-country speeds were only a bit less.
Best of all, their light weight and compactness (just 17 feet long) meant they could move around ancient narrow roadways in European towns and bridges usually off-limits for conventional armor. As such, they filled a niche between the larger U.S. M551 Sheridan (at 15 tons, a ringer for the old M3 Stuart in that category) and the much smaller West German Wiesel.
On the downside, their armor was only sufficient to stop about a .51 caliber Dshk gun round, which meant they were live bait when it came to a Mi-24 gunship, wandering RPG gunner, or SU-25 tank buster.
Nevertheless, a couple served in the Falklands in 1982 with the Blues and Royals where their onboard night vision gear was considered the best available in the whole task force. After continuing the serve in the Cold War and Gulf War, the Scorpions, armed with an ROF 76mm L23 gun, were put to pasture.
That is, except for the OPFOR unit of the British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS) in Canada.
Crown Copyright, and a beautiful image
There, along with a fleet of very well maintained Landrovers and FV432 Bulldogs, they continue to mix it up on the regular in month-long rotations fighting British and Commonwealth armored units across the rolling plains of Alberta in a maneuver area the size of Wales.
Modern salts on Uncle’s atomic roller coaster, 77 years ago OTD
“Modern Salts”, Spinning a Yarn in the casemate of 5″/51 Gun Number Eleven of USS Arkansas (BB 33) on 27 October 1940. The men are (from left to right): Gunner’s Mate Second Class N.I. Fewell; Boatswain’s Mate First Class R.D. Dennies; Coxwain G.E. Lehto and Gunner’s Mate First Class W.A. Crook. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 101674
Arkansas was the only sister to the USS Wyoming (BB-32), a two-ship series of early dreadnought battleships in the U.S. Navy commissioned in 1912. One of the last coal-burning battlewagons in the fleet, both Wyoming and Arkansas were shipped to the British Isles when the U.S. entered WWI as part of Battleship Division Nine, which was attached to the British Grand Fleet due to the availability of good Welsh coal in the UK.
“Arky” dodged the Kaiser’s Germans in the Great War but was still around to win 4 battle stars in the Second World War supporting both the D-Day invasions and the Dragoon landings in Southern France before shipping off to the Pacific to plaster the Japanese in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
The weary 33rd battleship ended her service to the nation on 25 July 1946, sunk as part of Operation Crossroads where she was just 620 yards from the Able shot and only 170 from the Baker blast.