Monthly Archives: July 2018

Warship Wednesday, July 11, 2018: A big gun in a little boat

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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 their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 11, 2018: a Big gun in a little boat

From the collections of the Danish National Museum #92-1993

Here we see the Danish kanonbaadene (gunboat) Møen of the Royal Danish Navy, a prime example of the late 19th Century “flat-iron,” or Rendel-type gunboat popular in Europe for coast defense for a generation. Just 112-feet overall, she mounted a very stout Armstrong 10-inch, 18-ton muzzle-loading rifle as her main armament.

Seriously:

Click to big up 2000×1321. Note the two covered 83mm guns on the bridge wings, the accordion player, and bugler. Oh, and the big ass 10-incher in the center. And yes, that is the whole crew.

Named after the lonely but beautiful island of Møn, the hardy vessel was ordered from Orlogsværftet, Copenhagen in 1875 and commissioned 24 August 1876. Based on the British Ant-class (254-tons, 85-ft overall, 1x RML 10-inch 18-ton gun) the 410-ton Møen was the *largest* of a five-ship lot consisting of three 240-ton Oresund-class vessels and her near-sister, the 383-ton Falster, all completed by 1876 and mounting the same giant 10-incher.

British Ant-class. In all, between the 1870s and 80s, some 100 or so Rendel-type gunboats like these were built and used by a dozen navies to include those of Argentina, the Chinese, and Japanese. By the 1900s these were largely replaced as an idea that had quickly expired.

Danish gunboats Lille Bælt (center), Grønsund (119 ft., 2 x 12 cm guns) and ironclad Gorm (233 ft., 2x10inch guns), 1895. Lille Bælt is an Øresund-class boat, all 85-feet of her. The gun is a 254mm/18cal muzzleloader. Oof

Meanwhile, just to the south of Denmark, the German Kaiserliche Marine had ordered 11 similar Wespe-class gunboats mounting an impressive 12-incher forward. It should be remembered that at the time Denmark and Germany were only a decade removed from a sharp war that went kind of bad for Copenhagen.

German Wespe class Rendel gunboats– the opposite of Moen and Falster

Powered by a 500hp steam engine, the proud Møen could make a stately 9-knots on her iron-hull when wide open but could float in just nine feet of water, enabling her to hide in the shallows around Denmark’s coastline and burp out a 400-pound shell to 6,000 yards. In tests, the Danes found that the 10-inch main battery of these five gunboats could penetrate 270mm of wrought iron at 628 meters, which was pretty good for the day.

Joining the fleet by late 1876, the plucky gunboat joined in regular Eskadren (squadron) maneuvers each summer from June to the end of September in the Baltic, assisting with cadet cruises as needed and practicing her gunnery while the Øresund-class ships were gradually removed from service, found to be just too small of the task.

Sister Falster, pre-1903. Note the same big 10-inch forward

On 30 September 1901, while anchored in front of Fort Middelgrund between Copenhagen and Malmö, Møen suffered a catastrophic hull breach while testing new (and apparently finicky) incendiary shells for her Armstrong. While her 35-man crew was safe aboard the nearby coastal defense ship Skjold, Moen‘s rifle was fired electrically via a cable from 400m away and on the third shot a fire started aboard that triggered her magazine just seconds later.

The ship “disappeared” and settled on the bottom of Øresund, gratefully without any casualties. Only her masthead was visible over the surface.

The news was widely reported in naval journals of the time.

The sinking of the Moen from the Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers, Volume 13

The sinking of the Moen from the Naval Institute Proceedings, Volume 27 1901

Sister Falster, the last Danish Rendel-type gunboat, soon after the accident landed her big gun and she was rearmed with a much safer 57 mm popgun in 1903.

Kanonbaaden Falster sometime between 1903 and 1914, note the much more sedate 57mm L44 M1896 mount forward. Interestingly enough, this model gun remained in maritime service well into the 1990s, only retired by the Icelandic Coast Guard in favor of slightly more up-to-date Bofors 40mm singles.

Retained for another decade, she was listed as having an armament consisting of seven machine guns (likely domestically-produced Madsens) in Janes‘ 1914 edition:

6th down, at the time the oldest armed gunboat in the Danish Navy

During WWI, Falster served as a guard ship between Amager and Saltholm. The highlight of this service was when the British submarine HMS E.13 ran aground near her in 1915, and some of the RN officers were brought aboard until they could be sent ashore to be interned for the duration.

Kanonbåden Falster, stern, as guardship

At the end of hostilities, she was withdrawn, disarmed, and was sold in February 1919. As such, Falster was pretty much the swan song of Rendel-type iron gunboats except for the Greek Amvrakia, which mounted an 11-inch gun on a ridiculous 400-ton hull and remained in (nominal) service until 1931.

Converted to a coastal freighter under the name Holger, Falster was lost in 1930 with seven merchantmen aboard in a winter snowstorm north of Djursland with a load of cement.

As for her sister, the Danish Navy salvaged the guns and most of the more valuable equipment in 1902, but the wreck of kanonbåden Møen, in just 19m of sheltered water, is a popular and easy dive.

The two ships were later commemorated by the Danes in the much larger Falster-class minelæggeren (minelayers) which were active from the 1960s through 2004.

As for Denmark, of course, the Royal Danish Navy was an armed neutral in the sharp crossroads between the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet and Imperial German Navy’s High Seas Fleet in the Great War, a semi-active combatant against the Germans in WWII, and, since 1949, has been an important contributor to NATO.

Specs:
Displacement 409 t.
Length: 112.5-feet
Width: 28.8 ft.
Draft: 9 ft.
Engine: 500 hp steam engine, one screw
Speed: 9.0 knots, 20-tons of coal
Crew: 30 to 35
Armament:
Single RML 10-inch 18-ton gun (254mm/18cal) M.1875 Armstrong
Two 83mm/13cal M.1872 Krupp rifled breechloaders (later replaced with 6 37 mm rapid-fire guns).

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/membership.htm

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.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, 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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The crank

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“Battery Gun” By Richard Jordan Gatling, 1865 Ink and watercolor on paper. 18 3/4″ x 14 1/4″ via National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Patent and Trademark Office:

“The Gatling gun was the first successful rapid-fire machine gun. Invented by Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling, a physician, the first model had six barrels revolving around a central axis. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler of the Union Army first used the gun at the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, in 1864-65. Shown here are two drawings of the improved 10-barrel, .30-caliber model which fired 400 rounds a minute. The gun was patented on May 9, 1865, and was officially adopted by the U.S. Army on August 21, 1866. It proved superior to other rapid-fire guns of the time and, for more than 40 years, the Gatling gun was used by almost every world power.”

Ruger expands its Officer options

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Ruger has been hot and heavy with its 1911 offerings in recent years– to include any number of full-size 5-inch barreled variants in the standard .45ACP and always popular 9mm and 10mm. Now– and it is about time– they have kicked in a a $900~ Officer sized model that reains a steel frame to boot, giving Kimber and Springfield a run for their money.

According to Ruger, “The new SR1911 Officer-Style pistol chambered in .45 Auto features a shorter, 3.60″ barrel and shortened grip frame that makes for an ideal concealment pistol. Compared to the SR1911 Lightweight Officer-Style, the steel frame on this new model retains additional weight for better balance, lower recoil and greater durability.”

Lots of features:

CNC Machined Slide & Frame w/ Low-Glare Stainless Finish
3.6” Bushing-Less Stainless Steel Bull Barrel w/ Full Length Guide Rod
Positive Barrel lock-up allows for Superior Accuracy Out-of-the-Box
Traditional Design w/ Replaceable Grip Panels & Checkered Backstrap
Lightweight, Aluminum, Skeletonized Trigger provides a Crisp, No Creep, Light Trigger Pull
Adjustable Over-Travel Stop w/ a Quick, Positive Reset
Skeletonized Hammer & Titanium Firing Pin for faster Lock Time
Oversized Beavertail Grip Safety provides Positive Function & Reliability
Extended Thumb Safety & Slide Stop Lever for Improved, Positive Manipulation
Integral Plunger Tube for Slide Stop & Thumb Safety is not Staked & will never come loose
Oversized Ejection Port & Extended Magazine Release enhance Competition Performance
Visual Inspection Port allows for Visual Confirmation of a Loaded or Empty Chamber
Rounded Mainspring Housing for Comfortable Carry
Rear Slide Serrations for a Positive Grip
Drift Adjustable, Novak 3-Dot Sights
Accepts Standard, Aftermarket 1911 Parts & Accessories
Classic, Original 1911 Series 70 Design
Includes: Two 7+1 S/S Magazines
Overall Weight: 31 Ounces
Twist Rate: 1 in 16” Right-Hand

Those pesky ghost guns

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In California, it is pretty tough for one of the 13 million estimated legal gun owners to buy an AR-15 or similar gun deemed by local law since 1989 to be an “assault weapon” without seriously neutering the firearm itself to be compliant. Fast forward nearly 30 years, numbers of (non-compliant) ARs still pop up with regularity in gun crime. Recently, the ATF and LAPD busted a group associated with street gangs that were operating DIY gun mills from Hollywood area weekly-rent hotels that made ARs and Glocks from 80 percent lowers.

Some of the firearms appear to violate National Firearm Act regulations for short-barreled rifles. Go big or go home, I guess. (Photo: LAPD)

So, just regulate “ghost guns” right?

Here’s the funny part: under a bill, signed into law in 2016 by Gov. Jerry Brown, legal builders of homemade firearms have to first obtain a serial number through the state Department of Justice to complete their built and abide by a myriad of California laws.

Sheesh.

More in my column at Guns.com

Scooter’s HIPEG, from the man who brought you the Spruce Goose!

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Here we see what was then dubbed the Mark 11, 20mm Aircraft Gun, in the Mark 1 POD, attached to the centerline bomb rack of a Douglas A4D-2 Skyhawk aircraft, April 14, 1958. The system was known in development by Hughes as the HIPEG.

330-PS-8882 (USN 710123)

330-PS-8882 (USN 710122)

Master Caption:

“The U.S. Navy today unveiled a new pod-mounted weapon, a 20mm aircraft gun capable of firing 4,000 rounds per minute. This gun, called the Mark 11, was shown to Naval Aviators and representatives of the press at the Third Annual Naval Air Weapons Meet, held at the U.S. Naval Auxiliary Air Station, El Centro, California. This new weapon, which will offer a significant contribution to Naval Air Attack Capability, is carried and fired in an external pod which is fitted to the bomb rack of carrier-based aircraft. Its primary application is in an air-to-ground attack, where its controlled variable rate of fire makes it extremely effective. Ease of rearming, replacement of the gun, and maintenance are notable features which add to the practicability of the gun. Rear Admiral Paul D. Stroop, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, indicated that with the Mark 11 gun and POD meeting the firepower requirements of future attack aircraft, there will be a gain in aircraft structural simplicity since there would be no need for internal fixed guns. Mr. Frank Markquaret, a Naval Ordnance Engineer in the Bureau of Ordnance, conceived the Mark 11 gun and POD. It was developed for the U.S. Navy by Flier Industrialist, Howard Hughes. The Mark 11 is presently undergoing an evaluation at the Naval Aviation Ordnance Test Station, Chincoteague, Virginia, and is expected to be operational in 1959.”

According to a May 1962 report, 17 test pods cycled 16,000 rounds of 20mm ammo with a total of 29 stoppages or about 550-rounds on average between stoppages.

As reported by Popular Mechanics in 1963, three such pods could be added to a Navy jet to triple its gunfire available to somewhere around 12,000 rounds of 20mm per minute. It should be noted that at the time the A-4 mounted two Colt Mk 12 cannons (U.S.-made Hispano HS 404s), one in each wing root, with 100 rounds per gun.

Adopted as the Mk 4 Mod 0, some 1,200 of these pods were produced and served on Navy and Marine A-4s, F-4, and the OV-10 Bronco, primarily seeing active service in Vietnam for close air support missions.

Ever wondered what an LA Harpoon looks like?

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Sailors load a Harpoon anti-ship cruise missile on to the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Olympia (SSN-717) as part of the biannual RIMPAC maritime exercise.

The 1970s era anti-ship missile is now in its most advanced version, Harpoon Block II+, and is being augmented by a program to field new and more advanced missiles, such as the AGM-158C LRASM and the Norwegian Joint Strike Missile. However, with those new missiles being air-or ship-launched, for subs looking to poke a hole in a ship, it is either Tomahawk or Harpoon, for now at least.

Now that’s a heck of a combo

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Vierlings (from the German word Vier, meaning “four”) are very odd four-barreled combination guns that come from two layers of thought.

This four-barreled Vierling has two 8x57R rifle barrels, a .22 Hornet on top and a 20-gauge below.

One, that when packing for a great overseas hunt where an adventurer’s baggage would ideally fit all in a large steamer trunk, such a weapon could contain both small and large-caliber rifles and/or shotguns to encompass everything from varmint to big game while on safari. Two, in some countries where gun licensing restricted an owner to a numerically small number of firearms (sometimes just a single long arm), a Vierling in multiple chamberings could allow flexibility. In both cases, the idea was to get the most out of a single frame.

With that in mind, the vaunted Austrian gunmaker Johann Fanzoj, with some 500 years of builds under their name, recently produced a beautiful Vierling made of a side-by-side double rifle in hard-hitting 9.3x74mmR– a classic medium to large game round popular in both Europe and Africa — with an over-and-under 20-gauge 3-inch chambered shotgun on a single frame.

It is truly a work of art…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Combat Gallery Sunday: Repin x3

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In 1891, Ilya Yefimovich Repin completed his giant 6×11 ft painting “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire” after an 11-year effort, selling the piece to Tsar Alexander III for a princely sum.

Hung in the Tsar’s Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.at the time, the painting is still there, although the palace is now the State Russian Museum.

The Zaporozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan *oil on canvas*358 × 203 cm *signed b.c.: И.Репин 1880-91

It depicts the popular legend of the 1676 cossack reply to an ultimatum of the Ottoman sultan, Mehmed IV, that these autonomous border people submit to Turkish rule. The reply, as the story goes, was one of insults with each rough steppes horseman striving to outperform his buddy. A lot of references to Mehmed’s mother and at least one goat were mentioned in the reply.

Since then, the painting has been updated a few times with the same Russian patriotic tendency.

Zaporozhian have been swapped out for Red partisans in WWII

Note the M1910 Sokolov machine gun, captured German MP40, and at least one Red Cossack

This most recent example, by Vladimir Nesterenko, is set in Syria with the modern Russian military, complete with 30mm grenade launchers and AK74s.

The next one will probably be set in space.

The GPF of Gulf Shores

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Here we see a U.S. Model 1918M1 155mm gun, the famous French GPF (Canon de 155mm Grande Puissance Filloux, a direct copy of the C modèle 1917 Schneider) of the Great War, which equipped U.S. forces overseas and– when upgraded with air brakes, new metal wheels, and pneumatic tires to allow for high-speed towing– remained the mainstay of the interwar Army throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Note the unmodified 1918-series profile, with hard rubber wheels and no air brake, in other words, in its original WWI-era mode, suitable for being pulled by slow tractors or horses. (Photo: Chris Eger)

By the outbreak of WWII, the Army had 979 GPFs still on hand although they were being replaced by the new and much more modern M114 155 mm howitzer (many of the latter are still in use in the Third World today).

With the relegation of the old GPF to the reserve, when the balloon went up and German and Japanese subs started crawling just off the U.S. coastline, these vintage guns were pressed into service on what was termed “Panama Mounts,” a semi-fixed installation atop a circular concrete mount that allowed the gun to revolve and rotate in place. Capable of sending a 95-pound shell out to 17,700 yards every 15 seconds with a well-trained crew, they could shatter the hull of a U-boat with ease or give a surface raider far from home at least a moment of pause.

One such gun (pictured above) remains at Fort Morgan, Alabama, controlling the entrance to Mobile Bay.

In 1942 the fort received four GPFs, two of which (Nos. 176 and 802) were used on Panama Mounts on top of the old Civil War-era bastions while two others were left mobile.

A soldier sitting on top of an M1918 155mm GPF, 1942. The gun position would be located on top of Bastion 3 of the fort. Note the camouflage, sandbag revetments, and Panama Mount (Fort Morgan Collection)

Taken in 1943, this picture shows one of two 155 GPF guns that were mounted on top of the fort. Maximum elevation was 35 degrees, which is close to what this tube is (Fort Morgan Collection)

These were manned by men of Battery F, 50th Coast Artillery throughout the War. It should be noted that, while Fort Morgan was an active U.S./Confederate base from 1819 through WWI, by 1931 it had been disarmed and abandoned, with the visiting 155s of Battery F her last hurrah.

The French 155 was used by many CA units at the time and was somewhat road-mobile.

Oakland Tribune-press photo of an M1918 Canon de 155mm GPF repurposed as a mobile seacoast gun belonging to San Francisco’s Battery E, 250th Coast Artillery Regiment, California National Guard, being pulled by a pre-1932 Indiana Truck Corporation 115 3-ton truck en route to the 1940 Fourth Army Maneuvers in Monterey County. Later that year, the 250th Coast Artillery Regiment would mobilize and deploy to reinforce the Harbor Defenses of Sitka, Alaska. California Military Department Historical Collection No. 2022.1.843.

Established at Camp Pendleton, Virginia 1 February 1942, the 50th Coast Artillery was a tractor-drawn heavy artillery regiment. After just two months of training, Battery F was entrained for Fort Barrancas (Pensacola) Florida. Arriving there on 7 April 1942, the unit left in a (slow) motor convoy to Fort Morgan to establish Temporary Harbor Defenses (THD) of Mobile and remained there until 1944.

Battery E went down the coast another several miles to my hometown of Pascagoula to defend Ingalls Shipyard from a point on Beach Boulevard, but that is another story…

Morgan’s remaining GPF, head on. Yes, double solid rubber wheels on each side. (Photo: Chris Eger)

The gun still at Morgan is on M1918 carriage No. 429, one of the 626 U.S.-made produced under a license from Schneider/Puteaux. Another 577 were purchased from the French directly. All U.S.-made carriages were manufactured by Minneapolis Steel from a built-up steel alloy. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Her tube is No. 1073, Watervliet Arsenal production. All gun tubes for U.S.-made M1917/18s were made by either Watervliet or Bullard Engineering Works and marked as such on the muzzle. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Technically a 155mm/38 caliber piece, the tube is almost 10 feet long (232.87 inches) with the weight of the gun and carriage topping 19,860 pounds, or right at 10 tons. The muzzle velocity on the 95-pound shell was 2,411fps– which translates to a whole lot of energy. 

Their use in Coastal Artillery was nearly the last hurrah of the GPF in U.S. service.

By May 1941, the M1917/18 was a Lend-Lease item, and much of those stocks not used to guard the various beaches soon were on their way to the British, where they made an appearance in North Africa against Rommel and Co. The GPF also served in the Pacific, with at least 60 of the models captured by the Japanese in the Philippines.

Late in 1942, some 100 GPFs that remained in storage were mounted on the turretless chassis of the obsolete M3 Lee tank to form the M12 Gun Motor Carriage as a form of early self-propelled artillery. When teamed up with the companion Cargo Carrier M30 (also a turretless M3), which allowed them to go into the line with 40 rounds of 155mm ready, they proved popular in a niche role.

M12 Gun Motor Carriage 155mm self-propelled gun with the US 987th Field Artillery Battalion near Bayeux Normandy June 10, 1944. IWM – Laing (Sgt) Photographer. IWM B 541

155mm M12 Gun Motor Carriage sniping strongpoints along the German Siegfried Line, late 1944/early 1945. At its core, it is a French 155 from the Great War

These tracked GPFs earned the nicknames “Doorknocker” and “King Kong” in service due to their ability to pierce up to seven feet of reinforced concrete and turn pillboxes into a smokey hole in the ground– a useful thing in Northeastern Europe in 1944.

Like this:

M12 Gun Motor carriage used in direct firing mode against a fortified German position during the Battle of Aachen in October 1944.

If visiting Fort Morgan, be sure to check out the small museum just a few hundred yards from where the surviving GPF sits.

Inside the museum they have the guidon of Battery A, 104th Coastal Artillery, an Alabama National Guard unit mobilized for federal service 10 months before Pearl Harbor and then shipped to the Pacific in 1942, only returning home in January 1946.

104th Artillery patch

As well as the typical WWII Coastal Artillery uniform of sun hat, olive coveralls tucked into canvas leggings, gas mask, and cartridge belt:

Of note, interwar Coastal Artillery coveralls were blue denim. Still, they were often worn by National Guard units operating 155mm GPFs in WWII, such as one of these big guns going boom, shown in the late 1930s Kodachrome below.

Vintage greetings from the USS Rhode Island, Battleship No. 17

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Via the Thomas Crane Public Library’s Fore River Shipyard Postcard Collection:

Commissioned into the Atlantic Fleet in February 1906, Rhode Island was one of five Virginia-class pre-dreadnoughts built between the SpanAm War and WWI. She carried four 12″/40 (30.5 cm) Mark 4s in two twin turrets and eight 8″/45 (20.3 cm) Mark 6s in four twin turrets.

Made obsolete before she was commissioned by the arrival of the HMS Dreadnought, Rhode Island served in the Great White Fleet and in various sticky spots during the Wilson administration and was sold for scrap in 1923 under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, though her bell is on display at the Rhode Island State House.

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