Born in Tennessee in 1936, Carl Wade Stiner graduated from Tennessee Tech and joined the Army in 1958, spending his platoon leader days with the 9th Infantry “Manchu” Regiment. Earning a beret with the 3rd Special Forces Group in 1964, he went to Vietnam in the S-3 shop of a battalion in the 4th Infantry Division in 1967 after CGSS school, picking up a Purple Heart for his trouble. By 1970, he was jumping out of planes again as battalion commander of 2/325th Infantry, with the “All Americans” of the 82nd Airborne.
Passing through Carlise Barracks and picking up his first star, he later became the 82nd’s assistant division commander, commanded JSOC as a major general from 1984-87– a time that included the Achille Lauro affair– then went back to the 82nd as divisional commander.
Running XVIII Airborne Corps and JTFS, he was the brain behind taking down the Panama Defense Force in Blue Spoon/Just Cause in 1989.
Following up on that, he pinned on a fourth star and became the second commander on USSOCOM in 1990, a job he held for three years, a time that included running all special ops during Desert Shield/Storm.
Besides his Ranger and Airborne tab along with CIB, he wore a Master Parachutist Badge and Vietnam Service Medal with four campaign stars, showing he knew how to walk the walk in addition to talking the talk.
You may best know Gen. Stiner from his Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces (Commander Series) book with Tom Clancy, a great 400-page treatise on SOCOM’s first decade.
Gen. Carl Stiner, inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004 and the 82nd Airborne’s hall of fame in 2019, died in Knoxville last Thursday, at the age of 85.
He is surely off leading the way into a brave new drop zone.
Original Caption, June 6,1944: “French civilians give directions to American paratroopers who made successful landings, on Utah Beach, at St. Marcouf, France.”
Note the ready M1911A1 in the paratrooper’s shoulder holster along with a Mk. 2 pineapple grenade. Original Field Number: ETO-HQ-44-4810. Photographer: Werner. Signal Corps Photo 111-SC-189927-S, National Archives Identifier: 176887768
I’m not sure which unit the above Camel-smoking junior officer is from, but the same photo is identified in other records as “Capt. Kenneth L. Johnson and paratroopers of HHC S-2 Intelligence Section, 508th PIR, 82nd Airborne Division ‘All Americans,’ talking with two Francs-tireurs partisans in the village of Saint Marcouf, Normandy, France. D-Day, 6 June 1944.” The Frenchman certainly looks to have a slung rifle or shotgun over his shoulder, something the Captain would surely be interested in.
The interaction was captured on film as well.
Saint-Marcouf saw scattered sticks of both the 101st Airborne’s 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) as well as the 508th PIR landed in the area.
They were one of the first to make contact with the Germans as, at 0220, Naval Commander Normandy (Konteradmiral Walther Hennecke) reported paratroopers near Batterie Marcouf.
The fight for the city and its nearby battery was an all-paratrooper affair until the afternoon of 7 June when the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment (4th Infantry Division) arrived inland from Utah Beach.
Via 508thPIR.com: These men are from Hq & Hq Co. S- 2 Intelligence Section, 508th PIR of the 82nd US Airborne in Ravenoville. The group consists of: Capt. Kenneth L. Johnson, Capt. Robert Abraham (Company CO), SSgt Worster M. Morgan, Pfc Luther M. Tillery, Pfc Joel R. Lander, Pvt John G. McCall, Pfc James R. Kumler, and T / 5 Donald J. MacLeod. The photo was taken by T/4 Reuben Wiener, a combat photographer attached to the 508th
It certainly looks like later pictures of Johnson.
His jacket:
Brigadier General (later Major General) K. L. Johnson enlisted in the Minnesota National Guard in 1940 and was called to active duty with the 135th Infantry, 34th Division in February 1941. After serving at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana; Fort Barrancas, Florida; and Fort Dix, New Jersey, he entered OCS and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant, Infantry on 3 July 1942.
General Johnson joined the 363rd Infantry, 91st Infantry Division at Camp White, Oregon, in November of 1942, volunteered for parachute training and was reassigned to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Fort Benning, Georgia. Subsequently, the organization was moved to Camp McCall, North Carolina, for advanced training.
In October of 1943, General Johnson proceeded to North Ireland as a member of the Advance Detachment of the 2nd Parachute Brigade. After a brief period of training, his regiment joined the 82nd Airborne Division and was moved to Nottingham, England, where it prepared for the invasion of France. General Johnson made combat parachute jumps in Normandy and Holland, and fought with the 82nd Airborne Division throughout the European Campaign, including the Battle of the Bulge.
Following World War II, he returned to the U.S. briefly and was reassigned to Europe to join the U.S. Constabulary in July of 1946. After serving in the 68th Constabulary Squadron and the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment, he returned to the U.S. in 1949 to attend the Advanced Course at The Infantry School. Subsequently, he served as an instructor and group chief in the Airborne Department of The Infantry School.
Following graduation from the Regular Course at the Command and General Staff College in 1953, he joined the 40th Infantry Division in Korea where he served as G-3. Later, he was assigned as Plans Officer, I Corps (Group) until he returned to the U.S. in November 1954 for assignment to the Officers Assignment Division, Department of the Army.
After four years on the Department of the Army Staff, General Johnson was selected to attend the Army War College, graduating with the class of 1959. His next assignment was to the Staff of the Commander in Chief Pacific where he served as a Joint Plans Officer and Executive Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Foreign Affairs and Logistics. In 1961, he joined the 25th Infantry Division where he commanded the 2nd Battle Group, 21st Infantry and 1st Battle Group, 5th Infantry, successively until the fall of 1963.
Returning to The Pentagon, he served briefly as Chief of Plans and Policy, Enlisted Personnel Directorate, Office of Personnel Operations and then for the next two years on the General Staff as Chief of the Special Review Division, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel. He was selected for promotion to Brigadier General in November 1965 and assigned to the 2d Infantry Division. He joined the Division as Assistant Division Commander (Maneuver) in April 1966.
General Johnson has been awarded the Senior Parachutist Badge with two combat-stars; the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star w/ V for Valor and Oak Leaf Cluster, the Army Commendation Medal w/3 Oak Leaf Clusters and the Purple Heart.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Johnson died on August 21, 1990 at the age of 71 and is now buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Arlington County, Virginia, USA.
While the U.S. airborne landings in Normandy during Operation Overlord, involving 13,100 paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions making night parachute drops early on D-Day followed by 3,937 glider troops flown in after dawn– are well known, especially following Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, the British companion drops the same morning gets less attention.
Official caption: “Paratroopers from the 22nd Independent Parachute Company of the British 6th Airborne Division with their divisional “Pegasus” mascot before the start of Operation Tonga (part of Operation Overlord, the Allied landings in Normandy) at RAF Harwell. June 5, 1944.”
By War Office official photographer, Capt. E.G. Malindine. Photograph H 39057 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums
Operation Tonga, involving 8,500 men of the British 6th Airborne Division (which included the unsung 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion), was given the key tasks of seizing the two strategically important bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River at Bénouville and Ranville and destroying the Merville Gun Battery behind Sword Beach.
By War Office official photographer, Capt. E.G. Malindine. This is photograph H 39070 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums (collection no. 4700-37)
IWM caption: OPERATION OVERLORD (THE NORMANDY LANDINGS): D-DAY 6 JUNE 1944. The Final Embarkation: Four ‘stick’ commanders of 22nd Independent Parachute Company, British 6th Airborne Division, synchronizing their watches in front of an Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle of No 38 Group, Royal Air Force, at about 11 pm on 5 June, just prior to taking off from RAF Harwell, Oxfordshire. This pathfinder unit parachuted into Normandy in advance of the rest of the division in order to mark out the landing zones, and these officers, left to right, – Lieutenants, Bobby de la Tour Don Wells John Vischer Bob Midwood were among the first Allied troops to land in France. Comment: This was Operation Tonga.
British paratrooper during Operation Tonga, note the skrim helmet and Mills bomb.
Pegasus Bridge by Gerald LaCoste who was with British 6th Airborne Division HQ in Normandy. Via The Parachute Regiment Museum.
Tonga was overall successful, though not without the same sort of brutal fighting that the 82nd and 101st had to pull off on D-Day. While the 6th Airborne Division lost 10 percent of the men who alighted on French soil that day, their war was just beginning, and would within a couple of months lead them to a “Bridge too far.”
Finnish soldier and dog in position near Kiestinki, 25 April, 1942, note the Mosin rifle
Happy 80th Annual Flag Day of the Finnish Defence Forces!
Celebrated every June 4 since the Continuation War in 1942, it is also the birthday of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, the commander of the Finnish forces 30 November 1939 (the start of the Winter War) to 12 January 1945.
Old Mannerheim, who learned his trade in the Imperial Russian Army, turned 75 in 1942, and the Finnish government granted him the honorary title Marshall of Finland and made his birthday the Flag Day.
It is also the customary promotion day for each year for those wearing a Finnish uniform.
As with all Western navies of the day, the Dutch had special marching order equipment to supply sailors for landing divisions in a sort of light infantry (Matrozen van de Landingsdivisie), and a great example of which are these series of shots of sailors from the Java-class light cruiserHr.Ms. Sumatra alongside Dutch Marines (KorpsMariniers) on post in war-torn 1927 Shanghai overlooking the Szechnen Road on the bridge over Soochow Creek near the Main Post Office.
Five sailors in marching order including cartridge pouches on leather webbing and puttees, with a Marine and a local “mascot” who may have been brought with the ship from the Dutch East Indies. As the Royal Navy and U.S. Navy did with ships stationed in the Far East, as much as a fifth of the personnel aboard Dutch ships in the region at the time were drawn from local recruits. Note the Geweer M. 95 6.5mm Dutch Mannlichers with their distinctive early model (pre-1905) 19-inch OEWG hooked quillon bayonets. NIMH 2173-224-044
NIMH 2173-224-132
Mugging for the camera, with two Marines and two sailors. Note the Lewis gun and mass of rickshaws in the background. NIMH 2158_061470
The Dutch, along with other European, Japanese, and American forces, were active in the city during the panic that saw the rebellious Reds of the Shanghai Commune crushed by Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT troops. Sumatra’s sailors were ashore and on post from 19 February to 12 May 1927.
Belgian-based FN Herstal this week announced its all-new 9mm NATO handgun pitched to defense and security markets: the FN HiPer.
A clear play on words from the old Browning/FN Hi-Power, which was the most prolific handgun in the Free World for most of the last half of the 20th Century, the new HiPer was fully designed, developed, and manufactured in Belgium. This is a change from the Hi-Power, which was assembled in its final years in Portugal, and from the newly-announced FN High Power which is made in South Carolina by FN America.
Basic specs of the polymer-framed striker-fired pistol are a 3.94-inch barrel with a 7.08-inch overall length and a 15+1 magazine capacity. Weight is 25.75 ounces, unloaded. This puts it about the size of a Glock 19, S&W M&P M2.0 Compact, or CZ P-10 C. For that matter, these specs read almost identical to the FN 509 Midsize.
Among the more advanced facets of the HiPer are what FNH says is a straighter, more optimized grip angle, which helps with the controllability of the pistol’s low bore axis.
The surface controls are also curious, featuring an ambidextrous slide catch located where a frame-mounted safety normally is, thus, according to FNH “prevents any accidental activation by the user,” and a rotary magazine catch rather than a push-button, paddle, or heel release. FNH contends the new-style release allows the user to “reliably change magazines in seconds without shifting grip while staying aligned on the target.”
So, in other words, the big sliding lever on the grip is a mag release, while the manual safety lever isn’t– it’s the slide catch. Talk about a Belgian waffle…
When I was an 11-year-old growing up in Pascagoula, with T-2 Buckeyes and T-28 Trojans a common sight overhead whenever we went to the beach in Gulf Shores and the “Grey Ghost” that was USS Lexington (AVT-16) regularly docked just over the Florabama line at P-Cola, Naval Aviation was never far from my mind.
Then I saw Top Gun, and I 100 percent knew that I had to become a Tomcat driver.
Caption: Hollywood moved right off the backlot and onto the Flightline at NAS Miramar to do the filming for the movie “Top Gun.” NHHC #: L36-03.10.02. Original Creator: PH2 Michael D. P. Flynn FLTAVCOMPAC, San Diego, 1985
Well, fast forward to my late teens, and, despite a few hours logged in a Cessna 172 and all the ribbons I earned in NJROTC– some of which were achieved at Pensacola NAS– my local recruiter told me of this thing called unwaiverable excessive refractive error, meaning I would never fly anything with the Navy except as a passenger.
Whomp whomp.
Still, you have to admit, there has probably never been a better recruiting tool for Naval Aviators, even considering its gaffes, than Top Gun.
And the Navy realizes that with the excellent sequel as well, hitting by coincidence during the Centennial of the Navy’s Carrier-borne operations.
Colt had a new revolver at NRAAM last weekend. A “King Cobra” Target model that looks and feels a lot like a .38/.357 but is actually a 10-shot 22LR.
The King Cobra Target 22 LR is crafted from forged stainless steel construction with a one-piece barrel topped with an adjustable target rear sight and fiber optic front sight. It comes standard with Hogue overmolded rubber grips and is available with 4-inch and 6-inch barrel lengths, both featuring a 1:16RH twist.
Of course, it could have just been called the Diamondback.
While the current King Cobra series, reincarnated in 2019, hit the market as a 6-Shot .357 Magnum big brother of the new line of Cobra wheel guns, the new King Cobra Target .22LR is a return to the company offering double-action rimfire revolvers. Not the first rimfire “snake” gun– Colt marketed the original circa 1950s first issue Cobra in .22LR and made a .22LR Diamondback into the early 1990s– the new Baby Snake fills a hole the company had in its catalog, and by extension is a first for CZ as well.
This 1985-production Diamondback is a 6-inch .22LR model. Surely, it would have been easier and better for Colt to reboot this name than to call the new model a King Cobra of all things…
MSRP on the new King Cobra Target .22LR models is $999. When compared to other DA/SA rimfire revolvers, this is on par with the S&W 63 and 617.
2 June 1972: USAF Major Philip W. “Hands” Handley, 32nd TFS “Wolfhounds,” grabbed the record for the highest speed air-to-air gun kill in the history of aerial combat, smoking an enemy (NVAF) MiG-19 over Hanoi using the internal 20mm Vulcan of Brenda 01 (AF 68210), his F-4E Phantom, while in the midst of a Mach 1.2 pass.
The final run, at just 500 feet off the deck over rice paddy, was also credited as the only MiG-19 shot down by air-to-air guns during the course of the Vietnam war– as well as the world’s only documented supersonic gun kill.
The following is from the Gathering of Eagles Foundation
On 2 June 1972, while leading a 4-ship of F-4Es in a combat air patrol northeast of Hanoi, his element was attacked by two MiG-19s. With his wingman critically low on fuel and unable to engage, he fought the MiGs in a dogfight ranging in altitude from 15,000 feet to 500 feet above the ground. During the engagement, he expended all four of his air-to-air missiles, however, none of them guided.
With only 20mm cannon ordnance remaining, he closed at a rate of almost four and one-half football fields per second for a high deflection shot (high angle guns snap) on the trailing MiG. Seconds later, while 500 feet above the ground, at a heading-crossing angle of 90 degrees, and a speed of 1.2 mach, he fired a 300 round burst from his M-61 Gatling gun and destroyed the MiG-19.
Ret. Col. Handley, the holder of the Silver Star and three DFCs, passed away in 2019, aged 83, and is buried in Texas, the land of his birth.
He penned an excellent work, Nickel on the Grass, reflecting on his 26-year career, almost all of it spent in the cockpit. The cover includes the MiG-19 “guns” kill.
