Austal USA, Mobile, Alabama, is awarded a $516,481,569 fixed-price incentive (firm-target) contract modification to a previously awarded contract (N00024-23-C-2203) to exercise an option for ordering long lead time material, continue/complete detail design and Construction of the Lead Ship of the T-AGOS 25 Class. Work will be performed in Mobile, Alabama (42%); Houma, Louisiana (13%); Camden, New Jersey (13%); Shelton, Connecticut (6%); Cincinnati, Ohio (5%); Grove City, Pennsylvania (3%); Semmes, Alabama (3%); Chesapeake, Virginia (2%); Milford, Delaware (2%); New Orleans, Louisiana (1%); and various locations across the U.S., each less than 1% (10%), and is expected to be completed by May 2028. Fiscal 2024 Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy funds in the amount of $516,481,569 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire through the delivery date of T-AGOS 25. Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-23-C-2203).
The Navy in FY2022 procured the first of a planned class of seven new TAGOS-25 class ocean surveillance ships for $434.4 million, with Austal picking up the prime contractor nod— with a potential value of $3.195 billion– in May 2023.
The planned MSC-manned TAGOS-25
The small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) vessel, so built to utilize the huge (64-ton) AN/UQQ-2 Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) active and passive sonar arrays, is key to U.S ASW strategy in the Western Pacific.
Of note, the Navy’s five aging TAGOS ships–four Victorious (TAGOS-19) class ships (TAGOS 19 through 22) that entered service in 1991-1993, and one Impeccable (TAGOS-23) class ship that entered service in 2000– all use the same SWATH/SURTASS package and are based at Yokohama, Japan.
TAGOS-25 will be the largest of her type, as compared with this chart from the CRS:
The bonus for replacing five older, smaller, and slower TAGOS vessels with the seven newer and more capable TAGOS-25s gives the obvious yield of putting more eyes in more places on the underseas goings on in the Pacific.
Arguably the first large format AR-style pistol to hit the market is now set to make a return, no brace needed.
Firearms maverick Mack Gwinn Jr., a Vietnam-era Special Forces veteran, in the early 1970s acquired the rights to Colt-made IMP-221, a stockless, gas-operated bullpup pistol intended to provide aircrew with a compact survival gun chambered in .221 Fireball. While the Air Force had already scrapped the project, Gwinn made lemons into lemonade, adapting the design to use 5.56 NATO and accept standard AR mags, launching the Bushmaster Arm Pistol.
Bushmaster Armpistol ads started popping up in the early-1970s
The original Gwinn/Bushmaster Arm Pistol borrowed from both AR-15 and AK-47 designs, with its AR-style rotating bolt and AK-type long-stroke gas piston.
Based on the Colt IMP-221/ Air Force GUU-4/P air crew weapon originally designed at Eglin Air Force Base, the original Gwinn Firearms in Bangor, Maine produced the 5.56mm Bushmaster Arm Pistol “in limited quantities” for the USAF in the early 1970s before sending it to the consumer market. Just 20.63 inches long, the Arm Pistol had a lot of M16-style features in a very abbreviated bullpup format.
With the Arm Pistol long out of production and Bushmaster now in at least its third reincarnation since Gwinn sold the company in 1976, his son, Mack Gwinn III, has founded Maine-based Hydra Weaponry and returned a much-improved version of the design to production.
We caught up with the fine folks from Hydra at the recent 2024 NRA Annual Meetings in Dallas to “lay arm” on the new BMP-23.
Hydra feels the BMP-23 is the 5.56mm pistol that Gwinn Jr. would have built if he had access to today’s CNC machinery and technologically advanced materials.
Some 80 years ago this month, a USN PB4Y-1 (B-24) Liberator on an anti-submarine operational flight, 22 May 1944, out of Naval Air Field, Port Lyautey, French Morocco. Note the Portuguese-flagged coaster, navio-motor Costeiro Terceiro (66,96m/ 1.212,87gt/ 9,5 knots; 09/1941) below.
U.S. Navy Photo, via the National Archives. 80-G-227968
As far as I can tell, the above aircraft is likely Consolidated B-24J-20-CO, BuNo 32192 (USAAF 42-73170), of the “Night Owls” of VB-114, one of the 46 Block 20 B-24Js (42-73165 through 42-73214) handed over to the Navy, which represent just a fragment of the more than 900 PB4Y-1 Liberators and PB4Y-2 Privateers that were sent to the blue side during WWII.
PB4Y-1 Liberator from US Navy Patrol Squadron VP-114 on the ramp at Norfolk, Virginia, United States, circa Aug 1943.
80-G-44506: U.S. Navy Aircraft: PB4Y-1. Navy Patrol Bomber, PB4Y-1, Liberator. Photograph received July 1944. U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (2014/6/5).
VB-114’s first overseas deployment was to NAF Port Lyautey (“Craw Field”) which was an improved 6,000-foot strip taken over in January 1944 from the French military. Operating beside assorted PBY-5 squadrons, VB-114 arrived starting in mid-February 1944, with their heavy equipment arriving later the next month aboard the Barnegat-class small seaplane tender USS Rockaway (AVP 29).
Operating under the control of FAW-15, the squadron suffered from a lack of targets, and, by June 1944, a detachment of six 50 million candle-watt searchlight-equipped birds (the squadron was the only American night-time patrol bomber unit in the Atlantic at the time), was deployed to RAF Dunkeswell, England “to provide low altitude ASW and anti-surface conduct in advance of and during the Normandy Invasion.”
They joined three other Navy Liberator squadrons (VB-103, VB-105, and VB-110) in roaming the Bay of Biscay, with the others roaming during the day and the Owls at night.
U.S. Navy Aircraft: PB4Y-1. Consolidated PB4Y-1 “Liberator” Patrol Bomber in flight circa 1943-45. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Accession #: 80-G-K-5175
By mid-July 1944, the elements of VB-114 left in Morocco were shifted to Lagens Field, Terceira Island, Azores, where they were painted in British markings as the Portuguese had agreed to fly RAF aircraft out of the islands, not American.
VPB-114 PB4Y-1 with US and British markings at Lajes Field in 1944
Post-war, VPB-114 shifted operations to Florida and became one of the first hurricane hunter weather squadrons, redesignated VP-HL-6. This endured until 1948 when they went back to being a full-time patrol squadron and were redesignated a final time to become the “Tridents” of VP-26.
Since then, they have flown P-2Vs, assorted P-3B/C Orion, and now P-8 Poseidon.
How about this great original color image of brand new frontline RAF and USAF strategic bombers, right out of the Cuban Missile Crisis era.
A Royal Air Force Avro Vulcan B.2 (s/n XH535) in flight with a U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52H-135-BW Stratofortress (s/n 60-0006)–the first B-52H to fly– over the Mojave desert near Edwards Air Force Base on 10 July 1961.
U.S. Air Force photo 342-C-KE-14932. National Archives Identifier 176246788
It is notable to compare the two frames, as most people forget just how big the Vulcan was. For reference, the B.2 Vulcan, which entered service in 1960, had a 111-foot wingspan and was 105 feet in length while the B-52H, which entered service the same year, spanned 185 feet and taped out at 159 feet in length.
Both of these beautiful aircraft went on to meet tragic ends early in their career.
XH535 crashed during a test flight under A&AEE control near Chute, Wiltshire, on 11 May 1964 after entering a spin and then belly-flopping. Four of six crewmembers died, with the pilots saved (albeit the co-pilot with a broken back) as they were able to eject at low altitude.
SN 60-0006, while part of the 34th Bombardment Squadron, 17th Bombardment Wing, crashed while making a ground-controlled approach to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio on 30 May 1974– 50 years ago today– because the aircraft’s rudder and elevators failed. Luckily, there were no fatalities.
A simple new platform that will be headed to shelves this summer is from North Carolina’s Veteran-owned Dark Mountain Arms.
The Stowaway system is a single-shot bolt-action, take-down firearm that is initially being offered in 5.7 NATO but, as it is multi-caliber via an easy swap out of a bolt face and barrel, future options on the table include 9mm, 4.6×30, .22 LR, .22 WMR, .17 Mach2, and .17 HMR.
A packable design with a weight of less than 3 pounds (2.8 pounds for the 16-inch threaded barreled rifle and 2 pounds flat for the 5-inch barreled pistol), the gun can be stowed in two primary pieces and then easily reassembled.
In Japan, the country’s Maritime Self-Defense Force is stretching its legs.
The 4,000-ton training frigate JS Kashima (TV-3508), accompanied by the 6,000-ton Hatakaze-class guided missile destroyer JS Shimakaze (DDG-172/TV-3521), departed for an overseas training cruise.
What makes this interesting, besides the fact that both units will travel together and conduct a rare circumnavigation of the globe, is that it also marks the first time in 50 years that they will pass by the Cape of Good Hope off the coast of Africa.
You can expect the pair to conduct lots of exercises with allies, such as this underway replenishment with the USNS Pecos (T-AO-197).
In terms of growth, the JMSD just celebrated the commissioning ceremony for the newest Mogami-class frigate at Nagasaki Shipyard, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., which saw JS Yahagi (FFM-5) join the fleet. The 5th Mogami will be deployed to Maizuru Naval Base, Kyoto, as part of Escort Division 14.
The very advanced CODAG-powered 5,000-ton “stealth” frigate includes a 5-inch gun, 16 cell VLS, eight anti-ship missiles, minelaying (and MCM) equipment, ASW torpedoes, a SeaRAM CIWS, and a hangar for an embarked SH-60 series helicopter–all with just a 90 man crew.
Top speed, “over 30 knots” is rumored to be closer to 40 in a sprint.
If only the LCS could have been something more like the Mogamis.
China’s PLAN looking bigger, better, and more professional than ever
Since you came this far, this excellent 45-minute USNI podcast in which retired Navy Captain Jim Fanell—noted expert on the Chinese Navy, former Director of Intelligence for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and frequent Proceedings contributor—provides an update on the PLA Navy and their operations.
He notes that the JMSDF is engaged in keeping tabs on the PLAN daily.
Above we see the sleek and elegant, almost light cruiser lines, of the Italian-built one-of-a-kind Soviet Red Banner Fleet’s Project 20I destroyer leader Tashkent, seen near La Spezia on 11 March 1938 during sea trials in which she would reportedly top 43.53 knots– a blistering speed for any warship of any class. You will note that her armament isn’t installed and she is in a very light condition (3,422 tons vs 4,175 full) however, once her guns and torpedo tubes were mounted and she went for speed trials, she still logged 42.7 knots, raising eyebrows around the globe.
Project 20I
The Russian Navy fell in love with large (for their day), light cruiser-sized, very fast destroyers going back to 1910’s Novik (1,620 t, 335 feet oal, 4x 4″, 8 x tt, 37.3 knots) and the earlier circa 1898 trio of Novik/Izumrud class scout cruisers (3,080 t, 360 feet oal, 6x 4.7″, 5 x tt, 25.8 knots).
Novik was a great destroyer for 1910. At some 1,600-tons full load, he could make 37.3 knots, which is still fast for a destroyer today, and carried four twin 18-inch torpedo tubes (eight tubes total) as well as four 4-inch guns.
With the Russian fleet all but destroyed during the Great War and the follow-on civil war that engulfed the world’s largest country from 1914 through 1922, followed by a half-decade of crippling famine and depression, as part of Stalin’s First Five Year Plan in 1928 a half-dozen Project 1/38 destroyer leaders were ordered to help rebuild. Better known as the Leningrad/Minsk class, they were the largest warships (2,350 tons, 418 feet oal) constructed in the Soviet Union at the time. Speedy ships, capable of some 40 knots, they carried five new pattern 5.1″/50 B-13 guns, eight torpedo tubes, mines, and depth charges, giving them a decent punch. However, they were miserable sea boats with a top-heavy design that made them pitch in almost any sea state outside of a flat calm.
As the Soviets were working with both Germany and Italy throughout the 1920s and 30s on several often murky rearmament initiatives, and Moscow was working with the latter on the Kirov/Maxim Gorky-class (Project 26) “medium” cruisers, went with the spaghetti option for a better-designed destroyer leader.
With high speed, stability, and the same rough armament as the Project 1/38 destroyer leaders as a baseline, the 54.6 million lire Project 20I design submitted by Odero-Terni-Orlando, Livorno, went some 40 feet longer and 500 tons heavier than the Leningrads. A powerplant of British-made Yarrow boilers and Parsons turbines (rather than going with Italian competitor Ansaldo) had an expected capability of 100,000 shp but this reached 125,500 on trials.
Original drawings by Odero-Terni-Orlando Shipyards, Livorno, 1936, via the Archivio di Stato di Livorno
Original drawings by Odero-Terni-Orlando Shipyards, Livorno, 1936, via the Archivio di Stato di Livorno
Original drawings by Odero-Terni-Orlando Shipyards, Livorno, 1936, via the Archivio di Stato di Livorno
While the ship couldn’t keep up her 40+ knots speed for long, she could still eke out a 2,800 nm range at 25 knots or 5,030 nm at a speed of 20 knots, giving them legs enough for overseas work. As such, the Soviets planned a series of 12 Project 20Is (4 for the Pacific Fleet, 3 in the Baltic, 3 in the Black Sea, and 2 for the Northern Fleet ) with the class leader built at Livorno and the other 11 constructed in the Motherland at Yard No. 190 (Zhdanov, Leningrad) and No. 198 (Marti South, Nikolaev).
Armament, as designed, would be six 5.1″/50 guns in three twin B-2LM mounts, a twin 3″/50 ZAU 39-K AAA mount, a half dozen 37mm ZAU 70-K “Boforski” AAA singles, and provision for another half dozen of the country’s soon to be famous new 12.7mm DShK 56-P-542 guns.
A torpedo battery of nine 21-inch tubes in three triple turnstiles, with enough reloads to allow for 18 fish, gave her an offensive punch. She could also carry 110 Model 1931 sea mines on rails along with two stern depth charge racks for 20 small (50-pound charge) BM-1 and four large (300-pound charge) BB-1 style ash cans.
Torpedo tubes, Tashkent
Meet Tashkent
Our subject was named for the ancient Central Asian Silk Road city that is the current capital of Uzbekistan and was a traditional Russian naval warship name going back to an 89-ton armed gunboat on the Tsar’s Aral flotilla in the 1870s and a Bolshevik river gunboat of the Volga military flotilla during the Russian Civil War.
Ordered from OTO Livorno in September 1935 in conjunction with the NKTP, she was laid down in January 1937, launched that December, and accepted (unarmed) by Soviet representatives in March 1939. Her contract price was paid in a mix of French francs and British pounds sterling.
Russian destroyer Tashkent under construction at the OTO shipyard in Livorno, Italy in 1937
While it had been planned to send her to the Baltic Fleet where the Leningrad yard would have ready access to her while they made eight copies for service from Murmansk to Vladivostok, the fact that the toothless destroyer would have to transit Spanish waters– where German Kriegsmarine ships and Italian “pirate” submarines were operating in the tail end of the Spanish Civil War, led Moscow to order Tashkent to Odesa in the Black Sea.
Sailing sans any guns under the guise of a passenger ship– complete with a Sovtorgflot or Soviet Commercial Fleet flag, a partial Italian crew, and tarpaulins with faux portholes painted on them stretched across her superstructure– she passed through the Bosphorus and arrived in Odesa on 6 May 1939, turned over to the Soviet Navy some 85 years ago this month.
Following a series of workups after which her Italian contract yard personnel were released, she went to Nikolaev for a temporary armament fit that included old-style 5.1″/50 B-13 singles as her planned twin turrets weren’t yet available. She nonetheless kept her blueish-gray Italian livery until 1941, earning her the nickname of the “Goluboy kreyser” or Blue Cruiser.
You have to love those Italian cruiser lines
Destroyer Tashkent with initial 130-mm B-13 naval guns armament, 1940
War!
With Stalin and Hitler officially on the same side for the first 22 months of WWII, to the horror of Eastern Poland and the Baltics, Tashkent only got into the fighting past Barbarossa but she quickly made up for lost time.
Under Capt. (3rd rank) Vasily Nikolaevich Eroshenko (Frunze 1930), Tashkent was at Nikolaev, finally receiving her twin 5.1″/50 mounts and dark wartime scheme in June 1941 but soon was able to sortie to Sevastopol where she would lead a scratch destroyer squadron that included three smaller (2402 t) Russki Project 7 type tin cans– Bodriy, Besposhchadny, and Bditelny.
With her twin turrets installed
Dispatched to help defend threatened Odesa on 22 August, she spent a week there, delivering NGFS (540 5.1-inch shells) to Red Army troops fighting advancing German and Romanian divisions until she was damaged by a 12-bomb near miss from German bombers on 30 August that forced her to limp back to Sevastopol at 12 knots to repair split seams and flooding of frames 192-205. She left a detachment of her crew behind in Odessa to join the doomed 1st Naval Infantry (Marine) Regiment ashore.
Cobbled back together with cement and steel patches in drydock under a blacked-out camouflage screen with volunteer yard workers only allowed onboard after dark, and with the Germans advancing on the Crimea and isolating Sevastopol by early October, Tashkent was withdrawn with the rest of the fleet to the Eastern Black Sea.
Tashkent and submarine Shch-212 in Poti, Georgia 1942
Tashkent moored with the submarine D-5 6.26.1942
She soon returned in early December to land 700 tons of vitally-needed ammunition in the besieged city and in January came back to deliver a brigade of Siberian Riflemen from the newly formed 386th Rifle Division, on both runs remaining in the area pulling naval gunfire support until her 5-inch magazines were exhausted.
Ship’s boy Borya Kuleshin, later holder of the Order of the Red Star, aboard Tashkent, his PPShka at the ready.
Tashkent shelling German positions near Sevastopol, while still in the harbor
With Siberian Riflemen
Further resupply runs/NGFS stints to Sevastopol by Tashkent would occur regularly over the next five months, earning her legendary status as the guardian angel of the city. Her ability to make high-speed 30+ knot runs through the 250 sea miles from Novorossiysk to Sevastopol made her invaluable, akin to the Japanese cruisers and destroyers running supplies and troops via “The Slot” down the New Georgia Sound to Guadalcanal in 1942.
To be sure, other Black Sea ships of all stripes made similar runs, but none as many times as the Blue Cruiser, which in the spring and summer of 1942 would carry 19,300 troops to the city along with over 2,500 tons of munitions and supplies.
Her final blockade run on 26 June to Sevastopol brought 944 replacement soldiers, a half-battery of light field guns, 760 Mosin rifles, 125 PPSh burp guns, 20 tons of ammunition, 26 tons of food, and 4.5 tons of other vital cargo. She left just after midnight the next morning with a cargo of 2,100 evacuees, primarily women and children along with war correspondent and novelist Evgeny Petrovich Petrov.
Among her cargo were the panels of the huge circa 1904 panoramic painting “Defense of Sevastopol” of Crimean War fame by Franz Roubo.
Sevastopol fell within the week.
On her way to Novorossiysk at 33 knots, Tashkent was spotted just after dawn by Luftwaffe aircraft, and formations of Junkers Ju 87 Stuka and Ju 88 bombers soon began dropping strings of bombs across her path, with waves coming every 5-10 minutes for four hours.
According to Soviet reports, her crew counted 86 aircraft and 336 bombs which, while miraculously no direct hits were logged (although over 100 passengers were lost or wounded), the unarmored Italian stallion popped so many seams and buckled so many plates that she shipped 1,700 tons of water and buried her bow.
Still, she made it close enough to Novorossiysk by 0900 for ground-based Red Air Force planes to provide top cover against the bombers and, linking up with the Project 7U destroyer Sobrazitelny which offloaded several hundred refugees, made it to port– albeit under tow.
Tashkent is approaching the destroyer Sobrazitelny to reload evacuees from Sevastopol. June 27, 1942
Evacuees from Sevastopol move from the damaged destroyer leader Tashkent to the destroyer Soobrazitelny
There, the barely floating wreck unloaded the rest of her precious cargo and was inspected by the mustachioed commander of the North Caucasian Front, Marshal Semyon Budyonny of the old 1920s Konarmiya.
Semyon Budyonny aboard Tashkent
Five days later, a 64-bomber raid on Novorossiysk left Tashkent riddled with bombs and, suffering an explosion of her torpedo magazine, settled on the bottom with almost half of her crew dead, hospitalized, or missing.
Salvage divers found no less than seven large holes in her hull, ruling out a service return.
Her guns were able to be recovered and went on to partially arm the destroyers Ognevoy and Ozmotelny along with an ersatz armored train, while her crew went to other units, for instance, her skipper, Capt. Eroshenko, reporting to the old Svetlana-class cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz (Red Caucasus, ex-Admiral Lazarev) as that ship’s skipper in August 1942.
He would survive the war and retire from service in 1960 following command of the cruiser Chkalov, elevated on the retired list to a rear admiral.
Eroshenko’s grave at the Serafimovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg includes the Tashkent in profile. He passed in 1970 at 64 and held just about every decoration the state could bestow a sailor.
Tashkent would later be raised in late 1944, but it was only to salvage her for scrap.
Epilogue
Of Tashkent’s planned 11 Russian-made sisters, none took to the water.
No doubt building on lessons learned from the construction of Tashkent for the Russians, the Italians ordered a dozen very similar (5420t, 466 ft oal, 8 x 5.3″/45, 8 x tt, 41 knots) Capitani Romani class scout cruisers were ordered via OTO starting in 1939 but only four were competed.
The destroyer San Marco (D563) (ex Giulio Germanico from the Capitani Romani class) passes through Venice post-war, with American DP 5″/38s installed.
The Soviets recycled Tashkent’s name as a Kara-class (Project 1134B) ASW cruiser built at Nikolaev in the 1970s that remained in service until 1992. She was later sold to a breaker in India.
As seen from the screening destroyer USS John Young (DD 973), foreground, the Soviet large anti-submarine ship Tashkent during operations with the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), circa 1985. USN Photo DN-SC-85-12178
Beyond that, our subject has numerous monuments and markers around the Black Sea area, postage stamps, and the like while the Black Sea Museum maintains a large-scale model and relics.
She has been extensively remembered in maritime art and model box art.
1940 destroyer Tashkent with B13 singles – box art Trumpeter
1942 Sevastopol siege era destroyer Tashkent – box art Trumpeter
Italian built Tashkent Soviet Russian navy destroyer leader in Black Sea WWII by Adam Werka
Tashkent’s last run
In 1970, the Leon Saakov-directed Mosfilm technicolor war drama, More v gone (“The Sea is On Fire”), recalled Tashkent’s last trip to Sevastopol and evac run to Novorossiysk and, while there is clearly a lot of up talk to the glorious worker’s paradise, is stirring and was made with lots of help from the Red Banner Fleet.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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Some 80 years ago this month, May 1944, we see a great period Kodachrome of Lockheed P-38J-20-LO SN 44-23296, carrying a special vermillion red paint scheme and the moniker “Yippee” as she was the 5,000th P-38 produced.
She even made the cover of the August 1944 edition of Flying Magazine, for good reason.
While the P-51 and P-47 get lots of love when it comes to USAAF fighters in WWII, and I think the P-40 is tragically unloved, people forget the twin-engine P-38 and how much of a bruiser it was in all the theatres it flew in.
Among the pages of aces that it produced were Col. Charles MacDonald (27 kills), Maj. Tom McGuire (38) and Maj. Dick Bong, who holds the title of the most proflic American ace of the war with 40 kills. It was the P-38 that was given the task of splashing Yamamoto, after all.
Sadly, Yippee was a working girl and, with her red and white scheme covered under standard military markings, shipped out to the Pacific in late 1944 to join the 475th Fighter Group’s 431st FS and was lost in a ground accident in the Philippines on 20 January 1945.
With her replacement– the planned first general-purpose frigate– still at least six years down the road, the Royal Australian Navy decommissioned the lead ship of its license-built Blohm & Voss MEKO 200 design, HMAS Anzac (FFH 150), completing 28 years of service on 18 May.
Ten 4,000-ton Anzac-class frigates (eight Australian, two for the Royal New Zealand Navy) were built by Tenix Defence Systems (now BAE Systems) at the company’s Williamstown yard in Melbourne between 1993 and 2006.
HMAS Anzac operating in the Persian Gulf region in 2002, one of her three extensive tours to the region. Note her original layout
Subsequent Phase 2A/2B and 4B upgrades saw her SPS-49 radar replaced with a distinctive CEAFAR phased-array radar mast which gave the ”First Lady of the Fleet” a very peculiar appearance.
HMAS Anzac returns to Fleet Base West in September 2023 after her final deployment. Note her phased array retrofit mast
She was the third such ship to carry the name of the famed Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in the RAN, after a Great War-era Parker-class destroyer leader that served under the Australian flag in the 1920s and a Battle-class destroyer that served in the 1950s and 60s.
One of the 52 WWII American submarines considered on Eternal Patrol, the resting place of the Gato-class fleet boat USS Harder (SS 257), which received six battle stars for her wartime service, has been confirmed.
Laid down at EB in Groton a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Harder was commissioned on 2 December 1942 and earned the Presidential Unit Citation through five wildly successful wartime patrols.
The recently commissioned Harder (SS-257) steaming on the surface of Narragansett Bay, 20 January 1943.
Harder, accompanied by sisters Hake (SS-256) and Haddo (SS-255) departed Fremantle on 5 August 1944 for her sixth war patrol, assigned to haunt the South China Sea off Luzon. Two weeks later the American wolf pack splashed four Japanese cargo ships while Harder and Haddo attacked and destroyed the escort ships Matsuwa and Hiburi on 22 August.
By 24 August, with the out-of-torpedo Haddo returned to base, Harder and Hake had one final joint engagement, one that Harder would not survive.
As noted by DANFS:
Before dawn on 24 August 1944, Hake sighted the escort ship CD-22 and Patrol Boat No. 102 (ex-Stewart, DD-224.) As Hake closed to attack, the patrol boat turned away toward Dasol Bay. Hake broke off her approach, turned northward, sighting Harder’s periscope 600 to 700 yards dead ahead. Swinging southward, Hake sighted CD-22 about 2,000 yards off her port quarter. To escape, Hake went deep and rigged for silent running. At 0728 Hake’s crew reported hearing 15 rapid depth charges explode in the distance astern. Hake continued evasive action, returning to the attack area shortly after noon to sweep the area at periscope depth – only finding a ring of marker buoys covering a radius of one-half mile. Japanese records later revealed that Harder fired three torpedoes at CD-22 in a “down-the-throat” shot, which the enemy vessel successfully evaded. At 0728, she launched the first of several depth charges, which sunk the American submarine.
The Navy declared Harder presumed lost on 2 January 1945. Her name was stricken from the Navy Register on 20 January.
She is in remarkable condition after sitting on the floor for almost 80 years, sitting upright under the crush of more than 3,000 meters of sea.
4D photogrammetry model of USS Harder (SS 257) wreck site by The Lost 52. The Lost 52 Project scanned the entire boat and stitched all the images together in a multi-dimensional model used to study and explore the site. Tim Taylor and The Lost 52 Project grants the US Navy permission to use their image for press release of the discovery of the USS Harder with photo credit given to Tim Taylor and the Lost 52 Project.
