Monthly Archives: December 2024

Christmas Eve 1944 off Sandy Hook

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80 years ago today, the Cannon-class destroyer escort USS Straub (DE 181), was captured from an altitude of 300 feet, on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1944. She is clad in Measure 32, Design 3D, camouflage, as modified for Atlantic DEs.

U.S. Navy Photograph, 80-G-298101, now in the collections of the National Archives.

According to her War Diary, Straub spent the morning underway of Christmas Eve 1944 off Sandy Hook Bay, NJ, steaming to calibrate her DAQ and magnetic compass, tying up at Earle later that afternoon to load ammo before ending the day at Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The only ship named for LT (jg.) Walter Morris Straub, killed at Guadalcanal aboard the cruiser USS Atlanta (CL-51), DE-181 was built at the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., at Newark, launched by the widow of the escort’s namesake on 19 September 1943, and commissioned just five weeks later.

Straub spent her war in and around the Atlantic primarily as a screen for sub-hunting escort carriers including USS Mission Bay (CVE-59), Solomons (CVE-67), Tripoli (CVE-64), and Wake Island (CVE-65).

WWII ended as she was crossing through the Panama Canal to help finish off the Empire of Japan.

Decommissioned on 17 October 1947, she spent 26 years in mothballs before she was stricken from the NVR and later sold for scrapping in 1974. The government made $84,666.66 from her sale to the Boston Metals Co. of Baltimore, Maryland.

However, she went on to live forever, to a degree, as stock footage of her was used extensively in the 1960s and she made cameos in episodes of Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, and 12 O’Clock High.

O Tannenbaum 

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This propaganda photograph was published in “Das 12 Uhr Blatt” (Literally “The 12 o’clock paper”), a Berlin daily rag, on 23 December 1944. It shows a Volkssturm militiaman from East Prussia with a letter from home near the Christmas tree.

The aging Volkssturmmann holds a Faustpatron 30 disposable anti-tank grenade launcher in his hand, the puny forerunner of the Panzerfaust line that was good for about 30 meters– hence its designation– but could still penetrate about 5 inches of armor at that distance.

With the majority of able-bodied men aged 18-37 in front-line units, and those 38-45 in second-line garrison units such as Landesschützen (fortress infantry) on the “Whipped Cream Front” in Denmark and Norway, the Volkssturm typically was filled with old men 45-60 and 16 & 17-year-old kids with the ratio being roughly 7:1 old-to-young.

The above Volkssturmmann is well equipped for the force, as generally, most members were lucky to get an armband and a captured recycled foreign rifle such as a Dutch Mannlicher or French Berthier, likely with only a packet of ammo, with a sprinkle of anti-tank weapons. 

The Christmas of 1944 was grim for the nominally six million strong (in theory, never in reality) as 1945 would be a tough year, and many of the Great War vets and seedcorn in its ranks would not live to see its end.

The lucky ones would be able to surrender to the Americans without much of a fight, while those in the East, well, those ledger pages never really caught up. 

“Three members of the Volkssturm who gave themselves up when the Americans entered their town of Haarm, Germany, point to the spot where they had their weapons hid. A Military Government expert finds out all the details. 3 March, 1945. 104th Infantry Division.” U.S. Army Signal Corps Photo SC 201502-S by T/5 Westcott, 165th Signal Photo Co.

Pacific Patrol

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The crew from the USCGC Oliver Henry (WPC 1140) patrols the Northern Mariana Islands on the cutter’s 26-foot Over the Horizon (OTH-IV) cutter boat, April 23, 2024.

Coast Guard photo by Tim Cusak, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. VIRIN: 240423-G-G0020-8601A

The 154-foot Sentinel (Webber)-class Fast Response Cutter is one of four assigned to U.S. Coast Guard Forces Micronesia at Santa Rita, Guam, and roams all across the Central and West Pac on 14 and 28-day patrols.

While the draft on the FRCs is just 9.5 feet, allowing them to operate well inside the Pacific littoral, its stern-launched OTH-IV, powered by a 500 hp Cummins diesel inboard with a Hamilton jet drive, can get inshore in style.

1363…1363…1363

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20 June 1963. A brand new Sikorsky HH-52A Seaguard (S-62C) doing what it was good at– landing in calm(ish) water to make hull-borne rescues, in this case during an exercise. The bird, CG1363 (MSN-62-040), is from the Coast Guard Air Station, Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, 3rd CG District.

USCG Photo 26-G-06-17-63(04), National Archives Identifier 205591343

Sadly, 1363 was destroyed at Trinidad Head near Eureka, California on 22 December 1964, just 18 months after the above photo was snapped. The helicopter crashed into a mountain in IFR conditions during a flood rescue operation in a heavy storm, killing all seven aboard including three crewmen and four individuals that had just been rescued.

The wrecked airframe is still where is impacted, at 1,130 feet elevation nine miles north of the Arcata Airport near a landmark known today as Strawberry Rock where it is visited annually by the Coasties stationed at Sector Humboldt Bay, whose base maintains a memorial to those lost 60 years ago today.

USCG Photo

USCG Photo

More on Carney’s Red Sea Getaway

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The guided-missile destroyer USS Carney launches land-attack missiles while operating in the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command area of responsibility, Feb. 3, 2024. The Carney was deployed as part of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to support maritime security and stability in the Middle East. U.S. Navy Photo 240203-N-GF955-1012

The early Flight I Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Carney (DDG 64) is not a young warship. Commissioned in 1996, the Navy has frequently deep-sixed younger greyhounds over the years.

Her epic 235-day October 2023-May 2024 deployment to the Red Sea to keep the area open in the face of Houthi attacks earned her a Navy Unit Commendation (her third) and she took part in a staggering 51 engagements against a high-low mix of everything from cruise missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles to swarms of much simpler prop-driven one-way attack drones.

She also made the first publicly acknowledged SM-6 combat intercept, downed air-to-air targets with her 5-inch gun (!), and launched retaliatory TLAM strikes against targets ashore.

Her entire crew earned the Navy’s Combat Action Ribbon while her skipper picked up a Bronze Star and other key members of the crew received Meritorious Service Medals, Navy Commendation Medals, and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals– well deserved as the ship had the highest anti-air op-tempo that the U.S. Navy has seen since 1945.

An excellent 10-minute Navy film, USS Carney: A Destroyer at War, dives deeper with crew interviews:

Anzio Christmas

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Original wartime caption: “25 December 1944, somewhere in the Pacific. Christmas night party, decorated tree, and presents aboard the escort carrrier USS Anzio (CVE-57).”

U.S. Navy photo in the National Archives. 80-G-380927. National Archives Identifier 148728638

The bluejackets above had good reason to celebrate. Anchored in Ulithi Atoll during the above image, just the week prior the ship had, as described in this week’s Warship Wednesday, fought through the heart of Typhoon Cobra and survived, albeit having two of her escorts demasted and a third of the planes in her air group damaged or swept overboard. Still, her crew swept up the flight deck and resumed flying operations as soon as the sea calmed.

Anzio still had eight long months of war ahead of her, including operations off Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

She group bagged five Japanese submarines, splashed 31 confirmed enemy aircraft in air-to-air combat, shot down another eight via her ship’s guns, and conducted over 6,000 traps, including hundreds of sorties reducing Japanese troop concentrations, gun emplacements, and shore installations. In all, Anzio steamed 156,518 miles within two years of her commissioning.

She earned nine battle stars for her Pacific War.

Returning home in 1946 after Magic Carpet service, she was soon laid up and, after more than a decade in mothballs, was unceremoniously sold for scrap.

Fiends on Mindoro

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80 years ago today. 20 December 1944. Lockheed P-38 Lightnings of the “The Flying Fiends” of the 36th Fighter Squadron, 8th Fighter Group, parked along the runway on the Hill Fighter Strip near San Jose, Mindoro Island, Philippine Islands.

U.S. Air Force Number 74227AC, NARA 342-FH-3A30104-74227AC

Formed during the Great War as the 36th Aero Squadron at Kelly Field, Texas, in June 1917, Quentin Roosevelt, the son of Teddy, was one of the squadron’s first commanders.

During WWII, the Fiends flew P-40, P-39, P-47, and finally P-38 fighters in several Pacific Theater campaigns. These included the defense of New Guinea (Distinguished Unit Citation for Papua, Sep 1942–Jan 1943), New Britain (Distinguished Unit Citation, Dec. 1943), and the battle for the Philippines (Distinguished Unit Citation, Dec. 1944). The unit ended the war with 11 Campaign Streamers (East Indies, Air Offensive Japan, China Defensive, Papua, New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, Western Pacific, Leyte, Luzon with Arrowhead, Southern Philippines, and China Offensive.)

While the 36th didn’t produce any aces, they did chalk up 96 aerial victories against the Japanese, trading no less than 16 aviators killed or missing, some still MIA to this day.

They moved to Fukuska, Japan at the end of the war, then flew a weird transition of F-80 Shooting Stars, F-51 Mustangs, and F-86 Sabers during Korea, and F-105s and F-4s during Vietnam before moving to the Viper in August 1988.

They still operate Block 40 F-16/C/Ds out of Osan, ROK, where they have been based since 1971.

Whelp, that’s it for FD2030

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In March 2020, U.S. Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. David H. Berger, debuted his transformative Force Design 2030 which, within a decade, intended to recast the Corps from its traditional expeditionary Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) model that it had used since the 1950s to something, well, a lot different.

First, the plan called to “divest to invest” which translated to cutting 12,000 billets, disbanding all seven of the Corp’s tank companies (dialing the clock back to 1941), getting rid of 16 of 21 cannon artillery batteries (thus losing over 2/3rds of its proven 155mm howitzers), halving the number of Assault Amphibian companies (from six big to four small), jettisoning all of the Corp’s bridging units, shuttering all three law enforcement battalions, casing the colors of three active and two reserve infantry battalions (and reducing each battalion left by over 200 billets), cutting the number of aircraft in its 18 fighter attack squadrons– converting from exhausted F-18C/Ds and AV-8Bs to F-35s– from 16 frames to just 10, and cutting eight entire tiltrotor/helicopter squadrons. Plus the Corps lost its famed Scout Sniper program.

U.S. Marines with 4th Tank Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve, salute during the 4th Tank Bn. deactivation ceremony on Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center San Diego, in San Diego, California, May 15, 2021. The Marines bid their final farewell to the battalion as it was deactivated in accordance with the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 modernization and capabilities-realignment efforts in order to stay prepared for the future fight against near-peer enemies. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Jose S. GuerreroDeLeon)

Jesus wept.

But the payoff was supposed to be big.

The three active component infantry battalions would be recast as “Littoral battalions” in three new Marine Littoral Regiments, a sort of expeditionary anti-ship missile force, and 14 new rocket artillery (HIMARS) batteries would be stood up.

A Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System launcher, a command and control vehicle and a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle are transported by a U.S. Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion from Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands, Hawaii, out to U.S.S. San Diego, Aug. 16, 2021. The movement demonstrated the mobility of a Marine Corps fires expeditionary advanced base, a core concept in the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 efforts. U.S. Navy and Marine Corps units came together from across 17 time zones as they participated in Large Scale Exercise 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Luke Cohen, released)

At the same time, the number of drone squadrons (VMUs) would be doubled (from three to six) and an extra aerial refueler squadron (VMGR) of KC-130s would be added to give the Corps some longer legs in the air. Three new Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) companies would be added, presumably to provide the three Littoral battalions some added muscle.

But the thing is, the big linchpin on moving these missile-armed Littoral Regiments around scattered atolls in the Western Pacific, would be a new breed of between 18 and 35 cheap and simple (remember that) shallow-draft amphibious landing ships akin to the old LSMs and LSTs of WWII and Korea.

Dubbed the Light Amphibious Warship by the Marines and the Landing Ship, Medium by the Navy, the idea would be a beachable 4,000-ton/200-400 foot vessel capable of landing 75 Marines and 8,000 sq. ft. of kit, with a cost of $100 million a pop.

A force of nine LAW/LSMs would be required to deploy a single Marine Littoral Regiment in one lift.

And there lies the rub.

The Congressional Research Service and GAO have been sounding the alarm on the progress of FD2030, which has been quick to get rid of the old Corps but slow to recast the new one.

Meanwhile, the Navy, tasked with buying and fielding the new class of LAW/LSMs, has all but iced the program, at least for now, canceling the RFP issued to the shipbuilding industry for plans as estimates are now putting the cost at something like $400+ million per hull.

As reported yesterday by USNI News:

“We had a bulletproof – or what we thought – cost estimate, pretty well wrung out design in terms of requirements, independent cost estimates,” Assistant Secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition Nickolas Guertin said at an American Society of Naval Engineers symposium last week.

“We put it out for bid and it came back with a much higher price tag,” he added. “We simply weren’t able to pull it off. So we had to pull that solicitation back and drop back and punt.”

On the bright side, the Navy earlier this Fall (perhaps seeing the writing on the wall) issued a big, fat $9.4 billion contract to Ingalls for three new big-deck LPDs and an LHD.

If only the Marines had the tanks, howitzers, and infantry to form the landing teams and aircraft to carry them to form the MAGTFs for these new ‘phibs to carry…

Basic math tells you that the 21 remaining non-MLR Marine infantry battalions, on a 3:1 workup, would only be able to field 5.25 Battalion Landing Teams, the core of a deployable Marine Expeditionary Unit– now without any scout snipers, law enforcement personnel, bridging gear, or tanks, with fewer Amtracs, and possibly without howitzers. The number of helicopters on hand is fewer and even the prospect of having the MV-22 available at all is in the air. For the Navy’s lift part of that equation, only nine LHA/LHDs exist, augmented by 13 LPDs and 10 soon-to-be-decommissioned LSDs which, on the same 3:1 workup, allows just 2.6 three-ship Amphibious Ready Groups at sea on deployment. Even that number is going to tank in a couple of years with the retirement of the used-up LSDs. 

As noted by Compass Points on the saga of the LSM being pulled.

This may spell the end of the Landing Ship Medium and is also, at a minimum, a tremendous setback for the Marine Corps’ long-stalled and controversial program to place small missile units on islands in the Pacific. If the value of building the LSM was clear, it would be built. But the value of the current LSM is not clear. This is a negative vote for the entire SIF concept. It is becoming accepted that the Marine missile concept is duplicative of missile capabilities the Navy, Air Force, and Army have already deployed. The Navy may be trying to get out ahead of DOGE by cutting the LSM now. There are still too many questions about the Marine Corps’ entire plan for island-based missile units.

Redfish Amok!

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Some 80 years ago today, the Balao-class fleet submarine USS Redfish (SS-395), on only her Second War Patrol, under the command of T/CDR Louis Darby McGregor, Jr., torpedoed and sank the brand spanking new 20,000-ton Japanese carrier Unryu while about 200 miles south-east of Shanghai. The carrier was loaded with 30 spooky Kugisho MXY7 Ohka (Cherry Blossom) kamikaze rocket bombs and Kokusai Ku-8s of the 1st Glider Squadron (Kakkūhikō dai ichi sentai), ready to ruin the day of American ships operating in the Philippines.

Periscope shot of the newly-built IJN aircraft carrier Unryū 雲龍, (Cloud Dragon) sunk by the submarine USS Redfish on 19 December 1944.

Notably, Redfish, in conjunction with the submarines USS Sea Devil (SS-400) and Plaice (SS-390), just 10 days earlier, had pumped the 30,000-ton Japanese aircraft carrier Jun’yō full of torpedoes but the flattop had survived.

Japanese aircraft carrier Jun’yō after hits by torpedoes from submarines Sea Devil, Plaice, and Redfish early in the morning of 9 December 1944

McGregor, who had sent several Japanese transports and tankers to the bottom as skipper of USS Pike (SS-173) and on Redfish’s first war patrol, was determined to scratch a carrier all the way off the Emperor’s naval list.

Redfish’s report on Unryu:

As detailed by Combined Fleet:

  • 1635: The torpedo hit abreast the forward generator room on the Hold Deck and the Main Control Center on No.2 platform deck, approximately frame 98 close to the bulkhead aft. As a result, No.1 boiler room flooded, and because the bulkhead dividing them failed, so did No.2 boiler room to port. All boilers except No.8 lose pressure. A main steam line was fractured and UNRYU temporarily lost power and went dead in the water. A fire broke out in No.2 ready room, but is put out by closing firewalls. REDFISH – having expended stern tubes at 1642 trying to hit HINOKI – hastily re-loaded a stern tube while UNRYU Chief Engineer Capt. Saga Tetsuo’s engineers extinguished fires, brought online No.s 5, 6, and 7 boilers, and successfully replaced damaged pipes and restored power.
  • 1650: The carrier was just getting back underway when hit by second torpedo at starboard side, forward of the bridge. This was abreast the bomb and torpedo magazines. Induced explosions from them and the volatile cargo of Ohkas on the lower hangar deck exploded, devastating vessel. The bow began to settle rapidly and UNRYU list steeply to starboard. Captain Kaname ordered Abandon Ship. Carrier sank very quickly – about ten minutes or less.
  • 1657-1701: (Times vary slightly) UNRYU sank sharply upended with stern raised and nearly on her starboard side – with the loss of her captain Konishi Kaname, XO Capt. Aoki Tamon, Navigator LtCdr. Shinbori Masao, sixty officers and 1,172 petty officers and men and six known civilians. Only one officer, Assistant Navigator Morino Hiroshi (was also injured) and eighty-seven petty officers and men (7 injured); fifty-seven passengers, and one civilian employee survived for a total of only 146 saved. Among these survivors of the passengers there are only twelve of the 1st Glider cadre. MOMI moves in immediately to rescue while HINOKI and SHIGURE depth-charge REDFISH.

20 December 1944

  • 0938: With no more survivors in sight, all three destroyers are still hunting and occasionally depth charging the submarine. After this, MOMI and HINOKI leave the scene and SHIGURE remains still hunting REDFISH. The two-Matsu class proceed to Takao to off-load survivors. (MOMI rescued senior survivor Morino)

McGregor would be awarded his second of two Navy Crosses in command of Redfish for the sinking of Unryu, along with a previous Silver Star in command of Pike, and would retire as a rear admiral. 

Redfish finished the war with 123,000 tons listed on her tally sheet after just two patrols and earned two battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation.

She later had a distinguished movie career as the fictional Nautilus in Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1954 and as Nerka in Run Silent, Run Deep in 1958, along with several appearances in the TV series The Silent Service. Her final reel, recorded by an S-2 in 1970, was a snuff film. 

USS Redfish attending the Rose Festival in Portland, postwar.

First Ukraine-assembled CZ BREN 2s Roll Out

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An effort between the Ukrainian defense industry and CZ has yielded results as the first Ukraine-assembled Bren 2 rifles are being delivered.

Ukroboronprom, the state-owned Ukrainian defense production organ, announced on Dec. 14 that one of its enterprises had last month begun the licensed assembly of Bren 2 rifles in the country. The partnership between Colt CZ and Ukroboronprom was agreed upon in July, allowing local assembly of components shipped from CZ, leading to eventual full-rate production.

Since 2022, the country has been fielding Czech-made Brens, notably among special operations units and legions of foreign volunteers.

The Ukraine military, since it was formed in 1991, has traditionally used Warsaw Pact pattern small arms (left) to include multiple AK-47/74 variants in 7.62×39 and 5.45×39, while some units, such as the Rubizh Brigade in the top right, are issued assorted M4 platforms in 5.56. The CZ Bren 2, seen in use with Ukraine marines at the bottom right, is a newer addition. (Photos: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine)

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