Author Archives: laststandonzombieisland

The P320-M17 Ceremonial

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As we’ve previously reported, SIG’s Modular Handgun System program with the Army led to a short run of ceremonial handguns for the Sentinels over the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. While the elite Sentinels carry an Army-issue M14, the NCO of the guard carries a sidearm to allow them to properly inspect the Sentinel’s rifle, a post that has been manned for over a century.

M17 MHS Tomb SIG (Photo: Sig)

SIG is now marketing a more toned-down salute to that gun, the P320-M17 Ceremonial. It uses a distinctive high-polish AXG all-metal grip module fitted with custom Hogue walnut grip panels. With a matching high-polish optics-ready (DPP footprint) slide that includes front and rear day/night sights, it is chambered in 9mm and uses a 4.7-inch carbon steel barrel.

Other features include an M1913 accessory rail, and both a 17+1 round flush-fit magazine and a 21+1 extended magazine. (Photo: SIG)

Of note, the model is night and day different from the General Officer’s model M18 as supplied to the Army, although I would expect that the new $2K Ceremonial M17 will be a hit for retirement ceremonies among the top brass.

Just Another Campaign

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80 years ago this week: An M4 Sherman Duplex Drive medium tank of the 13th/18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary’s Own), 27th Armoured Brigade, reverses aboard an LST (Landing Ship Tank) at the Hardway, Gosport, 1 June 1944, in preparation for the big Channel Jump that would be Overlord, where the 13th/18th’s Shermans would be the first British tanks to operate in France since 1940.

Taken by Capt. Knight, War Office official photographer, IWM H 38977

Raised in Ireland in 1715 as Richard Munden’s Regiment of Dragoons and in combat within three months against Jacobites at Preston, the regiment earned its lucky “13” number in 1751 and, after earning a shako full of honors against Napolean– Jamaica (1795) and San Domingo (1796), Campo Maior (1811), Albuera (1811), Badajoz (1812), Vitoria (1813), Nive (1813), Toulouse (1814) and Waterloo (1815)– then taking part of the doomed in the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea (earning honors for Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, and Sevastopol) as a light dragoons regiment, in 1861 they earned the tight breeches and dolmans of hussars.

A Private of the 13th Light Dragoons, 1812 Aquatint by J C Stadler after Charles Hamilton Smith, 1812. NAM. 1950-11-33-15

Shipping to Canada for the Fenian Raids, then to Afghanistan for the trek to Kandahar, by 1899 they were in the Boer Wars, trading in their bright breeches for khaki and pith helmets.

British 13th Hussars during the relief of Ladysmith, 1899

The Great War saw the 13th Hussars as part of the 2nd (Indian) Cavalry Division on the Western Front until they shipped to Mesopotamia in July 1916, fighting at Kut and Baghdad in 1917, then Sharqat in 1918, notably capturing Ottoman guns in a mounted charge.

Following the loss of most of the Irish regiments in 1922, the 13th merged with the 18th Royal Hussars to form the 13th/18th Hussars, earning its “Royal” and “Queen Mary’s Own” titles in 1935 while on garrison duties after the wife of George V was made their colonel in chief.

Part of the Royal Armoured Corps just before WWII, they served as a recon unit in the Phony War and Battle of France, leaving their vehicles behind at Dunkirk, then reformed with Shermans to hit the beach at Normandy, fighting up to the Rhine Crossings, which were accomplished with Duplex Drive Sherman tanks.

A long-barreled Sherman Firefly named “Carole” shown clustered with other Shermans of C Squadron, 13th/18th Royal Hussars, waiting to be loaded aboard vessels in Gosport England for the Normandy D-Day Landings – June 3, 1944. The crew in the left foreground are Fred Shaw, Doug Kay, Sgt. Fred Scamp, and Bill Humphries. The British Firefly models carried a 76.2mm/55 QF 17-pounder rather than the stubbier American 75mm/40 cal T8/M3 gun, with a much larger shell that carried 5 pounds more power, making it a much more effective anti-tank gun. Sgt James Mapham, Photographer. IWM H 38995

Operation Overlord (the Normandy landings): D-day 6 June 1944. Sherman DD tanks of ‘B’ Squadron, 13th/18th Royal Hussars support commandos of No. 4 Commando, 1st Special Service Brigade, as they advance into Ouistreham, Sword area, 6 June 1944. Laws, G (Sgt), Army Film and Photographic Unit IWM MH 2011

British Sherman duplex M4 tank of 13th/18th Royal Hussars cruises past a crashed Horsa glider near Ranville, Normandy 10 June 1944

Post-war duties saw the 13th/18th convert to an armored car regiment (Ferrets) in Libya (1948), Egypt (1950), Malaya (1950-53 then again in 1958-61), and Aden (1957-58 and 1967) along with several deployments to Northern Ireland during ’The Troubles’ and with peacekeepers on Cyprus.

In 1992, the 13/18th was merged with the already amalgamated 15th/19th The King’s Royal Hussars to form Catterick Garrison-based The Light Dragoons, which have since been in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Mali, and, as of late, Poland, with the regiment’s current (honorary) colonel-in-chief being King Abdullah II of Jordan, although they generally refrain from being termed “King Abdullah’s Own.”

Armed today with Jackals, they are a light recon cavalry unit.

Just in case: Aircrew Bail Out Handguns

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One peculiar thing that has endured from the ages of the Red Baron through today is the custom of pilots and aircrews carrying so-called “bail-out guns” to be used on the ground should they lose their main ride. 

The first instance of opposing aircraft encountering each other while over the battlefield is thought to have occurred when high-flying American soldiers of fortune Dean Ivan Lamb and Phil Rader, each at the controls of early fabric-covered biplanes, fired pistols at each other in the first “dogfight.” The action while flying for rival sides during the Mexican Revolution in November 1913 was bloodless, but the habit of Yankee flying birdmen carrying hog legs with them aloft persisted.

During the Great War, while Americans flew more advanced British- and French-made fighters against the Germans, the pilots often carried their M1917 Colt and S&W .45 ACP revolvers and M1911 pistols with them, even while Vickers and Lewis machine guns were their primary weapons. 

Not just a preux chevalier throwback, the handguns became mandatory to a degree, part of the survival kit with the plane – often for good reason. 

In 1924, during the famed “First Around the World Flight,” Army pilot Maj. Frederick Martin and his mechanic, Sgt. Alva Harvey, were forced to walk for 10 days across Alaska to civilization after their plane crashed into the side of a mountain in the fog. 

Note the pistol belt on Harvey’s hip, complete with a revolver. (Photo: National Archives 342-FH-3B-7971-11517AS)

More in my column at Guns.com.

 

Near Toronto? Time for CIAS!

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A Canadair CF-5 (officially designated the CF-116 Freedom Fighter) Serial No. 116742 from 433 “Porcupine” ÉTAC squadron based at CFB Bagotville, Quebec flies over Toronto, in September 1974. The pilot is doing a preview of the high-speed passes its squadron will make at the annual Canadian International Air Show (CIAS). Note the unfinished 1,800-foot-high CN Tower in the background.

(Toronto Star Archive)

Celebrating its 75th Anniversary this year, the Canadian International Air Show is North America’s longest-running airshow, and tickets go on sale this week.

The CN Tower still dominates the skyline.

Meanwhile, the top Freedom Fighter airframe, as detailed by Silverhawkauthor, was:

Originally ordered as RCAF 14742, re-marked before completion. Delivered directly to CFB Cold Lake, Alberta, where it served with No. 419 Squadron. With 433e L’Escadre de Combat when it visited Lossiemouth, UK in November 1975, and California in 1983. With No. 434 Squadron at CFB Chatham, NB in 1988. Back to No. 419 Squadron, with them in July 1989. Became instructional airframe 900B on 3 April 1993, used as a cockpit procedures trainer. In storage at Bristol Aerospace, Winnipeg, in December 1994. Reported damaged in handling accident at CFD Mountain View in the summer of 1995. Front fuselage in storage at CFB Cold Lake, Alberta in May 2006. Still there in 2009, stored for Cold Lake Museum. Nose section on display at Cold Lake Museum by 2010. Reported sold to Botswana, but that may just have been pieces of the airframe for spares.

 

Hollywood quiet?

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With the recent Henry Cavill Commando movie in mind, in which assorted STEN MK IIS got a lot of screen time, I thought this recently released Squire video was humorous and hit a “my thoughts exactly” when comparing the STEN Mk IIS against the famed Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife in use by Commando types in 1943-45.

The integrally suppressed MK IIS was a thing to behold.

Royal Armouries

Via the Royal Armouries

Via the Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon

The screen-used STENs in the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare have a much larger can installed

For reference on just how quiet an MK IIS could get, from my personal experience is a kit gun built by SilencerCo that I fired when on a tour there. It is just a baby poop green weld-up from a surplus parts kit with what I feel like was an Omega 36M multi-caliber can on it.

While likely not as quiet as an integrally suppressed MK IIS, it is still almost Hollywood.

Return of the Arm Pistol

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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.

Austal Gets $500 Million for New TAGOS

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From Thursday’s DOD Contracts:

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.

Nice to see the program is getting some funding.

Eye in the Sky

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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.

As detailed by the Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons, VB-114 was established on 26 August 1943 and was redesignated VPB-114 in October 1944.

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.

Cold War Bruisers– IN COLOR!

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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.

Freedom is never free.

Rising Sun Updates

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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. 
 

 

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