Author Archives: laststandonzombieisland

The HK SL8 Fever Dream is still Alive

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Much as the HK91 was a civilianized version of the G3, soon after the very sci-fi looking G36 hit the market in 1997 HK moved to give hungry fans what they wanted.

I mean, who wouldn’t want a G36, right?

First introduced in 2000, the .223 Rem caliber SL8 used a short-stroke piston actuated gas operating system with a 20.8-inch cold hammer forged heavy barrel. Semi-auto with a grey carbon fiber polymer thumbhole stock– it debuted during the Federal Assault Weapon ban– with an adjustable cheekpiece and buttstock, the initial version of the rifle included a removable Picatinny rail, an ambi charging handle that folded into the centerline of the gun, and adjustable sights.
So this is the “G36” consumers in the U.S. got stuck with:

The original SL8-1. Originally imported 2000-2003 and then again in 2007-2010, the first generation model now known as the SL8-1 included 10-round mags and a grey thumbhole stock.

In 2010, HK updated the design to the SL8-6 which ditched the space cadet grey for an all-black format and added an elevated Pic rail/carrying handle. It also had a vented handguard, closer to the G36 original. Unfortunately, this model was only imported for a year.
Now, the SL8-6 is back, and it is still kinda wonky but, if you call people like TBT, they can turn it into something great.

Schooners and Kingfishers

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Check out these beautiful shots, courtesy of the French Marine Nationale, showing the training schooners Etoile and Belle Poule buzzed by two civilian-owned Morane-Saulnier MS.733 Alcyons of the Morane Marine association, complete with vintage Aéronautique Navale markings.

The photoex took place on June 23.

Built in 1932 by the French Navy for training duties, Etoile and Belle Poule are some 123-feet oal and are designed to each accommodate 30 cadets in addition to their 20-man professional crew. Both of the schooners managed to escape the Fall of France in June 1940 and made for England, where they were later used by the FNFL, the Free French Navy, to train gunners, helmsmen, and commandos for the Liberation.

As such, they are the only ships in the fleet today that are granted the honor of flying the wartime FNFL flag.

As for the Alcyons, French for Kingfisher, they are not quite as old. First entering service in 1949, the French Navy used 40 MS.733s for navigation and basic flight training, keeping them in service into the 1970s. This makes them basically the French equivalent of the North American T-28 Trojan, although far less numerous.

The Guards Connection

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Check out this great image, circa 1901, by Mr. James Russell & Sons of Baker Street, London, fame. The seated gentleman is His Grace, Charles Henry Gordon-Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond, 6th Duke of Lennox, and 1st Duke of Gordon, KG, PC. He is surrounded by three of his grandsons who recently returned to England from campaigning abroad: LT Charles Henry Gordon-Lennox, Lord Settrington of the Irish Guards; LT Hon. Esme Gordon-Lennox of the Scots Guards; and LT Hon. Bernard Charles Gordon-Lennox of the Grenadier Guards. All of them are wearing the South African Medal, having just fought the Boer, while Lord Settrington is also wearing a D.S.O.

Bernard would later perish near Ypres in 1914, as a major, and is buried there. Lady Bernard Gordon-Lennox remained a widow until her death in June 1944, during World War II, aged 67, when a V-1 flying bomb hit the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks and killed her.

Lord Settrington, who would become the Earl of March in 1903 and was a colonel of the Sussex Yeomanry (see= Gallipoli) in the Great War, would have a son that would die in August 1919 of war wounds, seconded from the Irish Guards to the Royal Fusiliers fighting the Bolsheviks in Northern Russia, age 20, and is buried in Archangel.

Brigadier-General Lord Esmé Gordon-Lennox would be the longest living of the above quartet, as he would survive the Great War and enjoy a ripe old age, passing in 1949.

As for Charles, the paterfamilias had previously done his time in the colors with the Horse Guards in the 1840s-50s and was an ADC to Wellington.

The Gordon-Lennox family has continued to serve, often lengthy military careers, in the Guards. 

Mirages over the Keys

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This month, Textron subsidiary Airborne Tactical Advantage Company has been supporting F-35Cs from Eglin AFB’s 43rd Fighter Squadron during a deployment to Naval Air Station Key West to help sharpen their Dissimilar Air Combat Training skills.

Providing contract adversary air OPFOR airframes, ATAC brought Mirage F1s with them to the Keys, still wearing very nicely preserved French Armee de L’air camouflage.

The company bought 63 former French Air Force Mirage F1B, F1CT, and F1CR fighters; 6 million assorted spare parts, and 150 spare Atar 9K50 engines for a total value of €25 million in 2017. Last September, they pulled down a contract to use their aircraft as training assets against the USAF in seven locations.

An F-1 Mirage with Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC) takes off from Boca Chica Field to provide adversary air support for training. 20 August 2021 U.S. Navy photo by Danette Baso Silvers

Running around in sometimes cranky obsolete high-performance jets can sometimes be hazardous. One of ATAC’s Mirages had an “incident” earlier this year at Tyndall.

They also do “red air” for the Navy.

Check out this trio of an ATAC Mk 58 Hunter, a former IDF Kfir C-2, and a Navy F-35C.

The Hunter dates to 1959 while the Kfir is a 1979 model. Meanwhile, the F-35C is Navy NJ-121 (BuNo 169160) of VFA-101 “Grim Reapers.” The Reapers were the Navy’s Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) based at Eglin until they shuttered the unit in May 2019, moving the mission to NAS Lemoore’s VFA-125.

Italy Finally has an Aircraft Carrier

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Italy got into the seaplane tender biz in February 1915 when they bought the aging 392-ft./7,100-ton Spanish-built freighter Quarto and, as Europa, converted the vessel to operate a half-dozen or so FBA flying boats. Taking part in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto against the bottled-up Austro-Hungarian fleet in 1917, she was discarded after the war.

In 1925, Rome bought the incomplete passenger/mail steamer Citta di Messina and, sending her to the La Spezia for completion, produced Giuseppe Miraglia.

Italian seaplane carrier Giuseppe Miraglia entering Taranto. Look at all those Macchis…

She wasn’t a giant ship, just under 400-feet long with a light draft of 4,500-tons. But Miraglia was fast enough for naval use (21 knots) and with enough room for as many as 20 seaplanes of assorted sizes. Her war was lackluster, ending it under British guns at Malta.

Meanwhile, Italy’s first planned aircraft carrier– a respectable 772-foot leviathan by the name of L’Aquila (Eagle) converted from an unfinished ocean liner– was left under construction at Genoa in 1943.

Italian aircraft carrier Aquila in drydock at Genoa in 1942. She would never be completed

Although it was envisioned she would carry up to 56 aircraft, the Italian eagle was never completed and finally scrapped at La Spezia in 1952. A sistership, Sparviero, never even got that far, making Miraglia the sole Italian aviation ship fielded in WWII.

After flirting with Vittorio Veneto in the 1970s and 80s, a so-called “helicopter cruiser” capable of carrying six SH-3D Sea Kings or larger numbers of smaller whirlybirds; the Italian government placed an order for several AV-8B Harriers in 1990 for use on the newly completed 13,000-ton ASW carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, returning the country’s fleet to a fixed-wing capability that it hadn’t seen since Miraglia steamed for exile in Malta in 1943.

Today, it is thought that the carrier 27,000-ton Harrier carrier Cavour will retire her aging AV-8Bs for a squadron of operational Italian F-35Bs by 2024, right at 99 years after Miraglia was conceived. Except the vessel won’t be beholden to seaplanes or Harriers, a first.

Speaking of which, on 30 July, the first Italian F-35B landed on Cavour while the now-Lightning carrier was operating in the Gulf of Taranto.

On the journey to get there: 

In related news, the current operational British Lightning carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08), entered the tense waters of the South China Sea last week, with F-35Bs of RAF 617 Squadron and the USMC’s VMFA-211 taking to the air during the evolution. 

Smokey’s Lucky Witch, 77 Years Ago Today

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Ensign Darrell C. “Smoke” Bennett, A-V(N), USNR, stands beside his plane, a General Motors FM-2 Wildcat fighter, on board the Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73), 1 August 1944. According to reports, he had just arrived to join COMPRON (VC) 10 as Gambier Bay made Guam that day. 

Note pinup art and nickname Smokey’s Lucky Witch adorning the engine cowling; what appears to be a Composite Squadron Ten (VC-10) insignia below the cockpit windshield; plane numbers (27) in white on the wing leading edge and in black under the lip of the cowling; and Bennett’s flight gear and .45 caliber M1911A1 pistol carried in a shoulder holster. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-243864

Born in Hamburg, Iowa 30 March 1924, “Smoke” Bennett joined the Navy as an aviation cadet volunteer 1 October 1943, age 19, and was a deployed combat pilot on his first flattop just 10 months later. He spent most of the war in ground support missions from escort carriers supporting the liberation of the Philippines and narrowly avoided going down with Gambier Bay in the Battle off Samar just two months after the above image was snapped.

He would survive WWII as well as later service in Korea, continue his Navy career as a pilot, a flight instructor, and as Commander Fleet Air Miramar, retiring in 1965. CDR Bennett received the following decorations: Air Medal (5), Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Unit Citation, Korean Presidential Unit Citation, WWII Victory Medal, Navy Occupation Service Medal (Europe), National Defense Service Medal, Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, Korean Service Medal, and the United Nations Service Medal.

Retiring to the Florida panhandle after a second career as a corporate and personal pilot to Hollywood types, CDR Bennett was a well-known supporter of the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum, where one of his former airframes was on display, and the USS Gambier Bay Association. He passed last December, age 96, leaving behind “two sons, seven grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren.”

A Look at Baltic Minebusting

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A land of fishermen and sailors going back thousands of years, the Latvian Navy was formed in 1919 and survived until the Soviets occupied the country in 1940 but was soon reformed in 1991. Today, the force consists of a dozen assorted coast guard and patrol craft for sovereignty but their most active, and possibly important assets, are the vessels of the very professional Mine Ship Squadron.

NATO just released a very well done 9-minute mini-doc following the LVNS Talivaldis (M-06), an Alkmaar-class (Dutch Tripartite) minehunter of the Latvian Navy, as she performs her very dangerous work in the ancient sea. Formerly the Royal Netherlands Navy minehunter Dordrecht (M852) the 500-ton vessel was sold to Latvia in 2000 after 17 years of service. She has been since modernized with a new AUV A18-M sonar for detection and Seascan MK2 and K-STER C USVs/ROVs for identification and clearance.

In the presser for the video:

The Baltic Sea is said to contain 30,000 leftover unexploded ordnance from two world wars. The crew of Latvian minehunter M-06 Tālivaldis explains how these historic mines pose a threat to both military and civilian ships today, and why it is so important to dispose of them. The ship has been part of Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group One several times; this group is responsible for countering the threat of sea mines and unexploded ordnance in the northern seas.

This is a rare opportunity to explore life on board a Latvian Navy mine-hunting ship as it conducts its work in the Baltic Sea. This footage includes shots of the Tālivaldis in the Baltic Sea, searching for and destroying unexploded historic ordnance as well as interviews with crew members.

The Swiss Military Bicyclist Tradition Endures

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This week at the Tokyo Olympics, the Women’s cross-country mountain biking event may have gone little noticed here, but in Switzerland, it was big news. The two-wheeled ladies from the Alpine redoubt made a clean sweep of the event with Jolanda Neff taking gold, Sina Frei pulling down silver, and Linda Indergand completing the Swiss triple victory with bronze.

There was only a 79-second spread between the three while there was a full 50-second gap between Indergand and the 4th place finisher, Kata Blanka Vas of Hungary.

While all three Swiss bicyclists are top-notch athletes, Neff is in a class by herself. As detailed by Trek, whose TFR Cross-Country team she races for:

At 27 years old, Jolanda Neff has already made an indelible mark on cycling. She won the mountain bike cross-country World Championship title in 2017, is three-time XCO World Cup Champion, four-time XCO European Champion, five-time Swiss XCO Champion, and the winner of 12 XCO World Cups. Jolanda has raced a fair bit of cyclocross and on the road as well, even achieving Swiss road champion and finishing eighth in the 2016 Olympics road race.

Another noteworthy aspect of the Swiss triple threat is that they are all reservists in the Schweizer Armee.

The Swiss first established bicycle infantry units in 1905, using the now-famed (and much-sought by collectors) M0-5, and later the MO-93 army bicycle (Armeefahrrad) for nearly a century, only formally disbanding them in 1998.

However, seeing utility in the bikes for both exercise and use by Fernspäh-Grenadier patrols, the Swiss bought some 4,000 new MO-12 models in recent years, showing the “old ways” are still remembered.

They certainly are in Tokyo.

Hyundai’s 120mm Laser

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OK, well maybe not a laser but it sure looks like one! The Republic of Korea Army last week released several images of one of their K1A2 main battle tanks firing its 120mm KM256 smoothbore gun at a firing range.

Designed from Chrysler’s XM1– which later roughly became the M1 Abrams– the Hyundai K1 88-Tank is a beast that was intended to augment, then replace the ROKA’s obsolete M47 and M48 tanks in the 1980s and stand ready to eat North Korean T-62s (usually locally-made Chonma-ho knock-offs) for breakfast. It is perhaps most notably different from the Abrams line in the respect that most of the electronics are domestic (largely Samsung-made) and it uses an efficient German MTU 871 diesel powerpack similar to that used by the Leclerc, Challenger 2, and Leopard 2 MBTs rather than the M1’s thirsty gas turbine.

Updated with the license-built K256 120mm gun, the electronics and commo fit from the K2 Black Panther, and a redesigned armor scheme after 2012, the K1A2 is one of the most advanced and capable MBTs in the world– and they can still eat Nork T-62s, still Pyongyang’s most numerous front-line tank, for breakfast.

The 1911 is a Perma Staple of the Gun Community

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With a narrow profile and an excellent reputation for “stopping power” (in certain calibers) coupled with a host of on-board safety features, John Browning’s big M1911 format single-action pistols can be exceptionally accurate, and, if given a few tweaks and made correctly, can last a lifetime so long as the small internals and barrel are swapped out when overworn. Plus, there is probably no other platform other than the Glock that is backed up by so wide a spread of aftermarket parts and skilled smiths who know how to wring every ounce of performance out of them. Little wonder that gun companies seem to always be introducing new takes on the same gun.

Speaking of which, Springfield Armory this week came out with a new version of Mr. Browning’s single-action single-stack.

Using a forged steel barrel, slide, and frame, Springfield’s new Emissary sports a two-tone finish, with a blued carbon steel slide and a stainless-steel frame with a squared trigger guard. Carrying a “Tri-Top” cut to the slide, the single-action pistol runs a bushing-less heavy stainless steel bull barrel with a one-piece full-length guide rod. For those who want texture in their grip, the Emissary is fully wrapped in a grenade pattern texture from its slimline G10 VZ grips to the matching machining on the mainspring housing and front strap.

The Emissary is billed as blending defensive and custom pistols to create a striking .45 ACP railgun that looks great while still being very capable.

More in my column at Guns.com.

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