As appropriate with the 70th anniversary of the Korean War this month, the DOD reports:
In the largest repatriation of South Korean soldiers’ remains from the Korean War, 147 such remains were returned to South Korea following an honor ceremony last week at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and [South Korea’s] Ministry of National Defense Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification have jointly worked on the remains, as being ROK soldiers who had often died alongside U.S. troops.
MAKRI and DPAA scientists have conducted joint forensic reviews and validated 147 remains as being of South Korean origin.
In a mutual exchange, six Americans identified on South Korean battlefields were transferred to U.S. custody at Osan.
Honor Guard from UN countries participates in a dignified transfer as part of a repatriation ceremony at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, June 26, 2020. The United Nations Command in Korea remains committed to enforcing the 1953 UN Armistice Agreement and overseeing activities such as this repatriation. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Noah Sudolcan)
In logical reaction to police brutality in Minnesota captured in an iPhone snuff film, Loreal is deleting the word “whitening” from its marketing but will surely still sell the same fish oil under a different name, cartoon characters have vanished like commissars in Stalinist photographs, and episodes of already dated sitcoms are being memory-holed from their streaming service time capsules.
Meanwhile, statues of everyone from Francis Scott Key– whose virtually unknown ditty could be replaced by a hippy song that came from the Yoko-era– to a Norwegian abolitionist who died trying to end slavery have been toppled.
Living Classrooms Board of Trustees, who controls Historic Ships Baltimore, voted over the weekend to change Taney’s name to Thurgood Marshall.
As a background, the vessel was named for Roger Brooke Taney, a controversial figure and racist by today’s standards who, besides serving as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of War and Attorney General, also filled in for “Old Hickory” as his Treasury Secretary– which is why the cutter was named after him, as the class of seven 327-foot cutters were all named for previous Revenue Service bosses (Bibb, Campbell, Duane, Alexander Hamilton, Ingham, Spencer, Taney), a department the USCG belonged to until 1967. Further, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service had named a previous ship “Taney” in the 1830s, arguing that it was a historic ship name to one degree or another.
By all means, Taney the man is seen as unredeemable today, delivering the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case and penning some other very tough-to-read thoughts that no one in the past half-century has entertained as being acceptable.
Should the 1930s USCG have named their new vessel after him? Probably not, even by the standards of that era, but nonetheless they did and USCGC Taney went on to deliver tremendous service to the country.
She was at Pearl Harbor and Midway then escorted convoys across the Atlantic before coming back to the Pacific where she served as an amphibious command ship off Okinawa, ending WWII in Japanese Home Waters.
Taney at Pearl Harbor
USS Taney, CG (WPG-37) Taney, 327-foot Coast Guard combat cutter, is shown here wearing battle gray while on convoy escort duty in the Atlantic
A few years later she put on her war paint once again for Korea.
Not to be deterred, she continued to serve in the post-war Coast Guard, saving lives, delivering the rule of law across marine fisheries, combatting smugglers, and manning isolated ocean stations for the sake of the greater good. Oh yeah, and doing the whole Cold War thing, too.
Taney maintains surveillance of the Soviet refrigerator vessel Chernjakhovsk off northern California in May of 1965.
She went on to fire 3,400 rounds in NGFS in Vietnam while her crew assisted 6,000 souls ashore in civil support.
In the summer of 1973 Taney was fitted with a special storm-tracking, first in the world, Doppler Radar antenna housed in a distinctive bulbous dome fitted atop her pilothouse. She would spend most of the 70s on Ocean Weather Station (OWS) Hotel.
On weather station, every six hours or so, the NOAA folks would launch a weather balloon, which the cutter could track in CIC with its AN/SPA52 Air Search radar.
Thousands of men, and in her latter days, women, walked her decks and risked their lives against all manner of enemies both two-legged and sent by Poseidon. They did so for their shipmates and their country, not to honor Andrew Jackson’s T-SEC.
None of her crew ever met the man. Honestly, most probably never read the first word of any of his legal opinions or speeches. Nonetheless, they are now deemed guilty of Dred Scot-by-proxy by people who know nothing of their sacrifice.
While the oldest ship in the fleet in 1984, the Coast Guard filmed a recruiting commercial partially on her deck– narrated by James Earl Jones– highlighting diversity in the service.
After 50 years of service, Cutter Taney decommissioned on 7 December 1986– the 45th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack– and by Act of Congress was turned over to the city of Baltimore, Maryland–Roger Brooke Taney’s hometown, for use as a museum ship, and as such was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
No one could argue that Thurgood Marshall was not “a colossus of U.S. history.” First appointed to the federal bench by President John F. Kennedy– a Navy man– Marshall came to the court after arguing cases such as Brown v Education before the nation’s high court, which in many ways helped move civil rights forward for the nation. However, while Marshall is interred at Arlington due to his service as a jurist and in the early 1950s investigated charges of racism in the United States armed forces, he was not a military man and had no connection to the Coast Guard, Navy or the cutter that is preserved in Baltimore that now bears his name in retirement. About his closest tie to the sea service was that one of his grandfathers, Isaiah Olive Branch Williams, volunteered and served aboard the brig USS Santiago de Cuba during the Civil War and the frigate USS Powhatan after.
In the end, should the historic vessel have its name– from a man that is now considered despicable but nonetheless one that was carried into battle across three wars– erased from history and replaced with one of a man who, although a hero, never had a connection to said vessel, to atone for the nation’s guilt when it comes to race relations?
A ship and more importantly, its crew makes her own history and being a ship, a form of transportation, makes it part of the context of larger world history. The vessel is preserved because of her own history and not that of her namesake and continues to educate to this day. This ship is not something to condemn, its something to be proud of.
But then again, I guess none of that matters anymore.
WELT has recently posted this super interesting 50~ minute English-language doc on the German Type/Klasse 212A Unterseeboot, U32 (S182) “on its journey from the Eckernforde naval base through the difficult-to-navigate Kiel Canal to Plymouth in England,” for a NATO exercise.
I caution you now, when compared to U.S. bubbleheads, the modern crop of Germans are a bit sloppy looking and sport a lot of hair, but then again, that has been pretty common in the past few decades with Western European NATO militaries with the exception of the French, Brits, and Italians.
Nonetheless, Type 212s are excellent platforms.
Commissioned in 2005, U32 is tiny when compared to U.S. boats, tipping the scales at 1,800-tons (submerged) and having a length of just 183.7-feet.
She carries up to 13 fiber-optic-guided torpedoes in time of war or tension. With her X-tail, she can dive in seas as shallow as 55-feet– making her able to operate almost to the edge of the 10-fathom curve in littoral space– and, using AIP, remain submerged for weeks without poking a snorkel up. Periscope depth is just 44 feet.
On such a compact vessel, everything is a bit cramped and every compartment serves multiple purposes– the boat’s small arms locker is under the skipper’s bunk.
Sister U31. I still think a laughing sawfish would look great on her sail.
U31
Of note, Germany only has six of these vessels in a single squadron and a total of just about 80active submariners in four crews, each of about 20~ men (and women).
“There are more Bundesliga footballers than submariners in Germany.”
The German boat also has beer aboard, enough for two cans per sailor per day– stored in empty torpedo tubes.
The below image shows Maj. A. D’Arcy Marks and Capt. A. Brandon Conron of the Canadian 6th Armoured Regiment (1st Hussars) (6 CAR), posed in front of an M4A2 Sherman medium tank near Colomby-sur-Thaon, France, 28 June 1944 in the push out from Normandy.
Marks has what appears to be a Browning Hi-Power (or M1911?) in a very interesting holster that appears to be a British Pattern 37 flap holster that has been partially cutaway. Conron, meanwhile, is well-outfitted with a revolver rig that includes not only spare rounds but also a cleaning rod in the holster.
As for the 1st Hussars, formed in 1856, they served overseas with distinction in the Great War, earning honors at Vimy Ridge. They returned to France in 1944, landing at Juno Beach where they were “the only unit of the Allied invasion forces known to reach its final objective on D-Day,” which certainly lived up to their motto of Hodie non cars, (Today not tomorrow).
Still part of the Canadian Forces Reserve, they are currently stationed at London, Ontario as part of the 31 Canadian Brigade Group.
Low-level pass of a captured Messerschmitt Me 262 flown by an American pilot in front of General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, commander of Strategic Air Forces in Europe, 27 June 1945, 75 years ago today.
Nicknamed Schwalbe (Swallow), the German jet fighter was first introduced to combat in June 1944, almost a year before VE-Day. Although almost 1,500 were produced and Luffwaffle fighter jocks claimed 500~ air-to-air victories while flying them, mostly against Allied bombers, it was just too little too late and about a third were lost on the ground or to RAF Spitfires and USAAF P-51s, who were still superior to the Schwalbe in dogfights.
Only about a dozen exist around the world today, typically captured aircraft that, like the one above, were tested by the Allies seeking lessons in the next generation of fighters such as the F-86.
While the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG) recently made headlines with their extended 56,000 nautical mile-deployment where it was safe(er) from COVID-19, and only returned home after the eponymous Nimitz-class carrier and her primary cruiser escort, USS Normandy (CG 60), away from their homeports for over 270 days– nine months– it should be pointed that not all of that was spent underway.
As of June 25, 2020, the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) (Ike) and its escort ship, the guided-missile cruiser USS San Jacinto (CG 56), have been continuously at sea for 161 days, setting a new record for the U.S. Navy.
Both ships departed their homeport of Norfolk, Va., on Jan. 17, for the strike group’s Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX) and follow-on deployment to the U.S. 6th and 5th Fleet areas of operation.
Although Naval History and Heritage Command does not specifically track continuous days underway for naval vessels, it has two modern documented days-at-sea records, both of which are now broken.
In Feb. 2002, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) operated for 160 days straight in support of post-9/11 response. And it was again, Ike, who held the record of 152 days consecutively underway during the Iran hostage crisis in 1980.
The ships made over 32 UNREPS, flew over 8,000 sorties and logged more than 40,000 miles underway
Not a bad accomplishment, especially when you consider that Ike is 42 years young, commissioned 18 October 1977, and the Pascagoula-built San Jac is 32, commissioned 23 January 1988.
The Army History Magazine Summer 2020 edition (No.116) is available for free download and the 60-page journal includes a great article on Merrill’s Marauders in Burma as well as the U.S. and Allied Military Relations in World War I.
Army History Magazine is published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History and they have all of their past issues, going back to 1983, online in pdf format.
I’ve been tackling Kimber’s latest take on the modern M1911A1, their Rapide (Black Ice) series, in 10mm Auto. Early signs show that it delivers as advertised, at least across the first 500 rounds anyway.
Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm FG.1 Phantoms of No. 892 Naval Air Squadron back on board the carrier HMS Ark Royal (R09) after a visit to a US Naval Air Station (NAVSTA) Oceana where they worked up with USS Saratoga. The Royal Navy roundels had been “zapped” and replaced with interwar American Navy “meatball” insignia, and on XV590 001/R, the “Royal Navy” flash had been replaced with one for the “Colonial Navy.”
Photo by Lt. Colin Morgan, RN via IWM Catalog No. HU 73946
Originally founded in 1942 to operate Grumman F4F Wildcats (Martlets) from escort carriers, 892 NAS in the 1970s was the only operational RN Phantom squadron, and the force’s only fixed-wing carrier-capable squadron at the time– hence the Omega tail code–and flew from Ark Royal until the mighty British flattop was decommissioned in 1978.
FAA Phantoms got lots of cross-decking in the 1970s when the U.S. Navy was pushing over a dozen flattops around the world, as seen here on USS Independence, This allowed a lot of room for shenanigans.
892 NAS was disbanded on 15 December 1978 and its Phantom FG.1s were transferred to the RAF who continued to fly the type, sans tailhooks, until 1992.
Located in the legacy stables leftover from the 3rd Cavalry at Ft. Myer– where Patton kept his own horses back in the day– the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard)’s Caisson Platoon stables are an interesting place steeped in history.
Of note in the short virtual tour just posted by the Old Guard, they have the Gipper’s 2004 caparison horse, SGT York, as well as a caisson that has Great War damage to its limber.
