Author Archives: laststandonzombieisland

Is Taurus finally getting its pistol act together?

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Since the 1980s, I’ve had a few Taurus handguns pass through my hands and, while I had fair success with their S&W-cloned K-framed .38s and similarly-cloned M1911A1 .45ACPs, the same could not be said for their polymer-framed semi-auto 9mm pistols (looking at you, Taurus Millennium).

However, a few years ago they upgraded their semi-autos with the G2 (Generation 2) model which exercised a lot of the demons with the Millennium line. Then last year they coughed up the G3 series, which got a lot closer to being good, especially for the price.

Now, this week, they came out with the G3c, a 12+1 capacity 9mm that takes Glock sights, is about the same size as the Springfield Armory Hellcat, and is set up to run sub-$300 at retailers. Also, as opposed to the Hellcat, it seems to be partially American-made at the Brazilain company’s new plant in Bainbridge, Georgia.

It looks like I am going to have to T&E one of these…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Rifle Shooting a lost art…in 1913

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Sailors and Marines from the ship’s crew at the rifle range, Auckland, New Zealand, circa 1904-1906. Copied from the USS Baltimore album, page 47. NH 101377

A full-page feature in the May 18, 1913 edition of the New York Sun, entitled, “Rifle Shooting Becoming a Lost Art in America” decried the poor state of American marksmanship just less than 15 months before the start of the Great War and slightly under four years from U.S. involvement in said conflict. The lack of American riflemen at the time seemed apparent, despite the best efforts of the nascent Department of Civilian Marksmanship, today’s CMP, established by the Army in 1903.

From the article:

Records of the War Department show that in 1910, 29,230 members of the regular army, exclusive of those in the Philippines, received rifle Instruction, of whom 17,473 failed to make the qualifying score. In the organized militia, 51,749 received rifle Instruction, of whom 20,630 failed to qualify as marksmen.

There were also 40,000 National Guardsmen who were not even taken to a range. Out of the 25,320 students of colleges and universities supporting military departments only 7,710 received instruction In rifle practice, during the year. Including 39,400 sailors and marine sand 3,000 members of civilian rifle clubs, the aggregate number of men between the ages of 18 and 45 who practiced with the service arm during one year was 131,089, out of a male population within the enlistment ages of 16,000,000, or less than 1 percent.

I wonder what the author would think today?

A Close Look at a Shinyo

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Just three Japanese Shinyo (Sea Quake) suicide boats are in existence today. One is in the collection of the Australian War Memorial, where it has been since the end of the war.

“A Japanese Shinyo suicide launch which was captured by the crew of the Bathurst-class corvette/minesweeper HMAS Deloraine (J232/M232), brought back to Australia and presented to the Australian War Memorial. Six of the 24 captured boats were in operational readiness. This image is from the collection of Lieutenant Paul Merrick (Mick) Dexter, who enlisted in the Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RANV) in 1943, and was a watchkeeper and anti-submarine specialist on Corvettes between 1944 and 1946. He continued to serve in the RANV after the Second World War, resigning his commission in 1964.”

From AWM:

Japanese suicide launch (Shinyo). Plywood hulled vessel over frames, with a rear open-topped compartment for a single pilot. Powered by a Chevrolet straight 6 cylinder engine housed in the central compartment. Painted emerald green above the waterline and red below. The original Japanese pea-green paint survives below more modern paint coats. The missing steering wheel and some controls.

“This launch was recovered by HMAS Deloraine at Sandakan Harbour, British North Borneo, during the period of the occupation of that area by Australian Naval & Military Forces in October 1945. It was one of six that were in an immediate state of operational readiness complete with petrol, out of a total of thirty discovered. An opportunity of using this type of craft in the area was never presented. There was a further eighteen similar craft in different states of repair. This launch was used by sailors from the Deloraine as a ski boat on Sandakan Harbour. It returned to Australia with the Deloraine in late 1945 and was presented to the Australian War Memorial.

Construction of these boats began in 1943. The boats were designed to be one-man suicide craft armed with a 300kg charge of TNT. By the end of the war, about 6,000 had been produced, most of them built of wood but a few built from steel. Most of these boats were deployed around the Philippine Islands and the Japanese Home Islands and hidden until they could be of use. Because of their green color, they were referred to as ‘frogs’ by Japanese troops. The launch when transferred to HMAS Deloraine was painted to conform to the ship’s color scheme, but the correct colors should be dark olive green with red below the waterline.”

To further detail how the Dexter boat got back to the AWM, check out the below radio (podcast) interview, which is very informative.

From Hush Puppy to Starsky & Hutch

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In the late 1960s, Smith & Wesson started a project to provide Vietnam-deployed SEAL Teams with a modified S&W Model 39 9mm pistol that included a slide lock and threaded barrel for a suppressor as well as a 14+1 magazine capacity, a big jump from the Model 39’s standard 8+1 load.

The gun, intended for NSW use to silence sentries or their dogs, became dubbed the “Hush Puppy.”

Note the chest holster…Hush Puppy inside

Well, by 1971, Smith thought the basic model, sans suppressor-ready features, would make a good gun for LE and the consumer markets and introduced it as the more polished S&W Model 59, which soon saw some serious success in the hands of Disco-era police, including a regular appearance on cop shows of the era.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Warship Wednesday, June 17, 2020: Mohican Motorboat

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, June 17, 2020: Mohican Motorboat

Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN (Medical Service Corps), 1974. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 78973

Here we see the future section patrol craft, USS Chingachgook (SP-35), described in the 1916 photo as a “Submarine Chaser,” flying a Yachting Ensign but with a pair of deck guns installed, presumably as part of the popular civilian preparedness movement, in preparation for service with the new Naval Coast Defense Reserve.

The tradition of the Navy quickly acquiring commercial or consumer vessels in times of war and, after a quick retrofit with a few guns and, perhaps, a coat of paint, placing them back into service as a patrol craft or armed dispatch boat, dates back to the Revolutionary War. The tactic remained through the Civil War and saw a huge resurgence in the brief conflict with Spain in 1898. During the latter fashionable little war, whole squadrons of yachts, readily made available by scions of Wall Street, became plucky auxiliary patrol boats sent willingly into harms’ way.

Fast forward to the Great War and the terrifyingly incremental lead up to America’s involvement in that terrible conflict, and the Navy Department took steps in that period of armed neutrality to expand their reach.

Under provisions of the “Big Navy” Act of August 29, 1916, which established the Naval Reserve Force to be composed of six classes:

First. The Fleet Naval Reserve.
Second. The Naval Reserve
Third. The Naval Auxiliary Reserve
Fourth. The Naval Coast Defense Reserve
Fifth. The Volunteer Naval Reserve
Sixth. Naval Reserve Flying Corps.

The Naval Coast Defense Reserve was to be composed of:

“Members of the Naval Reserve Force who may be capable of performing special useful service in the Navy or in connection with the Navy in defense of the coast shall be eligible for membership in the Naval Coast Defense Reserve.”

The NCDRF, seen today as opening the door for women to serve in the Navy, also started cataloging in at first hundreds and then later thousands of craft like the Chingachgook for future inclusion in the fleet.

Dubbed “Section Patrol” craft, these boats were given SP hull numbers that they typically did not carry while they retained their pre-war civilian names. Reporting to the Naval Districts they were mobilized in, they would be responsible for keeping an eye peeled for spies, saboteurs, submarines, and assorted other strange goings-on. Keep in mind the Black Tom Island explosion had occurred on July 30, just under a month before the Act was put into effect and German cells were active along both coasts to one degree or another. 

As for Chingachgook, she was built by the Greenport Basin & Construction Co. of Long Island— best known for fishing craft, tugs, and yachts– in 1916, not as a civilian craft, but in hopes of offering her as a prototype sub-buster along motor yacht lines to the U.S. Government. Some 60-feet long, she could make a reported 40 knots on her two 300hp Sterling gasoline engines.

The below 23 January 1917 image shows Chingachgook, not yet in Navy service, lifted out of the waters of New York’s East River and placed on a truck for transport to the Motor Boat Show at Grand Central Palace. Note her stern gun, “10” pennant number on her pilothouse, and twin screws/rudders. Keep in mind that Bannerman’s military surplus, located in Manhattan, would sell both vintage and modern artillery pieces of all kinds, cash and carry, as the NFA of 1934 was still decades away.

War Department image 165-WW-338A-19, LOC ARC Identifier: 45513537

Our hearty little craft, of course, borrows her name from the supporting character of Chingachgook, the fictional Native American warrior featured in four of James Fenimore Cooper’s five Leatherstocking Tales, including his 1826 novel, The Last of the Mohicans.

Chingachgook was purchased by the Navy 25 May 1917 from Theodore W. Brigham of Greenport– six weeks after the U.S. entered the war– and placed in service on 6 June 1917, assigned to the 3rd Naval District (New York) for patrol duty. At least nine other dissimilar Greenport-built motorboats went on to become SP craft including USS Ardent (SP-680), USS Atlantis (SP-40), USS Beluga (SP-536), USS Perfecto (SP-86), USS Quest (SP-171), USS Sea Gull (SP-544), USS Uncas (SP-689), USS Vitesse (SP-1192), and USS Whippet (SP-89).

Chingachgook underway at high speed, October 1916. Like the first image in the post, she is flying yachting flags but is armed with a Colt M1895 “potato digger” machine gun forward and a small (1-pounder) cannon aft, probably for service with the pre-World War I Coast Defense Reserve. Note, while the mate up front is in naval-style crackerjacks, the two men in her wheelhouse are wearing boaters and bespoke suits. Photographed by Edwin Levick, of New York City. NH 101040

Chingachgook’s wartime service ended just two months later.

As noted by DANFS: “On 31 July 1917 her gasoline tank exploded, injuring members of the crew and igniting the ship. A survey of 13 October found her hull worthless and beyond repair, and she was subsequently disposed of by burning.”

She was struck from the Navy Register 19 February 1918.

A one-off design, the Navy went much bigger on their 110-foot sub chaser designs which, like the smaller Chingachgook that preceded them, were wooden-hulled gasoline-engined vessels developed by yacht makers that were intended to be mass-produced in small boatyards. The subsequent “splinter fleet” of SCs grew into the hundreds by 1919.

Later, in WWII, the Navy also used hundreds of small trawlers, yachts, drifters, former Coast Guard Cutters and the like in the same role as the Great War’s myriad Section Patrol craft, but typically designated them as Patrol Yachts (PYc), Patrol Craft (PC), Civilian Vessels (ID), or Yard Patrol Craft (YP) which were, perhaps, more descriptive terms, some of which continue to this day.

As for the Greenport Yacht & Shipbuilding Company, which is still in business, they went on to build coastal minesweepers, subchasers, and LCM landing craft in WWII.

Specs:
Displacement: 13 tons
Length: 60 feet
Beam: 10 feet
Draft: 3 feet
Propulsion: Two 300hp Sterling gasoline engine, two shafts.
Speed: 40 knots (although listed as “22 mph” by some sources)
Armament: One 1-pounder (37mm) and one Colt 30.06 machine gun

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Looking for Logs in all the right places

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A team of five graduate student interns working on a project titled “Seas of Knowledge: Digitization and Retrospective Analysis of the Historical Logbooks of the United States Navy” have been hard at work and have recently digitized 653 logbooks from 30 Navy vessels, all of which are available in the National Archives Catalog.

Page from the Logbook of the USS Hartford, 24 April 1862. Yes, Farragut’s Hartford! (NAID 167171004)

This project will continue through 2021 and will focus on digitizing Navy logbooks for the period 1861-1879.

The project is a collaboration between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Washington, NARA, and the National Archives Foundation, and is supported by a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (the grant program was made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation).

Be sure to recycle

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Outside of Moscow, reportedly on the location of one of the principal stavkas of the 1941 defense of the city from the German invasion, now stands the so-called Main Cathedral of Russian Armed Forces.

Built by popular subscription (with lots of help from the military and government) the immense Eastern Orthodox church is a living, breathing memory to the Russian (not Soviet) effort against Hitler in the Great Patriotic War. Opened over the weekend in a 3 hour-long ceremony attended by much brass to include the Minister of Defense, the facility is half WWII shrine/half church

Of interest, the giant steel doors to the cathedral include a fallen German eagle at the feet of very un-Soviet-like traditional Russian martial patron saints and is reportedly cast from metal that includes recycled German panzer treads, armor, and road wheels.

Going a step further, the steps and walkway into the door are made from reclaimed steel drawn from crates of German MP40s, Walther P-38s, and MG42s, a small part of the 3 million former Wehrmacht arms taken back to the Motherland in 1945.

If a part of you that is interested in collecting vintage WWII guns screamed out into the night, have no fear, as the Russians still have warehouses full of the stuff and they reportedly just melted down the low-end of their stock for the cathedral.

A video of part of the arms holdings still on hand in Vladimir, outside of Moscow, is below.

20mm Burglary Tool

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In 1965, Canadian criminal Joel Singer, a 22-year old member of the Montreal-based West End Gang syndicate, stole two WWII-era Lahti L39s 20mm anti-tank guns and 200 rounds of ammunition from a Plattsburg, New York gun dealer.

This thing

Singer and four other gang members later used one of these guns in a dramatic late-night burglary when they broke into the vault of the Brinks facility in Syracuse, New York. The Boombeast–equipped with a drum-sized improvised suppressor made from an oil drum filled with steel wool and rubber shavings, then dampened with a wet mattress– cracked open the bank vault after a hail of 33-rounds of AP, allowing the gang to flee with nearly a half mil in cash.

Oh my

Singer was the 221th person to be added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List on November 19, 1965. He spent two weeks at large before authorities captured him and sent him up the river. Singer later suffered PTSD during the Attica prison riots in 1971 and was released just after on account of this. This 20mm bandit took his own life in 1973 at age 29. In the end, just $166 of the nearly $425,000 taken was recovered.

The use of a 20mm cannon in a robbery was never tried again after this incident. The Brinks job incidentally was the central plot device in a later 1970s Clint Eastwood film “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” but an unsuppressed US Navy surplus Oerlikon cannon (in puny 20x128mm caliber) was substituted for the Finnish hardware.

Of course, these things have a heck of a kick.

Admiral Semmes statue to be shuffled to local museum

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Facing a $25K-a-day fine from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, the City of Mobile has decided to move the recently toppled statue of the former U.S. Navy CDR/C.S. Navy ADM/C.S. Army B. Gen., Raphael Semmes, to the city’s museum, where it belongs.

Notably, the museum also holds numerous relics of the commerce raider CSS Alabama, which Semmes helmed to 66 naval victories and one crushing defeat, as well as artifacts from the officer’s own life, including an ornate  French-made Houllier-Blanchard revolver I chronicled in the past.

You don’t see these every day. 

Update: It is still gonna cost the city some big bucks to be woke.

Camouflages and service rifles of Europe

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I stumbled upon this fairly accurate map of the assorted current camouflages and service rifles of Europe recently and thought that it deserved to be shared. Of course, there are minor things to grouch over, such as the fact that France still by far has more FAMAS rifles on hand than HK416s, and that the Polish military is in the process of switching to the new FB Radom MSBS Grot rifle, but all in all, it is pretty on point.

Of course, my favorite combo could be the Norwegian M98 camo and their HK416s, as seen in use by this Coastal Ranger below, but that’s just my humble.

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