Here we see a young guards officer of the Tsar’s Russian Imperial Army, Staff captain of the Life-Guards Lithuanian Regiment Bogutskiy in June 1915 during some of the darkest days of the First World War. The good captain wears the Order of St. Vladimir, to the 4th degrees with swords.
Note he has an officer’s sword on his left and a holstered revolver, likely a Nagant 1895 on his right, both set up to cross-draw. The photobombing guardsman with the Mosin 91 and eschew cap is the moneymaker in this one. Olga Shirnina from Russia colorized this image and the original is here.
By the time Bogutskiy’s picture was taken, the Lithuanian regiment, which started the war as part of the 23rd Army Corps of General AV Samsonov’s doomed II Army had escaped German encirclement the Battle of Tannenberg East Prussian operation and gone on to fight the Kaiser’s troops halfway across Poland. This officer with the sad eyes and well trimmed mustache, incidentally, was killed on the front in 1916.
The Regiment had much history in its short life.
Originally, a part of the Moscow Life Guards Regiment (formed in 1811) they fought Napoleon at Borodino and all through Europe, marching through France at the end of the little Emperor’s Empire. When the Tsar picked up the Kingdom of Poland in the peace that followed, the Lithuanians were split from the Regiment and sent to Warsaw and a new Life Guards unit, being officially given its standard on 12 October 1817.
1830s uniform
They helped put down Polish uprisings in 1830 and 1863, marched into Hungary in 1849 to do the same there for the Austrian Kaiser on the Tsar’s behalf, fought in the Crimean War and against the Turks in 1877 and Japanese in 1905. Drawn from ethnic Lithuanians, they had distinctive yellow trim to their uniforms in all of its variations (though only a thread on the shoulder boards of the 1909 field uniform shows at the top of the post). Their regimental crest, below, is however seen distinctively on Bogutskiy’s blouse.
Below is an interesting German newsreel archive of Emperor Nicholas II and his son Alexei watching the military parade of the Life Guards regiment of Lithuania at the annual maneuvers at Kransoe Selo just south of St. Petersburg in the summer of 1914. Of interest is the parade of the unit that begins about the 3.18 mark after Major General Konstantin Schildbach, then unit commander, takes a toast to the Emperor health. You will notice the color’s company come through wearing all of the Regiment’s various uniforms issued from 1811 through 1914.
Schildach was in interesting fellow. An ethnic Baltic German from a wealthy ennobled family with some 200 years of service to the Tsar, he graduated from the Alexander Military School and joined the Army in 1888, serving far and wide in the Empire. He commanded the Lithuanians during WWI until June 1915 when he changed his last name to Lithuania due to anti-German sentiment in the country. That’s ballsy. Could you see an officer with an Arabic-sounding name today in the U.S. Army change his to “Ranger” or some sort. That’s being married to the Army there.
The toasting Schildach seen in the video
Anyway, Schildach left the unit to command the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Guards Infantry Division then six months later was made chief of staff of the 39th Corps and by the end of 1916 was commander of the 102nd Infantry Division of 16,000 recently trained men. When the March Revolution came that swept away the old order, he was cashiered by the new government but quickly called back in May to command the rapidly disintegrating 79th Infantry Division as a Lt. Gen. When the war ended and the Civil War began he found himself first working in the Ukrainian puppet army of Skoropadsky with the Germans then in the White Army.
However when the Whites left in permanent exile in 1920, Schildach stayed in Russia and talked his way to a job as a military instructor in Moscow with the Reds but was later thrown in the gulag for three years and, even though allowed to return to Moscow, was arrested again in 1938, shot, and dumped in a bag in Donskoy cemetery. The Putin government declared him officially rehabilitated in 1996, which is nice.
Anyway, back to the war service of the Lithuanian Regiment.
Soon after the good Captain Bogutskiy’s photo bomb above, the unit kept up its fighting retreat during the great defeats by the Russian Army in the summer of 1915 but remained intact. Rebuilt over the winter, they participated in the Brusilov Offensive that came very close to knocking Austria out of the war. Interesting that a unit that helped keep the Austrian Kaiser on the throne in 1849 would come so close to sweeping him off just 60 years later.
Speaking of thrones….
On March 12, 1917, the day the Lithuanian Life Guards Reserve Regiment in St. Petersburg (Petrograd) mutinied, Capt. Bogdan K. Kolchigin was elected commander by the committee of soldiers at the front and remained in command until the Moscow Regional Commissariat for Military Affairs, in their Order No. 139, disbanded the former regiments of the Imperial Guard on March 4, 1918 (though the order did not cover the Reserve Regiment in St. Petersburgh which lingered until the Commissariat of Military Affairs of the Petrograd Labor Commune ordered it disbanded on June 6, 1918).
Interestingly, Kolchigin threw his hat in with the Reds and, taking his ex-Guards with him in an orderly withdrawal to Voronezh when the front collapsed after Russia withdrew from WWI, they became the Lithuanian Soviet Regiment and were one of Trotsky’s most professional units in the Civil War.
Kolchigin went on to keep his head and rose to become a Lt. Gen in the Red Army proper, ending his career as commander of the 7th Guards Rifle Corps, 10th Guards Army in 1945 after having lost his foot to a German mine and picking up three Order of the Red Banners and an Order of Lenin from Papa Joe Stalin in the Second World War to go along with his Knights of the Order of St. George awarded by Tsar Nicky in the First.
Kolchigin, in Red Army regalia. Look at all of those Red Banners.
He became a military historian of some note and, when he died in in 1976, was given a hero’s funeral, taking the Lithuanian Regiment of Life Guards with him in his heart to the rally point in the great drill field in the sky. It’s likely Kolchigin had an interesting conversation with Bogutskiy and Schildach when he got there.
And was maybe even photobombed by a guardsman with a crooked hat.
Maj. Hession’s rifle served him well in competition for over 30 years, then was loaned to the British to help Londoners from learning German in WWII. (Photo: National Firearms Museum)
Canadian-born U.S. Army Major John W. “Jack” Hession was a rock star of the shooting world in the 1900s but when Britain needed rifles in World War II, he sent his very best, only asking it be returned after things quieted down.
Hession, born in 1877, was an Army ordnance officer assigned to inspect weapons for the military at Remington Arms and later at Winchester and his cartouche inspector’s mark is well-known on martial guns of that era.
Besides his day job, he was a master long-range and small bore sharpshooter who competed in the 1908 London Olympics, set a world record for an 800 yard shot at Camp Perry the next year by shooting 57 consecutive bulls-eyes (that’s fifty-seven), winning the Marine Corps Cup in 1913, picking up the Wimbledon Cup in 1919 and 1932, and so on and so forth.
Well in 1940, with the British Army losing most of its equipment in the evacuation from Dunkirk, an urgent call was sent out for arms to equip the new Home Guard being prepared to resist a German invasion. With that, in November 1940 the National Rifle Association’s American Rifleman magazine ran an ad placed by the American Committee for the Defense of British Homes asking for guns to be donated as often and as soon as possible.
And in response, Hession sent his match-grade M1903 Springfield. Built in 1905, the bolt-action .30-06 had a 30-inch barrel and Stevens scope installed. A trophy and veteran rifle that had served him well, it was adorned with brass plates denoting its use in dozens of competitions.
Before it shipped to the UK along with over 7,000 other weapons collected, Hession added one more plate, one that simply read, “For obvious reasons the return of this rifle after Germany is defeated would be deeply appreciated.”
Hession himself, then in his 60s and retired from active duty, remained at his civilian job at Winchester and helped the war effort from there.
Sometime after Hitler was crushed the Hession rifle did come back home.
While the great rifleman passed in 1961, novelist Robert A. Heinlein, famous for Starship Troopers, later picked up the gun and even mentioned a similar ‘1903 in his work, Number of the Beast and it eventually ended up in the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia where it rests today.
Sentinels, assigned to the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), stand guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, Va., Jan. 22, 2016, as a record breaking snow storm hits the Washington, D.C. area. The Tomb Guards maintain a constant vigil at the Tomb no matter the weather conditions and has done so in an unbroken chain ever single second of the past 48 years.
In May 1942, the “Old Bird” Lapwing-class minesweeper minesweeper USS Quail (AM-15) was the last surviving American vessel as the Japanese invaded Philippines. [We covered her luckier sister USS Heron (AM-10/AVP-2) in a Warship Weds last month]
When Quail was disabled at Corregidor, an island near the entrance to Manila Bay, Lt. Commander J.H. Morrill had the ship scuttled and gave his crew the choice of surrendering to the Japanese or striking out across open ocean. Seventeen sailors chose to join him on the desperate voyage. With this pistol recovered from a dead serviceman as their only armament, and virtually no charts or navigational aids, they transversed 2,060 miles of ocean in a 36 foot open motor launch, reaching Australia after 29 days.
LCDR Morrill received the Navy Cross and eventually retired at the rank of Rear Admiral.
As noted by Navsource: “Although the Quail was lost, some of its crew decided that surrendering to the Japanese on Corregidor was not an option. Even though the odds against them were enormous, these incredibly brave men in their small boat managed to avoid Japanese aircraft and warships while, at the same time, battling the sea as well as the weather. But like so many of the men in the old U.S. Asiatic Fleet, they simply refused to give up. It was a remarkable achievement by a group of sailors who were determined to get back home so that they could live to fight another day.”
The gun is currently on display at the NRA Museum in Fairfax, VA.
Quail, U.S. Navy photo from the January 1986 edition of All Hands magazine, via Navsource
One of the Quail‘s “loaner officers” who didn’t make the trip south was Lt. Jimmy Crotty, USCG. A mine warfare/EOD specialist who graduated from the USCGA in 1934 at the head of his class, he was serving with the Joint In-Shore Patrol Headquarters when the war kicked off and spent several months on Quail working the mine fields around Manila Bay.
When Quail was sunk, he volunteered to move to Corregidor where he worked with the Navy’s headquarters staff and was captured while working one of the last 75mm guns with the Marine Fourth Regiment, First Battalion. He died two months later under the unspeakably harsh conditions at Cabanatuan Prison Camp #1.
The USCGA Football team dedicated their 2014 season to him and his Bronze Star and Purple Heart are in the custody of the Academy.
Warship Wednesday Dec.30, 2015: Subkiller of the Florida Keys
Image by Chris Eger. All others this post are either by me, or the USCG Historian’s office
Here we see the Treasury-class United States Coast Guard Cutter Samuel D. Ingham (WPG/AGC/WHEC-35) dockside of the old Navy submarine base at Key West near Fort Zachary Taylor, part of the Truman Annex to Naval Air Station Key West, where she has been as a museum ship since 2009.
Same view of Ingham back in the late 1960s, just after she picked up her “racing stripe.”
In the mid-1930s, the Coast Guard had some 40~ oceangoing cutters consisting of a few pre-WWI era slow boats and a host of 165 and 240/250-foot vessels designed for bluewater rum-runner busting during Prohibition. With the Volstead Act repealed and the boozecraft disappearing, the new push in the Treasury department once Mr. Roosevelt took office was for long-legged boats to help patrol the nation’s burgeoning international air traffic routes to affect rescues and provide weather support.
Although the Coasties came up with their own design for a stretched version of their 250-foot Lake-class cutters, the Navy had just coughed up a new gunboat design– the two Erie-class gunboats USS Erie (PG-50) and USS Charleston (PG-51) — which the service could save some bread on by gently modifying. Instead of the Erie‘s 6”/47 Mk17s, the Coast Guard went with 5”/51’s and saved money in other areas, building their cutters out at about 30 percent less cost than the Eries.
These seven new cutters, classified gunboats (WPG) in Treasury service, were all named after former Secretaries of that cabinet branch with USCGC George M. Bibb (WPG-31) laid down 15 August 1935 followed quickly by Campbell, Warship Weds alumni Spencer, Duane, Taney, Hamilton and the hero of our story, Ingham— named after Andrew Jackson’s Treasury boss. However, shortly after commissioning all of the names were trimmed to the last name only.
U.S.S. ‘Samuel D. Ingham’ Entering At Havana Harbor-Nov. 12 1936
Capable of over 20-knots and with the capability to carry a seaplane (a JF-2 amphibian), these 327-foot long, 2400-ton cutters could roam across the ocean and back again with an impressive 12,300-nm range. A pair of 5-inch/51-caliber guns augmented a few 6-pounder guns was impressive enough for shallow water (can float in 13 feet of sea) gunboat and seen as more than adequate to stop smugglers and sink derelict vessels on the high seas. In a pinch, the armament could be increased in time of war, which the Navy was keenly aware of.
These cutters were designed from the outset to accommodate a floatplane
Built at Philadelphia Naval Yard (Ingham was born at Great Spring near New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1779), the cutter carrying his name was commissioned on 12 September 1936 and was the fourth cutter to bear that name. She was assigned to Port Angeles, Washington, where she participated in arduous Bering Sea patrols until the start of WWII in Europe.
Ingham’s crew undergoing the prewar battle practice, in this case firing both of her main 5-inch 50-caliber main batteries.
Given a tasking for “Grand Banks Patrols,” Ingham was homeported in Boston with orders to identify foreign men-of-war, be on the lookout for any “un-neutral” activities, and report anything of an unusual nature. Each cruise lasted approximately two weeks. The cutters ran with their ensign illuminated by searchlight at all times and prefaced all signals with Coast Guard identification. This transitioned to three-week long weather station duty in the North Atlantic with embarked meteorologists.
In December 1940, she was up-armed with things growing increasingly tense in the North Atlantic and transferred for duty with the Navy on 1 July 1941 and her Coast Guard crew intact, spending part of the year as a floating embassy in spy-rich Lisbon for the U. S. ambassador to Portugal.
Assigned to CINCLANT at the U.S. entrance to the war, she soon began a series of convoy operations, escorting no less than 28 convoys back and forth from the East Coast to Iceland between Dec. 1941 and March 1943. Some were pure milk runs. Others were not.
On SC-107, 16 ships were torpedoed.
On ONSJ-160, Ingham reduced speed and ceased zigzagging as a force 12 hurricane developed and then had to spend three days searching for stragglers.
It was in this duty she rescued survivors from the torpedoed SS Henry R. Mallory, Robert E. Hopkins, West Portal, Jeremiah Van Rensseler, and all hands of the Matthew Luckenback.
Then there was the time she gesunken a U-boat.
Ingham fitted out for escort of convoy and anti-submarine warfare. Note her camouflage
Ingham, along with USS Babbitt and USS Leary was near Iceland, where they stumbled on the brand new German Type VIIC submarine U-626 which was on her maiden patrol on 15 December 1942. The cutter made sonar contact with an object and dropped depth charges on the sub, sinking her and killing her entire crew of 47 though some argue the point.
During the 8 to 12 watch tonight, while on patrol 3 miles ahead of the convoy, we picked up screw-beats of a submarine while listening, ran in and dropped three 600-pounders. Then, getting contact on the U-boat again by echo-ranging we made another run and gave it a 10-charge barrage. Search was continued for some time, but contact was not regained. There is a strong possibility that we sunk him without forcing him to the surface.
Another surface action in June 1942:
On the 16th, the Ingham broke away from the convoy to investigate a light brown smoke on the horizon and on approaching closer definitely sighted a submarine with conning tower and diesel oil smoke from the exhaust plainly visible. The Ingham increased speed to 19 knots and gave chase, firing one round from the forward 5″ gun at a range of 13,000 yards.
Then in 1944, she found herself in the Med, chasing sonar contacts off Morocco and Spain before assuming flagship of the Senior Mediterranean Escort Group.
U.S.C.G.C. W 35. NAVY YARD, NEW YORK. 28 May 1944 Photo No. F644C6169
Then in May, Ingham proceeded back to the states for conversion to an AGC (Combined operations communications headquarters ship) which took most of the rest of the year and led to her shipping for the Pacific, arriving Dec 26th at Humboldt Bay, reporting to Commander, Seventh Fleet.
USS Ingham, CG (WAGC-35)U.S. Navy Yard, S.C. . .U.S.S. INGHAM, (W 35), Starboard BowPhoto No. 2878-44 11 October 1944
By February 1945, as the flag of Commander, Task Group 76.3, Ingham was the HQ and guide ship for the Mariveles-Corregidor Attack Group in the PI and later oversaw the beach landings at Tigbauan, Pulupandan, Macajalar Bay, Sarangani Bay and the seizure of Balut Island. In these attacks she frequently let her 5-inchers release hate on Japanese shore positions while dodging underwater obstacles and swimming sappers.
Ingham as an AGC 1944
Commander Dean W. Colbert wrote in his memoir of life on board Ingham of her crowding at the time with four men assigned to a single rack:
“. . .during major landings, we accommodated up to 360 persons onboard and there was literally standing room only. . .Mealtime was a carefully orchestrated operation. Up to 1000 meals per day were prepared and served out of a galley roughly the size of a kitchen in a 4-bedroom house. . .It was a challenge by any standard, but Ingham’s crew rose to the occasion. Many of the ‘black gang’ . . .and other crew members had been on board during the worst of the U-boat campaigns in the North Atlantic. As a whole, the crew was superb, especially the chief and first class petty officers. They were a tremendously capable and reliable group.”
The end of the war found her off Okinawa as the flag of Adm. Buckmaster who sailed into Shanghai and Haiphong to help coordinate occupation efforts with Chinese army officials.
On 6 January 1946, she arrived back on the East Coast in New York, landed her armament, got her white paint scheme back, and picked up where she left off as a cutter.
Homeported at Norfolk, Virginia, she spent the next 22 years on quiet weather station duty, assisting those in peril at sea and conducting law enforcement operations.
Then came another war.
1965. She would pick up the racing stripe two years later, and ship for Southeast Asia a year after that.
Becoming part of Coast Guard Squadron Three in 1968, Ingham soon became part of the Navy’s Operation Market Time interdiction and coastal surveillance effort in Vietnam. She spent a year in CGS3, conducting numerous naval gunfire support missions, serving as a mothership to Navy Swift boats and Coast Guard 82-foot patrol boats, sending medical teams ashore to win hearts and minds in local seaside hamlets, and stopping anything that moved inside her area of operation.
As noted by her official USCG history, “She participated in Operation Sea Lords and Operation Swift Raiders, earning an unprecedented two Presidential Unit Citations, the only cutter to be so honored.”
18 July 1978 Photo No. G-BPA-07-18-78
Still homeported in Virginia, Ingham picked up where she left off in 1969 and continued ocean station duty until the stations themselves were disbanded in 1980.
Atlantic Weather Observation Service “ocean stations” on which thousands of Coast Guardsmen served through most of the Cold War
After that, she was a favorite vessel of the USCGA in New London, taking cadets on summer cruises that lasted up to 10 weeks at a time and continuing to do so until 1985.
She took breaks from cadet training to seize drug runners (the Honduran fishing trawler Mary Ann, where the boarding team discovered 15 tons of marijuana in 1979, and the vessel Misfit carrying 35 tons of marijuana in 1982) as well as saving hundreds of lives during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980– often landing refugees and towing Cuban vessels to Key West for processing.
She outlasted all of her sisters in service, with Hamilton being torpedoed during the war off Iceland 29 January 1942, Spencer sold for scrap in 1981, Campbell decommissioned in 1982 and sunk as a target, Bibb and Duane decommissioned in 1985, and Pearl Harbor survivor Taney decommissioned 7 December 1986.
On 1 August 1985, Ingham‘s hull numbers were painted gold, signifying she was the oldest commissioned Coast Guard vessel in service, period. On 24 May 1988, she was decommissioned with a salute from President Reagan. It was the first time in 52 years that she did not have an official tasking.
Ingham in her pre-1967 livery by William H Ravell
USCGC Ingham Decommissioning Ceremony 1988:
Saved as a memorial, she was at first a museum ship at Patriot’s Point, S.C., and then, after dry-dock and repairs, at Key West. A maritime museum keeps her in excellent condition and in 1995 was made the official site of the USCGs WWII memorial per order of the commandant.
I had a chance to tour Ingham last month and here is a sampling of her current disposition:
The ship is a time capsule from her last use in May 1988. I was told the only thing the Coast Guard did when they turned her over was dewat the guns, remove the classified documents from the safe, and pull some sensitive internal panels from the commo, sonar, and radar suites.
Officers mess
Remember the comment about a galley for a typical 4 BR house?
Holy 2600, batman
The enlisted mess
Japanese samurai sword picked up in 1945
GMs locker.Dig the M2 giant size training tool and the 20mm OK
Barber
Captain’s cabin
Captain’s cabin. This would be the berth of the Admiral when she was an AGC in WWII
Commo anyone?
Looking forward, note her 5″/38, and saluting gun. Malloy Square and Duval Street are a few blocks up.
CIC
Her bridge is off limits, but note all the brightwork and 1930s-style porthole row
Her sistership Taney has been preserved in Baltimore harbor since her decommissioning while sisters, Duane and Bibb, are only about a half hour away from Ingham‘s current location, both sunk as an artificial reef off Key Largo, on 27 November 1987.
As a nod to her many years of service to the USCGA, Inghamis often graced with visits from cadets who spend vacation time sleeping in the onboard berths, scraping paint, and repairing heads.
When in Key West, she is well worth a stop.
Specs:
Via shipbucket
Via shipbucket
Via shipbucket
Displacement 2,350 t. (lt)
Length 327′ 0″
Beam 41′ 0″
Draft 12′ 6″ (max.)
Propulsion
two Westinghouse double-reduction geared turbines
two Babcock & Wilcox sectional express, air-encased, 400 psi, 200° superheat
two 9′ three-bladed propellers, 6,200shp (1966)
Fuel Capacity NSFO 135,180 gallons (547 tons)
Speed 20.5 kts (max)
Electronics:
HF/DF: (1942) DAR (converted British FH3) ?
Radar: (1945) SC-2, SGa; (1966) AN/SPS-29D, AN/SPA-52.
Fire Control Radar: (1945) Mk-26; (1966) Mk-26 MOD 4
Sonar: (1945) QC series; (1966) AN/SQS-11
Complement 1937
12 officers
4 warrant officers
107 enlisted 1941
16 officers
4 warrant officers
202 enlisted 1966
10 officers
3 warrant officers
134 enlisted
Armament: 1936
2 single 5″/51 cal gun mounts
2 6-pdrs
1 1-pdr 1941
3 single 5″/51 cal gun mounts
3 single 3″/50 cal dual purpose gun mounts
4 .50 caliber Browning Machine Guns
2 depth charge racks
“Y” gun depth charge projector 1943
2 single 5″/51 cal gun mounts
4 single 3″/50 cal dual gun mounts
2 single 20mm/80 AA gun mounts
Hedgehog device
6 “K” gun depth charge projectors
2 depth charge racks 1945
2 single 5″/38 cal dual purpose gun mounts
3 twin 40mm/60 AA gun mounts
4 single 20mm/80 AA gun mounts 1946
2 single 5″/38 cal dual gun mount
1 twin 40mm;/60 AA gun mount
8 single 20mm/80 AA gun mounts
1 Hedgehog 1966
1 single 5″/38 MK30 Mod75 cal dual-purpose gun mount w/ MK 52 MOD 3 director
1 MK 10-1 Hedgehog (removed)
2 (P&S) x Mk 32 MOD 5 TT
4 MK 44 MOD 1 torpedoes
2 .50 cal. MK-2 Browning Machine Guns
2 MK-13 high altitude parachute flare mortars
Aircraft (discontinued after WWII)
1936, Grumman JF-2, V148
1938, Curtiss SOC-4
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The Ace of Clubs, 771 Naval Air Squadron, who has celebrated over 40 years of saving lives from RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall, started service with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm 24 May 1939 at Lee-on-Solent flying Fairey Swordfish TSR biplanes, her pilots helped in the search for the Bismarck. Transitioning to SAR in 1961, they hung up their then DeHavland Sea Venoms for Westland Whirlwinds and have been a chopper unit ever since.
Now 771 NAS and HMS Gannet’s SAR Flight, the last two military SAR units in the UK, are standing down. Their 300~ rescues per year will be the duty of civilian contractors who assumed the task from the RAF earlier this year.
Most powerful and glorious Lord God, at whose command the winds blow, and lift up the waves of the sea, and who stillest the rage thereof; We, thy creatures, but miserable sinners, do in this our great distress cry unto thee for help; Save, Lord, or else we perish. –Prayers to be used in [all Ships in]* storms at sea, 1892.
Iconic shot of the Endurance lit by flares at night. Photo by Frank Hurley 1914-1917. Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Designed by Ole Aanderud Larsen, the 144-foot long three-masted barquentine Endurance was built at the Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway and fully completed on 17 December 1912 for a singular purpose– to carry Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition to that frozen continent. Initially christened Polaris, her name was changed before delivery– an act that many old salts see as bad luck.
At onset of her delivery, the Times of London noted, Endurance was “built specially for work in Polar seas,” adding that “in an ice-coated sea there can be no turbulent waves which are the causes of so many disasters in warmer zones.”
Well, we all know what happened to the poor vessel, crushed by ice, causing her to sink three years later in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica.
After 80 years of storing the original glass plate and celluloid negatives, RGS along with the Institute of British Geographers (IBG) has digitized over 90 images for the public. Due to enlargement, the photos reveal detail that had not been previously seen, like in the image of six crewmen huddled around the fire below. Previously, only five men were visible in the image, but after digitization it is now possible to make out a sixth man through the thick smoke of the flame.
Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Photo by Frank Hurley 1914-1917. 5.S ingle use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Wearing full polar clothing and gathered under the bow of the ship, photographed and filmed by Frank Hurley, probably on 1 September 1915. Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Ernest Shackleton at Ocean Camp. Glass Plate Negative Photo by Frank Hurley.Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Single use permission from the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
If you want to explore the newly digitized images in person, make sure to catch the Enduring Eye which runs through February 28, 2016 at the Royal Geographic Society in London. The exhibition will then have a voyage of its own and travel to the US, Canada, and Australia.
As for Endurance, since 1967, the Royal Navy’s Antarctic patrol vessel has traditionally carried the name Endurance as a sign of respect.
As it is already Christmas across the International Date Line, take this into perspective.
1941 12 19 Hong Kong, Counter-Attack at the Wongneichong Gap by Giuseppe Rava
On this day in 1941, the Hong Kong Garrison was mounting a doomed defense against the might of Japan. Heavy among the embattled defenders, outnumbered nearly 4:1 by the attacking Japanese was “C Force,” a group of some 2,000 Canadians consisting of a brigade headquarters and a battalion each of the Royal Rifles of Canada from Quebec and Winnipeg Grenadiers from Manitoba. The below from the Toronto Star Weekly, 21 December 1961.
“It was the morning of December 25, 1941, in Hong Kong. The sun shone bright and warm. Along the road bordered with blood-red flowers strolled a Canadian soldier, steel helmet perched on the back of his head and singing at the top of his voice. Fellow soldiers taking cover in the basement of a house shouted at him, “Take cover – get off the road!” The Canadian shouted back, “It’s a lovely day and it’s Christmas morning.” Then he picked up his song and continued to stroll along the road, to disappear forever.”
“Who he was, where he came from and what eventually happened to him, the survivors of the Winnipeg Grenadiers who had shouted out to him never did learn. But the unreality of this occasion – the casual, singing soldier strolling along, oblivious to the earth-shaking explosions or the hills of Hong Kong which at that moment were a mass of roaring flames – did not unduly amaze them. It was, so they thought, merely an appropriate part of the greater unreality which was the battle of Hong Kong itself. This does not mean that there was anything unreal about the savage fighting that had gone on for 18 days as 14,000 Canadian, British and Indian troops attempted to hold off 60,000 experienced, superbly trained Japanese troops. ”
Both the Royal Rifles and Winnipeg Grenadiers were rebuilt.
“Today I held hell in my hands,” said a firearms buff who came across a battered 1911, pockmarked from its wartime service before it was recovered from a World War II battlefield.
Some 71 years ago this week, Hitler launched the last great German offensive through the densely forested Ardennes region near the intersection of the eastern borders of Belgium, France, and Luxembourg.
Codenamed “Operation Watch on the Rhine” over 200,000 Germans, including some of the most crack units remaining in the Army at the time, fell upon just 80,000 American troops, including many units such as the 101st Airborne, who were under strength following heavy losses and looking forward to some time in a “quiet area” to regroup.
While the German offensive gained ground at first, eventually reinforcements– including Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr.’s Third Army–were rushed to the scene and counterattacked.
However, for the men trapped inside the “bulged” salient from St. Vith to the week-long Siege of Bastogne, it was a white hell of exploding trees and German panzers that those who survived never forgot.
The pistol examined by Daniel ED MacMurray IV, marked with a yellowed tag that reads, “Colt pistol picked up after battle at Bastonge Dec. 1944,” is battered with shrapnel wounds across the top of the slide, muzzle and grip including several that penetrated deep into the steel.
Ed Heinemann’s “Tinker Toy Bomber”, the go-cart-like Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was a child of the 1950s and so good at what it did almost 3,000 of them were made. Although the U.S. military put these little scooters in the boneyard for good in 2003, the largest export customer for Skyhawks was Israel, who picked up more than 300 of the attack plane starting in 1967– dubbed Ayit (Hebrew: עיט, for Eagle).
Put to good use in Yom Kippur War in 1973 where Skyhawk aircrews took off to about 1000 operational sorties in the southern front– saving the day there by most accounts– and over Syria and Lebanon in the 80s and 90s, the type has slowly been replaced in service as a combat aircraft with the F-16 by 2008 and now, by the Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master in a training role.
“Ayit pilots marked great historical events in the history of aerial combat,” Air Force Commander Amir Eshel said, “Many of the force’s achievements are the outcome of the combination between the small plane and the greatness of its pilots.”
This leaves Brazil, who operates a dozen highly modified ex-Kuwaiti A-4s for use off thier 1960s-era Clemenceau-class aircraft carrier NAe São Paulo (A12), as the last Scooter drivers in service. They are expected to remain operational until 2025.
