Devil Dogs just before the Tarawa landings doing what Marines normally do…
Tragically, Tarawa was a hard nut to crack for the 2nd Marine Division and these leathernecks deserved every bit of happiness they got prior to hitting the beach. In just three days the Marines suffered 1,009 killed and 2,101 wounded, a casualty rate of some 10 percent.
In the Roman times such a rate was called decimation.
In the 15th Century the Swiss Army had the reputation of somewhere north of Israeli special forces and just shy of Mandalorians. Swiss mercenary regiments for for about 300 years or so were the norm in European armies for shock troops and detachments to be sent far, far away and left to their own devices.
In fact, Cat Island, an isolated and forlorn strip of nothing just off the Mississippi Coast where I grew up, although French after 1699, was garrisoned by Swiss troops back in the day and metal detector fanatics are constantly tearing up the dunes looking for old remnants out there.
Medieval/Renaissance Swiss mercenaries. They may have dressed like Liberace, but they could fight
Anyway, would the Swiss fight to the death for a bit of gold?
Absolutely.
During the sacking of Rome on May 6, 1527, 189 Swissmen under one Captain Kaspar Röist held off a force of Hapsburg troops ten times their number to allow Pope Clement to beat feet. They nearly perished to a man and the man in the funny hat got away with his life. To this day, the Papal guard are made up of Swiss volunteers– the oldest continually operational military unit in modern history.
Well, on 10 August 1792, some 20,000 French Republican National Guards and others stormed the palais des Tuileries which was garrisoned by a handful of Royalist volunteers and 900~ Swiss dogs of war.
Again, like the sack of Rome, the Swiss fought like men possessed but could not hold back the sea.
Storming of Tuileries portraying the massacre of the Swiss Guards, by Henri-Paul Motte, 1892. Click to big up
How did it go for them?
As British historian Nesta Webster says in her book Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette during the Revolution: “Could [Louis XVI] imagine…that the mob, not content with venting their fury on the Chateau, would massacre not only the Swiss Guard, men of the people who had remained at their posts, but even the luckless servants in the kitchens of the Palace? The horrors committed on this 10th of August were such as no human mind could possibly have conceived.” 900 Swiss guards were brutally killed, many tortured, some roasted, mutilated, decapitated, with their limbs distributed throughout Paris. Children played ball in the streets with the heads of the brave Swiss, and the steps of the Tuileries ran with blood, like some gruesome altar of human sacrifice. People dipped bread into the blood of the victims.
I guess that’s why the Pope still keeps these guys around and Hitler never crossed that border…
Swiss Soldiers from the Gebirgs Infantry Battalion 85’ training with the Light Machine Gun 05 (FN Minimi). All members of the Papal Swiss Guard are drawn from volunteers who have a clean service record with the Swiss Army
The Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided-missile frigate USS Vandegrift (FFG 48) was decommissioned after more than 30 years of service in a ceremony on Naval Base San Diego, Thursday Feb. 19.
Commissioned on Nov. 24, 1984, she was named after Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift, the 18th commandant of the Marine Corps. Now, with some 30 years on her hull, she has been put to pasture.
She will be missed.
(Click to bigup) Vandy in better days with a SM-2 MR ripping off her long-decommissioned one armed bandit Mk13 launcher.
When Napoleon rolled deep into Russia in 1812, he suffered pretty bad at the hands of Russo-Ukrainian partisans and cossacks fighting in his rear. Fast forward to 1918 and both the occupying Imperial German troops as well as the new Red Army and the old White Guards had problems with pesky bands of black flag waving Makhnovshchina locals who would sneak around at night and leave slit throats in their wake. Then came 1941 and the Axis had a hard time with local resistance that numbered some 500,000 spread across over 5,000 partisan bands by the end of the War.
Well, it seems like the now 200-year tradition is still in effect. As related by TFB, here are some pics from self-defense militia training in Zhydachiv, a city in Western Ukraine not far from the Polish border.
Babushkas and MP5s just go so well together. AND she knows that the knee is your friend in a kneeling position
She has good muzzle awareness/trigger D. Can work cover and concealment…10/10 partisans would likely operate with.
Pulling her own…It looks like SMGs for the ladies, AKs for the fellas in Zhydichev
U.S. Naval aviators in the Pacific Theater of Operations during WWII had their hands full. While the RAF earned thier fame in the Battle of Britain and the follow-on V-rocket Blitz, the U.S. Navy had to slug their way across 8,000 miles of water and fight the Japanese for every island.
One of these hardy flyboys was Alexander Vraciu, born in 1918 to Transylvanian immigrants in East Chicago. Graduating from DePauw University in 1941, he joined the USNR and by March 1943 was flying as Butch O’Hare’s wingman from the USS Independence (CVL-22) as part of the old Fighting Squadron Six (VF-6), flying F6F Hellcats.
Hard as a coffin nail, Vraciu racked up 21 aircraft destroyed on the ground and 19 confirmed aerial victories including a famous half dozen in a single day during the Marianas Turkey Shoot.
Lt. Alex Vraciu uses his hands to indicate his downing of six aircraft in a single day, June 19, 1944. All were Yokosuka D4Y “Judies” shot down in a period of just 8 minutes.
Shot down over the Philippines, he led a local guerrilla force for six weeks before linking up with American forces. He retired in 1964 at the rank of full commander. Although twice recommended for the MOH, he was ultimately awarded the Navy Cross. There is a campaign to help see he finally receives his MOH.
Commander Vraciu rejoined VF-6 last week at the age of 96.
His shipmates have been waiting.
Relic hunters in Italy came across a cartridge case that had been pulled apart and re-purposed as a note-holder. Well the note inside, dating back to 1944-ish, written in Italian is in some sort of code:
When decoded and translated into English its to the affect of :
THEY – THROW – GRENADES – WE – PULL – PINS – AND – THROW – BACK
NOTIFY REINFORCEMENTS STAND DOWN – NOT NEEDED
The believed explanation is that it was written by pro-Allied Italian forces who were fighting Germans on the road to the Alps and said grey suits were using Italian grenades on them– without pulling the second pin.
Why do Italian grenades have two pins? The rest here after the jump.
“The trunk, which includes a uniform bearing the ribbons for the Military Cross, was found at Highfield School in Letchworth.
It is not clear how the chest, the property of Lt Howard Hands, MC,found its way into the school.
Herts at War historian, Dan Hill, said opening the trunk was a “wow moment”.
As well as containing Lt Hands’ immaculate uniform including his cap, belts and cigarette case, maps showing a network of secret tunnels that ran under enemy positions on the Western Front, photographs, newspapers and his bedpan were also in the trunk.”
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology has made these pretty sweet travel Exo-planet posters for far-off planets to include Kepler-186f, HD 40307g and the very Tatooine-ish Kepler-16b, “Where your shadow always has company.”
Each of the below are big up for better viewing and your man cave printing pleasure.
Remember the sand people walk single file to hide their numbers…
“Twice as big in volume as the Earth, HD 40307g straddles the line between “Super-Earth” and “mini-Neptune” and scientists aren’t sure if it has a rocky surface or one that’s buried beneath thick layers of gas and ice. One thing is certain though: at eight time the Earth’s mass, its gravitational pull is much, much stronger.”
“Kepler-186f is the first Earth-size planet discovered in the potentially ‘habitable zone’ around another star, where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. Its star is much cooler and redder than our Sun. If plant life does exist on a planet like Kepler-186f, its photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star’s red-wavelength photons, making for a color palette that’s very different than the greens on Earth. This discovery was made by Kepler, NASA’s planet hunting telescope.”
The description in the archives for this photo reads: A be-skirted seaman 2nd class stands guard. He is wearing an M.P. arm band, belt with bayonet, holding a rifle and standing next to a sign “OFFICE OF THE MILITARY GOVERNOR PROVOST MARSHAL OF AMERICAN SAMOA”.
Samoa was on the front lines of WWII after Pearl Harbor. A Marine Brigade would arrive January 20, 1942 to better defend the islands. These photos from the Springfield Armory National Historic Site archives show a number of the local recruits who joined the 5600-man Samoan Marine Brigade. Wearing the traditional “lavalava” cloth wrap, these men were trained to use Springfield Armory 1903 rifles to defend their homeland. American Samoa would be attacked only once during the war when a Japanese submarine shelled the island causing minimal damage.
According to the NPS, “On January 11, 1942, the Naval Station was shelled by a Japanese submarine. One shell, an odd stroke of irony, struck the home and store of one of the very few Japanese residents of the island. Another struck the Navy Dispensary, doing only minor damage, but most of the shells landed in the bay. At the time, of course, the incident must have seemed to be only the beginning. This was the only enemy attack in American Samoa.”
One of the longest standing bits of USCG lore was that the sea service chalked up the only U-boat victory ever in the Gulf of Mexico when on 1 Aug, 1942, Coast Guard Grumman J4F-1 Widgeon, No.V-212, piloted by Chief Aviation Pilot Henry Clark White, Coast Guard Aviator No. 115, along with crewman RM1c George Henderson Boggs, Jr., were patrolling about 100 miles south of the air base at Houma, Louisiana, at an altitude of 1,500 feet. They spotted a U-boat on the surface and immediately dove on the target. The U-boat crash dived but at just 250 feet, White released all of his ordnance, a single depth charge into the dark Gulf water below. Afterward the crew saw a slick on the surface and reported the attack on RTB.
Well after the war, the Navy awarded the kill, that of U-166 commanded by one Oberleutnant zur See Hans-Gunther Kuhlmann, which went missing about that time with her entire 52 man crew according to German records. White was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Boggs was awarded the Air Medal.
Grumman J4F-1, No.V212 of the United States Coast Guard preserved at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Pensacola, Florida
Well, it turned out that in 2001, U-166 was found– right next to her last victim, the SS Robert E Lee which she sank on 30 July, 1941– the day *before* White and co bombed their credited submarine.
You see, in the end, the Navy realized that a little 173-foot subchaser, PC-566, which was escorting the Lee and attacked a periscope it saw directly after her charge was sent to the bottom, were in fact responsible for scratching the unterseeboot in question.
The craft, one of the 343 (not a misprint) PC-461-class submarine chasers built between 1941-44, was a light 450-ton ship who, powered by a pair of diesels, could barely break 20-knots, but they were built to escort much slower merchantmen such as the Lee. Armed with a single 3″/50 a 40mm gun mount, 3 20mm guns, and depth charges, they were built to bring the pain to German and Japanese subs. Manned by a 65-man crew PC-566 was commanded by LCDR Herbert Gordon Claudius, USNR, on that fateful day.
That’s 173-feet of sub-killer right there. Photo from The Ted Stone Collection, Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, VA via Navsource
Now, long after Commander Claudius has left us and PC-566 was scrapped (in 1978, after being transferred to Venezuela in 1961), SECNAV Ray Mabus, with CNO Adm. Jonathan Greenert in tow, posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit with combat “V” to the patrol coastal skipper and set the record straight last month.
Oh and White’s attack? According to records by the Germans, another boat, U-171, was attacked but survived by a flying boat in the Gulf around that time and location. So yes, the Coasties did attack a German sub, but it was the Navy, in the end, that brought down U-166.
And Herbert Gordon Claudius, Jr. has the medal to prove it.
