Photo by Jason Florio. By the way is that an RPG-2 (made in the PRC of course) or an RPG-7?
Jason Florio, perhaps one of the most talented photojournalists in the business, has traveled the globe in recent years to places like Silafando, Mogadishu, and Makasutu. On a trip to Burma he took a series of amazing portraits of Karen National Liberation Army freedom fighters.
Photo by Jason Florio The old “in the white” M16A1 is great as is the 20-round mag on the AK overfolder.
For those who don’t know, the Karens have been fighting the Burmese government since 1949 pretty much non-stop. Located in the Golden Triangle, their equipment runs the gamut from captured French Lebels left over from Colonial Indochina, to Japanese WWII equipment, 1960s era U.S. gear left over from Vietnam, and (slightly) more modern Chinese kit.
Photo by Jason Florio Can you dig the Karen Bloop gunner? What is the shelf-life of a 40mm fuse stored at 99% humidity in the jungle? What that TD though.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday October 22, 2014 the Overachieving Gresham
USRC Gresham 1902; photo by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y.
Here we see the gunboat (err. Revenue Cutter) Walter Q. Gresham of the United States Revenue Cutter Service (USRCS) in 1902. This hearty little Great Lakes cutter had a life far removed from the one she was originally designed for.
The USRCS was a branch of the Treasury Department established by an act of Congress on 4 August 1790, (which predates the actual U.S. Navy’s official establishment date however that service uses the older date of the establishment of the Colonial Navy as its basis) and was tasked with counter-smuggling operations in peacetime and serving as a backup to the Navy in war. The USRCS merged with the Lighthouse Service and Lifesaving Service to become the USCG in 1915. But back to the ship.
The USRCS decided in the 1890s to build five near-sisterships that would be classified in peacetime as cutters, but would be capable modern naval auxiliary gunboats. These vessels, to the same overall but concept but each slightly different in design, were built to carry a bow mounted torpedo tube for 18-inch Bliss-Whitehead type torpedoes and as many as four modern quick-firing 3-inch guns (though they used just two 6-pounder 57mm popguns in peacetime). They would be the first modern cutters equipped with electric generators, triple-expansion steam engines (with auxiliary sail rigs), steel (well, mostly steel) hulls with a navy-style plow bow, and able to cut the very fast (for the time) speed of 18-ish knots. All were built 1896-98 at three different yards.
USRC McCulloch in full rig. Note that McCulloch is indicative of the five ship class she came from with the exception of having a three-masted barquentine rig where as the other ships, being about 15-feet shorter, had a two mast brigantine auxiliary rig. Painting, Coast Guard Academy Museum Art Collection.
These ships included:
–McCulloch, a barquentine-rigged, composite-hulled, 219-foot, 1,280-ton steamer built by William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia for $196,000.
–Manning, a brigantine-rigged 205-foot, 1,150-ton steamer, was built by the Atlantic Works Company of East Boston, MA, for a cost of $159,951.
–Algonquin, brigantine-rigged 205.5-foot, 1,180-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,000.
–Onondaga, brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,190-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,800.
The fifth ship was the Gresham.
Launched on 12 September 1896, was a brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,090-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $147,800. She carried the name of Walter Quinton Gresham, an epic overachiever.
Maj. Gen of Volunteers, the great and Honorable W.Q. Gresham (1832-1895)
Born in 1832 in Indiana, Gresham was a bar-certified attorney and elected state Representative by the time the Civil War broke out. He soon became the 29-year old colonel of the 53rd Indiana and fought at Corinth, Vicksburg, and Atlanta where he was invalided out with a shattered knee and the rank of (brevet) Maj.Gen. of Volunteers. This helped supercharge his political career and he soon became a federal judge appointed by Grant, then Chester Arthur’s Postmaster General and later his Secretary of the Treasury (for a month) before picking up a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals while twice running for the Republican presidential nomination. At the time the gunboat, which carried his name, was ordered, he was serving as Secretary of State in President Grover Cleveland’s Cabinet and died in that office May 28, 1895, hence his name was used to christen the newest cutter. Again, back to the ship…
USRC Walter Q. Gresham commissioned on 30 May 1897 after being accepted by the government three months earlier. While two of these ships were intended for blue-water work on the East Coast (Manning) and West Coast (McCullough), Gresham and near-sisters Algonquin and Onondaga were ordered for Great Lakes service, hence their construction in Cleveland and their homeporting in Milwaukee and Chicago. Since the 200+ foot long cutters were too long to fit through the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway, they would be landlocked into the lakes their whole life (more on that in a minute).
When commissioned she caused a diplomatic crisis. You see, since these three cutters had a new-fangled torpedo tube and modern guns, the Canadians and their British big brothers objected that the ships were in violation of the 1817 Rush-Bagot Convention and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. These two acts limited U.S./British-Canadian arms build-ups along the border region between the two countries and to this day regulate how heavily armed ships can be along the Great Lakes.
Well, just 11-months after Gresham‘s commissioning, war broke out with Spain and, as her two blue water sisters were rushed to serve with the Navy, the USRCS decided to withdraw the three lake-bound ships and put them to good use elsewhere. To get them past the locks in the St. Lawrence, they sailed to Ogdensburg, NY, where they were cut in half, shipped through the canal, and rejoined on the Atlantic side. Gresham officially belonged to the Navy 24 March-17 Aug 1898, but she saw no service in that war.
Gresham cut cleanly in two and barged through the St. Lawrence locks. Her other two sisters were subjected to the same fate.
However, the war ended in August 1898, before Gresham could be reassembled. Not wanting to get the Canadians riled up again, the USRCS left Gresham, Onondaga, and Algonquin on the East Coast where they served as any respectable white-hulled cutter of the time did. Algonquin set off for the West Indies and Onondaga moved to Philly while Gresham lived the life of a New England cutter, based in Boston.
She used her popguns to sink derelict vessels found at sea. She patrolled fisheries looking for interloping foreign trawlers and poachers. Nantucket Island was only able to get supplies and mail during especially harsh winters by the use of Gresham as an ersatz icebreaker.
U.S.R.C. Gresham, flagship of the patrol fleet, America’s Cup races. Library of Congress photo.
She served as the official government presence at a number of the fashionable sea races of the time. This led to a collision during a regatta with Sir Thomas Lipton’s beautiful steam yacht, the Erin, in which the Gresham‘s torpedo tube scraped alongside the hull of that fine ship. The fault was all on Lipton’s ship by the way.
Gresham saved mariners in distress, including famously the “palatial” steamship RMS Republic of the White Star Line (yes, the Titanic‘s company) when she collided with the Italian liner Florida near Nantucket and foundered in 1909. That incident was the first time a CQD distress call was issued on the new Marconi radio device. Standing alongside the stricken ship, Gresham along with other ships and the cutters Mohawk and Seneca helped save more than 1200 passengers and crew.
In 1915 she, along with the rest of the cutter service became part of the new U.S. Coast Guard and she was given pennant number CG-1, her name by that time just shortened to Gresham, without the Walter Q. part.
When war erupted, she was transferred to the Navy for the second time in 6 April 1917 and remained in the fleet until Aug. 1919. Her sail rig was removed as were her 57mm and 37mm popguns, her wartime armament was greatly increased and was depth charges were fitted, which added several hundred tons to her weight and several feet to her draught. During the war, she escorted coastal convoys, watched for U-boats and naval raiders, and helped train naval crews. Interestingly enough, her old collision-mate Erin, while serving as the armed yacht Aegusa in the Royal Navy, was lost to a German mine during the war.
Returning to her normal peacetime cutter activities in the Coast Guard, to which was added policing and chasing after rumrunners in the 1920s (for which some water-cooled Brownings were installed) Gresham entered a quiet chapter in her life. Her armament was greatly reduced and by 1922, her torpedo tube was deactivated as all of the Navy’s stocks of the aging Whitehead Mk3 torpedoes were withdrawn from service.
In 1933, Gresham was again assigned to the Navy and was sent to Cuban waters to monitor the situation there. As part of the Navy Special Service Squadron she was used to patrol the Florida Straits during a series of revolts that eventually put Fulgencio Batista in power in Cuba. In this she served with a number of other Coast Guard vessels sheep-dipped to the Navy to include the Unalga for two years, alternating between Key West, Gitmo, and San Juan.
She was decommissioned 19 January 1935 just before her 40th birthday, which is about right for a Coasty hull. She was then sold for her value in scrap metal on 22 April 1935, the last of her five-ship class to remain in the Coast Guard’s service. Cleveland-built sisters Algonquin and Onondaga had been sold in 1930 and 1924 respectively and disposed of. Cramp-built McCulloch, who served with Dewey at Manila Bay, was sunk in a collision 13 June 1917. Boston-built Manning likewise was sold for scrap in 1931. The Coast Guard just did not have use for a bunch of slow old tubs.
Until World War II came along, anyway.
In 1943, the Coast Guard found Gresham still afloat in some backwater somewhere in the Chesapeake and reacquired her, the sole remaining ship of her class. She was old, with 47 years on her hull. She was in exceptionally poor condition– still with her original cranky vertical, inverted cylinder, direct-acting triple expansion steam engine fired by four single-ended boilers fed by coal.
Nevertheless, she could hold a few guns and maybe scare off a U-boat or two so she was bought (sum unknown) on 21 January 1943 and renovated in Baltimore.
Gresham during WWII. Notice her sail rig is long gone and, for the first time, she has a visible hull number. Photo from Navsource.
Two months later she was relatively seaworthy and, armed with a sonar, radar, depth charge racks and guns, placed into commission as the USS Gresham (WPG-85) on 25 March 1943. Assigned to coastal convoy escort, moving from port to port up and down the East Coast, she was not liked very well. Since her best possible speed was just 8-knots, she slowed the convoys down and they often decided to leave Gresham in port rather instead. In these terms, she served as a guard ship in New York for most of her 13-month WWII service.
Decommissioned 7 April 1944 before the war even ended, she was sold for scrap for a second time.
However, she just wouldn’t die.
In 1946, she was being used by one Nicholas D. Allen of Teaneck, NJ, converted to a tug and renamed T. V. McAllister. He apparently wasn’t very successful with Gresham as in turn he sold her to the Weston Trading Co. of Honduras who renamed the elderly vessel, Trade Winds.
She became a coaster and banana boat along the Caribbean, flying a Panamanian flag. Then in February 1947 she quietly became one of the 12 vessels purchased in America by Ha’Mossad Le Aliya Bet to carry Jewish refugees from Europe, many only months out of concentration camps, to Palestine past the British blockade. Appropriately, Gresham was in good company, as at least three of the other vessels, Unalga (who she had served with in the old Navy Special Service Squadron), Northland, and Mayflower, had served in the Coast Guard at one time or another as well.
Her scant 27-man crew consisted mostly of young American Jewish volunteers with former naval and military service under their belt. She was prepared for its voyage to Palestine at Lisbon, Portugal and PortoVenere, Italy. Yehoshua Baharav Rabinowitz was in charge of the work in Portugal and Avraham akai was in charge in Italy. The vessel, under the Hebrew name “Hatikva” (The Hope) sailed from Bocca di Magra, Italy on May 8th 1947 carrying 1,414 Ma’apilim refugees. Israel Rotem was its commander and those accompanying him were Alex Shour and Meir Falik; the radio operator was Nachum Manor. Soon five Royal Navy destroyers, enforcing the blockade on Palestine, were tailing the old tub.
c. May 1947 Hatikva loaded with Jewish refugees Algerine Associates photo from Paul Silverstone’s Aliyah Bet Project Aliyah Bet Project. Note that her mast has been stepped.
One of these ships pulled alongside and called to the captain, “Your voyage is illegal, and your vessel is unseaworthy. In the name of humanity surrender.”
On May 17, 1947, the Hatikva was forcibly intercepted, rammed, and captured by the destroyers HMS Venus and HMS Brissenden. Upon boarding, RN sailors and Royal Marines used tear gas, rifle butts, and batons to enforce their directives and ordered the ship to Haifa to unload where it sat while the American crew was interned on a British prison ship. (For an excellent in-depth story of this action and the American’s fate, read Greenfield’s, The Jews’ Secret Fleet: Untold Story of North American Volunteers Who Smashed the British Blockade)
With Royal Marines coming aboard. Note her old pilot house, a relic from the 19th century.
Later the Israeli Navy was able to reclaim Hatikva in 1948 after independence, but after sea trials, the desperate organization realized they were not that desperate, and sold her for scrap in 1951.
ex-Gresham, then Hatikva of the Israeli Navy (אוניית_מעפילים_התקוה) around 1948. This is the last known picture in circulation of her.
However, Hatikva/Gresham beat the scrappers once more it seemed. She popped up in Greek ownership in the 1950s and found herself back on the other side of the Atlantic again as an unpowered barge, her superstructure, funnel, and mast removed. She was last semi-reliably seen in the Chesapeake Bay area as late as 1980.
Her ultimate fate is unknown, but she may in all actuality be afloat somewhere in Blue Crab country, hiding out as a houseboat in some back eddy or grounded on a mudflat somewhere. If only boats could talk, Gresham would have had much to say. The Spanish American War, both World Wars, a revenue cutter that was deconstructed then reassembled, gunboat, coast guard cutter, freighter, refugee ship…talk about an epic tale. After all, how many ships have been sold to the breakers and lived to tell the tale not once, or twice, but three times!
The Gresham/Hatikva is well remembered in Israel and in the European Jewish community as a whole. This summer a group of 800 French Jewish students announced plans to recreate the voyage of the historic ship.
As a final note on the ship, Israel’s national anthem is named Hatikva, of course it is about the movement overall, but still; there is a small hatttip to the tiny Gresham in there every time it is played.
And Walter Quintin Gresham himself? He was buried in Section 2 of Arlington National Cemetery a little to the right of the grave of Union cavalry master Phil Sheridan.
The former seaplane tender made cutter USCGC Gresham
In 1947, the Coast Guard took possession of a 311-foot long gently used seaplane tender, USS Willoughby (AGP-9; AVP-57) and renamed her USCGC Gresham (WAVP/WHEC/WAGW-387) in honor of this long serving vessel and remained in service until 1973. However, if the reports of the original Gresham making it to 1980 are true, her namesake outlived her by almost a decade.
Armament:
1896: Two 6-pounder 57mm, one 1-pounder 37mm, three .50 cal. machine guns, and one bow torpedo tube
1918: 3 x 4-inch guns; (1500 rounds of ammunition stored in two magazinesfore and aft); 16 x 300-lb depth charges; 4 x Colt machine guns; 2 x Lewis machine guns; 18 x .45 Colt pistols; 15 x Springfield rifles.)
1930: 2 x 6-pdrs RF, 3 x .50-cal watercooled for rumrunners, tube deactivated.
1943: 2x 3″/50 (singles) 4x20mm/80 (singles), 2 depth charge racks, 2 K-gun depth charge projectors, 2 mousetrap depth bomb projectors, QCL-8 sonar, SF-type surface search radar.
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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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
Color photograph of the B-17 Flying Fortress “Idiots’ Delight” of Eighth Air Force in England. The original caption states the M/Sgt is Penrose A. Bingham of Reading, Pennsylvania. “Idiots’ Delight” served with the 332nd Bomb Squadron, 94th Bomb Group and later with the 710th Bomb Squadron, 447th Bomb Group. (U.S. Air Force Photograph via Lone Sentry.)
Charles Pears working on an oil painting of ‘R.M.S. Orcades’
Born in the quiet market town of Pontefract, Yorkshire was an Englishman by the name of Charles Pears on 9 Sept. 1873. A professional illustrator from the time he was 17, Charles did his duty in the Royal Marines as an officer in World War I, although in his 40s at the time. He also served as an official war artist through the Second World War, by then in his later 60s, but still on the list of the Royal Naval Reserve. A thorough Englishman, he made his living by drawing and painting amazing and captivating travel images for the Empire Marketing Board, and British Railway as well as in periodicals like Punch and Yellow Book. Between 1902-1933, with a break for his wartime service, he illustrated more than 50 books ranging from A Christmas Carol to The Great War.
Whenever possible, it seems he tried to work warships into his commercial illustrations.
“Gibraltar” by Charles Pears, for the Empire Marketing Board, 1930. Note that its a travel poster– but he still was able to work in a plethora of Royal Navy ships on the horizon.
Again, its a travel poster– but you see the naval aspect clearly.
Charles Pears paid the bills through illustrating.
“New Fast Turbine Steamers” GWR poster, 1923-1947. Poster produced for the Great Western Railway (GWR) to promote the new turbine steamers St Julien and St Helier which operated on services between Weymouth and the Channel Islands. Artwork by Charles Pears, a marine painter in oil who was an Official Naval Artist during the World Wars. He worked as a poster artist for rail companies and other clients and was also a book illustrator. Dimensions: 1050 mm x 1300 mm.
Poster produced for the Great Western Railway (GWR) promoting rail travel to Paignton, South Devon. The poster shows a bathing belle waving a towel on the beach, with the promenade stretching out behind her and sunbathers enjoying themselves on the beach. Artwork by Charles Pears,
However it is is maritime art in oils that Pear excelled in. He lived in the age of the mighty dreadnought and as such, captured some of the best battleship painting ever to grace a canvas.
“HMS Queen Elizabeth” by Charles Pears. he Royal Society of Marine Artists; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Charles Pears, member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists, Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolor, Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the first elected President of the Society of Marine Artists, died in 1958 at age 84 in Cornwall, but his art is timeless. Many of the ships he captured are immortalized no where else and it is through his scholarship that generations who will never know the experience of a true leviathan ship of war, may gaze upon his art and remember.
(Filed by James Hutchesnon with the 35th Division on Luzon., Aug 5 1945) Adone Santiago is probably the only soldier in the Philippines who ever cried because he couldn’t go hunting Japanese in the mountains. He cried like the small boy he is. Private Santiago of the Philippine Commonwealth army is only 13 years old. He looks like a toy soldier in the flesh. The concussion of a mortar blast might blow- all 65 pounds of him away. But little Adone’s military prowess is a thing to command respect. The Filipino major commanding his unit says Adone’s comrades have confirmed his claim to having killed seven Japs one during two years as a guerrilla and six since the guerrilla units have been absorbed into the army organization. Adone looks more like a mascot than a member of the team. He is equipped with regular uniform, slightly oversize. G. I. clothing wasn’t made for 13 year olds. His steel helmet hangs around his head like an oversize sun bonnet. His combat boots, which are half again his size, just about reach to his knees or where his knees should be. All you can do is guess where his knees are in the drooping folds of those breeches. Private Adone has a deep-rooted hatred of the Japanese. In faltering monosyllabic English, he tells how Japanese killed both his mother and father in their Manila home early in the war. An only child, Adone said he was playing under the house when Japanese soldiers entered. “I see through floor.” he related, gesticulating and big, boyish eyes rolling. “Japs try take my mother. My father fight them. Japs bayonet my father, my mother.” Adone says he later hiked with two older boys to Bataan and tagged along with guerrillas, living in the open. Now he is in a Filipino unit attached to the battalion of Lt. Col. Robert W. King of Terre Haute, Ind., and wants to continue an army career. “I like to go patrols after Japs.” he said. A carbine is his weapon.”
As you may know the 239th Birthday of the U.S. Navy (well, technically begun as the Continental Navy) is this week. In the interest of a birthday salute in addition to our regular Warship Wednesday, we have for your viewing pleasure a series of shots of the 44-gun frigate USS Constitution. Launched on Oct. 21, 1797, she is still in commission and is the most tangible time capsule of the past three centuries I could think of and her 217th birthday is next week.
USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere during the War of 1812. USNHC photo
Celebration of Washington’s Birth Day at Malta on Board the USS Constitution, Commodore Jesse D. Elliot, 1837″, oil on canvas b James G. Evans Courtesy U.S. Naval Academy.
USS Constitution seen as a receiving ship in Boston, Massachusetts sometime between 1903 and 1907
Constitution 1909, LOC photo, after a three year refit to restore her to a more correct 18th century rig
USS Constitution, 18th August 1914
1934 Constitution- alongside battleships USS Texas and the USS New York
July 21st, 1997 off the coast of Massachusetts.USS Constitution the worlds oldest commissioned war ship fires its port and starboard guns while underway in Massachusetts Bay, MA. Constitution is escorted by the frigate USS Halyburton (FFG 40) (center) and the destroyer USS Ramage (DDG 61) (right), while the Navy’s Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron passes overhead. Commissioned on October 21st, 1797, Constitution set sail unassisted for the first time in 116 years. Constitution will celebrates her 200th birthday on October 21st of this year after completing a 40 month overhaul. U.S. Navy Photo by Journalist 2nd Class Todd Stevens (Released)
BOSTON (Oct. 21, 2010) USS Constitution returns to her pier after an underway to celebrate her 213th launching day anniversary. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kathryn E. Macdonald/Released)
Born 1919 in Waverly, Missouri, Kenneth ‘Ken’ Riley is known primary as a ‘cowboy artist.’ This is because some of his best known works were Crow Fair, Split Horn Bonnet, and Legends of the Mandan. As such he is regarded as something of the modern Frederick Remington but in canvas. This led him to become a founding member of NAWA (the National Academy of Western Art) in 1973 and inducted as an Emeritus member of the Cowboy Artists of America .
Grasslands By Ken Riley. Image from From “First People“
Well, Riley did a lot of other stuff too. Before the war he was he was a student of Thomas Hart Benton. He also signed up for the military in WWII and cut his teeth as a combat artist in the U.S. Coast Guard (which included a mural at the Coast Guard Academy.)
“Offloading Supplies” By Ken Riley. Drawn and painted from what the USCG combat artist observed. Note the distinctive gold circles on the naval stevedore’s M1 helmets. Current in the collection of the USCG Museum. You can really feel the influence of Benton Hart in this painting.
“Marines Disembark at Tarawa.” Sketch by USCG combat artist Ken Riley in the collection of the Mariners Museum
Sketch by Ken Riley of WWII boat-crew from the collection at the Mariners Museum
“Coastguardsman Under Fire at Tarawa” By USCG Combat artist Ken Riley. From the USCG Museum
After the war he made a hard living by cranking out pulp illustrations for $15 a pop and unsigned comics to further earn his stripes.
Ken Riley pulp for The Saturday Evening Post, 1948
He was a frequent illustrator for National Geographic, painted Yellowstone for the Society of Illustrators and painted a series of iconic images in the history of the U.S. Army National Guard’s Heritage Command.
The Surrender of the Army of Northern Virgina April 12, 1865 by Ken Riley. Currently in the U.S. Military Academy Museum, West Point, New York
Ken Riley, “The visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to the U.S”, New York, July 14, 1825. 2nd Battalion, 2nd Regiment of Artillery, New York State Militia welcomes the visiting hero of the American Revolution Marquis de Lafayette. To honor him on his day of departure home to France, the unit adopted the name “National Guard” in remembrance of the Garde National de Paris, once commanded by Lafayette during the early days of the French Revolution. Taking note of the unit and its new name, Lafayette left his carriage and went down the line of troops clasping hands. It was this instance the the modern term of “National Guard” came from in the U.S. From the collection of the U.S. Army National Guard. Click to very much big up
Ken Riley, Buena Vista, Mexico, February 23, 1847 Showing the charge of the 1st Mississippi Rifles under then-Col. Jefferson Davis. Wearing their characteristic red shirts and straw hats, these men were equipped with 1841 pattern musket rifles and bowie knives. They saved Zach Taylor’s bacon that day and are still remembered in the lineage of the Mississippi Army National Guard . From the collection of the U.S. Army National Guard. Click to very much big up.
“Remember the River Raisin!” by Ken Riley, depicts a scene from the October 1813 Battle of the Thames, a decisive victory for the Americans in which Chief Tecumseh gave his life and Americans re-established control over the Northwest frontier. Kentucky troops were encouraged to fight this battle as revenge for an earlier massacre of Kentucky militia at the River Raisin. From the collection of the U.S. Army National Guard.
29th Infantry Division. D-Day, Omaha Beach Painting by Ken Riley. The 29th “Blue and the Grey” was made up of National Guard units drawn from both the North and South. Painting by Ken Riley From the collection of the U.S. Army National Guard. Click to big up.
“The Whites of Their Eyes” Colonial militia at Bunker Hill 1775. Ken Riley. Located at the JFK Presidential Library.
Riley’s paintings hang in the permanent collections of the White House, the U.S Military Academy, the Air Force Academy, and the Mariners Museum and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and he is alive today at 95. Thank you for your work, sir.
Chinese mechanics assemble Curtiss P-40N Warhawks in Rangoon, Burma, 1944. These aircraft belong to the 80th Fighter Group (FG) otherwise known as the “Burma Banshees.” Their distinctive ghost skull was nice contrast to the more traditional shark jaws often seen on Warhawks in U.S. and British service.
The 80th FG consisted of the 88th, 89th and 90th fighter squadrons (to which was added the 459th later, the only American fighter squadron formed and later dissolved in India, never seeing the states). These planes and pilots fought a forgotten campaign over the ‘Hump’ of the Himalayas and into Burma from late 1943 through the end of the war, engaging Japanese Army aircraft over isolated jungles and unmapped green hell in support of General Stilwell’s Chinese Troops and General Merrill’s Marauders.
Their specialty, however was ground attack missions against Japanese trains, depots and troops–and they did them well, dropping more than 3200 bombs over the course of 1948 combat sorties. Although transitioning to the P-47 very late in the war, they made the most of their P-40s and P-38s.
“In Proud Remembrance of the Forty Nine Thousand and Seventy Six of All Ranks of the Royal Regiment of Artillery Who Gave Their Lives for King and Country in the Great War 1914-1918”
Royal Artillery Memorial. Hyde Park, London, depicting a gunner shielded by a tent half from the rain, leading the first two horses of a gun caisson through a forgotten battlefield in Flanders
Back before the days of helicopters, the naval seaplane was king for over-the-horizon spotting. This included missions such as scouting for enemy ships, keeping up with the fleet, picking up those lost at sea, light transport of personnel and packages from ship to ship and ship to shore, as well as the all-important task of correcting distant naval gunfire missions.
The Navy used Curtiss CS-1 biplanes, Grumman Ducks, Vought O2/O3 Corsairs, and the Curtiss SOC Seagull through the 1920s and 30s (and in the Duck’s case even into WWII) for this task.
USS Portland (CA-33) during fleet review at New York, 31 May 1934, with four floatplanes amidship, likely Vought O3U-1 Corsairs with Grumman floats (Photo: NH 716)
The U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Chicago (CA-29) at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California (USA), in 1931 (looking aft from the top of the forward fire control station). Note the Vought O3U-1 Corsair floatplanes on the catapult deck. Cruisers in the U.S. Navy often carried as many as 5-6 aircraft between on-deck storage and their hangar (NH70721)
Northampton-class heavy cruiser USS Louisville (CA-28), Pensacola-class heavy cruiser USS Salt Lake City (CA-25), USS Northampton (CA-26), and USS Chicago (CA-29/also Northampton-class) turning in formation to create a slick for landing seaplanes, during exercises off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 31 January 1933. Planes are landing astern of the middle cruisers. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-451165
USS Northampton (CA-26) at anchor 1930s note four floatplanes amidships
In 1938 the new Vought OS2U Kingfisher, a mid-wing monoplane with a large central float and two outriggers had been introduced to take their place. These slow (160kts) and unwieldy scout planes were not built for combat. Rather, they served as the eyes and ears of the fleet.
OS2U-3 Kingfisher at the edge of the seaplane ramp at NAS Pensacola, Florida, United States, 1942. Note Consolidated P2Y flying boat laying off shore. Note the ladder/gangway. These planes were tall! (Click to big-up)
Launched by catapult from ships as small as light cruisers, they gave a tiny air wing to even the most modest of ships. Some cruisers were set up to carry as many as four of these planes.
A Kingfisher being launched from the Cat of the USS Pringle (DD-477). One of the few 2000-ton Fletcher class destroyers equipped for these aircraft.
They had long legs, capable of a range of some 800 miles. If needed they could carry 650-pounds of bombs which made them useful against lightly defended targets (such as Japanese freighters).
Perhaps more than any other aircraft save the long-legged PBYs and PBMs, Kingfishers saved more down aircrew during the war from being lost forever at sea “somewhere in the Pacific”
Over 1500 were produced and served the U.S. and her allies as late as the 1960s. They were so successful in fact, that the follow-on and much more heavily armed and fighter-like Curtiss SC Seahawk that replaced it in Navy service was itself phased out in 1949. Killed by the advent of the helicopter and long-range surface radar.
The Vought OS2U Kingfisher that appears here on the Missouri (BB-63) shakedown cruise was taken after an abandon ship drill in August 1944. (Click to embiggen)
The pilot of a Vought OS2U floatplane unstraps his flight log from his leg, after returning from a flight. The airplane is on the catapult behind him. Photographed during the ship’s shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, USNHC # 80-G-K-4597, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives.
Sadly, few Kingfishers remain as museum pieces– most notably at the North Carolina and Alabama battleship museums.
