No Warship Wednesday today.
Paul Harrell just passed, which is a big bummer to millions in the gun community.
Like a real gent in a time of lads, he filmed an “I’m Dead” video just for the occasion, as one does, apologizing for letting his viewers down.
“As always, don’t try this at home, and thanks for watching”
Thanks for everything, Paul.
Official wartime caption: “Members of the IX Troop Carrier Command hold a last-minute briefing session before another glider mission in Holland. 2 September 1944.”
U.S. Air Force Number 83086AC, NARA 342-FH-3A26203-83086AC
Note the invasion-striped CG-4 Waco glider behind the group along with the uncensored shoulder patches of the 101st “Screaming Eagles” Airborne Division.
Also seen, on the camo-net-clad M1 helmets of the assembled men, are the “clubs” markings for the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment (GIR).
The 101st’s helmet markings circa 1944:
With a lineage that dates back to the old 82nd “All American” Infantry in the Great War, the 327th was only redesignated as a glider unit and swapped over to the 101st on 15 August 1942.
Moving to Britain in September 1943, they spent eight months getting ready for the Overlord landings but, due to the shortage of C-47s on the early morning of D-Day (the Allied dropped the bulk of three airborne divisions at roughly the same time), the 327th wound up hitting the sand as “leg” infantry with the 4th Infantry Division on Utah Beach on D-Day.
“Hey, Mack, where’s the wings on this thing?” 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne, GIs mix with Joes from the 4th Infantry Division aboard an LCT on the way to Tare Green Sector, Utah Beach, Normandy, on D-Day.
They spent the next two weeks fighting around Carentan and in the hedgerows then another two in static defense.
Pulled back to England in mid-July to reform (the regiment had suffered over 100 KIAs at Carentan alone) and reequip for future operations, the 327th was placed on alert to glider into France (Operation Transfigure) and Belgium (Operation Limet 1) but both missions were scrapped as rapidly advancing ground forces made them irrelevant.
Glider troops were the “heavy” option for airmobile infantry as they could carry Jeeps, pack artillery, and other items in their Wacos or Horsas that were far too big to fit through the jump door of a C-47. This even trickled down to the squad level, with glider troops carrying M1918 BARs, a platform rarely strapped to the back of a paratrooper.
Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division Load a Jeep Into the Open Nose of a Glider in Preparation for Airborne Landings in Holland, in early September 1944. 111-SC-198683_001
Then came a big lift– Operation Market Garden– in which the 327th finally got the green light to ride their gliders into battle for the first time. Carried into German-occupied Holland over three days, they were tasked with Landing Zone – W, north of Eindhoven.
A glider-dotted area where the First Airborne Army landed, Holland. 18 September 1944. (U.S. Air Force Number 75246AC)
The 327th would spend the rest of the war in heavy combat, earning the name “Bastogne Bulldogs” during the Battle of the Bulge for their tenacity.
The 327th would go on to earn campaign honors for Normandy (with arrowhead), Rhineland (with arrowhead), Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe.
The regiment suffered 524 casualties in Normandy, 662 in Holland, and 580 in Bastogne.
Today, two of its battalions (1st BN “Above the Rest” and 2nd BN “No Slack”) are still on active duty with the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne, but prefer UH-60s and CH-47s over gliders.
30Some 80 years ago this month, an entertained nonna and a young girl keep Rifleman Brighthouse, of the 8th (Ardwick) Manchester Regiment, company as he darns a sock in Anghiari, Italy, 15 August 1944.
IWM NA 17875
The good rifleman is no doubt using his broad arrow-marked Army-supplied “housewife” sewing kit, likely beefed up by experience earned via backpacking through Europe. You can just make it out at his foot before his M1 Thompson.
Housewife Sewing Kit British Army, IWM (EQU 4327)
As noted by the IWM:
The ‘Housewife’ holdall/pouch contained all that a soldier would require to carry out any repairs to his clothing when necessary. Inside it would contain a thimble, two balls of grey darning wool (for socks), 50 yards of linen thread wound around card, needles, brass dish buttons (for battledress), and plastic buttons for shirts. The ‘Housewife’ was often contained within the holdall and stowed within the man’s haversack.
Growing up a little bit wild in the 1970s and ’80s, the question of just what was “my first gun” is sort of complicated.
First off, none of this is legal advice – or advice of any kind – and this is just my own personal gun journey, warts and all. Remember to properly store and use all firearms in line with published safety guidelines.
Now, let’s get into it.
As a short background, I grew up with a grandfather who was a retired career NCO with 30 years of military service in exotic places like Persia and Indochina that I couldn’t find on the map any longer. His house was filled with four sons: my uncles, who were all slightly older than me and were effectively like big brothers. However, my feisty 4-foot-10-inch German-born Nana, who had only escaped the Communists by sneaking across the Iron Curtain 15 years before I hit the ground, ran the show.
Raised in Eastern Georgia and Gulf South Mississippi as part of the aforementioned tribe, with the Russians and their pals seemingly coming any minute, guns were a part of my life.
My grandpa carried a Smith & Wesson J-frame every day, even though there wasn’t a CCW law at the time. It was the same one he had carried “just in case” while in Vietnam. We all knew about the M1911 in his dresser in a Schrodinger’s cat kind of way – the same way we knew of the old Stevens pump gun behind the workbench at his TV repair shop. He had a locked glass-cased oak gun cabinet in the den filled with war bringbacks (Chicom SKS, Korean War Mosin, and Mausers), hunting shotguns (he loved Browning humpback A5s), and deer rifles (Winchester 70s).
My Nana also EDC’d – a .25 Baby Browning in her purse and a .38 in the glove box of her baby blue Lincoln Continental land yacht – long before EDC was cool. She also stockpiled food and hid it everywhere. It was common to look under the couch for a lost shoe and find it hiding among cans of peas and bags of rice. As a survivor of both der Nassis and der Kommies, she was a believer in all forms of insurance. That was probably why she had an M1 Carbine that shared space in PawPaw’s gun case.
Guns were just a part of life.
As a bit of a gun and war nerd, even as a kid, my favorite TV shows (“Jonny Quest,” “Combat!,” “S.W.A.T.”, “The Rat Patrol,” “Battlestar Galactica”) and movies (“The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “Patton,” “A Bridge Too Far,” “The Longest Day,” “Kelly’s Heroes,” “The Duellists”) as a youth, all leaned towards things very loud, sharp, and/or explosive.
https://youtu.be/Y6ikO6LMxF4
“The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” was my favorite episode of Schoolhouse Rock.
I felt like I would end my short life either in a duel over a matter of personal honor or in holding off the enemy so that others could get away. Either way, I would be remembered and people would tell my story.
What else could a kid ask for than an honorable death, right?
With that, I had plenty of toy guns easily at hand and preferred my M1-style Thompson knock-off as it was handy and effective. Haven’t you seen, like, any war movies at all? Manning my big wheel, I was ready.
Neighborhood: well under control.
I also made sure to have a backup Colt Peacemaker cap gun (with the roll inside) and trained to transition when the Tommy gun ran empty after clearing out the first wave.
I was pulling this off in 1977. What’s your excuse?
Like my uncles, things got ballistic by the time I was five when I got my first air gun for Christmas: the classic Daisy Red Ryder, which could hold like 500 .177-caliber BBs in its reservoir magazine. It came with a three-slot wooden gun rack that I helped hang on the wall by my bed. My favorite target was the clothesline post, which gave a satisfying “ping” when hit from 20 feet away. The Daisy was only just powerful enough to get you in trouble (I had it confiscated by my grandfather for two weeks after I shot out a window while aiming at an old TaB can that was…in front of the window) while not being strong enough to cause too much damage (I saw a BB bounce off the chest of an ugly crow, to my utter dismay).
A year of learning with the Daisy brought a Crosman Pumpmaster the following Christmas. With 10 pumps on that bad boy, I could part a cloud in half. Should the Russkies or Cylons pop up, I would have been ready, for sure – I would just have to pump it up to 11 for the former and 12 for the latter. There’s a 300-year-old oak tree in Pascagoula that probably still has 5,000 pellets embedded deep in its rings.
The next Christmas came my first “real gun,” a Marlin Model 60 .22 rimfire capable of firing 17 shots as fast as I pulled the trigger. Things were getting real. I wasn’t allowed to shoot the Marlin in the backyard due to “the neighbors” despite my protestations, but I was allowed to keep it on my gun rack. With the Marlin came more organized range time with shooting benches and graded targets – the whole nine yards. Likewise came 4-H Clubs and Scouts, where I was able to start honing my marksmanship skills in a formalized way. Youth squirrel hunts became a thing.
My first shotgun was a Remington 870 in 12 gauge. That sweet second or third-hand Woodmaster with a chipped stock (I promise I didn’t do it) was easy to use with birdshot on doves but soon got a lot more kick to it when moving up to No. 3s for geese later on. Plus, it was funny how doves proved a lot harder to hit than some clays tossed into the air by my Uncle Thomas.
My first centerfire rifle was a hand-me-down milsurp German K98 Mauser that was taller than I was, and with which I harvested my first deer at the ripe old age of 8 at a range of 70 of my Uncle Robert’s steps. While I was proud of the achievement, my Nana wasn’t overly impressed and pointed out that she had taken boar (whatever those were) at about the same age with her dad in the Harz Mountains, which I was informed were too far away to go to at the time (and behind “The Wall,” although I didn’t understand what Pink Floyd had to do with it.)
Looking back, I think it was the BB gun window incident that led to me getting glasses.
Later down the road came my first handgun, an old J-frame I had seen someplace before (“If you have a car, you should have a pistol,” said my grandfather).
Then the first gun I purchased with my own money: an H&R “crack barrel” 12-gauge single-shot bought for $20 cash-and-carry when I was 16 at a flea market, something that would probably be frowned upon today.
Over time, as my grandparents and uncles faded away into old photos and memories, I still have had lots of “firsts,” such as my first 1911, first Glock, first 10mm, first AR, first AK, first bullpup – well, you get the idea.
While some would look back on my story and throw proverbial rocks at my family and childhood, saying my upbringing instilled in me fear of the unknown, I understand that instead, they filled my heart with the opposite: with love and the mutual respect of trust.
Moreover, I have contributed to other people’s firsts. My daughter is a great shot with an old P229 of mine.
I’ve got two grandsons and a granddaughter, who will be offered their firsts when they are old enough. At this stage of my life, I am looking at my gun safe differently and more in terms of what they will inherit one day.
What can I say? Guns are a part of life in my family.
Things change. Or do they?
29 August 1915, 109 years ago today: Frank Hurley’s picture of the Endurance, stuck fast in the Antarctic ice, during the polar night, illuminated using about 20 flashes.
“Half blinded after the successive flashes, I lost my bearings amidst the hummocks, bumping my shins against projecting ice points and stumbling into deep snow drifts,” the photographer noted.
Born in 1885, Hurley accompanied British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition which saw Endurance crushed in the ice in October 1915. The survivors, Hurley included, were rescued by a Chilean trawler the following August.
A collection of Hurley’s glass plates, photographs, and notes from his half-dozen Antarctic journeys are held by the State Library of New South Wales.
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 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
If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi
Above we see a great action shot of the late Victorian-era Hermes class protected cruiser HMS Highflyer living up to her name while fighting the Atlantic, circa 1905.
Although a dated design by the time of the Great War, Highflyer still made short work of a faster and larger German auxiliary cruiser some 110 years ago this week.
The Admiralty, starting in 1889, began to order several successive batches of “second-class” protected cruisers: rakish steel-hulled steamers capable of 20 or so knots (fast for their age) and, while girded with an internal curved steel armored deck protecting their vital machinery spaces, weren’t meant primarily for fleet-on-fleet action but instead tasked with the role of overseas patrol and protection.
With an armament of 6 and 4.7-inch QF guns and a few torpedo tubes, as well as the ability to land 100 or so Tars armed as light infantry for work ashore, these vessels were seen as capable of keeping the peace against either local rebellions or foreign interlopers short of a battleship during times of peace. In times of war– something not seen against a European power by the Royal Navy since the Crimea– such warships could both capture enemy shipping, using the very gentlemanly “cruiser prize rules” and protect the crown’s own merchantmen from the enemy’s own raiders.
In the short period between just 1889 and 1898, the Royal Navy ordered 38 of these cruisers: 21 Apollo-class (3,600t, 19.75kts, 2×6″, 8×4.7″, 4x 14″ TT), 8 Astraea-class (4,360t, 19.5kts, 2×6″, 8×4.7″, 1x 18″ TT), and 9 Eclipse-class (5,600t, 18.5kts, 5×6″, 6×4.7″, 3x 18″ TT).
Following in the wake of this hectic building spree, the Admiralty ordered a further five vessels in the Estimates of 1896-1901, laid down in five different yards. Repeats of the Eclipse class with a few tweaks, the Hermes (or Highflyer) class were roughly the same size, a little faster, and carried a more homogenous armament of 11 6″/40 (15.2 cm) QF Mark I guns instead of the mixed 6-inch/4.7-inch batteries.
These were arranged in single open mounts, one forward, two aft, and eight arranged in broadside. Armored with a 3-inch thick steel front shield, these mounts were capable of lobbing a 100-pound HE shell to 10,000 yards at a rate of fire of 5-to-7 rounds per minute depending on crew training.
Two 6″/40 (15.2 cm) guns on the aft quarterdeck aft of HMS Hermes.
The 373-foot Hermes/Highflyer class, second-rate protected cruiser HMS Hyacinth pictured c1902. This three-color peacetime livery shows off her waist broadside 6-inchers well.
For countering torpedo boats, these new cruisers would carry nine 3″/40 12pdr 12cwt QF Mk Is and a half-dozen 47mm/40 3pdr Hotchkiss Mk I guns. Their torpedo battery consisted of two 18-inch tubes below the waterline on the beam. Two Maxim machine guns and an 800-pound QF 12-pounder 8 cwt landing gun on a carriage were also carried for the ship’s ashore force.
Carrying 500 tons of Harvey armor, this ranged from 6 inches on the CT to 5 inches over the engine hatches with a 3-inch deck.
Powered by 18 Bellville boilers which drove a pair of 4-cylinder VTEs on two screws, the designed speed was 20 knots with a planned endurance, on 1,100 tons (max load) of good coal, of 3,300nm at 18 knots. On builder’s trials, over an eight-hour course at full power, most beat the 20-knot guideline while, when driving at 30 hours on 3/4 power, still ranged from 17.34 to 19.4 knots. Not bad for the 1900s.
Published builder’s speed trials for 1899, with three of our class, Hermes, Highflyer, and Hyacinth, listed in the middle:
With a 21-foot draft (more when carrying a double load of coal), these cruisers carried a flotilla of small boats including two 36-foot sail pinnaces, a 32-foot steam cutter, a 30-foot gig, and several smaller gigs and whalers as ship-to-shore connectors.
Listed in journals as having a 450-man ship’s company, this size was often larger during peacetime overseas sailing– especially when an RM platoon was embarked– and drastically reduced while in ordinary.
The class consisted of five cruisers: the first flight Hermes, Highflyer, and Hyacinth, then the follow-on modified (with heavier boilers) Challenger and Encounter.
Jane’s 1914 listing for the class.
Our subject is the fourth Royal Navy vessel named Highflyer, a tradition that began with the (brief) capture and reuse of the 5-gun American privateer of that name in 1813 by the HMS Poictiers. The second was a small 2-gun tender while the third was a well-traveled 21-gun wooden-hulled screw frigate that served in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War with time out to bombard the Arab fort at Al Zorah.
Ordered alongside class leader Hermes (Yard No. 401) at Fairfield, Govan, Highflyer was Yard No. 402 and was laid down on 7 June 1897. Launched on 4 June 1898, she was completed on 7 December 1899– the last RN cruiser commissioned in the 19th Century.
Dispatched to serve as the flagship of RADM Day Bosanquet’s East Indies Station, Highflyer set out in February 1900 for Trincomalee, Ceylon. There she remained for over three years, cruising around the region as directed, and served the same mission for the next East Indies Station commander, RADM Charles Carter Drury.
HMS Highflyer NH 60585
Next came a stint as flag for the North America and West Indies Station, again under RADM Bosanquet until 1908 when she was rotated back to England for drydocking and refit.
HMS Highflyer IWM (Q 42674)
Again deploying overseas, she left for East Indies Station in early 1911 to relieve her sister Hyacinth, and carried the flag of RADM Edmond Slade until April 1913.
Relieved by HMS Swiftsure, Highflyer was sent back to England to join the 3rd Fleet, detailed as a training ship for the new Special Entry Cadet scheme which took lads 17½ to 18½ years of age and gave them up to 18 months of training before sending them to the fleet. Such training meant hours and hours of holystoning decks, chipping and painting bulkheads, polishing brightwork, and drills, drills, drills.
HMS Highflyer IWM (Q 75385)
Her “lucky 13th” skipper, Capt. Henry Tritton Buller, assumed command on 1 July 1913.
Her complement was nearly doubled during this period, as noted by this log entry while at Chatam in late 1913.
Officers: 32
Seamen: 164
Boys: 24
Marines: 50
Engine-room establishment: 134
Other non-executive ratings: 466
She undertook a three-month Med training cruise in the Spring of 1914, roaming to Malta from Devonport with stops at Villefranche, Tangier, Naples, Algiers, and Gibraltar.
With Europe under tension of war, on 13 July 1914 at 0100, Highflyer logged a note to mobilize for fleet service and began receiving Marines and ratings from the Devonport depots and hospital. Three days later, she weighed anchor for Spithead via Bournemouth, leading the Astraea-class protected cruiser HMS Charybdis and class leader HMS Eclipse out to sea.
Putting in at Portsmouth, she soon took on ammunition and coal. With Sarajevo on fire from Austrian shells and the Kaiser sending his troops into Belgium, on 3 August, Highflyer’s complement– augmented by fresh reservists arriving every day– began fuzing lyddite shells and arranging torpedoes.
With the news of war declared against Germany flashed at 23:23 on 4 August, Highflyer made ready to prepare for battle and sortied out into the Channel with the Arrogant-class cruiser HMS Vindictive.
On the morning of the second day of Britain’s war, Highflyer spotted the 13,000-ton Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd liner SS Tubantia and promptly stopped her for inspection. Returning from Buenos Aires with £500,000 in gold destined for German banks, the liner’s steerage berths held 150 German military reservists returning home from South America and a cargo of Argentine grain likewise destined for the Vaterland.
With such a floating violation of neutrality, Highflyer’s prize crew directed the liner to Plymouth with the cruiser closely escorting. Once there on 6 August, Royal Marines escorted the German reservists off while the gold was confiscated– along with her German-bound mail which included bundles of rubber and wool– and taken ashore.
Tubantia, relieved of contraband, was later released and allowed to resume her voyage.
Putting back to sea to patrol the Bay of Biscay for German blockade runners, Highflyer sailed to Gibraltar and, with orders for Cape Verde, it was off the Spanish Northwest African enclave of Río de Oro
that she spotted a familiar ship on the morning of 26 August.
The Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, at 24,000 tons and 649 feet overall, was the largest ship in the world when she put to sea in 1897.
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse circa 1897 card by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y. LC-USZ62-69220
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse circa 1897 card by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y. LC-USZ62-69219
Capable of carrying as many as 1,500 passengers, the liner’s Baroque revival decor, overseen by Johann Poppe, can be seen in this view of her smoking cabin, North German Lloyd pamphlet c. 1905. LC-DIG-ppmsca-02202
Size comparison by the Gray Lithograph company for the lines North German Lines of the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse with the Trinity Church, the St. Paul Building in New York, the Washington Monument, and the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-50050
One of the fastest ships in the world as well, she twice captured the Blue Riband, sustaining a 22.3 knot Atlantic crossing in 1898.
By July 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse caught orders to chop over to the Kaiserliche Marine and, while at Bremerhaven, quickly converted to become an auxiliary cruiser (hilfskreuzer) under the command of Fregattenkapitän Max Reymann. While she had been designed to carry as many as eight 5.9-inch and four 4.7-inch guns as well as up to 14 Spandau machine guns, only four old 4.1-inchers were on hand for the conversion.
Ordered to sea on 4 August to take a route northeast of Iceland, Reymann took his barely converted cruiser to sea, with orders to make for the South Atlantic. He promptly sank three British ships, taking 126 of their crew aboard. Several other ships were stopped but the enemy passenger problem was getting out of hand so Reymann simply disabled their wireless and allowed them to proceed.
KWdG’s brief raiding record:
7 August: trawler Tubal Cain (227 GRT), sunk.
15 August: passenger ship Galician (6,757 GRT), allowed to proceed.
15 August: passenger ship Arlanza (15,044 GRT), allowed to proceed.
16 August: frozen meat freight Kaipara (7,392 GRT) and Nyanga (3,066 GRT), sunk.
16 August: coal steamer Arucas, captured for use as an escort ship with a prize crew.
Needing a breather from the Royal Navy dragnet looking for him, Reymann put into Río de Oro for a couple of days on 17 August to take coal from Arucas and two German ships (Magdeburg and Bethania) sheltering there.
Reymann never got to finish his cruise before Highflyer appeared on the horizon on the 26th in what was, technically, a breach of neutrality.
A series of signals were exchanged between the two ships:
Highflyer: “Surrender.”
Highflyer: “I demand your surrender.”
KWdG: “German warships will not surrender. I request you to respect Spanish neutrality.”
Highflyer: “This is the second time you have been coaling in this harbor, I demand that you surrender; if not, I will open fire on you immediately.”
KWdG: “This is the first time I’m coaling here, and besides, this is a Spanish matter.”
Highflyer: “Surrender immediately.”
KWdG: “I have nothing more to say to you.”
Putting ashore his prisoners and non-combatant complement, Reymann figured the end was near, and, sailing out, Highflyer soon opened up at 1515, with the German replying.
Although KWdG was faster, Highflyer had an excellent position and continued to exchange fire with her larger guns at ranges past 7,500 yards while the artillery duel between the two lasted until 1615 when the German ship ceased fire and, smoking, withdrew behind some sand hills.
Reymann, low on ammunition and with two men dead and zero chance of escaping, smashed his wireless, scuttled his ship (she had rolled on her side by 1710), and put his crew ashore via lifeboats.
The shipless Fregattenkapitän and his men landed on a Saharan beach five miles from the Spanish fort at Villa Cisneros (Al-Dakhla) where they were interred.
Buller, ever the gentleman, attempted to send his own medical teams to help the crew of the German cruiser but recalled them once he determined they were not needed. Highflyer suffered one killed– RJ Lobb, Leading Carpenter’s Crew, ON M.2882– and 10 wounded during the engagement. A prize court would later grant Highflyer’s crew £2,680 for the sinking.
The battle made Highflyer famous, and newspapers around the globe celebrated the fight.
Assuming the flag of the Cape Verde station by October, Highflyer remained on a sharp lookout for German raiders and runners for the next two years without the same sort of brilliant luck she had in the first three weeks of the war. She spent much of this time combing the seas off West Africa, often haunting Sierra Leone and St. Vincent.
By 1917, she was engaged in cross-Atlantic convoy escorts from Halifax to Plymouth as part of the North American Squadron.
May 1917,”S.S. Durham Castle with [S.S.] Ayrshire and HMS Highflyer ahead.” Exterior view from the deck of the SS Durham Castle looking fore at two ships ahead. Lt. Irvine of the RAMC, having just graduated in medicine, was shipping out on the SS Durham Castle to the campaign in German East Africa. The image is from an album chronicling the wartime experiences of Archibald Clive Irvine (1893-1974) in East Africa. During this time he would meet Dr John W Arthur which in turn would lead to his missionary work at Chogoria in Kenya. Acc.12016/1 (reference number), International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 (collection), National Library of Scotland (subcollection), NLS DOD ID: 97047298 (file).
It was while at Halifax on 6 December that Highflyer had a ringside seat for the great Halifax explosion when a collision between the relief ship SS Imo and the munitions ship SS Mont Blanc sent the latter sky-high in the world’s largest pre-atomic explosion, killing over 1,900.
With the Mont Blanc ablaze and abandoned by its crew, six volunteers from Highflyer rowed almost a mile across the harbor to the ship to offer assistance. All perished but one when the Mont Blanc’s cargo exploded when the whaler was only 300 feet away.
The survivor, Second Class Able Seaman William Becker, J5841, was propelled 1,600 yards across the harbor by the explosion. Becker swam through the icy water to safety and lived until 1969. He earned an Albert Medal and was entered in the Guinness Book as the “Farthest-Flying Human Projectile (Involuntary).”
From Highflyer’s deck log:
8:40 am: Port watch of stokers landed for route march.
8:45 am: Collision between IMO (Belgian relief ship) and S.S. MONT BLANC (French) .
8:48 am: Fire broke out on MONT BLANC.
8:55 am: Commander Triggs and Lieutenant Ruffles proceeded in whaler to investigate.
9:08 am: Mont Blanc exploded (cargo, ammunition previously unknown) causing large wave and setting Richmond on fire. Damage was done to HIGHFLYER and to most of its boats. The skiff was sent to find the whaler’s crew and picked up Murphy AB who was unconscious and later died. Becker AB was found on the shore, having swum there. No trace of the remainder of the whaler’s crew was found. HIGHFLYER received wounded from other ships, made temporary repairs and cleared debris. The ship had to be unmoored at one point because of the danger from its proximity to the PICTON and the fires. The watch of stokers which had been landed administered first aid on shore.
Casualties
Killed
Jones, Robert DCS 270699 ERA 1st class
Kelly, Francis DK 21331 Sto. 1st class
Rogers, Edn. Benjamin DK 33240 Sto. 1st class
Murphy, Joseph DJ 2308 Able Seaman, [who was picked up in the water] (whaler’s crew)
Missing (Whaler’s crew)
Triggs, Tom Kenneth Commander
Ruffles, James Rayward Lieutenant RNR
Rushen, Claude Eggleton LS DCS 234241
Fowling, James Able Seaman DCS 22261
Prewer, Samuel David Able Seaman DCS 236276
Wounded: 2
Slightly Wounded 25
Minor Injuries 20
Several Officers with facial injuries and injured tympanic membranes who carried on with their duties.
From other ships:
2 Pte. of Composite Regiment
2 of crew of Tug HILFORD (one, Perrin, Charles died later)
5 from S.S. PICTON
6 from S.S. IMO
3 others injured
55 other survivors, several with minor injuries were accommodated on board
Halifax explosion, with HMS Highflyer shown in the channel, via the Halifax Naval Museum
Repaired at Devonport, Highflyer was sent to Bermuda to serve as a guard and station ship for the first half of 1918 then returned to convoy work, escorting Yanks to Europe. She was off Glasgow on one such run when the Armistice was announced on 11 November.
Late-war she apparently had a dazzle scheme drawn up by British Vorticist (the very English modernist movement that grew out of Cubism) artist Edward Wadsworth who supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the Great War.
HMS Highflyer, 1917 dazzle camo, Edward Wadsworth Art.IWM DAZ 37
Following a post-war refit at Devonport, Highflyer was sent once more to assume the role of flagship for the East Indies Station. Hoisting the flag of RADM Hugh H. D. Tothill, she held down the station from July 1919 to January 1921.
Paid off, she was sold for scrap at Bombay on 10 June 1921, at the time, she was the last Victorian-era cruiser in RN service.
The RN has not reissued the name “Highflyer” to another vessel.
However, in a salute to her extensive service on the East Indies Station– which was both her first and last posting– the “stone frigate” of the Royal Navy shore establishment in Trincomalee was named HMS Highflyer from 1943 until 1958 when the dockyard, wireless station, hospital, and headquarters facility was taken over by the Royal Ceylon Navy. I believe the old cruiser’s bell was located there during WWII but I can’t discern if/where it still exists.
Our cruiser is remembered in maritime art.
HMS Highflyer by Alma Claude Burlton Cull 1880-1931
As well as in Delandres vignettes from the period.
Of her sisters and half-sisters, Hermes was converted to a seaplane carrier in 1913, and sunk on 31 October 1914 by SM U 27.
HMS Hermes, sank after being struck by a torpedo from U-27 on October 31, 1914
Hyacinth spent her Great War career off Africa and assisted in the blockade of the German cruiser SMS Konigsberg there. She was decommissioned in 1919.
HMS Hyacinth listed to increase the range of her 6-inch guns, firing on German positions north of Lukuledi River, Lindi, German East Africa, 11th June 1917.
Near-sisters Challenger and Encounter, the latter in Australian service, spent the Great War off Africa and in the Pacific. While Challenger was broken up in 1920, Encounter would endure as a disarmed depot ship for the Royal Australian Navy throughout the 1920s until she was scuttled in 1932.
Modified Hermes class Challenger class protected cruiser HMAS Encounter IWM (Q 75381)
As for Highflyer’s hard-charging early war skipper, who captured Tubantia and sank Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, Admiral Sir Henry Tritton Buller, G.C.V.O., C.B., went on to command three different battleships and HM yachts before moving to the retired list in 1931. He passed in 1960, aged 86.
Meanwhile, KWdG’s skipper, Max Reymann, released himself from Spanish custody and managed to make it as far as Switzerland before the war ended. The bulk of his crew, some 350 men, were not as lucky and, catching a ride to the U.S. aboard the Spanish steamer Bethania, were intercepted in the Caribbean by the British armored cruiser HMS Essex and spent the rest of their war in a POW camp in Jamacia. Reymann returned to service, was appointed president of the Marinefriedenskommission (Naval Peace Commission) with the post-war Reichsmarine, and retired as a vice admiral in 1923. He passed in 1948, aged 76. He is remembered on the Ehrenrangliste der Kaiserlich Deutschen Marine (list of honorable men of the Imperial German Navy.)
Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, partially salvaged, is still in Rio de Oro, now in Moroccan waters. What is left of her wreck was located in shallow waters in 2013 and can be dived, with the proper permission.
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
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Somewhere on what would soon be referred to as the Western Front, we see this impressive period Tournassoud autochrome Lumiere showing soldiers of 3e régiment de Zouaves (3e RZ), 37e division d’Afrique, moving to the line in late August 1914 in Belgium, around the time of the Battle of Charleroi.
Soldats du 3e régiment de zouaves (RZ) de la division de Constantine. Réf. : AUL 69 La Divion de Marche Marocaine de l’armée d’Afrique Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud/ECPAD/Défense
1914 – Unknown location A Zouave stops in the countryside and has his meal. Ref.: AUL 77. Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud/ECPAD/Défense
The unit’s flashy full-color “La tenue garance” uniforms were little changed from the 1840s and they would only adopt a more contemporary khaki-yellow field uniform in 1916.
July 20, 1870 – The 3rd Zouave Regiment passes through Place Gutenberg. National and University Library of Strasbourg.
Zouave, circa 1888.
3e régiment de zouaves with their flag. They wore white trousers until after the Boxer Rebellion, turning to red in 1902
3rd Zouaves in 1916. Note the khaki-yellow uniforms, complete with fez.
A Zouave in 1917 marching order. note they still have a fez. “1er-24 juillet 1917 – Vincennes (Val-de-Marne) Un zouave pose avec son équipement militaire habitual. Réf. : SPA 16 W 988. Jacques Ridel/ECPAD/Défense”
Formed in 1842 from volunteers drawn from 23 line regiments and 11 of light infantry, the 3rd Zouaves were a renowned fire-eating unit and spent almost their entire history shouldering rifles for the Empire and Republic.
This included the conquest of Algeria, the Crimean War, the 1859 Italian campaign, the ill-fated Mexican Expedition (earning a Légion d’Honneur in 1863 for their flag), the terrible 1870 war, Hanoi, Tonkin, the Boxer Rebellion Tunisia, Morocco, the list goes on.
By 1914, the regiment was made up of six active battalions (2nd & 4th in Morocco, 1st/3rd/6th in Algeria, 5th in France) and two reserve battalions (11th and 12th, with reservists all over France and North Africa).
Assembled at Sathonay-Camp outside of Lyon just after the Great War began, the 3e RZ marched to war on 16 August with the 1st (which had just been rushed from Algeria via Marseille), the “local” 5th and the hurriedly activated 11th battalion. Arriving at Rimogne in the Ardennes on 16 August, they linked up with the recently-arrived 3e régiment de marche de tirailleurs algériens (3e RMTA), another North African regiment, to form the 37th African Division’s 74th Brigade.
Crossing the border into Belgium with the French Fifth Army (General Charles Lanrezac) on 17 August, the very colorful brigade was at Saint-Gérard on 21 August, fought hard over the next two days in the Battle of Charleroi, advancing as far as Fosses, then retreated to Mettet and Wagnée in the general recoil back towards France which began on the 24th. Tasked to provide a covering force for the division, the Zouaves protected the withdrawal, falling slowly back to Chambry by 31 August.
Picked up and transported to Vauxaillon, the Zouaves were soon deep in the battle for the Marine, where they captured the flag of a Bavarian battalion at Tracy-le-Val on 19 September. In subsequent action on 25 September, they charged and seized a mile of German positions, cataloging 11 artillery pieces, 9 machine guns, and 400 prisoners– not a bad day’s work!
They would finish the war with campaign honors on their flag for Champaign (1915), Verdun (1916), and Moreuil-Noyon (1918), along with a fourragère, a Croix de guerre with 6 palms, and the Legion of Honor, going on to occupy the Rhineland.
Fighting again in WWII, the 3rd Zouaves won additional honors for Le Faid (1943) and on the Danube (1945) for the city of Ulm, then once again occupying Germany– stationed in Berlin, where they would remain until October 1945. Their final honor was added for the 1952-62 fight against AFN in Algeria although it was “Elle ne sera jamais portée sur les soies” (never to be worn on silks).
The 3rd Zouaves were disbanded on 1 November 1962, and its banner was placed in storage on the 14th.
Some 80 years ago, the 25 August 1944 issue of “Yank” magazine carried a wide shot of a “Tanker in the Marianas” on the cover, showing said helmeted armored vehicle crewman amidst a scene of urban wreckage, his trusty mount behind him and seemingly camouflaged by various sheet metal bits and local signage.
The shot, from a series by Yank’s own SGT Bill Young and LIFE’s Peter Stackpole, is of 20-year-old CPL Thomas O’Neal of the 2nd Marine Division’s 2nd Tank Battalion as he rests against his Fisher-made M4A2 Sherman Tank after securing the town of Garapan during Operation Forager, the Battle of Saipan, in late July 1944.
Of note, only the Marine Corps, the Russian Army, and the Free French Forces predominantly used the diesel-powered M4A2 Sherman, while the Army had standardized the M4A3, with its gasoline-fueled Ford GAA engine, for its own mass production.
The ad behind O’Neal, printed by Saichi in Nakajima, is for Yuchu “stomach disease tameyui” of the Makoto Sheiro Yutada gastrointestinal and pulmonary medicine company, based in Osaka City, Tennoji Mito. In short, for stomach pills (almost) good enough for the Emperor himself!
While on Saipan, both 2nd and 4th Tanks shrugged off hits from Japanese 47mm guns and teamed up to decimate a battalion of the Emperor’s Type 95 Ha-go light tanks– one of the few large tank-on-tank fights seen in the Pacific in WWII.
O’Neal, his M1938 helmet still plugged into his tank and an M1911 in a shoulder holster across his chest, seems less than impressed.
Thomas “Tom” Everett O’Neal was born on 28 April 1924 in Long Beach, California, and enlisted in the Marines at the ripe old age of 17 just a week after Pearl Harbor. Volunteering for tanks, he fought at Guadalcanal and Tarawa before the landings on Saipan.
O’Neal survived the war without injuries and returned home to his high school sweetheart to start a family. Called back to active duty in July 1950 to head to Korea, he fought with the Marines at Inchon, Seoul, Wonsan, and around the Chosin Reservoir before returning home to later retire from the Los Angeles Police Department in the late 1960s. He then moved with his wife to Oregon and took up woodworking, belonging to the Oregon Old Time Fiddlers “where Tom played the guitar.”
Thomas O’Neal passed away in 2007 at the age of 83, leaving behind a “wife of 65 years, two sons and two daughters, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.”
As for 2nd Tanks, formed on 20 December 1941, at Camp Elliott, San Diego, they cased their colors in 2021, capping 80 years of service to the Marines. It was the final Marine tank unit, a decision that could lead many future Devil Dogs to take stomach pills.
Here we see this amazing shot, some 80 years ago this week, of the Ruler (Bogue) class Royal Navy escort carrier HMS Nabob (D 77) as she doggedly returns to base, very well trimmed aft, her stern low down in the water, after being hit by a German torpedo on 22 August 1944.
She lost 21 of her crew but the survivors couldn’t quit her.
Hudson, F A (Lt) Royal Navy official photographer Imperial War Museums (collection no. 4700-01) A 25368.
Constructed in Seattle under the name USS Edisto (ACV/CVE-41), Nabob instead entered British service on 7 September 1943, with over two-thirds of her crew being Canadian.
Less than a year later and half a world away, Nabob, loaded with Wildcat Mk V fighters and Avenger Mk.IIs from 852 and 856 Naval Air Squadrons, were in the main force attacking KMS Tirpitz in that German battlewagon’s Norwegian stronghold during Operation Goodwood.
It was then, after the first strike was recovered, that a Type VIIC U-boat on its 8th patrol, U-354 (Oblt. Hans-Jürgen Sthamer), encountered our little “jeep” carrier and pumped a spread of FAT torpedoes into her just after 01.14 hours on 22 August 1944. One hit, blowing a 32-foot hole below her waterline aft of the engine room and causing extensive flooding.
Sthamer tried to finish off the wounded carrier with a Gnat torpedo but it was instead soaked up by the Buckley-class destroyer escort HMS Bickerton (K 466), sending the greyhound to the bottom of the Barents Sea with 38 dead.
The British sloop HMS Mermaid and the frigate HMS Loch Dunvegan would in turn send U-354 and all hands to the cold embrace of the sea floor courtesy of dozens of depth charges.
Nabob, her engine room shored up against the open ocean, managed to limp to Scapa Flow some 1,070 miles at a steady ten-knot clip. She somehow even managed to get a few of her Avengers airborne when a sonar contact suggested another U-boat blocking her path.
As her galley and mess facilities were out of service, the skeleton crew that shepherded their hogging carrier back to Scotland had to get by on “short rations and rum for the five days it took to get the ship home.”
It was a marvel of damage control and was cited as an example to emulate in RN publications for years.
Declared a constructive loss as repair to her warped shaft could not realistically be accomplished she was returned to U.S. Navy custody in March 1945.
Sold for scrap the next year to a breaker’s yard in Holland, she was in fact found still serviceable and, converted to mercantile service, steamed for another 30 years.
Never doubt a Jeep carrier.
Often regarded by some as Canada’s first aircraft carrier, her ship’s bell was retained by the RCN and is in the Naval Museum of Halifax, CFB Halifax. Although her crew cut off her guns and jettisoned several of her planes to cut weight and correct trim lest water poured into her hangar deck from the stern, they couldn’t bring themselves to 86 the bell.
Did it ever really get any cooler than Alain Delon?
An avid gun collector, Indochina vet, and movie tough guy who influenced generations of action filmmakers has passed away.
Alain Delon was born in November 1935 in the Paris suburb of Sceaux, France, and four years of his childhood living under German occupation.
After turbulent adolescence with time at a foster home and Catholic boarding school followed by a stint in the French Fusiliers marins during the Indochinese War in the 1950s— which included service at Dien Bein Phu and catching a court-martial charge for liberating a jeep in Saigon for personal use– Delon found himself discharged and on the streets of Paris and soon found him living as a literal pimp in Montmartre.
The French Navy and Marines in the 1950s had a war that precluded the American “Brown Water Navy” of the 1960s and 70s. U.S. Navy Historical & Heritage Command photo NH79376
The square-jawed young man caught a break in the movie industry that saw him appear in the first adaptation of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (“Plein soleil”) in 1960 and on to a host of films working alongside some of France’s most iconic directors to include Jean-Luc Godard, Jean‑Pierre Melville, and Louis Malle.
It was his tough guy roles, alternating between gangsters early on and detectives later in life, that saw Delon make his biggest marks, including 1967’s Bushido assassin film “Le Samouraï,” 1970’s “The Red Circle (Le cercle rouge),” 1973’s “Big Guns (Les grands fusils),” 1975’s ” The Gypsy (Le gitan),” and 1982’s “The Shock (Le Choc).” He even crossed over into American cinema, notably in the spy film “Scorpio” opposite Burt Lancaster.
These films, many of which were later cited as favorites and influences by later action directors like Quentin Tarantino and John Woo and actors such as Keanu Reeves, Delon built a lasting cult following around the world.
The Internet Movie Firearms Database has more than 40 listings of the guns he used on-screen, leaning heavily toward Smith & Wesson revolvers and Colt M1911s with the occasional Glock, Beretta, and Manurhin thrown in for good measure.
A firearms enthusiast and collector ever since his military stint in Indochina, Delon maintained a personal shooting range at his home because, well, freedom, right? Sadly, the long arm of the law caught up with him earlier this year and seized 72 unlicensed guns from his estate, because France.
Delon passed on Sunday, aged 88, leaving behind “at least” four children.
Reposz en paix, Alain.
