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Forgotten Canadians: The WWII Veterans Guard

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With news that the Canadian military just this week has finally made progress on replacing their WWII-era Browning Hi-Powers, this 80th-anniversary image seems very relevant:

The above shows one middle-aged Corporal A.M. McLean of the Veteran’s Guard of Canada in June 1943. Clad in a  No. 2 helmet and armed with an American-made Reising submachine gun, his unit was tasked primarily with guarding Axis E-POWs in Canada.

At the time the image was taken, the force, composed largely of Great War vets still ready to serve in secondary roles, was at its height, numbering over 10,000 men under arms at a time when the country had a population of just 11 million.

A Canadian “Dad’s Army,” for sure.

As noted by the IWM:

On 23rd May 1940, it was announced in the Canadian Parliament that a Veterans Home Guard was being formed from men between the ages of 40 and 65, mainly WW1 veterans. The idea was to make use, for domestic security duties, of experienced personnel too old for active service overseas. Twelve companies, each of around 250 personnel, were to be formed initially, with a number of reserve companies formed in due course. The name was shortly changed to the Veterans Guard of Canada.

They would be named with a mix of Ross rifles, SMLE .303s, and P14 Enfields. 

Note the Ross rifles. “Inspection of Veteran Guard, Internment Camp 130,” Kananaskis, Alta., photographed by William John Oliver LAC 3514979

Veterans Guard members, including some very aged corporals, training with a SMLE No. 1. MKIII

On the march with American-made P14 Enfields

Members of the Veterans Guard of Canada pose for a color publicity photo in an Ottawa studio via the LAC

Veterans Guard of Canada member poses for a color publicity photo, complete with his Belgian Great War ribbons, LAC

Many stood guard over power plants, factories, and other sites considered potentially vulnerable but most were assigned as guards for prisoner of war and internment camps. Guarding these prisoners was initially the responsibility of the Canadian Provost Corps but in May 1941 full responsibility for them was passed to the Veterans Guard. It was to prove a significant undertaking. Britain had initially asked Canada to accept some 4,000 internees and 3,000 prisoners of war, but this soon increased to the point where, at its peak in October 1944, Canada was holding no less than 34,193 prisoners on behalf of the UK.

With the growth of tasks came the growth of the Guard.

By March 1941 there were 29 active companies with a total strength of 206 officers and 6,360 other ranks. Of these, 98 officers and 2,848 other ranks were guarding internment camps, the balance of personnel being employed in guarding vulnerable points and training. There were in addition 43 reserve companies with a total strength of 183 officers and 3,765 other ranks.

The Guard reached its peak of strength in June 1943, when its Active strength was 451 officers and 9,806 other ranks, which included 37 companies and 17 internment camp staff in Canada.

The Guard also served overseas. One served in Newfoundland, and another went to the UK as the General Duties Company at CMHQ in London.

In the spring of 1942, there was concern that ships carrying bauxite from the mines in British Guiana might be sabotaged while on the Demerara River. The British Government asked whether Canada could provide white officers and NCOs to supervise the locally recruited colored guards assigned to the shipping. No. 34 Company was formed for this purpose, comprising officers and NCOs only, and it reached Georgetown in June 1942. The posting was extremely unpleasant, as the ships were filthy and the weather sweltering. They were not withdrawn until January 1945.

The British Government also requested Canada to provide a guard for the Governor of the Bahamas, The Duke of Windsor. ‘N’ Force, or No. 33 Company of the Veterans Guard, was formed for that purpose in April 1943 and arrived in Nassau in June. They were relieved by a company of the Pictou Highlanders in the autumn.

There were other less routine assignments. In early 1944 the British Army Staff in Washington asked Canada to supply personnel to “conduct” mules from New York to Karachi. Four shiploads of mules were taken by Canadian Army parties between March 1944 and April 1945, four of which were provided by the Veterans Guard.

The last Veterans Companies were disbanded in 1947.

How a Trench Knife in a French Cemetery Led to Honoring a Fallen Great War GI

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The Disson M1917 and later M1918 trench knives, or “knuckle dusters” were a uniquely American item in the Great War

In February 2018, a French undertaker working in a cemetery in Villers-sur-Fere, a village about 60 miles northeast of Paris, discovered a set of undocumented remains. The fallen warrior was found with assorted field equipment that included a steel helmet, a trench knife, and an ammo belt full of 30.06 cartridges.

The undertaker contacted authorities and, it was discovered that American forces battled German forces in the village in the summer of 1918. This led to calling in a Great War archaeology expert and the American Battle Monuments Commission.

ABMC historians consulted the memoir of famed Army Chaplain Francis P. Duffy, which describes the burial of U.S. Soldiers from the 42nd “Rainbow” Infantry Division in the location where the remains were discovered. Notably, three Soldiers of the 42nd’s 150th MG Battalion earned the Distinguished Service Cross at Villers-sur-Fere in July 1918, one posthumously.

They were not the only ones, as the main color in the Rainbow division in France was red.

During its time on the Western Front, the 42nd participated in six major campaigns across 264 days in combat in 1917-1918 and incurred 14,000 casualties– a whopping one-out-of-sixteen casualties suffered by the American Army as a whole during the war. The fallen included poet Sgt. Joyce Kilmer– -the author of the poem “Trees“-who was killed in action.

In the end, the lost Joe discovered at Villers-sur-Fere in 2018 was laid to rest with full military honors alongside 6,000 of his fellow countrymen this week at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France.

The ceremony is reportedly the first burial of an unknown U.S. Soldier from World War I since 1988 and the first burial at Oise-Aisne since 1932.

Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade carry a casket with the remains of a World War I unknown soldier at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France, June 7, 2023. Photo By: Russell Toof, American Battle Monuments Commission. VIRIN: 230606-D-GJ885-005

Notably, Kilmer, who was killed near Oise-Aisne, is buried at the same cemetery, (Plot B, Row 9, Grave 15).

With that, Kilmer’s “Rouge Bouquet,” a tribute to the 19 Americans killed by a German artillery bombardment in the Rouge Bouquet wood near Baccarat, France in March 1918 comes to mind. An excerpt reads:           

“In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet

There is a new-made grave to-day,

Built by never a spade nor pick.

Yet covered with earth ten metres thick

There lie many fighting men,

Dead in their youthful prime…”

Holy Pith Helmets, Batman

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How about this great group shot of the officers of the brand new 191-foot U.S. Revenue Cutter Tahoma, dressed in their tropical whites, complete with sun helmets.

U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office photo 201210-G-G0000-001

As detailed, the above include: CAPT Johnstone Quinan, Commanding (second row, seated second from left) 1st LT Charles Satterlee, Executive Officer (second row, far left) 2nd LT Edward S. Addison 2nd LT Archibald H. Scally, 2nd LT Russell R. Waesche (front row, center) 1st LT of Engineers Harry M. Hepburn, 3rd LT of Engineers Frank E. Bagger, Passed Assistant Surgeon J. S. Boggess, USPHS. Observe, the ranks are based on U.S. Army tables rather than U.S. Navy.

Of note, the future ADM Russell Randolph Waesche, shown as a young USRCS 2nd LT above, would be the WWII-era commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.

From his bio:

He also presided over the greatest expansion of the USCG in its history and made sure the service maintained its separate identity while it was under the administrative control of the U.S. Navy. Admiral Waesche saw his small peacetime fleet swell with Coast Guardsmen manning more than 750 cutters, 3,500 miscellaneous smaller craft, 290 Navy vessels, and 255 Army vessels. The Coast Guard participated in every major amphibious operation.

No word on if he did sometimes put the old pith helmet back on.

As for his ride, she had an interesting tale of her own.

Commissioned on 25 March 1909, the 1,215-ton cutter Tahoma, armed with four 6-pounders, still had fresh paint in the above image. Her crew, including the young Mr. Waesche, soon became globetrotters, taking her from her builders at the New York Shipbuilding Company of Camden, New Jersey to her homeport in the Pacific Northwest, via the long way around.

To get to her cruising ground she made the long journey to the Pacific coast via the Suez Canal, setting sail from Baltimore on 17 April 1909. She visited St. Michaels, Azores to obtain coal before arriving at Gibraltar on 3 May 1909. Ordered to proceed as quickly as possible to Alexandrette [now known as Iskenderun, Turkey] by the Treasury Department, she departed Gibraltar, stopping in Malta, before arriving at Alexandrette on 12 May 1909. The U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, had requested a U.S. warship to calm American expatriate nerves during civil unrest in the Empire. The Tahoma remained off the Turkish coast for 13 more days before being ordered to resume her course to the Pacific. She visited Port Said and then transited the Suez Canal. Then it was on to Aden, Colombo, and arrived at Singapore on 30 June 1909. She then sailed for Manila arriving there on 8 July and made a port call at Yokohama on 21 July. She arrived at her new station in Port Townsend on 23 August 1909.

USRC Tahoma off Alaska; scanned from original in Satterlee Collection, U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office Special Collections.

Happy 101st, Mr. Miskelly

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U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Southwest recently saluted the 101st birthday of a WWII-era Coastie, Lewis Miskelly Jr.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1922, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts prior to the conflict and volunteered for the Coast Guard just after Pearl Harbor. While not an official war artist, he painted what he saw while in Atlantic convoy duty on the Coast Guard Cutter Mojave (WPG-47), a 240-foot Tampa-class cutter.

Shown here is the ‘Tampa’ class gunboat type cutter USCG Mojave (WPG-47), 1942, operating amid ice floes off Greenland.

As noted by the USCG Historian’s Office during that period:

Mojave was assigned to the Greenland patrol in 1942, where she took part in convoy escort and rescue operations. While acting as escort for the slow group of Convoy SG–6 which had departed Sydney, Nova Scotia 25 August, she assisted in the rescue of 570 men from the torpedoed army transport Chatham. The escort and antisubmarine accomplishments of the cutters were truly vital to the winning of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Miskelly’s paintings: 

And in the Pacific while on the the Coast Guard-manned General G. O. Squier-class troop transport USS General R. L. Howze (AP-134).

USS General R.L. Howze (AP-134) anchored off Manus Island, Marshall Islands, circa 1944-45.

Commissioned in early 1944, Howze completed 11 voyages to the combat areas of the Pacific, before returning to San Francisco 15 October 1945, carrying troops and supplies to New Guinea, Guadalcanal, Manus, Eniwetok, and “many other islands as the rising tide of the Navy’s amphibious offensive swept toward Japan.”

As for Miskelly, in a recent profile by The Press Democrat:

When he was 52, he learned how to surf. He cruised the waves of Pacifica and Santa Cruz until he was 85. He does tai chi everyday and still loves biking and driving his car.

For most of his life, he worked as a structural engineer and naval architect, which took he, his late wife June and four kids from Marconi to Petaluma in 1963. He worked until he was 75.

Thank you for your service, and your work, Mr. Miskelly.

Vale, Kyle Ronald Porter

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First off, I just want to say that much of the press about Fireforce Ventures came from left-leaning and much-skewed small Canadian media outlets looking to sensationalize on the merch the small milsurp company sold, which included a lot of Rhodesian brushstroke camo and replicas of old Rhodie flags and patches, and then take said merch and use it to characterize who sold it, which were a couple of Canadian Forces vets.

While I have no love lost for the old Rhodesian regime, and don’t rock any brushstroke myself, selling it it is certainly no worse than companies that sell tons of old Combloc stuff or repro/vintage German/Italian/Japanese/Soviet WWII stuff, or South African springbok gear no less.

With that caveat delivered, one of the co-founders of FFV, a former Canadian Forces Medic, was just lost in Ukraine while volunteering as a combat medic on the lines at Bakhmut. An admirable end for any man. 

An email from Hank at FFV, which has since pulled stumps and moved to Texas:

On behalf of the Fireforce Ventures Corporation, I must sadly remit news of the passing of my co-founder, Kyle Ronald Porter during the Battle of Bakhmut on 26 April 2023.

Kyle Porter and I were the original two founders of Fireforce Ventures. At the time of his death, Kyle was a combat medic in the Ukrainian Legionnaires Special Services Group, attached to Code 9.2, 92nd Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.

Kyle came up with our name, our logo, and the business mindset we still rely on. Kyle emphasized attention to detail, and a deep respect for the hard-won military heritage that comes with the word “Fireforce”. His contributions to FFV are immeasurable.

However, Kyle was a combat medic first and foremost. He volunteered in Ukraine several times. He served twice with a search and rescue team, before volunteering as a combat medic in the Ukrainian Army. Kyle plied his trade with gallantry despite the horrors of war.

Under intense combat conditions, he saved the lives of both servicemen and civilians alike, regardless of who they were. He also empathized heavily with the plight of the innocent, caught in the crossfire of war. He was a professional soldier through and through. I know for a fact, he did not fear death. Whe n it came, I knew he had a smile on his face.

Before Ukraine, Kyle had truly lived the life of a modern-day adventurer. Whenever Kyle was back from some adventure, diving the Scapa Flow wrecks, skydiving in Arnhem to commemorate Operation Market Garden, or ranging the African veldt on anti-poaching missions, we d always meet up. We’d sit and chat, often for hours about life, death and everything in between. In those talks, he told me to never mourn his death, for he welcomed it if his time was up.

I don’t know how I’ll be able to do that. I am crushed knowing that my best friend won’t return for a beer this time. He’ll never see Texas. He’ll never see where we end up.

Kyle was my best friend. I pray that one day, the full story of Kyle’s extraordinary 27 years of life can be told.

No matter how many cruise missiles and artillery rounds danced around Kyle over the last two years, he never feared anything. He told me that if his number up, it was up. He primed me for this almost a decade ago when we met in basic. He always faced life and death with the same lingering smile and devil-may-care attitude that characterized him.

Kyle would have been tickled to have gotten so many words of love from strangers he’d never met in the last few days. He never viewed himself as anything special, just another combat medic in a random conventional war. He told me to never grieve his death, as it was one he accepted fully. He’d say he was “dead a million years before he was born, and will be dead a million years after”. I know he’d want us to move on the best we can. We shut down for 24 hours when we broke the news over social on May 8th, but have since come back online, as Kyle would have wanted.

Make sure to please still consider supporting his family on GoFundMe in their efforts to repatriate his remains and bury him with dignity. You can contribute to the GoFundMe campaign at https://www.gofundme.com/f/318ubtq8y0

Thank you everyone for your understanding and support in this difficult time.

–Henry “Hank” Lung, Managing Director of Fireforce Ventures

Insult to Inury

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80 Years Ago Today: The 6th of May, 1943, near Tunis, Algeria. 1st. Lt. Jerry Collinsworth, USAAF, thumbs his nose at the pilot of a German Luftwaffe Fw190 he just shot down. This was the fourth of six victories scored by Collinsworth, all were Fw190s, all achieved in his Spitfire.

Col. Jerry D. Collinsworth, born in 1919 in Dublin, Texas, was one of the few Americans to become an “ace” flying the British-made Supermarine Spitfire in World War II. Volunteering for the U.S. Army Air Corps in August 1941, by late 1942 he was a pilot in the 307th Fighter Squadron of the 31st Pursuit Group in Europe and North Africa, where he would log 125 sorties, first in P-39 Airacobras and then in Mk. V Spitfires.

Between February and July 1943, he shot down six Axis aircraft along with one probable and one damaged.

“As I said, I shot down one a month. A couple of them bailed out. I even went back and thumbed my nose at one of them,” noted Collinsworth in a 2002 interview.

In all, just nine USAAF fighter squadrons (2nd, 4th, 5th of the 52nd FG; 307th, 308th, 309th of the 31st FG, and 334th, 335th, 336th– formerly “Eagle Squadrons” Nos. 71, 121, 133 RAF– of the 4th FG) flew “Spits” during WWII. Meanwhile, five reccee squadrons (13th, 14th, 16th, 22nd, and 111th) utilized a handful of Spitfire PR.XI photo birds and the U.S. Navy’s Cruiser Scouting Squadron Seven (VCS-7) flew Spitfire VBs instead of their floatplanes off Normandy in June-July 1944.

A Spitfire of the 307th Fighter Squadron “Stingers” after an emergency landing on the beaches of Paestum, Italy. In the background, LST 359 is beached at shore. (Incidentally, the 307th still exists, flying the F-15E Strike Eagle from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina while the ship, USS LST-359 was sunk by torpedo attack, on 20 December 1944, by the German submarine U-870 in the eastern Atlantic.)

Finishing the war stateside as a flight instructor, Collinsworth later became certified on jets and flew F-94s, F-104s, and F-100s, retiring as a full bird in 1965.

Postwar, he served as a Professor of Aerospace Studies at Southern Methodist University in Texas and, passing in 2010, is interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix, Section 18D, Site 1891.

One last laugh with Billy Waugh

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You may have previously heard that ARSOF legend, Retired SGM Billy Waugh, recently packed his duffle for the last time at the age of 93. His military career spanned 30 years from Korea to Vietnam, joining the Army in 1948 (after an unsuccessful attempt to join the Marines at 15 during WWII to make the final push on Japan).

Once retired, in 1977 he joined the CIA’s paramilitary guys and, among other places, took part in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom– in his 70s. While most of his agency work is lost to history, he for sure took part in operations against Quadaffi’s Libya, the Soviets, and in chasing Carlos the Jackal.

In noting his death, the 1st Special Forces Command said Waugh had “inspired a generation of special operations.”

There are three services planned:

12 May: Fairview Cemetery, Bastrop, Texas: There will be a small, private, gathering of family and close friends to spread a small amount of BIlly’s ashes at the Waugh family plot. Billy’s parents, infant brother, and sister are buried there.

27 June: A large memorial, organized by SOCOM, will be held at MacDill AFB. Location and time not provided yet.

22 July, 11:00: Jumping of the ashes. Billy requested that his ashes be HALO jumped and scattered by the HALO team. The time is not known yet, but it will be at Raeford Drop Zone, Raeford, North Carolina.

Snipers, up, eh

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80 years ago today: An unidentified infantryman of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, who is armed with an Enfield P14 sniper rifle and scope, taking part in a sniping-stalking-camouflage training course, England, 23 April 1943.

Note the skrim and balaclava. Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN 3596209

Another image from the same day. Much more skrim and balaclavas.

Of course, the Canadians had a rich sniper history going back to the Great War, and continue to have one to this day.

One of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division’s more storied regiments was the Montreal-based Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada.

Below, if you have time to kill (see what I did there?), a great little doc on the Black Watch snipers in WWII, including interviews with four of the gentlemen on the sharp end. 

Dogs Playing Poker, Capt. Casey edition

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Happy National Bulldog Day!

This 1891 photograph via the Detroit Photographic Company shows Captain Silas Casey III (USNA 1860), skipper of the cruiser USS Newark (C-1), sitting in his well-furnished stateroom with his Old English Bulldog sleeping quietly on the floor.

Casey doubled down on being a dog lover as shown by his taste in art as the picture behind him is an illustration used for the “No Monkeying” brand of cigars, which depicts two bulldogs playing poker with a monkey, from a lithograph by Emile Steffens.

A better view of the stateroom is Lot 3000-F-14 at the National Museum of the U.S. Navy, which still shows the dogs playing poker image on the bulkhead.

U.S. Navy protected cruiser, USS Newark (C-1), the cabin, possibly Captain’s Cabin. Note the dogs playing poker illustration and the spittoon

Laid down by William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia, Pa., on 12 June 1888, the brand-new 4,000-ton/311-foot cruiser was commissioned on 2 February 1891, with Casey in command, and was the first modern cruiser in the U.S. Fleet. The above images were likely taken around the time of her commissioning. 

Active in the Spanish American War– the warship bombarded the port of Manzanillo on 12 August 1898 and on the following day accepted its surrender then after the Battle of Santiago, she participated in the final destruction of Admiral Cervera’s fleet through the bombardment of the burned hulks– she went on to serve in the Philippines. She spent her last days as a station ship at Guantanamo Bay and then as a quarantine hulk for the Naval hospital in Providence/Newport until scrapped in 1926. USS Newark (C-1) unofficial plans, published in the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 1893. Published in the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, NH 70105.

For reference, Casey was the son of the well-known Civil War Maj. Gen. Silas Casey, Jr., author of the three-volume System of Infantry Tactics manuals that were in use by the Army for a generation. During the Civil War, the younger Casey was very busy. He served aboard the USS Niagara in the engagements with the batteries at Pensacola; aboard the USS Wissachicken with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron including engagements with Fort McAllister; and on USS Quaker City with the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron against Charleston and Fort Fisher.

After commanding Newark, Capt. Casey served a stint at Annapolis then went on to serve as rear admiral commanding the Pacific Squadron, 1901–1903, before retiring.

He passed in 1913, aged 71, no doubt with a dog somewhere near.

Simon Lake’s Defender found?

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Simon Lake, the famed mechanical engineer and naval architect, who held hundreds of patents relating to submarine vessels, engines, and other concepts, built his first operational submersible in 1894 at age 28.

Simon Lake and his “Argonaut” submarine in dry dock. Note that it had wheels and was intended to crawl the ocean floor. Via Popular Science 1901

Later, his more mature designs were built for service to the Tsar of Russia, the Kaisers of both Austria and Germany as well as Uncle Sam.

Simon Lake’s O-12 (SS-73) retained his trademark stern and amidships planes (shown folded down in the outboard view). Note the separate flooding ports in the watertight superstructure. Drawing by Jim Christley, text courtesy of U.S. Submarines Through 1945, An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman. Naval Institute Press. Via Navsource

One of his more peculiar designs was the Newport-built commercial submarine Simon Lake XV, which was later renamed Defender.

Defender at Bridgeport Connecticut. Photo courtesy Submarine Force Museum & Library

Just 92 feet overall, she displaced but 200 tons. Fitted with three torpedo tubes, Lake modified the small boat for diver operations while submerged, a concept he thought would be useful for both mine clearance and salvage work.

The experimental submarine was built in 1902 by Simon Lake, and refitted as a salvage craft, on the ways before launching at Bridgeport, Connecticut, on 1 January 1929. It was taken to New London, Connecticut, to undergo tests of safety and rescue devices with the salvaged submarine S-4. The new escape hatch, slightly open, can be seen in the bow, directly beneath the eye bolt. Description: Courtesy of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, San Francisco, California, 1969. Catalog #: NH 69034

Although the inventor tried several times to interest the navy and others with public experiments with Defender, and a failed attempt to salvage gold from the lost British frigate HMS Hussar— which had rested at the bottom of New York City’s East River since the Revolutionary War– with the boat, he never managed to sell it or the design.

Amelia Earhart dressed for deep sea diving off the submarine Defender, off Block Island, Rhode Island, July 1929

Illustration of Defender, with a possible conversion to a Sightseeing Submarine

After Lake passed in 1945, Defender was hauled out to sea and scuttled by the Army Corps of Engineers in Long Island Sound.

Now, a group of divers led by Richard Simon of Shoreline Diving are pretty confident they have found the old boat.

The wreckage was first imaged as part of a bathymetric survey conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a sonar survey of the Long Island Sound conducted by Eastern Search and Survey. Both surveys marked the wreckage as “unidentified.” Simon, who had been researching Defender for years, noticed that the unidentified wreckage was consistent with that of submarine and of Defender’s dimensions. The team conducted further research before diving the target aboard Simon’s vessel R/V Integrity. The dive, research, and surface support team consisted of: Richard Simon, Bob Foster, Jeff Goodreau, Wayne Gordon, Austin Leese, Joe Mazraani, Kurt Mintell, Harold Moyers, Kevin Ridarelli, Jennifer Sellitti, and Eric Simon.
 
Members of the team attempted to dive the wreck on April 14, 2023, but poor tidal conditions prevented them from diving. The team revisited the site two days later, on April 16, 2023. Simon oversaw deck operations while divers Steve Abbate and Joe Mazraani descended to the wreckage. The pair found an intact submarine. The length, the size, and shape of protrusions on the submarine’s distinct keel, and the shape and location of diving planes characteristic of Lake-built vessels helped identify Defender.
 
Additionally, the proximity of the wreckage to the mud flats where Defender was beached prior to being scuttled further confirmed the identification.
 
“It is such a thrill to finally put our hands on this important piece of maritime history,” said Abbate. Abbate, who made the dive the day before his sixtieth birthday, added, “It’s also an incredible birthday present!”

 

Forward hatch on Defender/Diver Steve Abbate inspects one of Defender’s propellers | Photos courtesy Joe Mazraani 

More here.

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