Category Archives: man card

Echoes of Issac Bell

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This is one of the coolest things I have ever had a chance to hold.

Sure, you have seen Colt Police Positives.

And you have seen weapon-mounted lights.

But how many circa 1915 Colt Police Positives have you encountered with a Seely Night Sight weapon light (Patent US1029951A) from that era?

Boom:

The light assembly is under the barrel, while the battery and pressure switch are in the replacement grip. The device featured precise craftsmanship, including spring-and-rubber cushioning for the bulb.

They are joined by a fine wire that rests in a shallow milled passage through the frame that looks to have been done by perhaps a jeweler or a watchmaker.

Its inventor, Mr. George A. Seely of San Francisco, seemed an interesting chap and, besides his short-lived “night sight for firearms,” also patented a curious curtain pole, a threshold, a table leveler, a conveyor device, and a stamp affixing machine, among others.

Some lightbox images:

This seems right out of a Clive Cussler Isaac Bell novel. You know, the circa 1914-1950 investigator for the Van Dorn Detective Agency with titles like The Chase, The Wrecker, and The Bootlegger? I mean, it should. The only other example I’ve ever seen of one of these was from the Cussler Collection (formerly of noted collector/dealer Randall Bessler of Carson City) and sold at auction in 2021 for $3,750.

We have it for auction at GDC starting at an incredibly low $2,199 with like a day left, and somebody better get it because if they don’t, well, I may be forced to grab this bad boy for myself and just feel somewhat of a Van Dorn.

Rock of Chickamauga, Yoju edition

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Some 75 years ago this week.

Official period caption: “Pfc. Preston McKnight, 19th Inf. Regt. uses his poncho to get protection from the biting wind and cold in the Yoju area during a break in action against the Chinese Communist aggressors. January 10, 1951.”

Pfc. Preston McKnight, 19th Inf. Regt., uses his poncho to get protection from the biting wind and cold, in the Yoju area, during break in action against the Chinese Communist aggressors. Janurary 10, 1951. Cpl. E. Watson. (Army)NARA FILE #: 111-SC-356309 WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 1393

Signal Corps photo by  Cpl. E. Watson. (Army) 111-SC-356309. National Archives Identifier 531396

Constituted on 3 May 1861 as a regular Army outfit, the 19th Infantry earned nine battle streamers (Shiloh; Murfreesborough; Chickamauga; Chattanooga; Atlanta; Kentucky 1862; Mississippi 1862; Tennessee 1863; and Georgia 1864) in the West during the Civil War, including becoming a legend at one.

Then came the Indian Wars (another streamer, in the Ute campaign), the War with Spain (another streamer), the Philippine Insurrection (six streamers), and was part of the 18th “Cactus” Division during the Great War, but never made it overseas. World War II saw it as a key part of the 24th Infantry Division, fighting across the Pacific (five streamers and two Presidential Unit Citations earned from New Guinea through the Philippines).

It was while on occupation duties in Japan where the 19th Regiment was when the Korean War began. They spent the next 18 months heavily engaged with the Norks and the Chinese before seeing some rest and a final redeployment towards the latter stages of the war. The regiment took one hell of a beating during those 18 months, suffering 418 KIA at the Kum River alone in July 1950, fighting a critical delaying action.

Around the time the top image was taken, the outfit was holding the line near Inchon and was hard at it.

“10 February 1951 – Waiting for the counterattack, these men of 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division, dig in after capturing a Chinese-held hill along the Han River, above Inchon. The photographer who took this picture was hit by Chinese Communist fire a few minutes later. 358067”

Woody’s rivet: Birth of the Mighty ‘Mo

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85 Years Ago Today.

Driving the first rivet, during keel laying ceremonies of the future Iowa-class battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 6 January 1941.

The soon-to-be-retired Atlanta-born RADM Clark Howell “Woody” Woodward (Annapolis 1899), then-Commandant of the Navy Yard (second from right), did the honors on this occasion. That fits as he was a salty battleship officer with a Navy Cross and DSM behind him, earned across two declared and several undeclared wars.

He was 63, but not quite done, retirement be damned.

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 96796

Future VADM Woody Woodward, while still a mid at Annapolis, saw active combat along with several of his classmates during the War with Spain in 1898 on the armored cruiser USS Brooklyn in the Battle of Santiago. He then went on fto ight against Philippine insurrectionists and Chinese Boxers while on Asiatic station, before, rifle in hand, commanded landing forces in Nicaragua in 1912 (and 1932), Mexico in 1914, and Haiti in 1915.

While XO of the battlewagon USS New York during the Great War and present for the internment of the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow, he earned a Navy Cross and, called back to the colors in 1942, would add a Legion of Merit and his second Distinguished Service Medal to his salad bar during WWII as the Chief of the Industrial Incentive Service and a trouble shooter for the CNO and SECNAV.

A nephew of Clark Howell, the famed editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Woody cut his teeth in the newsroom there as a lad in 1895 before shipping off for Annapolis and, after he retired the first time from the Navy in 1941, penned numerous articles on naval matters for the International News Service wire, something he returned to once he finally took his stars off.

Retiring a second time in 1948 after a solid 50 years in uniform, Woodward came back to work for the Navy on retired status during the Korean War.

He passed in 1967, aged 90, and is buried at Arlington, leaving a daughter, two grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren to mourn him. His papers are maintained in the NHHC collection.

As for Missouri, she is probably his greatest and most appropriate legacy, with the “Mighty Mo” having the DNA of Santago and Scapa Flow in her family tree due to him.

Silent Protectors

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Some 60 years ago this month

“Navy moves a Gurkha Patrol in the Jungle, Malaysia, January 1966. A Naval Wessex Mk V (Sikorsky S-58) helicopter of 848 RN Air Squadron from the Centaur-class Commando Ship HMS Albion (R07), ascends from its pad after returning a Gurkha patrol to their jungle base.”

Image: IWM A 35005

The simmering Borneo “Konfrontasi” conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia, with the Soviet Union backing the Indonesians and the Commonwealth/West backing Malaysia, was one of the myriad proxy undeclared wars during the Cold War. Running some 42 months across 1963-66, the Commonwealth lost some 140 killed– about a third of those Gurkhas– against about four times as high a loss as felt by Jakarta.

No fewer than 44 Gurkha were killed and 83 wounded during the Konfrontasi.

Westland Belvedere HC.1 XG453 of No 66 Squadron Krokong, Sarawak Ghurkhas during the Indonesian Confrontation, 1964 IWM (RAF-T 5262)

Gurkha troops using a step ladder to climb aboard a Bristol Belvedere twin rotor helicopter of No. 66 Squadron RAF at Kuching, British Borneo, during operations in Indonesia. IWM (RAF-T 5257)

The Gurkas still stand watch in the region today with a battalion of the 2RGR stationed in Brunei.

The Royal Brunei Gurkha Reserve Unit, established in 1974, is composed of former and retired military Gurkhas residing in the sultanate. They stand some 500 strong, and you can bet they stand ready to defend their now-homeland to their last breath.

The Singapore Police, meanwhile, maintain a 2,000-strong (not a misprint) Gurkha Contingent wholly separate from the British Army’s Brigade of Gurkhas “to provide a ‘strong-arm’ within the Police Force capable of quelling civil disturbance and carrying out specialist security tasks.”

Lucky Fluckey Would be Proud

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I know that, going back to the 688 class of the 1970s, hunter killers have been named after cities in the good old “fish don’t vote” adage of Big Nuke Navy Boss ADM Rickover, but I do miss those old classic fish names for subs.

One is set to return with the future Block V Virginia-class attack submarine USS Barb (SSN 804), which had her keel authenticated at Newport News on Dec. 9.

SSN-804’s sponsor is the spouse of the late RADM Eugene Bennett “Lucky” Fluckey’s grandson.

Fluckey was commanding officer of the storied Barb (SS 220) in World War II. Under Fluckey’s watch, USS Barb became one of the most highly decorated submarines in U.S. naval history, most known for sinking a record number of enemy ships and for a particularly daring mission that destroyed enemy shipping lines. Fluckey received the Medal of Honor for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” The ship earned four Presidential Unit Citations, a Navy Unit Commendation, and eight Battle Stars for service in World War II and was decommissioned in 1954.

The second Barb, (SSN 596), a Permit-class boat, was active in the Cold War, including two tours off Vietnam, and helped vet sub-launched TLAMs.

The future and third Barb will be the 31st Virginia-class submarine when commissioned, and the third Block V boat.

Of note, when the 688 series USS Helena (SSN-725) was decommissioned in July, the Virginias became the most numerous active submarine class in the world, with 24 active and two (Massachusetts and Idaho) complete pending commissioning in early 2026. They will no doubt hold that title for the next 20+ years, at least for SSNs.

A total of 67 are planned, including a trio of boats (two Block IV second-hand, one new construction Block VII) for Australia.

The Candy Clipper

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On my recent trip through the Atlanta Airport to visit Glock and canoodle with the new Gen6s, I spied a display of hand-carved wooden scale models, all of WWII-era aircraft.

One caught my eye, that of a Grumman J2F-4 Duck amphibian in bright pre-war livery, complete with “meatball” roundels.

(Photos: Chris Eger)

Yup, it was I-J-7, the famous “Candy Clipper,” complete with candy cane markings on its cowlings.

The Clipper was part of Navy LT Jack Clayton Renard’s Utility Squadron of PATWING10, a group of 10 light single-engine seaplanes operating out of the area around Manila: four J2F-2/4 Ducks, five early OS2U-2 Kingfishers, and one SOC-1 Seagull.

The “Candy Clipper” moniker came from its Navy pilot’s side-quest of carrying candy to nurses on Corregidor to brighten the Christmas of 1941, along with shuttling medical supplies and food to the bunker.

By late January 1942, all of Renard’s light amphibians had been lost to the fighting or were otherwise written off, and the Navy personnel diverted to ground defense as the war for Manila was lost.

A USAAF 1st Lieutenant, Roland J. Barnick (O-2820), was tapped to take the battered old Clipper, which had its shot-through engine recently replaced with one from a sunken J2F, on the last flight out of Bataan before the Japanese surrender on 9 April 1942.

Built for a crew of two (three in a pinch), the Clipper was crammed with Barnick and five high-value passengers, including Army Major (later general and UN President) Carlos P. Romulo, who went on to write about the flight in his best-selling book, I Saw the Fall of the Philippines.

The abused Clipper, overloaded and running on a waterlogged salvaged engine, somehow made it from its hiding place at Cabcaben airfield to friendly lines in Mindanao, where it would remain as its passengers managed their way by assorted means to Java and Australia.

Barnick, a bomber man, would end the war leading B-29 Superforts over the Japanese Home Islands.

He earned a Silver Star for the Clipper flight and would later retire as a brigadier general in the USAF, with over 5,000 hours logged —including a few in a field-rebuilt Duck.

Passing in 1996 at age 79, BG Barnick’s ashes are interred at Arlington, Column: 3, Court: 4, Section: M, Niche: 4.

Break a candy cane in his honor this month.

85 years ago: Carnarvon Castle v Thor

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The Union-Castle Line Royal Mail Motor Vessel Carnarvon Castle was built in 1925-26 by Harland & Wolff, Belfast (Yard No. 595), and at 20,122 GRT and 656 feet overall, was a beautiful ship. With two squat funnels (the foremost being a dummy for looks) she had accommodations for 310 first class, 275 second class, and 266 third class passengers and could make 18 knots.

Coming off a rebuild at Harland & Wolff in 1938 that saw her profile change to a single funnel, 30 feet added to her hull, a new accommodation plan for 699 passengers and a faster speed of 20 knots, it was a no-brainer that the Royal Navy tapped her for service as an armed merchant cruiser in September 1939, carrying eight 6-inch guns left over from scrapped Great War battleships, a pair of 3-inch DP mounts, and some Lewis guns.

Between 25 November 1939 and 21 November 1943, HMS Carnarvon Castle would ride shotgun on a dozen, mostly Sierra Leone-bound, convoys.

Carnarvon Castle, Armed Merchant Cruiser, WWII, By Artist Robert Lloyd

Some 85 years ago today, on 5 December 1940, she would encounter the German Hilfskreuzer Thor (AKA HSK 4, Schiff 10, and Raider E) which was arguably slower (17 knots) but better armed (6x Krupp 5.9″/45s, 4x37mm, 4x20mm Flak, 4x torpedo tubes, mines) and better prepared, having already sunk seven Allied ships and captured one already on her cruise.

The fight would last five hours.

As detailed in “Ocean Liners” by Philip J Fricker:

The Captain had learnt by an intercepted wireless message that the AMC was in the vicinity and hoped to avoid her. However, on 5 December, a large vessel loomed up out of the mist when the Thor was about 550 miles south of Rio and signaled the Thor to stop. (The latter at the time was disguised as a Yugoslav ship.) The British AMC then fired a warning shot, and, realizing he could no longer avoid an engagement, the German captain hoisted his battle ensign and opened fire at a range of about 14,000 yards.

According to the German account, the sun broke through spasmodically, and the British ship was silhouetted against the misty horizon, making a larger target. An enemy shell damaged her electrical control gear early in the action, and guns had to be fired independently by hand control. Nevertheless, the British ship kept up a good, slightly irregular, rate of fire. The Thor kept up a steady fire and also fired a couple of torpedoes, which missed.

By 0844 range had been reduced to about 8,000 yards, and the British AMC had been hit several times. There were several outbreaks of fire on board, and the internal communication had been badly disabled. Accordingly, the ship turned to port and sailed off in a northerly direction to try to control the fires. Having no wish to reopen the engagement, the Thor made off to the eastward. She had expended no fewer than 593 rounds of ammunition, about 70 per cent of her supply, and had escaped damage.

The British ship had not been so fortunate. Twenty-seven enemy shells had found a mark, and her casualties numbered four killed and 28 wounded. The fires were eventually put out, and the ship set a course for Montevideo, where she arrived on 7 December. Some plates salvaged from the wreck of the Graf Spee were used to patch her hull. The Carnarvon Castle later crossed to Cape Town for full repairs.

The skipper of the Thor, Captain Otto Kähler, reported no damage to his ship. It had been Thor’s second gunnery duel with a British Armed Merchant Cruiser, the first being on 28 July 1940 with HMS Alcantara, also a former Union Castle Liner.

On 4 April 1941, Thor engaged and sank HMS Voltaire, the third British Armed Merchant Cruiser she met, in a battle that left 99 British sailors dead and 197 as POWs, underlining just how well Carnarvon Castle had fought the year before, especially when you consider that Voltaire had the same armament as Carnarvon Castle.

Thor arrived in German-occupied France on 23 April 1941 after a 329-day and 57,532-mile war patrol, then seven months later, with new guns, an Arado scout plane, and radar, would venture out on a second one of 321 days that would end in Japan.

As for Carnarvon Castle, she would be converted to trooping duties in late 1943 and survive the war.

Returned to commercial use in 1947, she would be refitted for the emigrant trade and would continue to sail until 1963, when she was scrapped, having served a long and varied 37-year career.

The forgotten Hagaru-ri airlift

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Official period caption: “Astonished Marines of the 5th and 7th Regiments, who hurled back a surprise onslaught by three Chinese communist divisions, hear that they are to withdraw! Ca. December 1950.”

Photo by Sgt. Frank C. Kerr. (Marine Corps). NARA FILE #: 127-N-A4852

After four days of violent combat in late November 1950 against the PRC’s fresh 59th, 79th, and 89th divisions, the 5th and 7th Marines began a fighting withdrawal to Hagaru-ri, the division’s forward operating base, some 14 miles south, with an ultimate evacuation by sea at Hungnam, another very cold and hard 78 miles away.

Joined in Hagaru-ri by the Army’s badly mauled 31st Regimental Combat Team, one of the first large American aeromedical evacuations then took place with wounded removed by USAF and Marine C-47s and C-54s, as well as by Stinson OY-1 liaison aircraft, and Sikorsky HO3S-1 helicopters of Marine Observation Squadron (VMO) 6.

By the end of 5 December, the last full day of the Hagaru-ri airlift before the troops bugged out for Hungnam, an eye-popping 4,369 wounded Marines and Soldiers had been evacuated by the Combat Cargo Command in six days.

Corpsman offering canteen of water to wounded men aboard a Marine air evacuation transport departing an emergency air strip at Hagaru-ri to the rear area evacuation. USMC Photo No. A-130289, 127-GR-51-A130289, National Archives Identifier 74241240

Casualties are being put aboard evacuation planes at Hagaru-ri. From here, and later at Koto-ri, to the South, an estimated 4,800 wounded men were snatched from death and flown back to safety and hospitalization. USMC Photo by T/Sgt, Royce V. Jobe, No. A-130281. 127-GR-51-A130281. National Archives Identifier 74241237

The battered 1st Marine Division reached the port of Hungnam on 11 December, and evacuation by 193 assembled Task Force 90 ships commenced through Christmas Eve, by which time some 100,000 UN troops and another 98,000 Nork refugees had been taken off by sealift.

Shootin’s Good in the Schoutens!

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On the road today to Georgia at a firearms industry event to see some new guns from a company whose name rhymes with “Wok.”

Thus, I offer you the reader this abridged Warship Wednesday, with a promise to “return to regular scheduled programming next week.

Original caption: Like Johnny in the song, these G.I. Joes ‘got a Zero today’ — in fact, they shot down three zeros in one day with their anti-aircraft gun on the beach of Biak in the Schouten Islands. Ashore from a Coast Guard-manned assault transport, the gunners jubilantly posted the score-three down and more to go.”

US National Archives Identifier 205584181, Local ID 26-G-2487, US Coast Guard photo # 2487.

Closer inspection of the board claims, “Mitsubishi downed May 31st, 1944.” The LST doors in the background read “26.”

Note the caption on the scoreboard says it is “subject to changes daily,” for the USCG 40mm Bofors crew in the Pacific in WWII. They aren’t bluffing, as the board seems crafted from a riveted section of a downed aircraft.

One of 76 sea-going LSTs manned by Coast Guard crews during WWII, USS LST-26’s first skipper was LT. Eugene Kiernan, USCGR.

Her DANFS listing reads:

LST-26 was laid down on 16 November 1942 at Pittsburgh, Pa., by the Dravo Corp.; launched on 31 March 1943; sponsored by Mrs. Mathilda B. Coulter; and commissioned on 7 June 1943.

During World War II, LST-26 served in the Asiatic-Pacific theater and took part in the following operations:

Bismarck Archipelago operation:

(a) Cape Gloucester, New Britain-December 1943 and January 1944

Hollandia operation-April and May 1944, Western New Guinea operations:

(a) Toem-Wakde-Sarmi area operation-May 1944

(b) Biak Island operation-May and June 1944

(c) Noemfoor Island operation-July 1944

(d) Cape Sansapor operation-July and August 1944

(e) Morotai landings-September 1944

Leyte landings-October and November 1944

Consolidation of the southern Philippines:

(a) Mindanao Island landings-March 1945

She saw service in China from 3 to 10 October 1945.

Following the war, LST-26 performed occupation duty in the Far East until early November 1945. She returned to the United States and was decommissioned on 1 April 1946. She was struck from the Navy list on 8 May 1946 and was sold to Arctic Circle Exploration, Seattle, Wash., on 17 June 1946 to be converted for merchant service.

LST-26 earned five battle stars for World War II service.

The Cold Desperate Fire of the Sapper Steel Battalion

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It is unusual for American units to burn their colors every year, but there is one, the 2nd Engineer Battalion.

During the Battle of Kunu-ri in the Korean War, in late November 1950, with an tsunami of Chinese “volunteers” close to overrunning the 8th Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, the division’s attached 2nd Engineer Battalion’s commander, Lt. Col. Alarich “Al” Zacherle, elected to set his unit’s own colors ablaze rather than let them be captured by the enemy and used as a trophy.

It was clear to Zacherle that his unit, left to perform a rear guard action as the division left the mountain pass, would likely be mauled if not eliminated in toto.

Founded in 1861 and first seeing combat at Antietam, then fighting in the Great War and WWII with the 2nd Division, the unit had 25 hard-earned battle streamers, at least three French Croix de Guerre, and a Presidential Unit Citation by 1950.

“The colors, box and all, were drenched with gasoline,” Zacherle wrote in a 1996 letter to the battalion’s association. “A last look at the colors with the unbelievable number of battle streamers were imprinted on our minds. Setting the fire produced a bright blaze that denied the enemy of a trophy they surely would have greatly prized.”

When the 2nd Battalion regrouped after the withdrawal, just 266 of its 787 Soldiers were present for roll call. While 331 of those “missing” had been captured, only 117 of those men survived the conflict.

Zacherle was a prisoner of war from 30 November 1950 to September 1953 at Pyeongtaek, but, repatriated post-ceasefire, lived to a ripe old age of 94, passing in Florida in 2005. He reportedly weighed but 80 pounds when released.

For at least the past 30 years, the unit, now as the Fort Bliss-based 1st Armored Division’s 2d Brigade Engineer Battalion (2BEB), has held a burning ceremony with each Soldier present reading off the name of a fallen/missing circa 1950 member of the battalion as the roll is called.

It concludes with Taps and a night shoot.

 

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