Category Archives: military art

And the real color of the Royal Navy’s Wildcats in WWII was…

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The Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton has recently restored a 1940-vintage Grumman Martlet I (G36A/F4F-3), AL246, in its collection.

Over the past several years, she was “carefully restored by the museum team with the paint removed layer by layer and analyzed, enabling the original camouflage to be identified and repainted to its very original pattern.”

The aircraft had been overpainted several times between 1940 and 1964 for various reasons, and all references to the very unusual original color scheme had seemingly been lost.

Only a few color images of these aircraft exist from the 1940’s, and due to color variations in image processing, have led to many debates about exactly what colors these aircraft were painted.

The wings, tail plane, rudder, and a few small panels still retained their original Grumman factory finish beneath the later over-painted layers, and after 6 years of skilled detail conservation work, the team has revealed and preserved these original and unique painted areas.

Sadly, the fuselage section had been stripped to bare metal before 1964, and so the team has recreated this missing portion with a newly painted finish.

Originally ordered by the French Navy, 81 of these aircraft were diverted to Britain with the fall of France in May 1940. By the end of the war, only a few of the French batch remained; by 1946, AL246 was the only known survivor.

AL246 spent most of her service life in Scotland at Donibristle and Machrihanish. From 1944, she was used as an instructional airframe at Loughborough Aeronautical College and transferred to Yeovilton in the late 1950s. In 1964, she was presented to the Fleet Air Arm Museum and has been on permanent display ever since.

Initially named the Martlet by the Royal Navy, they were re-named Wildcats in 1944 to align with combined U.S. and British operations.

A staggering 1,123 Fleet Air Arm Martlets operated in all theatres of war, including Norway, the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Far East, making the stubby little Grumman catfighter one of the most numerous of British WWII RN aircraft.

Martlet fighters aboard HMS Formidable in the Mediterranean Sea, 1942

Martlet MkII British Fleet Air Arm F4F Wildcat No. 888 Squadron, parked at La Senia air base, Oran, Algeria, 14 December 1942, USN photo

Sub-Lieutenant Eric M.Brown, R.N.V.R., Fleet Air Arm, with a Grumman Martlet Mk. I, circa 1941.

Tomcat over Kresta

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Some 50 years ago this month. A half-century.

Where has the time gone?

Cold War, Soviet Ships. Mediterranean Sea. January 1976.

A Fighter Squadron 32 (VF 32), F-14A Tomcat fighter aircraft seen in full color livery while in flight near a Soviet “Kresta II” class guided missile cruiser underway below. The Tomcat was assigned on board the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67).

Note that the Cat is “dressed for work,” carrying a mixture of Phoenix, Sparrow, and Sidewinder missiles.

Photograph received January 1976. U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 428-GX-K-112540

The squadron has a lot of “firsts” on its sheet.

VF-32, the “Fighting Swordsmen” or “Gypsies” depending on which year you are talking about, originated on 1 February 1945, as Bombing Fighting (VBF) 3, after the old “Felix the Cat” Fighter Squadron (VF) 3 was split into two squadrons. VBF-3 joined Carrier Air Group 3 aboard USS Yorktown (CV 10) operating in the Pacific theater. Flying F6F-5 Hellcats, VBF-3 pilots became the first Navy carrier-based pilots to attack the homeland of the Japanese Empire. During heavy action, the squadron shot down 24 Japanese aircraft for which the Swordsmen received the Presidential Unit Citation.

By 1948, they had been redesignated VF-32 and were flying Corsairs, aircraft they would use to good effect in Korea from the deck of USS Leyte (CV 32). The squadron had Jesse Brown and Thomas Hudner for that cruise.

Ensign Jesse L. Brown, USN. In the cockpit of an F4U-4 Corsair fighter, circa 1950. He was the first African-American to be trained by the Navy as a Naval Aviator, and as such, he became the first African-American Naval Aviator to see combat. Brown flew with Fighter Squadron 32 (VF-32) from USS Leyte (CV-32). Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. USN 1146845.

Finishing out that war, they were the first squadron to field the F9F-6 Cougar and later the Navy’s first supersonic squadron when they switched to a different Corsair, the F-8, which they flew during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

By 1966, in early F-4B Phantoms, they logged 940 sorties over Vietnam from USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA 42).

Then they entered their Tomcat period in 1974– an aircraft they used to good effect, often from JKF, over Lebanon, Grenada, against Libya, Bosnia, the Gulf War, and OIF, also grabbing the Admiral Clifton Award numerous times.

They hugged the “Bombcat” a tearful goodbye in 2005, capping a 31-year run with the F-14 platform, and shifted to Rhinos, flying F-18F Super Hornets since then as the NAS Oceana-based VFA-32.

In addition to multiple GWOT deployments, on 14 July 2024, an unidentified female pilot in VFA-32 became the first American female pilot to engage and kill an air-to-air contact as part of 1,500 combat missions in support of Operations Inherent Resolve and Prosperity Guardian.

Big Army to keep (some) Horse Units Afterall

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Leading the Way. Army Capt. Megan Korpiel, commander of the Horse Cavalry Detachment, 1st Cavalry Division, leads soldiers while waving to a crowd during the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif., Jan. 1, 2026. Army photo 260101-A-WV576-1153M by Army Spc. Steven Day

The above troopers have a reason to be smiling under their Stetsons.

We reported last July on the move by the Trump administration to slice the number of Army military working equid (MWE) programs (horses, mules, and donkeys owned by the Department of Defense and housed on Army installations) from seven to two, with 141 U.S. Army horses rehomed.

The last two MWE programs would continue with the Caisson units of The Old Guard at the Military District of Washington and at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.

There has been a bit of a backpedal on this, with the MWE programs at Fort Hood, Texas (the Horse Cavalry Detachment, 1st Cavalry Division, which was established in 1973) and Fort Riley, Kansas (the circa 1992-founded Commanding General’s Mounted Color Guard, CGMCG) now retained as well.

Plus, the Army recently established a new military occupational specialty (MOS), “Army Equestrian” (08H), that replaces the “military horseman” identifier (D2) and “creates a specialized career path dedicated to the professional care of military working equines.” It is currently open to infantry Soldiers in grades E5-E9.

When the smoke clears, just three of seven programs will be discontinued: the circa 2001-formed 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) Horse Detachment, Fort Irwin, California; B Troop, 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (Memorial) at Fort Huachuca, Arizona (established in 1974); and the Artillery Half Section at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The latter, a unique horse artillery unit, is the most senior.

The Fort Sill Artillery Half Section in Oklahoma was established in 1963 as a ceremonial unit to preserve the tradition of the Great War era horse-drawn artillery, featuring a six-horse team pulling a Model 1897 French 75 field piece, and became a permanent fixture around 1970. The horses wear 1904 McClellan saddles, while the Doughboy is the uniform of the day. It is sad to see them go

You can’t save ’em all.

Garryowen!

The ‘For’ in IFOR

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And you think it is cold outside where you are!

How about the below, some 30 years ago.

Queen’s Royal Hussars, Petrovac, Bosnia, early 1996, an FV4030 Challenger 1 of 3rd Troop, A Squadron, and a FV107 Scimitar of RECCE Troop, with an AAC Lynx AH.7 overhead. In January 1996, the QRH was the first unit deployed in Challengers to Bosnia with NATO’s British-led Implementation Force.

Cold War veterans who served in the Falklands and Op Granby against Saddam, among other places, Lynx and Scimitar have long since been retired, while Challenger 1 has been superseded by Challenger 2 since 2001.

As for the QRH, today they are the senior-most armored regiment in the British Army, equipped with C2s, and are based at Assaye Barracks, Tidworth, since moving from Germany home (for technically the first time) in 2019.

Formed in 1993 from an amalgam of the Queen’s Own Hussars and the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars (both of which were formed from amalgamations of other historic cavalry regiments in 1958), the QRH and its myriad antecedents have been awarded 172 Battle Honours going back to 1685, and remember eight Victoria Cross holders, while observing Regimental days for Dettingen, Balaclava, and El Alamein.

Sea Dragon and Black Dragon

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Some 80 years ago today.

Post-war view of Yokosuka, while anchored in Tokyo Bay.

The surrendered 33,000-ton 16-inch gunned Japanese super-dreadnought Nagato can be seen in the right background in this image, 30 December 1945, with the more advanced Iowa-class fast battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) in the foreground, which carried an extra 16-inch gun when compared to Nagato and hit the scales at a massive 57,540 tons at the time due to her immense AAA battery and huge crew.

USN photograph courtesy of David Buell, via Navsource.

New Jersey, launched 7 December 1942 by the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, was commissioned 23 May 1943, making her just over two years in the fleet at the time, and had earned nine battle stars for her World War II service in the Pacific. She would go on to serve in Korea (four more battle stars plus a Presidential Unit Citation), Vietnam (three more plus a Navy Unit Commendation), Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf and would only decommission for her final time on 8 February 1991.

She, of course, is a museum ship with at least another 20 years of service ahead of her following her latest dry docking.

Nagato, commissioned on 25 November 1920, had served just over 25 years with the Imperial Fleet but spent the majority of the war in home waters, one of the primary reasons she was still afloat in 1945, albeit a little battered. That would soon change, as she was sunk just seven months after this image was taken, sent to the bottom as a target in the Atomic tests at Bikini Atoll, Operation Crossroads, 29/30 July 1946.

Her decaying wreck will continue to rest on the ocean floor in Bikini Lagoon, some 170 feet down, for decades to come.

Father Christmas’s Cold War Lighthouse Run

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Put into service in 1967, the Leuchtturm Kiel stands some four miles offshore of Kiel in the shallows of the Kieler Außenförde and serves as both the pilot station for the busy terminal and a manned aid to navigation– the only one of its type in use in Germany.

Soon after it was established, each December saw Weihnachtsmann, Father Christmas, hitch a ride out to the station to deliver holiday treats to the keepers and pilots, with his traditional sleigh or horse replaced by a fast attack craft of the Warnemünde-based 7. Schnellbootgeschwader (the 7th Fast Patrol Boat Squadron, 7. SG or 7. S-geschwader), a unit that had only been formed a few years earlier, in 1961.

It was a no doubt fast trip of about 75 nm across the Holsatian littoral.

Father Christmas on a Lürssen-built 42m Type 142 Zobel-class schnellboot of 7. SG, delivering goodies to Leuchtturm Kiel in December 1972. (Foto: Bundeswehr/Archiv)

And via a Type 143 Albatros-class FAC of the West German 7. Schnellbootgeschwader aus Kiel im Jahr 1985 den Weihnachtsmann (Foto: Bundeswehr/Archiv WBK I „Küste“)

(Foto: Bundeswehr/Archiv WBK I „Küste“)

Type 143A Gephard class Hyäne (P6130) (S80) of 7. SG on the Leuchtturm Kiel run in December 1994, complete with a Santa cap on her stern RAM launcher.

Typically equipped with 10 boats and two small 2,300-ton/324-foot Rhein-class tenders, 7. Schnellbootgeschwader kept watch over their stretch of the Baltic with jaunts to Norwegian fjords on NATO exercises.

The last four boats of 7. SG (Hermelin, Frettchen, Hyäne, and Zobel) stood down on 16 November 2016, capping a 55-year run for the squadron and logging over 350,000nm in patrols.

Santa gets out to the lighthouse by other means these days, but he surely remembers his schnellboot days.

Double Deuce: Keeping the Watch

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This image by Cal Obson of the Mexico-United States border in Agua Prieta, Sonora/Douglas, Arizona captures the old international boundary some 110 years ago today, 22 December 1915.

Arizona Historical Society. PC 1000 Tucson General Photo Collection, Places-Douglas-F1 #58732

Pvt. M.R. Pankratrte of Company A, 22nd US Infantry Regiment, stands guard with his M1903 Springfield at hand while Pvt. Montes Simon, of the 3rd Company, 20th Batallion de Siniloy (Batallón de Sinaloa), Mexican Army, has a Mauser with plenty of ammo, and what looks to be a big S&W on his belt.

The old “Double Deuce” was originally founded in May 1861 as a battalion of the 13th Regulars before earning its own regimental status during the great reorganization of 1869. Famously including a company of Seminole Negro Scouts during the Indian Wars who earned four MoHs, the 22nd saw much service across the frontier in the Old West, shipped to Cuba in the war of ’98, fought across the Philippines from 1900-05, helped San Francisco during the great earthquake of ’06, then shipped to Alaska for two years to help establish order and communications amid the Klondike gold rush.

In garrison at the Presidio, the 22nd was sent to the Border during the tense Mexican Revolution and Civil War then, in April 1917 was about to sail for the Philippines again when the U.S. entered the Great War and was rushed to New York City and Washington, D.C. to guard docks and infrastructure during the conflict, missing out on going “Over There.”

The 22nd only made it to France on 6 June 1944, landing on Utah Beach with the 4th Infantry Division, before being assigned to the 2nd Armored Division, the 83rd Infantry, and back to the 4th, breaking through the Siegfried Line and finishing the war in Germany. The regiment suffered an incredible 1,653 killed and 7,706 wounded in less than a year of fighting.

It later served with the 4th Infantry again in Vietnam (earning a  Presidential Unit Citation) and, with a battalion sent to the 10th Mountain, has since seen service in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Today, the Fort Drum-based 2nd of the 22nd is the regiment’s only active battalion, and, naturally, is known as the Triple Deuce.

The regiment’s motto: Deeds, not Words.

Fletcher snowballs

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Happy first day of winter.

With that, how about this amazing watercolor painting by Edward T. Grigware titled “Scene Onboard Ship,” one you can almost feel if in a snowy area today.

It was painted in 1943 and depicts U.S. Navy sailors aboard two tied-up destroyers working in bone-numbing cold and snowy conditions, likely in the Alaska theater where Grigware, an official Navy artist, was deployed.

Painting, Watercolor on Paper; by Edward T. Grigware; 1943; Framed Dimensions 16H X 18W. Naval History and Heritage Command Accession #: 07-805-P

Grigware, born in 1889, was already a well-known American artist and illustrator before he moved from Chicago to Cody, Wyoming, in the 1930s. He attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and spent time working as a commercial artist.

During WWII, Grigware created poster art to support the war effort and painted pieces for the Navy, including the haunting work above.

Fury, Devil Dog edition

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You have to love this bad boy, likely of the “Vipers” of Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron (HMLA) 169.

Official caption: “A U.S. Marine Corps AH-1Z Viper assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 265 (Rein.), 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, prepares to land during flight operations aboard the forward-deployed amphibious assault carrier USS Tripoli (LHA 7), flagship of the Tripoli Expeditionary Strike Group, Dec. 2, 2025, while conducting routine operations in the U.S. 7th Fleet Area of Operations.”

(U.S. Marine Corps photo 120225-M-EC903-1500 by Lance Cpl. Raul Sotovilla)

While Brad Pitt’s battle-hardened SSGT Don “Wardaddy” Collier in Fury needed a whole platoon of M4 Shermans to take out a single ambushing German Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger (the very real Tiger 131 in a rare on-screen appearance), an AH-1Z could exterminate a whole platoon of the toughest panzer cats in the forest of any generation, so the name is apt.

190812-M-EC058-1148 STRAIT OF HORMUZ (Aug. 12, 2019) An AH-1Z Viper helicopter attached to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 163 (Reinforced), 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) takes off during a strait transit aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4). (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Dalton S. Swanbeck/Released)

Sadly, just 189 AH-1Zs were delivered to the Corps, with only about 150 of those in active service with eight (soon to be seven) Marine Light Attack Helicopter (HMLA) squadrons (with two of those reserve units), so they are almost as rare as Tigers…and getting rarer.

Tusky at peace, yet girded for war

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Some 85 years ago this month.

Late December 1940.

A great view of a cramped turret full of 8″/55 (20.3 cm) Mark 12 guns of the New Orleans-class heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37), as she rests in Norfolk, hosting dignitaries. ADM William D. Leahy (fore, L) and his wife are seen standing under the guns with Capt. Lee P. Johnson (fore, R), before they collectively departed for Vichy France, on a diplomatic mission.

LIFE Archives

Admiral William D. Leahy, USN, and his wife on board USS Tuscaloosa (CA 37), inspecting the cruiser’s Marines, before they depart for France in late December 1940. Note the Springfield 1903s

The big T in December 1940 was amid her stint on FDR’s Neutrality Patrol in the Atlantic and Caribbean– having met up with the Dutch gunboat Van Kinsbergen to examine the latter’s 40mm Bofors mounts just four months prior.

Tusky’s December was to be a busy one. Per DANFS:

On 3 December 1940, at Miami, President Roosevelt embarked in Tuscaloosa for the third time for a cruise to inspect the base sites obtained from Great Britain in the recently negotiated “destroyers for bases” deal. In that transaction, the United States had traded 50 old flush-decked destroyers for 99-year leases on bases in the western hemisphere. Ports of call included Kingston, Jamaica; Santa Lucia, Antigua; and the Bahamas. Roosevelt fished and entertained British colonial officials-including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, on board the cruiser.

While the President cruised in Tuscaloosa, American officials in Washington wrestled with the problem of extending aid to Britain. Having barely weathered the disastrous campaign in France in the spring and the Battle of Britain in the summer, the United Kingdom desperately needed war materiel. American production could meet England’s need, but American neutrality law limiting the purchase of arms by belligerents to “cash-and-carry” transactions was about to become a major obstacle, for British coffers were almost empty. While pondering England’s plight as he luxuriated in Tuscaloosa, the President hit upon the idea of the “lend-lease” program to aid the embattled British.

On 16 December, Roosevelt left the ship at Charleston, S.C., to head for Washington to implement his “lend-lease” idea, one more step in the United States’ progress towards full involvement in the war. Soon thereafter, Tuscaloosa sailed for Norfolk and, on 22 December, embarked Admiral William D. Leahy, the newly designated Ambassador to Vichy France, and his wife, for passage to Portugal. With the “stars and stripes” painted large on the roofs of Turrets II and III, and her largest colors flying, Tuscaloosa sailed for the European war zone, initially escorted by USS Upshur (DD-144) and Madison (DD-425).

Letting those big guns sing in the Torch (North Africa), Overlord (Utah Beach at Normandy) Dragoon (Southern France), Detachment (Iwo Jima), and Iceberg (Okinawa) landings, Tuscaloosa received seven battle stars for her WWII service. She fired 22,000 shells in the latter two operations alone.

Placed out of commission at Philadelphia on 13 February 1946, Tuscaloosa remained in reserve there until she was struck from the Navy list on 1 March 1959. Her hulk was sold on 25 June 1959 to the Boston Metals Co. of Baltimore for scrapping.

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