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.
Littoral Combat Ship 31, the future USS Cleveland, was delivered to the Navy on 26 November from Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin, closing out the line.
While all 19 of the more successful Indianapolis-class variants have been delivered and commissioned (albeit with two early hulls laid up), and are increasingly being used in a minesweeper role, the 16 Freedom-class variants, of which Cleveland is the final hull, have been much less successful, and five of her sisters have already been retired.
Clevelandlaunched in April 2023 and has spent the past 31 monthsfitting out. By comparison, the last Indy, USS Pierre (LCS-38), only needed 14 months between christening (18 May 2024) and delivery (11 July 2025). Pierre’s entire construction period, from keel laying to commissioning, spanned 29 months.
Following commissioning in Cleveland, Ohio, in early 2026, LCS 31 will be homeported in Mayport, Florida, with her 10 active sisters.
When commissioned, LCS-31 will be the fourth U.S. Navy vessel named for the Ohio city after two cruisers (C-19/CL-21 and CL-55), which served in WWI and WWII, respectively, and LPD-7, a Cold War era amphibious transport dock commissioned in 1967 and disposed of in a 2024 SINKEX.
Fincantieri, meanwhile, is continuing to work on the first (and last) two hopelessly behind Constellation class frigates, while the other four on contract will be canceled.
The Navy has agreed to take the blame for the program’s mismanagement, even going so far as to indemnify Fincantieri while the shipyard “is expected to receive new orders to deliver classes of vessels in segments that best serve the immediate interests of the nation and the renaissance of U.S. shipbuilding, such as amphibious, icebreaking, and other special missions.”
Wow.
Buy ROK FFGs?
Perhaps we should just order some frigates off the shelf from Korea, where the third Chungnam-class (FFX) Batch-III frigate, the future ROKS Jeonnam (FFG-831), was launched at SK Ocean Plant in Goseong, Gyeongnam, on 25 November.
Small, 3,600-ton (4,300 full load) ships that run 423 feet oal, they run a CODAG setup that allows a 30 knot speed and 8,000nm range at 16 knots– ideal for convoy and patrol work. They run a phased-array four-sided AESA radar/IRST mast, carry a 5″/62 MK45 gun, have a VLS (64 K-SAAM, 8 land attack) system, all the ASW goodies (hull-mounted active sonar, towed passive, VLA, 324mm tubes), a hangar for an embarked helicopter, and a CIWS.
Why can’t we have nice things?
Jeonnam’s sister, the ROKS Gyeoungbuk (FFG-829), gives a better view of the class. If we could just whistle up 40 of these. Bulk contract. Single source. Roll it!
Some 110 years ago this week, 22 November 1915. French lines “Somewhere on the Western Front.”
Official caption: “Three men in the cold, in a front-line trench, wearing hats and scarves. One of them, sitting on the firing bench, is handling grenades. While they seem like North African riflemen (Tirailleurs nord africain), they are actually just standard Poliu infantry equipped with mountain caps and hats.”
Note their Lebel rifles and long spike bayonets, as well as the man holding the early F1 (Fusante No. 1) cast-iron fragmentation grenade. Réf. : SPA 1 S 21 Emmanuel Mas/ECPAD/Défense
Last week in Munich, the German Bundeswehr introduced the new Kampfpanzer Leopard 2 A8 main battle tank to the public. The service, which has ordered 123 of the model thus far, stresses that, rather than upgrading older tanks, the Leopard A8 is a completely new design – and thus the first newly built MBT for the German Army since 1992.
Im Werk von KNDS wird der neue Leopard 2 A8 vorgestellt.
Of note, the display model included a Rafael EuroTrophy Active Protection System (APS) factory-installed. While 1,900 MBTs and AFVs around the world have Trophy, this is the first factory-fresh Leopard with the system. It also has a fully digital fire-control suite and an all-round situational awareness system with sensor-fusion capability on top of a host of improvements to the benchline Leopard 2A7HU production model.
Panzer Leopard rollt in München vom Band. Mit dabei: der Inspekteur des Heeres Ulrich de Maizière und Verteidigungsminister Kai-Uwe von Hassel.
The Germans have taken a keen interest in how second/third-hand Leopard 2A4/2A4V/2/2A6s have performed (and have been zapped) during real-life combat in Ukraine over the past few years to improve 2A8.
The first production models fielded will be with the PzBrig 45, also known as the Lithuania Brigade (Litauenbrigade), Germany’s first armored unit based abroad permanently since 1945.
Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann’s sizzle reel:
Future 2A8 operators besides Germany include the Netherlands (46 on order), Norway (54), Czechia (77), Lithuania (44), Italy (132), and Sweden (44), while Austria, Slovakia, and Croatia are all negotiating a purchase, making the new big cat a de facto NATO standard.
1965 Similarity
The rollout comes a little over 60 years since the original Leopard hit the scene, also in a similar event in Munich.
The Bundestag in 1964 allocated 1.5 billion DM for the purchase of 1,500 units of the new model. Subsequently, on 9 September 1965, a test drive was held at Krauss-Maffei in Munich, the main manufacturer, by Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel (CDU).
Inspector of the Army, Ulrich de Maizière, and the Minister of Defense, Kai-Uwe von Hassel, the first Leopard tank rolled off the assembly line in Munich, Sept 23 1965 (Panzer Leopard rollt in München vom Band. Mit dabei: der Inspekteur des Heeres Ulrich de Maizière und Verteidigungsminister Kai-Uwe von Hassel.)
The official handover of the first Leopard production model to the 4th Company of Panzerlehrbataillon 93 occurred soon after.
By 1976, the Bundeswehr’s total inventory already comprised almost 2,500 Leopard 1s.
Over 10,000 Leopard tanks have been made across the Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 lines, with the Leopard 1 having 6,485 total units built and the Leopard 2 having over 3,600 battle tanks produced since 1979.
And, since you have come this far and may be curious, this is what the U.S. is up to these days with the Abrams– or isn’t.
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 As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”
Warship Wednesday 26 November 2025: A Sad Affray
Above we see HM Submarine Affray (P421).
One of a class of 16 British A (Amphion/Acheron) class boats designed for use in the Pacific against the Empire of Japan in the latter stages of WWII, she commissioned 80 years ago this week and, while she did not get to fire a torpedo in anger against the Imperial Japanese Navy, Affray did go on to leave a tragic mark on naval history.
The A-class boats
By 1943, the writing was on the wall at the Admiralty that the naval war would soon shift to the Pacific and would be very different than that in the European theatre. Whereas small subs were ideal for work in the cramped English Channel, North Sea, and Mediterranean, larger hulls, more akin to American “fleet boats,” would be needed for far-ranging Pacific service.
The answer was the A-class boats, Britain’s only full-sized subs designed during WWII, which offered faster surface speeds, improved habitability under tropical conditions (they were the first RN boats to have air conditioning), and a double-hull structure. They used all-welded pressure hulls and welded fuel tanks inside, with ballast tanks adapted for extra diesel storage. With their 280-foot length, they were only a little shorter than the typical 311-footers seen in U.S. service while still being much larger than the Royal Navy’s preceding 204-foot “Long hull” V-class submarines of the 1941–42 Programme. Even the RN’s vaunted T-class only ran 276 feet oal.
By comparison, the A boats could make 18.5 knots on the surface (with a 10,500nm range at 11) as compared to the 15.5 knots (8,000nm @ 10) of the T-class, and downright pokey 11.25 knots (3,000nm @ 9) of the V-class. The operating diving depth of the A-class was 350 feet (max 600), versus 300 on the riveted V and T classes.
The As were also heavily armed with 10 21-inch tubes: six at the bow (two external) and four (two external) at the stern. Besides the 10 loaded tubes, they could cram another 10 Mark VIII fish inside the pressure hull for reloads, although typically just six were carried. Instead of torpedoes, 18 1,700-pound Mark II/Type G ground mines could be carried and deployed. Deck guns included a QF 4″/40 Mk XXII in the sail, a 20mm Oerlikon, and up to three .303 Vickers guns. Sensors included a Type 267W air warning radar, which could function at periscope depth, as well as Types 138 and 152 sonars.
The 1943 Programme called for the construction of 46 Type A boats built across six yards: Vickers-Armstrong, Barrow-in-Furness; Cammell Laird, Birkenhead; Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock; Chatham Dockyard, Plymouth Dockyard, and Vickers-Armstrongs, Walker-on-Tyne.
Only two of the 46, the Barrow-built HMS Amphion (P439) and HMS Astute (P447), were commissioned before the end of hostilities, in March and June 1945, respectively. Even at that, they never arrived in the Far East in time to conduct a war patrol, spending their wartime career in workup and tests.
The 14 sister boats– Acheron, Aeneas, Alaric, Alcide, Alderney, Alliance, Ambush, Anchorite, Andrew, Artemis, Artful, Auriga, Aurochs, and our Affray— were completed between late 1945 and April 1948.
HMS Alliance on sea trials, August 1946, off Barrow. Ref: CRTY 2017/139/776/1.
British Amphion-class submarine HMS Alcide (P415). Note her sail-mounted 4″/40 gun and original WWII profile. The photo was taken in 1947 at Plymouth Sound
Two more, the would-be Ace (P414) and Achates (P433), were not fitted out but, launched and afloat, were in turn converted into target boats.
The order for the remaining 28 units (Adept, Andromache, Answer, Antagonist, Antaeus, ANZAC, Aphrodite, Admirable, Approach, Arcadian, Ardent, Argosy, Atlantis, Agile, Asperity, Austere, Aggressor, Agate, Abelard, Acasta, Alcestis, Aladdin, Aztec, Adversary, Asgard, Awake, Astarte, and Assurance) was cancelled.
A-class submarines, 1946 Janes
Meet Affray
Our subject was laid down at the Cammell Laird yard in Birkenhead on 16 January 1944, launched on 12 April of that year.
The future HM Submarine Affray after launching at the Cammel Laird ship yard, Birkenhead, 1944 LT CH Parnall, photographer. IWM A28195
Affray commissioned on 25 November 1945, and her first skipper was LCDR Ernest John Donaldson Turner DSO, DSC, RN, a submarine service steely regular who had commanded HMS Sibyl (P 217) for 17 war patrols in 1943-44 and had earned his DSO earlier in the war as XO of HMS L 23 (N 23).
Only two of Affray’s Cammell-built sisters, Aeneas and Alaric, would be completed.
Cold War service
Designed for the Pacific, Affray soon left to join the 4th Submarine Flotilla in Hong Kong, centered around the tender HMS Adamant (A164), and with her four sisters, HMS Amphion, Astute, Auriga, and Aurochs, replacing eight T-class boats that Adamant had been supporting since 1945.
By 1949, Affray and, along with the rest of her class, had received a 60-foot “Snort” device, based on captured late-war German snorkel designs, during regular overhauls back home.
HM Submarine Affray (P421), after her 1949 refit. Note the 4″/40 on her fairwater had been deleted, and she has a forward torpedo tube open.
The device overall proved successful. On 9 October 1947, Alliance dived off the Canary Islands to commence a 30-day “snort cruise,” covering 3,193 miles to Freetown, all while submerged. Andrew later made a 2,500nm run from Bermuda to the English Channel in 15 days.
Previously, British submarines could only spend a maximum of 48 hours submerged, and that was largely stationary.
.A class submarine HMS Aeneas off Gosport, circa late 1940s/early 1950s, sans 4″/40 and with her “Snort” fitted
However, Affray’s Snort reportedly leaked “like a sieve” during dives in the Med, and by January 195,1 the hard-used boat had been placed in reserve at Portsmouth, with the globe-trotter having logged more than 51,000nm in just her first five years of service.
It would be a multi-day operation including “a war patrol, dummy attacks on shipping, combining with mock hostile aircraft attacks, Marine Commandos to be landed by cockle-type canoes for a simulated sabotage and enemy observation exercise, then re-embark.”
Instead of her regular crew, she had to land all but 24 experienced members while the boat was crowded with 24 ratings drawn from a new submarine class, a team of four Royal Marine Commando canoeists, and 22 members of a junior officer Executive and Engineering training class.
In all, 75 souls crammed into a boat built for 60~ with only about a third of them being “old salts.”
Affray had dived 30 miles South of the Isle of Wight, some 60 odd miles southwest of St Catherine’s Light, at 2115 on 16 April, and was due to transit to a position 20 miles southeast of Start Point. However, she failed to report her position on 17 April, and a SUBMISS/SUBSMASH alert stated search operations that eventually numbered over 50 ships, including 24 NATO warships.
These efforts continued fruitlessly until 19 April, with only an oil slick observed over Hurd’s Deep, by which point she was considered lost.
During the search, 161 sustained sonar contacts and as many as 70 uncharted wrecks, including another submarine, the 1944-lost U-269, were discovered, each requiring fruitlessly sending down a diver to verify if it was the lost Affray.
On 14 June, after two months, the frigate HMS Loch Fyne (K429) made the first contact with the wreck of Affray on her ASDIC equipment and sent the signal to the Admiralty in Whitehall.
The submarine rescue ship HMS Reclaim arrived on scene soon after and dropped a diver with a Siebe Gorman oxy-helium helmet to a depth of over 200 feet, who reported what could be a submarine below.
To confirm, Reclaim sent down her new underwater television apparatus on 16 June.
The camera container and lights in their frame, on board HMS Reclaim. IWM A 31970
When it neared the bottom at 260 feet, the first grainy image of the wreck, including the word “Affray” on a conning tower, appeared topside on Reclaim’s TV screen.
There is no shortage of educatedtheories as to what happened to the submarine, the last British boat lost at sea. What is known is that her Snort mast was broken, and all hatches and hull seemed otherwise intact.
Hopefully, it was over quickly.
As noted by Submarinefamily.uk:
Her loss is still a matter of controversy, and the exact reason for her loss may never be known, as she is now protected as a grave for those who died in her. The most likely cause is that her snort mast broke off while she was at periscope depth and that the induction hull valve had failed to operate satisfactorily, resulting in water entering the submarine through a 10-inch hole. With her buoyancy destroyed, she would have sunk very quickly.
Epilogue
The 75 men lost on Affray have their names recorded in the Submariners’ Book of Remembrance in the chapel at HMS Dolphin, Gosport. Their names are also listed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, the Submarine Museum Memorial wall at Gosport, and Braye Harbour, Alderney, among others.
Of note, one of the divers from Reclaim working on Affray was LCDR Lionel “Buster” Crabb, OBE, GM, who later became famous when, in 1956, he disappeared in Portsmouth harbor during the visit of a Soviet cruiser with Khrushchev aboard.
The rest of Affray’s class had a happier and much longer service.
At least 10 of her sisters served at one time or another between 1954 and 1967 with the Royal Navy’s 6th Submarine Squadron out of HMC Dockyard, Halifax (stone frigate HMS Ambrose) as “clockwork mice” for ASW training with Canadian and NATO surface ships– with active service deployed North-East of the Grand Banks to warn if Soviet submarines were active during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although not in RCN service, they typically had several “Canucks” as part of their crews, which helped the RCN’s transition to the trio of new Canadian Oberon-class submarines, which began entering service in 1965. The Submarine Room at the Naval Museum of Halifax contains many of their relics, including at least one ship’s bell from HMS Aurochs.
Fourteen received a further modernization akin to the American GUPPY conversions, which removed the old sail and replaced it with a more modern fairwater, as well as a streamlined hull profile. Although their four external tubes and the deck guns were removed, they could still carry 18 more modern Mark 8 Mod 4 torpedoes or 26 1,930-pound Mark V/type Q magnetic/acoustic mines. They also received new sonars (Types 186 long-range passive, 187 medium-range search/attack, and 197 intercept). The big Type 187 attack sonar required a large bulbous dome on the bow, giving the updated Amphions a similar profile to the 1960s Oberon class boats.
When they finished their refit, the GUPPY-fied Amphions received updated S-series hull numbers in place of their old P-series numbers.
HMS Alliance (S67), almost unrecognizable after her modernization.
HMS Artful, Amphion-class submarine, S96
Ironically, despite the original deck guns being removed during modernization in the late 1950s, a very non-streamlined replacement 4″/33 Mark XXIII S gun was installed starting in 1960 on several A boats to counter blockade-running junks during the Indonesian Confrontation with the Singapore-based 7th Submarine Squadron.
Modernized Amphion-class submarine HMS Andrew (S63) leaving Singapore at the end of her service with 7th Submarine Squadron (7SM), in 1968. The crew lining the deck wearing broad terandak hats while a sign hanging from the side reads “Mama Sam’s”. Within two hours of departure, the crew rescued two Malaysian fishermen whose boat had sunk and returned them to Singapore. Andrew was one of the many submarines to leave Singapore in the late 1960s when the decision was made to repatriate all British military “East of Suez”. 7SM closed in 1971. IWM HU 129718
HMS Alliance, in camouflage pattern off Malaysia, 1965. IWM HU 129708
Aerial starboard-bow view of modernized Amphion-class submarine HMS Alliance (S67) seen in 1965 during her service with 7th Submarine Squadron, note her deck gun. She is wearing a camouflage paint scheme appropriate for operations in the shallow waters around Malaysia during the Indonesian Confrontation. IWM HU 129708
Jane’s page on the class, 1960.
The class made appearances in several films, with Andrew filling in for a U.S. nuclear submarine in the 1959 post-apocalyptic film On the Beach.
Sistership Artemis appeared in an RN training film entitled Voyage North, from which stock submarine footage was lifted and reused in movies and TV shows for decades.
Aeneas, however, one-upped her sisters by appearing in the classic Bond film You Only Live Twice in 1967. She later went on to become an SSG, carrying an experimental mast-mounted SAM launcher.
The last of the class in service, HMS Andrew, paid off in May 1977 and was also the final British sub to carry a deck gun.
HMS Alliance, although decommissioned in 1973, would continue to serve as a static training boat until 1979, and survives today.
Alliance has been preserved since 1981 as a museum boat at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, Portsmouth.
HMS Alliance, Gosport
Among her relics is a replica wreath of daffodils, carnations, tulips, and lilies of the valley modeled after the one Alliance’s crew dropped over the resting place of Affray.
The Submarine HMS Alliance lays a wreath over the spot where submarine HMS Affray failed to surface during a training dive in 1951 (Manchester Mirror)
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
***
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30 November 1940, Scotland. Officers and NCOs of the Free French Navy submarine Minerve (P26), seen while the boat was refitting for further service. She was not alone.
At least the 13th warship with the name under the French flag, going back to 1757, Minerve was commissioned on 5 September 1936 under the pennant number Q185.
The leader of her class of 223-foot coastal submarines, she hit the scales at 870 tons submerged and could make 14 knots on the surface.
Her armament was varied, including a 3″/35 M1928 deck gun, two 13.2mm HMGs, six 21.7-inch internal torpedo tubes (four bow, two stern), each with a single reload. Outside of her pressure hull, she had three smaller yet trainable 15.7-inch tubes with no reloads.
Refitting in FFN service with a new pennant number on the sail. Note that her three external tubes are rotated out
In the early days of WWII, she carried out a surveillance of the Canary Islands for German blockade runners and then rode escort on seven convoys between Gibraltar and Liverpool. Towed out of Brest to avoid being captured by the Germans during the Fall of France in June 1940, she was seized by the British, then commissioned under the pennant number P26 in the Free French Navy with a new crew in January 1941 and soon took part in the chase of the German battleship Bismarck.
De Gaulle seen leaving the Free French submarine sisters, Junon and Minerve, in late 1940. Note Minerve’s win 13.2mm AAA mount. Photo by Harold William John Hamlin, IWM A 2173
Surviving the war, though heavily damaged in a blue-on-blue attack by British aircraft, she was wrecked in September 1945 while being towed back to France.
Of her six boat class, only two others survived the war.
A 14th Minerve (S647), a Daphné-class submarine, was lost in 1968 with a crew of 52 in the Gulf of Lion, one of four modern submarines mysteriously lost that year.
The mothballed Iowa-class fast battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62)is towed up the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge to the New York Navy Yard, 22 November 1950, for reactivation as a fire support platform for use in the Korean War.
She had been recommissioned at Bayonne the day before.
She would be refitted with SK-2 search radar, MK 12/22 radar on her MK 37 directors, and retained her 20mm Oerlikons, although most of her 40mm Bofors are gone
USS New Jersey (BB-62) commissioning at Bayonne, 21 November 1950, for Korean War reactivation
Already the recipient of nine battle stars for her WWII service, New Jersey had been decommissioned at Bayonne on 30 June 1948, so her hull had only languished on “red lead row” for 28 months and, notably, was still a very young ship, having been commissioned the first time at Philadelphia on 23 May 1943.
After a quick refit and shakedown, New Jersey left for the Seventh Fleet, where she arrived off the east coast of Korea on 17 May 1951 and spent the next seven months as fleet flagship. The recalled battleship’s big guns opened the first shore bombardment of her Korean career at Wonsan just two days later.
Over the next two years, she would pick up another four battlestars.
The battleship New Jersey (BB-62) fires a full nine-gun salvo of her 16″ rifles at a target in Kaesong, Korea, on 1 January 1953. Official USN photograph # 80-G-433953 in the collection of the National Archives,
USS New Jersey (BB-62) fires a nine 16-inch gun salvo during bombardment operations against enemy targets in Korea, adjacent to the 38th parallel. The photo is dated 10 November 1951. Smoke from shell explosions is visible ashore, in the upper left. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-435681
As noted by DANFS:
During her two tours of duty in Korean waters, she was again and again to play the part of seaborne mobile artillery. In direct support to United Nations troops, or in preparation for ground actions, in interdicting Communist supply and communication routes, or in destroying supplies and troop positions, New Jersey hurled a weight of steel fire far beyond the capacity of land artillery, moved rapidly and free from major attack from one target to another, and at the same time could be immediately available to guard aircraft carriers should they require her protection.
New Jersey would be decommissioned a second time on 21 August 1957, was brought back in 1968 to rain 6,000 shells on NVA positions in Vietnam, then decommissioned a third time the next year, and brought back a fourth and final time in 1982.
The fifth (completed) U.S. Navy vessel named for the Bay State, the future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798), was delivered to the service from Newport News on 21 November. She is the 25th Virginia/774-class submarine, the 12th delivered by the yard, and the seventh of 10 planned Block IV configured boats. Her commissioning is set for 2026.
Future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798) on builder’s acceptance trials. 251008-N-MQ094-002
Future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798) on builder’s acceptance trials. 251008-N-MQ094-001
Future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798) on builder’s acceptance trials. 251008-N-MQ094-003
The first USS Massachusettswas a 4-gun screw steamer built in 1845 and fought during the Mexican-American War.
The second, a 6-gunned screw steamer, fought in the Civil War– the bane of the Confederates on the Mississippi Coast and still has a fort named after her on Ship Island– while the third, an Indiana-class battleship (BB-2), fought in the Spanish-American War.
The last and most famous USS Massachusetts (BB-59) was commissioned in 1942 as a South Dakota-class fast battleship, earning 11 battle stars for exceptional service in WWII from Casablanca to Okinawa before being decommissioned in 1947. She remained in the Reserve Fleet until stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in June 1962 and continues to serve as a floating museum.
USS Massachusetts underway somewhere in the Pacific (1943)
How about this great shot some 50 years ago today, showing a quartet of full-color Grumman A-6A Intruder aircraft (BuNo 155623, 155624, 155625, 157014) of U.S. Marine Corps All-Weather Medium Attack Squadron (VMA(AW)) 242 flying in echelon formation on 21 November 1975.
Photo by Sgt. C. Quinn, USMC, VIRIN: DM-SC-84-04345
Commissioned on 1 July 1943 at MCAS El Centro, California as Marine Torpedo Bombing Squadron (VMTB) 242 with an insignia that included Bugs Bunny riding a torpedo, the squadron flew TBM Avengers throughout the Westpac in the last 20 months of the war, operating from bases ranging from the Solomons to Iwo Jima.
Inactivated post-war and stood back up in 1960, they first flew Skyhawks and then Intruders, stacking up a tally of 16,783 combat sorties delivering 85,990 tons of ordnance in successive tours in Vietnam, where they switched to the “Bats” nickname. One of the last Marine A-6 squadrons, they only transitioned to the F/A-18D Hornet in 1990, which they used to great effect in air support missions in Iraq in 2005.
Today, the Bats of VMFA-242 operate F-35Bs tasked to MAG-12 (1st MAW) out of MCAS Iwakuni. Of note, while they started off looking for Japanese carriers to sink in 1944, the unit recently was the first F-35 squadron to conduct operational testing on the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter carrier JS Izumo, the country’s first “big deck” fixed-wing carrier since WWII.
The Habsburgs by the 1860s had at least five assorted life guard units in their Household Division, with probably the most elite of them– on regular watch anyway– being the Imperial-Royal Trabant Lifeguards (k.k. Trabantenleibgarde).
Composed of long-serving Army officers and career NCOs, the half-company-sized Trabantenleibgarde was responsible for mounting the interior guard at the imperial residences of Hofburg and Schönbrunn in Austria. A larger force of picked enlisted men, the Leibgarde Infanterie Kompanie, handled day-to-day exterior guard work. The castles and residences in Hungary were guarded by dedicated Hungarian units.
When the last Habsburg emperor, Charles (Kaiser Karl I of Austria/King Károly IV of Hungary), left Schönbrunn Palace for the final time in the quiet pre-dawn hours of 12 November 1918, he personally dismissed the men of the Trabantenleibgarde without relief, their watch concluded.
However, Charles forgot to change the non-commissioned officer on duty in the Hall of Mirrors. Legend has it that the guard remained at his post until overcome by fatigue and drowsiness; he fell asleep on he shiny floor. He was found the next morning lying next to his white-crested helmet.
Emperor Karl I of Austria-Hungary inspecting troops of the Polish Auxiliary Corps in Bukovina, 10 December 1917. The officer on horseback is probably Lieutenant Colonel Michał Żymierski (IWM)
While Charles beat feet to Schloss Eckartsau, east of Vienna, and issued a proclamation that was ultimately taken as an abdication-in-waiting with the hope that his people would recall him, the old Empire was shattered to pieces in the wake of the country’s Great War defeat and ruin.
Leaving Austria for good in March 1919 for Switzerland and finally Portugal, where he died in exile in 1922, the Austrian Parliament pulled the plug on the monarchy in April 1919 and barred Charles and his male descendants from ever returning unless they formally renounced their rights to the throne.
Long feared broken up, it turned out that Zita carried the cardboard box full of jewels away and locked the trove in a Canadian safe deposit box in the 1940s, where they remain today.
The family secret was kept on the condition that at least 100 years had passed since the last Austrian Kaiser’s death before it would be revealed.
The family wants to put the jewels on display in a Canadian institution, but the Austrian government is already making noise about getting the items, some of which have been in the personal collection of the Habsburgs since the 1700s, back.
You have to give it to Charles, Zita, and their offspring, though. The jewels could have easily been passed on in private sales at any point since 1919, but have been kept intact and safe. Worse, they could have abandoned them to history. Keep in mind that since they left Austria, the country descended into a spiral of Nazi and later Allied occupation that lasted 23 years, bracketed by cycles of oddball socialist governments. Had the jewels been left at Schönbrunn, they very well may have vanished.
Remember that the 12th-century Holy Crown of Hungary, also known as the Crown of Saint Stephen, which last rested on Charles’s head in 1916, was recovered in the remote mountain hamlet of Egglesberg, Austria, by the U.S. 86th Infantry Division in April 1945 and kept in Fort Knox until 1978, when it was handed over to the Hungarian government.
At least the secret was kept, clad in pasteboard, and the last post has finally been relieved.
