The Blues have been tearing it up across the country lately, making up scheduled hours canceled along with this summer’s air shows by performing with the Thunderbirds over the nation’s urban centers in a salute to healthcare workers.
For instance, over Chicago this week:
They have never looked better, you could argue, and thousands who haven’t seen them in action before are now getting a chance, which is no doubt good for recruiting efforts– one of the primary reasons demonstration programs exist.
HOUSTON (May 6, 2020) The U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, fly over Houston, Texas, May 6, 2020. The flyover was part of America Strong; a collaborative salute from the Navy and Air Force to recognize healthcare workers, first responders, military, and other essential personnel while standing in solidarity with all Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Cody Hendrix/Released)
However, most folks don’t realize just how old these birds are. Like Desert Storm/32 years on the airframe old.
The closest Hornet above, BuNo 163435, is an early Lot 10 F/A-18C— the first block that saw the Charlie birds introduced– produced in 1988. It formerly flew in the Fleet with the Sunliners of VFA-81 on a number of deployments including during Desert Storm where the squadron downed a pair of Saddam’s MiG-21s.
A Sundowners’ Lot 10 F-18C, BuNo 163471, then assigned to Carrier Air Wing One Seven (CVW -17), climbs to an assigned altitude after completing a catapult launch from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73) in 2002. The squadron shifted to Rhinos in 2006, leaving their well-used Charle Hornets to go to the Marines and the Blues. This particular Hornet, while flying with the Sharpshooters of VMFAT-101, crashed following hydraulic problem 3 miles east of MCAS Miramar, in 2006. (U.S. Navy photo by Captain Dana Potts.)
Besides the above instance, the Blues operate several other aircraft from the same lot, including BuNo 163442, 163464, and 163468. They are slated to upgrade to F-18E/Fs next year, at which point the F-18C/D will only be operated by the Marines, long used to being the last to fly a NAVAIR asset.
Outside of the Blues, the alumni aircraft are commonly only seen on static display. For reference, several other Lot 10s have been relegated to museum pieces for years, with BuNo 163437 as a gate guard at Norfolk, 163498 on display at Naval Reserve Station Smyrna, and 163502 on the grounds of the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola.
Below we have the second U.S. Navy warship named after Adm. David Farragut, the 1,400-ton Clemson-class destroyer, USS Farragut (DD-300), shown rolling in heavy seas, during the 1920s.
Courtesy of Lieutenant Gustave Freret, 1970. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 70922
DD-300 was only in service from June 1920 until April 1930, then was sold for scrap.
Fast forward about 100 years and we see the 9,200-ton Flight IIa Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, USS Farragut (DDG 99) transiting the Atlantic Ocean as part of the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG), 2 May 2020.
U.S. Navy photo 200502-N-MQ631-0009 by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Maxwell Higgins/Released
Commissioned in 2006, she is the fifth such ship named for the good Civil War-era Admiral, and her bluejackets no doubt have just as much skin in the game as the ones who walked the decks of the previous four vessels– especially those quartered in the zero-gravity zones in high sea states.
With modern anti-ship missiles fielded by potential great power adversaries growing in size, speed and, most notably range from the 1980s benchmark (40-80 miles) a “missile gap” is seen as being real when you stack up legacy U.S./NATO AshMs such as Harpoon and Exocet against something like a Russian 3M54 Club (with a 400 nm range potential) or a Chinese CJ-10 (which could have a significantly longer reach).
This is why the big push to bring back a maritime strike variant of the Tomahawk (the TASM) and rush fielding of the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile (NSM), the latter of which has a range on some profiles stretching out to 300nm, to replace Harpoon the short term.
With that being said, others are still buying hundreds of Harpoons, and SLAM-ERs– the land-attack version of the missile– for more near-term use. Specifically, Saudi Arabia, which is in an increasingly drawn-out conflict with Iranian proxies on the Arabian Peninsula, and other overseas allies such as Brazil and Thailand that may need to still poke holes in things and can’t get on the TASM/NSM train yet.
Plus, in many cases, delivering a 500-pound warhead on target out to 80-100 nm is still, for the most part, useful.
From yesterday’s DOD contracts:
The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Missouri, is awarded a $1,971,754,089 firm-fixed-price contract to provide non-recurring engineering associated with the Stand-off Land Attack Missile – Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) obsolescence redesign effort as well as the production and delivery of 650 SLAM-ER missiles in support of the government of Saudi Arabia.
The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Missouri, is awarded a $656,981,421 modification (P00014) to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-19-C-0016). This modification procures and delivers 467 Harpoon full-rate production Lot 91 Block II missiles and support equipment for various Foreign Military Sales customers… This modification procures four Block II missiles and support equipment for the government of Brazil, eight Block II missiles and support equipment for the government of Thailand, 53 Block II missiles and support equipment for the government of Qatar, 402 Block II missiles and support equipment for the government of Saudi Arabia, and support equipment for the governments of Japan, the Netherlands, India, and Korea. Work is expected to be complete by December 2026.
Here we see the submarine Vesikko of the Finnish Navy surfacing in the Baltic, 1 August 1941, note her 20mm Madsen cannon, twin periscopes, and net cutter. Built as what could best be described as a demo model with help from a shady low-key U-boat concern, she went on to become Helsinki’s last submarine, an honor proudly held for the past seven decades.
Early Finn submarine efforts
Incorporated into the Tsarist Empire in 1809 as the Grand Duchy of Finland after a relatively one-sided war between Russia and Sweden, the region’s ports and inlets proved vital bases for the Imperial Russian Navy’s Baltic Fleet for over a century with the Gulf of Finland essentially a Russian bathtub. As such, many of the Tsar’s small core of professional mariners hailed from the land.
The Tsarist Navy, between 1901 and 1917, fielded around 50 submarines, most in the Baltic, across 10 different classes which included not only domestic production centered in St. Petersburg/Petrograd but also American, German, and Italian-made boats as well. Many of these operated from Finnish ports during the Great War with mixed results and six of the seven Russian subs lost during the conflict went down in Baltic waters. Added to this were a bag of nine small British submarines of the C- and E-class which likewise operated from Finnish waters from 1915 onward.
These two facts made it clear that the Finns had a measure of early respect for the submarine, a weapon that had great utility in the cramped Baltic if used properly.
In late 1917, as Imperial Russia was falling apart and the Bolshevik government was actively courting the Germans for a separate peace treaty to exit the Great War, Finland broke away and declared independence. Meanwhile, the Germans made a move to ally themselves with newly-free Helsinki, a flip that led the British to scuttle all nine of their Baltic-deployed boats at the outer roads of the fortress island of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg) off Helsinki on 3 April 1918 and evac their crews overland. Three days later, the Russians still in relative possession of four late-model American/Canadian-built Holland 602-type boats (AG-11, AG-12, AG-15, and AG-16) sent their vessels to the bottom of the harbor in Hango, another Finnish port.
This left newly-independent Finland with no less than 13 wrecked submarines in their coastal regions, two of which, AG-12 and AG-16, were deemed to be the least damaged and were raised in 1919 for possible use by the new country. The two boats lingered onshore for a decade while a variety of submarine experts from Britain, Germany, and the U.S. cycled through to evaluate returning them back into service. In the end, the two boats were too far gone and were sent to the breakers by 1929 in favor of new construction.
Guten morgen, Unterseeboot shoppers!
This led to the curious operation from Finland’s Turku-based A/B Crichton-Vulcan Oy shipyard to produce a series of small coastal submarines–the first warships to be built in independent Finland. The boats were designed by the Dutch front company Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (IvS), which was, in fact, a dummy funded by the German Weimar-era Reichsmarine using design assets from German shipyards AG Vulcan, Krupp-Germaniawerft, and AG Weser to keep Berlin in the sub-making biz while skirting the ban on such activity by the Versailles treaty.
IvS had previously built boats and shared technology with Turkey, Spain, and the Soviet Union before they moved to start making boats in Finland in 1926. Dubbed a “Tarnorganisation” or camouflage organization by German historians, IvS had one of its principal administrators former German Korvettenkapitän Karl Bartenbach, who had been the Kaiser’s submarine training boss during the Great War.
The first three Finnish-built boats, the 500-ton/208-foot Vetehinen (Merman) class subs, were based on the German WWI Type UB III and Type UC III submarines and served as an early prototype for Kreigsmarine’s later Type VII submarines, the most numerous U-boat type of WWII. All three were constructed side-by-side and were operational by 1931, with IvS training their crews. Their names: Vetehinen (builder’s hull CV 702), Vesihiisi (hull CV 703), and Iku-Turso (hull CV 704).
Then came the tiny 115-ton/106-foot submarine minelayer Saukko (Otter), designed to operate on Lake Lagoda– which was shared by the Soviet Union and Finland– built by Hietalahti in Helsinki.
In this period, Bartenbach, still officially furloughed from the German Navy, was serving in the Finnish Navy directly as an advisor.
These early boats had extensive lessons-learned knowledge gleaned by IvS experts who were reserve Reichsmarine officers during trails and shakedown periods.
This brings us to our little Vesikko.
Enter CV 707, err Vesikko.
Originally constructed as IvS hull CV 707, our feature submarine was built slowly between August 1931 and October 1933 in what Jane’s at the time called “private speculation” and “Is actually a German design.” The Finns had the first right of refusal on the boat when it came up for sale, open until 1937.
Submarine CV-707 at Crichton-Vulcan shipyard, shortly after sea trial performed by German submarine specialists from IvS, summer 1933. Her unofficial skipper at the time was Werner “Fips” Fürbringer, the Kaiserliche Marine ace who sank 101 ships during the Great War. He was later promoted to the rank of Konteradmiral during World War II.
Some 134-feet long and displacing just 250-tons when surfaced, she only needed a small 16-man crew but carried a trio of 21-inch torpedo tubes with two spare fish stored inside the hull for reloads.
Her trio of torpedo tubes. Finnish caption “Vesikon torpedoa kunnostetaan. Kirkkomaa 1941.07.27” SA-Kuva 29498
While the Germans used her to test their first generation of G-series torpedoes, the Finns would equip their submarines with British T/30 and T/33 type fish.
The attack periscope
Capable of floating in 13.5-feet of clear Baltic water, she could submerge in as little as 40 feet. As it wasn’t intended that she would operate outside of the narrow shallow sea, her dive limit of 300 feet wasn’t an issue. Able to make 13 knots on the surface and 7 submerged, her 1,500nm range would enable a war patrol of up to two weeks. Simple, she had an all-welded single hull with no watertight compartments.
A small, somewhat cramped ship, Germans submariners would dub her type as einbaum (dugout canoe).
Submarine Vesikko in Suomenlinna in her Finnish warpaint after 1937, via Submarine Vesikko Museum collections. She started off simply as CV707.
While deadly, her design could also be used in another capacity– training.
CV 707, as a private boat, was at the disposal of IvS submarine crews operating in Finnish waters and, within a year, the updated design was under construction in Germany as the Type IIA coastal submarine, with KMS U-1 officially ordered 2 February 1935 and commissioned four months later.
German submarine U 1 on trials, 1935, the country’s first “official” unterseeboot since 1919. Note the resemblance to CV707, down to the small tower with twin periscopes and serrated net cutter design.
The resemblance to the Finnish boat is striking.
In all, the Germans would construct 50 Type IIs by 1940 and the type would serve a vital training mission for the Kreigsmarine with a half-dozen later broken down and shipped overland to operate against the Soviets in the Black Sea during WWII.
German U-1 type submarines, passing in review in line-ahead (formation) before Grand Admiral Raeder. Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann, 1939. NYPL collection
Type II submarines of Kriegsmarine 21. Unterseebootsflottille Flotilla, Pillau
At the same time, sub expert Bartenbach had been recalled to serve in the newly formed Kriegsmarine in March 1934–after an official 14-year break– and promptly put on the uniform of a Kapitän zur See. Serving in vital submarine development roles, he would retire as a rear admiral in 1938.
With Parliamentary approval, the Finnish Navy purchased the one-off CV707 in January 1936 and dubbed her Vesikko in May, putting her to work as their fifth, and as it would turn out final submarine.
Submarine Vesikko’s entire crew. In Finnish service, she would go to sea with between 16 and 20 men. In German service, the type, filed with trainees, would usually carry 24 to 30
Soon she was involved in a war, the November 1939-March 1940 Winter War with the invading Soviets, during which she patrolled the Gulf of Finland on the lookout for Red warships until iced in by mid-December.
Sukellusvene Vesikko vauhdissa. Sa-kuva 81184
Allowed to be retained after the tense cease-fire with Moscow, Vesikko again became active in what the Finns have called the Continuation War, their limited involvement against the Soviet Union from June 1941 onward. Vesikko sank the 4,100-ton Soviet transport Vyborg on 3 July 1941 with a single torpedo and survived a resulting depth charge attack to boot. It would be her only significant victory.
Finnish submarine Vesikko with Madsen 20mm cannon 19 July 1941 Sa-Kuva 80467
Restricted from operations during the Baltic winter, she would spend the summers of 1942 and 1943 on patrol and reconnaissance duties but, as the Soviet Navy typically did not venture out of Krondstadt or besieged Leningrad, where they were protected by rings of nets and minefields, Vesikko did not chalk up any more kills. In fact, Vyborg was the only surface ship ever sunk by a Finnish submarine (although in 1942 Vesihiisi sank the Soviet submarine S 7, Iku-Turso sank the Soviet sub Shtsh 320, and Vetehinen accounted for Shtsh 305 though a mixture of torpedos and ramming).
By the summer of 1944, with the war turning against the Finns and their German allies on the Eastern Front, Vesikko was used to shepherd evacuation transports in Karelia as the Red Army surged forward.
In September, as Helsinki worked out a second cease-fire with Stalin in four years, the so-called Moscow Armistice, the Finnish Navy was sidelined and restricted to port, but spared destruction– for awhile at least. In January 1945, the Allied Control Commission ordered Finnish submarines to disarm and Vesikko’s ammunition and torpedoes were landed for what turned out to be the final time.
The 1946-47 Jane’s still listed Finland with five submarines, including our Vesikko.
As part of the multilateral Paris Peace Treaties that were signed in February 1947, Finland had to temporarily hand over control of their port at Porkkala and cede the Barents Sea port of Petsamo (now Pechenga) which had been occupied since 1944 anyway. There were also naval limits, which included eliminating her submarine arm as well as her largest surface ship, the 4,000-ton “lighthouse battleship” Väinämöinen.
While Väinämöinen would be towed to Leningrad and remained in Soviet hands, renamed Vyborg, until her scrapping in 1966, the Finns were allowed to dispose of their submarines themselves, a process, true to their nature of Sisu, they quietly slow-walked.
By 1953, the disarmed Vetehinen, Vesihiiden, Iku-Turso, and Sauko were sold abroad for breaking while Vesikko had been hauled out and stored at Valmet Oy’s shipyard in Helsinki, where she would remain until 1963 as the Finns made overtures to put her back into service.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
USS Nevada (BB-36) survived the hell of Pearl Harbor and was famously the only battleship able to get underway that day. Repaired and returned to service, she earned seven battlestars from France to Okinawa and, in the end, was subjected to far more damage post-war.
Nevada arrived at Bikini atoll on 31 May 1946 and was one of 84 targets used in Crossroads. The tests consisted of two detonations, the first Test Able, an airburst, on 1 July, and the second, Test Baker, an underwater explosion, on 25 July. Despite extensive damage and contamination, the ship survived the blasts and returned to Pearl Harbor to be decommissioned on 29 August. She was sunk by the cumulative damage of surface gunfire, aerial bombs and torpedoes, and rocket fire off Hawaii on 31 July 1948. Nevada was stricken from the Navy Register on 12 August 1948.
Nevada being sunk in ordnance tests off Pearl Harbor on 31 July 1948. (U.S. Navy Photograph 80-G-498257 National Archives and Records Administration, Still Pictures Division, College Park, Md.)
Now, over 71 years since she took her plunge to the ocean floor over 15,000 feet down, she has been discovered and documented.
“SEARCH, Inc. and Ocean Infinity are pleased to announce the discovery of USS Nevada, one of the U.S. Navy‘s longest-serving battleships. The wreck was located 3 miles deep in the Pacific during a joint expedition that combined SEARCH, Inc.‘s maritime archaeologists and Ocean Infinity‘s robotic technology and deep-water search capability. The veteran battleship, which survived Pearl Harbor, German artillery, a kamikaze attack, and two atomic blasts, is a reminder of American perseverance and resilience.”
The stern of the wreck has the remains of “36” and “140.” Nevada’s designation was BB-36 and the 140 was painted on the structural “rib” at the ship’s stern for the atomic tests to facilitate post-blast damage reporting. Photo courtesy of Ocean Infinity / SEARCH, Inc.
By the end of World War II, Nevada carried thirty-two 40mm Bofors antiaircraft guns. The airplane had changed naval warfare and guns like this helped the crew fight off enemy attacks from the air. This 40mm gun, still in its gun “tub,” is mounted next to a partly fallen, standard-issue Mark 51 “gun director” used by the crew to direct the fire of these guns. Photo courtesy of Ocean Infinity / SEARCH, Inc.
USS Nevada, like other ships at Bikini, was a floating platform for military equipment and instruments designed to see what the atomic bomb would do to them. One of four tanks placed on Nevada, this is either a Chaffee or Pershing tank that survived a 23-kiloton surface blast and a 20-kiloton underwater blast and remained on Nevada until the ship was sunk off Hawai’i on July 31, 1948. Photo courtesy of Ocean Infinity / SEARCH, Inc.
Here we see the USS Des Moines (CA-134) and her sister ship USS Newport News (CA-148), laid up as part of the Bicentennial Exhibit at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, August 1976.
National Archives Photo K-117046
The two retired bruisers, the largest and most capable heavy heavy cruisers ever fielded by the U.S. Navy (with the exception of the Alaska-class “large cruisers”) Newport Newshad put in lots of heavy work on the gun line off Vietnam and was only decommissioned 27 June 1975, some 14 months prior to the above image. Des Moines, on the other hand, had been on red lead row since 6 July 1961.
The third, and unpictured, ship of the class, USS Salem (CA-139), had preceded her two sisters to early retirement and had been decommissioned on 30 January 1959 after less than a decade of service. Notably, she portrayed the German pocket battleship KMS Admiral Graf Spee (which she actually outweighed by 5,000 tons!) in the 1956 film The Battle of the River Plate.
How about a chubby German BM on Salem’s quarter deck?
Ironically, the low-mileage Salem would go on to become a museum ship in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1994 while both Des Moines and Newport News were disposed of and slowly scrapped, with CA-159 only fully dismantled in 2007.
I’ve always been a fan of sweetheart grips on handguns. You know, the WWII trench art that was taking bits of broken plexiglass from viewports and aircraft canopies and forming them into grip panels for M1911s or similar period handguns.
Thus:
Likewise, I’ve been a fan of bayonets since, well, forever, so this German Gottlieb Hammesfahr/Solingen K98 bayonet listing I just stumbled across on eBay caught my eye, for obvious reasons.
Victory in Europe, or V-E Day, of course, celebrates the formal acceptance by the Allied nations of Nazi Germany’s surrender of its armed forces. German military leaders signed the surrender documents at various locations in Europe on 8 May 1945.
The signings detailed below in period newsreel, complete with the ceremonial destruction of the Swazi at Nurneburg.
A more British take on the matter, from the Imperial War Museum:
Just kidding, we are always friends. With that being cleared up, note all the little differences between these “GI .45s”
To check your knowledge: On the left is a Union Switch & Signal company-produced M1911A1 from 1943, made for the U.S. Army in Swissvale, Pennsylvania. On the right, a Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk-made M/1914 from 1925, made for the Royal Norwegian Army in Oslo.
Don’t let the slide markings fool you, both are in .45ACP, and both likely saw service in WWII.
I recently got to handle a few of each in our vault and put together a little article on these more uncommon Government Issue .45s. Check it out in my column at Guns.com
If you are a warship fan, you have no doubt seen it in the background in hundreds of classic images.
Italian destroyer Dardo shown in 1935 entering Taranto with the Aragon Castle in the background. NH 85759
Italian corvettes Gabbiano (F-571) and Pellicano (F-574) pass the Ponte Girevole swing bridge in Taranto. In the background is the 15th Century Aragon Castle
Swedish minelayer HSwMS Älvsnabben Entering Taranto Harbour ~1976-77 during one of her 25 Naval Training Voyages
ITS Andrea Doria (D 553) leaving the naval base of Taranto 2019
San Giorgio,
Dreadnought battleship RM Dante Alighieri pictured as she traverses the Ponte Girevole Swingbridge at Taranto on February 25th, 1917. Castello Aragonese is to the left
Taranto’s seven-towered Castello Aragonese was built in 1496 for Ferdinand II of Aragon but has fortifications on its compound dating back to the Byzantine era. Since 1883 the fort has been occupied first by the Regia Marina and then by the post-WWII Marina Militare, with the latter working since 2003 to restore and preserve the castle.
The below tour, posted last week by the Italian Navy, is very interesting and, should you need the translation, just click on the closed captioning, then “settings” and choose “auto-translate English” for a fair approximation.
