Category Archives: military history

There are Hearts of Oak guarding the Queen

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The group, drawn from across the Navy to include the Fleet Air Arm and HMs Submarines, trained for two weeks under the eye of instructors from the Coldstream Guards

A scratch group of 48 RN officers, NCOs and sailors are this week guarding Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, The Tower of London and St James’s Palace as a unit for the first time. The duty traditionally falls to one of the five Foot Guards Regiments from the Army’s London Garrison Household Division, but this is believed to be the first time the Royal Navy are mounting the Queen’s Guard– though Sir Walter Raleigh was appointed Captain of the Queen’s Guard in 1587.

The Royal Marines, meanwhile, have completed the Queen’s Guard on at least three occasions.

The sailors are “dressed in pristine navy blue double-breasted greatcoats with white belts, white caps, white gaiters and black boots” with SA80 (L85 Enfield) rifles and bayonets, complete with white and brass sheaths, in tow.

“The sight of sailors undertaking public duties in our capital city is a sign that the Royal Navy is back where it belongs, at the very heart of national life,” said First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Philip Jones.

So what have the Guards been doing while the RN is on the watch? Well, at least one small group of Grenadier Guards have been hanging out in Africa fighting poachers in Liwonde National Park in Malawi. Armed with AK-47s and the like, armed poachers have killed over 100 park rangers in the past year.

The Grenadiers have been working “side by side with teams from African Parks and the Malawian Department of National Parks and Wildlife to mentor the Rangers. With 548 km2 of woodland and dry savannah to cover, a tactical shift to long-range patrols has paid off. During the three-month period, the teams removed 362 snare traps, two gin traps and more than 700 meters of illegal fishing nets in the park.”

Nine poacher camps have also been destroyed and a number of suspects arrested. So there’s that.

I heard you like really nice 1903s…

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Rock Island Auction’s upcoming December Premiere Firearms event, which is this upcoming weekend, has a bunch of really nice goodies– especally if you are a M1903 rares collector.

Among the nicest I’ve seen is this great Griffin & Howe “exhibition quality” National Match Springfield. From hand-stippling on receiver ring to rich engraving on the barrel bands, floor plate, trigger guard, and rear sight base, this rifle is a showcase piece before you mention the jeweling on the bolt and hand-checkered English walnut stock.

Even the companion 1911-dated M1905 bayonet has gotten attention.

Then there is this late WWI model (1918-marked barrel) Springfield Armory Model 1903 rifle comes complete with a very hard to find Cameron-Yaggi device, one of several “trench periscope” setups tested for use in that horrible “War to end all wars.”

This particular rifle comes from Bruce Canfield’s own collection (he literally wrote most of the noteworthy books on U.S. military small arms currently in circulation) and was featured in a number of books itself. Every time I talk to Mr. Canfield I come away enlightened.

More on the exhibition gun in my column at Guns.com here and the Yaggi here.

Also, if you have about two hours to kill, check out Mae and Othais from C&Rsenal on a 1903 deep dive in the below video. They cover everything from the .30-03 and early rod-type bayonets to oddball WWI spin-offs like the Air Service Model, the periscope-equipped trench guns like the Guiberson, the Pedersen semi-auto and Warner-Swasey sniper variants.

The L1A1 still serves, in Montego Bay at least

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Governor-General of Jamaica His Excellency the Most Honourable Sir Patrick Allen, ON, GCMG, CD, KSt.J inspects the Guard of Honour platoon furnished by the First Battalion, the Jamaica Regiment.

The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) is a descendant of the old British West India Regiment which dates to 1795 and the Jamaica Regiment consists of two light infantry battalions (1JR and 2JR) with a 3rd battalion made up of reservists.

While the force is constituted on a British Army model, their standard infantry arm is the M16A2 (and wear a MARPAT field uniform) though there are some second line units with the 1980s SA80 (L85) Enfield rifles.

Guard of Honour, furnished by The First Battalion The Jamaica Regiment (1 JR), — note the L1A1s

You will note, however, that the honor guard (and 3JR as a whole) still uses the old L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle (SLR), the standard semi-auto inch pattern FAL adopted by the Brits in 1954. When the British replaced theirs in frontline use in the mid-1980s, they were forwarded over to Kingston– where they replaced even older WWII-era No. 4 SMLE .303s.

Jamaican soldiers training to fire the FN FAL in 2002.

1 Engineer Regiment (Jamaica Defence Force) recently deployed on Ceremonial Guard Duty at the National Heroes Park, note they have M16s

The SMLE’s did not go to waste, however, as they were passed on to the constabulary.

Jamaica Constabulary Force armed with No.4 SMLEs

A Key West Prohibition-era scene

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Photo courtesy of The Haffenffer Collection

Here we see a waterfront view of Naval Station Key West sometime likely around 1925. Visible to the right is the Wickes-class destroyer USS Maury (DD-100) just behind the local twin-masted schooner Eureka, while the tug to the left is USS Saco (YT-31).

Named after famed 19th Century astronomer and hydrographer, CDR Matthew Fontaine Maury and commissioned 23 September 1918, the 1,199-ton Maury was a “flush-deck” or “four-stack” type destroyer common to the Navy until the 1930s and got in one Atlantic convoy run in the Great War before she was sidelined on red lead row. Reactivated in 1920 as a destroyer minelayer (DM-5) in July, 1920, she carried her former destroyer bow number (100) through her active career, which she largely spent on the East Coast– with the exception of a Caribbean cruise in the summer of 1925 that included a stopover at Key West. She later struck in 1930 as part of the fallout from the Washington and London naval treaties and was scrapped in 1934. Incidentally, three other ships went on to carry Maury’s name, including DD-401 and two survey ships, the most recent of which just entered service.

Purchased for use as a yard tug at the Naval Air Station Key West, Saco operated there as “Alexander Brown” until 24 November 1920, when she was renamed “Saco” and re-designated YT-31. She continued yard tug operations until struck from the Navy list on 22 October 1926. She was sold the next year and her ultimate fate is unknown.

As for Eureka, she sailed regularly around the Gulf throughout the 1920s as a coaster carrying various cargoes and I found mention in the Marco County library that she was still pulling houseboats down to the Keys as late as the 1930s. Odds are she crossed paths with Papa Hemingway in her travels and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was still around somewhere down south under a different name.  Key West is funny like that.

Turkey Day, 50 years back

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(John Olson/Stars and Stripes)

(John Olson/Stars and Stripes)

Official caption: “South Vietnam, November 1967: Staff Sgt. Raymond Scherz of Addison, Ill., has a passenger, but the gobbler’s ride shapes up as a one-way trip to C Company, 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division’s Thanksgiving dinner at the nearby Bear Cat base camp. The turkey was one of 57,000 sent in to provide as many as possible of the half-million U.S. servicemembers in Vietnam with a traditional holiday feast.

Also rolling through the supply chain for the 1967 meal were 225 tons of boneless turkey meat, 28 tons of cranberry sauce, 15 tons of mixed nuts, eight tons of candy, 11 tons of olives, and 33 tons of fruitcake.”

However, you couldn’t be too careful with Charlie.

Specialist Fred Gutierrez “interrogates” a turkey for its supposed links to the North Vietnamese Army as it sits in the rucksack of Staff Sgt. Raymond Scherz near Bearcat Base, Dong Nai Vietnam, Thanksgiving 1967.

As for the AN/PRR-9 on the soldier’s helmet, as noted by VietnamGear.com: 

The battery-powered PRR-9 helmet-mounted receiver was used in conjunction with the PRT-4 handheld transmitter as a ‘walkie-talkie’ type radio. After successful testing, PRT/4 – PRR/9 sets were first sent to Vietnam in March 1967. However, the sets performed poorly in the field compared to the PRC-25 and were consequently relegated to base security use.

Back when the RN had more than one flattop

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RN Fleet Air Arm carrier planes, 1943/44. Nearest to farthest is a Seafire (marinized Spitfire), Corsair, Martlet (Wildcat), two Barracuda to the right, aircraft at the end is a Firefly and a Sea Hurricane facing the camera. Photo was taken at RNAS training facility a Royal Navy mechanics school in the Midlands, NAS Mill Meece / HMS Fledgling. The facility was used to train WRNS Air Mechanics (Ordnance) on FAA types.

During WWII, the Royal Navy saw the writing on the wall in the respect that, to remain a first-rate naval power with a global reach, it needed a fleet of modern aircraft carriers. Entering the war in 1939 with three 27,000-ton Courageous-class carriers converted from battlecruiser hulls, the 22,000 ton battleship-hulled HMS Eagle, the unique 27,000-ton Ark Royal, and the tiny 13,000-ton HMS Hermes (pennant 95, the world’s first ship to be designed as an aircraft carrier)– a total of just six flattops, within the first couple years of the war 5/6th of these were sent to the bottom by Axis warships and aircraft!

Luckily, two 32,000-ton Implacable-class and four 23,000-ton Illustrious-class carriers, laid down before the war, were able to join the fleet to help make good those losses until the first of 16 planned follow-on Colossus-class light fleet carriers, a quartet of 35,000-ton Audacious-class, four Malta-class supercarriers (57,000-tons), and 8 planned Centaur-class carriers could be built (although most weren’t)– not to mention 45 escort carriers quickly folded into service– hence the wide array of comprehensive carrier-based strike and fighter aircraft seen above.

An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age

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Check out this beautifully etched 1796 Pattern Light Cavalry Officer’s Sabre from British service in the Napoleonic-era up for auction.

From Bonhams:

The blade bright over a third of its length to the point, the forte etched and gilt against a blued ground on one side with a cherub bearing the maker’s details on a banner, a martial trophy, post 1801 royal arms and Union foliage, and on the other a horse amid foliage, a cavalryman firing his pistol, crowned ‘GR’ cypher within a garland, and a design of foliage, regulation steel hilt retaining its buff leather tassel, and wire-bound leather-covered grip (leather with minor damage), in original steel scabbard with two rings for suspension, the throat on one side engraved with maker’s details in an oval (some light rust patination)

Topeka’s Terriers looking for turkey, 56 years ago today

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Official U.S. Navy Photograph. Catalog #: KN-3632

This image, shows the converted light cruiser USS Topeka (CLG-8) firing a Terrier guided-missile on 18 November 1961, during weapons demonstrations for the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral George W. Anderson, a week before Thanksgiving. Photographed from on board USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63). Planes preparing for launch on the carrier’s flight deck are a F8U Crusader jet fighter, at left, and an AD-6 Skyraider attack plane (Bureau # 137588), in the lower center.

While probably not aiming at Thanksgiving dinner, Topeka was known for warming up some VC and NVA on occasion.

USS Topeka (CLG-8) fires her forward turret’s 6/47 guns at the Viet Cong, while steaming slowly in the South China Sea on an in-shore fire support mission, April 1966. Official U.S. Navy Photograph. Catalog #: K-31264

The story of the ghost of Mobile Bay, and her robot crew

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The ex-USS Shadwell (LSD-15) is a 7,300-ton, 457-foot gator– the last member of the 19-ship Casa-Grande-class dock landing ships. Commissioned in 1944, she was hit by a torpedo and downed a kamikaze in WWII. She was part of the Third Fleet in Tokyo Bay, Japan, on that fateful day in September 1945 when the war concluded.

In better days, USS SHADWELL (LSD-15) Mediterranean Sea, June 1968 NHC Catalog K-51142

After more than 25-years faithful service around the world, she was on 9 March 1970, placed out of commission, and mothballed. In 1976 her name was stricken from the Navy List and she was a warship no more.

However, the Navy Research Lab’s Navy Technology Center for Safety and Survivability’s Shipboard Fire Scaling Section operates and maintains Shadwell as the Navy’s full-scale “Real Scale” Damage Control Facility dedicated to integrated Research, Development, Test and Evaluation studies on active and passive fire protection, flooding and chemical (simulants) defense for the past 30 years. As such, she has been renovated and instrumented to a degree that her builders never imagined.

The Naval Research Laboratory’s ex-USS Shadwell is a decommissioned U.S. Navy Landing Ship Dock that serves as the Navy’s full-scale damage control research, development, test and evaluation platform. Moored in Mobile Bay, Ala., the ship is regularly set ablaze in controlled demonstrations to test firefighting technologies, tactics and procedures and damage control practices to improve the safety of operational Navy and civilian shipboard firefighting measures. (U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams/Released)

Among the high-tech systems, the ship has been a testbed for is Virginia Tech’s SAFFiR robotic firefighter built for ONR.

The Office of Naval Research-sponsored Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR) undergoes testing aboard the Naval Research Laboratory’s ex-USS Shadwell located in Mobile, Ala. SAFFiR is a bipedal humanoid robot being developed to assist Sailors with damage control and inspection operations aboard naval vessels. (U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams/Released)

Based in Mobile Bay since 1988, she is currently on the disposal list.

Shadwell is to be dismantled in place and all fire testing will be shifted to land-based facilities located at NRLs 168-acre Chesapeake Beach Detachment.

Below is an All Hands video of her from 2015, highlighting some of what made her so special.

A trophy Sterling-Patchett, with an interesting back story

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The Sterling-Patchett Mk 5 was a silenced version of the Sterling Submachine-gun. The modification was the work of George Patchett, who had originally designed the Sterling itself. The Mk 5 was adopted by the British armed forces as the Gun, Sub-machine, 9mm L34A1.

This is the commercially sold version with a “crinkle” finish, which featured a wooden foregrip to protect the firer’s hand from the integral suppressor unit, which became hot from the propellant gas which vented into it upon firing:

Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30029460

This particular gun was captured from Argentinian forces during the 1982 Falklands Conflict by the British Army in June 1982 along with 20,000~ other sundry surrendered arms. It was issued (along with standard versions of the Sterling SMG) to the Argentine Marines, and was most notably used by their assault commandos – the Buzos Tacticos – during the initial stages of the Argentine invasion.

These Royal Marines of Naval Party 8901, seen outside of Government House during the Argentine invasion, would later return to the Falklands as part of 42 Commando and settle scores, being the first unit to raise the Union Jack at the compound.

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