Two-time NRA Precision Pistol Champion and holder of 10 National Police Pistol Championship titles, Philip Hemphill, has passed away.
Hemphill, who retired from the Mississippi Highway Patrol as a captain in 2011 after a 30-year career, was a longtime fixture as a firearms instructor at the state’s largest police academy, MLEOTA in Pearl. During that time, he proved legendary at Police Pistol events, winning several consecutive national championships, typically competing against other instructors from around the country.
Hemphill notably was the first to win both the NPSC and the police title at NRA’s National Matches at Camp Perry in conventional pistol. He was named the NRA’s Officer of the Year in 2007, among other honors.
After he hung up his badge, Hemphill continued working as an instructor for another decade while competing for Team Zero/ Lapua, Rock River, and AimPoint.
Hemphill passed on Oct. 12, 2023, at his home in Meridian.
I met Capt. Hemphill on my two trips through MLEOTA in the early 2000s. He was a hell of a guy. We are diminished.
80 years ago today: Canadian Army Corporal Earl Harold Pruner, 19, of The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, carries both a PIAT anti-tank weapon and an M1 Thompson sub-machine gun through war-torn Motta, Italy, 2 October 1943.
Library and Archives Canada LAC 3229941
The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, known affectionately as the “Hasty P’s” traces its lineage to seven assorted local militia units dating to 1863 and was only stood up for active campaigning as a regiment in 1939. It went on to be awarded more Battle Honours (31) during WWII than any other Canadian Infantry Regiment, only earning its first in the Husky Landings in Sicily in July 1943– showing just how grueling and nonstop the combat was that the Hastys saw before VE Day.
Illustrating this, the above good Corporal Pruner would have just over two months to live as he was killed in action on 7 December 1943 during the two-day assault over the Moro River. He had lied about his age, dropping out of school and joining up in 1940 at age 16, following in the footsteps of his dad, who had served on the Western Front in the Great War.
During WWII, one of the unit’s officers, future author and environmentalist Capt. Farley Mowat took detailed notes and made the unit the subject of his historical book, The Regiment, which makes great reading.
The unit endures as an understrength three-company infantry battalion within the Army Reserve’s 33 Canadian Brigade Group, stationed across Ontario.
E/V Nautilus, in a 27-day expedition funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, in conjunction with a whole alphabet soup of other agencies and institutes (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, International Midway Memorial Foundation, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the State of Hawaiʻi, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, University of Maryland, University of Rhode Island, University of Hawaiʻi, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, and Japanese archaeological colleagues from Teikyo University, Tokai University, and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology) has been surveying the deep sea bed related to the Battle of Midway.
With that, they have released an extensive 27-minute survey of the lost carrier USS Yorktown (CV 5), conducted on 9 September.
Via EV Nautilus:
Ocean Exploration Trust’s survey of USS Yorktown during our Ala ʻAumoana Kai Uli expedition was the first time the world could witness this Battle of Midway wreck in real-time. The site was discovered 25 years ago, located during a joint U.S. Navy and National Geographic Society expedition led by Dr. Robert Ballard, president and founder of Ocean Exploration Trust. All dives in the Battle of Midway battlefield were launched and closed with protocol ceremonies to honor this place and all who lost their lives in ways that reflected their significance to Kānaka ʻOiwi (Native Hawaiian), Japanese, and U.S. military families and communities.
This historic, noninvasive, visual survey dive was conducted during a 27-day NOAA-funded mission to explore never-before-seen deep-water habitats to collect baseline data needed to support management in the most remote and northwestern section of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM). PMNM is a UNESCO World Heritage site distinguished for both its cultural and natural significance, the only site with this special distinction in the U.S. It is currently being considered for national marine sanctuary designation to safeguard further its diverse natural, cultural, and maritime heritage resources for generations to come.
The day after they visited Yorktown, the expedition made the first visual survey of the lost IJN Akagi, the Queen of Japanese flattops, on 10 September.
Via EV Nautilus:
Ocean Exploration Trust’s visual survey of the Japanese aircraft carrier Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Akagi 赤城 is the first time anyone has laid eyes on the vessel since sinking during June 1942’s Battle of Midway. Akagi was initially located during a mapping survey conducted by Vulcan, Inc. in 2019 that involved U.S. Navy participation. On September 10, 2023, E/V Nautilus team spent 14 hours surveying Akagi, examining battle and seafloor collision damage in the ship’s structure. The dive was launched and closed with protocol ceremonies to honor this place and all who lost their lives in ways that reflected their significance to Kānaka ʻOiwi (Native Hawaiian), Japanese, and U.S. military families and communities.
A group of wreck hunters, working off the Belgian coast, have discovered a pair of German U-boats that have been lost since World War I. The wrecks include the Kriegsmarine’s German Type U 5 submarine class leader, SM U5 (Kptlt. Johannes Lemmer), and the Type UC I minelayer submarine SM UC-14 (Oblt. (R) Adolf Feddersen).
SM U-5 was an early pre-war boat, commissioned on 2 July 1910, and was small even for her era (500 tons, 181-foot overall) but she was still capable, carrying a single 37mm deck gun and four 17.7-inch tubes with six fish.
German Imperial Navy submarines at Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein (Germany), before the First World War. The boats are: U 13, U 5, U 11, U 3, and U 16 (first row, l-r); U 9, U 12, U 6, and U ? (second row, l-r). To the left of U 9 are the torpedo boat S 99 and the hulk Acheron. The Acheron had been the frigate SMS Moltke (I), commissioned in 1878. After decommissioning she was renamed on 28 October 1911 and used as a barracks ship for submarine crews at Kiel. She was finally scrapped in 1920. A battlecruiser or battleship is visible in the background.
SM U-5 was lost very early in the war– on 18 December 1914– with no recorded sinkings of enemy ships on her two patrols. She took all of her 29 crew members to the bottom.
As for SM UC-14, she was even smaller, displacing just 183 tons (submerged) and having an overall length of 111 feet.
Carrying no torpedoes or large caliber guns, her very successful class used six 39-inch top-loaded/bottom dropping tubes, each with two 710-pound Type II mines, each filled with 290 pounds of guncotton, to sow minefields.
Type II mine being loaded into a UC minelaying submarine. IWM photograph Q 20345.
SM UC-5, of the class UC-14 was in. This image after she was captured by the British.
SM UC-14, a war baby that was commissioned on 3 June 1915 just five months after she was laid down, conducted 38 short war patrols, and her minefields were credited with sinking 16 ships the Italian battleship Regina Margherita (13,215 tons) — one of the largest ships claimed by U-boats during the war.
Italian pre-dreadnought battleship Regina Margherita passing through the Canale Navigabile, Taranto, 1912
UC-14, a boat that lived by the mine, also died by the mine, sunk on 3 October 1917 by what appears to be a British minefield off Zeebrugbee, taking her 17-man crew to the cold dark below.
See the below video of the wreckage. The wreck of U 5 is reported to be in good shape while UC 14 was lost in a heavy explosion and in a bad shape.
And so we remember.
Auf einem Seemannsgrab, da blühen keine Rosen Auf einem Seemannsgrab, da blüht kein Blümelein Der einz’ge Schmuck für uns, das sind die weißen Möwen Und heiße Tränen, die ein kleines Mädl weint Der einz’ge Schmuck für uns, das sind die weißen Möwen Und heiße Tränen, die ein kleines Mädl weint
The late Robert William “Bob” Barker, who was the brightest part of staying home sick as a kid, also did his bit as part of the Greatest Generation.
Bob enlisted in the Navy Reserve Aviation Cadet (AvCad) program in November 1942 at age 18 while attending Drury College in Springfield, Missouri on a basketball scholarship.
He trained at 11 locations including eight Navy air bases on six different types over the next three years:
William Jewell College – Liberty, Missouri: 6th Battalion Cadet ground school and athletic training.
Ames, Iowa—Iowa State University: Taylorcraft L-2 Grasshopper flight training.
University of Georgia: Preflight School and Navy Basketball Team.
Millington Naval Air Station- Memphis, Tennessee: Stearman NS2 Biplane Training.
Corpus Christi, Texas Naval Air Station: Completed flight training and received Commission as a Navy Ensign.
Cabaniss Field Texas: Vultee BT-13 Valiant Training.
Beeville, Texas: SNJ Texan flight training.
DeLand Naval Air Station—DeLand, Florida: FM2 Wildcat flight training (during his honeymoon)
Great Lakes Naval Air Station—Lake Michigan: Carrier landing qualifications on USS Wolverine (IX-64)— the infamous paddlewheel “Covered wagon of the Great Lakes.”
Banana River Naval Air Station: Gunnery runs on U.S. Navy Mariner aircraft to train their crews.
Goose Island Michigan: F4U Corsair training with VF-97 and advancement to Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJG).
He was in line to be deployed to the Pacific to fight the Empire in August 1945 when the whistle was blown.
As Barker summed up:
“I was a Naval Aviator, a Fighter Pilot. I completed all facets of my training, including my qualifying landings on a carrier. I was all ready to go, and when the enemy heard that I was headed for the Pacific, they surrendered. That was the end of World War II.”
Demobilized in November 1945, he remained in the inactive Naval Reserve until 1960.
You will be missed, sir.
And, with that, I’ll leave you with one of his greatest three minutes, which he filmed at a spry 73.
Built by Boeing in 1962, she was the first of a series of hydrofoil craft designed to evaluate the performance of this kind of propulsion in the modern Navy, one that ultimately led to the design (by Boeing) of the Pegasus-class patrol combatant missile hydrofoils, or PHMs.
Decommissioned by the Navy in March 1975 after a decade of testing, High Point was used briefly by the Coast Guard until her main turbine exploded, then was stricken in 1980.
428-GX-K108129 Patrol Craft, Hydrofoil, USS High Point (PCH-1) underway during a search and rescue exercise off San Francisco by JOC(AC) Warren Grass, 25 April 1975
Powered just by her auxiliary Detriot Diesel, she was retained as a non-commissioned experimental hulk until finally disposed of by MARAD in 1991. She passed through a series of private owners until she came up for sale once again for $70,000– with no takers.
All is not totally lost as a number of relics from the vessel were apparently passed on to a local, free cannery museum on the condition they set up and display the foil propeller.
A Requiem for a Ship that Could Fly; A Ship of local notoriety, USS HIGH POINT PCH-1
There were no flags flying, no bands playing on the pier, no dress uniforms with gold braids waiting to congratulate the captain and crew for a successful mission. No, there was none of that. Only an excavator with a hydraulic crusher awaited. And over a period of four days, in the middle of August, this once proud foilborne warrior was reduced to a heap of scrap and hauled away.
She deserved better, but you can’t save them all.
The only American “fighting foil” left afloat is the ex-USS Aries (PHM-5) museum in Gasconade, Missouri. Please pay them a visit or at least throw them a few dollars.
As easily explained by the Marine Physical Laboratory of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “FLIP, the FLoating Instrument Platform, is not a ship, but a 355-foot-long research platform that can be deployed for oceanographic research.”
Maybe a picture or three would help:
330-PSA-149-62 (USN 1060451): A new oceanographic research vessel – Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP), has been constructed for the Marine Physical Laboratory of Scripps Institution of Oceanography under contract to the Office of Naval Research. When the craft is flipped to a vertical position, the bow section remains above, water, shown here are the plan view and inboard elevation of the research craft. Photograph released May 25, 1962
330-PSA-149-62 (USN 1060451): A new oceanographic research vessel – Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP), has been constructed for the Marine Physical Laboratory of Scripps Institution of Oceanography under contract to the Office of Naval Research. When the craft is flipped to a vertical position, the bow section remains above, water, shown here are the plan view and inboard elevation of the research craft. Photograph released May 25, 1962
Offical caption: Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP). FLIP is in the vertical position. Photograph released August 7, 1962. Master caption: A new type of oceanographic research vessel – Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP) – is undergoing operational tests by the U.S. Navy in Dabob Bay, near Seattle, Washington. FLIP has been constructed for the Marine Physical Laboratory of Scrupps Institution of Oceanography under contract to the Office of Naval Research. The craft can literally flip from a horizontal to a vertical position while at sea. FLIP is flipped into the vertical position by flooding its long aft section with sea water. Only its “four story” bow section remains above the water. To return the vessel to a horizontal position, high pressure air blows the water out of the submerged section. FLIP will be used for studies of wave motion, marine biology, internal waves, sound waves, and other phenomena. The vessel has accommodation for four people and can carry enough supplies to last for about two weeks. In the vertical position, the research laboratories, living quarters, and engine room are above the water. Two diesel engines supply electrical power for air conditioning and other miscellaneous electrical equipment. Two waterfront tubes permit the crew to descent to 150 feet below the water. Upon completion of the tests in Dabob Bay, FLIP will be towed to San Diego, California, to begin its sea voyages. 330-PSA-207-62 (USN 1061426)
Scripps created FLIP with funding from the Office of Naval Research as it was seen at the time (1962) as a platform that could help better understand the mechanics behind wave height, acoustic signals, water temperature, and density– all valuable things when it comes to submarines and ASW.
The 355-foot, 700 GT vessel was unpowered and had to be towed to/from her location, where she had a trio of diesel generators (on rotating beds) to deliver electricity. She could remain “flipped” with a crew of a dozen researchers for as many as 35 days, long enough for the local fish to use her as structure.
A wild concept, FLIP in action was always neat to see, and I remember watching videos like this back in the 1970s and being blown away by the vessel.
“FLIP set the stage for thinking big about what could be done with technology to enable new scientific discoveries,” said Scripps’ Marine Physical Laboratory (MPL) Director Eric Terrill. “It was built in an era of risk-taking; a spirit that we try to embrace to this day and encourage in the next generation of seagoing scientists.”
The venerable spar vessel has been towed off for the last time, but a piece of it remains at Scripps. The institution has arranged for one of FLIP’s booms to be removed and mounted onto a pier, where it will continue to be used to deploy instruments into the water.
As it is getting to be summer festival time– and the annual hate the lobsterbacks remembrance– this seemed apt.
The King’s Shilling, 1770 (c) “A recruiting party of an officer, sergeant, drummer, and fifer of an infantry regiment in a village street with a fair in the background.”
Oil on canvas, artist unknown, 1770 (c)., on display at the National Army Museum, Soldier Gallery. Accession Number NAM. 1983-10-15-1
As noted by the National Army Museum:
When a man had ‘taken the King’s shilling’ it meant that he had enlisted in the Army. In the eighteenth century, recruiting parties were a common sight in villages and at country fairs. Recruiting officers would persuade men to enlist with misleading tales of the glamour of army life, and the offer of a ‘bounty’. This was a large sum of money, supposedly paid to the new recruit when he enlisted. In fact, most of it disappeared in various ‘deductions’ and the recruit was lucky to see any of it.
Here, the new recruit takes the money or shakes hands to seal the bargain, with the officer. His wife or sweetheart, obviously less naive, is clearly distressed at the prospect of his ‘going for a soldier’.
A deeper dive into the painting:
And with that, Becca Stevens and Chris Thile covering Planxty’s arrangement of “As I Roved Out” seemed likewise appropriate.
The Disson M1917 and later M1918 trench knives, or “knuckle dusters” were a uniquely American item in the Great War
In February 2018, a French undertaker working in a cemetery in Villers-sur-Fere, a village about 60 miles northeast of Paris, discovered a set of undocumented remains. The fallen warrior was found with assorted field equipment that included a steel helmet, a trench knife, and an ammo belt full of 30.06 cartridges.
The undertaker contacted authorities and, it was discovered that American forces battled German forces in the village in the summer of 1918. This led to calling in a Great War archaeology expert and the American Battle Monuments Commission.
ABMC historians consulted the memoir of famed Army Chaplain Francis P. Duffy, which describes the burial of U.S. Soldiers from the 42nd “Rainbow” Infantry Division in the location where the remains were discovered. Notably, three Soldiers of the 42nd’s 150th MG Battalion earned the Distinguished Service Cross at Villers-sur-Fere in July 1918, one posthumously.
They were not the only ones, as the main color in the Rainbow division in France was red.
During its time on the Western Front, the 42nd participated in six major campaigns across 264 days in combat in 1917-1918 and incurred 14,000 casualties– a whopping one-out-of-sixteen casualties suffered by the American Army as a whole during the war. The fallen included poet Sgt. Joyce Kilmer– -the author of the poem “Trees“-who was killed in action.
The ceremony is reportedly the first burial of an unknown U.S. Soldier from World War I since 1988 and the first burial at Oise-Aisne since 1932.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade carry a casket with the remains of a World War I unknown soldier at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France, June 7, 2023. Photo By: Russell Toof, American Battle Monuments Commission. VIRIN: 230606-D-GJ885-005
Notably, Kilmer, who was killed near Oise-Aisne, is buried at the same cemetery, (Plot B, Row 9, Grave 15).
With that, Kilmer’s “Rouge Bouquet,” a tribute to the 19 Americans killed by a German artillery bombardment in the Rouge Bouquet wood near Baccarat, France in March 1918 comes to mind. An excerpt reads:
I am on the road this week and too short on time for a proper Warship Wednesday. However, with Memorial Day on the horizon, and the fact this is an 80-year-old shot today, it seems appropriate.
Official caption: “Damaged USS Oklahoma (Battleship No. 37) raised after capsizing. She is shown being pulled to an even keel. The photograph was released on May 24, 1943.”
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-41598
Oklahoma received one battle star for her World War II service, at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
Twenty of Oklahoma’s officers and 395 of her enlisted men were either killed or missing, 32 others wounded, and many were trapped within the capsized hull, to be saved by heroic rescue efforts.
While her able-bodied survivors were reassigned immediately to other ships, on 29 December 1941, Oklahoma was placed under the Base Force and placed “in ordinary” [a non-commissioned status].
The difficult salvage job began in March 1943, and, finally righted in a herculean effort, Oklahoma entered dry dock on 28 December. Decommissioned on 1 September 1944 and made available by the Bureau of Ships to CinCPac as a hulk on 28 October 1944, Oklahoma was stricken from the Navy Register on 22 November 1944.
Stripped of guns and superstructure, she was sold on 5 December 1946 to Moore Dry Dock Co., Oakland, Calif., but while en route from Pearl Harbor to San Francisco, ex-Oklahoma parted her tow lines and sank on 17 May 1947, 540 miles from her destination.
