Category Archives: US Army

125 Years Ago: The Spanish American War Halts

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Spain declared war on the United States on 23 April 1898– after a pretty intolerable ultimatum from Washington that included a call for 125,000 volunteers and orders for a naval blockade of Cuba– and the U.S. Congress eagerly reciprocated and voted to go to war against Spain two days later.

“The man behind the gun will settle this war,” Puck cover, published by Keppler & Schwarzmann, 1898 July 13. LOC LC-DIG-ppmsca-28717

The future Secretary of State John Hay described the ensuing conflict as a “splendid little war” and for good reason, as it was a fairly lopsided string of victories (with Spanish wins at Tayacoba, Manzanillo, and Mani-Mani forgotten to history) and, after much bloodletting, a cease-fire was announced on 12 August, closing the very modern ten-week war fought across the Caribbean and the Pacific.

While the Navy folded several captured Spanish ships into the U.S. fleet— some of which remained in service until the 1950s!— other more enduring relics and monuments dot the country.

One gun, an M1860 Trubia 6.3-inch MLR that sat at the U.S. Naval Magazine at Subic until it closed in 1992, was subsequently removed by Seabees and brought to Gulfport, then donated to the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby in 2006, where it remains today. 

The circa 1862 M1860 Trubia gun, formerly a gate guard at the U.S. Navy Magazine, Subic Bay, now at Camp Shelby.

How it looked back prior to 1992

Nowhere has more SpanAm War markers and monuments than Arlington.

These include the USS Maine Mast Memorial (Section 24), the Spanish-American War Memorial (Section 22), the Spanish-American War Nurses Memorial (Section 21), the Rough Riders Monument (Section 22), and the Buffalo Soldiers Memorial (Section 22) as well as hundreds of graves of servicemembers who served during the conflict.

Hawk guts

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How about this great view of the Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk X-band CW mono-pulse semi-active radar seeker guidance system, taken a few years ago from a display at the excellent Alabama Veterans Museum in rural Athens. The museum’s nearby location to Redstone Arsenal obviously has some benefits.

What could go wrong?

Hard to believe, but Hawk, developed in the 1950s and initially fielded in 1960, remained in U.S. Army service (as Improved Hawk) until 1997 when the final Ohio ARNG battalion equipped with it was deactivated, while the Marines retired them in favor of Avenger in 1999.

In all of that nearly 40-year run, no U.S. manned Hawk battery engaged an enemy aircraft in combat (at least in acknowledged incidents.)

However, American-supplied Hawks made kills with the Israelis (the first combat use for the system occurred in 1967 when the IDF successfully fired the missiles during the Six Day War with Egypt), the Iranians, and the Kuwaitis, with the latter reportedly downing an impressive 22 Iraqi aircraft and one combat helicopter during the blitzkrieg invasion of that country on 2 August 1990.

And it seems that the old and “obsolete” Hawk is still hard at work, with launchers and missiles being sent to Ukraine in the past couple of years to field against its traditional Cold War foe: red-starred MiGs and Sukohi fast movers.

Katum Leprechaun

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With yesterday’s AH-1G Cobra gunship references in relation to the Spanish Navy’s carrier Delado (ex-USS Cabot), after all, the Spanish were the only country outside of the U.S. that operated the variant, this seemed appropriate.

Original Caption, circa May 1970: “Katum, South Vietnam…Side view of a U.S. Army AH-1G helicopter gunship landing for refueling during the Cambodian offensive. The helicopter is nicknamed “Leprechaun.”

Photographer: Staff Sgt. Harry G. Giffen Jr.. NARA NAID: 176246898. Local ID: 342-C-KE-40435

Note the 1st Cav “Hell for Leather” flash on Leprechaun’s tail and the Hughes OH-6A Cayuse “Loach” just beyond it. What looks to be the hub and rear wheels of a Sikorsky CH-54 Tarhe seems to be beyond that.

Over 800 G model Cobras flew in Vietnam, with 303 lost while chalking up over 1.3 million hours in theatre.

As most of the survivors were either scrapped or reworked into AH-1S birds, the classic Cobra Golf is a rare thing these days.

Two of them are preserved in the collection of the U.S. Army Aviation Museum, which I recently visited and highly recommend.

Army Officially out of the Chemical Weapons Biz After 106 years

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The U.S. Army’s final Sarin (GB) nerve agent-filled M55 chemical rocket was destroyed on July 7 at the Blue Grass Army Depot, Kentucky. It was the last crumb of the more than 30,000 tons of chemical weapons agents on-hand in U.S. arsenals in 1986 when Congress pulled the plug on using the category of weapons, then later pivoted to destroying it.

Operators pose with the last GB nerve agent rocket as it is loaded for destruction at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant on July 7, 2023. The destruction of this munition marked the completion of the destruction of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile. U.S. Army photo.

The rocket was the last “of more than 100,000 mustard agent and nerve agent-filled projectiles and nerve agent-filled rockets” destroyed at BGAD since 2019, including 51,000 M55s.

In addition, a team of companies in Colorado wrapped up the destruction of more than 780,000 mustard agent-filled 155mm and 203mm projectiles at U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot on June 22.

“This is a momentous day for the U.S. chemical demilitarization program,” said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. “After years of design, construction, testing, and operations, these obsolete weapons have been safely eliminated. The Army is proud to have played a key role in making this demilitarization possible.”

1917 Beginnings

With the Germans, British, French, and Russians all neck deep in the active use of chemical weapons when the U.S. entered the Great War in 1917, General Pershing established the Gas Service to supervise chemical warfare activity in the AEF on 3 September. Back home, The Committee on Noxious Gases National Research Council was formed in early 1917 with a mixture of Army Medical Department and U.S. Bureau of Mines personnel.

A large-scale production plant at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland was established that eventually produced chlorine (CL), chloropicrin (PS), mustard (H), and phosgene (CG) filled in assorted 75mm, 155-mm, 4.7-inch, and Livens projectiles.

Edgewood Arsenal produced more than 935 tons of CG and 711 tons of H by 1918. Meanwhile, contractors made an additional 150 tons of Lewisite and 681 of CG.

The first U.S.-made and filled shell was tested in April 1918 although none of the US-manufactured chemical-filled rounds would reach Europe prior to the end of the conflict. Fundamentally, this means that no “warshot” lethal American CW has ever (officially) been used in battle. 

However, the Army did have a unit that got its hands in the war.

The first dedicated Army unit trained to use chemical weapons was constituted on 15 August 1917 in the Regular Army as the two-battalion 30th Engineer (Gas and Flame) Battalion (later Regiment) under the command of Col. Earl J. Atkisson.

Sent to France, it would deliver phosgene via British-supplied Livens projectors to German lines on the Western Front, assisting British gas troops in their use as early as March 1918 suffering their first casualty, Pvt. William K. Neal of Company B was killed at Cite St. Pierre by a German shell.

Their first all-American gas attack was against the “Boche” at Bois de Jury in the Toul Sector on the early morning of 18 June 1918. The unit was supported by 100 loaned French Tirailleurs Sénégalais, who helped emplace its hundreds of projectors. 

Livens projectors: simple 8-inch steel tubes fitted with a 28-pound baseplate and single 65-pound projectile (filled with 30 pounds of agent) and electrically fired. The 30th Engineers would use as many as 900 of these at a time, typically in 20-tube batteries set well back behind the lines to prevent enemy observation. Once fired, they had to be dug up and reset before firing again as their azimuth would be screwed. The range was out to 1850 yards, depending on the angle. The Army kept these around well into WWII.

Soon the 30th would be converted and redesignated 13 July 1918 as the 1st Gas Regiment and by that time was using British-supplied 4-inch Stokes mortars to deliver not only gas, but also thermite, and high-explosive shells and earned the nickname “The Hell Fire” battalion.

Demobilized on 28 February 1919, at Camp Kendrick, New Jersey, the 1st Gas earned campaign ribbons for Lys, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihel, Meuse-Argonne, Flanders 1918, and Lorraine 1918. They suffered 39 killed or died of wounds between 21 March and 10 November 1918. Today, the 2nd Chemical Battalion, which remained an offensive combat unit until 1958, carried the lineage of the old Hell Fire Boys 

It wasn’t until 28 June 1918 that the Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) was established, with seven main departments. By the end of the conflict, it would contain 1,680 officers and 20,518 enlisted, albeit most involved in chemical warfare defense.

WWII stockpiles

Between 1940 and 1945, the CWS produced roughly 146,000 tons of chemical agents at locations throughout the United States. These included: 

  • 500,000 4.2-inch mortar shells, 25,000 AN-M78 500-pound bombs, 63,000 AN-M79 1,000-pound bombs, and 31,000 7.5-inch aerial rockets filled with CG.
  • Hydrogen Cyanide (AC) was used to fill 5000 1,000-pound bombs.
  • Some 25 million pounds of Cyanogen chloride (CK) procured by the CWS in WWII went into 33,347 M78 500-pound bombs, each holding 165 pounds of agent, and 55,851 M79 1000-pound bombs, each holding 332 pounds.
  • Mustard gas, the American favorite for decades, filled no less than 2 million gallon-sized land mines as well as “540,746 4.2-inch mortar shells were filled and stored. For the artillery, 1,360,338 75-mm. Mk 64, 1,983,945 105-mm. M60, 784,836 155-mm. Mk 2A1, 290,810 155-mm. M110, and smaller quantities of other shells, were readied…The service procured 594,216 M70 and M70A1 115-pound bombs, developed by the Ordnance Department, and 539,727 M47A1 and M47A2 100-pound bombs.” The service also procured 92,337 M10 30-gallon airplane spray tanks. “A plane flying at an altitude of 100 feet and carrying four of these tanks could spray mustard over an area 75 to 80 yards wide and 600 to 700 yards long.”

Cold War

On August 2, 1946, the CWS became the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, which is still around today (despite the efforts of Creighton Abrams). Post-Korea, the Army looked to field more modern CW weapons including the 115mm M55 chemical rocket, capable of carrying 10 pounds of Sarin (GB) or Venomous Agent X (VX) nerve gas to 6 miles, as well as the M23 landmine and assorted modernized 105mm, 155mm, and 203mm artillery shells.

Along with the new TMU-28/B VX spray tank and MC-1 and MK94 GB bombs.

Meanwhile, much of the WWII mustard gas, with the exception of 155mm shells, were burned or deep-sixed off the coast. The NOAA chart for the Mississippi Sound and Florida panhandle has listed “mustard gas” dumps all my life.

Fielding an offensive BW program until 1969, the U.S. stopped production of new chemical weapons the same year and later de facto halted the ready availability of CW to the service in 1986 then soon began to destroy those still on hand.

By 2012, the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Activity completed the destruction of nearly 90 percent of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, then stored at six U.S. Army installations across the U.S. and on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, closing all but Pueblo and BGAD.

That figure hit 100 percent last week.

“Following the elimination of the U.S. stockpile, the facilities will be closed in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and mutual agreements between the Secretary of the Army and the governors of Colorado and Kentucky.”

For a deeper dive, check out this 519-page official circa 1988 history of the Chemical Warfare Service branch.

Happy 80th, 10th Mountain

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Constituted on 10 July 1943, the 10th Mountain Division (Alpine) (often just called “the 10th”) was conceived as a light infantry division able to maneuver against Axis forces in Europe’s frigid mountains.

Via the Army’s Center of Military History:

Reports of combat operations involving Finnish, Italian, and German mountain troops prior to America’s entry into World War II convinced the National Ski Association, the National Ski Patrol, and later the American Alpine Club and the National Ski Patrol that the American army needed a mountain and winter warfare capability. Throughout 1940, Charles Minot Dole, Chairman of the National Ski Patrol, acting as spokesman, lobbied President Franklin Roosevelt, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, and many others, to organize a cadre of trained mountain troops. Dole also assisted in the initial recruitment of experienced skiers for the Army.

Beginning in November 1940, the War Department authorized the formation of small ski patrol units within several Army divisions. However, it was not until November 15, 1941, that the First Battalion of the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment began training at Fort Lewis, Washington, just 22 days prior to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. By March 1942, the Army had formulated a plan to activate a full mountain division in 1943. To reach this goal, construction of a large training facility began at Pando, Colorado in April 1942. This facility, named Camp Hale in honor of General Irving Hale, Colorado National Guard, was completed by November 1942. The Second and Third Battalions of the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment were authorized in May and June 1942, and by December 1942, all three battalions of the 87th Regiment had moved to Camp Hale.

87th Infantry, 10th Mountain, sentry standing guard at Mount Rainier wearing sleeping bag bear suit carrying a Springfield Armory designed and manufactured gas trap M1 rifle

World War II American soldiers on skis take aim with m1 Garands during winter training in the Colorado Rockies 

March 1943 Saturday Evening Post showing 87th INF in training

In June 1943, the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment transferred from Camp Hale to Fort Ord, California to engage in amphibious training prior to participating in the invasion and recapture of Kiska Island in the Aleutians. Amphibious landings occurred on August 15, 1943. However, Japanese forces had evacuated the Island just before the landings. The 87th Regiment remained on Kiska until November 1943.

Meanwhile, the 10th Light Division (Alpine) was activated at Camp Hale on July 15, 1943. It consisted of the previously activated 86th Infantry Regiment and the 85th and 90th Regiments, which were also activated on July 15, 1943. Upon completion of operations at Kiska, the 87th Regiment returned to Camp Carson, Colorado, and joined the 10th Light Division at Camp Hale on February 23, 1944, replacing the 90th Regiment. Three infantry regiments, the 85th, 86th, and 87th, along with engineering, artillery, and other support units, now comprised the 10th Light Division. The division’s intense training program at Camp Hale included winter survival, rock climbing, skiing, mule packing, and the extraordinarily demanding “D-Series” winter exercises, which occurred during the Spring of 1944.

In late June 1944, the 10th Light Division departed Camp Hale for Camp Swift, Texas to participate in maneuvers and regular infantry training under extremely harsh, hot conditions. The 10th Light Division officially became the 10th Mountain Division on November 6, 1944. Brigadier General George P. Hays arrived at Camp Swift on November 23 to take command of the reorganized Division. Hays ordered the addition of heavy weapons companies to each battalion, and additional artillery support units were authorized.

Deployment to Italy began on December 11, 1944, when the 86th Regiment embarked for Naples aboard the USS Argentina, arriving on December 22. The 85th and 87th Regiments sailed aboard the USS West Point on January 4, 1945. Support units, including the 604th, 605, and 616 Field Artillery Battalions and the 126th Mountain Engineer Battalion followed on board the transport General Meigs.

The 10th Mountain Division began combat patrols in mid-January 1945 and launched its first offensive on the evening of February 18, 1945, with a surprise, and successful night assault on Riva Ridge. The next night the assault continued with an attack and capture of Mount Belvedere, the key German observation point. The first offensive lasted through February 25 when Mount Della Torraccia was secured. During a second offensive, from March 3 to March 6, 1945, the 10th Mountain Division attacked and cleared German forces from Mount della Torraccia to Mount della Spe, where the Allied command temporarily halted the offensive.

The Division’s final offensive began on April 14, 1945, and lasted until the German surrender in Italy on May 2, 1945. During this final operation, the 10th Mountain division broke through the German mountain defenses and into the Po River Valley. On April 23, 1945, the 87th Infantry regiment crossed the Po River under fire, and the entire division then advanced to Lake Garda in northern Italy by the war’s end.

Following the German surrender, the 10th Mountain Division deployed near the Italian border with Yugoslavia, to participate in what some historians have called the first engagement of the Cold War. Anticipating a deployment to the Pacific Theater, the Division returned to the United States in August 1945. Reports of the dropping of the Atomic Bombs and the announcement that the Japanese forces would surrender came while much of the Division was still crossing the Atlantic. Many men returned to Camp Carson, Colorado, where the division was inactivated on November 30, 1945.

Over 32,000 men served with the 10th Mountain Division between 1942 and 1945. Of these, approximately 20,000 men engaged in combat operations in Italy. The 10th Mountain Division sustained nearly 5,000 casualties during World War II, with 999 men being killed in action. Among the combat deaths were twenty men who died during the Kiska operation, eleven of whom died as a result of friendly fire during intense fog.

Reactivation

After a brief reactivation from 1948 to 1958 as a conventional infantry division, the 10th MD (Light Infantry) was revived on 13 February 1985, returning to its roots as a rapid response and maneuver infantry unit. In this capacity, the 10th MD saw action in domestic disaster relief and overseas missions in Somalia (see: Black Hawk Down), Haiti, Kosovo, and the Sinai.

At the outbreak of the Global War on Terror, elements of the 10th MD became the first conventional force to deploy after September 11th and maintained a presence in the Middle East almost continuously from 2002’s Operation Anaconda to 2019’s Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.

U.S. Army Pfc. Joshua Tubbs from Sebring, Fla., with 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, pulls security during a patrol in the Charkh District of Logar province, Afghanistan, during Operation Charkh Restoration, April 5 2012

10th Mountain troops working the trench complex at Fort Drum, New York, Nov. 2018

Of note, the DPL has a huge stack (12 boxes) of the 10th’s WWII records.

Gavin’s D-Day jacket

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Below is the M1942 Paratrooper jacket that Brig. Gen. James Maurice “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin (USMA 1925) wore on the drop by the 82nd Airborne into Normandy, courtesy of the West Point Museum.

Of note, 80 years ago today, on 9 July 1943, then-Colonel Gavin was the first man out of his plane as the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (Airborne) became the first Army regiment to execute a combat jump as part of Operation Husky. He also completed more jumps in combat than any other Army officer in WWII, parachuting into Sicily (twice), Normandy, and Holland.

On 9 July 1943, at an airfield outside Kairouan, Tunisia, standing left is Col. James Gavin, CO of 505th PIR, briefing his sky soldiers prior to their boarding C-47 transports.

Husky was the first brigade-sized U.S. airborne operation in history and the largest American combat jump to date.

During the Torch landings the previous fall, the 509 PIB made smaller jumps to seize airfields at Tafaraoui, Morocco (8 November) and Youks les Bains, Algeria (15 November), but they were battalion-sized jumps with no more than 556 paratroopers were involved.

Husky was much bigger, involving six times as many troops jumping from aircraft on Day 1 alone. On 9 July, some 226 C-47 transports were required to lift the regiment and its attached units (3 Bn, 504 PIR; 505 PIR; 456 PFA; 307th Para Eng) over Sicily, with 3,407 men stepping out the door. 

The next day, Husky II would see another 2,304 paratroopers (of 1 & 2 Bn, 504 PIR; 376 PFA) drop in as reinforcements.

Of the 3,407 soldiers of 505th PIR who jumped into Sicily, 424 – 33 officers and 391 soldiers – were wounded or killed.

Working for that ‘Jungle’ tab

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Now don’t roll your eyes but Insider Business actually came up with a really good documentary on the current U.S. Army’s Jungle Operations Training Course (JOTC) in Hawaii. It is current, filmed just a few weeks ago at the 25th Infantry Division’s Lightning Academy, and follows 80 students across the grueling 12-day course with lots of access. Just 51 were able to get the “Jungle” tab at the end.

Don’t let the cringy title turn you off, it is a good doc.

Be all you can be, redux

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This week recognizes the U.S. Army’s 248th anniversary of its 14 June 1775 founding by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. (Yes, I know the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784, and technically the force was “just” 239 years old two weeks ago…but, hey, what’s a decade between traditions?)

In case you missed it, below is the short (20-minute) Army Birthday Wreath Laying at Arlington, performed by the “Old Guard” of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Regiment. Sadly, the ceremony looked sparsely attended.

And in something that is also stirring for the blood, MCoE Fort Moore (Bragg) released these two great short videos they cut, showing Joes today compared to throwbacks from the old 1980s “Stripes” style Be All You Can Be recruiting spots, including the “more before 9 a.m.” one.

Razzle Dazzle!

How a Trench Knife in a French Cemetery Led to Honoring a Fallen Great War GI

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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.

In the end, the lost Joe discovered at Villers-sur-Fere in 2018 was laid to rest with full military honors alongside 6,000 of his fellow countrymen this week at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France.

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:           

“In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet

There is a new-made grave to-day,

Built by never a spade nor pick.

Yet covered with earth ten metres thick

There lie many fighting men,

Dead in their youthful prime…”

Flying Banana Gunner

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We’ve come a long way in 60 years when it comes to helicopter gunships.

Here we see U.S. Army PFC Glenn W. Rehkamp, 57th Helicopter Company, manning his .30-caliber M1919A6 door gun on a CH-21 helicopter, 1 Feb 63.

U.S. Army Photo by PFC Jose C. Rivera DASPO via NARA

The Piasecki H-21 Workhorse/Shawnee, commonly called the “flying banana” for obvious reasons, served extensively with the French Army and Air Force in the Algerian War in the 1950s– sometimes equipped with .50 cals and 20mm cannons as some of the first helicopter gunships.

After some heavy use in the early days of U.S. involvement in Vietnam– including the 57th THC with early H-21C gunship variants– the type was soon withdrawn in favor of the Huey and Chinook.

Drink in these shots from 1957 of H-21 gunship experiments at Fort Rucker, including a chin turret repurposed from an old B-29, forward-firing M1919s, and HVAR rockets.

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