When the chips were down in World War II, the British Army needed a reliable submachine gun that could be mass-produced without tying down vital munitions factories that were already overstretched. This led to a gun, designed as an emergency weapon, which has become a classic of modern firearms design.
When Hitler invaded Poland in Sept. 1939, that country’s allies, Britain and France reluctantly declared war on Nazi Germany. Fast forward nine months and the Germans had defeated and occupied not only Poland, but also Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and France, leaving the Brits to face Hitler’s immense military machine alone.
Worse, in the evacuation of the British Army from France at Dunkirk, the Tommies had lost much of their pre-war armament.
This left the country in dire need of firearms to equip not only the regular forces, but also a rapidly growing Home Guard ready, as Winston Churchill promieed at the time that, “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
But they needed a good, cheap gun, and lots of them.
Danish dragoon Niels Kjeldsen fighting 14 Prussian hussars, 1864..only he didn’t see the sneaky bugger in the treeline coming up on him with a pistol. By Frants Henningsen, 1901 (Click to big up)
Sunday morning, 28 FEB 1864. While the American Civil War was raging on the other side of the Atlantic, Prussia and Austria was invading the Kingdom of Denmark over the territory of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg in the Second Schleswig War.
It was that morning that 23 year old Niels Kjeldsen, a cavalryman of the 4th Eskadron, 6th Dragoon Regiment, of the Royal Danish Army gave his last full measure. Drafted into the army 18 months before, he was a natural horseman who learned to ride on his family farm.
While scouting ahead in the Blakjaer forest, Kjeldsen’s detachment of 6 dragoons ran into a 14-man troop of Prussian Leib-Garde-Husaren Regiment under Count Gustav von Lüttichau. As with any scouts then or today, the Danes turned and rapidly tried to break contact to report wheat they had found. One by one the detachment was mown down or surrendered, the light hussars being mounted on faster horses than the Danish heavy cavalry . Soon it was only Kjeldsen and a corporal left on their horses.
In order to buy time for the corporal to bring the intelligence back to the lines, Kjeldsen wheeled and fought the German horsemen 14:1.
The legend has it that in the struggle the young Dane fought like a lion before being shot from behind by a rival hussar– depicted just to the right of the dragoon in the painting. Kjeldsen’s helmet lay on the road while his single-shot Remington 1852 pattern carbine hangs at his side.
Forced to rely on the cold steel of his M1839 pattern Dansk dragonsabel, he is outnumbered and outgunned but refuses to surrender. According to reports, after the hussars engaged him without result with their own sabers, von Lüttichau shot the Dane through the forehead at close range with a revolver.
In 1901 the Board of the Museum of National History commissioned Frantz Henningsen to portray the incident and the painting now hangs at Frederiksborg Castle. Kjeldsen’s sword and helmet are on display in a military museum and he was buried at home on his family’s farm, his body picked up from the road by a passing peasant. He is remembered as a Danish military hero.
As for Denmark, after suffering some 1500 casualties, a peace was signed on 1 August 1864 and the King of Denmark renounced to all his rights in the duchies in favor of the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia. However they gave better than they got and the Austro-German forces lost well past that number.
If you are a fan of modern aviation art, you know the work of Monsieur Romain Hugault. While a relative youngster (born in 1979) his work has gained international acclaim. The son of a military pilot, he earned his own pilot’s license at age 17.
Romain Hugault himself
With his first work, Le Dernier Envol, was published in 2005. Since then he hasn’t turned back and in the past decade has become a favorite aircraft illustrator of airshow posters, calendars, military prints and the like. Known for his illustrated novels Le Pilote à l’Edelweiss, and Le Grand Duc, his blog is http://romain-hugault.blogspot.com/ and his website http://www.romainhugault.com/#!/home
Russian Polikarpov I-153 Chaika (seagull) by Romain Hugault
Romain Hugault poster
Romain Hugault’s P-47 “Busty Angel”
Rafael calendar illustration
by Romain Hugault
By Romain Hugault
AVG pilots inspecting a L-2 Grasshopper in SE Asia by Romain Hugault
The Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, existed from 1942-45 and employed an amazing array of some 13,000 super secret soldiers who went places that didn’t exist and did things that never happened. Although mainly credited with far-out operations ‘Somewhere behind Nazi lines” in Europe, there were also OSS dets that operated– very successfully– against the Japanese. One of these, Det 101, was formed in part of Japanese-American (Nisei) troops drawn from the 442nd RCT (Go For Broke!) while it was training at Camp Shelby to go to Europe and fight.
“You are being recruited for a special dangerous mission in the Far East…. A mission more hazardous than combat, so hazardous that it may be “a one way street.” Do you still want to volunteer?” This dialogue took place sometime in July 1943 at the headquarters of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. The speaker was Dr. Daniel Buchanan of the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS) addressing over 100 soldiers of the 442nd who had responded to his recruitment call. In response to Dr. Buchanan’s ominous warning, not one of his listeners left the room…
Nisei MIS attached to OSS Detachment 101 go through Guerrilla, Ranger, survival training on Catalina Island, Calif. Sep 1944. Front Row, L-R: Calvin Tottori, Sho Kurahashi, Fumio Kido, Wilbert Kishinami, Tad Nagaki (mainland), Takao Tanabe (Mainland), Dick Hamada and Tom Baba. Back row, L-R: Susumu Kazuhaya (mainland), LT Ralph Yempuku, LT Richard Betsui, MAJ Crowe, LT Junichi Buto, LT Chiyoki Ikeda, and George Kobayashi (mainland)
“Thereafter each volunteer underwent individual interview and screening with Dr. Buchanan covering their personal background, Japanese language ability and ending with the final inquiry of their continued willingness to volunteer for this hazardous mission.
Ultimately, 23 Nisei were selected for this special OSS mission and they were quietly spirited out of Camp Shelby on December 29, 1943 to undergo nine months of rigorous special training. First they spent three months at Camp McDowell, Illinois for communications training in Morse Code, radio theory and repair. Then they were subjected to a five months’ crash course in military Japanese and the customs and geography of Japan at the Military Intelligence School at Camp Savage, Minnesota. Finally, they were sent to Catalina Island, California for intensive physical conditioning, hand-to-hand combat, beach landing and infiltration and techniques of demolition and explosives…”
Detachment 101 of the Office of Strategic Service Irrawaddy ambush
Then they got operational in 1945, the force was attached as intelligence specialists to the Kachin Rangers, a group of some 10,000 guerrillas lead by a handful of American army officers and men behind Japanese lines. All told they are credited with inflicting over 5400 casualties on the Japanese military and helping to tie down large forces that could have been used elsewhere.
It seems that ISIS (ISIL, IS, Taliban 2.0, et al) has decided to up the ante on abominations and the rules of war. According to the WaPo, they have used chlorine gas on Iraqi police at least three times in recent weeks.
“Dizzy, vomiting and struggling to breathe, 11 Iraqi police officers were rushed to a government hospital 50 miles north of the capital last month. The diagnosis: poisoning by chlorine gas. The perpetrators, according to the officers: Islamic State extremists.
The chlorine attack appears to be the first confirmed use of chemical weapons by the Islamic State on the battlefield. An Iraqi Defense Ministry official corroborated the events, and doctors said survivors’ symptoms were consistent with chlorine poisoning.”
While its unclear whether the gas came from old Saddam-era rockets, or Syrian stockpiles, or they just brewed it up in a Winnebago in the Iraqi Western Desert Walter White style, the fact is, it looks like Chem Warfare has been added to execution of prisoners of war, suicide bombings, beheading, and other general unpleasantness.
I just saw “Fury” and was pretty impressed with the take on armored combat from inside a Sherman tank in 1945 NW Germany. If you haven’t seen it, go. Its a treat.
One of the most pleasing aspects was the use of an actual Tiger tank in a brief (but terrifying scene).
“It took 15,000 Shermans to wipe out 1,500 Tigers…”
The Tiger was the Mike Tyson of WWII and literally slaughtered Allied tanks.
The U.S. Army after its horse-cavalry peak in 1865 under Phil Sheridan. The Union eventually fielded some 258 mounted regiments and a further 170 unattached companies in the conflict, overall an amazing 175,000 blue-coat horse soldiers.
When the smoke cleared the Army established 10 peacetime cavalry regiments. These units remained in operation well into the 1930s, even being increased in number. It wasn’t until the first part of WWII that these men put their horses out to pasture for the last time.
Okrajoe posted a couple of great videos from the 1930s. U.S. Army cavalry training films. A good way to spend your lunch break if you are curious on old school horse mounted combat.
U.S. Army training film: “The Cavalry Platoon: From Mounted to Dismounted Action”, 1933.
Tactical Deployment of the .50 Caliber Machine Gun by Cavalry, Official Training Film No. 18, U.S. War Department, 1933
The Canadian Prime Minister is calling yesterday’s attack on the National War Memorial and Parliament by a gunman an act of terrorism. The individual was put down like a sick animal by the House of Commons Sergeant at Arms, Kevin Vickers, who set aside his ceremonial sword and mace, grabbed a pistol from a lockbox, and engaged the shooter.
However, we need to remember not the shooters name but that of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who was standing his post at the Memorial when he was gunned down.
The Chronicle Herald‘s Bruce MacKinnon pays perfect tribute:
Thank you for your service, Corporal Cirillo. The pipes are calling
Photo by Jason Florio. By the way is that an RPG-2 (made in the PRC of course) or an RPG-7?
Jason Florio, perhaps one of the most talented photojournalists in the business, has traveled the globe in recent years to places like Silafando, Mogadishu, and Makasutu. On a trip to Burma he took a series of amazing portraits of Karen National Liberation Army freedom fighters.
Photo by Jason Florio The old “in the white” M16A1 is great as is the 20-round mag on the AK overfolder.
For those who don’t know, the Karens have been fighting the Burmese government since 1949 pretty much non-stop. Located in the Golden Triangle, their equipment runs the gamut from captured French Lebels left over from Colonial Indochina, to Japanese WWII equipment, 1960s era U.S. gear left over from Vietnam, and (slightly) more modern Chinese kit.
Photo by Jason Florio Can you dig the Karen Bloop gunner? What is the shelf-life of a 40mm fuse stored at 99% humidity in the jungle? What that TD though.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday October 22, 2014 the Overachieving Gresham
USRC Gresham 1902; photo by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y.
Here we see the gunboat (err. Revenue Cutter) Walter Q. Gresham of the United States Revenue Cutter Service (USRCS) in 1902. This hearty little Great Lakes cutter had a life far removed from the one she was originally designed for.
The USRCS was a branch of the Treasury Department established by an act of Congress on 4 August 1790, (which predates the actual U.S. Navy’s official establishment date however that service uses the older date of the establishment of the Colonial Navy as its basis) and was tasked with counter-smuggling operations in peacetime and serving as a backup to the Navy in war. The USRCS merged with the Lighthouse Service and Lifesaving Service to become the USCG in 1915. But back to the ship.
The USRCS decided in the 1890s to build five near-sisterships that would be classified in peacetime as cutters, but would be capable modern naval auxiliary gunboats. These vessels, to the same overall but concept but each slightly different in design, were built to carry a bow mounted torpedo tube for 18-inch Bliss-Whitehead type torpedoes and as many as four modern quick-firing 3-inch guns (though they used just two 6-pounder 57mm popguns in peacetime). They would be the first modern cutters equipped with electric generators, triple-expansion steam engines (with auxiliary sail rigs), steel (well, mostly steel) hulls with a navy-style plow bow, and able to cut the very fast (for the time) speed of 18-ish knots. All were built 1896-98 at three different yards.
USRC McCulloch in full rig. Note that McCulloch is indicative of the five ship class she came from with the exception of having a three-masted barquentine rig where as the other ships, being about 15-feet shorter, had a two mast brigantine auxiliary rig. Painting, Coast Guard Academy Museum Art Collection.
These ships included:
–McCulloch, a barquentine-rigged, composite-hulled, 219-foot, 1,280-ton steamer built by William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia for $196,000.
–Manning, a brigantine-rigged 205-foot, 1,150-ton steamer, was built by the Atlantic Works Company of East Boston, MA, for a cost of $159,951.
–Algonquin, brigantine-rigged 205.5-foot, 1,180-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,000.
–Onondaga, brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,190-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,800.
The fifth ship was the Gresham.
Launched on 12 September 1896, was a brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,090-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $147,800. She carried the name of Walter Quinton Gresham, an epic overachiever.
Maj. Gen of Volunteers, the great and Honorable W.Q. Gresham (1832-1895)
Born in 1832 in Indiana, Gresham was a bar-certified attorney and elected state Representative by the time the Civil War broke out. He soon became the 29-year old colonel of the 53rd Indiana and fought at Corinth, Vicksburg, and Atlanta where he was invalided out with a shattered knee and the rank of (brevet) Maj.Gen. of Volunteers. This helped supercharge his political career and he soon became a federal judge appointed by Grant, then Chester Arthur’s Postmaster General and later his Secretary of the Treasury (for a month) before picking up a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals while twice running for the Republican presidential nomination. At the time the gunboat, which carried his name, was ordered, he was serving as Secretary of State in President Grover Cleveland’s Cabinet and died in that office May 28, 1895, hence his name was used to christen the newest cutter. Again, back to the ship…
USRC Walter Q. Gresham commissioned on 30 May 1897 after being accepted by the government three months earlier. While two of these ships were intended for blue-water work on the East Coast (Manning) and West Coast (McCullough), Gresham and near-sisters Algonquin and Onondaga were ordered for Great Lakes service, hence their construction in Cleveland and their homeporting in Milwaukee and Chicago. Since the 200+ foot long cutters were too long to fit through the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway, they would be landlocked into the lakes their whole life (more on that in a minute).
When commissioned she caused a diplomatic crisis. You see, since these three cutters had a new-fangled torpedo tube and modern guns, the Canadians and their British big brothers objected that the ships were in violation of the 1817 Rush-Bagot Convention and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. These two acts limited U.S./British-Canadian arms build-ups along the border region between the two countries and to this day regulate how heavily armed ships can be along the Great Lakes.
Well, just 11-months after Gresham‘s commissioning, war broke out with Spain and, as her two blue water sisters were rushed to serve with the Navy, the USRCS decided to withdraw the three lake-bound ships and put them to good use elsewhere. To get them past the locks in the St. Lawrence, they sailed to Ogdensburg, NY, where they were cut in half, shipped through the canal, and rejoined on the Atlantic side. Gresham officially belonged to the Navy 24 March-17 Aug 1898, but she saw no service in that war.
Gresham cut cleanly in two and barged through the St. Lawrence locks. Her other two sisters were subjected to the same fate.
However, the war ended in August 1898, before Gresham could be reassembled. Not wanting to get the Canadians riled up again, the USRCS left Gresham, Onondaga, and Algonquin on the East Coast where they served as any respectable white-hulled cutter of the time did. Algonquin set off for the West Indies and Onondaga moved to Philly while Gresham lived the life of a New England cutter, based in Boston.
She used her popguns to sink derelict vessels found at sea. She patrolled fisheries looking for interloping foreign trawlers and poachers. Nantucket Island was only able to get supplies and mail during especially harsh winters by the use of Gresham as an ersatz icebreaker.
U.S.R.C. Gresham, flagship of the patrol fleet, America’s Cup races. Library of Congress photo.
She served as the official government presence at a number of the fashionable sea races of the time. This led to a collision during a regatta with Sir Thomas Lipton’s beautiful steam yacht, the Erin, in which the Gresham‘s torpedo tube scraped alongside the hull of that fine ship. The fault was all on Lipton’s ship by the way.
Gresham saved mariners in distress, including famously the “palatial” steamship RMS Republic of the White Star Line (yes, the Titanic‘s company) when she collided with the Italian liner Florida near Nantucket and foundered in 1909. That incident was the first time a CQD distress call was issued on the new Marconi radio device. Standing alongside the stricken ship, Gresham along with other ships and the cutters Mohawk and Seneca helped save more than 1200 passengers and crew.
In 1915 she, along with the rest of the cutter service became part of the new U.S. Coast Guard and she was given pennant number CG-1, her name by that time just shortened to Gresham, without the Walter Q. part.
When war erupted, she was transferred to the Navy for the second time in 6 April 1917 and remained in the fleet until Aug. 1919. Her sail rig was removed as were her 57mm and 37mm popguns, her wartime armament was greatly increased and was depth charges were fitted, which added several hundred tons to her weight and several feet to her draught. During the war, she escorted coastal convoys, watched for U-boats and naval raiders, and helped train naval crews. Interestingly enough, her old collision-mate Erin, while serving as the armed yacht Aegusa in the Royal Navy, was lost to a German mine during the war.
Returning to her normal peacetime cutter activities in the Coast Guard, to which was added policing and chasing after rumrunners in the 1920s (for which some water-cooled Brownings were installed) Gresham entered a quiet chapter in her life. Her armament was greatly reduced and by 1922, her torpedo tube was deactivated as all of the Navy’s stocks of the aging Whitehead Mk3 torpedoes were withdrawn from service.
In 1933, Gresham was again assigned to the Navy and was sent to Cuban waters to monitor the situation there. As part of the Navy Special Service Squadron she was used to patrol the Florida Straits during a series of revolts that eventually put Fulgencio Batista in power in Cuba. In this she served with a number of other Coast Guard vessels sheep-dipped to the Navy to include the Unalga for two years, alternating between Key West, Gitmo, and San Juan.
She was decommissioned 19 January 1935 just before her 40th birthday, which is about right for a Coasty hull. She was then sold for her value in scrap metal on 22 April 1935, the last of her five-ship class to remain in the Coast Guard’s service. Cleveland-built sisters Algonquin and Onondaga had been sold in 1930 and 1924 respectively and disposed of. Cramp-built McCulloch, who served with Dewey at Manila Bay, was sunk in a collision 13 June 1917. Boston-built Manning likewise was sold for scrap in 1931. The Coast Guard just did not have use for a bunch of slow old tubs.
Until World War II came along, anyway.
In 1943, the Coast Guard found Gresham still afloat in some backwater somewhere in the Chesapeake and reacquired her, the sole remaining ship of her class. She was old, with 47 years on her hull. She was in exceptionally poor condition– still with her original cranky vertical, inverted cylinder, direct-acting triple expansion steam engine fired by four single-ended boilers fed by coal.
Nevertheless, she could hold a few guns and maybe scare off a U-boat or two so she was bought (sum unknown) on 21 January 1943 and renovated in Baltimore.
Gresham during WWII. Notice her sail rig is long gone and, for the first time, she has a visible hull number. Photo from Navsource.
Two months later she was relatively seaworthy and, armed with a sonar, radar, depth charge racks and guns, placed into commission as the USS Gresham (WPG-85) on 25 March 1943. Assigned to coastal convoy escort, moving from port to port up and down the East Coast, she was not liked very well. Since her best possible speed was just 8-knots, she slowed the convoys down and they often decided to leave Gresham in port rather instead. In these terms, she served as a guard ship in New York for most of her 13-month WWII service.
Decommissioned 7 April 1944 before the war even ended, she was sold for scrap for a second time.
However, she just wouldn’t die.
In 1946, she was being used by one Nicholas D. Allen of Teaneck, NJ, converted to a tug and renamed T. V. McAllister. He apparently wasn’t very successful with Gresham as in turn he sold her to the Weston Trading Co. of Honduras who renamed the elderly vessel, Trade Winds.
She became a coaster and banana boat along the Caribbean, flying a Panamanian flag. Then in February 1947 she quietly became one of the 12 vessels purchased in America by Ha’Mossad Le Aliya Bet to carry Jewish refugees from Europe, many only months out of concentration camps, to Palestine past the British blockade. Appropriately, Gresham was in good company, as at least three of the other vessels, Unalga (who she had served with in the old Navy Special Service Squadron), Northland, and Mayflower, had served in the Coast Guard at one time or another as well.
Her scant 27-man crew consisted mostly of young American Jewish volunteers with former naval and military service under their belt. She was prepared for its voyage to Palestine at Lisbon, Portugal and PortoVenere, Italy. Yehoshua Baharav Rabinowitz was in charge of the work in Portugal and Avraham akai was in charge in Italy. The vessel, under the Hebrew name “Hatikva” (The Hope) sailed from Bocca di Magra, Italy on May 8th 1947 carrying 1,414 Ma’apilim refugees. Israel Rotem was its commander and those accompanying him were Alex Shour and Meir Falik; the radio operator was Nachum Manor. Soon five Royal Navy destroyers, enforcing the blockade on Palestine, were tailing the old tub.
c. May 1947 Hatikva loaded with Jewish refugees Algerine Associates photo from Paul Silverstone’s Aliyah Bet Project Aliyah Bet Project. Note that her mast has been stepped.
One of these ships pulled alongside and called to the captain, “Your voyage is illegal, and your vessel is unseaworthy. In the name of humanity surrender.”
On May 17, 1947, the Hatikva was forcibly intercepted, rammed, and captured by the destroyers HMS Venus and HMS Brissenden. Upon boarding, RN sailors and Royal Marines used tear gas, rifle butts, and batons to enforce their directives and ordered the ship to Haifa to unload where it sat while the American crew was interned on a British prison ship. (For an excellent in-depth story of this action and the American’s fate, read Greenfield’s, The Jews’ Secret Fleet: Untold Story of North American Volunteers Who Smashed the British Blockade)
With Royal Marines coming aboard. Note her old pilot house, a relic from the 19th century.
Later the Israeli Navy was able to reclaim Hatikva in 1948 after independence, but after sea trials, the desperate organization realized they were not that desperate, and sold her for scrap in 1951.
ex-Gresham, then Hatikva of the Israeli Navy (אוניית_מעפילים_התקוה) around 1948. This is the last known picture in circulation of her.
However, Hatikva/Gresham beat the scrappers once more it seemed. She popped up in Greek ownership in the 1950s and found herself back on the other side of the Atlantic again as an unpowered barge, her superstructure, funnel, and mast removed. She was last semi-reliably seen in the Chesapeake Bay area as late as 1980.
Her ultimate fate is unknown, but she may in all actuality be afloat somewhere in Blue Crab country, hiding out as a houseboat in some back eddy or grounded on a mudflat somewhere. If only boats could talk, Gresham would have had much to say. The Spanish American War, both World Wars, a revenue cutter that was deconstructed then reassembled, gunboat, coast guard cutter, freighter, refugee ship…talk about an epic tale. After all, how many ships have been sold to the breakers and lived to tell the tale not once, or twice, but three times!
The Gresham/Hatikva is well remembered in Israel and in the European Jewish community as a whole. This summer a group of 800 French Jewish students announced plans to recreate the voyage of the historic ship.
As a final note on the ship, Israel’s national anthem is named Hatikva, of course it is about the movement overall, but still; there is a small hatttip to the tiny Gresham in there every time it is played.
And Walter Quintin Gresham himself? He was buried in Section 2 of Arlington National Cemetery a little to the right of the grave of Union cavalry master Phil Sheridan.
The former seaplane tender made cutter USCGC Gresham
In 1947, the Coast Guard took possession of a 311-foot long gently used seaplane tender, USS Willoughby (AGP-9; AVP-57) and renamed her USCGC Gresham (WAVP/WHEC/WAGW-387) in honor of this long serving vessel and remained in service until 1973. However, if the reports of the original Gresham making it to 1980 are true, her namesake outlived her by almost a decade.
Armament:
1896: Two 6-pounder 57mm, one 1-pounder 37mm, three .50 cal. machine guns, and one bow torpedo tube
1918: 3 x 4-inch guns; (1500 rounds of ammunition stored in two magazinesfore and aft); 16 x 300-lb depth charges; 4 x Colt machine guns; 2 x Lewis machine guns; 18 x .45 Colt pistols; 15 x Springfield rifles.)
1930: 2 x 6-pdrs RF, 3 x .50-cal watercooled for rumrunners, tube deactivated.
1943: 2x 3″/50 (singles) 4x20mm/80 (singles), 2 depth charge racks, 2 K-gun depth charge projectors, 2 mousetrap depth bomb projectors, QCL-8 sonar, SF-type surface search radar.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
The Mechanix of Auto, Aviation, Military...pert near anything I feel relates to mechanical things, places, events or whatever I happen to like. Even non-mechanical artsy-fartsy stuff.
laststandonzombieisland 