“At a Roadblock on the Road to Bataan” by Don Millsap
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This painting depicts Staff Sergeant Emil Morello of Company C, 194th Tank Battalion (CA Army National Guard) smashing through a Japanese roadblock with his M3 Stuart tank. After destroying the roadblock, Morello fired upon several Japanese positions before finally being disabled. Morello was awarded the Silver Star in 1983 for his actions.
Ernst Udet (1896 – 1941), second most successful fighter pilot of the first World War with 62 confirmed victories, was requested by Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen for the Jasta 11 in March 1918, he received the Pour le Mérite in April 1918 and took over the command of Jasta 4 after Richthofen was killed in action. After the First World War he took up work as an aircraft constructor, actor, and pilot for stunts, shows and advertisements. His close relationship to Göring opened up his career path in the Luftwaffe in 1935, which came to an end on 17.11.1941. At the time of his suicide he was a Director General of Equipment in the rank of a Colonel General.
The following 8 drawings of aircraft, dating from 1915 – 1941 were made by Ernst Udet in watercolor and drawing ink over pencil on identically sized sheets of paper (37 x 50 cm). Very detailed studies in profile with inscriptions and short notes in block letters handwritten by Udet with the typical spelling mistakes known from his other handwritten documents. The (slightly foxed) paper and colors are more or less identical, suggesting that the fair drawings were made around 1940/41. He signed and dated them after original sketches he largely made during the First World War. The crop marks on each drawing indicate that the drawings were intended for a book project on the development of aeronautics which Udet had in mind, but were not realized due to his suicide in November 1941.
Udet´s drawing skills are well known from numerous small sketches and caricatures, especially famous are his extremely rare illustrations of captured allied aircraft re-lacquered in German colors – only a few were captured and re-used, and practically none of them survived the First World War – which could only have been observed and documented by experienced front pilots such as Udet. With a comprehensive expert opinion.
Rumpler C.I. bomber of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1915
Junkers J.I. of the Imperial German Flying Corps.
Hannover C.L.III.a. of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1918
Junkers J.I. of the Imperial German Flying Corps
O.A.W.R.VI. bomber of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1918 (Zeppelin Staaken R.VI. built by the OAW East German Albatros Plant)
Albatros D.V. of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1918
Albatros B.II. of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1916
Lohner C.I. Bomber of the Austro-Hungarian Flying Corps
Ref: Ernst Udet in Aquarellfarben und Tusche über Bleistift auf einheitlichem Papierformat (37 x 50 cm) angefertigt.
Built in 1913, 10-stories below New York’s Grand Central Terminal, lies perhaps the most strategically important room in the United States for during the World Wars. The video is a pretty neat way to spend 4-minutes
Lititz, Pennsylvania. Boy Scouts listening to lecture on German bombs during their training as messengers. November 1942. The kid on the far right seems to suddenly not be feeling this shit anymore.
Ran across an excellent piece over at Foxtrot Alpha on the real life experience of being a P-3 Orion/P-8 Poseidon pilot. Its long but really worth it. Ive been inside a Charlie variant on the ground and briefly in the air but the article really gives you a feel for it.
NAVAL AIR STATION JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (April 6, 2011) Three P-3C Orion aircraft with heritage paint schemes are positioned on the tarmac next to the Navy’s next generation of anti-submarine warfare and long-range maritime patrol aircraft, the P-8A Poseidon, rear left, and the unmanned Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) aircraft, center. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist William Lovelady/Released)
On capabilities:
“Overall, the P-3C and provide very useful capabilities to a commander. For example, a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) commander could task an Orion to screen the carrier from submarine threats while passing through a geographical choke point. The next day, the very same crew and aircraft could re-arm with AGM-65’s and provide overwatch of an enemy nation’s port, engaging any small craft that might depart to threaten the carrier. The next day, the same crew and aircraft can launch on an ISR mission, mapping possible mobile surface to air missile (SAM) sites to determine whether launchers or radars are present, all while staying safely outside of these air defense emplacements’ range. The flexibility and capability inherent to a modern P-3C brings a great deal to the fight. ”
On black ops:
“I should tell you that it has long been a Maritime Patrol Community rumor that a ‘black’ P-3B flown by the CIA over China shot down a MiG with a Sidewinder. This was allegedly in the 1960s. I have zero information to back that claim up but author David Reade in the book Age of Orion makes claims that this incident occurred. I suppose we’ll never know what really happened. By the time the truth is allowed out, anyone who flew these planes or operated them in such a manner will be long gone.”
On pucker moments:
“I was flying with a junior copilot while my commanding officer rested in the bunk back in the rear of the aircraft. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bright red flash and jumped in my seat as I heard an alarm scream. I looked to see what was wrong with the aircraft, but the light and alarm were gone as quickly as they had came. As I turned to ask my flight engineer “was that a fire warning,” the fire warning tone blared for one second and the fire light on the #3 engine lit up….”
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off 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. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, July 16, Coast Guard Salad-bar holder, The Mighty Spencer
(Courtesy USCGC Spencer Association)
Here we see the United States Coast Guard Treasury-class cutter USCGC Spencer (W36/WPG-36/WAGC-36/WHEC-36) as depicted in a painting by CWO3 William ‘Bill’ RaVell, USCG Ret. . CWO3 RaVell is an artist and member of the International Society of Marine Painters in addition to being a crew member on the USS Spencer between 1959 and 1961.
Officially known as the “Treasury” class due to the fact the 7 ships in the group were all named after former early secretaries of the U.S Treasury (the department that the Coast Guard reported to until 1972), they were better known simply as ‘327’ ships due to their overall length. Based on the Erie-class (PG-50) gunboats of the U.S Navy, a group of just two ships designed to patrol the far-flung Panama Canal Zone before WWII, these coast guard cutters were the largest and most heavily armed ships in the Treasury fleet up until that time.
“Gunnery exercise.”; circa 1940; Photo No. 2414; the photo was provided through the courtesy of Merle Harbourt, USCG (Ret.), a Spencer crewman, who served on board her during the 1939-1940 period. USCG Photo
Capable of over 20-knots and with the capability to carry a seaplane (a JF-2 amphibian), these 327-foot long, 2400-ton cutters could roam across the ocean and back again with an impressive 12,300-nm range. A threesome of 5-inch/51-caliber guns augmented a few 6-pounder guns was impressive enough for a shallow water (can float in 13-feet of sea) gunboat and seen as more than adequate to stop smugglers and sink derelict vessels on the high seas. In a pinch, the armament could be increased in time of war, which the Navy was keenly aware of.
Grumman JF-2 Duck being deployed from a cutter. Two were carried experimentally on board the 327s Spencer and Taney during pre-war tests. The Coast Guard obtained 14 JF-2s prior to WWII designed specifically for the service and a number of J2Fs during WWII. Of the first batch, they were acquired in October of 1934 and carried Coast Guard numbers V-135 through V148.
Laid down in 1935 at the New York Navy Yard, Spencer was commissioned into the USCG on 1 March 1937 with a total building cost of $2,468,460. She was named after former Secretary of the Treasury John Canfield Spencer, who served in President Tyler’s administration. An earlier Civil War-era Revenue Cutter was also named after Spencer.
Sent to patrol the Alaskan fishing grounds, Spencer embarked meteorologists from the Weather Bureau (this is pre-NOAA) and performed weather station observations in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Then in November 1941, with the threat of war looming, she reported for duty with the U.S. Navy Quickly, she was armed with an three 3-inch AAA DP guns, depth charge racks, and a “Y” gun depth charge projector as well as an increasingly advanced array of senors for finding enemy ships and submarines.
She was going to need them.
Spencer with her teeth in and her warpaint on.
By February 1942 she was escorting the first of no less than 18 huge trans-ocean convoys as part of Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF)-A3. This force often tasked with protecting dozens of merchantmen carrying troops and vital supplies consisted of the destroyer Gleaves, Spencer, and Flower-class corvettes Bittersweet, Chilliwack, Shediac and Algoma.
Each MOEF escort Group worked in a 33-day cycle allowing nine and one-half days with a westbound ON convoy, six days in St. John’s, Newfoundland, nine and one-half days with an eastbound HX or SC convoy, and 8 days refit in Derry.
These runs were often terrifying. Convoy ON 67 in February 1942 lost 7 ships to wolf packs of multiple U-boats. During Convoy SC.100, a slow-ship run from Sydney, Cape Breton Island to Liverpool with 26 merchant ships, the escorts fought off attacks from two complete wolf-packs totaling 17 U-boats. SC-121 fought off attacks from 27 submarines. It was only the fact that the Spencer and her associates constantly rushed to every HF/DF, sonor, radar and lookout contact, dropping depth charges and curses that these convoys made it at all. During this time her armament was increased with the addition of a Hedgehog system, 6 “K” gun projectors, and a number of 20mm AAA guns.
On 17 April, while a part of convoy HX-233, no less than seven U-boats converged on the group of ships in the mid-Atlantic gap, the area of the ocean too far from land to be covered by either U.S. or European-based anti-submarine aircraft. Stopping to pick up survivors of the torpedoed freighter Fort Rampart, Spencer found the German Type VII-type submarine U-175 sitting at periscope depth just 5000-yards from the convoy, lining up her tubes on the Allied vessels.
USCGC Spencer hits the German submarine U-175, 4.17.43
11 depth charges later, U-175 was mortally wounded and Spencer‘s U-boat killers soon switched into rescue mode (it’s the Coast Guard!), pulling 19 survivors from the stricken vessel.
Official Caption: “NAZI SUBMARINE SUNK BY THE FAMED CUTTER SPENCER: Effect of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER’S fire are visible in this closeup shot of the U-Boat, taken as the battle raged. The Nazi standing by the stanchion amidships disappeared a moment after this picture was taken by a Coast Guard photographer. The U-Boat had been trying to sneak into the center of the convoy.” Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1512 Photographer: Jack January? Description: The “Nazi” mentioned in the above caption was probably, in fact, a member of the Coast Guard boarding team–one of the first Americans to board an enemy man-of-war underway at sea since the War of 1812.
Official Caption: “OFF TO RESCUE THEIR BEATEN FOES: A pulling boat leaves the side of a Coast Guard combat cutter to rescue Nazi seamen struggling in the mid-Atlantic after their U-Boat had been blasted to the bottom by the cutter’s depth charges. Two Coast Guard cutters brought 41 German survivors to a Scottish port.” Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1516 Photographer: Jack January Description: The men in this pulling boat were, in fact, a trained boarding team led by LCDR John B. Oren (standing in the stern and wearing the OD helmet) and LT Ross Bullard (directly to Oren’s left). With the assistance of the Royal Navy they had practiced boarding a submarine at sea in order to capture an Enigma coding machine and related intelligence material.
In addition to this confirmed kill, Spencer has been credited by some sources as being credited off and on in the sinking of U-529 and U-225 as well as damaging several others.
Spencer was not the only 327 to make a kill. With a kill rate of .57 per ship, the Treasury-class were the most successful antisubmarine warships of World War Two. (US Navy Destroyer Escorts had a kill rate of .1 in comparison).
By early 1944 the submarine war in the Atlantic was all but decided and the 327s were reclassified as Communications Command Ships for Amphibious group leaders and Spencer was transferred as such to the Pacific with the 36th Signal Detachment Headquarters Company, U. S. Army stationed aboard.
Norfolk Sept 1944, a hard war already behind her, she is now headed to the Pacific.
There, re designated as WAGC-36, she arrived in the Philippines and participated in the landings at Palawan, Moro Gulf, Mindanao, Parang and Luzon where she had often had LTGEN R. L. Eichelberger, Commanding General, 8th Army, and MAJGEN Swing, commanding general, 11th Airborne Division on board during the landings. She then sortied south to assist in landings in Borneo. She ended the war shooting at floating naval mines off China and was ordered to sail back to the states 5 December 1945.
Her armament reduced, excess wartime equipment removed, and paint scheme returned to white, she was back in service off the Eastern seaboard with the Coast Guard by 1946, alternating home ports for the next thirty years between New York City (Governor’s Island) and Boston.
Back in white, with a new 5″/38 mount and almost everything else war-related stripped away.
In 1965 she was overhauled and redesigned WHEC-36 (High Endurance Cutter). Then in 1969, the 32-year old war veteran was sent to South Vietnam as part of CG Squadron Three as part of the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club interdicting NV/Viet Cong junks along the coast. For nine months she tracked and boarded contacts, captured 52 enemy suspects, and answered 13 naval gunfire close support fire missions, bombarding NVA targets ashore.
Then, as after WWII, she returned home to other rounds of peacetime service. Finally, her hull aging and equipment worn out, she was docked in 1974 in semi-retirement, used as a floating Engineer Training School until 1980, when she was finally retired after 43 years of service.
Spencer’s salad bar of decorations.
During her wars, she accumulated a vast array of awards and has been described as the most decorated of all Coast Guard cutters. These include a Presidential Unit Citation, 10 campaign medals for ETO and Pacific Theater operations in WWII, 3 Vietnam Service Medals, 3 Philippine Liberation Ribbons and the Republic of Vietnam Meritorious Unit Citation with Gallantry Cross with Palm.
In 1981 she was sold for $27,000, her value as scrap, to a company in Delaware. However, two of her sister ships, Taney (currently a museum ship at the Baltimore Maritime Museum) Ingham (Key West Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida) are preserved for you to visit– so please do.
Spencer‘s memory is preserved in a Bear-class 270-foot WMEC as well as a very well-organized veterans association.
Specs:
(As per USCG History official website)
Displacement: 2,350 (1936)
Length: 327′ 0″
Beam: 41′ 0″
Draft: 12′ 6″ (max.)
Propulsion: 2 x Westinghouse double-reduction geared turbines; 2 x Babcock & Wilcox sectional express, air-encased, 400 psi, 200° superheat; 2 x 9′ three-bladed propellers.
SHP: 6,200 (1966)
Maximum Speed: 20.5 knots
Economical Cruising: 11.0 knots (8,000 nautical miles)
Fuel Oil Capacity: 135,180 gallons (547 tons)
Complement: 1937: 12 officers, 4 warrants, 107 enlisted;
1941: 16 officers, 5 warrants, 202 enlisted;
1966: 10 officers, 3 warrants, 134 enlisted.
Electronics:
HF/DF: (1942) DAR (converted British FH3)
Radar: (1945) SC-4, SGa; (1966) AN/SPS-29D, AN/SPA-52.
Fire Control Radar: (1945) Mk-26; (1966) Mk-26 MOD 4
Sonar: (1945) QC series; (by early 1950s?) AN/SQS-11
Armament:
1936: 3 x 5″/51 (single mount); 2 x 6-pounders.; 1 x 1-pounder.
1941: 3 x 5″/51 (single mount); 3 x 3″/50 (single mount); 4 x .50 caliber Browning MG; 2 x depth charge racks; 1 x “Y” gun depth charge projector.
1943: 2 x 5″/51 (single mount); 4 x 3″/50 (single mount); 2 x 20mm/80 (single mount); 1 x Hedgehog; 6 x “K” gun depth charge projectors; 2 x depth charge racks.
1945: 2 x 5″/38 (single mount); 3 x 40mm/60 (twin mount); 4 x 20mm/80 (single mount).
1946: 1 x 5″/38 (single mount); 1 x 40mm;/60 (twin mount); 2 x 20mm/80 (single mount); 1 x Hedgehog.
1966: 1 x 5″/38 MK30 Mod75 (single); MK 52 MOD 3 director; 1 x MK 10-1 Hedgehog; 2 (P&S) x Mk 32 MOD 5 TT, 4 x MK 44 MOD 1 torpedoes; 2 x .50 cal. MK-2 Browning MG, 2 x MK-13 high altitude parachute flare mortars.
Aircraft: Curtiss SOC-4, USCG No. V159 (1937)
Grumman JF-2, USCG No. V144 (1938)
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Here we see the Kirov-class Russian battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great) transiting the Suez. Commissioned in 1998, this nearly twenty year old ship (of a 1970s design), is the largest active surface combatant warship in the world. The class of ships, almost three times the size as the largest Western cruisers, were one of the primary arguments used to bring the Iowa-class battleships out of retirement in the 1980s. Now four out of five Kirov‘s as well as the Iowa‘s have all been paid off to one degree or another, leaving this Russian leviathan as the end of an era in non-carrier surface combatant capital ships.
As such the 28,000-ton battlewagon is the fleet flag of the Russian Northern Fleet and her distinctive ‘099’ pennant number is being seen
increasingly around the world.
The Stalingrad Madonna is an image of the Virgin Mary drawn by a German soldier, Kurt Reuber, in 1942 in Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia, during the Battle of Stalingrad on the back of a captured Soviet map.
The piece is a simple charcoal sketch, measuring three feet by four feet (900 mm × 1200 mm). Mary is depicted wrapped in a large shawl, holding the infant Jesus close to her cheek. On the right border are the words Licht, Leben, Liebe (“Light, Life, Love”), from the Gospel of John. On the left, Reuber wrote Weihnachten im Kessel 1942 (“Christmas at the Siege 1942”) and at the bottom Festung Stalingrad (“Fortress Stalingrad”). Kessel (“Cauldron”), is the German term for an encircled military area, and Fortress Stalingrad was the label for the encircled army promoted in the Nazi press.
Stalingrad Madonna
The Madonna was flown out of the siege just before Stalingrad fell and made it back to Germany, since 1983 being on exhibit in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche church, Berlin.
Lanser Kurt Reuber, however, died in a Soviet prison camp in 1944.
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The First Victoria Cross of the European War, 1914. Captain Francis Grenfell, 9th (Queen’s Royal) Lancers at Audregnies, 24 August 1914′ by Richard Caton Woodville.
Grenfell was a remarkable rider and accomplished polo player before the war.
Grenfell was 33 years old that day he rode with the regiment in a charge against a large body of unbroken German infantry. The casualties were very heavy and the captain soon left as the senior officer. He was rallying part of the regiment behind a railway embankment when he was twice hit and severely wounded. In spite of his injuries, however, when asked for help in saving the guns, by Major Ernest Wright Alexander of the 119th Battery, Royal Field Artillery, he and some volunteers, under a hail of bullets, helped to manhandle and push the guns out of range of enemy fire. The citation was gazetted on 16 September 1914 and read:
For gallantry in action against unbroken infantry at Andregnies, Belgium, on 24th August 1914, and for gallant conduct in assisting to save the guns of the 119th Battery, Royal Field Artillery, near Doubon the same day.
Grenfell however was later killed in action on 24 May 1915 and is buried in the Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery.
His VC is on display in the Regimental museum of the 9th/12th Royal Lancers.
A fellow by the name of U. Lliyputin has saved some old 1980s/90s Soviet Navy comics, written and drawn by one O. V. Karavashkin.
Pulling away
Coming into Polyarini. This scene looks almost right out of The Hunt for Red October.
Lliyputin has provided translations and background information on the comics which show how ‘the other side’ lived during the Cold War.
Loading Type 53 torpedoes. The 53-65 (after the year it was introduced) torpedo family are Russian-made, wake-homing torpedoes designed to destroy surface ships and can make 45 kts on their hybrid kerosene turbines, delivering a shattering 678-lb HE explosive warhead. More on the kerosene later.
Type 53s in action.
This on-going battle between submariners and trawlers…
The crew lining up for illegal homebrew made either from torpedo fuel or fermented fruit. Also an ongoing saga of submariners.
Most of the comics seem to revolve around K-241 (Unit 854 in Soviet parlance), a Project 667AU Navaga-class (NATO designation Yankee) SSBN that was launched in 1972 at Severodvinsk and was based at Gadzhiyevo/Yagelnaya Bay or Saida Bay, which were in the same inlet in the Kola Peninsula. The subs carried 16 SS-N-6 SLBMs, had 6 torpedo tubes, and carried 18 Type 53 torpedoes.
They were the first Soviet SSBNs to carry their ballistic missiles within the hull (as opposed to the sail). K-241 was decommissioned June 16, 1992, for scrapping but the comix remain.