Category Archives: weapons

Centurion Layout

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Check out this great Cold War circa 1965 “layout” image of a Centurion Mk 5 main battle tank. While the whole thing seems very British, the picture is actually of a track from Bravo Squadron, 101 Tankbataljon (101 Tkbat), of the Dutch Army’s Regiment Huzaren Prins Alexander (RHPA).

NIMH AKL052561

A closer image gives a better view of the crew and the tank’s interesting camo pattern. NIMH AKL052558

All smiles, NIMH AKL052559

The crew in front of the tank all carry a 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistol as a personal weapon and two 9 mm UZI SMGs as an additional weapon for the gunner and the loader. Also, note the Class A-style uniforms on their packs and the vehicle gear to the right.

The Royal Netherlands Army’s tank history is a curious one.

Prior to World War II, the Dutch possessed but a single tank, a second-hand French Renault FT that was acquired in 1927. While this was augmented by five Carden Loyd Mk.VI tankettes in the 1930s and a fleet of about three dozen assorted armored cars including the excellent domestically-made (with Swedish help) M39 Pantserwagen, European Holland was not very well equipped when it came to armored vehicles when the Germans crashed over the border in May 1940. The Royal East Indies Army (KNIL) in what is today Indonesia, had more going for it but that is beyond the scope of what we are talking about.

The “Free Dutch” Prinses Irene Brigade, formed in England during the German occupation in WWII, was ostensibly motorized but was only about a battalion-sized unit that, in the end, would ride into Northwest Europe in late 1944 on Bren and Loyd Carriers while their reconnaissance unit was equipped with Daimler and White Scout cars.

Post-war, with a fight on their hands against Indonesian insurgents and the threat of thousands of Soviet T-34s set to turn Europe red, the Dutch received almost 300 surplus M4A1, M4A2, M4A3, and M4A4 Shermans as well as some former British and Canadian Firefly tanks, which they operated into the late 1950s when they were replaced by new Centurions.

When it came to Centurions, the Dutch bought an impressive 592 Mk 3 models with British radios and thin 20pdr OQF Mk.I (84 mm) main guns between 1953 and 1960, using American MDAA funds as production of the M48 Patton wasn’t sufficient to cover the demand. Plus, the Centurions allowed the Dutch to work hand-in-hand with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) and the Canadian Brigade in West Germany should the Fulda Gap become a contested space.

About 340 of these tanks were later upgraded with American radios and 105 mm L7A1 guns to become Mk 5 NL and Mk 5/2 standard by the early 1970s while the unmodded Centurions went into the reserve. The Dutch replaced them with West German-made Leopards and the Centurions, technically still owned by the U.S., were then (apparently) transferred to Israel.

The Dutch picked up 468 Leopard 1s in the 1960s and later 445 Leopard 2A4s (NL version which was all German but used Dutch radios, antenna bases, FN MAG machine guns, and smoke mortars) in the 1980s, then upgraded the latter to 2A5 and 2A6 standard.

With the end of the Cold War, the older Leos were scrapped (or converted to ARVs, BARVs, and bridge layers) and the newer Leo 2s hit the sales blocks for an average of $2 million a pop– a comparative bargain in the MBT world as the Dutch panzers were meticulously maintained and little-used. They sold them to Austria (115 2A4s in 1993), Norway (52 2A4s in 2001), Canada (100 2A4s/2A6Ms in 2007), Portugal (37 2A6 in 2007), and Finland (124 2A6s in 2011), leaving just a handful left in Holland. With no tanks left to drive, the disbandment of the 1st and 2nd Hussars (Regiment Huzaren 1st Van Sytzama, 2nd Prins van Oranje) occurred in 2012.

Even though no tank units “officially” exist in the Royal Army, the Dutch have just 18 Leopard 2A6M A2s active for service as part of a joint German/Dutch unit (the German 414th Panzer Battalion) and another handful of older Leo Is for spares, gate guards and museum displays beside the auxiliary hulls used as ARVs, etc. The Dutch make up the 4th Panzer Kompanie (4 PzKp) of the battalion and are barracked at Bergen-Loheide, though the battalion is under the overall command of the Dutch 43rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade.

Still, at least it is better than just having one.

Swedish Barrels in Africa

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You don’t think about the Swedish Air Force ready to drop napalm in Africa, but it was a thing.

Official caption, 60 years ago this week: “Two Swedish S29 SAAB Photo-reconnaissance jet planes arrived in Leopoldville, the Republic of the Congo, on October 23rd, 1962. Sweden has also supplied four J29 fighter jets with pilots and crew to the United Nations Forces in the Congo (ONUC). At Ndjili Airport is the United States Air Force MATS C-133 cargo plane unloading the planes after bringing them directly from Sweden.”

UN Photo # 113781

Back in the good old romantic mercenary days when you could grab a ticket to Africa and pick a side, the mass of confusion that was the 1960s Congo Crisis– which was later seen as downright gentlemanly compared to the pure shit show that was Biafra a few years later– saw a huge influx of non-aligned UN Peacekeepers from countries like Ethiopia, India, Sweden, Ireland (of “Siege of Jadotville” fame) and the like who, contrary to the UN of the 1990s and 2000s, often pulled triggers and dropped bombs in the interest of waging peace.

Cue the curious Saab 29 Tunnan.

Saab 29, colloquially called Flygande Tunnan

First flown in 1948 at a time when the Messerschmitt Me 262 was arguably still the best jet fighter in the world, the swept-wing turbojet Saab 29 Flygande Tunnan (“Flying Barrel”) set a world speed record of 607 mph and was put into production in both fighter (J= Jakt or “fighting”) and reconnaissance (S =Spaning or “scouting”) variants.

Capable of toting four nose-mounted 20mm cannons and equipped with 10 hardpoints for rockets, missiles, and light bombs, the J29 variants could take off and mix it up for an hour or so, with a combat radius of about 250 miles.

Royal Swedish Air Force SAAB J- 29 Tunnan after Napalm bombing in front of Hailie Selassie at Rosersberg in the Uppland province.

The Swedes would send a total of nine J 29B fighters and two S 29C photo reconnaissance Tunnans (the two shown in the first image above) between September 1961 and 1964, under the banner of Flygflottilj 22. They were soon joined by Iranian and Filipino F-86 Sabers and a force of Indian B-58 Canberras, giving the UN its first “Air Force.” 

Kamina Airport, UN Force in the Congo, January 1963, four Imperial Iranian Air Force F-86F Sabers of the Shah’s 103rd Tactical Fighter Squadron in the foreground, five stubby Swedish Air Force Saab 29 Tunnan to the right, and five Philippines Air Force Sabres. Also note the C-46 and two Sikorsky UH-19Ds.

A flight of four Swedish Saab 29 Tunnan (J-29) jets in the Congo

They eventually picked up a special “Congo” splinter camo scheme that they carried after late 1962.

While some of the only combat aircraft operated by the UN on the ONUC mission, Tunnan rarely engaged in combat missions or shoot down the mercenary-flown Fouga Magisters that had harassed the Irish at Jadotville. However, they were effective to a point.

From A Walter Dorn’s study: 

Active patrolling of the skies by the Swedish J-29s effectively cut the air bridge between Katanga and its allies in Portuguese West Africa and Southern Africa, precluding the introduction of new aircraft.[59] From 28 December 1962 to 4 January 1963 a total of 76 sorties were carried out by UN aircraft against Katanga’s airfields and aircraft

In the end, with the type withdrawn from service back home as they were replaced by the more advanced Saab J32 Lansen and J35 Draken, when ONUC wrapped up the Swedes destroyed their Tunnans on the ground in the Congo and flew their maintainers and pilots back home via SAS.

They have been remembered in box art and scale models. 

“Saab J 29B Tunnan Over Congo” by Zdenek Machacek

And, in semi-related news, let’s tap in Roland The Thompson Gunner…

Rare Army (Colt) Ace surfaces

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The original Colt Ace (the current one is a German pot-metal piece of trash) was a neat little blow-back action .22 rimfire version of the Colt Government similar to .45 ACP National Match, useful in training. However, the 10-shot .22 M1911A1 never really caught on, with less than 11,000 made between 1931-41 then in a “clean up” done post-WWII on everything left. A variant of the model, the Service Ace, which used a floating chamber design for better reliability as the .22 cartridge did not always have the power to move the slide backward for proper ejection and reloading, was lumped into the line after 1937 and about 13,000 were made, with the serial numbers starting with “SM” for Service Model.

Both the Navy and Army purchased small quantities of the pistol during this era, with the latter acquiring no less than 206 Aces.

Speaking of which Milestone has a really nice– and possibly historic– Ace up for auction this weekend.

The pistol is reported to be in the first group of Service Model Ace pistols obtained by the United States Gov’t for trials and consideration.

The pistol is accompanied by a copy of the sales receipt from Rock Island Arsenal to Captain Mark Jartman, Office of Deputy Chief of Ordnance, Washington DC and is dated Dec 30 1954. It is housed in Rock Island Arsenal shipping box with a label and the box has the serial number SM15 scribed on top with the matching federal stocking number that is indicated on the sales paperwork. The serial dates to the first run in late 1936, before the Service Model went into serial production. 

The pre-sale estimate is $8,500-$15,000.

What’s the Difference between the SIG Romeo Zero, 1, & 2 Pistol Optics?

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While Glock, S&W, and others sell pistols and have optics cuts on a lot of their newer models, SIG is kind of unique in the respect that they make both handguns and compatible red dots as well.

Over the past few months, I have been doing my own research when it comes to the company’s Romeo series (Zero, One, Two, Three Max, etc) of pistol-mounted red dots and have put together a guide to the above in my column at Guns.com.

Not gonna lie, tho, I like the Romeo 2 myself, it has proved bombproof in a T&E 10mm P320 XTen over the summer.

Alert Clocking in, 53 Years On

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The USCGC Alert (WMEC 630) is the newest of her class of 210-foot Reliance-class gunboats (WPG/WPC), her keel laid down in 1968 at the Coast Guard Yard at Curtis Bay. Commissioned 4 August 1969– the service’s 179th birthday– and is the 8th such cutter to bear the name going back to 1818.

Alert shortly after her commissioning in 1969. Note her single manually-operated 3″/50 Mark 22 mount, the last one installed on a U.S. warship. At the time, the Navy had already switched to the more modern radar-guided 3″/50RF Marks 27, 33, and 34; along with the 3″/70RF Mark 37, and would ditch those in the 1970s in favor of unmanned CIWS and MK75 76mm OTO Melera mounts. USCG Image: 170531-G-XX000-321

1973 Jane’s listing

Rebuilt in 1993-94 during a Mid-life Maintenance Availability (MMA) to give her a newer set of engines, generators, commo, and nav gear, Alert would also land her 3″/50 in favor of a much smaller (but still manually-operated) MK 38 25mm cannon. As the MMA was to extend her life for 15 years, she was later given a 9-month Medium Endurance Cutter Maintenance Extension Project (MEP) in 2009.

Now, some 53 years after she first joined the fleet, the humble little cutter, based since 1994 in Astoria, Oregon, is still getting it done. She just returned from a 68-day, 13,700-mile deployment, that saw her stretch her legs down from the PacNorthWest to the Panama Canal.

The Coast Guard Cutter Alert (WMEC 630) conducts an engagement coincidental to operations with members of the Guatemalan Navy on August 23, 2022, five miles south of Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. The engagement to strengthen law enforcement and search and rescue capabilities with our partners in Guatemala included joint pursuit training with two Guatemalan small boats and a search-and-rescue exercise with the Guatemalan vessels Kukulkan and the Kaibil Balam. Photo by Chief Petty Officer Matthew Masaschi

Same as the above, Photo by Chief Petty Officer Matthew Masaschi. The images were likely snapped from her embarked MH-65 Dolphin

As noted by USCG Pacific Area:

While in theater, Alert’s crew boarded three Costa Rican fishing vessels and successfully removed 1,440 pounds of marijuana valued at $1.4 million. Furthermore, during the boarding of the fishing vessel Mujer Gitana, Alert’s crew detected and articulated numerous factors of reasonable suspicion allowing Costa Rica to issue a return to port order. Costa Rican Law Enforcement officials searched the vessel and located a hidden compartment under a reversible steel hydraulic door system, a smuggling technique that reportedly has never been seen before on a Costa Rican vessel. The search resulted in the seizure of 729 kilograms of cocaine worth $21.1 million, and the apprehension of seven detainees by one of our top-priority partner nations.

Additionally, the Alert crew led a multinational training engagement with the Guatemalan Navy, conducted three joint boardings with the Costa Rican Coast Guard, and responded to one search and rescue case involving an American fisherman off the coast of Baja California.

The embarked helicopter aircrew flew more than 50 hours over 16 days, and searched thousands of miles over the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

The service’s 9th USCGC Alert, a brand-new 360-foot offshore patrol cutter (OPC) was announced in 2017 but likely won’t join the fleet for another decade, leaving the current one likely to keep on sailing into her 60s.

105 Years Ago: Going Loud, a Grave Responsibility

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Via the West Point Museum 

On the morning of 23 October 1917, the first American shell of World War One in Europe, was fired toward German lines by a First Division artillery unit.

On Oct. 22, 1917, Soldiers of C Battery, 6th Field Artillery, used the cover of the day’s dense fog to carve out a firing position on a hill 1.3 kilometers outside the town of Bathlemont without being detected by the Imperial Germans. By nightfall the position was ready, but no order came to emplace a gun there.
Capt. Idus R. McLendon, C Battery commander, made the decision to move the 75 mm M1897 gun, but with the regiment’s horses and tools in the rear, the 3,400-pound gun would have to be moved by hand.
The Soldiers under McLendon struggled for three quarters of a mile in complete darkness; with mud and muck up to their knees they pulled the gun uphill, all while wearing gas masks to protect from lingering German mustard gas.

McLendon convinced his French superiors to fire upon the Germans at first light. It would be the first time in more than a century that American and French Soldiers were to fight a common enemy, and the first time Americans had come to fight on a European battlefield.

When the command was given to fire, Sgt. Alex Arch of South Bend, a 23-year-old immigrant born in Austria-Hungary, pulled the lanyard on the 75mm gun, sending its shell — the first of over 10,000 fired in the conflict — into German lines. The time was 6 hours, 5 minutes and 10 seconds into the morning of Oct. 23, 1917.

Visit the West Point Museum to see the Gun on exhibit in our Large Weapons Gallery!

Barely two days prior, under the cover of darkness, the first battalions of the U.S. 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Infantry Regiments were led into the very “lived-in” trenches (complete with rats and remains) by their French allies of the battle-weary 18e Division d’Infanterie (18e DI), becoming the first American combat unit to take positions on the front lines of the Great War.

Captain Alban Butler, who would become the “divisional cartoonist”, portrayed the moment. As the cartoon illustrates, these Soldiers felt the eyes of the world upon them (both allied and enemy) as the mettle of the Americans had yet to be tested in European combat.

Via the Society of the First Infantry Division

One thing led to another, and an 87-year-old man now runs the only British Military Swordmaker

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“For more than 200 years, Wilkinson Sword made swords for the military but, in 2005, they decided to shut up shop.

However, one former customer, Robert Pooley, who was 70 at the time, decided to acquire their sword designs and have a go himself.

Now aged 87, he makes and renovates swords for the Royal Family, dignitaries and militaries all over the world.”

 

 

The Grey Ghost of the Korean Coast, 70 years ago today

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Here we see the super dreadnought USS Iowa (BB-61) firing off Koje, Korea, 17 October 1952 with those beautiful 16″/50cal Mk7 guns.

Laid down 18 months prior to Pearl Harbor, she was a war baby and meant to show the Germans, Italians, and Japanese that the U.S Navy would come correct in the battlewagon department should the Great Neutral be drawn into the war. She commissioned more than a year after Pearl Harbor to a very different conflict than what she was intended but she and her three sisters proved their worth as floating AAA batteries for carrier task forces and, as seen above, in shore bombardment.

Iowa earned 11 battle stars in WWII before being laid up in 1949. Recommissioned on 25 August 1951 and rushed to Korea, by 24 February 1958 she would again see mothballs for a long 26-year nap before modernized for the Reagan 600-ship Navy.  Decommissioned an amazing third time in 1990, she has been a museum ship at the Port of Los Angeles since 2012.

P226 XFIVE: Not Vaporware

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On a trip to SIG in New Hampshire last week, I had the occasion to see the new P226 XFIVE up close and personal.

Announced earlier this month, the P226 XFIVE was formerly just offered through SIG’s German Master Shop for serious competition use and typically ran in the neighborhood of about $5K– and that was in 2008 dollars! While today’s XFIVE remains pricy– like a minimum advertised price of $2,199 kinda pricy– it is still way less than the older version and the American-made instant classic has been updated to have better sights and a factory Delta Point Pro/RMR footprint.

It feels great in the hand due to the extended beavertail grip and undercut trigger guard. Note the extended magwell that just hoovers up the XFIVE’s 20-round standard magazine as well as the ambi extended slide lock– a must on a Single-Action Only pistol.

Plus, it is easy on the eyes.

More in my column at Guns.com. 

The Commish behind an ’03

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Check out these two images from the National Archives. Taken by the Brown Brothers for the Western News Union, likely sometime in the summer of 1916, they were shot at Plattsburgh, New York, then home to the huge Preparedness Movement backed by retired Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood. The movement hosted a series of volunteer summer training camps at Plattsburgh in 1915 and 1916 that saw some 40,000 men– largely of the Northeast’s elite social classes– of college graduates interested in reserve officer’s training without the catch of having to fulfill a reserve service requirement. They were billed as “the military training camp for the businessman.”

It was essentially the forerunner of the interwar Citizens’ Military Training Camps and ROTC.

Note the raised ladder sights of the early M1903 and the detail of the magazine cut-off– the latter a feature the rifle maintained throughout production– as well as the hobnailed short boots with laced-up gaiters.

Note the striped cord on the campaign hat denoting the civilian Preparedness Movement rather than a solid colored cord as worn by the Army at the time. Also, check out the rifle target in hands of the spotter behind the shooter.

The neat thing about the images is that they show Arthur Hale Woods, the 46-year-old New York City Police Commissioner at the time, getting his M1903 Springfield on.

Woods was an interesting figure.

Born to a wealthy family in Boston in 1870, he graduated from Harvard, did post-grad work in Germany at the University of Berlin, and became a schoolmaster at the Groton School for Boys in 1895 at the ripe old age of 25 where one of his students was a teenaged Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Leaving education and tagging along on William Howard Taft’s famous “Imperial Cruise” to the Pacific, Woods then switched gears and became a reporter for the New York Evening Sun on the crime beat in 1906, a job that led him to become Gotham’s deputy police commissioner the next year. Taking his position seriously, he picked up a law degree at Trinty College in his spare time and strived to model the agency’s detective squads after Scotland Yard. By April 1914, he was the boss, and ran the department until January 1918 when he signed up for the Army– it seemed his stint in Plattsburgh planted a seed.

Rising to the rank of colonel, he served as assistant director of military aeronautics (although I do not believe he held a pilot’s license) and then after the end of the war filled a variety of posts in the Harding and Hoover administrations. Woods passed in 1942, aged 72.

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