Category Archives: weapons

Carpetbagger Enfields

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In the 1970s and 1980s, Val Forget’s Navy Arms was a go-to in my childhood when it came to catalog dreaming. I used to flip through its pages and plan to pick up assorted Mosins, SKS carbines, Canadian-made Inglish Hi-Powers, and the like for what– even to a kid who collected Tops baseball cards and ate Spaghetti-Os– seemed affordable.

I mean just look at that!

Well, Navy Arms disappeared for a long time but, now based in Martinsburg, West Virginia with Val still associated with it, are back and back with some really cool stuff.

FR F2 Snipers

During the last NRA Annual Meeting in Houston earlier this summer I swung by their booth and checked out their stock of former French Army FR F2 bolt-action sniper rifles, which have long been unobtainable over here.

Good looking gun. Not sure if it is worth $7K, but it is still a good-looking (and rare) piece (Photo: Chris Eger)

Check out the flyer that I scanned:

9-Hole Reviews had a great trial of the FR F2 recently.

French Enfields?

Another thing the Navy Arms guys were talking about in Houston, although they didn’t have any on-hand to show off as they were still clearing Customs, were original World War II No 4 Mk I* Enfields that were dropped to the French partisans (see Operation Carpetbagger which dropped over 20,495 containers and 11,174 packages of vital supplies to the resistance forces in western and northwestern Europe in 1944 and 1945 alone ranging from batteries and radios to guns and explosives) in the lead-up to the Allied invasions of France to drive the Nazis out.

What’s really cool about them is they are all in original condition– complete with original slings and matching bolts– as they were not refurbished or rebuilt after the war, just unloaded, cleaned, and put in deep storage. They also had lots of codes we’ve never seen before (such as “PP,” “BS,” and “BT”) that haven’t been documented.

The flier for the Frenchie Enfields:

Well, it seems Navy Arms has finally gotten those Resistance Enfields. Check out this photo dump:

They have them listed at Old Western Scrounger (another of Val’s companies) with (as of Monday night) about 60 listed with prices ranging from $995-$1375 depending on rarity and condition. 

Kind of a steep price for an Enfield, but when you think about the backstory and condition on these, it may be an interesting addition to the safe.

The Worst Night in U.S. Navy history at 80

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USS Quincy (CA-39) photographed from a Japanese cruiser during the Battle of Savo Island, off Guadalcanal, 9 August 1942. Quincy, seen here burning and illuminated by Japanese searchlights, was sunk in this action (NH 50346).

Known today as the Battle of Savo Island British RADM Victor Crutchley’s Task group 62.6 cruiser and destroyer covering force, subordinated under U.S. ADM Richmond K. Turner for the amphibious landings at Guadalcanal, seemed mighty on paper: three Australian and five American cruisers, 15 destroyers, and some minesweepers.

The thing is, most were huddled around the beach and those that weren’t were separated into a number of smaller groups including:

  • Two tin cans on radar picket (USS Blue and USS Ralph Talbot)
  • A Southern cruiser group with the heavy cruisers HMAS Canberra and USS Chicago along with the destroyers USS Bagley and USS Patterson; and…
  • A Northern cruiser group with the heavy cruisers USS Vincennes, USS Quincy, and USS Astoria along with the destroyers USS Helm and USS Wilson.

Running a barricade to defend the landing beaches and ‘phibs, this immediate force of five Allied heavy cruisers and six destroyers– equipped with radar!– seemed a good match for Japanese VADM Gunichi Mikawa’s incoming striking group from Rabaul and Kavieng of five heavy cruisers (Chokai, Aoba, Furutaka, Kako, and Kinugasa) two light cruisers (Tenryu and Yubari) and the destroyer Yunagi.

Seemed.

However, ineffectively deployed into three separate and spread-out forces against Mikawa’s unified squadron, the Australian-American task group was sleepwalking with fatigued crews in the dark without properly using their radar (which was so new that tactics were still being developed for its use) and largely ignoring aerial spotting reports that should have warned the force while the Japanese, skilled in night fighting and armed with formidable Long Lance torpedos, took the Allies out with almost spooky ease, pounded to the seabed while fixed under the gaze of enemy searchlights.

Battle of Savo Island, 9 August 1942. cruisers USS Astoria (CA-34), USS Vincennes (CA-44), USS Quincy (CA 39) shown torpedo attack and shellfire from the Japanese cruisers. by John Hamilton NHHC

Japanese cruiser Yūbari shines searchlights toward the northern force of Allied warships during the battle of Savo island

Heavy cruiser Furutaka during the Battle of Savo Island.

“Night Battle of Savo Island by an unknown Japanese artist.”

In the short pre-dawn hour between 01:31 of 9 August 1942, when Mikawa ordered “Every ship attack” and 02:20 when he ordered them to retire, Vincennes, Quincy, Astoria, and Canberra were all mortally wounded while Chicago and two destroyers were very seriously damaged. Only two Japanese cruisers were damaged but could still make it back to base.

It was a mauling, an execution by large caliber shells at point blank range.

Canberra was hit at least 24 times. Astoria took 65 hits. Vincennes was struck an estimated 74 times. They were the first ships to be sunk in what today is named “Ironbottom Sound.”

HMAS Canberra’s last moments off Savo Island, 9th August 1942

Hits sustained by Astoria at the Battle of Savo Island off Guadalcanal on August 9, 1942

The Allies suffered at least 1,077 killed and missing while the Japanese a mere 58. 

Some 500 no doubt traumatized survivors of the lost American cruisers would be held under Marine guard at Treasure Island for weeks with orders not to talk about the defeat– something that only hit the papers back home nearly three months later. After all, nothing stays secret forever. 

James D. Hornfischer’s Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal, covers this sad tale in great detail. See chapter “The Martyring of Task Group 62.6” in particular.

An interesting conversation on the battle from the Australian point of view– Canberra was the RAN’s largest warship loss in any conflict– the Naval Studies Group at the University of Canberra held a panel of Dr. Greg Gilbert, Vice Admiral Peter Jones, and Dr. Kathryn Spurling to discuss the engagement a few years ago.

RIMPAC Review (and Coasties, too)

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The 28th biennial RIMPAC, the world’s largest maritime warfare exercise, wrapped up last Friday. In all, some 26 nations sent 38 ships, four submarines, more than 170 aircraft, more than 30 unmanned systems, and 25,000 personnel to take part in the six-week exercise that stretched across the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California.

We’ve detailed some of the interesting ships already, but be sure to check out this great PHOTOEX of the combined fleet steaming in perfect formation in bright daylight.

Batteries released

There were two SINKEXs, the first of which was the recently-retired OHP-class frigate ex-USS Rodney M. Davis (FFG 60) sent to the bottom in waters more than 15,000 feet deep and over 50 nautical miles North of Kauai. From the sea, U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Chaffee (DDG 90) shot her Mark 45 5-inch gun. Units from Australia, Canada, Malaysia, and the U.S. participated in the sinking exercise “to gain proficiency in tactics, targeting, and live firing against a surface target at sea.”

The second of which was the old gator ex-USS Denver (LPD 9), sent down almost on top of Davis. From the land, the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force and U.S. Army shot Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles and practice rockets. From the air, U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornets assigned to Fighter Attack Squadron 41 shot a long-range anti-ship missile. U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopters shot air-to-ground Hellfire missiles, rockets, and 30mm guns. U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18C/D Hornets assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232, Marine Air-Ground Task Force 7, fired an air-launched cruise missile, air-to-surface anti-radiation missiles, an air-to-ground anti-radiation missile, and joint direct attack munitions.

Coasties for the layup

Of note, the Coast Guard, stretching its legs via the service’s new and long-ranging frigate-sized (4,600t, 418-feet oal) Ingalls-built Legend-class national security cutters, contributing to the largest Coast Guard participation in the history of RIMPAC. This included the NSC cutter Midgett (WMSL-757) and the new 154-foot Fast Response Cutter William Hart (WPC 1134), the Pacific Dive Locker (who took part in port clearance operations with members of the ROK Navy), and Maritime Safety and Security Team Honolulu (who did survey work in the port in support of clearing).

Importantly, although her largest currently embarked weapon is a 57mm Bofors, Midgett has long-range sensors (a 3D TRS-16 AN/SPS-75 air search radar with an instrumented range of up to 250 km plus a AN/SPS-79 surface search set) and logged “at least nine constructive kills” during RIMPAC’s war at sea phase of RIMPAC, feeding targeting information to other assets via Link 16, an underrated force multiplier.

Midgett also embarked Navy MH-60Rs off and on during the exercise, something you can be sure of seeing during a real live shooting war. This is reportedly the first time the platform has operated from a cutter during RIMPAC

The Marines at Schofield Barracks have used FRCs in the past to set up commo nodes afloat, a task that it is super easy to imagine these shallow draft littoral vessels performing in time of crisis around scattered West Pac atolls. This worked with a mesh between the USCG’s Rescue 21 C4ISR system and an embarked Marine SATCOM team.
 
Marines and the @U.S. Coast Guard establish communications aboard USCGC William Hart (WPC 1134) during Large Scale Exercise 2021, at U.S. Coast Guard Base Honolulu. LSE 2021 is a live, virtual, and constructive exercise employing integrated command and control, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and sensors across the joint force to expand battlefield awareness, share targeting data, and conduct long-range precision strikes in support of naval operations in a contested and distributed maritime environment. 

Dick Special, Hi-Power edition

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While Mr. Browning’s Colt 1911 design has been abbreviated over the years to Commander and Officer-sized models among others, his Hi-Power never got the same widespread treatment from FN. Sure, there were custom gunsmiths such as Austin Behlert’s shop and Bill Laughridge’s Cylinder & Slide who made so-called “Mini-Brownings,” and Argentina’s state-owned FM plant made so-called “Detective” models that were imported by folks like Armscorp, Century and Sarco, but even this limited supply petered out more than a decade ago.

I remember the FM’s very well, having owned a full-sized model for a while in the early 2000s.

FM was an FN-licenced Hi-Power maker from the 1960s-1980s, so they knew what they were doing and the guns generally mimicked the Belgian C/T-series guns but with a less refined finish. I actively carried this gun for a while. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Both the standard and “Detective” FMs were readily available once upon a time, as noted by this circa 1992 SOG ad in The Shotgun News. Don’t call SOG to get these prices anymore, they stopped paying their phone bill a couple years back. For reference, $239 in 1992 is about $505 in today’s dollars.

Fast forward to today and, cumulating a push by BHP fans to EAA– I know I’ve been telling Chase (and anyone who read our MCP35 reviews)– that the imported needed a Detective/Mini-Browning in the catalog, they just announced the new Girsan MCP35 PI as in, well, you get it.

The EAA Girsan MCP35 PI is a factory-shortened Hi-Power clone that still accepts standard magazines and most parts, save for slide and barrel components. (Photo: EAA)

More in my column at Guns.com.

Everything old is new again: Pocket Pistol edition

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I found this very interesting article by Frank Jardim over at Guns Magazine in their archives recently. It’s from 2019 so it isn’t out of date, but the meat of it is that he takes a circa 1908 pocket pistol– a Belgian Pieper Bayard– and stacks it against a KelTec P3AT.

The differences, in the end, are not that profound although the elderly gun is surprisingly still spry, although with misgivings.

Says Jardim:

Though separated by a century-wide technological chasm, the 1908 Bayard and Kel-Tec P-3AT are cut from the same cloth. Their .380 ACP caliber puts them on the top rung of pocket-pistol power and their extremely small size makes them easy to carry and conceal. If you don’t imagine yourself in a quick-draw confrontation where trying to disengage the Bayard’s awkwardly placed safety will cost you your life, then the Bayard is the better pistol for self defense in terms of accuracy and speed.

More here. 

Naval and Marine Aviation in a nutshell, from the Med to the Americas

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This great shot from Neptune Shield 22 shows a U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet (BuNo 169735), attached to the “Fighting Checkmates” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 211– part of Carrier Air Wing One, assigned to USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) — flying alongside an Italian Marina Militare F-35B Lightning II (MM 7454) and an AV-8B II+ Harrier (MM 7200) somewhere over the Adriatic on 30 May of this year. It is a great way to see both the past and future of the USN/USMC’s front-line aviation and that of the Italian Navy.

(U.S. Navy courtesy photo. 220530-n-no874-1068)

The Italian Navy only has 14 Alenia Aeronautica-assembled Harriers left– of 18 ordered in 1990– in their Gruppo Aerei Imbarcati carrier air wing, with the type seeing combat over Libya a few years back. They are being replaced by 15 F-35Bs, with the intention to operate them from the country’s flagship carrier, the 27,000-ton Cavour.

Vigilance, Since 1790

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Happy 232nd birthday, USCG!

Official caption: “Somewhere on the Pacific, an alert Coast Guardsman scans the horizon as he clutches his machine gun, looking for trouble.” Released 29 September 1942.

USCG Photo via the National Archives 26-G-09-29-42(6)

Incidentally, the Coasties were, as far as I can tell, the longest user of the Thompson submachine gun. The service picked up some M1921 Colts during Prohibition to fight bootleggers and rumrunners and continued to have WWII-era M1 Thompsons in the small arms lockers of cutters well into the 1970s, with some tapping in on Market Time during Vietnam.

Battle of the (Hi-Power) Clones

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I’ve been kicking around a pair of 21st-century Hi-Power clones with two different origin stories, and we have a few things to talk about.

John Browning’s GP design, as delivered to the firearms world in 1935 via Fabrique Nationale’s resident gun genius Dieudonne Saive, was given its gold watch by FN in early 2018, and BHP fans the world over wept. While Turkish gunmaker Tisas briefly sent their Regent BR9 clone over here, other one-time Hi-Power clones such as Israeli-made Kareens and imports of the same branded by Charles Daly, Dan Wesson, and Magnum Research were history.

Then came 2021.

In September of that year, EAA announced they were on the cusp of bringing in the Girsan-made MCP35 from Turkey while Springfield Armory in October started hinting around at the gun they would soon introduce as the SA-35. Both were different takes on the classic Hi-Power of old, offering new ways to satisfy that eager fan base that was left with separation anxiety after FN exited the BHP biz.

Since then, I’ve given each of these newcomers a series of tests and evaluations, including putting over 1,000 rounds through each model. With that, let’s see how they stack up against each other – and the ghosts of Hi-Powers past with which they must contend.

At the end of the day, it boils down to why you want a Hi-Power in the first place. Both guns are better clones than I have seen in some past efforts under other banners (see the FEG, PJK, and the Bulgarian Arcus 94). Heck, even when stacked against late-model FN MK IIIs assembled in Portugal in the 2000s, there is little to grouse about. This is firmly an apples-to-apples comparison.

More on said apples in my column at Guns.com.

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022: Albacore Pancakes

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022: Albacore Pancakes

Note: on the road again this week enjoying some quiet time at a suppressed AR course at Gunsite, so our Warship Wednesday is a little abbreviated. Will be back to full-length WWs next week!

(All photos: Chris Eger)

Above we see the one-of-a-kind research submarine USS Albacore (AGSS-569) as I found her three weeks ago in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, landlocked as she has been in a custom-made display cradle along Market Street since 1985. While not an armed warship, Albacore was the bridge between all of the WWII-era fleet boats turned GUPPY just after the war as a result of lessons learned from advanced German U-boats, and today’s nuclear hunter-killers and boomers.

The third U.S. Navy ship to carry the name, as noted by DANFS:

The effectiveness of submarines in World War II convinced the Navy that undersea warfare would play an even more important role in comping conflicts and dictated the development of superior submarines. The effectiveness of submarines in World War II convinced the Navy that undersea warfare would play an even more important role in coming conflicts and dictated the development of superior submarines. The advent of nuclear power nourished the hope that such warships could be produced. The effort to achieve this goal involved the development of a nuclear propulsion system and the design of a streamlined submarine hull capable of optimum submerged performance.

Late in World War II a committee studied postwar uses of atomic energy and recommended the development of nuclear propulsion for ships.

Since nuclear power plants would operate without the oxygen supply needed by conventional machinery, and since techniques were available for converting carbon dioxide back to oxygen, the Navy’s submarine designers turned their attention to vessels that could operate for long periods without breaking the surface. Veteran submariners visualized a new type of submarine in which surface performance characteristics would be completely subordinated to high submerged speed and agility. In 1949 a special committee began a series of hydrodynamic studies which led to a program within the Bureau of Ships to determine what hull form would be best for submerged operation. The David Taylor Model Basin tested a series of proposed designs. The best two, one with a single propeller and the other with dual screws, were then tested in a wind tunnel at Langley Air Force Base, Va. The single-screw version was adopted, and the construction of an experimental submarine to this design was authorized on 25 November 1950.

Commissioned 6 December 1953 after three years of construction at Portsmouth NSY, her motto was Praenuntius Futuri (“Forerunner of the Future”) and she endured in the fleet until 1972 when she retired.

She is very well preserved, including her innovative control room.

I also found her extremely cramped, even more so than the 311-foot fleet boats that I have toured.

Her great handicap across her career was her GE GM EMD 16-338 “pancake” diesel engines, which stood some 13.5-feet tall and were about as wide as a refrigerator.

Cranky, they were also used on the six postwar Tang-class (SS-563) submarines until they were replaced with more reliable ten-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse opposed-piston 38D 8-1/8 diesels, leaving Albacore to languish with her cakes until she had exhausted all her spares.

Still, Albacore was a pioneer when it came to American sub tech, and the three boats of the follow-on Barbel-class– the last diesel-electric propelled attack submarines built by the U.S. Navy– were only a few feet longer than the test sub. Powered by Fairbanks-Morse diesels, the Barbels remained in fleet service as late as 1990.

Not to mention her features used on SSNs and SSBNs.

If you are in Portsmouth, please swing by the Albacore and pay her a visit.

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/membership.htm

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.

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Still Clocking in: Springfield 1903

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You know I gotta signal boost M1903s still on the front lines. As the last one was assembled in 1945, it always gives me a grin when I see one still at work, even if it is as a “bucket gun.”

Bonus as the receiver is the 110-foot Island-class patrol boat USCGC Tybee (WPB-1330) which, commissioned in 1989, only has a couple of seasons left in her before she shuffles off to some Third World partner for a second career under a different flag.

22 July 2022. Petty Officer 3rd Class Vincent Isaiah Pangelinan, a Gunner’s Mate aboard Coast Guard Cutter Seneca, fires the messenger line to pass the towing line to CGC Tybee during a towing evolution off the coast of Massachusetts. A messenger line is used to assist in heaving the mooring to the shore or to another ship. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Kyle Miller) VRIN 220722-G-ZZ999-001

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