SIG Sauer debuted the original 10+1 shot 9mm P365 in January 2018, and it soon became one of the best-selling pistols on the market, single-handedly launching the ever-growing “Micro 9” trend of imitators, and soon surpassed over a million guns sold.
Then came expansions in the series such as the P365XL with a slightly larger grip module, flat-faced trigger, and 12-round flush-fit mag while only growing the height a half an inch; and the P365XL Spectre Comp, which introduced an innovative integrated compensator to the slide that helps tame recoil without porting the barrel or extending past the frame.
Well, the new SIG P365 XMACRO takes all those incremental improvements and blends them in a new grip module with some more extras, including a 40 percent increase in capacity and an M1913 accessory rail, while still standing just over 5 inches tall. Plus, it is about half the price of the Spectre Comp.
I’ve been kicking one around for the past month, and I’m really feeling it.
Some 80 years ago this month, a scratch force of Marines waded ashore on a little-known island in the Pacific, with their beloved ’03s in hand, determined to stop the Rising Sun.
Some eight months after Pearl Harbor was attacked, and long after Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines fell to the Japanese onslaught during World War II, the Allies in the Pacific moved to seize the initiative and launched the first Allied land offensive in the Theater as well as the first American amphibious assaults of the war. Between Aug. 7 and Aug. 9, 1942, some 11,000 men of the newly-formed 1st Marine Division landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Japanese-occupied Solomon Islands, a chain of islands far closer to Australia than to Tokyo. There, the Marines aimed to seize an airfield the Japanese were carving out of the jungle and use it for their own fighters and bombers.
However, while the Army in 1937 had opted to switch to the M1 Garand from the M1903 Springfield– a bolt-action .30-06 adopted during the administration of Teddy Roosevelt– the Marines were slower to move towards the semi-auto battle rifle. It was only in Feb. 1941, just ten months before Pearl Harbor, that Marine Gen. Alexander Vandegrift wrote that he considered the Garand reliable enough to arm his Marines. With that, it wasn’t until after America was in the war that the Corps officially adopted the M1 Garand and later the M1 Carbine.
“Captured Japanese Battle Flag, Guadalcanal Airfield, circa 1942.” (Photo: Thayer Soule Collection/Marine Corps History Division)
Guadalcanal Campaign U.S. Marines rest in the field on Guadalcanal, circa August-December 1942. Most are armed with M1903 bolt-action rifles and carry M1905 bayonets along with USMC 1941 pattern packs. Two men high on the hill at the right have vests to carry patrol mortar shells and one in the center has a World War I-style hand grenade vest. The Marine seated at the far right has an M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. (Photo: U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.)
80 years ago: Four aviators of Fighter Squadron Six (VF-6) — two of which are enlisted “silver eagle” NAP pilots– pose beside a Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat (Bureau # 5126) on board the Yorktown-class carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6), 10 August 1942. The quartet were credited with shooting down eight Japanese aircraft during the Guadalcanal-Tulagi operation a few days earlier.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-11092
The men are (from left to right): NAP Machinist Donald E. Runyon, credited with four planes at the time; NAP Aviation Pilot First Class Howard S. Packard (one plane); Ensign Joseph Donald “Joe” Shoemaker (one plane); and Ensign Wildon M. Rouse (two planes). Note the shoulder holster rigs for GI .45 pistols worn by the three in khaki while Packard, in dungarees, is armed with a utility/fighting knife on his belt.
Runyon was one of the leading Wildcat Aces, credited with shooting down 8 Japanese aircraft while flying F4Fs.
NAP Machinist Donald E. Runyon, USN of Fighting Squadron Six (VF-6) On board USS Enterprise (CV-6). He is standing by the tail of his F4F-4 (Bureau # 5193, VF-6’s # 13), which is decorated with a tombstone containing 41 meatballs, each representing a Japanese plane claimed by the squadron. During his second combat tour in the Pacific in 1943 as a commissioned officer, he scored three more victories while flying F6F Hellcats with VF-18 off of USS Bunker Hill. 80-G-11103
Ensign Wildon M. Rouse, USNR of Fighting Squadron Six (VF-6) In the cockpit of an F4F-4 Wildcat fighter, on board USS Enterprise (CV-6), 10 August 1942. Ensign Rouse was credited with shooting down two Japanese aircraft during the Guadalcanal-Tulagi operation a few days earlier. These victories are represented by two flags painted below the cockpit. Rouse would survive the war but never make it home, dying in a crash in the Philippines on 4 Dec 1945. LT(JG) Rouse is buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. Catalog #: 80-G-11089
Soon after the above pictures were taken, on 24 August, Enterprise would suffer bomb hits off during the Guadalcanal campaign that would force her back to Pearl Harbor where the famed Enterprise Air Group, with which the carrier had fought her first five WWII deployments, was disestablished on 1 September 1942.
When she emerged again in October, she would be carrying the newly formed Air Group 10, whose fighter squadron was the Grim Reapers of LCDR William R. “Killer” Kane’s VF-10, the first time Enterprise would sail without the cover of “Fighting Six,” although NAP aviator Howard “Pack” Packard, pictured in the first image wearing dungs, would be with them.
As for Ensign Shoemaker, standing next to Packard in the top image, he would be killed in action on 29 September 1942, aged 22.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
I found this very interesting article by Frank Jardim over at Guns Magazinein 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.
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)
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.
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.
