This original color photo shows the crew of an M-24 Chaffee light tank along the Naktong River front in largely DPRK-occupied South Korea. Note the sign to Daegu.
NARA FILE#: 111-C-6061
On the ground is PFC Rudolph Dotts, Egg Harbor City, N.J. gunner (center), armed with an M3 Grease Gun. On the hull with an M1 Carbine is PVT Maynard Linaweaver, Lundsburg, Kansas, cannoneer of the tank’s M6 75mm gun. On top, ready on the M2 .50-cal heavy machine gun, is PFC Hugh Goodwin, Decatur, Miss., tank commander.
All are members of the 24th Reconnaissance Company, 24th “Victory” Infantry Division. The date is likely August to September 1950, as the unit was inside the battered Pusan (Busan) Perimeter, holding the western portion of the line.
Of note, the DPRK forces opposing the 24th had hundreds of Soviet-supplied T-34/85 tanks, which had both stronger armor than the M-24 and a superior main gun.
In honor of today’s anniversary of the founding of Alexander Hamilton’s Revenue-Marine in 1790, a force that evolved over time to the USCG, I penned a 2,000~ word piece on the service’s small arms over time.
Over the course of the past 150 years or so, Denmark and the U.S. have traded each other’s rifle designs back and forth. Today, the Danish military uses the Canadian-made C7/C8 system, which is fundamentally an M4/M4A1, while the elite Slædepatruljen dog sled patrol still carries Great War-era M1917 “American Enfields” in .30-06 as they walk their icy beat in Greenland.
Boom
Going back to the 1950s through the 1960s, the Danish military used the M1 Garand, or Garandgevær M/50 in local parlance, keeping them in reserve through the end of the Cold War.
Prior to that, the Danes used a standard Scandanavian bolt-action rifle, the Krag-Jorgensen, a design that was a staple in America on the front lines of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, then kept around as a second-line and training rifle as late as WWII.
This U.S. Volunteer, photographed in Tampa in 1898, preparing to ship out for points south in the War with Spain, is carrying the distinctive Krag
Danish troops with their side-loading Krags, a rifle they carried for nearly 60 years
All this sharing can be traced back to 1867, when the Royal Danish Army, looking to re-equip after their war with upstart Germany three years prior, bought one of the most modern breechloaders in the world– the Remington Rolling Block.
Notably, Denmark adopted the rifle before the U.S. Army (who adopted it as the Model 1870).
August 3rd is National Watermelon Day, which recognizes the refreshing summertime treat enjoyed at picnics and fairs. With that, enjoy this image of the ersatz Great War-era patrol boat USS Uncas (SP-689) showing bluejackets munching said melon amidships, circa summer 1917.
Collection of Robert S. Waters. Donated by Mrs. Alice W. Thomas, 1972. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 98352
The gun appears to be a rather elderly circa 1880s 3-pounder, which is what you would expect for a 60-foot wooden-hulled powerboat taken up from civilian service.
U.S. Armament Corp— who has been making superb licensed “reissue” Colt 1903 Hammerless Pocket Pistol (Model M) .32ACPs in the guise of the classic RIA General Officer‘s variant– just posted these images of a cutaway specimen.
It is nice to see makers still cranking out these classic guns “for the love of the game” so to speak.
“Jungle Marines,” a 15~ minute Crown Film Unit production, “Shows the dangers faced by long-range Royal Marines patrols in the jungles of the Far East.”
It portrays an 8-man RM patrol, all good chums, roaming around what looks like Burma during the latter part of WWII. Armed with No. 4 Lee Enfields, an M1928 Tommy gun, a BREN gun, and machetes, they poke around in good fashion in the green hell and across rice paddies, burning off leeches with cigarettes and winning hearts and minds with the locals while trying to keep one step ahead of the Japanese and jungle rot.
Of particular interest is how light they pack, using just a small musette bag for what seems to be a week-long patrol.
At the 7:40 mark, they make a great little raft out of groundsheets and bamboo to help them cross a river.
Curtiss A-1, The first Navy seaplane at the Curtiss airfield, Hammondsport, NY, June 1911, with Curtiss employees and early Naval aviators. NARA #: 80-G-418895
The 1920s brought the PN flying boats while the 1930s saw the early P2Y-1 Clippers, followed by the PBY Catalina and PBY2 Coronado– with both of the latter going on to be World War II workhorses.
Then came the twilight of the U.S. Navy flying boat era with lumbering Martin PBM Mariner and P5M Marlin, which replaced the Catalina and Coronado, and the aborted Martin P6M SeaMaster, the latter a seriously capable jet-powered sea-based strategic bomber capable of dropping nuclear ordnance. With no desire to continue in the art of seaplanes and their associated tenders, the final flying boat operations of the U.S. Navy were the 1965 Market Time patrols of VP-40 in Vietnam.
USS Guavina (AGSS-362), refueling a P5M-1 Marlin flying boat off Norfolk, Virginia (USA), in 1955. Prior to World War II several submarines were fitted to refuel seaplanes.
And just like that, the Navy was out of the seaplane biz.
Since then, the military use of seaplanes, once surplus USAF Hu-16 Albatrosses aged out, have been left to countries like Canada, Russia, and Japan.
However, the stirring dragon, China, is now getting very serious about a very serious flying boat, the AVIC AG600 Kunlong. The size of a 737, the AG600 had its first flight in 2017, and, while not in production yet, already has orders from the “little blue men” adjacent China Coast Guard.
While pitched as ideal for civilian uses such as firefighting, you would have to be smooth brained to gloss over the potential of a giant seaplane with a 2,800nm range to China, a country that is increasingly looking to build its Spratly Island territory across the contested South China Sea.
The AG600, with a maximum takeoff weight of 53.5 tons, can transport personnel and equipment to places like Mischief Reef in the South China Sea. The ability to take off and land from water will allow the PLA to keep Mischief Reef supplied even if the islet’s airfield is shut down by military action. Other military missions for the AG600 would include rescuing downed pilots at sea, convoy escort, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine warfare.
It increasingly seems like we are in 1940 rather than in 2020.
Originally billed as a “vest pocket .45” built for maximum concealment in mind, the 4+1 Semmerling LM-4 pistol was only 5.2-inches long, 3.7-inches high, and a svelte 1-inch wide. For reference, this puts it in the same neighborhood as common .32ACP and .25ACP pocket pistols, but in a much larger caliber. Today it still holds the title as perhaps the smallest .45ACP that isn’t a derringer and, for comparison, it is about the same size as a Ruger LCP.
It is also the only manually-worked slide action .45ACP carry gun I can think of…
And I have been fooling around with serial number #31 lately
North American B-25 Mitchell #43-3981 “Lucky Legs” of the 47th Bombardment Squadron, 41st Bombardment Group, 7th Air Force, prepares to take off from Ryuku Retto, Okinawa for a mission against Sasebo Harbor on Kyushu in the Japanese Home Islands, 28 July 1945. Lucky is carrying a Mark 13/44 GT-1 (glide torpedo), a weapon the particular plane used for the first time, in this mission.
[Source: USAF Photo via Mark Allen Collection]
While primarily a Navy-dropped weapon, the Mark 13 was used by the Army in a few instances, such as the 41st BG’s B-25s, and by B-26 Marauder units at Midway and in the Aleutian Islands, the Southwest Pacific, North Africa, and the Mediterranean, with limited success.
Mark 13 Torpedo on display in the World War II Gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Notably, the fish does not have her “pickle barrel” wooden drop nose attached. (U.S. Air Force photo)
With that being said, the Mark 13 was probably the most common air-dropped anti-ship torpedo in history, with more than 17,000 made, and had the distinction of being the U.S. Navy’s final such weapon used in combat, by Skyraiders from USS Princeton against the Hwachon Dam in Korea. Notably, late-war PT-boats also used the weapon as it was lighter than their older Mark 8s. Some 13-feet long and 22.4-inches in diameter (wider than a tube-launched torp) the Mark 13 weighed about 2,200-pounds, including 600 of Torpex high explosives. Once dropped, it could make 33.5 knots to 6,300 yards.
From “U.S. Naval Weapons” by Norman Friedman via Navweaps:
“A review of war experience showed a total of 1,287 attacks [this count only includes those launched by carrier-borne aircraft, other US Navy aircraft launched another 150 torpedoes – TD], of which 40 percent (514) resulted in hits, including 50 percent hits on battleships and carriers (322 attacks, including Midway), 31 percent on destroyers (179 attacks), and 41 percent (out of 445 attacks) on merchant ships.”
More info on the Mark 13, below:
For the record, the 47th BS inactivated 27 January 1946 at Manila and has remained that way while the parent 41st BG endured into the Cold War as an F-4 unit, the 41st TG, until it was inactivated in 1970 at Incirlik. Ironically, the F-4, a tactical fighter, could carry more ordinance than the B-25 of WWII fame.
Raytheon announced last week that it has delivered the first AN/SPY-6(V)1 radar array to Huntington Ingalls for installation on the Navy’s future guided-missile destroyer USS Jack H. Lucas (DDG-125), the first of the Flight III Arleigh Burkes. [As a side, I met Jack in Hattiesburg several years ago, and he was an absolute gentleman.]
“SPY-6 will change how the Navy conducts surface fleet operations,” said Capt. Jason Hall, program manager for Above-Water Sensors for the US Navy’s Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems in a press release.
The first 14-foot-by-14-foot modular array was transported from Raytheon’s Radar Development Facility in Andover, Mass., to the Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., company officials said. In November 2019, Raytheon received a $97.3 million contract modification for integration and maintenance of the AN/SPY-6(V) air and missile defense radar system on Navy vessels.
