Kamas, Utah-based Dead Air has come in from the cold to bring a new user-configurable suppressor to the market that is thin enough to accommodate factory handgun sights. I give you, the Odessa 9:
That HK P7M13, though…
The 9mm suppressor uses a 1.1-inch tube to allow utilization of regular sights, rather than force the user to go without or install high-profile aftermarket sights or optics, and can be adjusted baffle-by-baffle from pill bottle size to a full-length can.
Will be in Dallas to cover the 147th NRAAM event for Guns.com this week. With some 800 exhibitors from big name companies to collector groups and 80,000 in attendance, there is sure to be something of interest. If there is anything you are curious about or want me to check out, hit me at egerwriter@gmail.com and I’ll get back with you.
Springer is now jumping into the pool largely owned by companies like Daniel Defense and Sig by debuting a pair of factory SBRs.
Announced last week were their Saint SBR and Saint Edge SBR, with the former using a forged lower receiver, and the latter a lightened billet lower. Each has a free-float M-Lok compatible handguard and 7075 T6 aluminum flat top upper with a forward assist and M4 feed ramps as well as Bravo Company Gunfighter buttstocks and pistol grips. Overall length, due to the adjustable stock, runs between 27.5 and 30.75-inches while weight goes just over 5.5-pounds.
Prices, even with stamps included, run less than $1500, and I will definitely check them out in Dallas this week.
In Virginia, The Mariner’s Museum and Park has partnered with Newport News Shipbuilding and The Nature Conservancy to plant a grove of new growth long leaf pines, each dedicated to a Newport News-built ship, with the first saplings including a shout out o the Big E. Kinda neat in a full circle kind of way
Here we see a white-painted Leopard 1DK main battle tank of the Royal Danish Army’s Jydske Dragonregiment (Jutland Dragoon Regiment) while deployed to the UN-led international force UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) in the former Yugoslavia in 1994.
Danish Leopards 1A3s were originally purchased in 1976, 120 in all which were renamed Leopard 1DK, delivered until 1978. 110 more were acquired in 1993 and all were gradually upgraded to the 1A5 standard.
Designed in the 1950s as the Standard-Panzer to replace the West German Bundeswehr’s U.S.-built M47 and M48 Patton tanks, the Leopard was built on all of the German lessons learned from WWII and the follow-on Allied after-action reports from Korea. In all, some 4,744 Leopard I MBTs were produced between 1965 and 1984 when they were replaced on Porsche’s line by the much-improved Leopard II. Besides West Germany, the Leo was sold throughout NATO including Denmark, as shown above, Canada, Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Turkey. Outside of the military alliance, Australia, Brazil, and Chile bought Leopard Is– with the latter going on to sell theirs to Ecuador while Lebanon picked up former Belgian panzers.
With all of those thousands of Leos in circulation, it may come as a surprise that the first combat action by the tank was by the Danes.
Yes, in April 1994, DANSQN (Danish Tank Squadron), a 10-tank unit of the Jydske Rgt, commanded by Major Carsten Rasmussen, was dispatched to form the armored overwatch fist of the 2nd Nordic battalion (NORDBAT2) composed of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish forces operating under the UN mandate. Commanded by Swedish Col. Ulf Henricsson (later dubbed the “Sheriff of Vareš” for his “no shit” attitude in Bosnia), the Nordic unit was composed of the Danish armored squadron, a Norwegian field hospital (NORMEDCOY), and the three-company strong first Swedish mechanized infantry battalion (BA01).
While in Bosnia, in an action remembered as Operation Bøllebank (“Hooligan bashing”) 7 tanks of the Danish squadron rushed to the aid of a Swedish observation post on 29 April that was under attack outside of Tuzla and was in turn ambushed on the way by elements of the Bosnian-Serb Sekovici brigade of the VRS (Republic of Srpska Army) outside the village of Kalesija.
The VRS had Sagger anti-tank missiles (which had proved deadly to other UN armored forces), 122mm guns and T-55 tanks but the Danes had better, FLIR-enabled night vision (the engagement started at 2315hrs) and in the end, carried the day.
Serb casualty reports range from 9 to 150. The Danes lost none of their 28 tankers involved and all of the Viking tanks were still more or less operational, though one had its paint scratched a bit.
The Leos had fired 72 105mm rounds in the 2-hour fight, (44 HE, 9 WP and 19 armor piercing.)
Eskadronchef Rasmussen, who was on scene for the fight in his command tank, said later of the counter-ambush against a nominally superior force, “The cat set a trap for the mice, but the mice caught the cat.”
Here is a pretty good run-down of the battle (in Danish)
Besides the Leo’s first use in combat, it was the first Danish overt military action since World War II and the first Dane tank-on-tank fight ever (in 1940, the Danish army only had a half-dozen Swedish-built Landsverk 180 and Landsverk PV M 39 Lynx armoured cars, armed with 20mm Madsen cannon, and they did not have a chance to engage German tanks in the brief blitzkrieg of the tiny country).
While the event has since been celebrated in Denmark, Rasmussen has downplayed the notoriety of the engagement. The tankers were not even decorated for the engagement.
As for DANSQN, they caught a whiff of gunpowder again on 26 October 1994 when three Danish tanks fired 21 rounds against Bosnian Serbs’ near Gradacac north of Tuzla in order to retake a UN- observation post. Dubbed Operation Armada, the Nordic Leos bagged at least one more T-55 in that engagement, suffering zero casualties.
As part of IFOR, they later helped in the disarmarment of local forces in Bosnia.
Leopard 1A5 of the Royal Danish Army Jutland Dragoon Regiment (Jydske Dragonregiment) crushes a 20mm autocannon abandoned by Bosnia Serbs
Here we see U.S. Naval Museum Catalog #1849.001.0014.
It is the British Royal Standard taken from the Parliament House at York, now Toronto, the British capital of Upper Canada by 1,800 regulars under noted explorer, U.S. Brig. Gen. Zebulon Montgomery Pike, in conjunction with a squadron of small shallow-draft vessels under U.S. Navy Lt. Isaac Chauncey, on this day (27 April) in 1813 in a raid known as the Battle of York.
According to the USNA, it is the only Royal Standard captured by U.S. forces and has been on display at Mahan Hall for over 150 years. It is currently undergoing maintenance.
The British and Canadian naval attaches in Washington recently traveled to Mahan Hall to view the standard
It was last on public display in 1913 when the great Amelia Fowler and her team of seamstresses moved to restore the banners.
Amelia Fowler and her team working on the Royal Standard in Mahan Hall, 1913, note the “Dont Give Up the Ship” banner hanging on the right
As for Pike, he was killed the same day the Standard was taken, aged 34, by shrapnel and debris when the much smaller British garrison blew up their ammunition magazine as they withdrew.
Chauncey, on the other hand, lived to command the Mediterranean Squadron and New York Naval Shipyard. He passed at a ripe old age of 67 as a Commodore and President of the Board of Navy Commissioners. Three different 20th Century destroyers (DD-3, DD-296, and DD-667) were named in his honor. Pike, of course, has a mountain.
So this popped up on my newswire from CBP’s media people. While the story of the bust isn’t that interesting, the guns recovered are.
In the above image from Border Patrol, there appears to be a Bulgarian-made Arsenal SLR-106 pistol at the top with the side rail, a Hungarian AMD-65 style gun with a very un-Hungarian side-folding stock, what looks like an Arsenal SAM-7 rifle with the stock detached, some really beat AK that probably still runs like a champ, and a Century-imported Serbian-made Zastava M85 pistol with the mag well to accept AR mags.
Remember the big .44 Colt Model 1847 Walker I wrote about a few weeks back? The one that earned its moniker due to its first owner, Capt. Niels Hanson, who bought the gun in New York while in port and brought it back to Europe with him where it was passed down through his family and collectors in Denmark for over a century?
The Cap’n
Well-documented over the years, the revolver was billed by Rock Island Auction Company as the only known original cased Colt civilian Walker percussion revolver in circulation. When the gavel dropped on the rare hog leg, it hit the $1.84 million mark last week– a world record for a single firearm sold at auction.
Here we see the last of the Royal Navy’s Arrogant-class cruisers, HMS Vindictive (P.4C), going through just over an hour’s time at the center of hell along the Mole in the German-occupied Belgian port city of Zeebrugge on St. George’s Day, 100 years ago this week.
The four-pack of Arrogant-class 2nd class protected cruisers were approved under the 1895/96 Programme and designed for fleet use rather than in protecting trade from enemy auxiliary cruisers in wartime (at the time thought most likely to be Russian) and policing colonies. As such, they were a bit beamier than the nine preceding Eclipse-class cruisers (5,700 tons, 350x53ft, 18.5kts, 5x QF 6″ guns) while being faster. The subsequent Arrogants went 5,840-tons with a 320-foot overall length while having a 57-foot beam and a ram bow.
A group of 18 Belleville water-tube boilers (the first installed on a British cruiser of the size) and pair of 3-cyl VTE engines on twin screws enabled these ships to be considered “20-knot” ships (on forced draught) while a battery of four 6″/40cal QF Mk II singles and six 4.7-inch guns gave them the comparable muscle to the Eclipses. The first two vessels of the class, Arrogant and Furious, were built at Devonport, while the third, Gladiator, was laid down at Portsmouth.
Our hero, the fourth and last of the family, Vindictive, was laid down at Chatham Dock Yard in Kent on 27 Jan. 1896, carrying the name of a hard-luck Napoleonic War-era 74-gun third-rate ship of the line that was only broken up two decades before.
HMS Vindictive, from Navy and Army Illustrated, 1900, via Wiki
Commissioned on the 4th of July in 1900, she was a happy peacetime ship that served in the British Mediterranean Squadron for a decade before she was considered obsolete in the rapidly advancing days of post-Dreadnought naval technology.
In ordinary for two years from 1909-10, her armament was revamped, and she was modernized. Gone were the old MkII guns and 4.7s, replaced by a homogenous group of 10 new MkVII 6″/45cal breechloaders, among the snazziest British guns of the era.
Here is her diagram from the 1914 Janes.
In the above, note that she is the only one of her class left listed in the naval almanac. This is because Gladiator sank after a collision with the American liner (and Warship Wednesday alumni) SS Saint Paul in a heavy snowstorm off the Isle of Wight in 1908, Arrogant had become a depot ship in 1911 and Furious had likewise been hulked, leaving Vindictive as the sole member of the group still with the fleet by the time the Great War began– and even that was as a tender to the Home Squadrons.
On August 6:
0630: N.D.L. (Norddeutscher Lloyd) S.S. Schlesien boarded by Lieutenant Sayle R.N.R. and Fleet Paymaster G.A. Miller. Lat 46 02 N, Long 7 37 W. Reported carrying general cargo to Antwerp. Lieutenant Sayle and an armed guard of 13 men proceeded in the ship to Plymouth by order of Rear Admiral.
3.20 pm: Fired shot ahead of Austrian S.S. Alfa; Austrian steamer S.S. Alfa boarded by Lieutenant Pope R.N.R. and Fleet Paymaster Miller in Lat 45 24 N, Long 7 56 W. Reported carrying a cargo of grain. Ship ordered to report herself at Falmouth. Boarding Party returned.
8.30 pm: Atlantea S.N. Co. S.S. Polnay under Austrian Flag boarded by Lieutenant Pope and Fleet Paymaster G.A. Miller in Lat 44 57 W, Long 8 05 W. Reported carrying grain consigned to order at Rotterdam. Ship ordered to report herself at Falmouth. Boarding party returned.
Sept 8:
German collier Slawentzitz boarded by Commander Grayson, Lieutenant Sayle R.N.R. and Fleet Paymaster Miller. 5044 tons of coal consigned to Haiffa Syria. Lieutenant Sayle and prize crew of 13 men placed on board and ship sent to Gibraltar.
Following this, Vindictive was sent to warm Equatorial waters along the Abrolhos Rocks off Brazil and spent the next 18 months on the lookout for German surface raiders and submarines, boarding passing ships but largely having no reportable results.
Then, in June 1916, she was recalled to Britain for a change of pace that saw her deploy in October to Romanov (Murmansk) in the frozen wastes of the White Sea to protect the growing stockpile of Allied war material in that isolated Arctic backwater. She shuttled from there to Arkhangelsk and conducted drills with the locals and other visiting Allied ships until she was recalled to Plymouth once more in October 1917– just before Russia really went to crap in the Revolution.
Chilling back in England with the war at its fiercest, the old cruiser without a mission was to pull one heck of a job.
It was decided that she would be part of the big push to block the Belgian port at Zeebrugge, home to flotillas of German patrol boats and squadrons of U-boats. The task was three-fold, with (1) Vindictive and two converted Mersey ferries– Iris and Daffodil— coming alongside the mile-long Mole so they could discharge a battalion of sailors and Marines to go ashore and jack up the port while (2) a group of old cruisers–HMS Thetis, HMS Intrepid, and HMS Iphigenia— sank themselves as blockships in the Bruges Canal and (3) an old submarine blew the Mole itself.
Vindictive would be commanded during the raid by Capt. Alfred Francis Blakeney Carpenter, an RN veteran with service that dated back to the Boxer Rebellion.
The raid in a 2-minute nutshell:
To carry out her job as a landing ship (held to the Mole by a ship pushing bow on her starboard), the portside of Vindictive was fitted with a fly deck with 18 gangways handled by derricks, to allow rapid disembarkation of the landing force, made up of most of the 4th RMLI battalion and two companies of armed Jacks.
To provide more protection than her thin Harvey armor could on her exposed topside, splinter mats were installed liberally. Besides the mats, two Mk I 7.5-inch howitzers were mounted to go along with her four remaining 6-inch BL guns and as many Vickers Maxim guns as could be found. The Marine Storming Party, as it was termed, was equipped with 16 81mm Stokes trench mortars, one 11-inch howitzer (mounted aft), five 1-pounder (37mm) quick-firing Vickers Mark 1 pom-pom guns, and 16 Lewis guns which both added to Vindictive‘s armament and provided some mobile artillery to be taken ashore during the raid.
Going along with the Marines were 34 engineers, all volunteers of the Royal Naval Air Service Experimental Party, or Pyrotechnic Party, led by Lt. Graham S. Hewett, R.N.V.R., with Lt. A. L. Eastlake, R.E., second-in-command, armed with a variety of demolition charges, “fixed and portable flame-throwers, phosphorus grenades, etc.” Among these were a “telescopic” fixed flamethrower capable of sending a jet 90m– made by the J Morriss & Sons Ltd, an engineering company from Manchester that normally made fire hoses– as well as two very large five-man weapons fixed to a steel A-frame, these latter guns were called “Vincents” after Vindictive.
The group’s portable flame weapons consisted of the scuba-tank like Hay Flame Gun, created by Captain P. S. Hay of the Ministry of Munitions in December of 1917. It was the only portable British-made flamethrower used in WWI.
The operator slung the Hay Flame Gun from a shoulder strap so that it hung in front of his chest. He pressed a button on a dry-cell battery mounted on the lance, which ignited a pilot light under the nozzle. He then squeezed the oil-release valve at the base of the lance, which was identical to the brake handle on automobiles of the era.
The oil was pressurized with deoxygenated air pumped directly into the tank. When the operator ran or jumped, the propellant gas mixed with the oil and produced a foam, which greatly limited the range. For this reason, other flamethrowers had either separate internal propellant chambers or bottles attached externally to the oil tank.
The Hay Flame Gun was 35 inches tall by 5.5 inches in diameter. It carried 2.6 gallons of oil, which gave it a laden weight of 66 lbs. It had a range of about 66 feet and a duration of 15 seconds. A total of 36 where ordered by the Admiralty for use at Zeebrugge of which about 15 Hay Flame Guns were used in the raid in the raid In April 1918. The Flamethrowers were used to engulf the Mole parapet with liquid fire to clear any opposition before the storming parties went ashore.
HMS Vindictive steaming toward Zeebrugge, April 22, 1918. This image shows the full extent of the modifications for storming the mole, including the multiple brows and ramps, the splinter mat-armored foretop, the highest point of the ship (with machine guns and quick-firing cannons). Forward of that is the conning tower and forward of that was a mount for a large flamethrower (another is aft). These were put out of action by German shellfire before they could be used. Smoke from only the after stack shows that the forward boilers have been secured
Vindictive hit the Mole on schedule and was the center of the German fury during the raid. It was her illumination rockets that the Marines and sailors fought by, her smoke screen, flame and fire they were covered by, and her collision sirens that they retired to at the end of the operation.
As noted in the after-action report on the raid by Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, everything involving Vindictive came off as planned:
According to the time-table, the hour at which the “Vindictive” (Captain Alfred F. B. Carpenter) should have been laid alongside the Zeebrugge Mole was midnight. She reached her station one minute after midnight, closely followed by the “Daffodil” (Lieutenant Harold Campbell) and “Iris II” (Commander Valentine Gibbs). A few minutes later the landing of the storming and demolition parties began. By 1.10 a.m. the “Vindictive” had taken off the survivors, who had meanwhile done their work upon the Mole, and by 1.15 a.m. she and her consorts were clear of the Mole.
In the 75 minutes she spent on the Mole, Vindictive took a terrible beating, but she made it back to Dover under her own steam.
“Vindictive after Zeebrugge” 1918 May 23, Bain News Service print via LOC
German propaganda photo of the above
Besides Carpenter, who received the VC from the King as well as the Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor from France, several officers received lesser awards while 18 of Vindictive‘s crew picked up Distinguished Service Medals:
Ch. Air Mech. Clifford Armitage, R.N.A.S., O.N. F6981.
E.R.A., 4th Cl., Norman Carroll, O.N. M17679 (Ch.).
E.R.A., 3rd Cl., Herbert Cavanagh, O.N. M1111 (Po.).
Sto., 1st Cl., William Crawford, O.N. K34438 (Ch.).
M.A.A. Charles George Dunkason, O.N. 191301 (Po.).
Arm. Arthur William Evans, O.N. M7148 (Ch.).
Ldg. Sig. Albert James Gamby, O.N. J11326 (Ch.).
A.B. Arthur Geddes, O.N. J30822 (Ch.).
E.R.A., 5th Cl., Herbert Alfred Harris, O.N. M6218 (Po.).
Sto. P.O. Thomas Haw, O.N. 306429 (Po.).
Sto., 1st Cl., James Lewis Hayman, O.N. K35627 (Dev.).
P.O. Herbert Jackson, O.N. 213767 (Ch.).
A.B. Richard Ellis Makey, O.N. 219228 (Po.).
S.B.S. Arthur Ernest Page, O.N. M960 (Ch.).
Ch. Sto. Alfred Edward Sage, O.N. 281683 (Ch.).
Sto., 1st Cl., Joseph Smith, O.N. K24538 (Dev.).
E.R.A., 4th Cl., Alan Thomas, O.N. M16493 (Dev.).
P.O. Thomas Wood, O.N. 171903 (Ch.)
The next month, the battered and beaten but still afloat Vindictive had one more mission. Two hundred tons of cement was put into her after magazines and upper bunkers on both sides– which was all her draught would permit her to carry– and she was sunk as a blockship in the approaches to Ostend Harbor on 10 May 1918.
After the war, she was raised and broken up in 1920, with her bow saved and put on public display at Ostend, where it remains today.
Two of her sisters, Furious and Arrogant, was broken up just after her– though they had seen no action during the war. As for Vindictive‘s skipper, Carpenter, he went on to command a series of capital ships before moving to the retired list as a Rear Admiral in 1929, though he did return to service in WWII to command a Home Guard district. All good men must do their part, you know. His VC is in the IWM.
Several relics from Vindictive, to include her shot-up binnacle, a rum draw with a shrapnel wound, her J Morriss & Sons Ltd telescopic flamethrower, one of her 7.5cm howitzers, her voice tube, a piece of concrete from the Mole found on her deck after she returned to Dover and portions of her splinter mattresses are all in the collections of the IWM.
The same gun is now in the Royal Marines Museum’s collection
She is, of course, also remembered in maritime art such as the piece at the beginning of the post and this one on display at the Britannia Royal Naval College by Charles De Lacey, showing HMS ‘Vindictive’ at Zeebrugge, 23 April 1918, on loan from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
This week, the RN and RMs celebrated the 100th anniversary of the great raid. On Saturday, Belgium held a special service attended by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines with HRH The Princess Royal representing Her Majesty the Queen. A similar event was held in Dover on Monday with dignitaries from Belgium and Germany as well as the Senior Service.
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.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
“A Southern Black Racer slithers across the barrel of a NationalGuard Soldier’s sniper rifle during a 1-173 Infantry training exercise Saturday, April 7, 2018, at Eglin Air Force Base. Snipers are trained to remain still for hours and invisible to enemies and even to wildlife.”
US Army photo by Staff Sgt. William Frye
Eglin’s panhandle training area is the stomping ground not only of Air Force SOF commandos but also the Army’s co-located 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), and the black bears and assorted snakes in the area see lots of company.
1st Battalion, 173rd Infantry Regiment is part of the Alabama National Guard based in Enterprise, AL. Since their activation in 2016, they have been aligned as a mobilization asset of the Louisiana-based 256th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, also known as the Tiger Brigade. The latter is sure to be a matter of heartburn during Alabama/LSU games.
