Behold, the Trimese-16:
The gun, literally one-upping the infamous Siamese-16*, has three barreled uppers with interlocking gas tubes. The gas system of each feeds into the next rifle and it only has one trigger, causing it to fire three shots with one pull of the trigger, in rapid order.
More in my column at Guns.com.
On this day in 1841, the 2nd Regiment of the Foreign Legion of the French Army was created at Bone in Algeria and enrolled 2,240 legionnaires– largely Swiss and Germans– organized in 3 battalions stationed in Bone, Bougie, and Djidjelli.
The regiment fought throughout Algeria for the next decade until it was shipped out to the Crimea to join the allies fighting Russia, freezing at the Battle of Alma and the Siege of Sevastopol then went on to fight in the Franco-Austrian War in 1859.
By the 1860s, they were fighting in Mexico to prop up Maximilian and a patrol of the regiment, just 62-strong under Capt. Jean Danjou (Saint-Cyr, 1848) engaged 2,000 Mexicans at the Battle of Camarón with a predictable outcome.
The wooden hand of Capt. Danjou, treated as a holy relic by the Legion, housed at the Legion’s museum in Aubagne.
Then came service in metropolitan France during the war with Prussia in 1870, the Sino-French War, the Sudan and Morocco, Dahomey, Madagascar, fighting in France again in the Great War where they bled at the Somme, Verdun and along the Marne, then, of course, World War II where they fought in North Africa and later in the Colmar Pocket, ending the conflict on occupation duty in Austria, a country some of its men had left in the 1930s.
Then, like the rest of the Legion, the back to back 17-year armageddon in Indochina and Algeria before they were moved from their traditional “home” to Corsica and reformed. Since then, they have undertaken peacekeeping and intervention activities in Lebanon, Chad, and Bosnia, among others.
Their march since the 1900s is the Anne-Marie, oddly enough a German drinking song in the French Army, but then again, it is the Legion, and the regiment curiously hosted both German refugees during the broken Weimar era, German Jews fleeing from Hitler in the 1930s and 40s, and after WWII, former Wehrmacht soldiers.
The words, translated:
Anne-Marie, where is the journey going,
Anne-Marie, where is the journey going,
She goes to the city
Where the soldiers are.
One two three
Young, young, young Anne-Marie
Anne-Marie, today we want to be funny,
Anne-Marie, today we want to be funny,
We want to go dancing
And we rotate in circles.
One two three
Young, young, young Anne-Marie
Today the 2e REI is a two-battalion strong mechanized infantry unit based in Nîmes, France, and their mascot is a mule.
The Philippine Marines have been busy doing hearts and minds type missions in the Sulu area for the past several months and have managed to get 246 weapons turned over (with a little help from martial law.)
About half are vintage M1 Garands, followed by a decent haul of M14s and M16s, as well as a smattering of other hardware to include M79 bloop tubes, 81mm mortars and 90mm recoilless rifles.
Dig the M79s, with one using a boot top as a pad…also the fifth gun up is a suppressed M1 Carbine with a homemade wooden pistol grip…
Yes, that is a Vietnam-vintage Colt XM177 in the foreground, followed by (likely Manila-made Eslico) M16s. You never know what you are going to come up with in the PI
Here we see the eastern curtains of the old and once Confederate-held masonry fortification, Fort Morgan near Gulf Shores, Alabama, shown after damage to from U.S. Major-General Granger’s heavy artillery brigade composed of the 21st Indiana and 6th Michigan Heavy Artillery in 1864 during the Battle of Mobile Bay. Compared is a shot by Dylan Tucker, Site Historian at Fort Morgan, of the present day wall.
Equipped with four 10-inch mortars and four 8-inch howitzers, the 6th Michigan (formerly an infantry unit) was rushed all over the south and had a specialty in reducing masonry forts. They pounded Forts St. Phillip and Jackson downriver from New Orleans in 1862 and served at the Siege of Port Hudson.
Signed by the artist: Jack Fellows. Via NNAM.2004.100.001
On 1 April 1943, during a big fight over the Russells Group in the Central Solomons, a Japanese Navy pilot plays the fool as he loops his “Hamp” in front of the F4F-4 flown by VMF-221 2nd Lt. Warner O. Chapman, USMC, who promptly shot him down. Chapman was also awarded a “probable” on the mission. Chapman went on to become Commanding Officer of VMF-221 in 1959, as the squadron entered the USMC Reserve program.
VMF-221 was formed five months before Pearl Harbor flying the forgettable Brewster F2A-3 Buffalo– using them to down a Japanese Kawanishi H8K “Emily” flying boat in March 1942. Augmented by a handful of badly worn Wildcats, they fought at Midway before eventually switching out to the F4U Corsair, which they flew until the end of the war.
I thought this list was pretty interesting. It’s a survey of the carry choices of 100 Rangemaster certified firearms instructors.
Most commonly, they carry (almost every day) a 9mm striker-fired semi-auto, with about 80 percent falling in the compact to full-sized arena (very few mouse guns or subcompacts). Almost all waist-carry (concealed) IWB on the strong side, appendix to the back of the hip, in a Kydex holster. All have a round in the chamber, with about half carrying a secondary piece for a New York reload.
Hmm. I agree with most, but I do like my leather sometimes…
Rock Island Auction company always has a collection of interesting pieces at their events, but their upcoming April Premiere auction has some seriously strange guns:
For info on just what the heck these are, check out my column at Guns.com.
All branches of the U.S. Armed Forces have placed orders for the M17/18 Modular Handgun System according to Sig Sauer. (Photo: Chris Eger)
Though originally a winner for an Army contract, Sig officials report that every branch including the Coast Guard has placed orders for the modified P320 pistol platform.
Sig’s M17/18 pistol, the winner of the Army’s Modular Handgun System contract last year, is set to be fielded by not only the land service but the Air Force, Marines and Navy as well as the Coast Guard, according to company representatives.
The handguns will begin replacing a host of other platforms, including various marks of the M9 Beretta in the Army. As noted in the Navy’s FY 2019 procurement budget justification for the Marine Corps, 35,000 of the Sigs will not only replace M9s but also Colt M45A1 CQB .45ACP pistols and the newly acquired M007 Glock. In Coast Guard service, the gun will augment the Sig P229R which was adopted in 2005. The Air Force has been quietly acquiring the guns and testing their use for compatibility with aircraft ejection seats.
More in my column at Guns.com.
Members of the Canadian contingent serving with the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), are seen at an observation post in Trakhomas. 27 March 1964.
UN Photo Archives # 86335
Note the unit patch of the famous Royal 22e Régiment (The Van Doos), as well as the Canadian-made, inch-pattern semi-auto FN FAL dubbed the C1A1 (C1) in Canuck service and a U.S.-supplied M1919 light machine gun. Interestingly enough, the Canadians were the first large military to adopt the FAL, in 1954, to replace the Enfield .303, and only phased it out in the late 1980s with the Diemaco (Colt Canada) C7 (M16A2).
According to the UN: “Canada has a long tradition of supporting peacekeeping missions starting with its contribution in the United Nations Military Observer group in Indian and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) in 1949 and currently have contributes 113 military and police personnel to our peacekeeping missions in Haiti (MINUSTAH) Darfur (UNAMID) Cyprus (UNFICYP) South Sudan (United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Middle East (UN Truce Supervision Organisation).”
And it looks like the Canucks are headed to increasingly unstable Mali.
A behind the scenes look at the U.S. Army’s Small Arms Repair Facility at Anniston Army Depot.
Here, Army experts with the U.S. Army Materiel Command bring small caliber weapons to fully mission capable status, from disassembly, repair, modification, to target accuracy testing. The full overhaul resets US Army equipment and generates readiness. They cover M249 SAWs, conversion of M2 BHMGs to the improved M2A1, M4s, et. al. They show off a Frigidaire-made M2 as well as an example by Kelsey Hayes Wheels
I am kinda disappointed that the M-4 standards for accuracy are 5-inches at 100 meters, seems a bit loose. But meh. Also, they should have mic’d old boy, as its hard to hear him (sorry).
Still, between CMP and Anniston Army Depot, there is probably no better pool of U.S. small arms gunsmiths in any town its size in the world.
As noted by DLA:
“The depot’s Small Arms Repair Facility is the primary Small Arms Rebuild Center for the Department of Defense.
Here, employees overhaul, repair and upgrade small caliber weapons from the M9 pistol to the M2 50-caliber machine gun, grenade launchers, mortars and much more.
The men and women who work in the depot’s Small Arms Repair Facility are able to refurbish many parts, bringing them back to like-new condition.
For example, as much as 60 percent of a M2 weapon can be refurbished and reused as the artisans upgrade it to a M2A1 machine gun. ”
That rack tho:
