Ready to burst on the scenes, rifle makers Barrett, CMMG, JP Enterprises, LaRue Tactical, LMT Defense, LWRC, MasterPiece Arms, Mossberg, Q LLC, Savage and Seekins Precision are all reportedly working on bringing offerings using Federal Premium’s new .224 Valkyrie cartridge to market.
What’s the big deal? It’s a 1,300-yard supersonic MSR 15 (AR-15) cartridge…
Due to the heavier bullets and extremely high ballistic coefficients of new 224 Valkyrie, it nips at 6.5 Creedmoor performance. Loaded with the 90-grain Gold Medal Sierra MatchKing, the cartridge offers as much as 68.76 inches less drop and 127.88 inches less wind drift at 1,000 yards when compared to existing AR-15 cartridges.
During World War II the Allies dropped literally tons of arms and munitions to local resistance forces across occupied Europe to give the Germans a little heartburn. Though squirreled away over 70 years ago, caches left behind by various underground groups have popped up in Denmark, France, and Latvia in recent months, as have individual arms buried during the war for one reason or another.
Speaking of France, a couple doing home renovation near Quarré-les-Tombes found three STENs, a pile of BREN gun mags (but no BREN gun, hmmmm), as well as a crate or two of Mills bombs and ammo, all secreted under a granite floor.
Best yet, two of the British-made 9mm hoses had names scratched it to them: Pepette and Alice.
They have nice early-type cocking handles on them too. Such a shame. They seem to have held up well after all these years.
BOSTON (Oct. 20, 2017) A U.S. Coast Guard Station Boston law enforcement team provides security for the USS Constitution, Friday, Oct. 20, 2017 as it sails in Boston Harbor to commemorate the Navy’s 242nd birthday, officially observed on Oct. 13th. On Oct. 21, 1797, 220 years ago, USS Constitution was launched into the Boston Harbor and commissioned as an active duty warship in the United States Navy. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Andrew Barresi/Released)
After 26 months in drydock, USS Constitution, the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat, and her crew headed underway for a three hour cruise from the ship’s berth in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on Oct. 20, in commemoration of the ship’s launching 220 years ago and the U.S. Navy’s 242nd birthday.
Constitution started boarding guests at 8 a.m., many of them family and friends of current crew members. Shortly after 10 a.m., with more than 349 guests in attendance, she departed her pier.
At 11:40 a.m., Constitution performed a 21-gun salute which was returned by the Concord Battery and 101st Field Artillery near Fort Independence on Castle Island. Fort Independence is a state park that served as a defensive position for Boston Harbor from 1634 to 1962.
The ship also fired an additional 17 shots at 12:15 p.m. as she passed U.S. Coast Guard Station Boston, the former site of the Edmund Hartt shipyard where Constitution was built.
Each round of this salute honored the 16 states that comprised America when Constitution launched in 1797, and one in honor of the ship.
The ship returned to her berthing, Pier 1 of the Charlestown Navy Yard, at 1 p.m.
With more than 1,000 dead and after nearly five months of fighting, Marawi City is free from the stranglehold of terrorists. The city looks akin to Warsaw in 1945, Seoul in 1950 or Hue in 1968.
Still, the PI armed forces appear very salty.
Philippine Army’s 4th Light Reaction Company sniper team and Rangers from the 3rd Scout Ranger ‘Excelsior’ Battalion in Marwai. This bunch reportedly zapped both Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon and Maute Group leader Omar Maute, two very HVTs. Note the Remington-made R4 rifles, M203 40mm bloop tube and sniper’s rifle to the right. Also, chest rigs are the order of the day.
Here we see a rundown of the standard bayonet fare for U.S. military rifles from the early 20th Century through the early days of the Vietnam conflict.
From top to bottom: an M1905 sword bayonet with a 16-inch blade on the M1903 Springfield rifle, an M1 bayonet on an M1 Garand, a chopped down bayonet (10-inch blade) made from the legacy M1905 pigsticker redesignated M1905E1 on an M1 Garand, and finally an M4 bayonet on M1 Carbine.
The M4 is very interesting in the respect that it originally wasn’t suppose to exist, and then went on to be both widely used and extensively cloned.
Initially, the M1 Carbine did not accept a bayonet. However, beginning in June 1944, the front band included a bayonet lug. Most earlier carbines were subsequently retrofitted with the bayonet-lug front band. Most U.S.-made M4 bayonets were produced by W. R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co., Turner Manufacturing Co, Imperial Knife Co., Conetta Manufacturing Co, and Bren-Dan Manufacturing Co. using the M8/8A1 sheath, and ran into the early 1960s at least.
Early models used the leather washer handles while post-WWII production shifted to hard rubber or plastic grips. Standard blade length on military spec models was 6.5-inches, overall is 11.5-inches. The M4 bayonet blade even went on to form the pointy end of a later Korean-era M1 Garand bayonet, the M5A1, which replaced both the M1905E1 and M1 bayonet.
The M4 model I just picked up is a Kiffe made in Japan, which would obviously make it a Post-WWII variant.
Though the company was founded in New York in 1875 by Herman H. Kiffe and remained in operation through the 1960s, they contracted their M4 bayos to unknown Japanese makers in the 1950s.
Not meant for military contracts (at least from the U.S.) these were popular with new civilian buyers of surplus M1 Carbines which were widely available for a song at the time. These new bayonets sold for $3 at the time via mail order– about $23 in 2017 greenbacks, which is a deal both then and now.
1967 ad for Kiffe, note the “M8 Bayonet” in the top right with “self-sharpening plastic sheaths” (!)
Overall length is 11.25-inches, while weight is 8.6-ounces, in each case without the scabbard.
The blade is marked simply “Kiffe Japan” as is the hilt.
While not a true martial bayonet, it is beautiful and this specimen is very minty– no doubt because it was purchased during the Atomic-era as a keepsake to complete a privately owned M1, rather than for field use. At 50~ years old, it looks great and I think it will hold up for another 50 with no problem.
Fighting against the combined forces of time and Mother Nature, the oldest U.S. battleship still afloat is in need of desperate repair, and sales of a limited edition rifle could help.
Dubbed “The Last Dreadnought,” Texas was commissioned in 1914 as the world was on the verge of the Great War and went on to serve for over 30 years, during both World Wars — one of only a handful of ships still in existence with such a lineage. Since 1948, she has continued to serve in her namesake state as a museum ship at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site in Texas.
However, time has not been kind to the century-old relic and continuous repairs are needed just to keep her afloat– and funds are scarce.
A cara cara bird perches atop the remote memorial to the 21 men of HMS Sheffield
Some 35 years after the events, the MoD report into the loss of the Royal Navy’s Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield in the Falklands, following a hit from an Argentine Exocet missile, shows why is was redacted and withheld for the past several decades.
From The Guardian:
Some members of the crew were “bored and a little frustrated by inactivity” and the ship was “not fully prepared” for an attack.
The anti-air warfare officer had left the ship’s operations room and was having a coffee in the wardroom when the Argentinian navy launched the attack, while his assistant had left “to visit the heads” (relieve himself).
The radar on board the ship that could have detected incoming Super Étendard fighter aircraft had been blanked out by a transmission being made to another vessel.
When a nearby ship, HMS Glasgow, did spot the approaching aircraft, the principal warfare officer in the Sheffield’s ops room failed to react, “partly through inexperience, but more importantly from inadequacy”.
The anti-air warfare officer was recalled to the ops room, but did not believe the Sheffield was within range of Argentina’s Super Étendard aircraft that carried the missiles.
When the incoming missiles came into view, officers on the bridge were “mesmerized” by the sight and did not broadcast a warning to the ship’s company.
A pretty interesting video on the NATO Submarine Rescue System (NSRS) is a cooperative project between three NATO countries: France, Norway and the United Kingdom.
“It is designed to rescue personnel from submarines in distress and can dive to depths of up to 600 meters. It consists of three main parts: an intervention system, a rescue vehicle and a transfer under pressure system. It is the largest fly-away submarine rescue system and can dive up to six hours, four times a day. On each dive, it can rescue approximately 12 submariners, who will receive medical treatment in its facilities, if needed. The NATO Submarine Rescue System is available to anyone on request and can be deployed almost anywhere in the world within 72 hours.”
On the downside, while it is ideal for plucking bubbleheads from wrecked Type 209s and the like, running to pick up a 100+ member crew from a U.S. sub would likely push the NSRS to its limit.
The Navy used to have a very robust rescue program of its own, two DSRV’s (Mystic and Avalon) each able to rescue 24 men at a time. Operating from the purpose-built rescue ships USS Pigeon and USS Ortolan, all have since been decommissioned and replaced by the single 16-place Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression System, which is turn is based on the 6-passenger Royal Australian Navy Submarine rescue vehicle Remora and uses craft of opportunity.
A Colt M231 Firing Port Weapon mounted in M2 Bradley door 1986. Stoked with tracers, the gun was sighted via periscope (Photo: Christopher Barzyz)
Sharing only limited commonality with the M16, Colt’s M231 Firing Port Weapon was a full-auto-only buzz saw made to squirt bad guys from an opening in the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle. Some 27,000 FPWs were ordered from Colt for the M2, each of which originally had six firing ports from which to use the chopped down 5.56mm officially designated as a submachine gun by the Army.
“When it was my turn I found that you had to walk the rounds to the target. By the time you got to the target area you had to change magazines again. The extremely high rate of fire went through the magazines fast,” he said.
Here we see the lead ship of the Armada Española’s Canarias-class heavy cruisers– the mighty Canarias herself– in her pre-1953 arrangement. The big cruiser, though laid down in the 1920s, survived the Spanish Civil War and, in the end, even Franco himself.
The Spanish Navy of the old days was a colonial power and was very good at it for several hundred years until the 19th Century saw her Latin American holdings disappear along with, after the Spanish-American War, the crown’s Pacific Empire. Said conflict with the U.S. saw most of the Armada’s cruisers destroyed or captured in uneven fleet actions in the Caribbean and Manila Bay.
Post-1898, after losing or condemning 19 of her cruisers 21, all that was left was the old Velasco-class protected cruiser Infanta Isabel and the 5,000-ton Lepanto, which finished just too late for the war. Three single-class new ships were quickly built using lessons learned in the conflict: Emperador Carlos V, Rio de la Plata, and Extremadura, followed by the three ships of the Princesa de Asturias-class and the Reina Regente, ordered in conjunction with the three 16,000-ton mini-battleships of the España-class in 1909. This is the fleet the Spanish carried into the Great War, where they were an armed neutral.
In the 1920s, with their turn-of-the-century, coal-fired cruisers and dreadnoughts increasingly obsolete, and colonial conflicts such as the Rif War in North Africa draining resources while still setting the need to show the flag in far-away ports, the Spanish ordered the one-off Reina Victoria Eugenia (6,500 tons), two similar 6,300-ton Blas de Lezo-class cruisers, three very modern Almirante Cervera-class cruisers (9,385-tons, based on the Royal Navy’s Emerald-class) and planned for three 13,700-ton Canarias-class ships, with the plan to put the older WWI-era fleet to pasture and phase out their increasingly marginalized battleships.
Note that the class was always considered to be a Washington Treaty warship by the Spanish
Based on the British Crown County-class ships of Sir Philip Watts’ design but switched up to a degree, these 636-foot heavy cruisers were handsomely equipped with eight 8″/50 (20.3 cm) BL Model 1924 Mark D Vickers-Armstrong-designed guns, each capable of sending a 256-pound AP shell out to 32,530 yards every 20-seconds.
Overall speed on Parsons geared steam turbines was 33 knots and the range was sufficient to sortie to the Spanish outposts in the Moroccan shores, Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea.
Two vessels, class leader Canarias (Canary Islands) and sister Baleares (Balearic Islands) were laid down at Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval (SECN) in El Ferrol in 1928 and took more than eight years to construct, both still only semi-complete-by-1936–a pivotal year for Spain. The third ship of the class, Ferrol, was canceled due to tight budgets.
At Ferrol, colorised by Postales Navales
In July 1936, a pro-fascist military coup led by Gens. Goded and Franco in colonies outside of Metropolitan Spain quickly spread to all-out civil war with the Soviet-allied Republicans against the German-Italian-backed Nationalists.
Suffice it to say without chronicling the entire Civil War, the Spanish Navy took a beating in the three-year conflict.
On her trials, where she broke 33.8 knots at 99,000 shp. Note much of her equipment including her rangefinders and Turret C is yet to be fitted– and she never did get that seaplane rig
-Canarias‘ own sister ship, the Nationalist-controlled Baleares, was sunk in a battle with Republican destroyers at Cape Palos in March 1938.
Heavy cruiser Baleares sank after receiving several torpedo hits from republican destroyers during the Battle of Cape Palos in, early hours of 06 March 1938.
-While steaming off Santander on 30 April 1937, the Nationalist-controlled battleship Alfonso XIII struck a mine and sank.
-Spain’s last remaining battleship, Jaime I, was under the Republican flag and was struck by German bombers and eventually sunk by the Nationalists.
-The cruisers Miguel de Cervantes, Libertad, and Mendez Nuñez, part of the Republican Navy, escaped at the end of the war and were interned by the French at Bizerte only to be repatriated later in poor condition.
-Of the other ships in the Nationalist Navy, only the light cruiser Almirante Cervera escaped the war largely intact and was Canarias‘ partner in crime.
-The cruiser Reina Victoria Eugenia, renamed Republica by the Republicans and then Navarra by the Nationalists after they recaptured her, also survived though was less functional than either Cervera or Canarias.
The Civil War saw Canarias as the de facto flag of Franco’s fleet, especially after the loss of Alfonso XIII, their only battleship.
Note her 4.7-inch secondary guns amidships at elevation and that she has all four turrets for her main battery
A good picture of the cruiser Canarias in her original configuration.
The big cruiser plastered Republican positions near the coastline including bloody work along the Malaga-Almeria highway and in the bombardment of Barcelona, intercepted Soviet merchant ships headed to the Republicans with arms, and engaged Republican ships in naval actions– including vaporizing the Churruca-class destroyer Almirante Ferrándiz off Cape Spartel with three salvos of her big 8-inch guns.
In 1938, she almost captured the Republican destroyer Jose Luis Diez, who only narrowly made it to Gibraltar and internment carrying an 8-inch hit in her stern. During the war, she reportedly fired her guns in anger on at least 34 occasions.
crucero Canarias, via Postales Navales
In WWII, while Franco never officially entered the war despite being an ersatz Axis state, Canarias and Cervera were the Spanish Navy’s most effective units and the big cruiser put to sea in 1941 to help look for survivors of the German battleship Bismarck after the failed Operation Rheinübung. While she found no survivors after a three-day search of the fallen dreadnought’s debris field, they did recover some wreckage and five bodies.
During the war, she picked up 12 Rheinmetall 37mm AAA guns in a tertiary battery.
Post-VE-Day, she remained the most powerful naval unit under the Spanish flag and in 1952-53 underwent modernization at SECN that saw her wide Lexington-like funnel separated into two stacks as well as navigational and search radar fitted. Her torpedo tubes were landed.
View of the northeast section of basin #1, El Ferrol, looking northwest. Two graving docks appear, one partially hidden by shops in the right middle ground. In the left foreground is the cruiser CANARIAS with her new after stack in place but without her new forward stack. This refit occurred between October 1952 and February 1953. Some destroyers and smaller craft are also visible. Description: Catalog #: NH 93640
Post-1953, note her twin funnels
She helped support the Spanish Legion in the little-known Ifni War in 1957-58 which included some very muscular gunboat diplomacy against Morocco.
At Ceuta in 1960> Note, she is wearing her pennant number on her hull
Then came the hijacking of the Portuguese liner Santa Maria in 1961 which saw Canarias chase her across the Atlantic, cooperating with a U.S. Navy task force that also shadowed the cruise ship more than 20 years before the better remembered Achille Lauro hijacking. An important development considering Spain did not join NATO until 1982.
She also waved the flag, attended several European ceremonies, participated in goodwill trips to Latin America, exercises with Western navies, and visited overseas holdings.
Here she is in Africa in 1961:
In 1969, Canarias helped evacuate the Spanish from Equatorial Guinea as that Central African country gained independence from the ever-shrinking empire, a fitting final act for a colonial cruiser.
In Equatorial Guinea
She had outlasted all the other Spanish cruisers, with the three Almirante Cervera-class ships all striking by 1970, Mendez Nuñez retired in 1964, and Navarra paid off in 1955.
By that time, she was among the last all-big-gun cruisers left in the world. The British had broken up their last Crown Colony/Fiji-class near sister ships in 1968, though two, HMS Newfoundland and HMS Ceylon, continued to operate with the Peruvian Navy into the 1970s, and one, Nigeria, served the Indian Navy as INS Mysore (C60) until 1985.
Her last modernization came in 1969 when she was fitted with a modern CIC, new radars (Decca 12 navigation set, U.S. SG-6B surface search, Italian Marconi MLA-IB air search), and electronics, while 40/70 Bofors L70s replaced her WWII 37mm and 40mm suites.
CANARIAS Photographed in Barcelona, Spain, in about 1970. Note the large tower to the right for the gondola transport system going across the harbor. The 371-foot four-masted training barque Juan Sebastián Elcano is to her stern. Description: Catalog #: NH 90743
Spanish cruiser CANARIAS, Janes 1973
There was even a plan afoot to convert her to a light aircraft carrier. The old light carrier USS Cabot (CVL-28) was later purchased instead in 1972 after a five-year loan and was commissioned Delado.
The end game came for Franco in 1975, as the Green March wrested Spain’s hold in the Sahara and the overseas colonies shrank to the current lot that are the isolated cities of Ceuta, Melilla, and the Canary Islands. The old dictator himself marched off to the parade ground of lost souls that November.
Pushing 40 and considered obsolete for the last 30 of those years, Canarias was pulled from service and decommissioned on 17 December 1975, the end of an era. She had steamed 650,000 miles on 524 trips in her career.
While several cities sought to preserve her as a museum– including some she had bombarded in the Civil War– the money just wasn’t there and the old war wagon sailed to the breakers under her own steam in September 1977.
Her last cruise, Sept. 1977
Sailing past the Castillo de San Felipe at Ferrol
Parts of her were saved, however, including turret B and the entire admiral’s cabin interior at the Naval Academy at Marín, a 4.7-inch AAA at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria– the capital of the Canary Islands, a rangefinder at the Naval Museum at Ferrol, several anchors around Spain, and other items.
Canarias bell, wheel, and other items at Museo Naval de Ferrol
Displacement:
10,670 long tons (10,840 t) standard
13,500 long tons (13,700 t) full load
Length: 636 ft.
Beam: 64 ft. (20 m)
Draught: 21 ft. 5 in
Installed power: Yarrow-type boilers, 90,000 hp (67,000 kW)
Propulsion: 4 shafts, Parsons-type geared turbines
Speed: 33 knots (61 km/h)
Range: 8,000 nmi (15,000 km) at 15 kn (28 km/h)
Complement: 679
Armament:
(1936, designed)
8 × 8-inch (203 mm) guns in four twin turrets
8 × 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns
12 × 40 mm AA guns
3 × 20 mm AA guns
12 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes in triple mounts above water
(1969)
8 × 8-inch (203 mm) guns in four twin turrets
8 × 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns
8 40/70 Bofors
Armor:
Belt 2 in (51 mm)
Deck 1.5–1 in (38–25 mm)
Magazine 4 in (102 mm) box around
Turrets 1 in (25 mm), also splinter shields were added to 4.7″ mounts in 1940.
Conning tower 1 in (25 mm)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
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.
