The guys down at Whiskey Tango Firearms in Sarasota, Florida are apparently big fans of the Merc with the Mouth.
A manufacturing FFL, WTF came up with this Colt New Agent 1911 in a battle-worn Deadpool theme complete with “Smile, Wait for Flash” barrel engraving by Accubeam in Sarasota, cartoon script “Deadpool’s gun” logo grips, chimichanga mag and just enough wear to make it look like it’s been to Francis and back.
Internals.Note the attention to detail and the very Paris Theodore style guttersnipe sight rail
Sure, ‘Pool used Deagle .50s for the most part, but in the beginning of the film pre-Cancer he uses a Colt 1911-based Para-Ordnance P14.45 in the pizza delivery scene and of course a plot point is a sweet Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket with pearl grips that he uses at the end of the film, so the use of the New Agent by WTF is on point if not entirely accurate.
First Soldier Systems and then TFB chimed in with the new rumint on the Glock 17M as confirmed by Larry V and Tim Harmsen with the Military Arms Channel the new groove-less Gen 4+ model that has been selected to be the new FBI gun to replace their thousands of Gen 3 G22 .40S&W models.
Note the left thumb ambi slide stop and a Gen 4 extended palm swell/beavertail back panel but no finger grooves on the front.
The images purportedly come from a member of the Indianapolis Police Dept who was shown the gun during in-service training which will likely make him really super duper popular with the instructor who pimped it out.
The TLR-1 is sweet, note the flared magwell seemingly absent from the above shot, as well as night sights– also the belt keepers scream copshit, lending an air of cred to the whole thing
Among the cooler points are a flared tactical/practical style magwell and G42 trigger, plus it has an ambi slide release as shown in the second image. All of this I predicted months ago, just saying.
From the webs:
“Currently at our handgun in-service, and the 17M info has been released to the guys here, so I feel comfortable putting it out here.
Changes are:
1. New, “tougher” finish
2. Different rifling
3. Longer RSA
4. Reinforced front RSA notch
5. Smoother trigger (similar to G42/G43)
6. Flared magwell
7. Removed finger grooves
8. Safety plunger is oblong/rectangular instead of round
9. Ambi slide release
10. Magazine well cut out
11. Magazines have a slightly extended front lip.”
Tim had one in testing before the news broke, and after the cat scrambled out of the bag, posted some really good pictures of the internals and dropped that the gun uses a traditional button rifled barrel with lands and grooves– a departure from Glock’s polygonal rifling– as well as advised the gun uses legacy G17 mags.
I’m sure there will be much more on these guns out there at SHOT in Jan 2017, and I will bring you what I find. Also, can you say Army Modular Handgun?
Here is a matching exhibition quality gold inlaid and engraved cased four gun garniture by renowned French gunsmith Nicolas Noel Boutet (you do know Boutet, don’t you?) of Versailles including 12mm (.47 cal) dueling pistols with 8.75-inch barrels and much cuter but no less deadly .58 caliber pocket pistols, hence the two different bullet molds.
All told, $180,000 – $250,000 worth of Napoleonic swag at Rock Island’s upcoming auction next month. They have a ton of just really neat stuff up for grabs in over 2,500 lots.
Sure, his trigger/muzzle control is suspect at times, but this kid, who goes by the YouTube name of RoyalNunsuch, has pretty much got a handle on a homebuild blowback action semi-auto 9mm Grease Gun remake that uses Glock 33 rounders.
She isn’t pretty, and there are some jams, but it’s only the second time the gun has been shot.
What were you building at that age? Heck I have a (semi-auto) STEN project that I have been circling back to for the past two decades and still haven’t gotten to the firing stage yet.
Those welds though. Hell, I know a hippy chick in Florida that welds better than that and she is in the business of selling empty boxes.
Here we see a beautiful Springfield Armory 1903 MK I .30-06 SPRG caliber rifle with an uber rare and original Pedersen device.
Mr. Pedersen’s device was a very simple top loading, blowback-operated pistol without a grip. Its barrel was the exact size, shape, and length of the standard .30-06 M1906 cartridge case. All the soldier had to do was pull out the regular turnbolt of his Springfield and any .30-06 ammo, insert the Pedersen Device, attach the device’s 40-round magazine, and let her rip. The device used the host rifle’s trigger group, sights, barrel, and stock. The device would cycle new rounds, and eject spent cases through a small port cut in the side of the rifle.
Other modifications to the rifle were to the sear, magazine cut off, and trigger to allow the regular bolt or the Pedersen device to be used interchangeably. In tests a trained infantryman could rip off two full magazines in less than a minute—a 500% increase in the Springfield’s rate of fire.
To accommodate the device’s short action (it had to fit completely in the space occupied by the Springfield’s original bolt), it fired a short .30 caliber pistol sized round. This 7.62x20mm round, a cross between .32 ACP and the WWII-era .30 Carbine loads, held a 80-grain bullet over 3.5 grains of bull’s-eye powder which gave a blistering 1300fps out of a rifle barrel. This allowed the Pedersen device rounds, although pipsqueak in size, to still be lethal and accurate enough to reach out to 300 yards.
Overall, the device added 1.75 pounds to the weight of the standard Springfield rifle, but, best of all, all the all the infantryman in the field had to do to convert back over to .30.06 was pull out the device and insert the regular bolt and ammo. Two guns with the weight of one!
Of course, WWI ended before the Pedersen could be fielded in great numbers, and the lean peacetime Army brass decided it wasn’t worth keeping so most ended up smashed or burned in the 1920s, hence their great rarity today.
Sweeping in its context, the report gives the public a rare glimpse into the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, which is the federal list of all items, such as suppressors, SBRs, short-barreled shotguns, destructive devices and any other weapons logged under the NFA as of February 2016. While this figure includes Post-86 Dealer samples, SOT production guns up for sale and LEO guns as well, most of these are in civilian hands.
Comparing last year’s report with the new information shows the aggregate number of NFA items of all kinds have climbed to 4,436,096, adding over a quarter million devices to the registry in a twelve-month period from February 2015.
This includes:
2,545,844 Destructive devices (mostly live ammunition over .50 caliber in size)
902,805 Suppressors
575,602 Machine guns
213,594 Short barreled rifles
140,474 Short barreled shotguns
57,777 AOWs (pen guns, cane guns, shorty shotgun pistols)
Suppressor numbers have just reached for the cheap seats in the past five years. In 2011, there were 285,087 cans registered– meaning U.S. silencer ownership has more than tripled in the past half-decade.
Ordered 3 August 1886, the one of a kind armored cruiser USS Maine was fitted with two twin 10″/30 caliber Mark 2 guns as her main battery and another half dozen 6″/30 caliber Mark 3 singles equipped with gun shields as a secondary while her near-sister USS Texas was given 12-inchers and thicker armor among other improvements, but had the same Mark 3s.
The 6-inchers were mounted in casemates in the hull, two each at the bow and stern and the last two amidships.
Commissioned 17 September 1895, less than three years later the mighty Maine took 252 of her crew with her when more than 5 tons of powder charges for the cruiser’s 6 and 10-inch guns detonated, obliterating the forward third of the ship.
As she was sitting in Havana harbor at the time, this soon led to war although most agree that her loss was a tragic accident.
Now, one of those Mark 3s that survived the blast and subsequent sinking, and has been on public display at the Washington Navy Yard for generations, is getting a makeover to preserve it for future generations. (It should be remembered that in August 1886 Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney signed General Order 354, establishing the Naval Gun Factory at the Washington Navy Yard, and it was the heart of Navy gunnery until the early 1960s when the manufacturing of guns was phased out and the buildings turned into office spaces, making the Yard the perfect place to put Maine‘s gun.)
141104-N-CS953-001 WASHINGTON (Nov. 4, 2014) A 6-inch, 30 caliber gun from the battleship USS Maine is on display in Willard Park at the Washington Navy Yard. Naval History and Heritage Command has arranged for conservation of the gun because of deterioration due to exposure to the elements. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tim Comerford/Released)
Conservators from the Warren Lash Conservation Center (WLCC) in Charleston, South Carolina, worked with the Naval History and Heritage Command to remove the gun for conservation.
160806-N-TH437-095 WASHINGTON (Aug. 6, 2016) After weathering the elements for more than 20 years, contractors clear away loose dirt around the base of the 6-inch, 30 caliber gun from the U.S. Navy battleship Maine at the Washington Navy Yard. The Maine attained infamy when it was sunk in Havana Harbor, Cuba, being the catalyst of the Spanish-American War in 1898. The Naval History and Heritage Command contracted WLCC to perform extensive conservation work on the gun to preserve it for future generations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Eric Lockwood/Released)
“I think cultural heritage is like bringing history to the next generation,” said Stephanie Crette, director of WLCC in a statement, “and conserving it is kind of like bringing an object to life for the next generation. I hope this is a full success and we continue on with other conservation processes with the Navy.”
Now that it’s gone, the WLCC team will start arresting its condition issues. They’ll start off by removing existing paint, as much rust as is prudent, and inhibiting the extant corrosion.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The Forward-looking submarine Ops of Luis Philip Senarens
Along with Tom Swift, Frank Reade Jr., and others, Jack Write was one of the host of fictitious “Edisonade” series of brilliant young inventors from the 1880s-1914 who graced the pre-Great War dime novels of the era. These were young men whose adventures were full of pluck and included the high tech forward thinking science of the era including radios, electric weapons, electrical land vehicles, steam powered robots, airships, rockets and submarines.
Speaking of which, Brooklynite Cuban-American Luis Philip Senarens, who was so busy that he wrote under a series of at least a half-dozen pseudonyms and has been described as both “the first prolific writer of science fiction” and “the American Jules Verne” crafted no less than 300 dime novels, inventing first Frank Reade Jr. and later Jack Wright. Most of these he wrote as “Noname.”
While written almost exclusively in the 1890s, they were republished several times through about 1920 and while Senarens himself was not the illustrator, the detailed descriptions he embedded in his work helped craft the images seen on the cover.
Many of these involved complex submarine operations long before they were practical including:
Jack Wright’s Submarine Catamaran (1891)
Jack Wright And His Electric Turtle (1891)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Yacht (1892) Jack Wright And His Deep Sea Monitor (1892)
Jack Wright And His Ocean Sleuth-Hound (1892)
Jack Wright And His Dandy Of The Deep (1892)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Torpedo-Tug (1893)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Explorer (1894)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Warship (1894)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Destroyer (1894)
Jack Wright And His Electric Submarine Ranger (1895)
Senarens also gave Reade his own U-boat from time to time, such as in this arctic submarine adventure from 1892 and in The Search for the Silver Whale.
It should be realized while looking at this work that the U.S. Navy’s first modern commissioned submarine, the dynamite gun armed USS Holland, was not commissioned until 12 October 1900 while the Royal Navy’s first submarine, HMS Holland 1 (guess who the inventor was), was not accepted until the following year. Russia’s first working submersible, Delfin was adopted in 1903, and the German’s kerosene powered SM U-1 was not commissioned until 1906. It could be argued the submariners of these early craft may have had a copy of a Noname attributed submarine dime novel stashed among their sea bags.
Other than the works of Swedish industrialist and arms dealer Thorsten Nordenfelt (who will be spoken about in a coming Warship Wednesday), Spain’s Peral, and the experimental French submarine Gymnote, which were afloat during Jack Wright’s heyday, there were few workable submersibles on the seas.
As for Senarens, he died in 1939 though his Reade and Wright adventures had peaked long before then.
When the U.S. entered WWII, the entire garrison of tiny Kiska Island in the Aleutians consisted of a 10 man U.S. Navy radio/weather station. As a diversionary attack as part of the Battle of Midway, on 6 June 1942 the Japanese landed in force, some 550 men of an elite Naval Landing unit.
Over the next year, the Japanese build up on the remote island grew to 3,700 Navy personnel at Kiska Harbor and some 3,500 Army personnel at Gertrude Cove despite U.S. air and naval attacks. They put in fire hydrants and the beginnings of a water system, laid hundreds of foxholes, personnel trenches and barbed wire entanglements; dug underground bunkers into the hillsides; constructed a power and telephone network and erected a Shinto shrine.
Japanese propaganda design of the Aleutian Islands Campaign, 1942
In the harbor floated Kawanishi H6K ‘Mavis” flying boats, Nakajima A6M2-N ‘Rufe’ floatplane fighters and Aichi E13A ‘Jake’ floatplane bombers/reconnaissance aircraft. They also crafted a slipway and repair facilities for midget submarines (more on this later).
With a looming Canadian-U.S. force ready to invade the frozen tundra near the Bearing Strait in July 1943, the Japanese swiftly withdrew their troops and when the 34,000-man Allied force hit the beaches the next month, they found nothing but a ghost town– and three wrecked Japanese midget submarines.
They were actually pretty fast– 19 knots submerged– but due to not being able to recharge their batteries, had a very short range (about a half-hour at full speed, 24-hours if barely spinning the contra-rotating propellers). The two-man crew of these boats carried a pair of 17.7-inch Type 98 (Type 97 “Special”) torps in a pair of blackpowder-fired tubes forward (each with a 772-pound warhead and a 3.4-mile range), and a 300-lb scuttling charge for when things went wrong.
Interior of a Type A Japanese midget submarine. Copyright Newspix/News Limited, via NWS.gov.au.
The IJN completed about 105 of these vessels in four slightly different variants, of which a few were based at Kiska for coastal defense against encroaching U.S./Canadian vessels, and others lost in raids on Australia and Madagascar.
As noted by Combined Fleet.com, on 28 June the seaplane/submarine tender Chiyoda left Yokosuka with six Type A’s (HA-28, HA-29, HA-31, HA-32, HA-33 and HA-34) as well as the 150-man crew of the future midget submarine base, a detachment of the 12th Construction Battalion and 200-tons of cement.
The submarines on Kiska were launched to and from their base via a beaching railway with four sets of launch rails in the Western part of Kiska Harbor, and all the structures around the bases, when abandoned, were rigged with 155mm IEDs, sulphuric acid cans set to explode via live grenade, and other booby traps, making souvenir hunting hazardous to a GI’s health.
Arriving 5 July, the submarine force joined the 5th Guard Unit, Special Purpose Unit and was under command of Lt ( j.g.) Otozaka Shoichi. With Chiyoda leaving, the aging L-class submarine RO-61 (1,000-tons, completed 1920 to a British design) arrived in August to serve as a pier-side battery charger for the midgets, three of which were afloat in the harbor at a mooring buoy and three more retained on land.
By November 1942, with the submarine base built and the vessels operational, they begin taking regular personnel casualties in air raids from American bombers. Larger subs stopped coming as often.
Losses mount, with HA-33 sunk in a heavy storm in early April 1943 and on the 14th P-40 Warhawks from Amchitka strafe HA-29 and HA-34, leading to the cannibalization of HA-29 and HA-34 for spare parts, but as a result of continuing air attacks and storms repair cannot be completed.
This led Vice Admiral Kawase Shiro in May to order the midgets redeployed to nearby Attu but when two fleet submarines arrive to accomplish this, the news that Attu has fallen leads the midget crews to instead embark on I-31 and I-35 for the Kuriles.
On June 8, the two remaining midget submarines in the harbor are scuttled with demolition charges and one midget submarine is blown up using two Type 98 torpedo warheads, ending in watery graves. The three partially cannibalized midget submarines in the maintenance shed (including HA-32 and HA-34) are also demolished and the cache of some 20 remaining torpedoes are thrown in the harbor.
The sheds and buildings are burned with the stored fuel.
When the Americans arrived in August all they found were ruins.
Entrance to tunnel near Japanese sub base on Kiska, August 1943. Tunnels gave protection to the Japanese against bombs and provided sleeping quarters; image and caption Alaska State Library/Alaska’s Digital Archives (as with three following images).
Inside view, looking seaward, of covered, Japanese submarine beaching railway, tracks leading to waterfront; a soldier passes large submarine handling cradles on left; warships are visible through opening.
Japanese winches used to pull submarines into work shed on Kiska, August 1943.
Two-person submarines, damaged by internal explosions, on Kiska, August 1943. Fleet Air Wing Four military personnel remove incapacitated submarines from marine railway track leading to waterfront; lumber is scattered along one side; sandbags line top of hillside; winches for hauling subs are at right. All of the submarines, as with other equipment left on the island by the Japanese, were captured in thoroughly disabled condition as to be expected.
Submarines converted into scrap on Kiska Island, August 1943. Fleet Air Wing Four military personnel use torches to cut up submarines for scrap
Kiska is federally owned and forms part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which is administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service, though the National Park Service and others are also stakeholders.
Atom Age Combat was a short series of comic books produced in the 1950s by Gerard Arthus (St. John Publishing Company) that occupied that special little niche that war comics have always tried to juggle: Be appealing enough that your audience would want to read em and exploit the hell out of the horrific subject matter to keep them coming back for more.
