Category Archives: weapons

Miami: Off the Beach

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How about this great action shot, 80 years ago today. A smoke ring is left by 6″/47 (15.2 cm) Mark 16 Turret #1 as the brand new Cleveland class light cruiser USS Miami (CL-89) pounds the Palau islands on 7 September 1944. 

Note that a wartime censor has obliterated her SK and Mk 37s Mk 4 radar. NHHC 80-G-284070

She would fire a very exact 900 6-inch (her magazines only had space for 2,400) and a matching 900 5-inch shells that day in just over four hours across two runs just offshore, targeting Japanese airfields, with shots corrected by her floatplanes.

Commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 28 December 1943, by June 1944 Miami was supporting fast carrier task forces and found herself in the above image as part of TG 34.6 in support of carrier strikes against Peleliu, Ngesebus, and Angaur in the Palau Islands.

She alternated her bombardment with her accompanying sisters USS Vincennes (CL-64) and Houston (CL-81).

From her 10-page report on the gun action:

Miami received six battle stars for her service in World War II and immediately after operated on the California coast training naval reservists until her decommissioning on 30 June 1947, whereupon she entered the Pacific Reserve Fleet. 

Miami’s name was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 September 1961 and her hulk was sold for scrapping the next year.

Her name was recycled for a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine (SSN-755) commissioned in 1990 and decommissioned in 2014. The fourth USS Miami (SSN-811) will be a future Block V Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine that was ordered in 2021.

Did the SIG Fuse fizzle?

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The Fuse, SIG Sauer’s newest P365 gets its name, says the company, as it is the “fusion of capability and concealment.” This is due to still being carry-sized while featuring all the goodies one could want, including a removable magwell, nickel-plated flat-faced trigger, LXG grip module with interchangeable backstraps, optics-ready (RMSc footprint) slide, easily co-witnessing iron sights, and extended 21-round magazines.

All this for well under $800.

I put 1,000 rounds through one in the past couple of months.

Full review in my column at Guns.com.

Radial Engine Glory

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How about this great shot of two aircraft rarely seen operating side-by-side on a flattop, showing Navy and Marine F4U-4 Corsairs of VF-43 (F-3xx) and VMF-211 (AF-144) spinning up behind a big Douglas AD-4 Skyraider (SS-807) of composite squadron VC-33 aboard the supercarrier USS Coral Sea (CVB-43) circa 1952.

While both the Corsair and Skyraider used 18-cylinder radials, the Pratt & Whitney R-2800-18W on the F4U “only” coughed up 2,380 hp while the Wright R-3350-26WA Duplex-Cyclone of the AD-4 went at least 2,700 hp.

Cora was on deployment to the Mediterranean Sea with Carrier Air Group Four (CVG-4) from 19 Apr 1952 to 12 Oct 1952. The mixed jet-prop group at the time included the “Gladiators” of VF-62 (F2H-2 Banshees), the Corsair-equipped “Hornets” of VF-44, “Wake Island Avengers” of VMF-211, and “Challengers” of VF-43; the Skyraider-flying “Blackbirds” of VF-45 and dets of AD-4W, AD-4N, F2H-2Ps, and HUP-1s.

While on service with the 6th Fleet, she visited Yugoslavia and carried Marshall Tito on a one-day cruise to observe carrier operations. On her next Med deployment, she would host Generalissimo Franco on a stop in Spain.

VMF-211 was redesignated VMA-211 during that cruise, while Cora herself morphed on paper from CVB-43 to CVA-43.

Meet the Gewehr 210

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The Bundeswehr, or German federal military, has tapped the home team at Heckler & Koch to supply it with a new model of sniper rifle based on the company’s MR308.

The recently teased A6 Designated Marksman Rifle variant was shown off by HK at trade shows in Nuremberg earlier this year–we saw it at EnforceTac– and was formally announced (German) by the company as the Bundeswehr’s new G210 rifle on Aug. 27.

HK officials stated the semi-auto 7.62 NATO-chambered MR308A6, with a 16.75-inch barrel, abbreviated M-LOK handguard, and full-length top Picatinny rail, was developed specifically for the G210 tender.

Some 500 rifles will be delivered beginning in 2025.

The company is also supplying the Bundeswehr with the HK416A8 in 5.56 NATO as the G36 – the country’s standard infantry rifle – as well as the HK437 in .300 BLK as the G39 SD.

More in my column at Guns.com.

First of the Dash Cans

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Official caption, 65 years ago this month: “U.S. Navy s First Helicopter Destroyer Conducts Exercises. USS Hazelwood is the Navy’s first anti-submarine helicopter destroyer, steams off the Atlantic coast near Newport, Rhode Island.”

Photograph released on 1 September 1959. 428-GX-USN 710543

Attached to Destroyer Development Group Two, Hazelwood is undergoing extensive training exercises to acquaint her crew with air operations. Her flight deck is designed to accommodate the DSN-1 Drone Helicopter (OH-50) scheduled for delivery from Gyrodnye Company of America, Inc. Soon, an HTK Drone Helicopter with a safety pilot, developed by the Kaman Aircraft Company, is being used for training exercises until the DSN-1 Drone becomes available. Through the use of a drone helicopter and homing torpedo, Hazelwood will possess an anti-submarine warfare kill potential at a much greater range than conventional destroyers.

A hard-charging Fletcher-class tin can, USS Hazelwood (DD-531) was built at Bethlehem’s San Francisco yard and joined the Pacific fleet in WWII.

Hazelwood in WWII, wearing Measure 32, Design 6d.

As part of her wartime service that saw her earn 10 battle stars, she caught a kamikaze off Okinawa in April 1945.

USS Hazelwood (DD-531) after being hit by a kamikaze off Okinawa, 29 April 1945. 80-G-187592

Hazelwood, all guns blazing, maneuvered to avoid two of the Zeros. A third screamed out of the clouds from astern. Although hit by Hazelwood’s fire, the enemy plane careened past the superstructure. It hit #2 stack on the port side, smashed into the bridge, and exploded. Flaming gasoline spilled over the decks and bulkheads as the mast toppled and the forward guns were put out of action. Ten officers and 67 men were killed, including the Commanding Officer, Comdr. V. P. Douw, and 35 were missing. Hazelwood’s engineering officer, Lt. (j.g.) C. M. Locke, took command and directed her crew in fighting the flames and aiding the wounded.

Suffering terrible damage, she was patched up enough at Ulithi to return to San Francisco under her own steam, albeit in an almost unrecognizable condition.

These photos by LIFE’s Thomas McAvoy as she steamed under the Golden Gate in June 1945, headed to Mare Island NSY for a rebuild:

After reconstruction and a spell in mothballs, Hazelwood served in the Med during the Suez Crisis, and, between 1958 and 1965, following another rebuild, would serve as a trials ship for DASH and the Shipboard Landing Assist Device (SLAD).

USS Hazelwood (DD 531) off Patiuxent, November 1960. She is shown with the prototype DASH hangar, landing area, and refueling system

In August 1963, Hazelwood logged more than 1,000 DASH landings on her deck. That’s almost carrier-level numbers.

“DASH” (Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter) the U.S. Navy’s new long-range anti-submarine weapon system, “DASH”, hovers in free flight over the flight deck of the USS HAZELWOOD (DD-531). Suspended under the drone’s body is a homing torpedo, the mainstay of the DASH system. The drone produced by Gyrodyne Co. of America, Inc., of Long Island, New York, is designated model DSN-1. It made the world’s first free flight of a completely unmanned drone heli. At the Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, MA. In August, 1960. March 22, 1961. KN-1814

As detailed by a 1970s Navy report:

(U) While initial feasibility tests of the helicopter-destroyer concept were successfully conducted aboard Manley (DD 940) with a drone version of the HTK-1 helicopter in February 1959, Hazelwood (DD 531) was the first destroyer to be completed with the installation of a drone helicopter facility (hangar, flight deck, and aviation fuel system). Initially, COMOPDEVFOR was scheduled to begin evaluation of the Hazelwood installation in July 1959.*

Delays in the development of the final drone helicopter, however, meant that initial tests of the DSN-1** would not begin before March 1960. This program, one of the Navy’s largest commitments, certainly in terms of numbers of ships, to an unproven concept was eventually to prove less than completely successful and, in fact, delayed the introduction of the manned helicopter into the Navy’s destroyer-sized vessels for nearly ten years. Nevertheless, it represented the beginning of the destroyer-helicopter team concept which was to receive growing emphasis throughout the sixties and seventies.

* In the Pacific one prototype FRAM started conversion at the same time, Thomason (DD 760).

** Single Boeing jet engine, gross weight 2,200 pounds, rotor diameter twenty feet.

Hazelwood decommissioned 19 March 1965, entered mothballs with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet for a decade, then was stricken and sold for scrap in 1976.

As for the QH-50, some 755 were produced in the 1960s and it was fielded through the 1970s on over a hundred U.S. destroyers, destroyer escorts, destroyer tenders, cruisers, and at least one battleship (New Jersey off Vietnam) as well as seven Japanese ships during the Cold War. While it didn’t live up to its potential, had there been no DASH program, there wouldn’t be the vibrant UAV fleet that is currently fielded.

RIP SS United States, we all knew this was coming

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The Liner SS United States Departing, circa 1952.

When she hit the water in 1952, the 990-foot, 53,000-ton ocean liner SS United States was a beauty to behold and was seriously fast by any nautical standard. Rumored capable of up to 44 knots— she had a 247,785 shp steam turbine plant– she could make 32 knots sustained on an ocean crossing. By comparison, the 80,000-ton RMS Queen Mary only had 200,000 shp on tap and needed 24 boilers to get it while the United States only carried eight.

Capable of carrying 1,928 passengers in elegance and style, it was planned she could be used as a military asset during a war in Europe, able to cram a 14,000-man infantry division aboard and race them across the Atlantic in four days. With a range of 10,000 miles without refueling, she could also race to the Pacific, although not via the Panama Canal due to her size.

Constructed at Newport News Shipbuilding, there was an aura of secrecy around her with her top speed, hull form, screws, and the full power of her plant long a closely guarded military fact.

The Liner SS United States on Nov. 28, 1952, at Norfolk Naval SY for inspection after initial voyages.  

Due to its hidden military objective (though the SS United States was never ultimately employed for wartime purposes), the construction of the ship was shrouded in secrecy. The ship was the first major liner to be built in a dry dock, away from prying eyes, and was unveiled to the public already in the water, ensuring its knife-like hull and propellers couldn’t be studied by foreign enemies.

However, the United States only sailed for 17 short years and was laid up unexpectedly in 1969.

Then followed a series of almosts over the past 55 years.

She has been looted of all of her furniture and artwork in a 1984 fire sale to pay for years of back pier rent. For better or worse this means that thousands of relics from her glory days are already on display around the globe. 

She was further stripped to the bare bulkheads during asbestos remediation in 1994.

She had deteriorated to the point that there was realistically nothing left to save– just 990 feet of floating hulk.

The stripped 1st-class enclosed promenade, which runs for most of the ship’s length, as it appears in 2024, wiki commons

The SS United States Conservancy, which has owned her since 2011, has not been able to raise enough money to do anything worthwhile with the old queen and the ship is facing eviction this month due to court order. The Conservancy apparently didn’t even have the funds on hand at first ($500,000) to tow her off the evicted pier.

Now, it is too late for anything except reefing her. Escambia County and Okaloosa County, Florida have submitted bids to turn the liner into the world’s largest artificial reef.

Okaloosa, which has the USS Oriskany off nearby Pensacola already, is voting Tuesday on a $9 million outlay for the acquisition ($1 million purchase), remediation, transport, and deployment of the liner off Destin.

The county has identified three active permitted areas (Large Area Artificial Reef Sites A, B, and C) that can accommodate the SS United States, all less than 25 miles from shore. These sites offer depths and clearance requirements suitable for divers of various skill levels, from beginners to technical divers.

The deal would include a land-based museum.

The statement from the Conservancy, which is heavy on blaming the pier owner (Penn Warehousing) without taking responsibility for not being able to pull off anything but host very expensive individual tours of the old girl in the past decade:

We understand that many of you are deeply concerned about the fate of the SS United States as the September 12 eviction deadline looms. These anxieties have been compounded by today’s media coverage about the prospect of the SS United States‘ potential conversion into an artificial reef in Florida. We are reaching out to share that the next chapter of the ship’s history is still being written and to provide additional background on the current situation.

As we explained in our last e-update, earlier this month the U.S. District Court denied the Conservancy’s request for a three-month extension at the ship’s Philadelphia pier, ruling instead that we have until September 12 to present a formal agreement to the court to remove the ship from Pier 82.

Now legally obligated to comply with the Judge’s rulings, the Conservancy has been in discussions on a range of scenarios for the ship’s future, including proposals to deploy the SS United States as an artificial reef in tandem with a land-based museum and immersive experience incorporating iconic components from the ship. To comply with the court’s ruling, we have entered into a contingent contract with Okaloosa County, Florida, to advance this vision. We must emphasize that this proposal remains subject to various contingencies, including a successful negotiation with pier operator Penn Warehousing to extend the ship’s stay beyond the September 12 deadline, while the complex logistics of moving and reefing the ship are worked out. Unfortunately, some media outlets have published misleading stories today suggesting that such a deal is a fait accompli. It is not. There are multiple discussions underway and many unresolved matters that make both the outcome and timing uncertain at this point.

Reefing is not the Conservancy’s preferred scenario for the SS United States. In an intense and all-hands-on-deck effort to keep the ship safely afloat, we have conducted a massive nationwide search for a new temporary location—a search that has thus far yielded no viable alternatives. With our hand being forced by Penn Warehousing, and scrapping being the only other viable option, we believe reefing is the more dignified outcome.

Since its founding, the Conservancy has worked tirelessly to raise public awareness about the ship’s historic importance, organize exhibitions and events, and care for a major museum collection of artwork, archival documentation, and historic components from the vessel. Our primary goal has always been to repurpose America’s Flagship and celebrate her legacy as a symbol of innovation, strength, and pride. Redeveloping the SS United States has always been a uniquely complex, costly, and challenging undertaking. We worked in close partnership for five years with prominent real estate development firm RXR Realty, and more recently MCR Hotels, to advance a commercially viable development plan for the ship. In the end, Penn Warehousing’s actions ended our ability to continue searching and advocating for a viable location for the project and we are unlikely to realize our shared dream. We are now working diligently to salvage that dream as best we can, albeit not in the way we had originally envisioned, but in a way that allows the story of our nation’s ship to inspire generations to come.

We completely understand that the prospect of reefing the SS United States may be challenging to contemplate. Many members of the Conservancy’s Board of Directors have been working to avoid such an outcome for over a decade. We vow to continue to do everything we can to best preserve her legacy each day leading up to the Court-imposed September 12 deadline, and we remain eternally grateful for your support and partnership in our shared mission.

Big Lift to Louisiana

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The 101st Airborne (Air Assault) has pulled off some pretty deep “Hail Mary” style operations in past military history.

For example, in Desert Storm, a group of Apaches led by AFSOC Pave Lows as Task Force Normandy fired the first shots of the air campaign by penetrating 150nm from the Saudi border to target EW sites near Baghdad. The Apaches cleared the way for the F-117s.

The division as a whole followed up on that opening act once the ground war got underway with the 101st’s three brigades conducting the longest and largest helicopter-borne air assault in history at the time, moving over 350 miles in 96 hours.

The thing is, Desert Storm was 33 years ago and, with the possible exception of some retired guys retread as DoD civilians or CW5s sipping coffee in the back of a shop somewhere, the 101st doesn’t have anyone left that pulled off those big lifts. While there was at least one notable rotor wing loss in Afghanistan (Turbine 33), the concept of having to pull a big-unit deep penetration against a near-peer/peer adversary ready to shoot you down is something rarely done in recent years– but maybe something needed soon.

With that, the 101st last month airlifted a full 3,000-member brigade (2nd MBCT) from its garrison at Fort Campbell, Kentucky to the JRTC at Fort Johnson (Polk), Louisiana– a distance of 500nm. The move saw the mix of 80 UH-60s, CH-47s, and AH-64s utilize a series of six forward arming and refueling points (FARPs)– mainly in Northern Mississippi– and a lot of night flying.

UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters assigned to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) depart the Oxford-University Airport, Miss. during forward arming and refueling point (FARP) operations on August 14, 2024. (Staff Sgt. Raymond Valdez)

For anyone who has ever flown over Mississippi at night, it’s almost all dark space and may as well be the middle of the desert of the ocean. That’s a big reason why the training bases at Columbus AFB and Meridian NAS exist.

Army Makes $1.8 Billion Effort to Rebuild Anti-Tank Weapon Stockpile

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Ukraine Stinger MANPADS, M141 BDM (SMAW-D), the NLAW and the Javelin ATGM, seen with transit cases in the Ukraine.

Since 2021, the Pentagon., as authorized by the White House, has drawn down “more than $56.2 billion” in weapons and equipment from DoD stocks to provide security assistance to Ukraine.

While the list of that aid spans more than three pages, the amount of anti-armor/anti-bunker weapons supplied is staggering including:

  • More than 10,000 FM-148 Javelin anti-armor systems;
  • More than 120,000 other anti-armor systems and munitions;
  • More than 9,000 BGM-71 Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles;

The “other” anti-armor systems mentioned above are a mix of man-portable, typically “disposable” single-shot munitions including 66mm M72 LAWS, and a trio of 84mm devices: M136 AT4s, Mk 153 SMAWs, and M141 Bunker Defeat Munitions (SMAW-Ds). That and a smattering of Combloc RPGs the U.S. had around for training and SOCOM use.

Developed in the 1960s to offer a more man-portable one-shot weapon instead of the 15-pound 90mm M20 “Super Bazooka,” the original 5.5-pound 66mm M72 LAW has seen continual service since then. The above images are from 1968 Vietnam, 1983 Grenada, and 2008 Iraq. The LAW endures, it would seem, and is still very much in use in Ukraine (Photos: National Archives)

That’s a lot of counter-armor/structure munitions but since the Ukrainians are fighting the mechanized Russian military it makes sense. Keep in mind the Germans made over 8 million Panzerfausts between 1943 and 1945 and still couldn’t stop it.

However, as only 50,000 Javelin missiles and just 12,000 reusable Command Launch Units have been made, and a lot of the disposables had been stockpiled back during the Cold War– ironically for just this purpose– the U.S. Army’s cupboard is looking a little bare right now.

This makes two DoD contract announcements this week very welcome news.

First is an announcement that the Javelin JV team picked up the largest single-year Javelin production contract to date, for $1.3 billion worth of missiles including more than 4,000 replacements for munitions sent to Ukraine already. The project “hopes” to ramp up production to 3,960 Javelin per year by late 2026.

Further, Saab just got a $500 million nod for the new XM919 “Individual Assault Munition” which is meant to replace the M72, AT4, and M141 with a single multi-use weapon.

Saab’s XM919 IAM submission is a modernized confined space AT4. Over 1 million AT4s have been produced since 1985, and the system is currently deployed by over 15 countries worldwide. (Photo: Saab)

Capable of functioning day or night and from within enclosures such as from inside buildings, bunkers, and in built-up urban environments, the requirements for the IAM is that it be a shoulder-fired, single-use munition that hits the scales at less than 20 pounds and tapes out at under 40 inches.

With an engagement envelope of between 30 and 200 meters, targets on the menu include light armor and earth and timber bunkers, as well as the ability – via a tandem warhead – to pierce double reinforced concrete, adobe, and triple brick walls with “lethality effects.” It also has to be able to operate inside a temperature swing of -40⁰F to +140⁰F.

Of course, delivery isn’t expected to wrap up on the M919– if it reaches IOC– until 2029, so there’s that.

India Orders Another 73,000 SIG 716 Rifles

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New Hampshire-based SIG Sauer announced this week the company has pulled down a second significant contract to supply the second-largest standing army in the world with rifles.

The award, from the Government of India’s Ministry of Defence, is to supply an additional 73,000 SIG 716 rifles to that country’s military. When completed, 145,400 SIG716 rifles will be in service with the Indian Army.

In early 2019, purchased 72,400 of the rifles, chambered in 7.62 NATO. The lion’s share of these – some 66,400 – went to the Indian Army, while the balance went to the Air Force and Navy. The move came about as the Indian Army, which fields more than 1.2 million active troops, was undergoing a comprehensive firearms procurement process to advance the capabilities of the country’s infantrymen while facing increased threats from neighboring China.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Sailors Knocking

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80 years ago, the Liberation of Paris, 26 August 1944, the American-built M10 tank destroyer No. 420 094 “Flibustier” of the 3rd Sqn, 2nd Pltn, Régiment Blindé de Fusilier Marins, of the Free French 2nd Armored Division in action outside the Hôtel Crillon, place de la Concorde, 8ème arrondissement, Paris.

Photo by Robert Pichonnier via the Paris Musee Collections, PH18871

Note the mixture of curious civilians taking cover watching the French and U.S. troops flush out the snipers. The commander appears to be waving a signal flag. The eastern building, the Hôtel de la Marine, housed the headquarters of the French Navy until 2015, which made sense as the RBMF was made up of Free French sailors and marines– typically recruited from British POW camps.

As Flibustier’s name is one of many French descriptors for a pirate and was traditionally used for warships, what could be more correct than these sailors and marines, fresh from the brig essentially, made sure to roll on Navy HQ?

As noted by one researcher:

The main victim during this battle was one of Gabriel’s massive Corinthian columns, the fifth one from the right along the facade of the Hotel Crillon. According to the story, the column was destroyed by the gunner of M10 Flibustier after he was warned by his commander to “watch out for the fifth column”. The commander was referring to the collaborationist snipers. The story probably originated by the civilians who were around M10 Flibustier which was closest to the column at the time. But Flibustier’s cannon was pointed away from the building when the column was destroyed. One source stated that one of the Shermans on the other side of the Place de la Concorde actually fired and destroyed the column.

Free French M10 Tank Destroyer “FLIBUSTIER” in Paris during the Liberation – August 1944. LIFE Magazine Archives – David Scherman Photographer WWP-PD

Flibustier almost survived the war. The M10 was de-tracked by German tellermines on 16 April 1945 in Royan.

For what it is worth, the Hotel de Crillon, mentioned Hemingway in several of his novels including The Sun Also Rises (1926) and The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) and where Orwell worked as a dishwasher in 1929, endures. Closed for remodeling in 2013, it reopened in 2017. 

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