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Category Archives: World War One

So much for turning the other cheek

Posted on December 4, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Reds of “Budyonny’s Cavalry Army” (Konarmia) the key Bolshevik fire brigade of the Russo-Polish War. Note the mix of French Adrian helmets, Cossack shapskas and Trotsky caps for headgear. Also note the Cossack at the left is wearing the 1909 pattern officer’s sam browne web gear to include a trench whistle near his left armpit. As pre-Civil War Cossack officers in the Konarmia were rare (Budenny himself had only been a senior NCO in the Imperial Dragoons) this officer is likely had an interesting tale– though notably he has ditched his shoulder boards. Then again he could just be a guy who found some web gear.

Sputnik, which is more or less a pro-Russian propaganda site masquerading as news, kind of Moscow’s Fox News if you will, actually has an interesting historical piece about the lost Bolshevik Red Army POWs from the 1919-21 Russo-Polish War.

Of course it bends to the East in slant, but honestly I have never read anything about this facet of that war before, so I found it a good read, especially as they tried to spin the Katyn Massacres of World War II as a sort of fair-play retaliation for what happened back in 1921. Whatever you have to tell yourself to get through the night…

During the Polish-Soviet war over 150,000 Soviet military servicemen became prisoners of war and were held in Polish POW camps. The camps were located in Strzalkowo, Pikulice, Wadowice, and Tuchola.

Professor Gennady F. Matveyev of Moscow State University carried out thorough research on the matter and published the book “Polskiy Plen” (“The Polish Captivity”) which sheds light on this controversial historical episode.

Citing Russian and Polish archival documents the professor underscores that Poland had captured up to 206,877 Red Army soldiers, while 60,000 to 83,500 died in captivity due to unbearable living conditions, poor nutrition, torture and disease.

More here

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of C. LeRoy Baldridge

Posted on November 22, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of C. LeRoy Baldridge

Born May 27, 1889 in Alton, New York, Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge was a gifted artist even as a youth. Accepted at age 10 as the youngest student at Frank Holme’s Chicago School of Illustration, he paid his way through the University of Chicago painting signs and selling sketches, graduating in 1911.

About that time he joined the Illinois National Guard as trooper in the Chicago Black Horse Troop, 1st Illinois Cavalry Regiment and, like all the other mounted units of the U.S. Army and reserves, was called up in 1916 and rushed to the border with Mexico following the attack on Columbus by Pancho Villa’s raiders. Once demobilized, he sought adventure in Europe and, as the U.S. wasn’t in the war just yet, enlisted as a medical orderly (stretcher bearer) with the French Army.

When the Americans did go “over there” Baldridge was able to transfer to the AEF but, instead of using him as a cavalryman or corpsman, Pershing used him as a member of the growing number of war correspondents. Roaming the Western Front embedded with the doughboys, he made hundreds of sketches from the front line. He even bumped into his old mates from the Illinois National Guard who had left their sabers behind as their regiment had been rechristened the 124th U.S. Field Artillery and saw the elephant at St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne and the Lorranie.

This immense body of sketches appeared back home in Leslie’s Weekly and Scribners while the troops he covered saw them in Stars and Stripes. He remained in Germany into 1919 with the army of occupation.

“Along the Rhine; To Make Sure He [Prussianism] Stays Down.” Illustration by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge. The Stars and Stripes, December 13, 1918, p. 4, col. 4.

After the war, many were fleshed out for his first book, I Was There with the Yanks on the Western Front, Sketches, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919. The 340-page work is here for free.

An idealist who once said of war, “If only I can make the public see what war is – what a dirty, low thing it is, and how brutal it makes men, fine clean men – then they’d fight to the last ditch for the League of Nations,” Baldridge was a champion of peace in the 1920s and 30s, leading a small and controversial segment of the American Legion.

He co-founded and later led the New York-based Willard Straight Post of the American Legion who took what was seen then as a leftist and downright pacifist attitude towards war. The post was later investigated in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

During this time he roamed the Earth with his wife, producing hundreds of works for books and magazines alike, bring the world back to readers in the U.S. the way a camera never could.

During WWII he helped illustrate and produce a series of Pocket Guides to West Africa and Iran for the War Department as well as lending his brush to war loan art.

Once his beloved wife died in 1963, Baldridge began something of his own quiet decline.

The end of his career saw him in the desert, painting haunting landscapes in which people seem far off and in a dream. No more trenches. No more machine guns. Just high desert and adobe for as far as the eye can see.

One summer afternoon at his Santa Fe, New Mexico home in 1977, he ended his own life with a pistol he had been issued in World War I while “with the Yanks.”

His work is celebrated extensively by the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, to which he made large contributions while smaller collections exisit at the Smithsonian, New Mexico Museum of Art, and Fisk University.

Baldridge’ old unit remains as the 106th Cavalry Squadron, part of the 33rd Brigade Combat Team of the Illinois Army National Guard.

Thank you for your work, sir. May you find peace.

The PPS Submachine Gun: The Leningrad typewriter

Posted on November 21, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

You are a 29-year old mechanical engineer and the city you live in, the second largest city in the country, is besieged by enemy troops. The defenders need a simple gun that can be made quickly but is still effective. You are Alex Sudayev, its 1941 Leningrad, and your solution is the PPS.

Born in battle

In 1941, the Soviet Red Army was the largest in the world but found itself far outclassed in terms of weapons, leadership, and tactics when Hitler launched his immense invasion of the Soviet Union in June of that year. Within weeks, the German Army Group North under Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad and placed it effectively under a siege that would last some 900 grueling days. Civilians drafted right off the streets were augmenting the defenders of the city but they needed weapons faster than you could say bad borscht.

Alexey Ivanovich Sudayev at the time was an engineer working inside the city. Taking the PPSh-41 submachine gun design of firearms legend Georgi Shpagin, he reworked it. Whereas the 41 used a heavy, carved wooden stock, and required nearly 8-hours of machining per weapon, he produced a simplified blowback weapon that fired from an open bolt and could be made in just 2.7-hours, using half the raw steel as the PPSh-41, and best of all, no wood.

Dubbed the Pistolet-Pulemet Sudaeva model of 1942 (PPS-42), the gun was rushed into production locally.

Design

Sudaeva’s gun was a rough looking piece of work cut from a sheet of basic stamped steel and of blocky construction, with an upper and lower receiver that hinges open. Its bolt was simple and the cocking handle placed directly to it, reciprocating the whole time the full-auto only weapon fired. To keep the rattling of this open bolt from cracking the stamped steel receiver, a simple leather recoil buffer was installed.

Weighing in at 6.5-pounds, it was 35.7-inches long with its stock extended. With its folding metal stock collapsed atop the gun it was a very compact 25.2-inches long. A 10.7-inch barrel proved accurate enough for spraying Nazi storm troopers and was enclosed in a square barrel shroud with air holes for cooling. The gun used a 35-round detachable box magazine with a very slight banana curve to it to feed the weapon with 7.62x25mm Tokarev pistol cartridges at a rate of 600 per minute.

field stripping the pps is simple

The gun fieldstripped incredibly easy: dropping the hinged lower away from the upper and removing the bolt and spring, it could be taught in about 30 seconds. This made the gun perfect or issuing to a conscript that up until yesterday was a student, factory worker, or farmer. Give em a uniform, a PPS, and some bullets and send em to the front to fight the Fascist invaders. Of course, often the front could be just two blocks over, which made transport easy.

The Soviets loved the design and after some 45,000 of the PPS-42 were made, while a gently finished version, the PPS43 was put into more widespread production. The PPS-43 was about an inch shorter in all of the dimensions and used a chrome-lined barrel that was good for up to 20,000 rounds of corrosive ammo.

Use

The PPS became the standard sub gun of the late war Soviet Army. The gun was a good two pounds lighter than the PPSh-41, and almost a foot shorter, which made it a better fit for tank crews and vehicle drivers. Also, being cheaper, faster to build, and using fewer materials helped in its choice for adoption.

The pps was the soviets favorite sub gun in late World War Two

In possibly the most famous Soviet image of the war, a young Red Army soldier is seen raising a flag over the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin in 1945—with a PPS slung over his back. The image is seen as the Russian version of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima and the PPS was there, front and center.

possibly the most famous image of a soviet soldier in wwii and he has a pps

Sadly, Sudaev died in 1946 just before his 34th birthday, and his gun was already being phased out in favor of the newly introduced AK-47. Like the PPS, it was simply made of steel stampings and later AKMS models carried a very similar folding stock. Even while the Soviets started to withdraw the gun from their service, they shipped machine tooling and expertise abroad to allies to help them make their own versions of the Leningrad typewriter. In Poland, it was put into production as the PPS wz.1943/1952 and continues being churned out by Radom to this day.

The pps lived on in asia as the type 54

In Red China, the PPS43 became the Type 54. GIs fighting in Korea encountered this dreaded Asian burp gun and also in Vietnam where it’s service spread for generations out over a 30-years. As such, these guns are still quite often seen in the hands of guerilla types and drug-runners throughout the jungles of South West Asia to this day.

If you watch enough footage from conflicts in the Third world, you will see the PPS popping up everywhere from the Ivory Coast to Thailand and everywhere in between. They are rusty and crusty, but they still work.

PPS in Africa

Fighters loyal to Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara celebrate in the main city Abidjan, April 11, 2011. Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo was arrested by opposition forces on Monday after French troops closed in on the compound where the self-proclaimed president had been holed up in a bunker for the past week. REUTERS/Emmanuel Braun

A soldier of the United Nations Mission in Ivory Coast (MINUCI) inspects weapons handed in by soldiers of the New Forces (FN) on June 15, 2010 at the military camp of Korhogo during a ceremony where the former rebels started joining the army. AFP PHOTO / SIA KAMBOU (Photo credit should read SIA KAMBOU/AFP/Getty Images)

Collectability

The PPS43 is one of the great bargains today in terms of affordable surplus guns that are both historical and shootable.

These guns, crazy cheap on the surplus market, were imported off and on into the US Pre-1986 and a number of full-auto originals are floating around. They proved popular with Hollywood prop houses in the 1980s and 90s, with a handful being visually mocked up to resemble the more popular (and much more expensive) Heckler & Koch MP5. Other non-working models were mocked up for movies including the Mel Gibson Vietnam epic, We Were Soldiers and are available for collectors out there for under $400.

PPS dummy gun used in We Were Soldiers

Radom in Poland makes an almost perfect semi-auto pistol version of the PPS43 that is currently being imported. Dubbed the PPS43-C, it still has the 10-inch barrel and folding stock—but its tack is welded to keep it from being classified as a SBR.

New made ppsh43 PPS-43 pps subgun carbines semi auto

This is one of the few subguns that are still widely available in torched kit form for cheap. Sportsman’s Guide , MGS, Centerfire Systems, and others stock these for about $80, which makes the likely hood of a getting a kit and doing a reweld well within reach of the common hobbyist. Remember to keep your ATF regs in line, as you do not want to make an illegal machine gun. There are many pistol builds out there with new receivers and no buttstock as well as 16-inch barreled carbines made by Wiselite, and others.

It makes a great starting point for an under $600 SBR build as well.

Safety and known issues

The leather buffers on these guns are problematic and, while you can always create your own if the going gets tough, it may be wise to pick up several ‘OE’ models while you can and store them in a clean dry area for when the Germans come. Keep in mind these should be inspected and replaced every few hundred rounds or so. It’s a good idea to have enough buffers in stock to get you through the ammo you have on hand at least, so get in touch with your buffer math each time you buy ammo.

Speaking of bullets. Ammo used to be crazy cheap for these guns, running about $75 a case on the surplus market just a couple years ago, but today tends to go a little higher. There is still a good bit of Polish and Bulgarian bulk floating around for now. New made Sellier & Bellot production go for about .50 cents per round, which will keep you from burning through a whole lot.

No matter how many Germans are surrounding your city.

Weird but functional enough for 100+ years of service

Posted on November 20, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Ian from Forgotten Weapons takes a look at the curious inner workings of a Danish Madsen light machine gun. Its an oddball falling block action that originates from the gas lamp era. Oh, and the neat thing, is the gun he is looking at is was made in 1950. Yup, even with such designs as the MG42 and Browning M1919 out there, the Madsen was still in production that late.

More on the Madsen from an earlier article I wrote:

Designed in 1896 in Denmark, the Madsen Light Machinegun has served dozens of countries in more than a hundred years of warfare from 1904 to the present day.

The Madsen Light Machinegun was developed in 1896 in Denmark by Captain W. O. Madsen of the Danish artillery and adopted by the Danish Marines in 1897. Originally a sort of assault rifle it was perfected into the final design as a light machine gun in 1902.

It served with the Danish military for more than fifty years, only retiring in 1955. When Hitler’s Germany invaded the country on April 9, 1940 they fired to preserve Denmark’s honor in the Danish military’s hopeless one-day defense of their country. Ordered turned over to the Nazis these same weapons served Hitler throughout the Second World War. The odyssey of the Madsen Light Machine Gun however, is even more complex that this one chapter.

The Madsen Company early on won a large foreign contract to Denmark’s Baltic neighbor, Russia. Imperial Russia, rich with gold due to being a huge exporter of grain, but poor in industry, was forced to buy many of its most sophisticated weapons overseas. The Tsar, Nicholas II, was a son of a Danish princess, bought several items, including naval vessels (his own yacht, the Standart— officially an auxiliary cruiser– was Danish built) and small arms from non-aligned Denmark.

Bought in numbers by the Tsar for the military buildup in the Russian Far East, Madsen machine guns were used in 7.62x54r caliber by Cossack light cavalry in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Russian Madsens continued in active service and were seen often in World War One and in the subsequent Russian Civil War by dozens of end users.

The guns made an early appearance in Mexico’s series of civil wars, shown here in 1913 in the hands of military school cadets

Kaiser Wilhelm’s Imperial Germany also bought a number of Madsens from Denmark, chambered in 8mm Mauser. These weapons served alongside overly complicated Mexican Monodragon rifles in early German scout planes and balloons in the aerial war in World War One. Germany also created the first light machine gun units, called Musketen Battalions, based on the Madsen in 1915.

German soldiers with Madsen machine guns 1915

The Musketen Battalions carried as many as 150 of the weapons which provided an amazing suppressive fire capability. Latin America was a huge customer of the Madsen.

Soldiers, possibly Czechoslovak Legion, using a Madsen machine gun note french Adrian helmets

The new countries of Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Poland, and Estonia, who emerged from the wreckage of that war, used captured stocks of those old Tsarist weapons into the opening stages of WWII against both German and Soviet invaders.

Countries as diverse as Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador bought the light machine gun in a multitude of calibers. They saw combat in the Chaco War (1932-1935) between Paraguay and Bolivia, and untold coups, insurgent operations and civil wars.

Short barreled Madsen light machine gun, a Danish manufactured weapon used in the 1930’s and 40’s in the Dutch West India Colonies

Portugal used the weapon in their wars in their African colonies of Mozambique and Angola and left enough behind there to ensure that they pop up all over the continent.

Two members of the 4th special hunter company manning a Madsen machine gun. By then somewhat of an antique, in 1970s Angola. Observe how the little pooch is completely unconcerned with the development.

When Denmark was liberated after World War II they began exporting the Madsen again and continued production of the slightly modified weapon as late as 1957. Dansk Industri Syndikat A.S. produced weapons as late as the 1970s. Their wares included the ubiquitous Madsen Light Machine gun, the Madsen model 50 submachine gun which was also very popular in Latin America and Africa, and a number of bolt action rifles that also saw service in such countries as Colombia and Bolivia.

They are still to be encountered in trouble spots around the world. The fact that no spare parts have been made for these weapons in over fifty years attests to the machine gun’s reliability. The Madsen was recently pictured in use with the Brazilian military police during battles with drug gangs in 2013.

Madsen still giving a strong showing with Brazilian special police in 2013

Warship Wednesday Nov. 18, 2015: The Brooklyn Stinger of the Calico King

Posted on November 18, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.
– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Nov. 18, 2015: The Brooklyn Stinger of the Calico King

Here we see the steam gunboat USS Scorpion (PY-3) in her gleaming white scheme in an image taken in 1899. She may not look it, but when the Detroit Photographic Co. snapped this photo, the mighty Scorpion was already a killer.

Mr. MCD Borden (not Franz Ferdinand)

Ordered by Massachusetts textile magnate Matthew Chaloner Durfee Borden, commonly referred to at the time as “the Calico King” due to his huge factories in the Fall River area, Scorpion began life in 1896 as the very well-appointed steam yacht Sovereign built by the private yard of John N. Robins in South Brooklyn, New York to a design by J. Beaver Webb.

The rakish vessel, a 212-footer at the waterline (250-foot oal) with twin masts and twin screws powered by 2500shp of triple expansion engines, she could touch 15 knots with ease and, when running light in just ten feet of seawater, surpass that when needed.

The New York Times wrote she was, “supposed to be the fastest craft of its size on the Atlantic seaboard, and all the Jersey Central Railroad commuters between Seagirt and Atlantic Highlands know all about it.”

Borden entered her into the New York Yacht Club, where he was an esteemed member and she sailed under his care with the Seawanhaka Yacht, South Side Sportsmen’s, and Jekyll Island Clubs as well.

When war with Spain came, Borden did the patriotic thing and placed his yacht at the Navy’s service, who promptly hauled her to the New York Navy Yard, painted her haze gray, added a quartet of 5″/40 guns located on her sides, fore and aft of the superstructure– the heaviest battery fitted to any yacht converted for service during that conflict, and commissioned her four days later as USS Scorpion on 11 April 1898.

While only a yacht, her powerful 5″ guns, typically reserved for cruisers, made her a brawler able to dish out some heavy blows and the Navy Department had just the man to conn her. You see Scorpion’s skipper was German-born LCDR Adolph Marix (USNA Class of 1868) and the former executive officer of the battleship USS Maine whose explosion in Havana four months earlier had sparked the war.

By May she was off the coast of Cuba and spent an eventful ten weeks capturing lighters, assisting with landings, enforcing blockades and patrolling the shallows and high seas alike with the Flying Squadron.

On July 18, she was part of a 7 ship attack force, including two gunboats of shallow draft—Wilmington and Helena; two armed tugs—Osceola and Wampatuck; and two converted yachts—Hist and Hornet that sailed into the heavily fortified Spanish base at Manzanillo and, with using her big 5-inchers to good effect, kept the Spanish coastal batteries tied down while the smaller ships destroyed five Spanish gunboats, three blockade runners and one pontoon in less than four hours with little damage to themselves.

When the war ended, Scorpion was recalled to New York, painted white and refitted with a smaller armament while Marix left on his way to become a Vice Admiral. He wasn’t the only one. Over the course of her 31 years in the Navy, she had a staggering 21 skippers to include a Medal of Honor winner and no less than five who went on to become admirals.

In October 1900. Description: Catalog #: NH 2742 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command

Another Detroit Publishing Co. shot, this one from 1903, with her laundry hanging. LOC

View of officers and men circa 1904. Note the six-pounder Description: Catalog #: NH 83748

Photograph of ship, with diary entry and roster of officers. Lieutenant Commander Richard G. Davenport was aboard as passenger. Description: Catalog #: NH 43803

As you may have guessed, Borden never got the Scorpion back and the Navy paid good money for her. She spent six years with the North Atlantic Squadron as a dispatch ship and flag waver small enough to venture into backwater ports around the Caribbean and protect U.S. interests.

Speaking of which, by 1908 she was on her way to Europe. Keeping the svelte gunboat with her 60-70 man peacetime crew in semi-permanent anchor in the Bosporus near the Dolma Bagtchi Palace, she became the station ship in Constantinople. There she remained, leaving to take the occasional Black Sea or Med cruise, for a decade.

Several times she took part in international actions, helping to assist earthquake victims in Messina, Italy; landing armed sailors to guard the U.S. Legation in Constantinople during riots in the city; and venturing into the disputed Balkan ports during the tumultuous events that led up to the Great War.

USS Scorpion (PY-3) in Constantinople, circa 1912 NHHC UA 04.01 Margaret Duggan Collection

Speaking of which, when the U.S. entered WWI on the side of the Allies, the humble Scorpion faced the might of the German-cum-Ottoman battlecruiser Goeben and, a suddenly a stranger in a strange land, was peacefully interned on 11 April 1917 without a fight, her breechblocks removed and a guard posted.

View taken at Constantinople, Turkey, in 1919 of ship’s officers. Front row (L-R): Lieutenant Samuel R. Deets, USN; Commander Richard P. McCullough, USS; Lieutenant Leonard Doughty, USN. Back row: Lieutenant George P. Shields (MC), USN; Paymaster Clarence Jackson, USN; Lieutenant William O. Baldwin, USN; Lieutenant Gale A. Poindexter, USN. Description: Courtesy of LCDR Leonard Doughty, 1929 Catalog #: NH 50276

When the war ended, she rearmed and remained as the flag of the U.S. High Commissioner to Turkey, keeping her place in now-Istanbul until 1920 when the influx of White Russian exiles and tensions with Greece forced her relocation to Phaleron Bay, Greece, where she remained on station until recalled back to the states 16 June 1927.

In the early 1920s, the Black Sea was an American lake, as the Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Ottoman fleets had largely ceased to exist while the British and French fleets, facing near bankruptcy and mutinous crews, respectively, were keen to send only a few vessels to Constantinople and Odesa and withdraw them as soon as possible. At its height, the U.S. fleet in Constantinople included over 26 warships including the battleships Arizona and Utah, a dozen destroyers, heavy and light cruisers, floating repair shops, and transport ships.

Anchored off the Dolma Bagtche Palace, Constantinople, probably during the early 1920s. Description: Original negative, given by Mr. Franklin Moran in 1967.Catalog #: NH 65006 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command.

1925

Decommissioned, Scorpion sat on red lead row for a couple years, a Spanish-American War vet in a fleet of 1920s modern marvels.

On 25 June 1929, she was sold for her value in scrap. Very few artifacts remain from her other than some postal covers.

Her name has gone on to become something of an albatross for the submarine force. USS Scorpion (SS-278), a Gato-class submarine, was lost in 1944 to a mine in the Yellow Sea while USS Scorpion (SSN-589), a Skipjack-class submarine, was lost in an accident in 1968. In each case there were no known survivors and her name has been absent from the Naval List for 47 years.

As for Borden, he passed away in 1912 at age 69 while his beloved Sovereign/Scorpion was in Europe. His leviathan American Printing Company outlived them all, but by 1934 was shuttered because of the Great Depression.

Specs:

Displacement: 775 long tons (787 t)
Length: 212 ft. 10 in (64.87 m)
Beam: 28 ft. 1 in (8.56 m)
Draft: 11 ft. (3.4 m)
Installed power: 2 × WA Fletcher Co, Hoboken NJ triple expansion steam engines; 2500 IHP total; powered by twin Babcock and Wilcox 225# boilers. (as built) later Four Yarrow boilers, two 1,400ihp vertical inverted triple expansion steam engines, two shafts.
Propulsion: Twin screw
Speed: 14 kn (16 mph; 26 km/h)
Complement: 35 (civilian service) 90 (1898) 60 (1911)
Armament:
(1898) – Four 5″/40 guns
(1905) – Six 6-pounder (57mm) guns and four 6mm Colt machine guns
(1911) – Four 6 pounders in rapid fire mounts

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The bones of the ‘the grandest white elephant’

Posted on November 7, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

This ship graveyard contains the graves of 230 United States Shipping Board Merchant Fleet Corporation ships sunk in the river in 1925. These ships were wooden hulled steamships made to a poor design during the Great War– the Liberty Ships of WWI if you will– then sold for their value as scrap.

Bethlehem Steel came down there in WWII and scraped up all the easy to reach steel for use in other enterprises, but the keels and wooden parts that escaped burning are still there, in the mud.

Mallows Bay is now in the process of protection under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act

Majestic Steed

Posted on November 5, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

When you think of the Australian Light Horse, this comes to mind:

Nº.1457 Sergeant Clement Edward Hill, 3rd. Australian Light Horse Regiment Colourised by Jared Enos

However, these also served…

An unidentified soldier on his donkey gazing across the barren plains. Each regiment of the Australian Light Horse operating in Palestine had a few donkeys which were ridden by batmen and grooms. c1918.

Warship Wednesday Nov.4th, 2015: HMs long-lasting welterweight sluggers

Posted on November 4, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Warship Wednesday Nov.4th, 2015: HMs long-lasting welterweight sluggers

IWM photo

Here we see the head of her class, the Royal Navy monitor HMS Erebus at a buoy in Plymouth Sound in early 1944, as she was prepping to pummel the jerries overlooking Normandy. Though a cruiser-sized hull with a destroyer’s draft, this ship and her sister, HMS Terror carried a very impressive set of battleship 15-inchers and her crew knew how to use them.

Rushed into service in the darkest days of World War I, these ships were built not to slug it out with the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet (as the whole rest of the RNs battle line was!) but rather to close into old Willy’s stormtroopers along the French and Belgian coasts and plaster them but good.

As such, these 405-foot/8,450-ton ships, with a shallow 11 foot draft, carried an impressive armament but very little armor (just 4-8 inches, enough for splinter protection from German destroyers and field artillery), and were very slow, at a very pedestrian 12 knots.

Huge anti-torpedo bulges were fitted to these squat ships to allow them to suck up German fish and keep punching (These proved so effective that when Erebus was attacked by a German Fernlenkboote remote controlled boat carrying a very serious 1550-pound charge, all it did was cave in 50 feet of her bulge and knock loose a lot of equipment– but failed to sink her. Terror likewise survived German torpedo boat love while in service).

Named after the two ships, HMS Erebus and Terror, of the 1839-43 expedition to Antarctica of Sir James Clark Ross which resulted in mapping most of the Antarctic Coastline (and for whom the Ross Sea is now named) and later of the ill-fated expedition of Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin, their namesakes were tiny 100~ foot long “bomb vessels” with huge 13 and 10 inch mortars– which in the end was surprisingly fitting. (As a footnote, the “bombs bursting in air” part of the Star Spangled banner comes from the 1814 mortaring of Fort McHenry, for which bomb vessel Terror was on scene).

‘Erebus’ and the ‘Terror’ in New Zealand, August 1841, by John Wilson Carmichael, via wiki

As with any monitor, its the guns that steal the show and both 1916 Erebus and Terror carried a pair of huge 15″/42 (38.1 cm) Mark I naval guns, which proved to be among the most popular and hard-service type carried by HMs battleships throughout WWI and WWII, being carried by everything from the Queen Elizabeth to Vanguard classes, as well as being fitted as giant coastal artillery pieces at Dover and Singapore.

These were really big guns: Worker being helped out of a BL 15 heavy gun after she had finished cleaning the rifling, Coventry Ordnance Works, England, United Kingdom .

Terror's 15s, these ships had thier turret set so high to enable her shallow draft

Terror’s 15s, these ships had their turret set so high to enable her shallow draft. Note the observation tower.

From the same shoot: A female worker cleans the rifling of a 15-inch gun after being lifted inside the barrel in the Coventry Ordnance Works, Warwickshire during the First World War. (Source -IWM Q 30135) Colorized by Doug

These beasts could fire a 1,920 lb. shell (of which the stubby monitors carried 200 in their magazine) out to 29,000 yards. It should be noted that the monitors were able to elevate their guns to an amazing 30 degrees (most of the battleship fittings were limited to 20 degrees, with only HMS Hood able to match the monitors’ arc), giving them about 5,000 yards more range. Later SC super charges boosted this to 40,000~ yards, which is downright impressive for guns designed in 1912!

Erebus‘s guns came from the 355-foot monitor HMS Marshal Ney (and were originally built for the Revenge-class battleship Ramillies) while the smaller Ney was given a more appropriate single 9.2-inch mount. Terror‘s guns came from a spare turret left over from the Courageous-class battlecruiser HMS Furious that was finished as an aircraft carrier and didn’t need them.

Both ships were laid down at Harland and Wolff yards, Erebus at the concern’s Govan, Scotland site, Terror at H&W’s Belfast site (the same yard that had just three years before completed RMS Titanic) in October 1915.

By the fall of 1916, they were both in commission with their abbreviated 204-man crews and headed to the Continent.

They proved their worth at bombarding German naval forces based at Ostend and Zeebrugge as part of the Long Range Bombardment force for the Zeebrugge raid and in plastering the Kaiser’s forces on shore during the Fourth Battle of Ypres.

Erebus kept slugging into 1919-20 when she participated in the British Intervention in Northern Russia, sailing around the White Sea as needed and popping off shots at the Bolsheviks around Murmansk and Archangel.

Terror at Malta, 1930s

After the war, while other monitors were laid up or went to the breakers, T&E remained somewhat active, flexing their guns in a series of tests against captured German armor and serving as gunnery training ships, guard ships and depot vessels as needed.

Oh the fate of peacetime service! Note the school house/barracks on Erebus in this 1930s photo.

Terror at Singapore, early 1939, with camo added

When the next war came, the aging monitors were stripped of their peacetime housing, given an updated AAA suite, and called back to service, first in the Mediterranean Fleet, where Erebus‘s shallow draft enabled her to become a blockade-runner into besieged Tobruk and Terror stood to in Malta to provide a floating anti-air battery against incessant Axis air attacks.

Speaking of which, Terror was severely damaged in attacks by German Junkers Ju 88 bombers on 22 February 1941 off the coast of Libya and sank while under tow the next day, gratefully with very few casualties.

Erebus finished her Second World War, returning to French waters where she helped bombard British beaches at Normandy. Suffering a detonation that crippled one of her guns, she nevertheless continued the war into late 1944, advancing with the land forces along the coast into Belgium and Holland.

Decommissioned at the end of hostilities, she was scrapped in 1946 although her single good 15-incher left was kept as a spare for the RN’s last battleship, HMS Vanguard.

Hard serving, indeed.

Specs:

Displacement: 7,200 long tons (7,300 t)
Length: 380 ft. (120 m) (p/p); 405 ft. (123 m) (o/a)
Beam: 88 ft. (27 m)
Draught: 11 ft. 8 in (3.56 m)
Installed power: 6,235 ihp (4,649 kW) (trials); 6,000 ihp (4,500 kW) (service)
Propulsion:
2 × triple expansion reciprocating engines,
Babcock boilers
2 × screws
Speed: 13.1 kn (24.3 km/h; 15.1 mph) (trials); 12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph) (service)
Capacity: Fuel Oil: 650 long tons (660 t) (normal); 750 long tons (762.0 t) (maximum)
Complement: 204 WWI, 315 WWII
Armament:
(1916)
2 × 15-inch /42 Mk 1 guns in a single turret
2 × single 6-inch (150 mm) guns
4 × single 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft (AA) guns
(1939)
2 × 15-inch /42 Mk 1 guns in a single turret
8 × single mount 4-inch (102 mm) BL Mk IX guns
2 × single mount 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft guns
2 × quadruple .50-inch (12.7 mm) Vickers machine gun AA mounts
6 × .303 Vickers

Armor:
Deck: 1 in (25 mm) (forecastle); 1 in (25 mm) (upper); 4 in (100 mm) (main, slopes); 2 in (51 mm) (main, flat); .75 to 1.5 in (19 to 38 mm) (lower)
Bulkheads: 4 in (100 mm) (fore and aft, box citadel over magazines)
Barbettes: 8 in (200 mm)
Gun Houses: 4.5 to 13 in (110 to 330 mm)
Conning Tower: 6 in (150 mm)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

The Best Coast’s homegrown Great War tanks

Posted on November 2, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

The C. L. Best Tractor Company of San Leandro, California built two mock-up armored vehicles based on their CLB 75 Tracklayer tractor in 1916 for trials with with the California National Guard. These vehicles were steampunk before steampunk was cool.

One had a semi-cylindrical hull with a turret (of which most pictures exist) and the other was similar but the hull had flat surfaces.

Equipped with 6-pounder Naval guns which were apparently fitted but never fired, they had up to a half-inch of steel armor.

These two machines appeared at a Fourth of July celebration in San Francisco in 1917, and in maneuvers with the 5th Infantry Regiment of the California National Guard, as well as in recruiting posters and brochures for the next several years. As noted by some accounts, they were termed “Bison” by the guardsmen.

Best merged with the Holt Tractor company after the war to become Caterpillar.

More here.

And here.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Claus Bergen

Posted on November 1, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Claus Bergen

Born 18 April 1885 in Stuttgart, Claus Friedrich Bergen was a product of Kaiserian Imperial Germany. Studying at the at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, under the American-born master Carl von Marr, young Claus shined.

By his 22nd birthday had been selected to illustrate Karl May’s classic Teutonic fiction novels about Winnetou, the wise chief of the Apaches and Old Shatterhand, Winnetou’s white blood brother in the American Old West and Kara Ben Nemsi and his manservant Hadschi Halef Omar in the Sahara and Far East.

As May’s works were sold in upwards of 200 million copies, the more than 400 illustrations that Bergen did between 1907-14 for these books have been seen world wide.

When the war came, Bergen was appointed as a naval artist to the Kaiserliche Marine and, in the weeks and months following the pivotal Battle of Jutland, created some of his best work.

High Seas Fleet setting sail 31 May 1916

German battleships passing Heligoland

SMS-Grosse-Kurfurst-

German battleships in action

Bridge of SMS Markgraf

Hipper leaving Lutzow for SMS Moltke

Inside a battleship main turret

German destroyers attack the British battleship line at Jutland 31 May

SMS-Seydlitz seeing what hell looks like

Night action

SMS Thuringen lighting up HMS Black Prince

The Kaiser addressing the High Seas fleet after Jutland

In 1917, Bergen embarked on tiny SM U-53, a 213-foot Type 51 unterseeboot conned by legendary Fregattenkapitän Hans Rose, who won both the Pour le Mérite and the Ritterkreuz for sending a staggering 79 Allied ships to the bottom of the Atlantic (including six while bobbing off the Nantucket Lightship in 1916) and went to sea on a two month war cruise. The images he saw in the heavy seas were burned into his memory and he committed them to canvas for posterity.

In den Wellenbergen

U-53 in the summer of 1917

During WWII, Bergen, then in his 50s, was a party member and one of the Reich’s favored painters. He continued working, composing military subjects on the list of those approved by Berlin.

Battleship Schlesig-Holstein on 1st-September 1939 fires the first naval shots of the War at Danzig

1942 U-boot Type IX

Prinz Eugen at Denmark Strait Painting by Claus Bergen

Dornier Flugboot X

After the war, he escaped his Nazi party associations and, living in West Germany at 8172 Lenggries/OBB, painted simple sea scenes and landscapes…

Mit Wind und Wellen

Though he did paint the cover of the 1950s board-game Bismarck, one of the most popular in the U.S. at the time.

He donated several large pieces to U.S. and British public museums and the Admiralty after the Second World War, many of which are on display around the UK. He is also celebrated, of course, by the Karl May Society and others. The Hellmann Art Gallery in Munich contains a large body of his more famous works.

Dr. Bergen was impressed with the President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Germany (Ich bin ein Berliner) and wanted to present him with one of his paintings because of the President’s love of the sea and maritime art. His gift, The Atlantic, shows the windswept Atlantic at twilight and hung in the Atlantic Room of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum for years, making Bergen possibly the only artist to have presented canvas to Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler and JFK.

Bergen died 4 October 1964 in Lenggries, Bavaria at age 79.

For more Bergen pieces on Jutland, see British Battle’s excellent series of articles on the clash.

Thank you for your work, sir.

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