Category Archives: World War Two

Warship Wednesday, August 19, 2020: Under New Management

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, August 19, 2020: Under New Management

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-490371

Here we see Japanese and U.S. naval officers negotiate the surrender of Mili Atoll, a collection of 92 coral islands in the Marshall Island group, aboard the Cannon-class destroyer escort USS Levy (DE-162), some 75 years ago this week. While numerous such isolated garrisons would lay down their arms in the months to come, Mili Atoll is often described as the first surrender of pre-WWII Japanese territory– rather than islands such as Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Saipan which were taken by force without surrender– making this moment historically significant.

Some 116 Cannons were ordered during WWII from late 1942 onward, with the class sandwiched between the more numerous Buckley– and Edsall-class destroyer escorts. Fundamentally diesel-powered corvettes built for convoy work, they were 1,600-ton, 306-foot vessels with a long-range– 10,000nm at 12-knots– and fast enough at 21 knots to keep up with a convoy. Geared to ASW work, they bristled with depth charges and hedgehogs. To ward off surface threats, they had a trio of 21-inch torpedo tubes while a variety of open 3″/50 cal and 40mm Bofors mounts could poke holes in kamikazes.

Levy and her sisters could float in just 11 feet of water, which would make them very useful in the littoral space of the Pacific’s far-flung islands.

USS Levy (DE-162) on delivery, 12 May 1943, Port Newark. Note her three 3″/50s, one forward and two aft, as well as her triple torpedo tube turnstile just aft of her stack. NHHC L45-164.05.01

Our tin can to this day is the only warship named for Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, a hero remembered today chiefly as the US Navy’s first Jewish flag officer but should be perhaps best known as the 19th Century “Author of the Abolition of Flogging in the Navy of the United States” and the man who purchased and later restored President Jefferson’s near-ruined Monticello. An experienced mariner sailing under a Navy appointment issued by President Madison in the War of 1812, Levy served on the USS Argus, raiding off the British coast, and ended that conflict on an RN prison hulk. He went on to fight pirates and slavers, then command the Mediterranean Squadron before his death in 1862, aged 70.

Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, his ornate circa 1850 sword buckle in the NHHC’s collection of relics, and a portrait of him as a lieutenant.

USS Levy (DE-162) was laid down 19 October 1942 by the Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Newark, N.J., sponsored at launch the elderly niece of the late Commodore Levy, and commissioned 13 May 1943.

Her wartime service was fairly sedate, arriving in the Society Islands 19 August 1943 and spending the next 16 months escorting and screening oilers during various fueling operations in the South and Central Pacific theaters– a vital if an unglamorous task that saw her pursuing suspected sonar contacts and fighting off interloping Japanese aircraft seeking to bag her charges. As such, she followed the fleet in the support of the Hollandia operation and the strikes against Truk, Statwan, and Ponape; took part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea; and was there with the 3d Fleet during the conquest of the western Carolines and the liberation of Leyte.

She retired to San Diego in December 1944 for an overhaul, then pointed back West to rejoin the push.

Levy’s 1945 saw quite a bit more detached service. The hard-working DE helped blockade and bombard the remaining Japanese-held atolls in the Marshalls and assisted in the rescue of 238 waterborne Marshallese natives who had escaped from enemy-held Jaluit.

Mili Atoll. 

On 12 August 1945, Levy arrived off Japanese-controlled Mili Atoll while the war was still very much active– the battleship USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) was damaged by an aerial torpedo in Buckner Bay, Okinawa that very same day, for example.

Mili had been a German colony from the 1880s until the Great War when ownership passed to the Empire of Japan under the League of Nations’ South Seas Mandate. Since then, it had become an important Japanese radio station and seaplane base with a ~5,000 man Army/Navy garrison and, located 2,875 miles East of Tokyo and 2,286 miles West of Pearl Harbor, is often included in the conspiracy theory over the 1937 disappearance of aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

Mili’s location midway between Hawaii and Japan made it the logical choice for one of the earliest raids on Japanese bases by American carriers, struck by aircraft from USS Yorktown (CV-5) just seven weeks after Pearl Harbor. The Atoll would later be plastered in the last eighteen months of the war by a ceaseless bombing campaign conducted by long-range American aircraft and the occasional plastering by U.S. warships– including famously the USS Iowa.

On 13 August 1945 at 1220, Levy was the last U.S. Navy ship to bombard Mili Atoll, retiring shortly after. Two days later, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

On the morning of 19 August– 75 years ago this week– a PBM Mariner arrived alongside the destroyer escort with seven officers aboard, headed by CAPT. Harold Bartley Grow (USNA 1912) acting under the authority of RADM (later VADM) William Keene Harrill (ComMarGilArea) and less than two hours later, Levy received a whaleboat from Mili carrying LCDR Toyda and LT. Hutsu of the Japanese Navy under a white flag. After a brief negotiation, the Japanese officers left Mili made for shelter at nearby Majuro Atoll, then under U.S. control.

Dispatched again to Mili with Grow’s team embarked on 21 August, on the next morning IJN CPT Masanori Shiga, LCDR Hiroshi Tojuno, and LT Horoshi Otsu came aboard Levy, signing the surrender document at 1300 sharp.

Japanese Navy CPT Masanori Shiga signs the surrender document for Mili Atoll, Marshalls, onboard USS Levy (DE-162), 22 August 1945. To the right of CPT Shiga is (left to right): LT E.R. Harris, USNR; LTCOL G.V. Burnett, USMCR, and CPT H. B. Grow, USNR, senior U.S. officer present. Also, note the Lucky Strikes. 80-G-490369

Afterward, Levy anchored in Mili lagoon and got to work with the business of peace.

She remained there for the rest of the week, her crew busy removing “all arms up to and including 13mm machine guns, swords, and bayonets” while building a new dock. At noon on the 28th, RADM Harrill and his staff arrived and at 1405, Levy’s armed honor guard hoisted the colors on Mili, firing a 21-gun salute, as the disarmed Japanese stood by.

Surrender of Japan, Mili Atoll, Marshall Islands, August 22, 1945. Flag Raising Ceremony by U.S. Navy occupation forces at Millie Atoll, Marshall Islands. 80-G-338449

Mille Atoll, Marshall Islands, shown these sailors from USS Levy (DE 162) in their whites and landing gaiters pointing with pride to their sign, which reads, “We always welcome Seabees and Marines” 28 August 1945. This beachhead became the first Japanese territory in World War II to formally surrender to United States forces. Shown (left to right): SM2 Abe Klotzman; YN2 Irwin Schwartz; Coxswain Henry Jendrzejanski, and EM2 Kenneth Werton. All the sailors were Navy Reserve. 80-G-338460

Everett Greenbaum, a Navy man who later went on to be a comedy writer who worked on M*A*S*H* among other shows, was stationed at Naval Air Station Majuro, where CAPT. Shiga was taken as an EPW, and the two’s lives became intertwined with Greenbaum later saying, “Insisting on moving into my tent, Captain Shiga committed Hara- karri with my toenail clippers.”

Back to our destroyer escort.

On the 29th, just a day after raising the flag on Mili, Levy fired up her diesels and served as the platform for Grow to negotiate the surrender of the 2,000 men under IJN RADM Nisuke Masuda on Jaluit Atoll. While Levy left that atoll after Masuda’s party retired, tasked with other missions, her sistership USS McConnell (DE-163) received the Japanese surrender on 5 September. Masuda would go on to commit ritual suicide on the eve of a war crimes trial for the execution of captured American aircrews during the conflict.

At the time of his and Jaluit’s surrender, however, Levy had her hands full, liberating the Japanese-held American territory at Wake Island.

Accompanied by the destroyer escorts USS Charles R. Greer (DE-23) and USS Lehardy (DD-20), Levy on 2 September took aboard a party that included Marine BGEN Lawson H. M. Sanderson, Marine COL. Walter L.J. Bayler– often termed “the last man off Wake Island,” which he had left on 21 December 1941– and nine other officers along with 25 war correspondents including representatives of the New York Times and LIFE Magazine.

04 September 1945: Wake Atoll – USS Levy anchored off Wake Island. A barge carrying Japanese officers approaches Levy to surrender the Island. The surrender proceedings took place aboard Levy. LIFE Magazine Archives via Navsource.

The Japanese surrender party came aboard on 4 September at 0740 and IJN RADM Shigematsu Sakaibara, 65th Base Garrison commander, signed the surrender documents at 0819.

Surrender of Japanese forces on Wake Island onboard USS Levy DE-162 – September 4, 1945. Pictured is Japanese Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara, Japanese Paymaster Lieutenant P. Hisao Napasato, and US Marine Brigadier General Lawson H. M. Sanderson
Original Color Picture. LIFE Magazine Archives – Eliot Elisofon Photographer

RADM Shigematsu Sakaibara, former commander of the Japanese garrison forces at Wake, signs the surrender document that makes Wake American once again. Note the Lucky Strikes. Marine Corps photo in the National Archives. 127-GR-60-133687

As white-gloved Japanese officers in their full dress uniforms saluted, the American flag was raised over the island by Levy’s honor guard at 1348.

Raising the U.S. flag over Wake Island on 4 September 1945, as a U.S. Marine Corps bugler plays Colors. This was the first time the Stars and Stripes had flown over Wake since its capture by the Japanese on 23 December 1941. The officer saluting in the right foreground is RADM Shigematsu Sakaibara, Japanese commander on Wake. Colors carried by the U.S. party, right background, include the U.S. Marine Corps flag. Photographed by R.O. Kepler, USMC. NH 96813

Shigematsu would later become a convicted war criminal sentenced to death by a military tribunal in connection with his actions on Wake Island, which included the execution of 98 U.S. civilian workers who had been kept on the island for forced labor. He was hanged on Guam in 1947. At the end of his trial, the 48-year-old career officer said the hearings were “unfair” but “I obey with pleasure.”

Levy got underway from Wake on 11 September, her war concluded. She was soon transferred to the Atlantic, where on 14 November she joined the St. John’s River Group, 16th Fleet, at Green Cove Springs, Florida, and was placed In Commission, In Reserve.

For her 30 months of service, almost all spent in the Pacific war, the vessel earned five battlestars.

She was decommissioned on 4 April 1947 and retained as part of the Atlantic Inactive Fleet at Norfolk, until she was stricken on 2 August 1973. The historic vessel was sold for scrap on 18 June 1974 to the Boston Metals Co., Baltimore, Md for $94,666.66, as part of a bid for her and five other destroyer escorts.

Postscript

Of her sisters, just 72 of the planned Cannons were built. One, USS Roche (DE-197) was lost to a Japanese mine during the war, a remarkable string of luck. Most of the others were soon given away as military aid.

An amazing 54 of the class were transferred around the globe, with the economical destroyer escorts serving with no less than a dozen navies. Three of those, USS McAnn (DE-179) in Brazil, USS Slater (DE-766) in New York (who spent 40 years in the Hellenic fleet), and USS Hemminger (DE-746) in Thailand– the latter nominally still in service– are preserved as museums.

Of late, Slater has been undergoing an extensive refurb and looks great, please visit her if you can.

USS Slater is the only destroyer escort preserved in North America– and is Levy’s sistership

When it comes to direct relics of Levy, at least one of her wartime ensigns are preserved in private collections and the Mili Atoll surrender pen is in the Naval History and Heritage Command’s holdings.

This pen can be seen in the Mili Atoll surrender signing photos. NHHC 07-598-P

It looks as if almost all her war diaries have been digitized in the National Archives and are available online.

Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy and the destroyer escort named for him should be remembered in a new destroyer or frigate, and I have written both my Congressional delegation and the SECNAV’s office on the fact.

Specs:

USS Levy (DE-162) underway in the Pacific Ocean, circa 1944

Displacement:
1,240 tons standard
1,620 tons full load
Length: 306 ft
Beam: 36 ft
Draft: 11 ft full load
Propulsion:
4 GM Mod. 16-278A diesel engines with electric drive
6,000 shp (4,500 kW), 2 screws
Speed: 21 knots
Range: 10,800 nautical miles at 12 knots
Complement:
15 officers
201 enlisted men
Armament:
3 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 guns (3×1)
2 × 40 mm AA guns (1×2)
8 × 20 mm AA guns (8×1)
3 × 21 in. torpedo tubes (1×3)
8 × depth charge projectors
1 × depth charge projector (hedgehog)
2 x depth charge tracks

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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.

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The little-known Vz.33

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Often dubbed “the light V.24” by collectors, the Czechoslovakian made Vz.33 was short-lived, with only about 25,000 of these little carbines produced at Brno between May 1934 and January 1939.

The Vz.33 was only used by Czech provincial gendarmes and the national border guard, pre-WWII.

The rifle also went on to be the base design for the Brno-produced Gew 33/40, the standard carbine for the German mountain troops during the war, with sufficient quantities left over afterward to equip the Norwegian police in the 1950s.

Gebirgstruppe kit including M31 rucksack G33/40 rifle,burgmutze with edelweiss insignia, and eispickel pickax.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Lost 52 Project Discovers Their 7th Submarine

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USS S-35 (SS-140) Off San Diego, California, on 23 November 1923 NH 69868

The New York-based Lost 52 Project, which is dedicated to finding all 52 WWII American submarines on “Eternal Patrol,” recently announced they found the final resting place of a lost boat that, while not one of the 52, was nonetheless a very interesting submarine: the S-class “pig boat” USS S-35 (SS-140).

Laid down on 14 June 1918 by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation in San Francisco, California, she was commissioned on 17 August 1922 then spent two full decades on the West Coast in training duties and, while obsolete, conducted seven war patrols, principally against the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands and Northern Pacific. Relegated to training tasks after 1944, she was decommissioned on 19 March 1945 then sunk by torpedo fire on 4 April 1946 in deep water off Oahu.

As noted by Lost 52:

The S-35 lower hull underneath the control room and after battery is smashed in. This could indicate that the torpedo used to sink her detonated under the hull without actually striking it, most likely using a magnetic influence exploder. Strangely, the amount of damage doesn’t seem nearly bad enough if the weapon that was used was the typical Mk 14 or Mk 18 torpedo with their large 600 lb+ Torpex warhead. If one of those weapons had been used on the S-35 the most likely result would have been a completely broken keel with the wreck in two or more pieces. The weapon that might have been used could have been the Mk 27 “Cutie” homing torpedo. This was a much smaller weapon with a warhead of only 127 lbs. It was a new weapon at the time and there may have been a desire to conduct tests under real conditions to see how the weapon reacted.

Execute! 75 years ago today

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Ships of Task Force 38 of the victorious U.S. Third Fleet maneuvering off the coast of Japan on August 17, 1945, two days after Japan agreed to surrender. The force at the time was under the command of Mississippi-born ADM. John S. “Slew” McCain Sr., who himself was only three weeks away from heading to that great wardroom in the sky.

Official U.S. Navy photo 80-G-278815 from the Naval History and Heritage Command.

USS Wasp (CV-18) is the aircraft carrier in the lower right. Note that her forward hull number on the flight deck is painted to be readable for planes coming from the bow.

The other identifiable carrier is USS Shangri-La (CV-38) in the left-center. She is the only known carrier to have her air group identification letter (“Z”) painted in white on her flight deck, instead of her hull number.

There are four other Essex-class carriers, four Independence-class light carriers, at least three battleships (two Iowa class and one South Dakota-class), several cruisers, and multiple destroyers in the formation.

End of the Kwantung Army

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Soviet Defeat of the Japanese Kwantung Army, 1945

75 years ago today, the largest Imperial Japanese military force on the planet, the fabled Kwantung Army, was instructed to surrender its remaining 500,000+ men into Soviet hands.

Formed in 1906 in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War to police the Empire’s slice of mainland Asia, it had long been the key command in the IJA and by 1945 was in actuality a large army group composed of no less than six numbered (3rd, 4th, 5th, 30th, 34th, and 44th) armies in addition to the forces of the puppet state of Manchukuo, those of various White Russian exile units, Korean auxiliaries, and assorted Chinese warlord allies.

That is, until the Soviets crashed in and burst that bubble, showing the force to be a hollow Easter bunny of sorts. This is because the Kwantung Army had been siphoned off in 1942-45, drawing irreplaceable elite cadres away to be fed into the meat chopper that was defending the Empire against the on-rushing Allied forces island hopping from Guadalcanal to Okinawa. For reference, in June 1938, 18 months before Pear Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army had a full 34 combat divisions tied down on the ground in Eastern China along the Yellow River, that, when coupled with a supply train that ran back to the Home Islands through Manchuria and Korea, totaled over 1.1 million men in the field.

When the Soviets marched into the Theatre, that force had been halved and most of what was left were second-rate troops.

Soviet vehicles and troops crossing the border into Manchuria, August 1945.

A Lend-Leased M4A2 Sherman with a Soviet crew making friends

Soviet Motorcyclist column on Harley-Davidson WLA-42 and Dnepr M-72 in Manchuria, August 1945.

Soviet soldiers sitting on the throne of emperor Pu Yi, leader of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, China, September 1945

Gen. Otozō Yamada, an old horse soldier, cumulated 40 years of service in the Imperial Japanese Army on 16 August, the day after the Emperor ordered national surrender, by issuing a command to lay down the Kwantung Army’s arms and banners at the feet of the invading Soviets in Manchuria.

However, many of Yamada’s units kept fighting for several days until Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, son of a samurai of the Aizu domain, met with Soviet Field Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky in Harbin on the 19th, and a further cease-fire order circulated directly after.

A former Minister of War, Hata had experience with surrender, having been a member of the Japanese delegation to the Versailles Peace Treaty negotiations as a young colonel in 1919, although on the winning side.

Nonetheless, the Soviets kept advancing even after Stalin had announced the end of hostilities on 23 August. Red paratroopers hit the silk into Heijō, a Japanese colonial outpost since 1905 and known today as Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, on 24 August, the same week as the Soviet Pacific Fleet arrived in Wonsan– on American Lend-Leased LSTs.

Column of Soviet Soldiers advancing into the Korean Peninsula against the Kwaungtung Army meet U.S. personnel, September 1945. Soviet forces occupied the north of Korea with U.S. forces occupying the south, with the arbitray boundary between their zones being the 38th parallel, one that holds today. LIFE Magazine Archives – George Silk Photographer

On 9 September, a full week after the instruments of surrender were signed in Tokyo Bay, 100,000 Japanese troops in Nanking laid down their arms. Even with that, there were still isolated Japanese garrisons in China that remained intact well into November 1945.

Japanese fort surrendering to Chinese partisans, Fall 1945

Japanese surrender in Peking (Beijing), China to combined U.S./British/KMT forces, October 1945

The Soviets remained a presence in Manchuria and North Korea for several years, going so far as to keep troops in the Manchurian hubs of Mukden, Harbin, Dairen, and Port Arthur– all notably former Tsarist stomping grounds– until 1955, more than eight years after the Communist Chinese had taken over the supposed governance of such areas.

PPS-43 armed Soviet tankers in Mukden, 1946. Note the officer with an upcycled Japanese Army tanker winter suit that he has installed shoulder boards on. Also, note the bronze plaque behind them with T-34s on it.

Soviet Naval Infantry raising their flag on the famous 203 Meter Hill in Port Arthur– now known as Lüshun in Liaoning province– 22 August 1945. The Baiyu Tower, constructed by the Japanese in the 1930s to commemorate 1904-1905 war dead, is visible in the distance. The Japanese Army used 203 Meter Hill in late 1904 to destroy the besieged Imperial Russian Navy’s Pacific Squadron below. RIAN Archive Photo 834147

Manchukuo

Standing with the Japanese– briefly– was the “Manchukuo Imperial Army” of puppet Manchurian Emperor Pu Yi. Originally formed around the roughly corps-sized Chinese National Revolutionary Army of the “Young Marshal” (Zhang Xueliang) in 1932, it grew to a nominal peak of 300,000 men in the field, under Japanese tutelage, in seven provincial armies. While capable of pushing into Inner Mongolia and fighting roaming bands of warlords, the occasional Chinese Communist insurgent group, and bandit gangs, it was no match for the battle-hardened Soviets and, once the Russkis crossed the border, melted away into the countryside, with the conscripts often turning on their officers, killing their Japanese advisers, and vanishing into the towns and villages, taking their weapons but leaving their uniforms behind. Tellingly, the Soviets only captured about 30,000 non-Japanese Manchukuo Army soldiers– of whom half were ethnic Koreans and were too far from home to self-demobilize– and killed about 10,000 in very one-sided combat. In less than two weeks, the force had ceased to exist.

Chinese troops train under Japanese instructors. More than 300,000 soldiers from China fought for Hirohito against their own countrymen between 1932 and 1945.

Much as the Russkis dismantled the Kwangtung Army and its puppet Manchukuoan allies, they also took apart the Egami-gun, the Manchukuo Imperial Navy. Established in 1932 with donated Japanese destroyers and gunboats and drawing half of its officers (the senior half) from the IJN’s retired list, the force concentrated largely on coastal defense and river operations on the Sungari, Amur, and Ussuri rivers against bandits, pirates and anti-Manchu Communist partisans. Consisting of about 20 small gunboats and a force of armored cars to drive around on the ice every winter once the rivers froze over, the Egami-gun quickly lowered its flags as the Russians came in and took over their vessels. Some of these warships would be retained by the Soviet’s Amur flotilla for years as working trophies.

Manchurian gunboat Chin Jen in Soviet fleet as KL-56 captured in August 1945 from the Manchukuo Navy.

At 290-tons, Chin Jen and Ting Pien were built in the 1930s by the Japanese for the Manchukuo Imperial Navy as seen here and operated on the Sungari River as a part of the 1st Patrol Division until 1945. Armed with a pair of 120mm/45 DP mounts, two 170mm mortars, and some machine guns, they were both captured without a fight by the Soviets in August 1945. Refitted with Russian armament, they served on the Amur river as patrol boats until 1951, as training ships until at least 1953.

Throw away the key

As for Yamada, the former Japanese general was taken as a prisoner of war to Siberia and sentenced to 25 years in the Soviet gulag for war crimes, primarily related to the heinous activities of Unit 731, but was repatriated to Japan in the mid-1950s after Stalin’s death along with the remnants of his surrendered Army.

Ironically, most of those crimes had occurred under Hata’s period as commander of the Kwantung Army from 1941 through 1944, rather than Yamada’s. Sentenced to life imprisonment after a war crimes trial by the Americans, Hata was paroled in 1954.

On 10 May 1962, Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, the last surviving Field Marshal of the Imperial Japanese Army, died while attending a ceremony honoring Imperial war dead, age 82.

The Soviets said they ended up with 594,000 Japanese EPWs by October 1945, but Japanese authorities contend it was well over 700,000 when other, non-military, subjects of the Emperor under Stalin’s control were counted. Although 60,000, mostly the ill and elderly or females with children, were quickly paroled, some the same day, the Soviets hauled the rest back to Siberia.

Repatriated Japanese soldiers returning from Siberia wait to disembark from a ship at Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, in 1946. The Kwantung Army would trickle back over the next decade. 

Over the next decade, many of the Siberian prisoners perished, with estimates running at a minimum of 50,000 and some as much as six times that amount. Meanwhile, many ethnic Koreans in the Japanese ranks would be “re-educated” by the Soviets to become the bedrock of the North Korean People’s Army.

The last remnants of the Kwantung Army went home in 1956 although some elected to stay behind and “go native” in the Worker’s Paradise.

“A Japanese mother is reunited with her son after he is released from a Soviet POW camp in Siberia, 31 December 1956. He and his fellow prisoners are arriving at Maizuru port in Japan, having been captured at the end of World War II and held for another 11 years.” (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive via History Forum)

Japanese artist Nobuo Kiuchi, who during WWII was a Japanese paratrooper, spent years in Siberia after the Kwantung Army laid down its arms, and chronicled what he saw.

His art reflects those experiences and is on exhibit at the Maizuru Repatriation Memorial Museum located in the principal port where some 660,000 Japanese POWs and civilians were sent back home from China, Russia, and North Korea in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Echos into new wars

The wealth of equipment used by the Kwantung Army, unwanted and typically seen as obsolete when captured by the Allies, was quickly inherited by the Chinese and Koreans who soon put it into use against themselves and others. The boon of materiel picked up in large part by Mao’s Red Army gave it a huge shot in the arm in the final act of the Chinese Civil War and subsequently was recycled into the Korean War in the 1950s.

US soldier, Chinese soldier, and Chinese guerrilla fighters displaying captured Japanese flags, aircraft machine guns, and MP 34 submachine gun, China, 1945

Japanese Type 97 Chi-Ha medium tank in use with the Chicoms. Some 300 of these tanks became Mao’s iron fist through the late 1940s.

Shanghai Police Department monitor a political protest in 1948. Equipment includes a stahlhelm M35 helmet and captured Japanese Arisaka Type 38 rifle.

Red Chinese soldier late 1940s with captured Japanese Arisaka

Red Chinese captured Japanese Arisaka Type 38 rifles Type 30 bayonets M30-32 Tetsu-bo helmets 1949

Chinese soldier carrying captured Arisaka Type 38 rifles and a Type 11 light machine gun, date unknown.

Sun’s out, guns out

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Resistance fighters with the French Forces of the Interior armbands meet up with curious recently arrived American troops on the beach in the Saint Tropez area during Operation Dragoon landings along the French Riviera, 15 August 1944. The irregulars of the FFI numbered an estimated 400,000 by this stage of the war and were no longer underground.

Signal Corps Photo 111-SC-212383 via NARA

The Resistance members all seem to have pistols stuck in their waist-band, channeling Dan Tanna long before the 1970s.

Inset of 111-SC-212383

The fella to the left has a Colt M1908 Hammerless stuck in his belt while his buddy with the short (German surplus?) wool jacket has what appears to be an Astra 400 grip just showing. The stabby guy with the bandana has what looks like a 6.35mm pocket pistol such as a Browning Baby or Colt Vest model in addition to his steel-handled sheath knife.

As for the GIs, the older Soldier on the right has the distinctive seahorse patch of the 36th Engineer Regiment.

The 36th Engineers were everywhere in the ETO, earning campaign streamers for Algeria-French Morocco, Tunisia, Sicily, Naples-Foggia, Anzio, and Rome-Arno in the 22 months prior to the Dragoon landings. They would go on to prove essential in the push through Northwest Europe through Alsace and the Rhineland. An active-duty unit, after WWII they went on to serve in Korea, where they remained for 20 years. Reformed as the 36th Engineer Group in 1973 and as the 36th Engineer Group in 2006, they have continued to deploy downrange across the sandbox extensively over the past three decades.

The Curious V-43 Machine Carbine

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Via the collection of The Museum of the Parachute Regiment & Airborne Forces, we have the Vesely V-43 Machine Carbine.

This 9mm weapon– which used a very interesting double-stack 9mm magazine that was wide and used an extended magazine well, but was capable of holding 60-rounds– was proposed to be issued to airborne forces in the Second World War.

Curiously enough, the V-43, which was designed for Para use, was heavier than the V-42, which was intended for regular “leg” infantry, but the former had the ability to break down into three components (besides mags) for easier storage, say, while jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

Vesely V-43 paratroop submachine gun disassembled

Designed by Free Czech firearms designer Josef Vesely while working out of Birmingham Small Arms, it could fire up to a rate of 1000rpm. It also had a short (8-inch) spike-style bayonet stored above the barrel.

As noted by the Para Museum, “However, it offered very little improvement over the Sten which continued to be issued instead.”

This particular version was presented to Lt Gen FAM “Boy” Browning by VAP Holdings, the manufacturer.

For more info on the Vessley, my homie Ian McCollum over at Forgotten Weapons has a section on it that includes the interesting 35-page manual.

B-25 and PBY on the USS Essex…in 2020

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A series of three upcoming Legacy of Peace Aerial Parade around Oahu, part of the 75th Commemoration of the End of WWII that will culminate with the official ceremony aboard the museum ship USS Missouri (BB 63) on 2 September, will have more than a dozen vintage warbirds take part including a B-25 bomber, some T-6 Texans and a former Navy PBY Catalina flying boat. The rare aviation classics came from the mainland and arrived at Pearl Harbor via the “aircraft carrier” USS Essex on Monday.

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kenneth Rodriguez Santiago)

Of course, the Essex involved is LHD-2, the 5th U.S. Navy ship to carry the name, and calls back to the famous 4th, the WWII fleet carrier CV-9 which remained in service until 1969.

That beautiful B-25 being lifted from Essex’s deck. Too bad they didn’t try to fly it off– it’s been done before! (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kenneth Rodriguez Santiago)

Of note, today’s Essex actually has a longer flight deck than 1942’s USS Hornet, which carried Doolittle’s B-25s on their famous “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” raid.

PEARL HARBOR (Aug. 10, 2020) North American T-6 Texans, part of a group known as the “Warbirds,” sit on the pier at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam after being offloaded from the amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) for the 75th Commemoration of the End of WWII. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jessica O. Blackwell)

Flyovers of the Warbirds will include: Around Oahu (Aug. 29), Connecting the Military Bases (Aug. 30), and over the Battleship Missouri Memorial, Pearl Harbor to Waikiki (Sept. 2).

More than just a green plug

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On this day, 75 years ago, 9 August 1945, a 509th Composite Group Boeing Block 36 Silverplate B-29-36-MO Superfortress SN 44-27297, Victor 77, dubbed Bockscar by her normal crew, piloted by the 393d Bombardment Squadron’s commander, MAJ Charles W. Sweeney, dropped the “Fat Man” A-bomb with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT over the city of Nagasaki, which had two large Mitsubishi plants, with the aim point of the device plotted roughly between the two factories.

It was the plane’s fourth combat mission.

In the West Point Museum is Fat Man’s safety fuze for the atom bomb.

Bockscar took off with this green “Safe” fuze in place and, while in flight, the bombardier, CPT. (later COL) Kermit K. Beahan, removed the green fuze and plugged in a red “Armed” fuze. (Photo via West Point Museum) 

This is the sole remaining part of the Nagasaki bomb while Bockscar itself is preserved at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. 

The green plug for the 13-kiloton “Little Boy,” the Hiroshima device, is at the Truman Library and Museum.

A planned third and fourth “Fat man” bombs were not needed.

St. Louis, arriving

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Over the weekend, in an understated COVID-era ceremony, the latest USS St. Louis joined the fleet.

She is the 7th such vessel to carry the name and SECNAV made sure to touch on the missions of the first one, the 19th Century 24-gun sloop-of-war, rather than the two 20th Century cruisers with the same legacy. Because mission.

“Nearly 200 years after the first ship to bear the name was launched, today we commission the seventh USS St. Louis,” said Secretary of the Navy Kenneth J. Braithwaite. “Much like that sloop of war did in 1828, LCS-19 and her crew will protect the U.S. and our interests near and abroad. Whether conducting counter-narcotic operations in the Caribbean or working to enhance interoperability with partners and allies at sea, USS St. Louis will provide maneuverability, stability, and lethality in today’s era of Great Power Competition.”

St. Louis is the 22nd LCS to be delivered to the Navy, and the tenth of the Freedom-variant to join the fleet and is the seventh ship to bear the name. The first St. Louis, a sloop of war, was launched in 1828. It spent the majority of its service patrolling the coasts of the Americas to secure interests and trade. In addition, it served as the flagship for the West Indies Squadron working to suppress piracy in the Caribbean Sea, the Antilles, and the Gulf of Mexico region.

Of course, the most celebrated St. Louis in U.S. Navy history was past Warship Wednesday Alum “Lucky Lou,” the Brooklyn-class light cruiser that was the first to clear the Channel at Pearl Harbor and went on to earn 11 battle stars in WWII before going on to serve Brazil as the Lobster War flagship Almirante Tamandaré for another quarter-century.

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