A kapok-clad crewman on the Sims-class destroyer USS Wainwright (DD 419) brings coffee to the open bridge during the escort for the ill-fated Arctic Convoy PQ-17, July 1942.
LIFE Magazine Archives – Frank Scherschel Photographer.
LIFE Magazine Archives – Frank Scherschel Photographer.
Various events have been held, called Coffee Day or National Coffee Day, with many of these on or around September 29.
Cups up, gents.
Mike B recently did a ballistic test on a historic WWII-era Brodie-style British Mark II steel helmet, and it is fairly surprising.
Don’t freak out too much about destroying a collectible, as the helmet is a high-use specimen that had gone to Pakistan and been reimported for sale to reenactors. Plus, the Allies made something like 12 million of these helmets between 1938 and 1944, so they aren’t that rare (you can find them for like $50).
Still, it surprised me how resistant it was to pistol rounds.
The new and more permanent (the old 1951 pact was only in effect as long as NATO existed) three-way military agreement between Greenland, Denmark, and the U.S. has a couple of big takeaways.
One is the green light for the U.S. to modernize and expand its activities in Pituffik Space Base (the old Thule AB from 1951-2023, formerly Bluie West-6 Air Field from 1943-1946), as well as “to be allowed to establish an additional Defense Area at Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig in accordance with modalities and technical details to be mutually agreed by the Parties.”
The thing is, we’ve been there before.
Starting with 14 U.S. Coast Guardsmen recently “discharged” from the service who took up newly established positions as uniformed security guards on the staff of the Invigtut cryolite mine, delivered by the USCGC Comanche in May 1940– just a month after Germany occupied Denmark– the U.S. military established no less than 26 bases dotted around the Greenlandic coastline by 1945.
One of the larger bases was Bluie West One (BW-1) on the island’s southern tip. With construction that started in June 1941, before the end of the war, the base housed 4,000 personnel and was the key waypoint along with Bluie West Eight (Sondre Stromfjord / Kangerlussuaq) in the “Blue Spruce” northern ferry route, which saw aircraft leave from RCAF Gander/Goose Bay in Newfoundland/Labrador and make it to Scotland using Greenland and Iceland as refueling stops. More than 10,000 Allied aircraft crossed the Atlantic that way during the war.
The HQ of the Greenland Command, BW-1 was just 776 miles from Gander to the southwest and 748 miles from Meeks Field (later Keflavik AB) in Iceland to the southeast, the perfect midway point, making it possible for even P-38 and P-39 fighters to self-deploy across the Atlantic.
Of course, there were challenges, as the base was located essentially in a bowl.
Circular infrared photo from weather station at Narsarssuak, Greenland, shows entire airfield, 1943. Note the B-24 on deck. Sloping hills at left and right are actually parts of the same mountain. (U.S. Air Corps Number 27837AC)
Panorama of West Bluie One, Army Airfield, Greenland August 1942 80-G-0061961
As noted dryly by DANS-VP:
“Operational conditions from the field were primitive, with 4,000-foot mountains on either side of the runway and the Narasarssuak Fjord at the far end. Flying conditions were frequently IFR, with the installation of radar sets on the aircraft in 1943 a welcome addition.”
Further, it proved ideal to base a PBY unit there to help cover convoys across the North Atlantic; only the Navy was cool with somebody else doing it.
On 6 August 1943, Patrol Bombing Squadron (VPB) 6, manned entirely by Coast Guardsmen, began operating from BW-1.
Bombing 6, commanded by USCG CDR Donald B. “Bo Bo” McDiarmid, was to earn a reputation as one of the busiest and most effective in Coast Guard aviation history.
VPB-6 at BW-1. The unit arrived at Narsarsuaq with ten aircraft (one designated as a spare), 22 officers and 145 enlisted, including eight enlisted pilots.
Like every other Coast Guard unit in Greenland, “Bo Bo’s Flying Circus” had to “do a little of everything.” Its PBY-5A Catalinas searched for U-boats and German weather stations, escorted convoys, delivered mail, reported on the movements of the ice, and, on several dozen occasions, guided rescue parties to crashed Army and Navy aircraft.
By November 1944, Bombing 6 had flown 638,998 miles in 6,325 flying hours, searching more than 3 million square miles of ice cap and ocean, and BW-1 had become known as NAF Narsarsuak.
Original caption: May 19, 1944. “Over the barren expanse of the 2,000-foot-high Greenland Ice Cap speeds a Coast Guard PBY Flying Boat. Thousands of years old, the Ice Cap looms as a forbidding menace to fliers. One of the most daring plane rescues in history was recorded in the winter of 1942, when Coast Guard Lieutenant John A. Pritchard, Jr., of Burbank, Calif., landed his PBY on the treacherous surface of the Ice Cap and took off successfully to rescue two of three Army fliers, stranded there when their Flying Fortress crashed. The next day, attempting to rescue the third Army airman, Lieutenant Pritchard’s plan was wrecked. The pilot, his co-pilot, and the Army flier were killed.” NARA 26-G-05-19-44(2)
“Eyes of the Arctic,” 9.26.1944 Coast Guard PBY Greenland 026-g-024-006-001
Original caption, 23 February 1944: “A bearded U.S. Coast Guardsman clears snow from the wings of a PBY patrol plane assigned to a Coast Guard-manned air base on the bleak coast of Greenland. The plane is kept in top running order for its sky sweeps against enemy craft daring to penetrate into the northern wastes.” NARA 26-G-02-23-44(6)
VPB-6 (CG) was ordered back home on 10 July 1945, and the much-reduced NAF was disestablished on 5 February 1951, transferring it to the USAF to operate as Narsarssuak Air Base until November 1958, when it was turned over to the Royal Danish Navy who in 1988 turned it over to the Greenlandic government.
USAF C-123s at Narsarssuak Air Base Greenland 1956
The old 6,000-foot airstrip is still there as the Narsarsuaq Airport. However, with Air Greenland moving its hub to the new strip 30 miles away at Qaqortoq earlier this year, Narsarsuaq is largely empty now– making it ideal for use as a military base once again!
So, logically, let’s base a rotational P-8 (or USCG HC-130J) detachment out of there and bring in occasional rotations of USAF and NATO F-16s, F-18s, and F-35s.
Um,
Kinda like what NORAD and NATO are doing right now with Operation Arctic Vanguard.
Check out this flightline last week at Kangerlussuaq, Greenland (formerly Bluie West-8 during WWII and Sondrestrom Air Base from 1952-92):
United States F-16s, Danish F-35s, and Canadian F-18s sit parked on the flight line during Operation ARCTIC VANGUARD at Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, Sept. 16, 2026. OAV demonstrates the Nordic Bridge concept, enhancing cooperation between United States Northern Command, United States European Command, North American Aerospace Defense Command, and NATO in order to expand domain awareness, strengthen deterrence, and improve interoperability. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Colin Perkins)
As for Mestersvig, the Royal Danish Navy established a Sirius dog sled patrol outpost there in 1988 at the old Blyklippen zinc mine, which was active from 1956-62, and SF teams have exercised there in the past. You could definitely see it expanded to house a rotational company from the 10th Mountain or 11th Airborne a few months a year to give the island subcontinent a bit of a “fire brigade.”
U.S. Special Operations Mountain Warfare Green Berets and Danish Special Operations Forces pose for a group photograph in Mestersvig, Greenland, March 2, 2024. During Arctic Edge 24, more than 400 joint and allied Special Operators trained in extreme cold conditions to sharpen SOF readiness across unique specialties like long-range fires and movements, special reconnaissance, rapid resupply, personnel recovery, and medical care in the austere Arctic environment. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Andrew Estrada)
Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling 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
If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”
Photo by Phillip Oliver Hobson, AWM HOBJ0796
Above we see the aircraft repair ship and light aircraft carrier HMS Unicorn ( I72), or more specifically one of her four twin 4″/45 Mark XVI guns in a sponson Mark XIX mounting.
A child of WWII, it was Unicorn’s aircraft that made the Germans howl off Salerno, but in September 1951, some 75 years ago this week, her guns made naval history off the coast of Korea.
In 1938, England knew she was stumbling headlong into a war with a revitalized Germany, likely to be allied to Mussolini’s Italy, which the West had been fighting by proxy in Spain for years, while Japan, which walked out of the League of Nations in 1933 and withdrew from the London Naval Treaty the next year, was beating war drums of her own.
While the battle line, with its 15 active and five building battleships and battlecruisers, was the stuff of legends, the Royal Navy had been in the aircraft carrier business for a solid 20 years– the first fleet to field a true flattop in the form of HMS Argus in September 1918.
Going into the Czech Sudeten crisis, the Brits had four active fleet carriers (the 26,000-ton/48-aircraft HMS Courageous and Glorious, the 23,000-ton/33-aircraft Furious, and the 26,000-ton/21-aircraft Eagle), while the brand-new 27,000-ton/60-aircraft Ark Royal would commission in November 1938.
On the builders’ ways at three different yards were the 28,000-ton/33-aircraft “Lusty” sisters (Illustrious, Formidable, and Victorious) of soon-to-be-famous class armored deck carriers, followed closely by near sisters Indomitable, Indefatigable, and Implacable, although none of these six would join the fleet until well into the war (the latter two not until 1944).
With 11 large flattops built or on the schedule, the Admiralty hit on an idea for a “replenishment carrier” which could be a floating workshop capable of receiving “flying duds” in need of repair or patchwork from these other carriers, then sending a fresh model over to replace it while said dud was cycled down to the hangars for refurbishment.
Plus, as the carrier was actually a sort of “depot ship,” its tonnage didn’t count against naval treaty limits.
The need for a decent-length flight deck capable of takeoffs and landings, complete with six arresting wires, a crash barrier, and a BHIII hydraulic catapult, resulted in a 600 x 90-foot “roof” over a 640-foot hull on a steamer that displaced 16,794 tons (standard, 20,625 full). Under said roof was a 324 x 65-foot upper hangar and a 360 x 62-foot lower hangar, both standing 16.5 feet tall.
Fleet Air Arm Corsair and Firefly aircraft in the hangar of the maintenance carrier HMS Unicorn, circa 1945. Besides these types, Unicorn would, in the course of her career,r tote Fulmar, Seafire, Hellcat, and Martlet (Wildcat) fighters along with Swordfish, Albacore, Barracuda, and Tarpon attack aircraft– plus Dragonfly helicopters and a range of RAF types to include Gloster Meteors. Photo via Royal Navy Research Archive.
Transit between the hangar and flight deck was via a pair of 10-ton elevators aligned to starboard, fore (46 x 33 feet) and aft (46 x 24 feet) of the island. In this manner, 20 single-engine aircraft could be easily stored in the below-deck workshops and, should the flight deck be used, this could bump up to 35ish.
Further, her shops had storage for 50 aircraft engines, and she carried a self-propelled lighter for moving aircraft between herself and other carriers. Avgas storage allowed for 36,500 imp gallons, enough to fill a Swordfish from empty something like 218 times, not enough for extended operations (by comparison, Ark Royal could carry over 100,000 imp gallons) but enough to get some sorties in for sure.
She also had a large crane for both handling seaplanes and amphibians and moving aircraft to and from lighters.
Cutaway of aircraft repair ship and light aircraft carrier HMS Unicorn Illustrious class
Powered by a pair of Parsons geared steam turbines delivering 40,000 shp when all four Admiralty 3-drum boilers were lit and pushing, this floating aviation repair depot would be able to steam at a respectable 24 knots maximum, with 3,157 tons of fuel oil bunkerage giving her a worldwide deployable endurance of 7,500nm at 20 knots, or 11,000nm at a 13.5-knot pace. While not as fast as the 30-knot fleet carriers, this depot ship could still keep up with the fleet in all but racing speeds.
HMS Unicorn via Armored Carriers
She had a decent armament, easily the equivalent of a destroyer leader if not a scout cruiser. This included a main battery of eight high-angle dual-purpose 4″/45 QF Mk XVIs in four twin mounts located on sponsons, four quadruple 40mm 2pdr QF Mk VIII pom-pom AA guns sited immediately before and abaft the island, and 16 (five twin, six single) 20mm Oerlikons in sponsons below the flight deck towards the bow and stern. She also has four single 3-pounder saluting guns. Her magazines allowed for 3,816 4-inch and 19,000 40mm.
If you think this is a lot of guns, remember that the preceding RN fleet and light carriers– HMS Argus (6 x 4″/45s), Hermes (6 x 5.5″/50s), Eagle (9 x 6″/50s), Courageous/Glorious (16 x 4.7/40s), Ark Royal, Indomitable, and Illustrious/Formidable/Victorious (16 x 4.5″/45s)– all had significant batteries of medium guns while not being that much larger than Unicorn. It should also be noted that the 10 follow-on 18,000-ton Colossus-class light carriers commissioned after Unicorn never mounted anything larger than 40mm AAA guns.
The AA armament was controlled by two AR Type 285 RDF fitted HA/DCT’s and three AR Type 282-fitted barrage directors. A Type 290 radar was carried at the masthead, as was a Type 72 homing beacon.
In British fashion, Unicorn had an armored flight deck with two inches of box-shaped protection stretching to three inches over the engineering and magazine spaces, along with a 1.5-inch anti-torpedo bulkhead below decks. It should be pointed out that the similarly-sized late-war Colossuses were all but unarmored, only carrying a 10mm plate over their aviation magazines.
Able to switch hit between carrier and depot ship, Unicorn’s motto was very appropriate: In utrumque excelso animo (Ready for either duty with a soaring spirit).
Unicorn also had extensive medical facilities, including aid stations, fore and aft, and a central sick bay complete with a fully equipped surgical theatre and dental clinic.
At that, Unicorn was meant for RN use, shipping and supporting FAA aircraft and carriers either directly or in the fleet train. The vessel would be the equivalent of a deployable destroyer tender to destroyers, or a submarine tender to subs, yet also capable of performing as a carrier when needed– and sometimes she was needed.
As discussed on Unicorn at Armoured Carriers, it was thought that one such Unicorn type would deploy to support three fleet carriers, making the need for three such depot carriers to replenish the expected nine deployable fleet carriers. However, just one Unicorn would be completed, with no sisters or follow-on depot carriers ordered.
For shipping RAF aircraft in a “knocked down” condition with the wings removed, the RN in 1940 converted a pair of 10,700 ton Cameron-class twin-screw steamers, HMS Engadine (ex-Clan Buchanan) and HMS Athene (Clan Brodie), originally planned to be seaplane depot ships, for the task. Capable of 17.5 knots, they were thought too fast to be U-boat bait, especially when running with an escort. For air and surface defense, they had Type 286 radars, two QF 4-inchers, four quad 40mm pom poms, 10 Oerlikons, and two inches of armor plate on deck. They could carry up to 40 planes with the wings removed, and had bunkerage for 34,000 gallons of avgas. Planes were lifted on and off as cargo via two large cranes, fore and aft.
The air transport HMS Engadine (ex-Clan Buchanan) at anchor during WWII. IWM (FL 6024)
This all brings us to…
Our subject is the 10th such vessel to carry the name of the mythical horned horse, going back to 1544.
The eighth was a 32-gun fifth-rate that served throughout the Napoleonic Wars, capturing over 30 vessels at sea, each including the French 44-gun frigate Tribune, the latter after a brutal ten-hour-long running fight.
Capture of the French Frigate La Tribune by the Unicorn, 8th June 1796, by Nicholas Popcock. In the collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. PAI5714
The ninth Unicorn was a 46-gun Leda-class frigate that entered service in 1824, then lingered as a powder hulk and later Royal Naval Reserve drill ship until she was handed over to a preservation society in 1968 and is preserved in Dundee as a museum ship— noted to be the sixth oldest warship in the world.
The old frigate Unicorn has been around for over 200 years, including pier-side service during both World Wars. In WWII, used as a training ground for WRNS; she even accepted the surrender of the advanced German Type XXIII submarine U-2326 a week after VE-Day. Note her distinctive figurehead.
This left our Unicorn with a full dozen battle honors to inherit (Armada 1588, Cadiz 1596, Porto Farina 1655, Santa Cruz 1657, Lowestoft 1665, Orfordness 1666, Solebay 1672, Schooneveld 1673, Texel 1673, Vestale 1761, Tribune 1796, and Basque Roads 1809).
Our subject, the 10th Unicorn, was part of the 1938 Estimates and ordered from the Titanic-famous yard of Harland & Wolff at Belfast on 14 April 1939. She was laid down as Yard No. 1031 on 29th June that year, by which time Czechoslovakia had been erased from the map of Europe and tensions were at an all-time high.
Her launch on 20 November 1941, sponsored by Lady Mabel MacNaughton, was delayed as the yard was ordered to suspend work on several occasions so that workers could be diverted to complete smaller warships urgently required for convoy defense. Harland and Wolff completed no less than 20 Flower-class corvettes at Belfast between HMS Arabis, laid down in October 1939, and HMS Pimpernel, commissioned in November 1940.
Incidentally, to keep from having two Unicorns on the Admiralty’s Naval List, the old frigate HMS Unicorn in Dundee was renamed HMS Cressy in 1941, to free up the name. We’ll revisit that later.
Our carrier’s first skipper was Capt. Quintin Dick Graham, RN, a seasoned regular who had commanded the light cruiser HMS Arethusa (26) earlier in the war and had joined up in 1908 as a cadet.
Unicorn was delivered by the yard to the Admiralty on 12 March 1943, commissioned for service with the Home Fleet, and commenced acceptance trials in the Clyde area.
Carrying an Admiralty standard camouflage scheme of Grey (G45) with a Blue (B20) panel, Unicorn spent April and May 1943 on a series of landing trials, aircrew training, and work-ups for operational service out of Scapa Flow.
Rather than serve her intended depot carrier role, she was needed as a training carrier, conducting operations with the Sea Hurricane IIcs of 800 Squadron, Swordfish of 818 and 824 Squadrons, and Seafire L.IIs of 887 Squadron.
HMS Unicorn (I72), seen here 24 June 1943 at Greenock, Scotland, LT S.J. Beadell IWM (A 17523)
HMS Unicorn Underway. Photograph taken by Catalina Flying Boat B120J GIB/NC/01. Map reference of photograph location: 35 degrees 40 minutes north, 12 degrees 0 minutes west. Speed 18 knots. IWM (FL 6449)
On 19 May 1943, sailing from the Clyde with Algiers-bound Convoy KMF.15, Unicorn, escorted by the cruiser HMS Suffolk, made for the Mediterranean with 18 crated RAF Beaufighters and aircraft spares bound for Gibraltars belowdecks while her Swords from 818 NAS and Seafires from 887 remained aboard to provide the convoy with a combat air patrol– one that came in handy on 24 and 25 May in chasing off big German Fw200 Condors, one of which reportedly dropped ordnance near our carrier.
After arriving at “The Rock” and unloading her Beaus, Unicorn returned to England with Convoy MKF 015, reaching Greenock on the early evening of 4 June.
She returned to training duties and suffered her first loss: Ty/Sub Lieutenant (A) James A F Lawrance, RNVR, FAA, an 818 Squadron observer who fell from his Swordfish in rough weather near Ailsa Craig on 15 July and was never heard from again. She suffered her second loss, Ty/Sub Lieutenant (A) Joseph Brooks Pilling, RNVR, FAA, also of 818 Squadron, killed in an air crash at age 20.
By this time, Unicorn was deployed with elements of the Home Fleet in a feint towards German-occupied Norway as part of Operation Governor, in an effort to entice the Tirpitz out to be destroyed– and to divert German attention from the Mediterranean where the Husky Landings were being made on Sicily.
For Governor, Unicorn carried 887, 818 and 824 NAS and sailed with Force B from Scapa, with ADM Fraiser running his flag from the battleship HMS Duke of York while the new 16-inch battlewagon USS South Dakota joined the effort. The rest of Force A was balanced by the cruiser HMS Bermuda and nine destroyers. Meanwhile, Force A, from Iceland, with the carrier HMS Illustrious, battleships HMS Anson and USS Alabama, and eight destroyers worked as a pincer while Forces C, D, and E were nimble cruiser-destroyer greyhound packs.
Late July 1943. Battleship HMS Duke of York, HMS Unicorn and battlewagon USS South Dakota steaming in line, during Operation Governor. Photo from HMS Bermuda by Harold William John Tomlin, IWM (A 18352)
Operation Governor, Unicorn from HMS Bermuda. IWM (A 18348)
Same as above; note the Swordfish on deck. IWM (A 18349)
Operation Governor. The aircraft repair ship Unicorn dwarfs the destroyer HMS Saumarez when leaving on the reconnaissance. Photo by Lt FA Davies, IWM (A 18336)
Governor proved fruitless, with Martlets from Illustrious downing two German BV.138 seaplanes and RAF Beaus out of Scotland jumping another two as the only contact.
Unicorn was then given orders to sail for the Med to take part in the Avalanche landings at Salerno in Italy proper. For this task, she would lend her air group (30 Seafires of 809, 887, and 897 Squadrons and nine Swords of 818 Squadron) as part of Force V to cover the beachheads.
Force V was balanced by four British escort carriers (HMS Attacker, Battler, Hunter and Stalker), three cruisers and 10 destroyers, the latter including two Poles. The four CVEs were packed with two Seafire squadrons each, lending some 76 aircraft to Unicorn’s 39. Two larger fleet carriers, Illustrious and Formidable, were assigned to nearby Force H with six further squadrons aboard.
A total of 265 sorties were flown by Force V over Salerno on the first day, 9 September. Unicorn lost two aviators that day, Ty/Sub Lieutenant (A) Malcolm A. McKenzie, RNVR, FAA of 809 Sqn, and Ty/Sub Lieutenant (A) Joseph J Urlich, RNZNVR of 887 Sqn.
Another 232 sorties were flown by Force V on 10 September. Unicorn lost Sub Lieutenant (A) Brian Razzall, RNVR, of 897 Sqn that day, who bailed out of his Seafire but was never found. Also, Unicorn’s Swords carried “spare” pilots in their observers’ seats to Castelvetrano, Sicily, where more Seafires were staged to fly those aircraft out to the action, while also receiving “flying duds” from Force V’s escort carriers.
While it had been planned for Montecorvino airfield to be used ashore by D+2, that fell through, and Force V made another 160 carrier-borne sorties on the 11th. Ultimately, an ersatz strip was set up ashore at Paestrum on the 12th, allowing Force V to withdraw, its Seafires flown ashore, to Tunisia on the 13th.
All in all, for Salerno, Unicorn’s Seafires flew 198 combat sorties, which was certainly near exhaustion for her limited avgas storage.
Pilots from 809 NAS onboard HMS Unicorn after the Salerno landings in 1943. The FAA Museum notes, “The 17 Fleet Air Arm squadrons involved flew 713 sorties during 42 hrs of daylight. During the battle, the Seafire experienced a high attrition rate in large part due to deck landing accidents.” Photo via FAA Museum
Sent back to Scapa to rejoin the Home Fleet, Unicorn arrived at Gibraltar on 23 September and, in company with the carriers Illustrious and Formidable and the battleship Valiant along with a cruiser-destroyer screen, made Greenock on 10 October. Flying off her Swords, Unicorn arrived back at Harland & Wolff for repairs and alterations, remaining in the yard for a month. She would spend the rest of the year in a series of gunnery and flying exercises, celebrating Christmas at home.
On 30 December 1943, Unicorn and Illustrious departed Scapa with the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and Valiant, the battlecruiser HMS Renown, and a force of cruisers and destroyers bound for Trincomalee, Ceylon, to join the Eastern Fleet for service against the Japanese. During the cruise, Unicorn was packed with spares and aviation material, bound for points East, which meant she could only carry four Swords of 818 Squadron– later augmented for a few weeks by 8 Barracudas of 847 Squadron.
Arriving at the Suez on 13 January 1944, on the 19th Unicorn called at Aden for fuel, made Cochin on the 27th, and Trincomalee on 2 February, wrapping up more than 8,000nm.
Spending the year shuttling between Colombo, Bombay, and Trincomalee, Unicorn’s final assigned air group was made up of Barracuda IIs of 817 Squadron, which shipped aboard in November 1944 and continued operations over the new year into January 1945. She also had regular flights of Grumman Martlets, Corsairs, and Hellcats conduct flight training from her deck from RAF China Bay outside of Trincomalee.
Battlecruiser HMS Renown, aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, and aircraft repair ship HMS Unicorn, January 1944, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka
The Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Unicorn (I72, left) and HMS Illustrious (87), probably pictured at Trincomalee, Ceylon, in 1944. NNAM photo No. 1996.488.037.044
Crossing into 1945, Unicorn was ordered to join the British Pacific Fleet, which was soon to field the largest RN carrier force ever seen before or since. When she left for Australia, she carried 82 aircraft and 120 engines with her.
2 February 1945, Unicorn was seen steaming with her deck filled with FAA Corsairs, Hellcats, and Avengers. AWM 302495
Back when Britannia had a proper fleet: Six British Pacific Fleet carriers, circa early 1945, HMS Indomitable (R92), HMS Indefatigable (R10), HMS Unicorn (I72), HMS Illustrious (R87), HMS Victorious (R38) and HMS Formidable (R67) at anchor, with other shipping. IWM MH 5309
Unicorn would serve with TF 112/113, then TF 37/57 for the rest of the Pacific campaign, arriving at Manus on 7 March and running back and forth to Sydney for replacement aircraft, engines, and parts to keep the British 1st Aircraft Carrier Squadron in combat, making a huge effort during the Iceberg landings on Okinawa.
As detailed by the Royal Navy Research Archives,
Since Unicorn left the UK in December 1943, a total of 626 aircraft passed through the hands of the Air Repair Division; these included Albacore, Avenger, Barracuda, Corsair, Firefly, Fulmar, Hellcat, Martinet, Sea Hurricane, Seafire, Swordfish, Vengeance, and Walrus aircraft. Additionally, the Department also handled 283 engines and power plants. 63 engines were installed in aircraft or power plants.
Unicorn seen with the Hecla destroyer tender HMS Tyne (F 24), circa 1945. Tyne was deployed with the BPF from January to October 1945. You get a great view of her armament scheme with four twin 4″/45s on sponsons, two quad pom-poms bracketing the island, and smaller Oerlikon sponsons and tubs.
Post VJ Day, Unicorn assisted in the evacuation of units in the Admiralty Islands and Manus, landing withdrawn personnel, cargo, and aircraft at Brisbane in at least three round-trip 3,000-mile runs by Halloween. Leaving Fremantle in late November, she arrived back home in Devonport on 16 January 1946.
By the end of January, Unicorn was paid off and de-stored before reduction to Reserve status; her war was finished.
Unicorn, in her WWII service, added two battle honors (Salerno 1943, Okinawa 1945) to the dozen she inherited.
She had proven the replenishment carrier concept so thoroughly that two similar support ships, the Colossus-class light carriers HMS Perseus (ex-Edgar) and Pioneer (ex-Mars), were converted into aircraft maintenance ships while still under construction, although they arrived too late to be of use during the war.
In mid-1949, with the newer replenishment carrier Perseus designated the trials ship for steam catapult development, and Pioneer laid up while at the same time Red China was growling, the RN decided it was cheaper to reactivate Unicorn for use as a maintenance and ferry carrier, backing up the forward-deployed light carrier HMS Triumph out of Hong Kong, which was carrying the 13th Carrier Air Group (Seafires of 800 Squadron and Fireflies of 827 Squadron).
British carrier silhouettes, 1954 Jane’s: battleships include Vanguard, Anson, Duke of York, King George V, plus th the monitors Abercrombie and Roberts, while carriers include Perseus, Glory, and Unicorn.
Unicorn sailed from Devonport on 22 September 1949, packed with a cargo of 27 Seafires, 38 Fireflies, 6 Sea Furys, and two Sea Otters bound for the Med and Far East, arriving in late November after numerous flag-showing colonial port calls, dropping off planes at RNAS along the way.
In May 1950, while calling in Kure, Japan, Unicorn and the Australian River-class frigate HMAS Shoalhaven pulled out their glad rags and fired simultaneous 21-gun salutes to mark George VI’s 13th Coronation.
HMS Unicorn and the frigate HMAS Shoalhaven, lying alongside at Kure, Japan, dressed their ships and fired simultaneous salutes of 21 guns to mark the 13th anniversary of King George VI’s Coronation. Photo by Phillip Oliver Hobson. AWM HOBJ0791.
A view of the mast area of HMS Unicorn docked at Kure harbor, dressed, May 1950. Photo by Phillip Oliver Hobson. AWM HOBJ0793
A view of the deck of HMS Unicorn dressed with flags to mark the 13th anniversary of the King’s Coronation. Note the carrier aircraft on deck with folded wings. Photo by Phillip Oliver Hobson. AWM HOBJ0800
Same as the above, Unicorn dressed with flags to mark the 13th anniversary of the King’s Coronation at Kure in May 1950. Note the Rotol contra-rotating propellers of the Supermarine Seafire FR Mk 47, the type used operationally in Korea by the FAA’s 800 Squadron from the carrier HMS Triumph. The Mk47s were the last of the 22,000 aircraft built under the Spitfire/Seafire program, ending the 13-year production line in 1949. Photo by Phillip Oliver Hobson. AWM HOBJ0801
In drydock at Singapore when the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel in June 1950, before a planned voyage back to England, Unicorn hurriedly refloated and rearmed, headed north to back up Triumph with spare Seafires and Fireflys.
Pulling into Sasebo, Japan, she unloaded her good planes in exchange for worn-out duds from Triumph.
August 1950. The aircraft maintenance carrier HMS Unicorn is seen entering Kure Harbor, Japan. IWM (A 31695)
The destroyer HMS Comus ships a heavy sea when oiling from HMS Unicorn in Korean waters. August 1950. IWM (A 31698)
Unicorn would continue the cycle for the next three years, jogging the 2,500nm from Sasebo to Singapore, via Hong Kong, carrying good aircraft and stores to the theatre and unserviceable airframes back.
Besides supporting Triumph, she did the same for HMS Theseus, which took Triumph’s place in September; HMS Glory, which replaced Theseus; HMS Ocean, which replaced Glory; and the Australian HMAS Sydney.
Between December 1950 and January 1951, off Korea. Air Mechanics servicing planes on board HMS Unicorn, ready for flying off to HMS Theseus. IWM (A 31804)
Between December 1950 and January 1951, off Korea. Servicing an FAA Sea Fury on board HMS Unicorn IWM (A 31806)
Between December 1950 and January 1951, off Korea. An FAA Sea Fury flying off HMS Unicorn. IWM (A 31809)
HMS Unicorn. Between December 1950 and January 1951, off Korea. Petty Officer Pilot Peter Lines of London, left, and Petty Officer Pilot Raymond Grant of Eastry, Kent, in flying kit, already to fly off their aircraft. IWM (A 31798)
United Nations ships assigned to support military operations in Korea pictured at anchor in Sasebo, Japan. Pictured from front to back: HMS Unicorn (I72), the 9,000-ton anti-aircraft cruiser USS Juneau (CLAA-119), the Essex-class carriers USS Valley Forge (CV-45) and USS Leyte (CV-32), and the repair ships USS Hector (AR-7) and USS Jason (ARH-1). The photo was taken between 8 October 1950 and 7 January 1951, as this was the only time that Leyte operated off Korea. NNAM photo No. 1999.272.030
HMS Unicorn moored in a southern Japanese port, probably Sasebo) after a tour of duty in Korean waters. Photo is dated 15 March 1951. Note the Carley floats. 80-G-427411
Besides shuttle trips, Unicorn would often clock in close to the line, supporting her front-line carrier in real-time, providing a base for loaned CAP aircraft, and serving as a lily pad for U.S. Navy SAR helicopters.
The whirlybird is a Sikorsky HO3S-1 Dragonfly (S-51) UP28 of the “Fleet Angels” of Navy Helicopter Utility Squadron One (HU-1). Assigned to support the RN and Royal Australian Navy, this aircraft was nicknamed “Uncle Peter.” September 1951. IWM (A 31984)
In July 1951, an unidentified shutterbug on Unicorn captured an incoming Sea Fury in such distress that it had to ditch alongside the carrier, with its pilot being scooped out by a whirlybird and delivered on deck just 2.5 minutes after hitting the drink.
Thus:
The Sea Fury, still airborne astern of the Unicorn, is giving off black smoke, an indication of engine failure. The pilot, aware of his difficulties, is already getting his wheels up in preparation for “ditching” alongside the carrier. IWM (A 31925)
With his engine stopped, hood open and wheels up, the Sea Fury pilot brings his aircraft down to the water alongside the repair and replenishment carrier Unicorn. IWM (A 31926)
Just 2 1/2 minutes after his Sea Fury ditched, the pilot is back on the Unicorn’s flight deck, being helped out of his flying kit by the carrier’s crew. IWM (A 31930)
Unicorn also served as an intermediate hospital ship as needed and would carry troops intra-theater to Korea as well.
One of her first such missions was to carry the “Die-hards” of 1st Bn, Middlesex Regiment, from their restful and exotic garrison in Hong Kong to active combat at Pusan.
“D” Company, 1st Battalion, The Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) joins HMS ‘Unicorn’ at Hong Kong, 25 August 1950. Photo by Lieutenant (later Major) Geoffrey Norton. NAM. 1992-08-62-1
Unicorn pulling off. Photograph by 2Lt John Mortimer Lock, 1st Battalion Middlesex Regiment, Korea, 1950. Lock (397965) was killed in action on 29 November 1950. NAM. 1992-08-61-17
August 1950. Dusk falls over Hong Kong harbor as the aircraft carrier HMS Unicorn, helped by tugs, swings round, heading northwards for Pusan, South Korea, carrying men of the Middlesex Regiment. IWM GOV 2742
Troops from 1st Battalion, The Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own), on the march in Korea, late 1950. From August 1950 to April 1951, the battalion saw action as part of the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade, being one of the first British units to be deployed there. Seeing combat along the Naktong River and Hill 282, the battalion suffered 136 casualties in its nine months in Korea and received seven honors during its campaign of assault, withdrawal, and defensive operations in support of the ROK forces. Photo by Lieutenant (later Major) Geoffrey Norton. NAM. 1992-08-61-85
On 21 September 1951, Unicorn became the first aircraft carrier to conduct a shore bombardment when she used her eight 4-inch guns to shell North Korean coast watchers at Chopekki Point. As noted by the Royal Navy Research Archive, “out of sixteen salvos, three were known to have found the target.”
HMS Unicorn, the day after her NGFS, at Sasebo, 22 September 1951.
She also provided yeoman service delivering land-based Commonwealth tactical aircraft to the front.
At least 18 new Gloster Meteor jets for the Korean theatre lined up on the flight deck of Unicorn at Singapore. The aircraft were flown from England. At least 58 Meteor F.8s were flown by No. 77 Squadron, RAAF, during the war, with no less than 35 lost. (RAAF 393, AWM 042801)
Iwakuni, Japan. 1952. Gloster Meteor jets for No. 77 Squadron, RAAF in Korea are unloaded from the flight deck of HMS Unicorn to lighters in Southern Japan. By the end of the conflict, 77 Squadron had flown 4,836 missions, destroying six MiG-15s, over 3,500 structures and some 1,500 vehicles. AWM JK0388
Unicorn’s work involved supporting evolving aircraft types, and she took on board SMEs to help accomplish that.
For instance, in October 1950, when Theseus relieved Triumph, the new carrier’s wing was made up of 807 Sqn’s Hawker Sea Fury FB.11s and newly-built Firefly FR.5s of 810 Squadron. The changeover between the two flattops resulted in Triumph’s 827 Squadron paying off its older Fairey Firefly Mk.1s and the unit’s skipper, LCDR (A) Bernard Campbell “Ben” Lyons, cross-decking over to Unicorn to help provide the crucial support to keep the Fireflies serviceable for Theseus’s tour.
Of note, Lyons had flown the Fleet Air Arm’s very first strike in the Korean War, leading his 827 Sqn Fireflies on a rocket attack from Triumph against the hangars of Haeju airfield in North Korea on the morning of 3 July 1950. Lyons had also flown some of the last RN sorties against Japan in 1945, at the controls of a 1771 Sqn Firefly from HMS Implacable.
Briefly, in October 1952, Unicorn served as flag for the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Roderick McGrigor, joined by ADM Sir Guy Russell, head of the Far East Fleet, for their visit to Japan.
Vice Admiral Sohn, CinC Republic of Korea Navy, inspecting a pith-helmeted Royal Marine Guard of Honour during a visit to HMS Unicorn, Pusan, 26-29 November 1952. IWM (A 32445).
With the outbreak of the ceasefire, Unicorn was released on 15 October 1953 and sailed home from Singapore, arriving at Devonport on 17 November.
Her decorations list for her four Korean War tours:
HMS Unicorn (I72) Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong 1953
During her four years’ service in the Far East, Unicorn steamed 130,000 miles and spent over 500 days at sea, carrying over 6,000 troops intra-theatre, and handled some 600 FAA, RAF, RAAF, and RAN aircraft.
During the war, British carrier aircraft dropped 15,200 bombs of various sizes, fired 57,600 rockets, and 3,300,000 rounds of 20mm cannon ammunition in around 23,000 operational sorties.
Redesignated as a ferry carrier (pennant A195) with a skeleton crew, Unicorn remained in reserve until March 1957.
Unicorn, 1954 Janes
Unicorn, post-war
HMS Unicorn seen with a King George V-class battleship behind her, likely post-Korea mothballs
Battleships HMS Vanguard and HMS Howe lying in reserve at Devonport, 1956. HMS Unicorn and Euryalus behind
Placed on the disposal list in 1958, ex-Unicorn was sold for scrap in June 1959 and arrived at Dalmuir on 15 June 1959 for breaking.
The old frigate HMS Unicorn, still in Dundee, has our carrier’s 1942-marked bell on display. She had her original name restored from HMS Cressy in 1959 during a ceremony by Mrs. Keay, widow of the late Captain William Foggie Keay, RNVR, who had commanded the frigate throughout the war.
Ship bell from aircraft carrier HMS Unicorn (1942) on HMS Unicorn, which is on display in Dundee, Scotland, by Hynek Moravec via Wiki Commons.
She is remembered in maritime art.
HMS Aircraft carrier Unicorn from destroyer HMAS Nepal (G25/D14) in Sydney Harbour, 1945, by John Goodchild, AWM ART25541
Further, several aircraft tied to her are preserved in museums, including Hawker Sea Fury FB.11 WJ231/O-115 at the Fleet Air Arm Museum, RNAS Yeovilton, and Gloster Meteor F.3 A77-867 – NZ6001 at the Ashburton Aviation Museum in New Zealand. The first, preserved in Korean War “invasion stripes,” was shifted from Unicorn to Ocean during Korea, while the second shipped aboard Unicorn to Korea in August 1952, where it served with 77 Squadron, RAAF, based out of Kimpo.
Unicorn’s plank owner skipper, Capt. Quintin Dick Graham DSO with Bar, RN, remained aboard through Op Governor and the Salerno Landings, then commanded the big deck carrier HMS Indefatigable during the Pacific. Passing to the reserve list in July 1946 after 38 years of service, he passed the bar in 1968, aged 73. His replacement, Henry Lockhart St. John Fancourt DSO, RN, who commanded Unicorn in the Pacific in 1945, retired in 1950 and passed in 2004, aged a distinguished 103.
As for the RN, the Admiralty commissioned an 11th Unicorn, S 43, an Upholder-class SSK, in 1993 after the name became available when the 9th Unicorn, the old frigate, finally passed out of naval service in 1968.
HMS Unicorn (S 43) was one of the RN’s last “smoke boats” and was sold to Canada in 2001, where she continues to serve as HMCS Windsor.
Finally, perhaps the last naval gunfire support via an aircraft carrier was also done by the British. It occurred during the Aden Emergency when 145 Battery, 29 Commando Regiment, Royal Artillery, fired 105mm pack howitzers directly from the flight deck of the Centaur-class commando carrier HMS Albion off the coast of Aden in November 1967.
But that’s another story.
Thanks for reading!
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
***
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I’ve dug what Pennsylvania-based Auto-Ordnance has done in the past with their WWII-themed M1911A1s, for instance, with their Black Sheep Squadron salute back in 2024.
A functional work of art, underneath the custom Cerakote finish, the Black Sheep 1911 is still an Auto-Ordnance Stainless 1911 in .45 ACP. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Also, note the “belly” of the gun is left in “the white” to emulate the aluminum body of an F4U Corsair. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Well, the company is back with two additions to its “Winged Warriors” series: the “Memphis Belle 1911” and the “Red Tails 1911”. Artwork in Cerakote is hand-done by the artisans at Altered Arsenal.
Price is $1,500, making these limited editions something more for an aviation buff’s man cave or gift to grandpa kinda thing, but it is nice to see them around.
Some 85 years ago, during the epic eight-month siege of Sevastopol.
Wehrmacht soldiers of II/Artillerie-Regiment 814, 11th Army, Army Group Sud, cover their ears as a Czech-made Skoda 9.45-inch Howitzer Model 39 (24 cm Haubitze vz.39) fires at Red Army positions, probably during the siege of Perekop, on or about 24 September 1941.
The two-battalion/four-battery AR 814 was the only German unit to use the rare gun, of which only 16 were made for the Wehrmacht after two early tubes had been sent to the gun’s original customer, the Turkish Army, in early 1939.
Firing a 366-pound anti-concrete shell to 11 miles when all five bags were loaded behind them, these 35-ton beasts were only ever meant to be siege howitzers– making it likely the Turks planned to use them if needed against the Soviets in the Caucasus, as their other traditional enemy, the Greeks, had few such fortified positions worthy of such heavy ordnance.
The Germans used them at Sevastopol and at Leningrad.
A 24 cm Haubitze 39 of AR 814 in 1942 during the Siege of Leningrad.
They were withdrawn in 1944, and the guns were lost to history, although part of one may have been captured by the U.S. 79th Infantry Division in the Rhine in March 1945.
I/814 melted away near Königsberg in Wehrkreis I in early 1945, while II/814 was bagged by the Soviets as part of the 18th Army in Courland.
If anyone knows about the history of the two guns delivered to Turkey in 1939, please pass it on.
Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling 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.
If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”
Department of National Defense / National Archives of Canada, PA-105829.
Above we see the mighty Flower (Trillium) class corvette HMCS Moose Jaw (K 164) steaming with a bone in her teeth off Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June 1942. The 205-foot brawler, along with her sister HMCS Chambly, sank the German Type IXC U-501 via ramming and depth charges off Greenland some 85 years ago this week.
The U-boat was the first of 30 German subs busted by the RCN during WWII.
A handy little sub-buster that could be cranked out in record time but was still very capable of escorting slow-moving merchantmen from the Americas to Europe during the Battle of the Atlantic, the Admiralty would order more than 300 Gladiolus/Flower-class corvettes from 1939 onward.
Essentially a stretched version of the Smith’s Dock’s 582 GRT, 160-foot steam-powered whaler design built in 1936 for the Southern Whaling & Sealing Co. Ltd (SWSC), they were single-screw vessels powered by a pair of cylindrical Scotch marine boilers feeding a single VTE engine that could, when turning at maximum RPMs, generate a theoretical 2,750 h.p., enough to push the little tub 16 ish knots while an economical load of 230 tons of fuel oil would get them 3,500nm at 12 knots, enough to make it across the Atlantic on the 2,700-mile Halifax to Liverpool route with some fuel left for maneuvering.
The Flowers were based on the SWSC’s Southern Pride, shown here in her pre-war whaler service. The vessel would be requisitioned by the RN (K 249) in 1940 and lost in 1944 off Freetown.
Using the simpler boiler pattern and including enough space for a crew of 80 officers and men (later to swell to as much as 110), the dimensions shifted from a 160-foot whaler to a 205-foot corvette. With a correspondingly wide 33-foot beam, they had a stubby 1:6 length-beam ratio.
Armament was slight: a single 4″/45 BL Mk IX forward, a 40mm/39 2pdr QF Mk VIII pom-pom on a “bandstand” platform aft, a couple of depth charge throwers and two depth charge racks over the stern, with provision for up to 40 ash cans. They also had a perfectly adequate Type 123 or Type 128 sonar and (eventually) a Type 271 or Type 286 radar.
Of course, there were extensive modifications to this and tweaks across the massive production line, but you get the idea. Late-war fits included as many as 70 depth charges, a Hedgehog ASW device, and a half-dozen 20mm Oerlikons.
Drawing of a Flower Class Corvette showing the ship’s layout by John W. McKay – 1992. Source: “Corvettes of the Royal Canadian Navy 1939-1945” by Ken MacPherson and Marc Milner
Flower-class HMCS Timmins (K 223) plans
Built to merchant (Lloyds) standards rather than to those of the Admiralty, they could be churned out rapidly at about any small coastwise commercial shipyard, and several dozen shipyards participated in the program in the UK and Canada.
Some 13 Canadian yards alone (Burrard, Canadian Vickers, Collingwood, Davie & Sons, Davie SB, Kingston SB, Marine Industries, Midland SY, Morton Eng. & D.D. Co, Port Arthur SB, Victoria Machinery, and Yarrows Esquimalt) made a whopping 122 Flowers during the conflict.
The average construction time was 6-8 months, a process often sped up by the fact that the armament and sensors would be installed post-delivery at a nearby naval yard, sometimes in stages, a problem that meant some Flowers had to deploy for months before they received all their gear.
No less than 111 Flowers were assigned to the RCN at one point or another, of which seven were canceled while still under construction, 80 were built from the start for the Canadians, and 24 RN corvettes (many of which were built in Canadian yards) were transferred on loan.
RCN corvette in drydock. Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4950910
Three Flower-class corvettes tied up at St. John’s.
This all brings us to…
Our subject is the only Canadian warship named for the town of Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, which has the nickname of “Canada’s Most Notorious City” due to its Prohibition-era rum-running history.
Moose Jaw, Sask. Circa 1909, by Sidney Turk. Library and Archives Canada, 3315697
The future HMCS Moose Jaw (K 164) was one of 28 corvettes (19 Flowers/modified Flowers and nine Castles) ordered from the Great Lakes firm of Collingwood Shipyards Ltd, in Collingwood, Ontario.
Laid down 12 August 1940 as Yard No. 94, she was constructed directly alongside her sisters HMCS Galt (K 163) and Battleford (K 165).
Moose Jaw side-launched into Lake Ontario on 9 April 1941, the first anniversary of the invasion of Norway and Denmark. She was christened by Miss Jane Cory, daughter of Lt.Col. Robert Young Cory, V.D., 48th Highlanders of Canada.
Shipyard workers drive in wedges preparatory to the launch of HMCS Moose Jaw at Collingwood Shipyards, Ltd., Collingwood, Ontario. (NAC, PA 204282)
The launch of HMCS Moose Jaw at Collingwood Shipyards Ltd., Collingwood, Ontario – 9 April 1941.
Moose Jaw in the water, 9 April 1941. (NAC, PA 204283)
She was commissioned on 19 June 1941 at Montreal.
Moose Jaw’s first skipper was LT Frederick Ernest Grubb, RCN, a regular who shipped out on the monitor HMS Erebus as a cadet in 1927, followed by tours on the battleships HMS Revenge and Warspite. His first RCN ship was the destroyer HMCS Vancouver in 1934 as a sub-lou, before serving as a full lou on HMCS Skeena and St Laurent, the latter of which had badly damaged the German submarine U-52 on a three-hour pursuit and depth charging while defending the Halifax-to-UK Convoy HX 60 in August 1940– almost the first Canadian sub kill of the war.
Her namesake city passed the hat and sent a box of radios to be installed for the morale of the crew, as noted by the May 1941 Moose Jaw Times Herald: “The radios, one each for the forward and after crews and the officers, have been shipped to Halifax with the compliments and good wishes of the city of Moose Jaw.”
Part of the RCN’s 72 1939-40 Programme Flowers, Moose Jaw had the earlier fit of armament for the class: a single shielded 4″/45 BL Mk IX forward, two twin Vickers .50 cals, two twin .303-caliber Vickers machine guns, two depth charge throwers, and two depth charge racks with total capacity of 40 “ash cans.”
The only image I can find of her during the war that shows her foremast has the RCN’s REL-made, manually rotated 1.5m SW1C (Surface Warning, 1st Canadian) radar array installed, which was likely added at Saint John, NB, in June 1942.
Arriving at Halifax in late June 1941, Moose Jaw spent six weeks working up in the waters off Nova Scotia, then tagged along with Flower-class sisters HMCS Prescott and Kenogami on Convoy HX 146 for three days out of Halifax to transfer to the Newfoundland Escort Force at St. John’s.
Once there, under CDR “Chummy” Prentice’s local control as Senior Officer, Canadian Corvettes, Moose Jaw and sisters had a hill to climb in training and meeting Chummy’s exercise program.
As noted by No Higher Purpose: The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War:
Although Moose Jaw was one of the very few corvettes commanded by a regular force officer, Lieutenant F.E. Grubb, RCN, most of his inexperienced crew, missing several key specialist personnel, “was seasick for the first four days at sea, some of them being quite incapable of carrying out their duties.”
Then came an emergency call to go to the rescue of the struggling Convoy SC 42, which had left Sydney, Nova Scotia on 30 August with 64 slow (7-knot convoy speed) merchant ships bound for Liverpool under the protection of four escorts. The lumbering flotilla was discovered by the 14 U-boats of Wolfpack Gruppe Markgraf off Southeast Greenland on 9 September, with U-81 sinking the straggling Empire Springbuck (5,591 GRT) that morning. While depth-charge-carrying PBY Catalina flying boats from Iceland kept the wolves away during the day, night proved a horror story. By the end of the 10th, the Markgraf wolves claimed another eight steamers.
The slaughter led C-in-C Western Approaches to sortie reinforcements from Iceland (36 hours away) and even strip escorts from the safely steaming HX 147 and ON 13 Convoys to sail to SC 42’s aid.
From off St. John, Chummy was ordered to rush his proven HMCS Chambly (K 116) and his new Moose Jaw, which were at sea on exercises, at best possible speed to the battle. Arriving just 24 hours after they left Newfoundland, the two Flowers saw the signal rockets shooting up from the struggling merchant vessels under attack around 2100 on the 10th in the Denmark Strait south of Angmagsalik, Greenland.
Soon, Chambly had an ASDIC contact 700 yards off and was turning to drop charges, which had an immediate effect.
As detailed in the RN interrogation report of U-501’s crew:
“U 501” was at a depth of 40 meters (131 ft), and the explosion of the depth charges caused considerable damage inside the U-Boat, a number of instruments being smashed and the after hydroplane being put out of action; both the ordinary and the emergency lighting systems ceased to function.
Prisoners claim to have heard two more crashes in the control room, followed by a smell of gas given off by the action of water on potassium cartridges. The valves of the U-Boat were said to have been damaged, and the depth gauge was put out of action.
While Chambly turned to make another depth-charge attack, the damaged U-boat, U-501 (KrvKpt. Hugo Forster), surfaced near Moose Jaw. The banged-up submarine attempted a hasty withdrawal, and Moose Jaw opened fire, but an overexcited sailor in the 4-inch gun’s crew jammed its mechanism.
Then came something really special.
As described by Grubb in his report from Moose Jaw:
The next few minutes was spent in chase … At one time four of the submarine’s crew made a determined move to the after gun. As our own gun was still jammed, no action could be taken except to increase speed and try to ram before they could fire. This I did, although the chance was small; fortunately, someone on the conning tower ordered them back. The .5-inch machine guns were bearing at the time, but when the trigger was pressed, they failed to fire. A subsequent check showed no defects, so I assume that in the excitement the crew failed to cock them.
I managed to go alongside the submarine, starboard side to, and called on her to surrender. To my surprise, I saw a man make a magnificent leap from the submarine’s deck into our waist [the mid-part of the corvette], and the remainder of her crew move to do likewise. Not being prepared to repel boarders at that moment, I sheered off. The submarine altered across my bows and I rammed her [a glancing blow that, fortunately, did not seriously damage the corvette] …
After the impact she moved across my bows at reduced speed. The gun being cleared by that time, I opened fire again. The crew jumped into the sea as soon as the first round went, and I ordered fire to be stopped. I subsequently learned that the shell had passed low enough over the conning tower to knock down the men who were standing thereon.
The man who I had seen jump on board turned out to be the submarine’s commanding officer. He was badly shaken, and when he was brought to me on the bridge appeared to be worried at the amount of light we were showing in order to pick up survivors.
While Chambly put a nine-man boarding team aboard U-501 under Lt. Ted Simmons looking for code books, it was reported by the boarding party that a large hole was seen, about four feet in diameter, where the U-Boat’s casing joined the hull on the port quarter. It appeared that the U-Boat’s port after hydroplane had been shorn off.
The boat sank before they could get very far, losing a man in the process, Stoker William Irvin Brown, RCNVR, while Simmons, sucked out of the conning tower, almost perished.
In all, U-501 lost 10 men.
On both the skipper’s and the boat’s first patrol, U-501’s commander had only one vessel to their credit, a 2,000-ton Norwegian steamer which required six torpedoes and 40 shells from the boat’s deck gun, before being sent to the bottom by Moose Jaw and Chambly 35 days after leaving Trondheim. A regular who had joined the Reichsmarine in 1923 and served aboard surface ships– he was on the cruiser Blücher when she was sunk in a cold Norwegian fjord in 1941– Förster was nonetheless a very green 37-year-old submarine commander.
From the RN crew interrogation:
He was transferred fairly recently to U-Boats and took a shortened U-Boat course. He refused to go into any details of his recent career, but it was established that the first and last cruise of “U 501” was also his first and last cruise as Captain of a U-Boat, although he may have been on a war cruise in another U-Boat under instruction as a prospective Captain. His lack of experience, his cowardice, and other defects were bitterly criticized by his officers and men, some of whom went so far as to threaten to take vengeance into their own hands should Förster not be adequately punished by Court Martial after the war. According to his crew, Förster not only surrendered without a fight, but subsequently thought solely of his own skin, and not of the fate of his ship, nor of the lives of his men, eleven of whom were drowned. He was the first to desert his U-Boat and the only man to jump from her to the British corvette [Moose Jaw] without even getting wet, let alone having to swim for some time before being rescued. Later, when visiting his men, he offered his hand to his Chief Quartermaster, a man of fourteen years’ service in the German Navy, who refused to shake hands with him.
The captain of “U 501” explained his precipitate leap from his U-Boat by stating that he felt impelled to get aboard “Moosejaw” at once in order to insist on the British rescuing his men; otherwise, he added, the German crew might have been left to drown. His explanation, while failing to convince the British, succeeded in infuriating his own men into a state of high blood pressure.
Moose Jaw and Chambly, having completed the rescue of U-501’s survivors, joined the convoy at 2315, with the former soon stopping to pick up survivors from the lost British steamer Berury. Moose Jaw and sister HMCS Kenogami (K 125) rescued Berury’s master, 36 crew members and four gunners, only losing one to the sea. Berury’s captain informed Grubb that he had been unable to remove the confidential books from the bridge of his ship and, with seas too high to board the vessel, Moose Jaw riddled the hull with 66 shells from her 4-inch gun (33 HE, 33 SAP) to help speed the sinking along.
The two Flowers would spend the next week riding shotgun towards the British Isles. SC 42 made it to Liverpool on 20 September, after losing 16 ships totaling 68,259 GRT.
Besides U-501, U-207 was sent to the bottom with all hands by the destroyers HMS Leamington and Veteran of the 2nd Escort Group out of Iceland, while HMCS Skeena and Kenogami had severely damaged U-85.
Moose Jaw had 29 prisoners (three commissioned officers, two midshipmen, and 24 ratings) along with 35 merchant seamen from torpedoed ships on board when she made port.
In the aftermath of the SC 42 convoy fight, the Admiralty’s Anti-Submarine Warfare Division classed the defense of SC 42 as “valiant” and praised the destruction of U-501 by Chambly and Moose Jaw. Chummy Prentice and Ted Simmons earned a DSO and DSC, respectively, while our LT Grubb was Mentioned in Dispatches.
With her ASDIC and bow busted because of ramming U-501, she was put in for 10 days of patchwork at Greenock for repairs.
The corvette operated on ASW patrols between St. John’s and Iceland for the rest of 1941 and into 1942, operating with sisters HMCS Chicoutimi, Sherbrooke, Berne, Brandon, Rosthern, and Morden. During this time, she clocked in briefly on other eastbound SC convoys, including SC 58 and SC 64, as well as westbound Liverpool-to-Halifax Convoys ON 29, ON 36, ON 48, and ON 60.
On 9 February 1942, while escorting convoy ON-60, the Free French Flower-class sister FS Alysse (K 100) was torpedoed by the German submarine U-654 and eventually sank. The Moose Jaw and HMCS Hepatica took 34 men as survivors, including the wounded skipper, LdV Jacques Pépin Lehalleur, while 36 men were lost to the sea.
Free French Corvette Alysse (K-100), torpedoed in the North Atlantic by U-654, 9 February 1942. HMCS Hepatica visible in the distance. Photo taken from HMCS Moose Jaw by L/S Ian Butters, RCNVR.
Moose Jaw then ran aground on the south entrance to St. John’s harbor on 19 February while en route to join convoy HX.176, and required repairs to fix busted seams at Saint John, New Brunswick until 25 June. This resulted in the reassignment of her skipper at the time, T/Lt. Henry Drummond Campsie, RCNR, who had taken over from Grubb the previous December.
Her third skipper, arriving on Valentine’s Day 1942, was T/Lt. Lewis Dennis Quick, RCNR, who would remain in command into early 1944.
The ship’s company of Moose Jaw in Saint John, New Brunswick, 19 March 1942, likely with skipper T/Lt. Lewis Dennis Quick, RCNR, forward. (NAC, PA 204274)
Dispatched to join the Western Local Escort Force, Moose Jaw was once again on North Atlantic Convoy duty, clocking in on westbound ON 109, ON 116, ON 123, ON 129, and ON 133, as well as eastbound SC 93, SC 97, SC 100, SC 103, and SC 107.
On 3 November 1942, while escorting Convoy SC 107, sisters Moose Jaw and Algoma (K 127) engaged the marauding U-704 and U-89 of Wolfpack Gruppe Veilchen with star shells and depth charges, forcing both sharks to break contact. Still, SC 107 was a rough convoy fight, losing 15 of 42 merchant ships to Donitz’s raiders, some 82,817 tons of shipping, while the Germans only lost two subs, both to RCAF patrol bombers.
Then came the Torch landings in North Africa, with Moose Jaw joining sisters Algoma and Regina, actively escorting convoys to and from England to Gibraltar and Tunisia between November 1942 and March 1943. These included Med-bound KMS 5G, KMS 6G, KMS 8G, and UGS 5 as well as Liverpool-bound MKS 4 and MKS 9. Regina bagged the Italian coastal submarine Avorio north-west of Philippeville, Algeria during this period.
After this, Moose Jaw was sent back home to join Quebec Force/Gaspe Force for escort duties in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
During a December 1943 to March 1944 refit at Liverpool, NS, she was modernized, and her forecastle was extended along with a sheet of over 30 modifications and additions, including increased accommodations, watertight lockers for the fighting equipment, and additional voice pipes and electric buzzers for communication within the ship.
By this stage of the war, Moose Jaw carried her 4-incher, a 40mm 2-pounder QF Mk VIII, four 20mm Oerlikons, a 24-rocket Hedgehog ASW spigot mortar system, and room for as many as 72 depth charges. She also sported a more advanced Type 271 radar and a Type 123 sonar.
A Hedgehog ASWRL on board HMCS Moose Jaw, Halifax, May 1st, 1944. While 294 Flowers were completed, the Hedgehog was far from standard kit across the class. Department of National Defense / National Archives of Canada, PA-112918.
Two ratings in front of Moose Jaw’s 4inch gun. FPS MJW0004
Moose Jaw had legendary gun shield art
By May 1944, Moose Jaw was sent to the British Isles as part of the buildup for the Normandy invasion, one of 62 documented RCN warships involved in D-Day.
Assigned to the escort force as one of the 70-odd corvettes under Western Forces Command out of Milford Haven and Portsmouth, Moose Jaw was soon running small convoys from Barry on the Bristol Channel across the English Channel to the Seine Bay in France, a sector still very hot with German S-boots, U-boats, human torpedoes, and aircraft.
These EBC/FBC convoys were small and lightly escorted, for instance, with EBC 43 seeing Moose Jaw depart Barry with 19 merchants on 17 July 1944 with only the old (circa 1916) destroyer HMS Walker to help shepherd the group. They were short, 200-mile/three-day runs, but they were always a pucker factor. By September, Moose Jaw had run 10 convoys across the Channel in such fashion and lived to tell the tale.
Shifting to Escort Group 41 out of Plymouth in December 1944, Moose Jaw escorted coastal BTC (Milford Haven – Southend/Thames Estuary) and TBC (Southend/Thames Estuary – Milford Haven) convoys until the end of the war, logging 15 of each. These coastwise four-day/450nm milk runs were very small indeed, typically just a few merchant vessels hugging the 10-fathom line with Moose Jaw seaward as the sole escort.
Don’t think this work was low risk, as even in this late stage of the war, “Jerry” was still about. On 28 February 1945, Moose Jaw rescued six survivors from the British merchant ship Norfolk Coast, which had been torpedoed and sunk by U-1302 south-west of Strumble Head.
By the end of the war, the little corvette had logged no less than 66 convoys of all sorts. She earned battle honors for Atlantic 1941-1943, Normandy 1944, and English Channel 1944-1945.
Not all her sisters were that fortunate. No less than seven were lost during the war, including Levis, Charlottetown, and Shawinigan to U-boats; Albernie, Weyburn, and Regina to mines; and Louisburg to air attack.
Moose Jaw was paid off from the RCN on 8 July 1945 at Sorel, Quebec, then sold for scrapping in September 1949 and broken up at Hamilton, Ontario.
A For Posterity’s Sake page exists to carry forward the memory of the lost corvette.
Moose Jaw’s plank owner skipper, who commanded her during the U-501 attack, went on to command the HMCS Charny (Z 26) through November 1942 and ended the war at the Toronto shore establishment HMCS York, a site that trained 14,000 RCN members during the conflict. Post-war, he shifted to the HMCS Naden shore establishment at Esquimalt, BC, and went on to pen several scholarly works, including Naval Customs and Social Practices. He retired as a captain in 1954 and passed in 1985 at Victoria, aged 74.
Grubb, looking very much like Brendan Fraser’s uncle
Captain James Douglas “Chummy” Prentice, RCN, DSO, DSC, was on the scene for the sinking of at least three more U-boats and retired in 1946 as ADC to the Governor General of Canada. He passed in Saanichton, BC, in 1979.
As for the man who jumped from his U-boat to Moose Jaw’s deck during the fight for Convoy SC-42, KvtKpn. Hugo Förster of U-501 spent the following three years in Canadian POW camps, then was repatriated in January 1945 in poor health as part of a prisoner exchange. He committed suicide just weeks after returning to war-ravaged Germany.
Of Moose Jaw’s classmates, the last of her Collingwood-built sisters, HMCS Barrie (K 138), survived until 1972, serving with the Argentine Navy as the survey ship Capitan Canepa.
The final Canadian Flower afloat, HMCS Sackville, remained in service first as a controlled minelayer, then as a survey ship with the RCN into the 1980s, and is a fixture on the Halifax waterfront, complete in WWII livery.
Sackville via Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, please, if you are ever in Halifax, pay her a visit.
Thanks for reading!
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
***
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Here we see, some 85 years ago this month, a Finnish dragoon (Rakuuna) on horseback, 12th of September 1941, near Tsalkki-Suojärvi on the Russo-Finnish border during the Continuation War between the two countries, which saw Finland allied with Germany.
Photo by Heikki Aho, SA Kuva Image number 47915
Photo by Heikki Aho, SA Kuva Image number 47916
The above dragoon was likely from Finland’s oldest cavalry regiment, the Nyland Regiment of Dragoons, or the Uudenmaan rakuunarykmentti (URR).
While you wouldn’t think of Finland, with its dense forests, rugged coastline, and frozen north, as good cavalry country, the country has a horse soldier tradition going back over 400 years.
The Swedes formed the Uusimaa Riders (Nylands ryttare), along with the Viborg (Viborgs läns kavalleriregemente), and Karelian Cavalry Regiments (Karelska kavalleriregementet) as far back as 1618, when Karelia (the region north of what is now St. Petersburg around the White Sea and Lakes Ladoga and Onega) and Finland were firmly under the Swedish crown.
Hakkapeliitta, Finnish light cavalryman of the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)
These rugged light horsemen in blue and yellow uniforms fought throughout the Ingrian War and Thirty Years War then later morphed into the Uusimaa and Hämeenlinna Dragoon Regiment (Nylands och Tavastehus läns dragonregemente) and the Karelian Dragoon Corps (Karelska dragonkåren) in 1721-1724 for another 80 years of tough service against the Russians, Sweden’s traditional enemy from 1475 onwards (the two countries fought each other something like 15 times between 1475 and 1809, periods always bracketed by uneasy peaces and a frontier filled with breaches, smugglers, and bandits).
Swedish Karelian Dragoon Corps (Karelska dragonkåren)
Assorted Finnish dragoons in Swedish service in the early 1700s-1800s, all from the NYPL’s Vinkhuizen Collection.
These storied units were all disbanded in 1809 after the territories were lost to Tsar Alexander I.
Going back to 1806, even before the country was a Grand Duchy of Russia, ceded to the latter as a prize of war in 1809 by the Swedes, the “Finnish Dragoon Regiment” was established in Vitebsk– some 400 miles south of anything that can be considered Finland, likely without a single officer or dragoon who spoke Finnish.
Made from a squadron drawn from five other Russian line cavalry regiments, it was soon fighting the French (1807), then the Swedes (1808), then the French again (1812-14), then the Poles (1830s) and the French one more time (in the Crimea at the Black River) before renamed as the 13th Dragoon Regiment (Field Marshal Count Minich’s) in 1860.
The next Finnish Dragoon Regiment was actually raised in Finland in 1889 in the Karelian town of Villmanstrand (now Lappeenranta), with its first colonel the Helsinki-born Oskar Theodor Schauman (the latter a figure in the Finnish military after the country gained independence in 1918).
Officers and dragoons of the Finnish Dragoon Regiment 1890s-1900
Short-lived, it was disbanded in 1901 due to pro-Russian reforms that included getting rid of such “nationalist” units, and Colonel Schauman was cashiered and took an appointment in a local fire brigade.
The third Finnish dragoon regiment, established in 1901, was dubbed the 20th (20-i Dragunskii Finlyandskii polk) and based in the same barracks as the old, but make no mistake, it was an all-Russian unit, formed from platoons drawn from 25 line cavalry regiments.
Its commander was also Russian, Col. Alexander Antonovich Grigorkov.
Among its future commanders over the next two decades were the future German puppet leader of Ukraine in 1918 (Pavel Skoropadsky), the general who compiled the most detailed records of the Russian Army in the Great War while in exile in Paris (Nikolai Golovin), the Georgian Prince Melikov, Reznikov Dmitry Pavlovich, who was killed as a major general with the Whites during the Civil War in 1919, and Swedish-born Petr Viktorovich Engelhardt, who was dismissed from the Army after the revolution and settled in Finland as a horse trainer.
Part of the Russian XX Army Corps in 1914, the 20th Finnish Dragoons, known as “The Black Dragoons,” rode off to fight the Germans and Austrians and never came back.
Their final colonel, 40-year-old Prince Vladimir Nikolaevich Gagarin, disbanded his regiment on 21 April 1918 and led his 140 remaining counter-revolutionary officers and men south, where they joined the Whites. Gagarin died in Paris in exile in 1948.
By that time, the Finns had already founded and sent to war two full-fledged native dragoon regiments of their own.
The flower of free Finland’s cavalry organizations in 1917 was being cultivated at the Saksanniemi police school, where a mounted gendarme unit, under former Finnish Dragoon riding master (master kavalerii) Gaston Ahrenberg, was being trained.
Once the brief Finnish Civil War kicked off in February 1918, Ahrenberg became major and eventually colonel of a new force built around his 70 mounted police cadets, augmented by Finns of the Tsar’s old army who had riding experience. It became the Uusimaa Dragoon Regiment (Uudenmaan Rakuunarykmentti).
A second regiment, the Karelian Cavalry Regiment (Karjalan ratsujääkärirykmentti, KRjR), was founded in Joensuu in March 1918 by the Jaeger Rittmeister Sven Weckström and 23 fellow Jaeger dispatch rider (Melderreiter), trained officers and NCOs who had served in German service during the Great War.
Finnish cavalry section of the German 27th Jaeger battalion in Libau in late 1917 (Jaakaripataljoonan ratsuosasto). They would form the core of the Finnish Karelian Cavalry Regiment (Karjalan ratsujääkärirykmentti, KRjR) in 1918.
Both units covered themselves with glory during the Finnish Civil War, with the KRjR who established its depot in Hämeenlinna and being renamed the Hämeen ratsurykmentti (HRR) in March 1919.
A squadron of URR dragoons in Jyväskylä during training, 1923
Forming the Ratsuväkiprikaati (Cavalry Brigade), the URR and HRR were an elite branch of the cash-strapped Finnish military over the interwar years. They turned out well at parades and as honor guards for important events and regularly sent officers to represent the country at the Olympics.
One officer, Oskar Wilkman (Vilkama), had ridden with the Russian pentathlon team (which included Rasputin assassin Grand Duke Dmitri) in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics against American Lt. George S. Patton, then rode for the Finns in the 1920 Antwerp games at which point he was the regimental colonel of the URR.
The two Finnish dragoon regiments maintained their own brigade-based riding school and were serious equestrians, having an Olympic-level program. Here, a charger of the URR is put through its paces at Sungu in August 1942, well into WWII, when the regiment was actively deployed against the Soviets. SA-Kuva 105518
Formed as battalion-sized three-squadron regiments with an anti-tank troop in support and the bicycle-mounted 1st Jaeger Battalion as mobile reserve, the entire brigade in 1939 on paper numbered just 4,238 officers and men at war strength- including the regimental bands as well as the staff and cadets of the Finnish Army Cavalry School!
Even at that, the stables across the entire Finnish military only had 4,700 horses on hand, including breeding stock, against a need to mobilize 50,000 for the war for transport, support, and dispatch rider purposes.
Nonetheless, from the Winter War (Nov. 1939-March 1940) through the Continuation War (June 1941-Sept. 1944) against the Soviets and then the tail-end of WWII against the Germans, the Finnish cavalrymen carried on the fight and acquitted themselves well.
The brigade was commanded during the war by BG Harry Uno Alfthan, a graduate of the old Nicholas Cavalry School and late of the Tsar’s 6th (Grand Duke Ernst-Ludwig of Hesse’s) Klyastitsy Hussar Regiment during the Great War.
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Finnish Dragoons of the URR pulling ski troops, Tuntematon, 19 December 1939. SA-Kuva a_154
Finnish Dragoons of the URR’s 3rd Squadron in cross-country riding exercises.. SA-Kuva 79071
Finnish Dragoons of the URR in snow near Arsenavolok, 2 April 1942. SA-Kuva 79990
Finnish Dragoons of the URR in the field near Ilomantsi on the road to Lake Ilona by Othmar Nyblin, after the beginning of the Continuation War, 8 July 1941. Note the stalhelms (the Finns used no less than 19 different helmets during the war) and campaign order. The rifles over their backs, carried Russian style, are Italian Fucile Mod. 38 Terni short rifles in 7.35x51mm with their 11-inch folding knife bayonets stowed. Italy sent 94,500 such rifles to Finland in the summer of 1940 (against German guidance), and they were used by cavalry, coastal /field artillery, engineers, counter-partisan troops, and AAA units. Of interest to gun nuts, Interarms bought at least 74,000 remaining rifles of this type from the Finns in the 1950s and imported them to the U.S. directly. SA-Kuva 26239
Finnish cavalry, East Karelia, 1941 Museovirasto HK19710326
“Cavalry to the border, Uimaharja, 27 June 1941.” SA Kuva 22029
Dragoons of the Häme Cavalry Regiment (HRR) on their way to the front lines during the Continuation War on 24 July 1941. Riding fourth from the right is Knight of the Mannerheim Cross Teppo Hirvi-Kunnas. SA-Kuva 81614.
Finnish ratsuväen cavalryman and horse, Sunkku village in Karhumäki, 14.8.1942. SA-Kuva 104053
The URR filing past for Mannerheim’s birthday, June 4, 1942, Sunku. SA-Kuva 90628
URR’s annual celebration and parade in Sungu. Squadrons in position and a march past, received by the commander, Lieutenant Colonel v. Essen, Lieutenant Colonel Wahren and Major Åkerman. 9 July 1942. SA-Kuva 107152
“A squadron of a cavalry regiment has received a report that an enemy patrol has been encountered about 5 km away and that they are now going to destroy it. The horses are quickly saddled, and soon we are there: We mount our horses.” (Erään ratsurykmentin eskadroonaan on tullut ilmoitus, että vihollispartio on tavattu noin 5 km päässä ja sitä lähdetään nyt tuhoamaan.) Hevoset satuloidaan nopeasti ja pian ollaan paikalla: Noustaan ratsaille.) SA Kuva 80002
After 1942, the cavalrymen were typically dismounted due to the static trench warfare nature of the Finnish Vyborg front facing besieged Leningrad.
The HRR was disbanded in November 1944 but was rebooted in 1986, its lineage used by the Lahti-based Hämeen rykmentti (HämR) training regiment until 2014.
Meanwhile, the URR kept its horses until 1 March 1947 when, laying a bouquet of tulips on the cavalry brigade’s war memorial, the final mounted detachment was disbanded. The URR endured as an infantry unit with a dragoon name through 1989.
The URR says goodbye to its horses in 1947 before its war memorial. Via the South Karelian Museum (EKM).
Even after it gave up its horses, a former URR colonel, Adolf Ehrnrooth, represented Finland in the equestrian events at the 1948 Olympics in London at age 43.
The Danes are currently hosting 400 soldiers from 11 NATO countries in a large ground force exercise in Greenland, and just wrapped up a rare joint exercise with SNMG1 and SNMCMG1 off Iceland for Operation Reassurance, along with Op Nanook Tuugaalik with the Canadian and U.S. naval forces, with the latter including the Freedom-variant littoral combat ship USS Wichita (LCS 13), surged to the far north from sunny 102-degree Mayport.
Dutch Korps Mariniers in Greenland, finding out just how cold RIB ops can be!
Some more Dutch Korps Mariniers, with a sinking feeling their camo might not be working
Finnish special forces are in Greenland having a blast…
Meanwhile, the current batch of Greenlandic territorials, the Arktisk Basisuddannelses, are probably not loving their training. Note the new Colt Canada C8s, though…
HMCS Robert Hampton Gray performs maneuvers with HDMS Thetis and CCGS George R. Pearkes during Operation Nanook-Tuugaalik on August 21, 2026. Photo: Corporal Paquette, Canadian Armed Forces Photo
ORP Mewa and HMCS Moncton conduct a mine-screening exercise alongside FS Auvergne while sailing astern of HMCS Ville De Québec during Operation Reassurance in the North Atlantic Ocean on 16 August 2026. Corporal Gregory Cole, Canadian Armed Forces Photo
With all of this naval and coast guard ship movement, it is of interest that a shore party of tourists from a passing cruise ship (!) came upon an old Soviet naval mine in Carlsberg Fjord (Kangerterajitta Itterterilaq), north of Ittoqqortoormiit in East Greenland.
Nope. Don’t like that on your beach walk…
For reference, the closest town to where the mine was found is Scoresbysund (Ittoqqortoormiit), a 300-person hamlet just 20 miles away as the crow flies, but is about 500 miles NW by air of Reykjavík and 900 miles from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland on the opposite side of the frozen subcontinent.
A det from the Royal Danish Navy UDT group (Søværnets Dykkertjeneste) helicoptered in and zapped said mine.
As to the mine’s origin, it likely floated at least 1,200 miles across the Barents and Greenland Sea from the Northern Norwegian coast (e.g., Kirkenes) or the Kola Peninsula and could very well have been laid during WWII.
This week is the 105th anniversary of the establishment of the 1st U.S. Cavalry Division.
To celebrate, how about this great photo essay of American horse cavalry in the field, Fort Bliss, Texas, summer of 1939? The twilight of such an organization. Note the M1903s and M1917A1 “Kelly” helmets. All caught in time.
(Photographer in all cases: J.J. Gregor, Ft. Bliss, Texas. From prints furnished by Mr. Sullivan, Remount Branch, Quartermaster Corps. 7/18/39. Signal Corps Collection via NARA)
Machine gun detachment. Note the M1917 Bolo knives on their gun belts, used for clearing brush from fields of fire. 111-SC-113986
Hell for leather, baby! Could you imagine what that Kelly tin helmet with almost no padding felt like rattling on your head while galloping across that ground? 111-SC-113995
Another shot of the MG detachment. You can see the tripod mounts for their M1917 Brownings. 111-SC-113989
Another of the MG detachments with Bolos. 111-SC-113992
111-SC-113991
Machine gun detachment. Note their M1917 Bolos. 111-SC-113985
Of gas masks and 1911s. My favorite, and also perhaps the scariest. 111-SC-113987
Field artillery on parade. At the time, the division had the 82nd Field Artillery Battalion and the 99th Field Artillery Battalion, both with 75mm pack howitzers, later towed by jeeps. 111-SC-113998
On parade with dress uniforms, including pennants
At the time, Fort Bliss was one of the final holdouts for horse cavalry in the U.S. Army. It was home to the active duty 1st Cavalry Division (activated there on 13 September 1921) with four regiments (5th, 7th, 8th, and 12th U.S. Cavalry). The base would also soon be home to the Army National Guard’s 56th Cavalry Brigade’s 112th (Texas) Cavalry Regiment, which had been called to federal service on 10 November 1940 by President Roosevelt and mustered at Bliss.
Tasked with guarding the Mexican border, that mission largely evaporated after Mexico formally entered WWII on the side of the Allies in June 1942.
After giving up their steeds on 28 February 1943, largely transferring them to the 2nd Cavalry Division, the 1st Cav deployed to Australia and later fought the Japanese on foot, seeing combat for the first time on 29 February 1944 on Los Negros Island in the Admiralty chain— which was ironically a horseshoe-shaped island.
It was in the Philippines when the unit inherited about 25 captured Japanese Army horses, found still harnessed to 75mm guns, then duly recycled into U.S. service by men of the 8th Cavalry Regiment.
On 3 February 1945, the 1st Cav became the first U.S. unit to re-enter Manila, racing 100 miles as part of the legendary “Flying Column” of jeeps and trucks to liberate more than 3,500 internees at Santo Tomas University and secure key objectives across the city, coining the name “First Team.”
By the end of the war, they had suffered 4,055 battle casualties in 521 days of combat.
Entering Tokyo with the occupation forces, they put on a rodeo for Armistice Day, 1945, at the Meiji Shrine Stadium, complete with horses liberated from a racetrack and purportedly late of the Imperial Guard.