She still looks beautiful, even after 33 years of hard riding.
Naval Base San Diego (Aug. 27, 2024) – Retired Vice Adm. Edward Moore delivers remarks at the decommissioning ceremony for the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Cowpens (CG 63) at Naval Base San Diego Aug. 27, 2024. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Claire M. DuBois)
The 17th Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, USS Cowpens (CG 63), was recognized for more than 33 years of naval service during a decommissioning ceremony at Naval Base San Diego on 27 August.
The second ship to bear the name after the 12 battle star and Navy Unit Commendation earning Independence-class light carrier (CVL 25) of WWII fame, the current Cowpens was built at Bath and commissioned in 1991. Both vessels were named after the pivotal Battle of Cowpens during the War for Independence, “The ship has faithfully served the nation for more than three decades, embodying the valor and resilience of her namesake.”
Cowpens, which will be towed to the Navy’s Inactive Ship facility in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii where it will be in a Logistic Support Asset status, leaves the fleet with only 11 Ticos left on active service.
The final American cruiser is set to retire in FY 2027.
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Warship Wednesday, 11 September 2024: You Have to Go Out…
USCG Photo #: 16079-A Photographer: J. N. Heuisy
Above we see a member of the 35 so-called “Buck and a Quarter” Active-class Coast Guard cutters rushed into completion to deal with bootleggers during Prohibition, the USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) as she appeared in 1927 in her original “rum-buster” haze gray configuration. Don’t let the bone in her teeth fool you, she is probably just making revolutions for 10 knots– her designed top speed.
These choppy little 125-foot gunboats were designed to serve as subchasers in times of war and Jackson, along with her sister Bedloe, did their part during the conflict, atop an unforgiving sea, to the bitter end.
The 125s
These cutters were intended for trailing the slow, booze-hauling “Blacks” mother ships of “Rum Row” along the outer line of patrol during Prohibition.
Constructed for $63,173 each, they originally had a pair of 6-cylinder 150hp Superior or Winton diesel engines that allowed them a stately speed of 10 knots, max, but allowed a 4,000 nm, theoretically Atlantic-crossing range– an outstanding benefit for such a small craft.
While slow, this was deemed at first adequate as most of the Blacks were cheapy acquired and nearly condemned old coasters and fishing schooners salvaged from backwater ports around New England and the Maritimes for their shady last hurrah.
For armament, they carried a single 3″/23 cal deck gun for warning shots– dated even for the 1920s– a Lewis gun or two for serious use, and a small arms locker that included everything from Tommy guns to .38s. In a time of conflict, they could tote listening gear and depth charge racks left over from the Great War, but we’ll get to that later.
Taking advantage of one big contract issued on 26 May 1926, the class were all built within 12 months by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, New Jersey (although often listed as “American Brown Boveri” due to their owners at the time, the Swiss Brown Boveri corporation).
The class was named in honor of former historic cutters from the Coast Guard and its preceding Lighthouse Service, Revenue Marine, and Revenue Cutter Services.
Meet Bedloe
Commissioned 25 July 1927 as USCGC Antietam (WPC-128) after a circa 1864 Revenue Cutter Service centerboard schooner of the same name that was a nod to the pivotal Maryland Civil War battle, this hardy 125-footer was first stationed in Boston under the 1st CG District where she served for eight years, accomplishing her hallmark law enforcement and SAR duties but also breaking light ice when needed.
The USCG sent no less than 11 of the first 125s to Boston, where they were desperately needed to parol the New England coastline. Besides Antietam, they included USCGC Active (WPC-125), Agassiz (WPC-126), Alert (WPC-127), Bonham (WPC-129), Dix (WPC-136), Faunce (WPC-138), Fredrick Lee (WPC-139), Harriet Lane (WPC-141), General Greene (WPC-140), and Jackson (WPC-142).
These new cutters were based at the Charleston Navy Yard and arrived in a haze-gray livery, built to take the “Rum War” to the bootleggers.
Five 125-foot cutters– likley including Antietam– at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.
Once the Volstead Act was repealed, the 125s got a more regal peacetime USCG white and buff appearance.
Cutter Antietam in the Boston area, likely during a summer regatta around 1930. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection 08_06_004565.
USCGC Antietam, later Bedloe in 1930, likely in the Boston area. USCG Photo.
With cutters needed on the Great Lakes and the downturn in cutter tempo that accompanied the end of Prohibition, Antietam transferred to Milwaukee in May 1935, a station that typically meant a winter lay-up once the lakes froze over.
Of note, on 1 December 1937, Antietam was used as a dive platform for a famous deep dive in Lake Michigan by Max Gene Nohl that set the world’s then-deep dive record of 420 feet. Nohl, using a self-contained suit with a heliox (helium/oxygen) breathing mixture pioneered by what would become DESCO, had earlier made history from the cutter’s deck the previous April when she hosted the first live underwater broadcast to a national audience by WTMJ over the NBC-Blue network.
On 10 April 1937, Max Nohl (shown in the dive suit) along with John Craig made a dive on the shipwreck Norland to perform another early test of the newly designed diving suit in conjunction with testing the helium-oxygen mixture that Dr. End and Max had been working on. The dive took place off the deck of the Coast Guard cutter Antietam (note the “A” on her whaler) about five miles out from Milwaukee’s breakwater, via the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Between 1939 and 1940, most of the 125s in the Coast Guard’s inventory had their often cranky original diesels replaced by new General Motors 268-As. Rated for 600 hp, they were capable of breaking 14 knots (vs the designed 10) in still seas. However, the radius dropped down to 2,500nm @ 12 knots and 3,500 @ 8.
Then came WWII in Europe and the need for the Neutrality Patrol. This was long before FDR’s 1 November 1941 Executive Order 8929 that transferred the Coast Guard to the Navy Department.
With the Navy short on hulls, Antietam was pulled from her Wisconsin home and ordered to Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1940. There, her armament was beefed up at the Tietjen & Lang yard to include stern depth charge racks and the capacity to carry 10 cans. To acknowledge the upgrade, in February 1942, the 125s were redesignated from WPC (Coast Guard patrol craft) to WSC (Coast Guard sub chaser.)
Assigned to the EASTSEAFRON (Eastern Sea Frontier), Antietam was stationed out of Stapleton, Staten Island, where she saw service as a coastwise convoy escort along the eastern seaboard. It was in this duty that she proved a godsend to those souls on the sea and was involved in several rescues including that of the unescorted Gulf Oil tanker SS Gulftrade (6,776 tons) after she had been sunk by U-588 (Victor Vogel). Antietam pulled 16 Gulftrade survivors out of the ocean on 9 March 1942.
It was around this period that our cutter would be further up-armed with a pair of 20mm/70 Mk 4 Oerlikon AAA guns, a Mousetrap Mk 20 ASWRL, swap out their goofy little 3″/23 for a 40mm Bofors single Mk 1, and pick up a SO-model surface search radar set. So equipped, they had become subchasers in reality rather than just names.
The 125-foot Coast Guard Cutter Cuyahoga ready to depart from the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Md., Feb. 11, 1945. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Note her 40mm Bofors crowding her bow. By mid-war Antietam and her sisters had a similar appearance.
As the Navy was looking to use the name “Antietam” for a new Essex-class fleet carrier (CV-36) that was under construction at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, our patrol boat was unceremoniously renamed USCGC Bedloe on 1 June 1943. Shortly after, she was dispatched to Navy Section Base (NSB) Morehead City, North Carolina, to join the Chesapeake Escort Group (T.G. 02.5).
The AOR of TG 02.5, as seen on the cover of its war diary
Morehead City served as the link in the coastal escort chain between Norfolk and Charleston and its vessels– a mix of auxiliary motor minesweepers (YMS), miscellaneous Yard Patrol craft (YPs), random patrol yachts such as USS Cymophane (PYc-26), a handful of 110-foot patrol boats (PC) and subchasers (SC), augmented by a dozen Coast Guard 83 footer “Jeeps of the Deep”— was a motley assortment to say the least. A couple of 97-foot converted trawler hulled coastal minesweepers, USS Kestrel (AMc-5) and USS Advance (AMc-63) puttered around on sweep duties just in case the Germans laid a few eggs.
Antietam/Bedloe, and her sister Jackson, were about the brawniest vessels the Morehead City group had at its disposal.
USCGC Bedloe, probably 1944. Note her stern depth charges and SO radar set. USCG Photo #: A-8125.
Meet Jackson
Repeating the name of one of the 13 circa 1830s Morris-Taney class 73-foot topsail schooners ordered for the service USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) commissioned 14 March 1927. Like her sister Antietam/Bedloe, she was immediately assigned to Boston.
Four 125-foot cutters at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s including, from the outside, USCGC Fredrick Lee, General Green, and Jackson. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.
Like Antietam, Jackson painted over her haze grey for a more Coastie white and buff scheme post-Prohibition.
A black and white photograph of the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson passing through the Cape Cod Canal on the day of the Canal Bridge Opening, August 15, 1935. Nina Heald Webber Cape Cod Canal collection. MS028.04.022.005
Reassigned in the late 1930s to U.S. Coast Guard Stations Rochester and Greenport, New York in the Great Lakes, Neutrality Patrol work saw her armed and assigned to Norfolk on 1 July 1941 for anti-submarine patrol and coastal escort duty.
This typically boiled down to escorting one or two merchies at a time along cleared (for mines) routes at speeds hovering around 10 knots. Some faster vessels took their chances and ran the coastline on their own which didn’t always work.
One such instance was the unescorted and unarmed tanker SS Tiger (5,992 tons) which on April Fool’s Day 1942 caught a torpedo from U-754 (Hans Oestermann) just as she reduced speed and signaled with blinkers to pick up a pilot off Cape Henry, Virginia. Her complement taken off by the Yippee boat USS YP-52, Jackson and the tug Relief brought a salvage crew by the listing tanker to attempt to tow it to Norfolk but the hulk was uncooperative and sank in the Chesapeake.
On 20 July 1944, Jackson was made part of Task Group 02.5, joining sister Antietam/Bedloe.
Then came…
SS George Ade
An EC2-S-C1 break bulk cargo carrier, SS George Ade (7176 tons) was built by Florida-based J. A. Jones in 1944. Based out of Panama City, while carrying a mixed load of cotton, steel, and machinery from Mobile to New York, the brand new Liberty ship was unescorted (!) and steaming on a non-evasive course (!!) off Cape Hatteras when she came across by the Schnorchel-equipped Type IXC U-518 (Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann) on 12 September 1944.
Hit by a Gnat that destroyed her rudder and flooded the shaft alley, she was effectively dead in the water. Her Naval Armed Guard fired a few rounds in U-518’s direction, keeping the boat away but she was a sitting duck.
The Great Atlantic Hurricane of September 1944
Four days before George Ade was torpedoed, Commander Gulf Sea Frontier issued an advisory that a tropical hurricane centered east of the Leeward Islands was moving northwest at 10 knots. Aircraft recon on 11 September found a system with a radius of 150 miles and warnings “This is a large and severe storm” were flashed.
It would grow into what we today would deem a Category-4 monster.
Guantanamo to New York Convoy GN-156 on 12 September came across the storm’s periphery and logged 47-knot winds, later upping to over 65 which scattered the convoy although no casualties were reported.
On the night of 12 September, the refrigerated stores ship USS Hyades (AF-28), escorted by the Somers-class destroyer USS Warrington (DD-383) only two days out of Norfolk bound for Trinidad, encountered the hurricane between West Palm Beach and the Bahamas as the storm moved North.
USS Warrington (DD-383), photographed by Navy Blimp ZP-12, 9 August 1944. Just five weeks after this image was snapped, the destroyer would be at the bottom of the Atlantic. 80-G-282673
As noted by DANFS:
Later that evening, the storm forced the destroyer to heave to while Hyades continued on her way alone. Keeping wind and sea on her port bow, Warrington rode relatively well through most of the night. Wind and seas, however, continued to build during the early morning hours of the 13th. Warrington began to lose headway and, as a result, started to ship water through the vents to her engineering spaces.
The water rushing into her vents caused a loss of electrical power which set off a chain reaction. Her main engines lost power, and her steering engine and mechanism went out. She wallowed there in the trough of the swells-continuing to ship water. She regained headway briefly and turned upwind, while her radiomen desperately, but fruitlessly, tried to raise Hyades. Finally, she resorted to a plain-language distress call to any ship or shore station. By noon on the 13th, it was apparent that Warrington’s crewmen could not win the struggle to save their ship, and the order went out to prepare to abandon ship. By 1250, her crew had left Warrington; and she went down almost immediately.
A prolonged search by Hyades, Frost (DE-144), Huse (DE-145), Inch (DE-146), Snowden (DE-246), Swasey (DE-248), Woodson (DE-359), Johnnie Hutchins (DE-360), ATR-9, and ATR-62 rescued only 73 men of the destroyer’s 321 member watch bill– and these were spread out for 98 miles from the destroyer’s last position!
Coordinated by the jeep carrier USS Croatan, whose escorting tin cans did a lot of the work in pulling men from the water, the group commander signaled on 14 September, “Sharks very active. Am making every effort to locate and recover living before dark as those so far rescued are very weak.”
Further north, New York to Guantanamo Convoy NG-458, with 15 tankers and 17 freighters escorted by two frigates and a few PCs and YMSs, encountered the unnamed hurricane for 18 hours across the 12th and 13th, and reported: “winds estimated 130-150 knots and seas 50-60 feet.” The COMEASTSEAFRON War Diary for the period notes, “It was impossible for a person to remain exposed to the wind because the tremendous force of driving spray was unbearably painful. Visibility was nil, and all ships and escorts were widely scattered.”
One man, LT North Oberlin of USS PC-1210, was swept overboard “and undoubtedly drowned.”
Another small escort, PC-1217, had her bulkhead plates buckled and several compartments flooded– including her radio shack. Her communications knocked out and long missing from the rest of the convoy, she limped into Mayport alone on the 16th– self-resurrecting from among the missing thought dead.
One ship that never arrived in port was the 136-foot baby minesweeper USS YMS-409, which foundered and sank, taking her entire crew of 33 to the bottom.
Photo from the collection of LT(jg) Bernard Alexander Kenner who served on board YMS-409. He departed a few days before the ship left port and sank off Cape Hatteras. He kept this photo for over 61 years along with a list of his former crew mates who perished, via Navsource.
Further up the coast, the USCG’s Vineyard Sound lightship (LS-73), anchored before the shallows off Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts, was also claimed by the storm, taking her entire crew.
The 123-foot United States Lightvessel 73 (LV 73 / WAL-503) on her Vineyard Sound station where she served from 1924 through 1944. On 14 September 1944, she was carried off station during a hurricane and sank with the loss of all hands. USCG photo
…Back at the George Ade
Late on the afternoon of 12 September, some 14 hours after the attack by U-518 that left her dead in the water, the salvage ship USS Escape (ARS 6), escorted by our previously mentioned Bedloe and Jackson, arrived and took her in tow.
Struggling against the ever-increasing seas with the hurricane inbound, Ade and Escape hove to on 14 September some 12 miles off Bodie Island, North Carolina in 13 fathoms of water, where they reported 100-knot winds and 50-foot seas. Ade suffered one of her anchors, two lifeboats, and four rafts carried away.
However, the tow’s escorts, Bedloe and Jackson, had vanished.
At around 1030 on 14 September, Jackson was struck hard by seas while laid her over her port side, a roll from which the 125-footer could not recover. Given the order to abandon ship, her complement too to four life rafts, which all swamped/flipped and sank within 30 minutes. This left her crew afloat and on their own…in a hurricane.
Bedloe, meanwhile, was entirely unaware of the disaster with her nearby sister due to the strong seas and nil visibility. At around 1300 local, she suffered three severe rolls to port, the last of which left her that way until she submerged three minutes later. Of her crew, 29 were able to abandon ship on three life rafts.
Rescue
With Bedloe and Jackson failing to report to shore following the storm, and George Ade and Escape confirming their separation from the escorts, the 5th Naval District launched an air search beginning with four Coast Guard-operated OS2U3 Kinfishers from CGAS Elizabeth City taking to the air at first light on the morning of the 16th. At this point, the survivors of Bedloe and Jackson had been on the sea for two days.
The first group of men, the three waterlogged rafts from Bedloe with but just 21 remaining men, were spotted 10 miles off Cape Hatteras. Three of the Kingfishers landed and taxied to the rafts to give aid to the injured.
Pilots and radio operators knocked off their shoes and then dove into the water to help pull semi-conscious men onto the wings of the bobbing planes.
Eight of the Bedloe’s crew had perished over the night of the 15th from a mixture of injuries and exposure. Two more would die shortly after rescue.
A Navy blimp dropped emergency rations.
Navy airship hovers over two OS2Us and a CG launch with picked-up survivors of the USCGC Bedloe, 16 September. USN ZP24-2906
With the Kingfishers on hand as a guide, a Coast Guard 30-foot motor lifeboat, CG-30340, from the Oregon Inlet Lifeboat Station, 15 miles away, raced to the scene and brought the survivors ashore.
BM1 William W. McCreedy from the Oregon inlet Lifeboat Station, who assisted in the rescue of the survivors from the Bedloe said the first thing he saw was a man doubled up in a small raft, his eyes resembling “a couple of blue dots in a beefsteak.”
“He flashed a beautiful smile that couldn’t be missed,” McCreedy continued. “I felt I had looked at something a man sees once in a lifetime — sort of thought I had come to the edge of heaven. Then, as though his last will to fight had been lost when he saw us, he jumped into the water. The radioman grabbed him and held him in the raft. I went overboard to help and the three of us dragged the raft down. The unconscious man’s foot was twisted in the lines, but I cut him free and we put him in the boat.” Just before reaching shore, the man reached, stroked McCreedy’s face and mumbled “We made it.” Then he died.
Once back at Oregon Inlet, a Coast Guard PBM with a doctor aboard flew the men to Norfolk for treatment.
Original caption: “Coast Guard survivors of hurricane disaster recover in Norfolk hospital: eight of the 12 survivors of the hurricane sinking of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bedloe are shown recovering in the naval hospital at Norfolk, Virginia. They were rescued by Coast Guard air and seacraft after clinging to life rafts for more than 50 hours in shark-invested [sic] Waters 15 miles off the Virginia coast. All suffered from shock and exposure, as well as lashing by the stingers of ‘Portuguese men-of-war.’ the cutter Bedloe was sunk at the height of the hurricane on Thursday, about the time that the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson went down in the same area. In all, 19 were rescued and 49 officers and enlisted men are missing in the twin disaster. In this group, left to right, are Coast Guardsmen Jerry VanDerPuy, seaman, first class, of. . . .Sheboygan, Wisconsin; John Kissinger, soundman, third class, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Robert Greeno, seaman first class, of Monroe, Michigan; Robert Hearst, seaman first class, of Latonia, Kentucky; Joseph Martzen, soundman second class, of. . . .McAdoo, Pennsylvania.; Michael J. Cusono, radioman third class, of Schenectady, NY, Pearcy C. Poole, chief radioman of Lakewood, N.J. and Joseph Ondrovik, coxswain of Bellville, Michigan.” Date: 14 September 1944. USCG Photo 1248 Photographer: “Kendall”, U.S. Coast Guard photo.
The search for the floating Jackson survivors continued into the night of the 16th, with Navy Blimp K-20 following up on a report from a Navy SB2C Helldiver that two groups of men were sighted in the water 18 miles offshore. USS Inflict (AM-251), on her shakedown cruise between Charleston and Norfolk, joined the rescue.
Aided by dropped water lights from the aircraft, whaleboats from the minesweeper recovered 12 men who had been adrift for over 60 hours, hounded by sharks and Portuguese men-of-war. Of these, the ship’s pharmacist’s mate found one man had a gangrene infection, another appendicitis, a third a broken leg, and a fourth a dislocated shoulder and cracked ribs, while all suffered necrotic salt water ulcers, hypothermia, and general fatigue.
Pushing her twin ALCO diesels to their max to break 14 knots, Inflict made Norfolk on the morning of the 17th and her charges were rushed to the Naval Hospital.
Later that day, USS PC-1245 recovered the floating bodies of four from Bedloe.
The air and naval search for the cutters’ lost members continued until the evening of the 18th. No less than 116 planes and six blimps had been aloft in the search.
In all, 22 men from Bedloe are still marked “missing” while another four who were recovered died. Of Jackson’s crew, which spent more time in the sea– almost all of it treading water– 21 are still somewhere under the waves.
This bill from Poseidon was paid, along with the 251 souls from the destroyer Warrington, LT Oberlin of PC-1210, the 33 minemen aboard YMS-409, and a dozen lightkeepers on LV-73.
Epilogue
Separate courts of inquiry conducted by ComFive and COMEASTSEAFRON inquired into the loss of Bedloe and Jackson:
Coast Guard Historian William H. Thiesen suspected Jackson succumbed to waves pushed ahead of the storm’s eyewall, while Bedloe was sunk by rogue waves formed on the backside of the eyewall, writing in a 2019 Proceedings article that, “It is possible that both cutters were victims of a phenomenon called the ‘three sisters,’ a series of rogue waves that travel in threes and are large enough to be tracked by radar.”
Post-war, the Coast Guard would use both cutters’ names a third time, with USCGC Jackson (WPC-120), ex-USS PCE(R)-858, and USCGC Bedloe (WPC-121), ex-USS PCE(R)-860. In typical Coast Guard fashion, “Both of the new cutters remained berthed at Curtis Bay, Maryland due to a lack of personnel,” and were later decommissioned and sold in 1947.
Today, Jackson rests, broken in two, southeast of Nags Head in 77 feet of water in NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. Navy EOD visited the site in the 1990s to remove ordnance and depth charges.
The USCGC Maple in 2022 hosted a Coast Guard chaplain, divers, and an underwater archaeologist for four days while the sites were visited, mapped, and honored.
The Coast Guard Art Program has also saluted the cutters.
“The Fate of Cutters Jackson and Bedloe,” Louis Barberis, watercolor, 16 x 23. US Coast Guard Art Program 2005 Collection, Ob ID # 200503
As for the SS George Ade, the Liberty ship made it back to Norfolk where she was drydocked and repaired, returning to service on 18 December 1944.
Ade’s shot away rudder and damaged screw/shaft following the hit from U-518 and surviving a hurricane at sea immediately after. Photos: MARAD.
Post-war, Ade was transferred to the National Defense Reserve Fleet, in Mobile, Alabama, and, after 20 years in mothballs, was sold for scrap in 1967.
As for U-518, she was sunk on 22 April 1945 in the North Atlantic north-west of the Azores by depth charges from the destroyer escorts USS Carter (DE 112) and USS Neal A. Scott (DE 769), with all hands lost including Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann. Ade was the final ship the U-boat had torpedoed.
U-518 via Deutsches U-Boot-Museum, Cuxhaven-Altenbruch, Germany
The Atlantic holds its dead.
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Fellow Mississippian James Earl Jones, who of course is probably best known for his sci-fi and Disney cartoon voiceover work, will always be remembered by me as the fictional VADM James “Jim” Greer (Ret.) in his trio of 1990s Tom Clancy movies (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger).
What war nerd doesn’t remember the “I was never here,” ending to Red October?
Of course, his other on-camera screen roles were often impeccable such as the Single Action Army-packing Few Clothes in Matewan, the straight-man to Eddie Murphy in Coming to America, Sgt. Maj. Goody Nelson in Gardens of Stone, the B-52 bombardier in Dr. Strangelove (his first role)– which be bounced against his role as the general in charge of the Looking Glass EC-135 in the under-rated By Dawn’s Early Light 25 years later– and as world weary baseball writer Terence Mann in Field of Dreams.
Earning his butter bar via ROTC at the University of Michigan, he was commissioned in mid-1953 after finishing the Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning. Too late to see combat, he nonetheless finished Ranger School with a tab, served with the 38th Regimental Combat Team at Camp Hale, and was discharged as a 1LT in 1955.
He also gave the best rendition of the National Anthem, ever.
The California State Military History & Museums Program in Rancho Cordova recently received a pair of circa 1905 3-inch Salute Guns.
The museum believes they were originally part of the old San Diego Army Barracks (which closed in 1921 and became the property of the city in 1938) before standing guard in front of the Long Beach Seventh Street National Guard Armory from the mid-1930s until 2020.
The Long Beach Armory, 854 East 7th Street, Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California, before its closure in 2020. Note the signal guns.
These guns are the last remnants of one of the best-known (and loved) field guns of the Civil War.
Patented in 1855 by cannon engineer John Griffen, superintendent at Phoenix Iron Co in Pennsylvania, and thus known originally as “The Griffen Gun,” the 3-inch (9.5 pounder) Ordnance Rifle, Model of 1861, became one of the most popular and prolific pieces of light artillery in Union service during the Civil War, with some 1,100 produced– 940 from Phoenix Iron alone. It was lighter (816 pounds) and more accurate than the slightly more common M1857 12-pounder Napoleons and available in better quantities than the 10-pounder M1861 Parrott.
Starting in 1885, the Army began replacing these Civil War-era guns with more contemporary steel, rifled, breech-loading models, ultimately resulting in the M1897 field piece, which would remain in service until the Great War.
Although a wrought iron muzzle-loading rifled cannon, the Army kept some 300 unconverted M1861 3-inchers on inventory for assorted reasons (primarily as gate guards) through the Spanish-American War, although none deployed to that conflict.
Another 350 usually non-spiked guns, many of which had been sold as surplus through Bannerman’s to local cities and towns, have made their way into the assorted state and National Military Parks since then.
Starting in 1905, the Army made a move to convert its stocks of remaining M1861s to breech-loading saluting guns capable of firing standard 3-inch black powder blank cartridges. They were then mounted on steel pedestal mounts and typically placed on either side of an installation’s flagpole.
Saluting guns, 3-inch, at Fort Worden circa 1930s. Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum Collection
3-inch M1861/05 Saluting gun, Washington Barracks, Washington, D.C. 1921. Note the breech. NARA 111-SC-000213-ac
From a 1908 War Department Ordnance report
In all, at least 25 were converted by the United States Rapid-Fire Gun and Power Company of Derby, Connecticut, and the balance (about 270) was done by Army cannon works, primarily Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, with the Army allocating $4,600 in 1905 and another $16,000 in 1906 for the conversions.
It was noted that a whopping 13,800 pounds of saluting powder was on hand in Army depots in 1907 (vs 367,183 pounds of smokeless powder for artillery) for use with such guns and many posts, besides lighting them off for special events and on holidays, would fire a “Noon-day gun.”
By the late 1940s, especially with the general contraction of bases following WWII, most of these saluting pieces found their way to the scrap heap.
As for the recently saved California guns, they will soon be installed on either side of the CSMH&MP’s Consolidated Headquarters Complex’s flagpoles.
Phuoc Tuy Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1970. Sergeant John (Jack) Gebhardt of 1 Sqn Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) of Mount Yokine, Western Australia, points to direct while on patrol. “The Special Air Services (SAS) men creep through the jungle to spy on the enemy to provide raw intelligence for the Australian Task Force Commander to act upon.”
Photo by John Geoffrey Fairley, AWM FAI/70/0312/VN
SGT Gebhardt is armed with a well-camouflaged L1A1 SLR, a semi-auto-only “inch pattern” development of the Belgian FN FAL, which was the standard rifle of the Australian (and British) Army from 1960 to 1992, sandwiched in Ozzie service between the No. 1 Mk III Enfield and the F88 AuSteyr.
The new L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle is being examined by “Pig Iron Bob,” Prime Minster Robert Menzies, 1962. Made at Lithgow, the SLR replaced not only the Enfield bolt guns in .303 but also stocks of Owen and STEN 9mm SMGs left over from WWII and American M1/M2 .30 caliber carbines left over from Korea. Some 175,000 were made.
One particularly curious use of the L1A1 by Australian SAS in Vietnam to break contact while on a recce was the “Slaughtermatic” (AKA, “Beast” or “Bitch”) a field mod SLR tweaked to run full-auto with L2A1 parts and shortened via the removal of handguards and given a chopped barrel. To keep it running, 30-round L2A1 mags were likewise acquired.
Such a modded L1A1 is seen in the two circa 1971 2SASR images, below left, along with M16s equipped with experimental Colt CGL-4/XM148 40mm grenade launchers and lots of grenades.
Nui Dat, SAS Hill, South Vietnam. 1971-04-08. Members of No.25 patrol, ‘F’ troop, 2 Squadron, Special Air Service (SAS), at Nadzab LZ (landing zone) after returning from their second patrol. The patrol of nine days was from 1971-03-30 to 1971-04-08. Left to right, back row: Corporal Ian Rasmussen, second-in-command; trooper (tpr) Don Barnby, signaller; Tpr Dennis Bird, scout; Second Lieutenant Brian Russell, patrol commander. Front row: TPR Bill Nisbett, rifleman; John Deakin, United States Navy (USN-SEAL). AWM P00966.084
Sadly, while most of the Australian Enfields were sold on the commercial market in the 1990s when the L1A1 passed into reserve use and are popular with collectors, with a reputation for being meticulously maintained, it was later decided by the disarmament-minded Ozzie government post-1996 to dispose of almost all of their inventory of SLRs and parts via outright destruction (“110,000 rifles melted down at BHP, Australia’s largest steel producer”) or being tossed into the sea.
One of the big hangars (No. 2) at the USCG Aviation Training Center in Mobile recently accidentally discharged its AFFF FSS (foam-o-matic) and filled the building with 400 gallons of suds. It sidelined three EADS HC-144 Ocean Sentry maritime patrol aircraft (of which the Coaties only have 18), and four Sikorsky MH-60T Jayhawks (of which the service has only 48).
The incident got a lot of attention.
Following up, the USCG sent out a memo on Friday announcing a sundown of the systems, for better or worse, in line with a November 2021 plan by the Air Force and an August 2024 plan by the Navy.
As noted in the memo, the systems are more trouble than they are worth:
In 2021, the Air Force led a joint DoD effort including the Defense Logistics Agency to assess the risks associated with replacing Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) fire suppression systems (FSS) in DoD facilities. The effort reviewed 32 years of historical data and found no hangar fuel-related fires resulting in the loss of life or an aircraft. A review of 15 years of safety mishap data uncovered 84 inadvertent activations of foam systems resulting in $24.5 million of damage, one death, 21 injuries, and 120 damaged aircraft.
Citing the 2021 Air Force Study, COMDT (CG-43) signed a charter in June 2024 establishing the Aviation Hangar Fire Suppression Integrated Project Team (IPT), REF (A). The IPT reviewed 35 years of Coast Guard mishap data and found no documented Class Bravo fires in any hangar and 26 accidental discharges, including three in the last 12 months. In reference to those three incidents, preliminary reports include damage to 12 aircraft with final damage estimates still to be determined.
Official caption: “September 1964, Sabah, the northeast Borneo territory of Malaysia. Royal Marines in action with the security forces repelling the infiltrating Indonesians from across the vast jungle border. A Royal Marines Daimler Ferret Scout car of 40 Commando patrols a jungle-fringed forward area of the Kalabankan River. The vehicle commander is Corporal B. Skinley.”
IWM (A 34858)
As anyone will tell you, the Royal Marines are light infantry, and typically don’t bring armor with them. Even in the Falklands, the four Scimitars and Scorpions that went along with 3 Commando were operated by a troop of the Household Cavalry.
While the Royal Marines Armoured Support Group dates back to 1944– when it was founded to help give the Commandos some armor support for the Normandy landings in the form of a few Centaur and Sherman tanks — it had been disbanded by 1948 and only stood back up, under the 539 Assault Squadron, to operate Hägglunds Viking BvS 10s in 2005.
So where did the Ferret come from?
Note the Ferret’s name (“Sharquat”) recalls a 1918 battle between the British and the Ottomans during the Mesopotamian Campaign in the Great War, and several units present there (1/10 Gurkhas, Queen’s Royal Hussars, 114th Mahrattas, et. al ) still celebrate “Sharqat Day” in honor of the historic victory. The hull number, 38 BA 39 (62), would lead one to believe that the armored car is owned by the British Army.
For comparison, see this image of a Ferret Scout Car in use by the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards overlooking the Mantin Pass between Kuala Lumpur and Seremban during the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960):
IWM (D 88417)
As the 10th (Princess Mary’s Own) Gurkha Rifles– a Sharqat unit– had two battalions in Malaysia at the time, along with the Ferret-equipped QRIH, this leads to the likely conclusion that the Marines in the first image were just borrowing the wheels from the Army.
A favorite on the surplus military vehicle market, the FV 701 Ferret is simple to learn to drive and support and is forgiving in operation, which is no doubt a reason that it is still in service with like a dozen different countries around the world even though it has been out of production since 1971.
While Barrett has by far the most name recognition when it comes to portable .50-caliber rifles, there has been another option on (and off) the market for the past 20 years.
Bushmaster recently announced the BA50 is back, baby, and reportedly better than ever.
“Re-engineered to be even more reliable, more durable, and even longer lasting than the original,” says Bushmaster. “New improvements to the bolt design bring effortless bolt operation, with improved extraction and cartridge feeding,” are among the updates.
Standard features include a 29-inch 1:15 twist rate barrel capped with a beefy three-port muzzle brake, a 10-shot detachable magazine, and a Magpul PRS Gen3 adjustable stock. Using a left-hand operated, right-side-eject bolt action that allows the user to keep their right hand on the grip while cycling, the platform has long been known as exceptionally accurate.
Further, the updated rifles will be offered in both black and FDE.
What a tranquil scene, some 110 years ago today: The 3,700-ton Bremen-class light cruiser SMS Leipzig, part of KAdm Maximilian von Spee’s exiled German East Asia Squadron, is seen coaling in Guaymas on Mexico’s Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez, on 8 September 1914. Of note, she is only about 240 miles south of the Arizona border.
You’d almost think there wasn’t a war on.
Leipzig. She had an all-up armament of 10 4.1-inch SK L/40 guns as well as a battery of smaller 37mm guns and two torpedo tubes.
Leipzig would prove fast on the trigger just seven weeks later at the Battles of Coronel in November, firing 407 4.1-inch shells– four times what fellow German light cruisers Dresden (102) and three times what Nurnberg (135) managed.
Engaged with the larger (5,300 ton) British Bristol-class light cruiser HMS Glasgow, the latter was only lightly damaged by five hits, leaving four lightly wounded ratings and, sadly, killing some parrots that the men had purchased while on a South American port call– an act of Teutonic barbarity that shocked the crew.
Leipzig, meanwhile, came away undamaged.
The Bristol class light cruiser HMS Glasgow. She carried two 6-inch guns, one aft and one forward, as well as 10 4-inch guns, arranged five on each side. IWM (Q 21286)
On 8 December, Glasgow would have a rematch at the Battle of the Falkland Islands where, assisted by the Monmouth-class armored cruiser HMS Cornwall (9,800t, 4×10-inch), her parrot-mourning crew would watch Leipzig battered below the waves. Leipzig in return had hit Glasgow twice, killing a single man and wounding four, and hit Cornwall 18 times, causing a slight list on that bruiser but no casualties.
Only 18 of Leipzig’s nearly 300-member crew were pulled from the freezing water of the South Atlantic.
SMS Leipzig sinking in a painting by William Lionel Wyllie as HMS Cornwall and HMS Glasgow look on
How about this great action shot, 80 years ago today. A smoke ring is left by 6″/47 (15.2 cm) Mark 16 Turret #1 as the brand new Cleveland class light cruiserUSS Miami (CL-89) pounds the Palau islands on 7 September 1944.
Note that a wartime censor has obliterated her SK and Mk 37s Mk 4 radar. NHHC 80-G-284070
She would fire a very exact 900 6-inch (her magazines only had space for 2,400) and a matching 900 5-inch shells that day in just over four hours across two runs just offshore, targeting Japanese airfields, with shots corrected by her floatplanes.
Commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 28 December 1943, by June 1944 Miami was supporting fast carrier task forces and found herself in the above image as part of TG 34.6 in support of carrier strikes against Peleliu, Ngesebus, and Angaur in the Palau Islands.
She alternated her bombardment with her accompanying sisters USS Vincennes (CL-64) and Houston (CL-81).
Miami received six battle stars for her service in World War II and immediately after operated on the California coast training naval reservists until her decommissioning on 30 June 1947, whereupon she entered the Pacific Reserve Fleet.
Miami’s name was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 September 1961 and her hulk was sold for scrapping the next year.
Her name was recycled for a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine (SSN-755) commissioned in 1990 and decommissioned in 2014. The fourth USS Miami (SSN-811) will be a future Block V Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine that was ordered in 2021.
