80 years ago this month. Wartime official caption: “First American Heavy Guns to Fire into Germany, 16 September 1944. Here is a battery of American 155mm. self-propelled guns, mounted on tank chassis as they fired into the village of Bildehen, Germany, which is located six kilometers southwest of Aachen on the Liege-Aachen road. They opened the barrage with 21 rounds of high explosive shells each weighing 100–pounds.”
Note the gunner with the bag of propellant, fresh from its tube, and a system of ramps to stop recoil and help with elevation. Acme Photo by Andrew Lopez for the War Picture Pool, via Allison Collection, City of Little Rock Archives
Ironically, the guns shown above started out life as Great War era towed howitzers with spoked wheels: U.S. Model 1918M1 155mm gun, the famous French GPF (Canon de 155mm Grande Puissance Filloux) a direct copy of the C modèle 1917 Schneider.
Late in 1942, some 100 GPFs that remained in storage were mounted on the turretless chassis of the obsolete M3 Lee tank to form the M12 Gun Motor Carriage as a form of early self-propelled artillery. When teamed up with the companion Cargo Carrier M30 (also a turretless M3), which allowed them to go into the line with 40 rounds of 155mm ready, they proved popular in a niche role.
M12 Gun Motor Carriage 155mm self-propelled gun with the US 987th Field Artillery Battalion near Bayeux Normandy June 10, 1944. IWM – Laing (Sgt) Photographer. IWM B 541
155mm M12 Gun Motor Carriage sniping strongpoints along the German Siegfried Line, late 1944/early 1945. At its core, it is a French 155 from the Great War
These tracked GPFs earned the nicknames “Doorknocker” and “King Kong” in service due to their ability to pierce up to seven feet of reinforced concrete and turn pillboxes into a smokey hole in the ground– a useful thing in Northeastern Europe in 1944.
Like this:
M12 Gun Motor carriage used in direct firing mode against a fortified German position during the Battle of Aachen in October 1944.
Leonardo celebrated a significant milestone with the 100th delivery of the TH-73A Thrasher helicopter to the United States Navy on September 17 at a ceremony in Northeast Philadelphia. Attendees included Vice Adm. Daniel L. Cheever, Commander, Naval Air Forces/Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Lt. Gen. Bradford Gering, Deputy Commandant for Aviation for the U.S. Marine Corps, along with a crowd of over one hundred dignitaries representing government, military, and nonprofit institutions.
In early 2020, the Navy selected the Leonardo TH-73A, an advanced Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) rated version of the commercial AW119Kx, to replace its aging fleet of TH-57B/C Sea Rangers as the primary training helicopter to produce the next generation of rotary and tilt-rotor pilots for the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and selected allied nations.
The Navy over the weekend christened the John Lewis-class oiler USNS Lucy Stone (T-AO 209), the fifth ship in the new fleet oiler program for the U.S. Navy.
She is an impressive replenishment ship of the size and scope that only the USN coughs up.
Military Sealift Command’s newest fleet replenishment oiler, USNS Lucy Stone (T-AO 209), slides down the rails, and into the San Diego Bay, following its christening at the General Dynamics NASSCO shipyard in San Diego, Calif., today.
Designed to transfer fuel to U.S. Navy carrier strike group ships operating at sea, the 742-feet vessels have a full load displacement of 49,850 tons, with the capacity to carry 157,000 barrels of oil, a significant dry cargo capacity, aviation capability, and can sail at a speed of up to 20 knots
It follows the refrain for the class with the previous four ships– USNS John Lewis (T-AO 205), the USNS Harvey Milk (T-AO 206), USNS Earl Warren (T-AO 207) and USNS Robert F. Kennedy (T-AO 208)-– all being named for civil rights pioneers. Granted, at least Milk was a Navy vet (submarine force during the Korean War) as was Kennedy (USNR 1944-46, V-12 program) while Warren was a platoon commander in the Army’s segregated 91st Division during the Great War, but John Lewis got out of the peacetime (1961) draft claiming conscientious objector status!
The sixth and seventh ships in the program, the future USNS Sojourner Truth (T-AO 210) and Thurgood Marshall (T-AO 211) are currently under construction. While both are American icons when it comes to Civil Rights, like Lewis, neither had a wink of military service or by any stretch of the imagination even be considered military adjacent. Sure, Truth helped recruit Black men to fight for the Union during the Civil War, including her grandson, James Caldwell, who enlisted in the famed (“Glory”) 54th Massachusetts Regiment, but I would argue Caldwell would be a more appropriate name for a Navy ship than his grandmother.
If they wanted a powerful Navy woman, why not name the oiler after Captain Mildred H. McAfee, the wartime leader of the WAVES? Or 20-year-old Bernice Smith Tongate, who walked into a California Navy recruiting office in 1917, and proclaimed “Gee, I wish I were a man, I’d join the Navy!”
Tongate, one of 12,000 Yeomen (F) to serve during the Great War, was the Navy’s “first poster girl.”
Surely the Yeomen (F) of the Great War or the WAVES of WWII deserve an oiler named for them rather than for Lucy Stone…
The previous naming convention from the 1910s through the 1980s was for rivers (Kanawha-class, Patoka-class, Cimarron-class, Chicopee-class, Kennebec-class, Suamico-class and Neosho-class) which gives dozens of historic names that saw heavy WWII service to choose from and still have geographic tie-ins with regions of the country to cite Admiral Rickover’s 1970s “Fish Don’t Vote” mantra in getting away from naming submarines after maritime creatures and instead using cities and states.
Even the 18 Henry J. Kaiser class oilers built in the 1990s, which are being replaced by the John Lewis class were named via a mix of recycled AO-carried river names and those of wartime industrialists who helped make the Navy that beat Germany and Japan. Of note, Kaiser’s yards built hundreds of Liberty ships and dozens of escort carriers in record time.
The Navy has granted NASSCO a block buy for eight more, of which the SECNAV will no doubt continue with his progressive name choices:
National Steel and Shipbuilding Co., San Diego, California, is awarded a $6,754,785,160 fixed-price incentive (firm-target), block buy contract for detail design and construction of eight T-AO 205 John Lewis class fleet replenishment oiler ships (T-AO 214 through 221). Work will be performed in San Diego, California (56%); Iron Mountain, Michigan (8%); Mexicali, Mexico (6%); Crozet, Virginia (4%); Beloit, Wisconsin (4%); Metairie, Louisiana (3%); Santa Fe Springs, California (2%); Chesapeake, Virginia (2%); Chula Vista, California (1%); Walpole, Massachusetts (1%); Houston, Texas (1%); Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1%); National City, California (1%); and other locations (less than 1% each, and collectively totaling 10%), and is expected to be completed by January 2035. Fiscal 2024 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funds in the amount of $780,000,000 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured in accordance with 10 U.S. Code 3204(a)(3) (industrial mobilization; engineering, developmental, or research capability; or expert services). Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-24-C-2301).
While I love to see the new hulls, I do wish they would have more relevant names for future warfighters. Sure, leaders such as Stone and Truth deserve to be remembered– but put their face on a coin or stamp and name on a building, not on a naval ship.
Especially on a ship that will be manned by overworked and underappreciated civilian mariners (CIVMARs) of which the MSC is in short supply. These people aren’t looking for inspirational civil rights leaders’ names on the stern of their next contract vessel, they are looking for better pay, benefits, and working conditions– which is something the SECNAV should devote the same amount of time to that he does picking out progressive ship names.
Walther this week is bringing back some vaunted iconic pistol models with a modern twist as well as debuting several new models.
The announcement comes as part of the company’s TEQ (Trigger, Ergonomics, and Quality) Fest, a national event celebrating the brand’s “commitment to performance and engaging customers across the country.” The event will highlight a half dozen new handgun models.
The new guns include the compensated PDP PRO-X Parker Mountain Machine; the PDP F-Series PRO which includes an aluminum magwell and Dynamic Performance Trigger; a return of the original Police Pistol (PP) in both .380 and .32 ACP; the very Bond-like PPK/S SD in .32 ACP, which will be the first in the PPK family to ship with factory threaded barrels; the PDP PRO-E, and the WMP SD, which is the only factory threaded-barrel semi-auto .22 Magnum handgun on the market.
Official wartime caption, some 80 years ago this month in the recently liberated Belgium:
“(Hawker) Typhoon IBs undergoing maintenance and repair at Melsbroek (B-58), near Brussels, 10 September 1944. An aircraft from No 247 Squadron RAF (foreground) and a No 181 Squadron machine are parked in front of an elaborately camouflaged hangar at the former Luftwaffe bomber base. The Germans had gone to great lengths to disguise the airfield, fabricating fake houses, shops, and even a chateau, all of which had failed to protect it from air attack.”
Goodchild A (F/O) and Bellamy W (F/O), Royal Air Force official photographer, IWM CL 3979
One of the most powerful inline piston aircraft engines in the world, it was only used in the Typhoon and its derivative, the Hawker Tempest. Little wonder Tempest became the go-to V-1 killer as it was the fastest of Allied fighters at low level (the P-51 beat it at altitude) and the Tempest knocked down at least 20 Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbes.
For the record, No. 247 Squadron RAF– which flew everything from Felixstowe F2A flying boats to Gladiators and Hurricanes to Vampires and Hunters– disbanded in 1963. Ironically No. 181 Squadron had a much shorter run despite its lower squadron number, only existing from August 1942 until September 1945, running first Hurricanes and then Typhoons.
80 years ago this month. An M18 (T70) Hellcat of the 603rd Tank Destroyer Battalion during Patton’s Lorraine Campaign in an ambush position down Rue Carnot in recently liberated Lunéville, France, 22 September 1944. The dismounted .50 cal M2 gunner is going to have a bad day if the Hellcat’s 76mm gun gets rowdy, especially in the days before hearing protection.
Via the Bovington Tank Museum.
Established 15 December 1941 as the TD unit for the 3rd Infantry Division, by D-Day the 603rd had been sent to England and, reequipped with M18s, deployed to the continent in support of the “Super Sixth” 6th Armored Division. They landed at Utah Beach and entered combat on 28 July 1944.
Loading shells onto a B Company, 603rd Tank Destroyer Battalion M18 just outside Brest, France, are, left to right: T/5 Francis J. Kangas, Astoria, Oregon; Pfc. Dominic Juncewski, Silver Lake, Minn.; Sgt. Emory Triggs, Arkansas City, Kansas; Pvt. John Horns, Dickinson, N.D., and Cpl. Cliff Pratt, Selah, Washington. 12 August, 1944. SC 195544
Fighting through Northwest Europe, the 603rd raced through Brittany then Lorient, and through Lorrane to the Moselle. Then came the Saar, Bastogne, crossing the Rhine, and pushing through the Fulda Gap where it later helped free Buchenwald and, with the rest of the Super Sixth, is recognized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Liberating Unit.
Disbanded in 1946, one of the Hellcats from the 603rd is on display at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Wyoming.
M18 Hellcat of the 603rd Tank Destroyer Battalion at the NMMV
Did you know that, while the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions jumped/glided into Holland during Market Garden some 80 years ago this week with relatively light air-cooled machine guns (M1918 BARs and M1919 Brownings), the British and Polish airborne forces landed with 60 proper full-sized water-cooled Vickers MGs in both their parachute and airlanding battalions?
On a more somber note, the Americans, Brits, Dutch, Poles, and even the Germans have been in attendance for the anniversary of the jumps.
The 82nd in Nijmegen, Mook, Grave and Groesbeek:
U.S. Army Paratroopers assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division stand in formation during a commemoration ceremony at the 82nd Airborne Division Memorial near Mook, Netherlands Sep. 18, 2024. Each year, U.S. Army units’ partner with Dutch communities to celebrate their shared history from the campaign and the initial liberation of the Netherlands during World War II. (U.S. Army photo by Maj. Matthew Diaz)
The 101st at Nuenen and in unveiling bridge monuments in Sint Oedenrode and Son:
A convoy of vintage U.S. military World War II vehicles passes through the Netherlands town of Nuenen during the 80th anniversary of Operation Market Garden in Nuenen, the Netherlands, Sept. 14, 2024. Over 200 vintage U.S. military World War II vehicles, including jeeps, trucks, and even an M24 Chaffee tank, traveled in a convoy from the Netherlands town of Nuenen south to the town of Veghel, following the route that the 101st Airborne Division took alongside British soldiers against German forces during Op
Two fallen Brits from the battle were interred at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery:
Wisconsin-based Henry Repeating Arms this week expanded its line of high-quality double-action revolvers with a new rimfire model.
The Henry Golden Boy Revolver announced on Thursday, shares Henry’s lever-action rimfire aesthetic, featuring a deeply blued steel medium-size frame, genuine American walnut grip panels, and a highly polished brass backstrap and trigger guard. Chambered in .22 rimfire, they accept Short, Long, and Long Rifle cartridges, giving the user a bit of flexibility.
The new wheelguns will be available in both a square “Gunfighter” grip as well as an option for a Birdshead grip, and they sport 4-inch round-profile steel barrels.
While traveling around New Orleans, I often come across old French Foreign Legion insignia in antique and curious goods shops. My guess is that Francophiles and Cajuns in the area often, at one point, would sign up for life in the old Legion Etrangere and then return home at the end of the contract.
Holding their old insignia as souvenirs of places long gone, these items would eventually ebb away from them when they passed on to the great barracks in the sky. Echoes of history, I suppose.
This one is appropriate today.
Insignia of the Marching Regiment of the Foreign Legion, (Regiment de Marche de la Legion Etrangere = R.M.L.E) designed in 1943 with France Dabord (“France First”) motto:
This is the scarcer metal and enamel type insignia made for officers. It is marked Drago, Paris, and was likely manufactured in late 1944, post-Liberation.
The RMLE was created in July 1943 at Sidi-bel-Abbes, Algeria, under Colonel Gentis from the remnants of the old 1st and 3rd REIM (régiments étrangers d’infanterie de marche) which had fought against Rommel in the final days of the North African campaign, specifically at Djebel Mansour. The original “les anciens” RMLE had been formed in the Great War under the famed “father of the Legion” Colonel Paul Frederic Rollet so the name was very symbolic to Legionaries at the time.
Assigned to the 5th Armoured Division (5e DB) at Oranie, the unit was equipped with American uniforms and equipment, including Springfield M1903 bolt action rifles, and had the same general structure as the 3e REI.
Some 80 years ago today, 20 September 1944, the RMLE landed at Provence near Saint-Raphaël on Dramont beach as part of the Dragoon Landings and raced towards the Rhine, helping liberate Alsace in the process.
Along the way they fought at Belfort– where I/RMLE was decimated at Montreux-Château– helped reduce the Colmar Pocket, broke through the Siegfried Line, crossed the Black Forest, entered Stuttgart, and made it into Austria by VE Day.
13 November 1944 at Valdahon, General de Gaulle, Sir W. Churchill, Generals Juin, and de Lattre de Tassigny review a detachment of the RMLE the day before leaving for combat.
Respected by the Allied troops it fought alongside, the RMLE earned a U.S. Presidential Unit Citation and Distinguished Unit Citation (“Rhine-Bavarian Alps”).
At the end of the war, the RMLE was transferred back to North Africa. Once there, on 1 July 1945, it was renamed 3e REI.
Its regimental flag carries honors from the old RMLE of Great War fame (Artois 1915, Champagne 1915, The Somme 1916, The Verdun Mountains, Picardy-Soissonais 1918, and Vauxaillon 1918) as well as our WWII era RMLE (Alsace 1944-1945 and Stuttgart 1945) and those it has earned under its own name (Indochina 1946-1954— where the regiment lost 3,396 officers and legionnaires– and AFN 1952-1962).
80 years ago today. And then they came for the cops.
Amid an uptick of sabotage operations that saw no leads when investigated by the locals, and with the country’s army,navy, and air forces already disbanded in 1943, on 19 September 1944, the German occupation government in Copenhagen dissolved the Danish police, as the force was seen as a potential threat, was ineffective in putting down strikes and civil unrest, and an outright ally towards the growing and increasingly active Danish resistance movements.
German soldiers set up a field piece in front of the Police Station in Copenhagen during the action against the police on 19 September 1944. FHM-173508
Of the organization’s 10,000 members, the Germans were able to arrest upwards of 5,000 and eventually deport 1,960 high-ranking officers to Buchenwald– where no less than 60 died that winter under horrible conditions. This group was “upgraded” to POW status in December and 200 sick coppers were repatriated home while the other 1,700 were transferred to Stalag IV-B in East Prussia, where they would be liberated by the Soviets in April 1945. In all, almost 200 Danish police would perish in German custody during the war.
Other members of the Danish police managed to skip the country to nearby Sweden while many who stayed behind, typically under watch by the local Germans and subject to work details, moonlighted in the Danish resistance outright.
In early May 1945, they once again took to the streets in their uniforms, and resumed operations, with the first order of business: arrest local sympathizers– in particular the hated Schalburg corps and HIPO-korpset auxiliary police– and disarm German occupation troops.
Danish police back in Kolding after the capitulation May 1945 FHM-239219
Danish policemen in uniform May 1945. Note they are wearing resistance armbands and carrying Suomi
Roadblock in Copehagen. Note the British BREN gun. FHM-164100
Danish Police taking their uniforms in Carlsberg, May 1945 FHM-243918
Copenhagen police officers May 1945 FHM-19023
Police group at Cafe Strandlyst on Øresundsvej in Copenhagen after the liberation on 5 May 1945. FHM-243047
Danish Armed police in position at Amalienborg on 5 May 1945 FHM-314581
With the Germans having disbanded the King’s Lifeguards (Livgarden) the previous year, the local Copenhagen police also immediately set up a picket around Amalienborg Palace and secured the grounds.
They would remain the King’s ersatz personal bodyguard unit for six weeks until the reformed Livgarden, on 10 June 1945, marched in and relieved the bluebacks.
Changing of the guard at Amalienborg on 10 June 1945. The Life Guard replaces the police guard
