Republic of Vietnam: H Co, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, Easter Service, 1969.
“Chaplain Leper holding Easter service for H/2/5 in the Arizona territory, Quang Nam. At left is GySgt Napoleon.”
From the Barry Broman Collection (COLL/4613) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division
Enjoy your weekend, gents.
Taking an early weekend, gents.
Remember to keep looking for the sunshine and do whatever you find therapeutic.
The new Jolly runs FN’s updated EGM on both sides of the airframe
The next generation of “Jolly Green Giants” ride shotgun with a new gun mount system that was developed for the Air Force by FN.
The mission of Combat Search and Rescue, or C-SAR, helicopters for the Air Force dates to Vietnam, where large camouflage-painted Sikorsky HH-3Es were given armor and machine guns for protection. Nicknamed the “Jolly Green Giant” for obvious reasons, the HH-3E was replaced by the smaller but more modern HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters in the 1980s. Then, with the Pave Hawks showing their age, the Air Force in 2016 embarked on a program to field the new HH-60W Jolly Green II Combat Rescue Helicopter.
And the service wanted the next generation of Jolly Green to tote a better weapons suite, with FN getting the call from HH60W contractor Lockheed Martin to come up with something special.
Whereas FN already made the fast-firing (1,100 rounds per minute) M3 .50-caliber machine gun – which the Marines had already fielded as the GAU-21 – and a Medium Pintle System to mount it on helicopters, the new flexible mount on the HH-60W was made capable of carrying either the Air Force’s legacy GAU-18 .50-caliber machine gun with a 650- to 800-rounds-per-minute fire rate as carried on the HH-60 Pave Hawk, the M3/GAU-21, and the GAU-2, a 7.62mm NATO caliber electric M134 minigun with a 3,000 rounds-per-minute fire rate.
The Air Force performed live-fire testing on the HH-60W Jolly Green Giant in August 2020 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida “to verify the weapons systems functionality, accuracy, and to demonstrate the guns are safe to employ operationally.” (U.S. Air Force photos by Tech. Sgt. John Raven)
Further, the new mounts allowed the helicopter’s left- and right-side mounted guns to rotate independently, providing an almost 360-degree firing arc – including straight ahead.
“This unique hybrid solution offers the user the capability to maximize the use of the machine gun in a wide firing window, allowing both lateral and fixed forward protection or target engagement,” notes FN. “It allows suppressive fire against light armored vehicles, suppressive fire in landing zones, and ground and aerial threat suppression.”
FN announced this month the company delivered 10 prototype mounts between 2016 and mid-2019 for use in initial flight operations and Air Force validation tests.
This was followed with 25 shipsets (each of two mounts in left-hand side and right-hand side configurations along with dedicated ammunition boxes for each caliber) delivered by October 2022, at which time the Air Force declared the HH-60W “combat ready.”
The company began full-rate production of what is now dubbed the FN External Mount Gun System last November. Soon after, the Air Force announced that the 347th Rescue Group, operating with HH-60Ws, rescued two U.S. service members from a battlefield in the Horn of Africa in late December, the aircraft’s first CASEVAC mission.
Ultimately, the Air Force program of record calls for 113 helicopters to be delivered.
While most people are aware that there is a current submarine on the Navy List that has a Mississippi connection– the Virginia-class hunter-killer USS Mississippi (SSN-782) which was commissioned at Pascagoula a few years back– there are also a baker’s dozen former boats that have an even closer one.
I spotted this monument last week at the Vietnam Memorial in Ocean Springs, next to a Mk 14 torpedo. It covers the 13 boats constructed at Ingalls over a 15-year period in the Cold War including the country’s final “smoke boat” and 12 Sturgeon-class SSNs.
Back in the day, the crowds would assemble at the Point to watch “Submarine Races” as the Sturgeons would run out for trials and back.
They used to let the crew and dignitaries ride the boat down the ways at launching as well.
Barb (SSN-596) sliding down the launching ways at the Ingalls Shipbuilding, Pascagoula, Mississippi, 12 February 1962. Today, all that swampland behind her is Ingalls’ West Bank, where LHDs, and DDGs are built.
These days, the deep old sub docks at Ingalls East Bank just hold flounder.
This from GCaptian, which notes the group that represents the nation’s six state maritime academies has asked the Coast Guard Commandant for some insight on the current Chart Plot module of the U.S. Coast Guard Third Mate exams. Keep in mind something like 70 percent of the country’s unlimited tonnage/horsepower merchant marine officers hail from this six-pack of maritime academies.
Historically, cadets have passed the Chart Plot module at an acceptable rate and served the U.S. Merchant Marine with a high level of competency. However, following the introduction of new exams in 2021, passing rates have dropped dramatically. Recent results from five state maritime academies show passing rates as low as 0% at Maine Maritime Academy and only 19% at California State University Maritime Academy.
Oof.
More here.
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Above we see the British C-class coastal submarine HMS C-27 (57) in the Spring of 1916 as she rides like a beached whale aboard a barge in Russia on her way, via inland lakes and rivers, from Archangel to Petrograd (St. Petersburg), where she would join a flotilla of similar boats in an aim to put the Eastern Baltic off limits to the German High Seas Fleet. You wouldn’t know it by the looks of her, but this little sub had already chalked up one of Kaiser Willy’s U-boats.
Sadly, C27 was lost 105 years ago today, at the hands of her own crew.
A slightly better and larger follow-up to the 13-strong A-class (200t, 105 ft, 2×18 inch TT, 11.5 kts) and 11-unit B-class (316t, 142 ft, 2×18 inch TT, 12 kts), the C-class boats went some 300 tons and ran 143 feet overall. Powered by a 600hp Vickers gasoline (!) engine on the surface and a single 200hp electric motor when submerged, the C1, as built, could make 13 knots.
HMS C25. Note the pennant number on the hull is 30 digits off of the name.
Manned by up to 16 officers and crew, they still just carried two 18-inch torpedo tubes with no reloads (although they were designed to carry an extra pair of “fish”) and no deck gun.
HMS C11. Note her two tubes at the bow under caps
British C class submarines Grimsby
These boats were known at the time in naval circles as “Fisher’s Toys” as Jackie Fisher fancied them instead of minefields for harbor and roadstead defense against enemy sneak attacks.
Five of the boats (C12 through C16) were even fitted with three airlocks and enough emergency dive gear for the entire complement should the boat bottom be unable to surface. Certainly, a forward-looking concept. This was later changed to a planned underwater egress via a hatch in the torpedo compartment.
Crew members of the submarine HMS C7 wearing their Rees Hall escape apparatus, dating from the 1900s. “There is no record of the apparatus ever having been used.”
These boats were seriously meant for coastal work, as they could float in just 12 feet of water while on the surface, and they often made appearances in river systems and small littoral harbors.
British submarine HMS C13 moored at Temple Pier, London. July 1909 National Maritime Museum Henley Collection.
A view looking west from Victoria Embankment towards Waterloo Bridge. Three C Class submarines are berthed alongside Temple Stairs, with two torpedo boats moored in Kings Reach at the time of the Thames Naval Review. 23 July 1909. RMG P00045
HM Submarine C34 (66) alongside HMS Victory to supply electric current from her generators to power lights and a “cinematograph lantern” for movie night for the cadets’ movie night.
The 38-vessel* class was split into three flights constructed in the half-decade between 1905 and 1910, with the first 18 boats (C1-C18) running a Wolseley 16-cylinder horizontal opposed main engine that allowed a 1,500nm surface radius. The second (C19-30), and third (C31-38) flights were equipped with a more efficient Wolseley-Vickers 12-cylinder engine that gave a better 2,000 nm radius while proving a knot faster (14 surfaced, 10 submerged).
*Two additional units were later built to a modified design for the Chilean government in Seattle and then later taken over by the Canadians (as HMCS CC1 and HMCS CC2) and should be considered their own separate class as they had different engineering and an additional stern torpedo tube along with four bow tubes rather than two.
Boy sailors having submarine instruction in the engine room in a C-class submarine in Portsmouth. IWM Q 18868
Most were built by Vickers, as they were a Vickers design, at Barrow, although six were constructed by the Royal Dockyard at Chatham as sort of an educational run.
HMS C1
HMS C14 (44)
HMS C25
HMS C38 (68)
HMS C32
HMS C31 (61)
The class was soon outpaced by the follow-on D and E-classes, which were almost twice as large, could make 16 knots on the surface, and carried safer diesel engines– the C-class submarines were the last class of gasoline-engined submarines in the Royal Navy.
Jane’s 1914 entry for the RN’s 75~ odd submarines, of which the Cs made up fully half of those numbers.
These little boats were tricky as they had very low freeboard while surfaced and the Submarine Force had both tremendous growing and teething pains at the same time. This cost lives as HMS C11 was sunk in a collision with the collier Eddystone in the North Sea in 1909, with only three survivors. In the same incident, HMS C16 and C17 collided but remained afloat. Four years later, HMS C14 was lost in a collision with a coal hopper in Plymouth Sound but was later salvaged and returned to service.
Nonetheless, some of these boats became among the first of HM Submarines to operate in the Pacific as HMS C36, C37, and C38 were transferred to Hong Kong in February 1911 to operate with the China Squadron. Ironically, the Japanese were building a series of almost identical boats at the same time, having bought the plans from Vickers.
By the time the Great War kicked off in August 1914, the remaining C-class boats were generally tasked with coastal defense and training duties in home waters while the larger craft were given more dynamic offensive missions. They did prove deadly in some cases, with HMS C15 for example torpedoing the highly successful German UC-65 (106 ships sunk for 125,000 tons) in the English Channel in November 1917.
Suggested in April 1915 by Acting Paymaster F. T. Spickernell, Secretary to VADM Sir David Beatty, as a method to combat German U-boats haunting the British Home Islands, the idea was to team up a trawler in RN service with a small coastal submarine– the Cs were ideal for this– with the fishing boat serving as bait to draw in said Hun to be bashed by waiting C-boat.
As underwater communication was non-existent at the time, and even hydrophones were still a new concept, the trawler, and C-boat were attached by a telephone line. The concept was that the trawler, being too small for the German to waste a torpedo on but still an inviting target, would soon be confronted by surfaced U-boat that would dispatch the fisherman via deck guns or a landing party. Either way, this would set up the idle and unsuspecting German to be zapped by the shadowing C-boat’s submarine volley.
Eight trawlers and a corresponding number of C-boats were tasked to operate from four ports: HMS C26 and C27 were to work with trawlers from Scapa Flow; C14 and C16 from the Tyne; C21 and C29 from the Humber; and C3 and C34 from Harwich.
Put together in May, this “U-Boat Trap” technique soon proved effective, with HMS C24, operating with the trawler Taranaki, sinking U-40 in the North Sea off Eyemouth on 23 June 1915.
This was followed up by our HMS C27, under the command of LCDR Claude Congreve Dobson, along with the trawler Princess Louise, ending the career of U-23 in the Fair Isle Channel between Orkney and Shetland on 20 July. She made good on this after missing a shot at U-19 the month prior.
As detailed in Martin Gibson’s War and Security Blog on the Royal Navy in the Great War:
The trawler was captained by Lieutenant L. Morton, but Lieutenant C. Cantlie and Lieutenant A. M. Tarver were also on board in order to train the crew. Cantile, who was the only regular officer of the three, the others being peacetime merchant marine officers who were members of the Royal Navy Reserve, took command during the subsequent operation.
At 7:55 am on 20 July Cantlie telephoned Dobson to tell him that a U-boat had been spotted 2,000 yards away. The phone then broke down; Dobson waited five minutes before slipping the cable; contact had not been restored, and he could hear gunfire.
The U-boat, which was U40, had fired one warning shot before firing at the trawler. She stopped, raised the Red Ensign, and dipped it as a sign of surrender, whilst her crew prepared to abandon ship in an apparent panic. This was in accordance with the plan, which was to trick the Germans and hopefully persuade them to come closer. It worked so well that U40 stopped near the trawler.
The trawler’s crew did not know where C27 was, but she was only 500 yards away on U40’s starboard beam when Dobson raised her periscope. He fired a torpedo, but U40 then started her engines, and it passed under her stern. He fired another that hit and sank U40. The British rescued 10 survivors, including her captain, Oberleutnant Hans Schulthess, and two other officers.
The British Naval Staff Monograph, written after the war for internal Royal Navy use only, stated that the prisoners ‘gave a good deal of information, not only of a technical character…but also on the general work of German submarines’, which it suggests may have been a result of their good treatment.
However, the U-Boat Trap results were mixed, with HMS C33 mined off Great Yarmouth while operating with the armed trawler Malta on 4 August. This was repeated when HMS C29 was lost when her companion trawler, Ariadne, strayed into a minefield in the Humber on 29 August. These losses, coupled with the increasing German wariness to fall for the bait of trawler decoys and larger Q-ships, led to the end of the program.
Nonetheless, the RN had other plans for C-27.
With Tsarist Russia’s main ports in the Black Sea closed down by the entrance of the Ottomans to the war, and the Germans controlling the Baltic, the Imperial Russian Navy was effectively bottled up except the obsolete and neglected Siberian Flotilla. As an attempt to aid the Russians via their extra naval capacity, Britain and France attempted to force the Dardanelles and break into the Black Sea in a fiasco that was soon followed up by the slow-moving Salonika campaign.
At roughly the same time as the Gallipoli misadventure, the Royal Navy was sending a few small E-class boats through the Baltic to give the Russians some extra torpedo tubes to throw at German shipping.
Three British E-class boats in mid-October 1914 attempted the dicey journey into the Baltic through the Oresund Strait separating Denmark from Sweden, against tough German opposition. This saw HMS E-11 forced to turn back while HMS E-1 and E-9 got through to Reval in the Gulf of Finland.
SUBMARINE WARFARE DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR (Q 114325) The Royal Navy’s submarine E1 in Russia during the First World War. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205356741
Iced in over the winter, the following summer they soon torpedoed and sank a German collier, and badly damaged the destroyer SMS S-148, the battlecruiser SMS Moltke, and the cruiser SMS Prinz Adalbert. Such exploits brought a meeting with the Tsar, and boxes of Russian decorations including the St. George, the country’s highest.
In late 1915, E-1 and E-9 were joined by E-8, E-18, and E-19, while sister E-13 was disabled after she ran aground in Danish waters and interned.
E18 Arriving off Dagerort, 12-9-1915. Note the extensive camouflage applied. Photo: Royal Navy Submarine Museum
They were assigned the steamers Cicero, Emilie, and Obsidian to serve as tenders and a home (away from home) for the British submariners and support staff.
By October, they waged a campaign to disrupt iron ore traffic from Lulea in Sweden to German ports and sank ten merchantmen over three weeks. The month ended with E-8 sinking Prinz Adalbert when a spread of torpedoes sent her magazine to the heavens, carrying almost 700 of the cruiser’s complement with it. The following month, E-19 hit the German light cruiser Undine with two torpedoes, sinking her south of the southern Swedish town of Trelleborg.
While the five Es were busy, a further four smaller C-class boats (our C27 along with HMS C26, C32, and C35) were given the mission to join them. However, since it was unlikely they could force the Oresund, they were stripped of as much weight as possible to give them increased buoyance, then towed to Archangel in the frozen Russian North, and finally taken by barge down the Dvina and across Lakes Onega and Ladoga to the Gulf of Finland where they would take the water once again and be ready to almost double the British submarine flotilla in the Baltic.
The thing is, this boondoggle, which sounded good on paper to someone, took almost 18 months to carry out and by the time the C-boats were ready for action in early 1917, the Tsar had been deposed, and things were getting downright weird in Russia. Nonetheless, the British boats were still as active as they could be, even while the now revolutionary Russian fleet was content to sit on its hands. As such, C32 was lost in October 1917 in the Gulf of Riga but claimed at least one German merchant sunk.
As the Bolsheviks swept to power in November 1917, and soon signed first a truce and then a peace with the Germans, the Kaiser’s troops started swarming through the Baltics and landing in Finland in March 1918. With the remaining British subs backed into a corner with no options, they made one final sortie to scuttle.
HMS E18 leaving Reval for the last time on May 25th, 1916
HMS E-18 had already been lost to German activity in May 1916, leaving E-1 and E-9 to be scuttled in the Gulf of Finland off the Harmaja Lighthouse on 3 April, followed by E-8 and C-26 on 4 April, and our C27 and C35 on 5 April. E-19 was sunk on 8 April. The supply ship Emilie was sunk on the northwest side of Kuivasaari on the 9th. The maintenance ships Cicero and Obsidian were sunk southwest of Bändare on the 10th, ending the carnage.
This left the flotilla’s 150~ remaining members to exfiltrate with the nominal help of the Reds back to Murmansk, where most soon became part of the British interventionist forces that would operate on the White Sea and the Dvina against the Reds well into 1919.
The flotilla’s senior officer, E-19‘s skipper CDR Francis Newton Allen Cromie, stayed behind in Petrograd where he was officially a naval attaché but nonetheless assumed the vacant portfolio of the British ambassador. There, he helped interface with assorted counter-revolutionary types, only to be killed by Cheka agents when the Reds raided the embassy in August 1918.
C-27‘s final commander, LT Douglas Carteret Sealy, survived the war and revolution but would be lost on HM Submarine H42 when she was rammed while submerged near Gibraltar by the “V” Class destroyer HMS Versatile in 1922.
For a deeper dive (see what we did there?) into the British Baltic boats, see Baltic Assignment: British Sub-Mariners in Russia 1914-1919, by Michael Wilson.
Of the other 35 C-class boats built for the Royal Navy that entered the war, several failed to emerge on the other side after the Armistice. As covered, C26, C27, C32, and C35 were scuttled in the Baltic to avoid capture, while C29 and C33 were lost in 1915 while on the U-boat Trap detail.
Other wartime losses included:
LT Richard Douglas Sandford VC HM Submarine C3, Zeebrugge Raid, 22 – 23 April 1918 IWM Q 104329
The two dozen enduring C-boats left on the Admiralty’s list in 1919 were soon disposed of, largely through sale for dismantling. They were just too obsolete for further use, even though the oldest hull in the batch had just 15 years on its frames.
HMS C4, converted in secret by D.C.B. Section at the RN Signals School at Portsmouth into an unmanned vessel controlled remotely by an operator in a nearby aircraft, was the only surviving C-class submarine not to be scrapped at the end of the Great War. Still, she only lingered until 1922 when she went to the breakers.
The wrecks of the British Baltic flotilla, our C27 included, have largely been found and well documented over the years, with some even raised for scrap or attempts to put back into service, with unsatisfactory results.
Today, the C-class is best remembered in a series of period maritime art that still stirs emotions.
“HMS Bonaventure and Submarines” circa 1911 by William Lionel Wyllie. RMG PW2083. Inscribed, as title, and signed by the artist, lower right. The ‘Bonaventure’ (1892) was a second-class protected cruiser converted to a submarine depot ship in 1907. This finished watercolor shows the ship in her 1911-14 condition. Both the ‘Bonaventure’ and the trawler tender on the left are flying large red flags, advising other vessels to keep clear of a submarine operating area. The submarine with the number ’61’, lying close to ‘Bonaventure’, is the ‘C31’, launched on 2 September 1909 and lost by unknown causes after leaving Harwich for the Belgian coast on 4 January 1915. What appears to be a practice torpedo is in the foreground and an unidentifiable submarine is on the left. As the circumstances indicate, the drawing is of an exercise off the English coast, probably in the Channel from the relatively high ground behind.
“Near the Dardanelles, English, and French warships in the harbor of Malta,” by Alexander Kircher, with C22 and C26 in the foreground.
“A fleet of submarines passing HMS Dreadnought,” by Charles Edward Dixon, circa 1909. The closest boat is HM Submarine C-14
“The submarine ‘C15’ fundraising for the Gosport war effort” by William Lionel Wyllie. RMG PV3490
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
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80 Years Ago this month, a brilliant original Kodachrome:
A pilot of No. 417 “City of Windsor” Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force climbing into the cockpit of his Supermarine Spitfire fighter at Goubrine, Tunisia, April 1943.
Note the field shorts, .38 revolver, and “Canada” flash. IWM photo TR 832, part of a collection of great original color images from this period of No.417
At this time, No 417 was the only Canadian fighter squadron in the Mediterranean Theatre and was equipped with Spitfire Mk VB and Mk VC aircraft.
They were based at the remote Goubrine field, some 90 miles south-southeast of Tunis, and the squadron counted at least two aces on its rolls counting Flight Lieutenant Albert Ulrich “Bert” Houle, the squadron’s skipper at the time. 417 Squadron would later include James Francis “Stocky” Edwards who would splash three Focke-Wulf Fw 190s on the same day over the Anzio Beachhead.
Flight Lieutenant W.H. Pentland, of No. 417 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, awaiting start-up in his Supermarine Spitfire Mark VC (s/n BR195 ‘AN-T’) at Goubrine, Tunisia, in April 1943. Royal Air Force official photographer, Woodbine G (F/O) IWM TR 862
Flight Lieutenant W.H. Pentland, of No. 417 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, awaiting start-up in his Supermarine Spitfire Mark VC (s/n BR195 ‘AN-T’) at Goubrine, Tunisia, in April 1943. Other aircraft of the squadron are lined up alongside. Royal Air Force official photographer, Woodbine G (F/O) IWM TR 861
Supermarine Spitfire Mk Vbs of No. 417 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, flying in loose formation over the Tunisian desert on a bomber escort operation, April 1943. Royal Air Force official photographer, Woodbine G (F/O) IWM TR865
As noted by the RCAF Association on 417 Sqn:
Formed at Charmy Down, Somersetshire, England on 27 November 1941 as the RCAF’s 16th – seventh Fighter – squadron formed overseas, the unit was ordered to the Middle East in the spring of 1942.
Equipped with Hurricane and, later, Spitfire aircraft, it spent five months in the defense of the Suez Canal and the Nile Delta. In April 1943 it became the only Canadian squadron in the Desert Air Force and was to provide air defense and close support to the British Eighth Army through the closing stages of the Tunisian campaign, and throughout the Sicilian and Italian campaigns.
The squadron was disbanded at Treviso, Italy on 30 June 1945.
The unit’s battle honors include “Defence of Britain 1942. Egypt and Libya 1942-1943. North Africa 1943. Sicily 1943. Italy 1943-1945: Salerno, Anzio and Nettuno, Gustav Line, Gothic Line.”
Reactivated post-war, the squadron flew P-51 Mustangs briefly and then was disbanded once again.
Reformed a third time in 1970, they flew CF-104s out of Cold Lake until taking another decade off with the retirement of the “Missile with a Man in It.”
Stood back up in 1993 for the fourth time, No.417 is still flying out of Cold Lake and equipped with three CH-146 Griffon helicopters.
Construction workers in Eastern Europe recently stumbled across a vintage SMG left over from World War II.
The Lesser Poland (Małopolska) regional headquarters of the country’s Policja, or national police force, last month posted images of a recovered German-made MP40 sub gun, complete with its 30-round magazine and packets of tarnished 9mm ammunition.
According to the post, the WWII-era maschinenpistole was made in 1941 and had been recovered by workers in the historic Old Town tenements in the southeastern Polish city of Tarnow. Workers found the MP40 first, wrapped in rags, while dismantling a wooden roof, then the bullets, hidden in the rafters.
Tarnow, which had been part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire after the 1772 partition of Poland, became part of the reunified Polish nation in 1918. It was occupied by the Germans during WWII in 1939, then by the Soviets in 1945. During the occupation, members of the city’s Jewish population– almost all of which were deported to extermination camps at Auschwitz and Belzec– mounted an armed underground resistance to the Germans.
“Contrary to myth of Jewish passivity, many Jews did fight back during the Holocaust,” notes 2A scholar and attorney David Kopel in his work on armed resistance to genocide. “They shut down the extermination camp at Sobibor, rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto, and fought in the woods and swamps all over Eastern Europe. Indeed, Jews resisted at a higher rate than did any other population under Nazi rule. The experience of the Holocaust shows why Jews, and all people of good will, should support the right of potential genocide victims to possess defensive arms, and refutes the notion that violence is necessarily immoral.”
The Policja stated the recovered MP40 will be either donated to a museum to be preserved or destroyed. We are hoping for the former.
Over the weekend the Navy commissioned its latest warship, USS Santa Barbara (LCS 32), the newest (16th) Independence-variant littoral combat ship, in San Diego where she will be homeported.
As noted by the Navy, she is the third ship to carry the name but the first surface combatant:
LCS 32 is the third United States ship to bear the name Santa Barbara. The first Santa Barbara was a single-screw steel freighter built in 1916 by William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia. Ordered and taken over by the Navy on February 1, 1918, from the Atlantic & Pacific Steamship Co. of New York, it was commissioned there on April 15, 1918. The second Santa Barbara, a Kilauea-class ammunition ship, was laid down on December 30, 1966 by the Bethlehem Steel Corp., Sparrows Point, MD, launched on January 23, 1968, and commissioned on July 11, 1970.
Two additional Austal-built LCSs are coming right along, with USS Augusta (LCS-34) launched last May and is expected to be commissioned in Maine later this year.
Meanwhile, USS Kingsville (LCS-36), the 18th of 19 planned Independence variants, just launched in Mobile last week.
She was followed by the Flight II Spearhead-class MSC-manned Expeditionary Fast Transport vessel, USNS Cody (EPF 14).
As described by the Navy:
Capable of transporting 600 tons of personnel and cargo up to 1,200 nautical miles at an average speed of 35 knots, each EPF vessel includes a flight deck to support day and night aircraft launch and recovery operations. The ships are also capable of interfacing with roll-on/roll-off discharge facilities and can load and off-load heavy vehicles such as a fully combat-loaded Abrams Main Battle Tank.
The Navy plans for up to 19 EPFs, with the last five being capable of configuration as “Expeditionary Medical Ships.”
This came just after 60 Minutes aired a fairly well-done 30-minute piece on the Navy’s readiness to take on China, including interviews with the CNO and CINCPAC, the latter conducted on the deck of the 50-year-old Nimitz with ADM Samuel Paparo looking very like Admiral Bill Adama giving a pre-war chat with the reporters aboard the soon-to-be-retired Battlestar Galactica.
You know, right before the Cylons attack and clean the fictional Colonials’ clock.
The 60 Minutes piece includes some much-deserved shade thrown at the Zumwalts and the LCSs, even whipping out the “Little Crappy Ships” nickname.
Then, also last week, the DOJ announced indictments against a trio of Austal execs for fraud— and it sounds bad.
Via DOJ:
The defendants and their co-conspirators allegedly manipulated the EAC figures in part by using so-called “program challenges” – ostensibly cost-savings goals – but which in reality were “plug” numbers and fraudulent devices to hide growing costs that should have been incorporated into Austal USA’s financial statements, and ultimately reflected in Austal Limited’s reported earnings. The defendants allegedly did this, among other reasons, to maintain and increase the share price of Austal Limited’s stock. When the higher costs were eventually disclosed to the market, the stock price was significantly negatively impacted and Austal Limited wrote down over $100 million.
And the beat goes on…
When the Ruger Wrangler popped out in 2019, it was a basic no-frills .22 LR single-action revolver styled on their well-liked Single-Six but cheaper.
Made with a zinc alloy frame and finished in Cerakote, it had basic fixed sights but it worked.
I handled the above early model at NRAAM four years ago and thought it was okay, but wished it had better sights, a longer barrel, and was sold with an option to swap out the .22 LR cylinder for a .22 Mag, which would make it a lot more capable. After all, Heritage makes their little single-actioned rimfires in Georgia with much the same convertible option, and for a bargain basement price.
Well, Ruger has heard me and legions of others and today, I can share that I have been evaluating the new Super Wrangler. As you may have figured out, it has better sights, a longer barrel, and is sold complete with a .22 LR cylinder and one for a .22 Mag.
Behold, the Super Wrangler! Notably, it comes in at half the price of Ruger’s Single-Six convertible.
More on the new Super Wrangler in my column at Guns.com.