Here we see, buried under extensive awnings, the Danae-class light cruiser HMS Delhi (D47) at Long Beach, California, on 28 July 1932.
Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 60836
Laid down at Armstrong Whitworth during the Great War, Delhi wasn’t commissioned until June 1919, dispatched almost immediately to Baltic service against the Bolsheviks. Seeing much interwar service around the globe in the Med, Far East, and the Caribbean, her stop in California came during her time as flagship, 8th Cruiser Squadron, during a 20,000-mile, five-month cruise from Devonport to Malta via both the Atlantic and Pacific.
Historic voyage map from HMS Delhi log showing voyage from England to Canada and on to Malta, 1932. Via Wiki commons.
The U.S. Navy captured numerous shots of her in Long Beach, detailing the 5,000-ton cruiser at peace.
At Long Beach, California with a view of 2 pounder QF anti-aircraft pom-pom gun by the bridge and two forward BL 6-inch Mk XII naval guns, one of which is completely covered by canvas overhead. NH 61082
With a view of the range clock on the foremast and her extensive variety of small boats. NH 61083
View of her portside QF 3-inch high-angle anti-aircraft gun (she had one on each side) as well as her torpedo tubes. NH 61081
Coming into Berth K, sans awnings. Note her two sets of starboard torpedo tubes. NH 60828
A great bow-on shot from the pier. Note the bales of what could be rubber stacked to the right. NH 61279
NH 61277
Astern. Note the “City of Long Beach” sign in the distance. NH 61278
Following her 1932 cruise, Delhi ended up in the Mediterranean with the 3rd Cruiser Squadron, where she was involved in the periphery of the Spanish Civil War. When WWII came, she was reactivated from mothballs, captured a German blockade runner, served with Force H, supported the Allied landings at Algiers, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, and the Dragoon landings in Southern France, fighting off German explosive boats, Fritz bombs and air attacks, suffering extensive battle damage on several occasions.
The proud Dehli was judged to be too aged, too broken, and too obsolete after VJ Day and was eventually sold for scrap in 1948.
Back at the hottest part of the Iran-Iraq Tanker War in 1987-89, Operation Prime Chance saw Army Little Birds and AH/OH-58Ds “Sea Cavalry” of Task Force 118deploying from FFGs and two leased Brown & Root crane barges dubbed Mobile Sea Base Hercules and Mobile Sea Base Wimbrown 7. Set up in the Northern Persian Gulf, the latter supported eight MkIII 65-foot patrol boats and an array of Army AH-64D Longbow Apaches and Navy Seahawks for C-SAR while they were protected by Marine air defense units to pop interloping low-flying tangos.
Task Force 118, OP Prime Chance, a Navy FFG with A/OH-58D Kiowa embarked
US Army OH-58D Kiowa Warrior of TF 118’s 4 Sqn/7 Cav., 18 Aviation Brig. “Thugs” overflying USS Curts (FFG-38). Academy model top box art.
Fast forward to today and Joint Task Force-Bravo, part of 4th Fleet/SOUTHCOM, this week posted these images of Army UH-60s conducting deck landing qualifications with the USS Billings (LCS 15) while some 50 miles off the coast of El Salvador recently. In all, 14 pilots and 14 crew chiefs accomplished the deck landing qualification. The training was conducted using four Black Hawk UH-60L helicopters of 1st Battalion, 228th Aviation Regiment (1-228) equipped with pylon systems.
A UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter assigned to Joint Task Force-Bravo’s 1-228th Aviation Regiment lands on the deck of the Freedom-variant littoral combat ship USS Billings (LCS 15) during deck landing qualification training off the coast of El Salvador, July 16, 2022. Achieving and maintaining deck landing qualifications ensures flight crews are mission ready to support any humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, or other contingency operations across the United States Southern Command area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Master-at-Arms 1st Class John Carson)
(U.S. Navy photo by Master-at-Arms 1st Class John Carson)
(U.S. Navy photo by Master-at-Arms 1st Class John Carson)
Of course, this shows the utility of the LCS platform as a forward arming and refueling point and mothership just outside of shore fires while the vessel carries a modicum of self-protection capability, at least against a Third World adversary.
The training took place approximately 50 miles off the coast of El Salvador and involved five landings by each crew across two-days of training. The deck landing capability is somewhat unique for U.S. Army aircrew who primarily operate over land.
“The capability to be ready when called upon for over-water mission support is critical in Central America,” said U. S. Army Lt Col. Charles Hall, commander, 1st Battalion, 228th Aviation Regiment. “The skills and confidence these aviators gained through our Joint relationship with the Navy extend our capability to support our Central American partners in the region we live and operate.”
While the LCSs are controversial, it is precisely this type of (wait for it) littoral contingency operation the vessels were intended for, and the Freedom-variant, with its trimaran hull, low signature, shallow draft, and large helicopter deck excel at.
Typically, the Freedom-variant LCSs have been deployed in the past couple of years with an integrated combination of a single multi-mission MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter and two radar-capable MQ-8B Fire Scout drones along with five pilots, four aircrewmen, and 16 maintainers.
An MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle attached to HSC-8 Eightballers prepares to land on the flight deck of the Freedom-variant littoral combat ship USS Billings (LCS 15). Billings is deployed to the U.S. 4th Fleet area of operations to support Joint Interagency Task Force South’s mission, which includes counter-illicit drug trafficking missions in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo by Operations Specialist First Class Jacob Walker/Released)
As the Fire Scouts can remain airborne for 5 hours at a time up to 100 miles away from the host, and carry a day/night day real-time ISR target acquisition and maritime search radar, they can prove a powerful force modifier that the old Prime Chance crews would have loved.
The more capable MQ-8Cs, which are coming online, have double the range and endurance as well as a Leonardo AN/ZPY-8 (Osprey) radar system, giving it better “eyes” than the MH-60S.
Ironically, based on the Bell 407 airframe, the MQ-8C series is, at its heart, the same aircraft that the Army used as the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior which was used in Prime Chance/Desert Storm from the deck of Navy FFGs. It will be nice when the Charlie models start carrying ordnance.
PT. MUGU, Calif. (Oct. 31, 2013) An MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle takes off from Naval Base Ventura County at Point Mugu. The Navy’s newest variant of the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter completed its first day of flying Oct. 31 with two flights reaching 500 feet altitude. The MQ-8C air vehicle upgrade will provide longer endurance, range, and greater payload capability than the MQ-8B. Initial operating capability for the MQ-8C is planned for 2016.
Above we see 28-year-old Oberleutnant zur See (=Lieutenant) Hans-Günther Kuhlmann on the running bridge of DKM U-166, a brand new German Type IXC U-boat, circa 1942. The good Oblt. Kuhlmann was U-166‘s sole skipper during WWII and he, his submarine, and all 51 of her hands have been sleeping along the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for 80 years as of this week, although how they got there was the subject of contention.
One of the 54 Type IXCs completed during the war, U-166 was laid down at Seebeckwerft A.G. (Yard # 705) in Bremerhaven at the mouth of the Weser River on 6 December 1940 just after the Battle of Britain served up the first German defeat. At some 1,232 tons, she was not a big boat, running just 251 feet overall. However, the class was well designed and capable of 13,450-nm cruises on their economical diesel engines. Able to carry 22 torpedoes and a 4.1-inch deck gun with 180~ shells as well as a Flak armament, they were deadly and efficient killers when it came to stalking Allied merchantmen. While most of these boats could carry as many as 66 mines, all could also carry TMC-type torpedo mines in the place of a fish.
Commissioned on 23 March 1942, she spent the next two months in the 4. Flottille training squadron out of Stettin on the Baltic, then chopped on 1 June to Korvkpt. Günther Kuhnke’s 10. Frontflottille at Lorient in occupied France.
An AGFA video exists of her sea trials.
Arriving on 10 June after a combat sortie from Kristiansand in occupied Norway, her first war patrol was uneventful.
U-166 with her commander, Han-Günther Kuhlmann (bareheaded, top), before her patrol. Image courtesy of the PAST Foundation.
Spending a week in France stocking up and enjoying the local sights, U-166 sailed for her second (and final) war patrol on 17 June 1942.
Making for the Gulf of Mexico via the Florida Straits, U-166 drew her first blood when on 11 July 1942 she shelled and sank the unescorted and unarmed Dominican two-masted schooner Carmen (84 tons), which had been carrying a mixed cargo of maize, mahogany, and cedar, about 8 miles northeast of Gaspar Hernández, DR. The Dominicans had declared war on Germany four days after Pearl Harbor, for reference, and Carmen was one of four Dominican-manned ships sent to the bottom by U-boats during the conflict. While the country never sent troops overseas to help the Allies, at least 100 Dominicans signed up with the U.S. military during the war.
Two days later, U-166 fired her first warshot torpedo, ending the career of the unescorted and unarmed Ford Motor Company’s SS Oneida (2,309 tons), sailing empty from Puerto Rico to Cuba, while steaming about two miles north of Cape Maysi, Cuba. The steamer sank in minutes, but 23 survivors were able to make it safely to shore.
On 16 July, U-166 would claim her third vessel in a week, stopping the Miami Fish & Ice Co’s unarmed trawler Gertrude (16 tons) about 30 miles northeast of Havana, a port to which she was carrying a load of fresh onions. Putting her three-man crew into their motor launch and pointing them towards the shore, Gertrude was sent to the bottom with a scuttling charge or gunfire (reports vary).
Moving into the Gulf of Mexico, U-166 quietly laid nine TMC mines off Port Eads/South Pass, at the southern tip of the Mississippi River on the Louisiana coast. This was considered the boat’s primary mission, as each of these massive 2,400-pound mines could break the back of a merchantman and potentially block the Mississippi– not to mention cause a massive panic as, in typical U.S. Navy fashion, there was nowhere near enough mine countermeasures assets available to safeguard the domestic sea frontier. However, although Kuhlmann’s special mission was successful on its face, in a stroke of luck for mariners in the area, none of the mines ended up making contact and the field was cleared post-war after Allied panels were given access to Kriegsmarine records logging some 43,636 mines sown worldwide in at least 1,360 minefields.
Anyway, after delivering his eggs to the mouth of the Mighty Miss, Kuhlmann & Co. decided to stick around and pursue targets of opportunity for his remaining torpedoes. This brings us to the…
Robert E. Lee
Constructed for “Ice King” banking and shipping magnate Charles Wyman Morse for his Eastern Steamship Lines, the sistership 5,100-ton passenger liners SS George Washington and SS Robert E. Lee were put into service with Eastern’s Old Dominion Line. In 1937-38, they were making four regular sailings weekly between NYC’s Pier 25 to Norfolk’s Pier S for $12 one way or $16.50 round trip.
SS Robert E. Lee and her sister George Washington were simple one-stack, three-decker 373-footers that, besides work-a-day transport of almost 400 passengers on each coastwise trip, could run fresh produce as cargo from Virginia to New York City by the next day and return with garments, furniture, and dry goods from the North.
A June 1924 detail from the Marine Review on SS Robert E. Lee and her sister George Washington, noting they could carry almost 250,000 bales of cargo (1,700 tons) loaded through 10 cargo elevators as well as 322 “white and colored” passengers along with 58 in steerage. Capable of 16 knots, they were fast for their type and time.
Just weeks after Pearl Harbor, Lee and Washington were taken up by the War Shipping Administration under contract by the Alcoa Steamship Co. and converted to carry up to 778 troops, typically on shuttle runs from U.S. East Coast ports to assorted Allied Caribbean bases and Bermuda. This conversion included a dark paint scheme, degaussing equipment to help avid mines and magnetic exploders on torpedoes, lots of Carley floats rigged to break loose topside if needed, and a single 3″/50 DP mount with its accompanying Naval Guard crew.
Sailing from Trinidad on 21 July for Tampa with eight officers, 122 crewmen, six armed guards, and 268 passengers– including 115 waterlogged mariners of the sunk tankers Andrea Brovig (Sunk by U-128 on 23 June), Høegh Giant ( U-126 on 3 June), and Stanvac Palembang (U-203 on 11 July)– along with 47 tons of general cargo and personal effects, Lee was part of Intracoastal Convoy TAW-7. However, just short of Florida, TAW-7 was dispersed, and she was carved out and diverted, escorted by the brand-new (commissioned 15 June) PC-461-class submarine chaser USS PC-566 riding shotgun, for New Orleans.
USS PC-566, via The Ted Stone Collection, Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, VA. She would spend her entire career in the Florida-Caribbean area on patrol and escort duty and as a training ship out of Miami then go on to be sold to Venezuela in June 1961 and serve for another decade.
It was on the late hours of 30 July, about 45 miles southeast of the entrance to the Mississippi River and 146 miles south-by-southwest of the Biloxi lighthouse, that U-166 would see its biggest prize.
Firing a single torpedo, Lee was as unlucky as the men of the three tankers that she carried, and the ship soon sank, taking 25 souls with her.
Lookouts had spotted the torpedo wake about 200 yards away before it struck just aft of the engine room. The explosion destroyed the #3 hold, vented through the B and C decks, and wrecked the engines, the radio compartment, and the steering gear.
…
The badly damaged Robert E. Lee first listed to port then to starboard and finally sank by the stern about 15 minutes after the torpedo hit. One officer, nine crewmen, and 15 passengers were lost. The survivors…abandoned the ship in six lifeboats, eight rafts, and five floats and were soon picked up by USS PC-566, USS SC-519, and the tug Underwriter and landed in Venice, Louisiana.
The end of U-166
Immediately after Lee was hit, her escorting 173-foot subchaser PC-566, with her green crew under the command of LT Herbert Gordon Claudius, USNR, dropped five depth charges across a sonar contact, circled back and dropped another five, then proceeded to pick up survivors after the contact disappeared in deep water and a large– reportedly 200 feet wide– oil slick was observed.
PC-566‘s depth charge runs were considered (at the time) ineffective, but U-166 never made it back to Lorient.
As Claudius and his crew had been rushed into service and had not received any formal ASW training yet, his reported “kill” was dismissed as unlikely. The new skipper was stripped of his command, sent to Sonar school to ride a desk, and admonished “for breaking radio silence twice before his arrival” and for “not being in the proper patrol station, nor that any proven system of attack was followed.” Further, the Navy said, “It is not considered probable that any except minor damage could have been sustained by the submarine.”
The Coast Guard flew some 25 Widgeons, numbers V197 through V221 from 1941 to 1950, purchased from Grumman for $75,000 each. V203 is pictured here. Equipped with twin inverted Ranger L-440 engines, the J4F-1 was a high-wing all-metal monoplane with a range of 750 miles at a pokey 135 miles per hour. It was modified to carry a crew of two and a single 325-pound depth charge under the inboard right wing. Alternatively, a bomb, raft, or droppable SAR gear could be carried in that position.
Piloted by Chief Aviation Pilot Henry C. White with RM1 George H. Boggs as a crewmember, V212 was forward deployed from an outlying grass field at Houma, Louisiana owned by Texaco, and reported depth charging a surfaced German U-boat on 1 August, two days after Robert E. Lee was lost and about 100 miles away from that killing field.
They were at 1,500 feet at the base of a broken cloud deck 100 miles south of the Houma base. Through the open windows of their twin-engine Grumman J4F-1 Widgeon amphibian, they could see about 10 miles across the hazy gulf sea. White had just turned to the northeast to set up a ladder search for the assigned area and moments later they saw a surfaced German submarine. White started to maneuver the Widgeon behind the sub for a stern attack, but it immediately became obvious that as soon as White and Boggs had seen the sub, the sub had seen them, and the U-boat began to slide underwater in a crash dive. White banked sharply to starboard and from a half mile away began his dive towards the sub fully aware that he had only a sole depth charge under his wing and that he would have but one try.
At an altitude of 250 feet, the single depth charge was released. Boggs stuck his head out of the window and watched the depth charge fall into the Gulf waters, its fuse set to explode 25 feet below the surface. He estimated it entered the water 20 feet from the submarine on the starboard side. Boggs saw a large geyser of water rise from the explosion. White later wrote that the submarine was visible during the entire approach being just under the water and still clearly visible when the depth charge was released. When they circled back around, they saw only a medium oil slick. German records obtained after the war verified that the U-166 had been sunk in that area at the beginning of August. White and Boggs were given credit for the sinking.
Coast Guard Air Station Biloxi was an 18-acre seaplane base founded at Point Cadet on Back Bay in 1934 and remained in service until 1966 when the land and its 12,000 square-foot hangar and barracks were turned over to the city.
The above image is from 1941. In the far back of the hangar pictured above is a twin-engine PH-2 Hall Aluminum Flying Boat, either V-166 or V-170. Next to it is the single-engine JF-2 Grumman Amphibian V-143. A brand new twin-engine JFR-2 Grumman Amphibian, V-184, pokes its nose into the sunshine.
Biloxi Coast Guard Air Station would become the Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum. The structure was destroyed in Katrina.
A stylized 1940s postcard made from composite photographs showing two J2F Ducks, three airborne J4F-1 Widgeons, and an RD-4 Dolphin at USCG Air Sta Biloxi at Point Cadet. After 1966, the old hangar was used by the city for concerts and festivals until it was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.
The destruction of U-166 by V212 went down in Coast Guard (and Grumman) history and was celebrated for the rest of the 20th Century. This led V212– which had been sold on the commercial market in 1948 when the USCG got out of the Widgeon game and later flown as a commercial airliner (N212ST) in Alaska– to be acquired by the National Naval Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola in 1988 and preserved, reverted to her WWII USCG livery.
In all, from 1942 into 1943, no less than 24 German U-boats patrolled the Gulf of Mexico– the American Sea– sinking 56 Allied vessels of which 39 were in the coastal waters of Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. U-166 has the distinction of being the only German submarine lost in the Gulf.
Epilogue
In 1986, Shell Offshore found two likely shipwrecks on a deep tow survey in one of their leased oil fields due south of the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 5,000 feet of water. It was thought that one was possibly the remains of the bauxite freighter SS Alcoa Puritan, another World War II casualty lost in the same rough area as Robert E. Lee, sunk by U-507 about 15 miles off the entrance to the Mississippi River in May 1942.
In 2001, deep water HUGIN 3000 AUVs of C&C Technologies working pipeline survey along the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico’s Mississippi Canyon for BP and Shell (the Mississippi Canyon is home to well MC 252, the infamous Deepwater Horizon well), found a single-stack ocean liner and, less than a mile away, a broken submarine.
In 2010, U-166 was briefly revisited during the Lophelia II study, where archaeologists collected additional ROV videos, still photos, core samples, and biological samples and re-examined the test platforms that had been deployed on site since 2003.
Finally, in 2014, as part of a National Geographic Explorer-funded effort that was turned into a one-hour special, Robert G. Ballard surveyed the U-boat and suggested that one of PC-566’s depth charges had wrecked the bow and likely detonated several torpedo warheads.
Further analysis by the Naval History and Heritage Command agreed. It turned out that PC-566 was the only one of the 343 PC-461 class submarine chasers to be credited with sinking a U-boat.
This also brought some closure to Kuhlmann’s widow. Following the film crew documenting the discovery of the U-boat, she donated an ample collection of images from Kuhlmann’s service to The National WWII Museum in New Orleans through the PAST Foundation, where it is preserved as part of the story.
Some personal images of Kuhlmann are in the collection of The National WWII Museum.
Down the coast in Biloxi, U-166 has always had a special place in the city’s lore, as for years it was celebrated as the base where V212, the long-thought dispatcher of the boat, was assigned. The City’s Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum— located on the grounds of the old Coast Guard Air Station at Point Cadet– has exhibits on the base, its aircraft, and history, as well as the barrack’s tower, saved after Hurricane Katrina.
(Photo: Chris Eger)
Since 2005, the Seafood Industry Museum has had a 45-foot U-boat model, constructed for the film U-571, which has been dedicated to U-166 (although it depicts a German Type VII U-boat) after a rework in 2008 by volunteers of the Tullibee Base Submarine Veterans and those of Seabee Base Gulfport.
The U-571 model is next to the old tower from the USCG Air Sta Biloxi barracks. (Photo: Chris Eger)
As for V212, the NHHC revised the record book and cited that the Coast Guard seaplane likely had attacked but failed to sink U-171, a Type IXC sistership of U-166 that was operating in the same area at the time and reported being bombed by a “Flugboot” (flying boat) on 1 August with slight damage. U-171 went on to sink the tanker R. M. Parker Jr. (6,779 tons) two weeks later off the Louisiana coast, then was herself lost just short of Lorient when she struck a mine just miles short of the end of her maiden war patrol.
Speaking of losses, of U-166’s sister boats, 50 of 54 were lost, almost all to Allied ASW efforts. Only four survived the war and a single example, U-505, is the only one of two of her class (U-534 was sunk in 1945 and then salvaged by the British in 1993) preserved. Of all places, U-505 is in Chicago.
4 June 1944 Tug USS Abnaki (ATF-96) tows U-505 photo from USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60) Note the large U.S. Ensign flying from U-505’s periscope. 80-G-324351
And finally, Robert E. Lee’s sister, George Washington, survived the war and lived a second life in the Pacific until the mid-1950s.
George Washington’s entry in “U.S. Troopships of WWII.” After the war, she was acquired by the Alaska Transport Company (ATCo.) to run between Seattle and Alaska until ATCo went bankrupt in 1948. A French company named CGT bought her in 1949, renamed her SS Gascogne (Gascoigne), ran her in the Caribbean for a while, then in 1952 sold her to Messageries-Maritimes, who operated her in Indochina until she was scrapped in Hong Kong in 1955.
Specs:
Displacement: 1,144 t (1,126 long tons) surfaced 1,257 t (1,237 long tons) submerged Length: 251 ft 10 in o/a 192 ft 9 in. pressure hull Beam: 22 ft 6 in o/a 14 ft 7 in pressure hull Height: 31 ft 6 in Draught: 15 ft 4 in Installed power: 4,400 PS (3,200 kW; 4,300 bhp) (diesels) 1,000 PS (740 kW; 990 shp) (electric) Propulsion: 2 shafts 2 × diesel engines 2 × electric motors Range: 13,850 nmi at 10 knots surfaced 63 nmi at 4 knots submerged Test depth: 230 m (750 ft) Complement: 4 officers, 44 enlisted Armament: 6 × torpedo tubes (4 bow, 2 stern) 22 × 53.3 cm (21 in) torpedoes 1 × 10.5 cm (4.1 in) SK C/32 deck gun (180 rounds) 1 × 3.7 cm (1.5 in) SK C/30 AA gun 1 × twin 2 cm FlaK 30 AA guns
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Dubbed either self-propelled semi-submersibles (SPSS) or low-profile vessels (LPVs), “narco subs” have gone from being a unicorn type of thing discussed only in Clive Cussler books to the real deal, especially when it comes to the Eastern Pacific, where they seem to be the vessel of choice running coke from South America to transshipment points in Central America.
Since they first started popping up in 2006, these craft have become an almost weekly thing in the past few years. The USCG and SOUTHCOM assets stopped almost 40 such boats in 2019, this number continued into 2020 where, across four days in mid-May Southcom stopped three narco submarines in the same week (remember the “Alto su barco” incident?), and showed no sign of stopping if you look at the typical patrols done by cutters throughout 2021-22.
Almost every recent EastPac patrol by the Coast Guard (or Fourth Fleet with a USCG LEDET aboard) shows off images of an LPV stopped with a gleaming white cutter in the background.
USCGC Northland (WMEC 904) interdicts a low-profile vessel in the Eastern Pacific Ocean in August 2021. The Northland crew returned to Portsmouth Monday, following an 80-day patrol in the Eastern Pacific Ocean in support of the Coast Guard Eleventh District and Joint Interagency Task Force South. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)
This translates into a whole series of art produced as part of the U.S. Coast Guard Art Collection in the past few years on the subject:
One of the scariest sounds for any of the Kaiser’s foot soldiers in the Great War had to be that of the Vickers gun, ready to rattle away in .303 all day.
The below amazing eight-minute video is the sight and sound of 16 Vickers machine guns rocking and rolling at a recent event saluting the centenary of the disbandment of the British Army’s Machine Gun Corps. Held at the Century range at Bisley, Surrey, it was pulled off by the Vickers Machinegun Collection and Research Association. Set up as a machine gun company, the guns represented gunners from 1912 through 1968, including one team of female factory testers.
“The Kaiser’s necklace, compliments of Camp Lee, Va.” showing Doughboys training with a Vickers gun and holding up one of its 250-round cloth belts. Both the 80th “Blue Ridge” Division, drawn from volunteers from Virginia and western Pennsylvania, as well as the 37th “Buckeye” Division of the Ohio National Guard trained at Camp Lee. (Photo: The Library of Virginia)
The Parachute Regiment was established on 1 August 1942 from No 2 Commando/No. 11 Special Air Service Battalion (which had already conducted the first British airborne operation, Operation Colossus, against the Tragino aqueduct, on 10 February 1941, and been renamed 1st Parachute Battalion in September 1941) and volunteers who were forming the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Battalions. This new regiment was placed under the Army Air Corps, alongside the existing Glider Pilot Regiment (air-landing infantry), as the 1st Parachute Brigade and, before 1942 was up, was tossed into action in French Morocco and Algeria during Operation Torch.
“The Parachute Regiment in Training, Ringway, August 1942.” A paratrooper armed with a STEN gun equipped for a jump. Malindine E G (Lt), Puttnam L (Lt), Spender H (Lt), War Office official photographer. IWM H 22754.
Same spread as above, IWM H 22759, note the Pegasus flash on the Para’s smock and No. 4 Enfield bayonet for his STEN.
By Overlord in June 1944, the British had five parachute brigades consisting of 17 battalions, most of which were under the 1st (British) Airborne Division, and 6th (British) Airborne Division. By the end of the war, the Brits had an impressive 31 battalions of Denison smock-wearing airborne troops in a mix of glider-borne infantry (10), SAS (3), and parachute light infantry (18) units, not even counting hard-charging Indian (6) and Gurkha (1) airborne battalions who were very active that year against the Japanese in the CBI theatre.
The “PARAS” have been paired down quite a bit over the years but are still very much around.
Today, 2 Para and 3 Para Bns serve as part of 16 Air Assault Brigade, the UK’s rapid deployment “fire brigade” force, while 1 Para serves as a support group alongside elements of the Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force in the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG). The Army Reserve has 4 Para Bn which retains its airborne/air assault capability through a far higher level of training typically seen in other Reserve units.
As a salute to the Regiment that over the weekend, Paratroopers of all four Battalions, the Red Devils (Britain’s version of the Golden Knights), and some 250 cherry berry vets gathered at the National Memorial Arboretum for a Service of Remembrance and recognition of the 80th Anniversary of the formation of the Regiment in 1942.
The “Terminal List,” which debuted earlier this month on Amazon Prime, is based on the best-selling novel by Navy SEAL veteran Jack Carr and follows Navy Lt. Commander James Reece (Chris Pratt) after his entire platoon SEALs is killed in an ambush during a covert mission overseas. Besides Pratt– who has fast become a staple of Hollywood sci-fi/action films, the series stars Constance Wu, Taylor Kitsch, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Jai Courtney, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and, oh yeah, a SIG P226 MK25.
Besides a slew of serious hardware and edged weapons, the MK25 gets a lot of screentime, especially in the first episode, and is even included in the opening credits. The gun is such a key plot point, in fact, that you can’t get two seconds into the trailer for the series without seeing it.
The MK24/25 series P226 models go back to at least the early 1990s in service with the Navy’s frogman corps.
A pair of SIG MK25 1962-2012 50-Year SEAL Team Commemoratives I ran into at the company’s headquarters in New Hampshire. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
This week marks 80 years since the start of the hell that was the Kokoda Campaign.
On the night of 21 July 1942, Japanese forces of the South Seas Detachment landed on the northern beaches of Papua at Gona and moved to cross the Kokoda Trail overland to reach Port Moresby. The first fighting occurred between the Japanese and elements of the Papuan Infantry Battalion and the 39th Australian Infantry Battalion at Awala on 23 July.
July 23, 1942: Japanese troops move up Kokoda trail and clash with Australian forces. Painting by Japanese artist Kei Sato from 1943
This soon became a desperate and bloody fighting retreat– including several instances of bitter hand-to-hand combat– along the Trail that would stretch into mid-November is one of the most forgotten ground campaigns of WWII.
A patrol of the 2/31st Battalion negotiates a path through the native cane growing on the swampy river flats bordering the Brown River c 4 October 1942. A two-day rest at the river, during which time it was re-supplied by air, enabling an issue of tobacco and chocolate was “very beneficial”. The men were able to swim and wash their clothes, to light fires, and smoke at night for the first time since the campaign began more than three weeks before. In a month’s time, the 2/31st Battalion would become the first Australian troops to re-enter Kokoda.
Kokoda and the Aussies. Note the Owen SMG, Bren, No III Enfield SMLE rifle, posing among the captured Japanese helmets
Kokoda and the Aussies. Australian captured Japanese Type 11 mountain gun and Type 96 machine gun
As noted by the Australian War Memorial:
The Kokoda Trail fighting was some of the most desperate and vicious encountered by Australian troops in the Second World War. Although the successful capture of Port Moresby was never going to be a precursor to an invasion of Australia, victory on the Kokoda Trail did ensure that Allied bases in northern Australia, were vital in the coming counter-offensive against the Japanese, would not be seriously threatened by air attack. Approximately 641 Australians were killed along the Kokoda Trail and over 1,600 were wounded. Casualties due to sickness exceeded 4,000.
“The Kokoda Trail is one of the most iconic Australian campaigns of the Second World War,” Dr. Karl James, Head of Military History at the Australian War Memorial, said. “Eighty years on, it is important to continue to honor those veterans.”
These days, the Australian Army still takes jungle warfare seriously, conducting regular Butterworth training rotations in Malaysia to keep their skills sharp.
C Squadron, 1st Armoured Regiment on Butterworth Rotation 136 in Malaysia, Aug 2022.
In a case of not realizing the knife in your back has your own fingerprints on it, the Army posted a rare public-facing document noting its end strength will drop to 445K (against 466K authorized) by the end of FY23 and noted that:
Only 23 percent of Americans aged 17-24 are qualified to serve due to a mixture of poor physical fitness, serious juvenile crimes, or bad ASVAB scores (which fell 9 percent with schools using remote learning during the overly long COVID shutdown).
And the fact that young Americans just don’t want to join.
The Army found three “gaps” are the reason:
Not noted is the fact that the country just came out of a 20-year morass in Afghanistan/Iraq that accomplished little but scarring two generations of Soldiers while hollowing out the reserves and Guard and increasing wait times at the VA by months, at the same time ROTC/JROTC is increasingly asleep at the wheel stateside, recruiting duty is seen by many as a bitter pill that has to be swallowed as its the only way to jump from JNCO to SNCO and actually making the Army a career, all the while toxic leadership is concentrating on meeting BS administrative goals so they can advance, all as the organization downshifts from being operational over the past two decades back to Micky Mouse garrison life. Then you throw the very spooky question marks of Ukraine and China out there, which isn’t going to get the purple-haired kids just interested in finding a way to pay for college off the bench, especially when they know they can get a student loan that will seemingly never have to be paid back.
But that’s just me.
Anyway, the feedback via the 850~ comments on the original post is enlightening.
The date: the overnight of 22/23 July 1945. U.S. Navy Destroyer Squadron 61 (DesRon 61, CAPT Thomas Henry Hederman), consisting of nine modern Allen M. Sumner-class destroyers USS De Haven (DD-727), Mansfield (DD-728), Lyman K. Swenson (DD-729), Maddox (DD-731), Collett (DD-730), Taussig (DD-746), Blue (DD-744), Samuel N. Moore (DD-747), and Brush (DD-745),sweeps Sagami Bay– lower Tokyo Bay.
With each of the Sumners mounting six 5″/38s, they could get off a tremendous amount of fire when needed.
Detecting a Japanese convoy of four vessels at 2305 while still 33,000 yards away, the chase was on. Closing to within 11,000 yards by 2353, the engagement took just 16 minutes and saw the DDs fire 3,291 5-inch shells and let fly some 18 torpedoes.
The score? One Japanese merchant ship was sunk– the freighter No.5 Hakutetsu Maru (810 t), and the other, Enbun Maru (7,030 t), damaged. The escorting IJN minesweeper (No. 1) and subchaser (No. 42) were unharmed. The little convoy was carrying a disassembled aircraft factory and was headed to Korea to set up shop, a trip that was aborted after the battle.
The American losses were zero.
As noted by the National WWII Museum, the engagement, termed today the Battle of Sagami Bay, was “the first time U.S. Navy ships entered the outer reaches of Tokyo Bay since April 1939.”
While DesRon 61 never received a commendation for the action, Halsey himself signaled afterward, pointing out that the force rode heavy post-typhoon seas into the Bay with great effect:
“Commander Third Fleet notes with great satisfaction the success of this well-planned and executed attack.
Commander Destroyer Squadron 61 is to be congratulated on the sound judgment, initiative and aggressive spirit displayed in ‘beating the weather’ to drive this attack home at the very door of the Empire.
You are unpopular with the Emperor. Well done”.
Allied ships entered Japanese waters 27 August 1945 on the eve of the surrender, and staged in Sagami Bay, where DesRon 61 had its shootout the month prior.
Surrender of Japan, 1945. Description: U.S. and British warships anchored in Sagami Wan, outside of Tokyo Bay, Japan, on the day the Allied ships entered Japanese waters, 27 August 1945. Photographed from USS South Dakota (BB-57) as the sun set behind Mount Fuji’s distinctive cone. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-490487
Epilogue
Hederman, an Annapolis grad (USNA ’23) had already earned a Navy Cross with DesRon61 off Okinawa and would retire in the 1950s as a rear admiral.
The nine tin cans would continue in U.S. service through Korea and Vietnam then were disposed of, with several going to overseas allies to live a second life. This included De Haven transferred to South Korea, Mansfield and Collett to Argentina— where they were assigned escort duty for the Argentine carrier Veinticinco de Mayo during the initial invasion of Port Stanley in the Falklands on 2 April 1982. Soon after, the two destroyers picked up the last screening duty for the pride of the fleet, the Brooklyn-class light cruiser ARA General Belgrano (ex-USS Phoenix). Meanwhile,Maddox (of later Tonkin Gulf fame), Moore, Taussig, Brush, and Swenson were sent to Taiwan where they survived for another three decades.
Blue, decommissioned in 1971, was disposed of in a SINKEX in April 1977.
