SPSS Art

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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:

The sound of 16 Vickers 303s

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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. 

More on the Vickers 303, and its interesting American connection, after the jump in my column at Guns.com.

“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)

Pegasus at 80

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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.

“Utrinque Paratus”

MK25 Gets some Screentime

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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)

More in my column at Guns.com.

Nightmare of the Papuan Jungle

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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.

Army Sees Historic Recruiting/Retention Shortfall, Misses Why

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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.

I mean, I’m just gonna drop this GoArmy ad here: 

Meanwhile, the Marines are smashing their retention goals.

So, contrast the above Army spot with this current Marines recruiting ad: 

Sweeping on the night shift

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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.

Vale, Almirante

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BAP Almirante Grau of the Peruvian Navy was decommissioned on 26 September 2017. She had been laid down in Holland on 5 September 1939, the same week Hitler marched into Poland, giving her an amazing 78-year career. 

The beautiful De Zeven Provinciën-class light cruiser Hr.Ms. De Ruyter (C 801), who went on to serve the Peruvian Navy as BAP Almirante Grau (CLM-81) until she was retired in 2017, was to be saved as a floating museum, perhaps at the Naval Museum in Callao, but lack of funding and interest derailed that.

The Peruvians put the last all-gun cruiser on active service up for sale for around $1 million back in March, but concerns about asbestos, chemicals dating back to the 1930s, and lead paint made that a non-starter as it would likely cost more to safely dispose of all the bad stuff than her value in recycled materials.

A last-ditch effort by a group of Navy vets in Holland likewise fell through.

This led to a quiet ceremony, attended by a naval band, of the old girl being towed from Lima to undisclosed shipbreakers, likely in India,  for scrapping in Guayaquil, Ecuador, for a final price undisclosed.

The ship last departed from Callao Naval Port in Lima on 8 July. (Photo: Juan Carlos Iglesias Caminati)

She deserved better.

Update: Oryx reported Saturday that Almirante Grau/De Ruyter docked over the weekend in India, completing her final voyage. 

Budget Flattops of Opportunity: Entering the Age of the Drone Carrier

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While China, the U.S., France, Britain and India are collectively spending billions in treasure and decades of time to develop modern supercarriers to deliver wings of advanced combat aircraft across any coastline in the world, countries with a more modest budget are going a different route.

Rather than a 40,000+ ton vessel with a crew of 1K plus in its smallest format, simpler flattops filled with UAVs are now leaving the drawing board and taking to the water.

Turkey

As previously reported, Turkey, which had built a 25,000-ton/762-foot variant of the Spanish LHA Juan Carlos I with the intention of using a dozen F-35Bs from her deck, kicking the country out of the F-35 program left it with a spare carrier and no aircraft. They have fixed that by planning to embark now Navy-operated AH-1 Cobra gunships and as many as 40 domestically-produced Bayraktar TB3s drones on deck with the promise of at least that many stowed below.

Thailand

The Royal Thai Navy took the Spanish Navy’s Príncipe de Asturias Harrier carrier design of the 1980s (which in itself was based on the old U.S. Navy’s Sea Control Ship project of the 1970s) and built the ski-jump equipped 11,500-ton HTMS Chakri Naruebet some 25 years ago.

Royal Thai Navy AV-8S Matador VSTOL fighters on HTMS Chakri Naruebet (CVH-911) harrier carrier, a capability they had from 1997-2006. 

Originally fielding a tiny force of surplus ex-Spanish AV-8S Matadors which were withdrawn from service in 2006, she has been largely relegated to use as a royal yacht and sometime LPH, reportedly only getting to sea about 12 days a year.

However, since at least last November, the Royal Thai Navy has been testing a series of drones including the locally-produced MARCUS-B (Maritime Aerial Reconnaissance Craft Unmanned System-B) Vertical Take-Off and Landing UAV from the carrier and started taking delivery of RQ-21A Blackjack drones from the U.S. in May.

Portugal

As detailed by Naval News, the Portuguese Navy (Marinha Portuguesa) unveiled details on a new drone mothership project dubbed “plataforma naval multifuncional” (multifunctional naval platform). Initial brainstorming shows an LPH-style vessel that could hit the 10,000-ton range.

The mothership is shown with two notional fixed-wing UAVs on deck (they look like MQ-1C Grey Eagle but the new MQ-9B STOL may be a better fit) as well as 6 quad-copter UAVs and one NH90 helicopter. The design seems to lack an aviation hangar. Below decks is a modular area to launch and recover AUV, UUV and USV. Portuguese Navy image.

The fixed-wing UAVs are launched via a ski jump. Portuguese Navy image.

Iran

Last week, the Iranians showed off their new “Drone-Carrier Division” in the Indian Ocean including a Kilo-class submarine Tareq (901), auxiliary ship Delvar (471), and landing ship Lavan (514). Iranian state TV claimed one unnamed vessel currently carries at least 50 drones, which isn’t unbelievable.

As noted by Janes: 

Most were launched from rails using rocket boosters, including what appeared to be Ababil-2 and Arash types, which can be used to conduct one-way attacks. Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) television news coverage of the event showed a floating target and a target on land being hit by UAVs.

The one launched from the submarine appeared to be a new, smaller type, roughly similar in size and configuration to the Warmate loitering munition made by Poland’s WB Group.

A UAV that appeared to be an Ababil-3 – a reusable surveillance type with wheeled undercarriage – was shown taking off from Lavan from a rail. The UAV may have been fitted with a parachute and a flotation device so it can be recovered from the sea, although this was not shown.

Welcome to 2022.

The Old Man Returns to Manage the Joint

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In July 1937, some 85 years ago this month, otherwise surface warfare-qualified Capt. William Frederick Halsey Jr. (USNA 1904) arrived at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola– where he had just earned his own wings of gold two years prior, at the age of 52, the oldest person to do so in the history of the U.S. Navy– to assume command of the Cradle of Naval Aviation.

Of course, Halsey would achieve his first star in 1938 and go on to bigger and better things just a few years later, but it was easy to see that, had the events of 1941 not gone the way they did, “Bull” may have been only a quiet command or two away from retiring in the peacetime Navy, and faded into a footnote. 

History is funny like that.

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