Turkish Cheetah

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To be clear, I love the Beretta 80-series of DA/SA pistols, best known to collectors as the Cheetah line. In my opinion, they were the high-water mark for when it comes to 1970s-80s all-metal hammer-fired compact carry guns. A simple blowback action, the pistol is light due to its abbreviated size, open-top slide, and aluminum frame.

As Beretta was in the small pistol market for about 60 years before the Cheetah hit the scene, they knew what they were doing when they came up with the design. What people wanted. What worked.

I have a couple of different .32 and .380 Beretta Cheetahs, all recently imported former Italian police guns, and I really like them.

While surplus Euro police guns can be had for around $300-$400 today, they often have a good bit of abuse to them as, let’s face it, many were carried for 25-30 years. Still imported as new-production for the commercial market as late as 2017, a factory-fresh Cheetah these days almost always goes for $1K or higher.

Sigh.

This lead us to the Turkish-made, some say commercially licensed (production started two years after Beretta closed down its own Cheetah line) Tisas Fatih B380 as brought in by SDS Imports, a double-stack 13+1 capacity .380 that I have found in testing to handle fairly well…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Warship Wednesday, July 20, 2022: Four Stacker Convoy King

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 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

Warship Wednesday, July 20, 2022: Four Stacker Convoy King

Above we see the stern of the Clemson-class tin can USS McCook (Destroyer # 252), in her second career as the Royal Canadian Navy’s Town-class HMCS St. Croix (I 81), with her White Duster flapping in the windy North Atlantic, likely while on convoy duty in 1942. Note her Q.F. 12-pdr. (12-cwt.) gun over the stern with ready rounds in the rack and splinter mats rigged for a modicum of protection. While McCook had a quiet life in her stint with the U.S. Navy, St. Croix throughout her work with the RCN would log time with 28 convoys and bust two of Donitz’s U-boats– not bad for a second-hand “four piper.”

One of the massive fleets of 156 Clemson-class flush decker destroyers, like most of her sisters, McCook came too late to help lick the Kaiser. An expansion of the almost identical Wickes-class destroyers with a third more fuel capacity to enable them to escort a convoy across the Atlantic without refueling, the Clemsons were sorely needed to combat the pressing German submarine threat of the Great War.

At 1,200 tons and with a top speed of 35 knots, they were brisk vessels ready for the task.

Inboard and outboard profiles for a U.S. Navy Clemson-class destroyer, in this case, USS Doyen (DD-280)

Carrying a legacy

Our vessel laid down at the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp in Quincy, Massachusetts in September 1918, was the first named in honor of CDR Roderick S. McCook, USN. The Ohio-born McCook was appointed a Mid in 1854 at age 15 and gave 28 years to the Navy, including service on the steam frigate USS Minnesota, the gunboat USS Stars and Stripes, and as XO of the monitor USS Canonicus during the Civil War, distinguishing himself in the latter during the assaults on Fort Fisher to the special thanks of Congress and ADM Porter.

CDR Roderick S. McCook, USN. Promoted to commander on 25 September 1873, McCook died in 1886. NH 47933

U.S. Navy Service

McCook commissioned on 30 April 1919 and, following her shakedown on the East Coast, was folded into the rapidly-shrinking Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet. She soon shipped out for Europe at a time when the U.S. was heavily involved in shaping the post-Great War redrawing of the map of that continent and the ensuing cycles of revolution, civil war, and nationalist uprisings.

USS McCook (Destroyer # 252) Dressed in flags in a European port, circa 1919. Photographed by R.E. Wayne (# J-50). NH 46470.

Wicks-class destroyer USS Gridley (DD-92) and USS McCook (DD-252) in Venice during 1919. From the John Dickey collection, via Navsource.

Once Europe began to quiet down, and the Roaring 20s set in, the Navy found McCook (as well as many other tin cans) surplus to its immediate needs, and she was decommissioned at Philadelphia on 30 June 1922 at laid up.

Her entire active USN service would run 1,157 days– barely enough to get her hull dirty.

View of the Reserve Fleet Basin of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard circa the early 1920s. Visible ships include (left to right): the destroyers USS McCook (DD-252) and USS Benham (DD-49). U.S. Navy photo S-574-M.

Headed to serve the King

With Europe again at war, on 2 September 1940, FDR signed the so-called Destroyers for Bases Agreement that saw a mix of 50 (mostly mothballed) Caldwell (3), Wickes (27), and Clemson (20)-class destroyers transferred to the Royal Navy in exchange for limited basing rights on nine British overseas possessions. Canada would receive seven of these ships including two Clemsons: McCook and her sister USS Bancroft (DD-256).

In respect of Canada’s naming tradition for destroyers, all seven RCN flush deckers were named for Canadian rivers, ideally, those that ran in conjunction with the U.S. border, a nice touch. McCook, therefore, became HCMS St. Croix, so named after the river on the Maine/New Brunswick border, while Bancroft became HMCS St. Francis after the Rivière Saint-François which makes up part of the Maine/Quebec line.

Sailed by scratch USN crews from Philadelphia, McCook was handed over at Halifax on 24 September in a batch of five destroyers.

Transfer of U.S. destroyers to the Royal Navy in Halifax, Sept 1940. Wickes-class destroyers USS Buchanan (DD-131), USS Crowninshield (DD-134), and USS Abel P. Upshur (DD-193) are in the background. The sailors are examining a 4-inch /50 deck gun. Twenty-three Wickes-class destroyers were transferred to the RN, along with four to the RCN, in 1940 under the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. (Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3199286)

HCMS St. Croix passed through the anti-submarine gates at Halifax, before receiving her camouflage.

Made ready for local patrol, she joined her first convoy, the Halifax-to-Liverpool HX 080, on 12 October– just 18 days after she was handed over. The seas were not kind to the small destroyer.

A battered HCMS St. Croix enters Halifax Harbor on 18 Dec 1940 after enduring a powerful North Atlantic storm. This photograph shows some of the damage inflicted on the ship, including guardrails hanging over the ship’s side (center) and broken windows on the ship’s bridge (top center). Less visible but more serious storm damage included bent steel plating on the bridge and below-deck flooding caused by massive waves. The photograph also emphasizes the ship’s narrow hull, which contributed to its instability in heavy seas and to poor handling. George Metcalf Archival Collection CWM 19900085-1040

As part of the handover, some systems and armament were changed out, after all, McCook had been laid up since 1922 and was all-Yank. Ultimately, three of her four triple-packed torpedo turnstiles were landed as was the aft 4-inch gun, the latter replaced by a British 12-pounder. She also eventually picked up a couple light AAA guns, depth charge racks, British radar (Type 273), medium-frequency direction finders (MF/DF), ASDIC, and depth charge throwers. At least one boiler was removed to increase fuel capacity.

Unidentified personnel manning a four-inch gun aboard HCMS St. Croix at sea, March 1941. LAC 3567312

Manning a .50-caliber water-cooled AAA mount aboard HCMS St. Croix at sea, March 1941. LAC 3571062.

Once modified and updated, she was sent for work with convoys between St Johns and Iceland by April 1941, joining troopship Convoy TC 10.

In October 1941, while part of ON 019A, St. Croix picked up 34 survivors from the Dutch merchant Tuva that was torpedoed and sunk the previous day by the German U-boat U-575 southwest of Iceland.

HCMS St. Croix (Canadian destroyer, 1940) taken circa 1941, at Reykjavik, Iceland. Note camouflage. NH 49941

HMCS St Croix (ex-USS McCook, DD-252) underway circa 1942 via Navsource

On 24 July 1942, while part of the outbound ON 113 convoy from Liverpool to Halifax, St. Croix, under command of 40-year-old LCDR Andrew Hedley Dobson, RCNR, she depth-charged U-90 (Kptlt. Hans-Jürgen Oldörp) to the bottom east of Newfoundland after the boat had attacked her convoy the day before. The U-boat took all 44 of her crew with her on her final dive, now 80 years ago this week.

Commodore L.W. Murray congratulated the Ship’s Company of HCMS St. Croix for sinking the German submarine U-90 on 24 July. St. John’s, Newfoundland, 29 July 1942. LAC 3231215

St. Croix’s crew gathered around her sole remaining set of torpedo tubes during the pier side celebration after sinking the U-90. Note the depth charges to the right. LAC 3231215

Dobson would earn the Distinguished Service Cross on 25 November 1942 for the U-90 sinking. He was still in command when she shared a second submarine kill with the Flower-class corvette HMCS Shediac (K100), against U-87 (Kptlt. Joachim Berger) off the Iberian coast on 4 March 1943 as part of Convoy KMS 10. A killer, U-87 had accounted for 5 Allied merchant ships (38,014 tons) before Shediac/St. Croix would end her budding career.

Speaking of endings, in the spirit of living and dying by the sword in epic proportions, St. Croix would come under the sights of Kptlt. Rudolf Bahr’s U-305 while escorting convoy ON-202 southwest of Iceland on the night of 20 September 1943. One of the first victims of the newly developed Gnat acoustic torpedo, she took three hits from the weapon and sank in the freezing waters in six minutes.

In all, she had served the RN/RCN for just 1,091 days, two months shy of her USN career.

After surviving 13 hours afloat, some five officers and 76 men who had survived St. Croix’s loss were picked up by the River-class frigate HMS Itchen (K 227) the next morning only to have that ship sunk by a Gnat fired from U-666 on 23 September. A single member of St. Croix’s crew, Stoker William Fisher, survived his second sinking in 72 hours. He was rescued by a Polish merchant ship, the Wisla, along with two men of the Itchen.

As noted by the Canadian War Museum, “St. Croix’s loss was felt nationwide because the crew, as on many Canadian ships, was drawn from across the country.”

For what it is worth, U-666, the slayer of HMS Itchen, the event that also claimed 80 of St. Croix’s waterlogged and traumatized crew, would meet her end in 1944 at the hands of 842 Sqn Swordfish of the British escort carrier HMS Fencer, with all hands lost. The Battle of the Atlantic was unforgiving no matter the flag.

Epilogue

All 2,852 Canadian and Newfoundland sailors and soldiers lost at sea in WWII were added to the Great War’s Halifax Memorial at Point Pleasant Park in 1966. RCN vessels and visiting warships render honors when passing the memorial in daylight.

Halifax Memorial

St. Croix’s lost crew is chronicled in a page at For Posterity’s Sake. 

As for her sisters, seven Clemsons were lost at the disaster at Honda Point in 1923, and 18 (including six used by the British) were lost in WWII including one, USS Stewart (DD-224), which was famously raised by the Japanese and used in their Navy only to be recaptured by the USN and given a watery grave after the war. Notably, the other Clemson-class RCN Four-Stacker, HMCS St. Francis (ex-USS Bancroft) who sailed as escort to 20 convoys and engaged the enemy on five occasions somehow managed to survive the conflict.

Those remaining Clemsons not sold off in the 1930s or otherwise sent to Davy Jones were scrapped wholesale in the months immediately after WWII. Sister USS Hatfield was decommissioned on 13 December 1946 and was sold for scrap on 9 May 1947 to NASSCO, the last of her kind in the U.S. Navy.

The final Clemson afloat, USS Aulick (DD-258), joined the Royal Navy as HMS Burnham (H82) in 1940 as part of the “Destroyers for Bases” deal. Laid up in 1944, she was allocated for scrapping on 3 December 1948, the end of an era.

None are preserved and only the scattered wrecks in the Western Pacific, Honda Point, the Med and Atlantic endure.

Few elements of the first USS McCook— or the first HMCS St. Croix— remain today other than engineering documents in the National Archives.

St. Croix is remembered in maritime art.

“HMCS St. Croix and U-Boat in North Atlantic” by Ronald Weyman. Canadian War Museum Beaverbrook Collection of War Art CWM 19710261-5628. Weyman served aboard the St. Croix as a naval gunnery officer and only narrowly missed being on the ship when she was sunk and later went on to become an award-winning film and television director and producer after the war. His artwork likely depicts the moment U-90 was sunk on July 24, 1942.

A well-done scale model of HMCS St. Croix is on display at The Military Museums in Calgary along with photos of her service.

(Credit: Naval Museum Assoc. of Alberta via The Military Museums).

Meanwhile, the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum has an exhibit that includes letters from Stoker Fisher, St. Croix’s sole survivor.

The U.S. Navy quickly reused the McCook name in WWII, christening in April 1942 the Gleaves-class destroyer DD-496 (later DMS-46), sponsored by Mrs. Reed Knox, granddaughter of CDR McCook.

Commissioned on 15 March 1943, McCook received three battle stars for World War Il service, all in the ETO. Sent to the Pacific post-war, she was laid up in 1949 at San Diego then at Bremerton before being sent to the breakers in 1973. She was the last USS McCook.

The Canadians likewise commissioned a second St. Croix, a Restigouche-class destroyer (DDE 256) built in the 1950s in Quebec. The Cold Warrior was a big part of the RCN’s ASW plans until paid off early in 1974 due to constrained defense budgets as part of that grinning fool Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal/socialist policies.

The beautiful HMCS St. Croix (DDE 256). She was laid up in 1974, just 18 years after joining the fleet, and was sold in 1991 for scrapping. CFB Esquimalt Museum photo.

Perhaps the RCN could do with a third St. Croix.

Specs:

HMCS St. Croix plan and elevation by LB Jenson

Displacement:
1,215 tons (normal)
1,308 tons (full load)
Length: 314 ft. 4.5 in
Beam: 30 ft. 11.5 in
Draft: 9 ft. 4 in
Propulsion:
4 × boilers, 300 psi (2,100 kPa) saturated steam
2 geared steam turbines
27,600 hp (20,600 kW)
2 shafts
Speed: 35.5 knots
Range: 4,900 nmi (9,100 km) @ 15 knots
Crew: (USN as commissioned)
8 officers
8 chief petty officers
106 enlisted
Armament:

(1920)
4 x 4″/51 cal guns
1 x 3″/23 cal AAA
12 × 21-inch torpedo tubes (4 × 3) (533 mm)

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Mineman Salute

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The Royal Navy and some of its Commonwealth spin-offs have long had a habit of commissioning “stone frigates” as shore establishments located on existing bases. One of these, founded in 1923, was HMS Vernon, so-called due to the fact that the torpedo and mining training schools in Portsmouth were on a series of hulks that included the old (circa 1832) 50-gun fourth-rate of the same name.

HMS Vernon remained a shore establishment into 1996, specializing in mine warfare in various forms, then was sold for the development of its commercial real estate potential.

HMS Vernon with a series of Ton-class Mine warfare vessels– HMS Crofton Lewiston and Hubberston– berthed in 1974.

Two years ago, the so-called Vernon Monument at today’s Gunwharf Quays, a shopping and housing development formed from the old HMS Vernon establishment, was quietly installed.

Designed by sculptor Mark Richards, the £250,000 statue depicts a one-and-a-quarter scale British Mk XVII moored contact sea mine, armed with 11 “Hertz horn” contacts – chemical fuses – which two divers wearing equally-iconic Clearance Diving Breathing Apparatus are attempting to deal with.

However, as 2021 was the year of COVID, the monument was only just dedicated this week, at an event that saw guests from around the world as well as personnel from the Royal Navy’s Mine Warfare community in attendance.

The statue is the only national memorial in Britain to mine warfare.

The Many Houses of the late, great, John Paul Jones

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That brilliant naval scofflaw, Scottish-born John Paul Jones of “Give me a fast ship, for I intend to sail in harm’s way” and “I have not yet begun to fight!” fame, is credited today by some as “The father of the U.S. Navy.” Of course, he had a spotty record prior to casting his lot with the Revolutionary Colonials in 1775, including more than a decade of service in British merchant and slave ships, a stint that covered a messy incident in putting down a mutiny and being labeled as “unnecessarily cruel” by at least one of his crews.

Between his command of the sloop USS Providence in 1776– which included taking at least 16 British prizes– and becoming the skipper of the new sloop USS Ranger in late 1777, he roomed at the Purcell boarding house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire from which he penned a number of letters. Returning to the area again in 1781-82, after his stint in commanding the short-lived 42-gun USS Bonhomme Richard and before his promised command of the new 74-gun ship-of-the-line USS America could be completed, he once again boarded with the widow Purcell.

This house today is remembered as the John Paul Jones Historic House in the care of the Portsmouth Historical Society, although it was never owned by Jones and he only lived there briefly for two short periods.

Nonetheless, you know I had to stop off there on my recent trip to Portsmouth.

It is a beautiful home, especially right before dusk when you are headed to dinner at the Library Restaurant next door on State Street.

Jones went on to spend time in the service of Catherine the Great (rising to the rank of rear admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, higher than his American rank), then was found dead in his Paris apartment of nephritis at age 45 in July 1792– 230 days ago this week.

Interestingly, at least two other homes of Capt/RADM Jones exist today including the John Paul Jones Cottage Museum at Arbigland in his native Scotland and the house owned by his brother in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Jones often stayed.

His current resting place, since 1905, is at Annapolis where he was interred in an ornate marble crypt underneath the iconic Naval Academy Chapel.

The Red Circle’s ’45 European Vacation

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Activated 15 July 1943 at Camp Carson, Colorado– some 79 years ago this week– the U.S. Army’s 71st Light Division (Pack, Jungle) was a rarity when it came to WWII infantry divisions as it was not descended from units that had a Great War history. Formed from two regiments of regulars– the 5th and 14th– that had long been assigned to defend the Panama Canal, augmented with new units such as the 66th Infantry Regiment, it was originally meant to fight in the triple canopy green hell of the South Pacific.

With a TO&E that included hundreds of horses and mules to carry and support 75mm pack guns– rather than the more standard 105mm howitzers and trucks– it had a small footprint, just 9,000 men, only about two-thirds the size of a traditional “leg” infantry division.

“7200 rounds of 75mm pack how. Ammunition is required per battery for operations of the 609th F.A., 71st Div. (L), atop a ridge on firebreak trail near hill #3905 during mountain maneuvers. Here are men of Hq and Service Batter, 609th, 71st L. Div., unloading dummy ammunition after a long 5-mile haul up the steep firebreak trail. 900 rounds a day is a good haul, as one mule can carry only 9 rounds. HLMR Mtn. Man. 168-9-44-593.’ Army Signal Corps photograph Photographer: J. P. Johnson. 22 March 1944

However, the 71st (L) never did make it to New Guinea or the Philippines.

Proving a bad idea in stateside tests in California, the 71st (L) was recast as a standard 14,000-man infantry division, sent to Fort Benning for additional training, and left its 75mm guns and beasts of burden behind.

This put it late to mature and the outfit only reached the European Theatre of Operation (still with jungle-trained Panama regulars of the 5th and 14th Inf Rgts making up two-thirds of its combat force, because this is the Army we are talking about!) in the Winter of early 1945.

The 71st ID’s patch had a red circle around it, earning the unit the easy nickname of “The Red Circle.” This uniform, of WWII combat veteran Staff Sergeant Harold R. George, is in the American Legacy Museum.

Hitting France on 6 February 1945, some 245 days after D-Day, it would enter combat on 10 March and spend 49 days engaged, suffering 1,879 total casualties in that short period, some 13.3 percent of its strength. The division earned two battle streamers, for the Rhineland and Central Europe Campaigns, and notably took 107,406 enemy POWs, including bagging most of the battered stragglers of the dreaded “Black Edelweiss” of the 6th SS Mountain Division Nord.

In doing so, the men of the 71st earned over 800 individual awards including 166 Silver Stars and 651 Bronze Stars. In the final days of the war, on 4 May 1945, the Division liberated Gunskirchen, one of the many subcamps of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Three days later they made contact with advancing Soviet Red Army elements near Waidhofen after capturing Steyr and were already making merry by the time VE-Day hit on the 8th.

The most excellent war chronicle map below, drawn by T4s Emil Albrecht and Roland Wille, covers the 71st 49-day war with the Seventh and Third Armies from Limesy, France to Sierning, Austria.

(3500×2200) National Archives Identifier: 152951241 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/152951241

Current Great Lakes Loadout

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I don’t often recommend content from Business Insider, but they have been posting otherwise well-made videos from Great Lakes recently, and these two I found interesting:

A Navy sailor breaks down every item that new recruits are issued on their first day of boot camp. MM2 Lionell Comeaux explains what’s in the Navy “ditty box,” or the first issue of uniform items, hygiene products, and more that new recruits receive once they arrive at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes:

A Navy sailor breaks down every uniform that new recruits are issued at Navy boot camp. HM1 Daniel Andren explains the history, features, and uses for the six uniforms every sailor receives in their sea bag, which they’re issued on their first night and which stays with them throughout their Navy career, and shares his favorite and least favorite uniforms to wear.

The six uniforms every sailor is issued in their sea bag:

  1. Physical training uniform
  2. Service dress white uniform
  3. Service dress blue uniform
  4. Working uniform type 3
  5. Coveralls
  6. Navy service uniform

Stomping around New England

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So I spent last week fighting canceled, delayed, and bumped flights to Boston-Logan and back at the behest of Sig Sauer, who has a couple of really interesting new guns coming out in a few months (more on that later) as well as to attend the opening of the company’s new 40,000 sq. ft. SIG Experience Center.

The facility includes a huge retail store where you can “try before you buy” anything Sig makes on the in-house series of shooting ranges ($10 per gun), a coffee shop, meeting and training areas, and the Sig Sauer Museum.

It is the latter, of course, that I found most interesting.

Originally an importer of West German-made guns established in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia in 1985, SIGARMS later became Sig Sauer in 2007 and has been manufacturing firearms in the U.S. for the past two decades.

I remember the $18,500 P226 Black Beauty from SHOT Show 2012, and it remains stunning.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Wind of the Great North

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We’ve covered the Wind-class “battle icebreakers” several times on Warship Wednesday including USS Atka (AGB-3)/USCGC Southwind (WAG-280) (then became the Soviet Kaptian Bouleve then later Admiral Makarov) and USCGC Northwind (WAG/WAGB-282).

USCGC Northwind in Antarctic waters, 16 December 1956. K-21429.

In all, an impressive eight Wind-class ships were built. Equipped with 5″/38 DP mounts and with the ability to carry floatplanes (later helicopters as soon as 1945), they fought the Germans in the “Weather War” while on Greenland Patrol in WWII, were the coldest boats of the frozen front lines of the Cold War where they helped establish the DEW Line and made sure Thule AB could exist in the Arctic and McMurdo in the Antarctic. Operations Deep Freeze, Nanook, Blue Nose, High Jump (aka “The Battle of Antarctica”), and more. They also proved to have long lives, with several still clocking in for hard work crunching ice in the late 1980s.

However, one of the Winds that got little love from the history books was a special one-off sister HMCS Labrador (AW50), the Royal Canadian Navy’s only polar icebreaker. She was almost amazingly advanced for the “old school” Tars of the RCN, being the first fully diesel-electric vessel in the Royal Canadian Navy as well as the first to have central heating and ventilation, air conditioning, and bunks instead of hammocks.

Built domestically under license by Marine Industries Limited in Sorel, Quebec (Yard No. 187), she was laid down on 18 November 1949, making her all-Canadian. Her seven American sisters were all built at San Pedro while her unarmed freshwater half-sister USCGC Mackinaw (WAGB-83) was built for Great Lakes service at Toledo.

Speaking of unarmed, the 6,500-ton HMCS Labrador was completed with a much-reduced fixed armament, mounting two 40mm Bofors and a single 3″/50 gun platform on the forecastle– though the latter was never mounted.

Note her forward gun platform is empty

As noted in her 141-page operational history:

The ship was by no means an exact copy of the American icebreakers, for advantage was taken of USN experience to incorporate many improvements. The stem of the Canadian ship, for instance, was given a knife-edge instead of the U shape of the American vessels, and the bow propeller fitted in the original Wind Class was omitted. The flight deck was made about half as big again as those fitted in the American ships and could accommodate three helicopters. Another major deviation from the US design was the fitting of retractable Denny-Brown stabilizing fins in an attempt to cut down the excessive roll of the Wind Class ships in rough weather. A great many changes involving accommodation of personnel were also made in order to provide better quarters and more recreational space for the ship’s company. Further modifications were necessitated by the fact that the RCN communications and radar requirements were about twice as great as those of the American ships. The ship’s first Commanding Officer, Captain O.C.S. Robertson, GM, RD, RCN, was responsible for many of the improvements made to the ship. He spent several months working with USN icebreakers, and his fertile mind conceived improvements and modifications at a rate that almost had the Naval Constructor in Chief wishing the ship had been assigned a less efficient and enthusiastic CO.

Commissioned 8 July 1954– some 68 years ago this week, later that November Labrador became the first warship to circumnavigate North America in a single voyage, sailing North from Halifax, crossing the Northwest Passage, sailing down the Pacific Coast, and back up to Halifax via the Panama Canal.

She could carry three helicopters including two Bell HTL-4 and a HUP II. Along with the 36-foot (11 m) all-aluminum hydrographic sounding craft Pogo. 2

She was Canada’s first heavy icebreaker and the Royal Canadian Navy’s first vessel capable of reliably operating in the waters of the Arctic, in essence, the country’s first Arctic patrol ship. She was the first warship as well as the first deep-draught ship of any type to transit the Northwest Passage and only the second vessel ever to accomplish the feat in one season.

USCGC Eastwind W279 coming alongside HMCS Labrador in the Arctic Ice

However, scandalously cash-strapped (a heritage the service continues to carry to this day), Labrador decommissioned on 22 November 1957 and transferred to civilian control in 1958 after just four years of RCN service.

Operating with the Department of Transport as the Canadian Government Ship (CGS) Labrador and then after 1962 with the newly-formed Canadian Coast Guard as CCGS Labrador, she endured until 1988 and was sent to the breakers. Today, the RCN hopes to field six new new “ice-capable” patrol ships, this time armed– the Harry DeWolf-class offshore patrol vessels– which are, at 6,600 tons, actually bigger than Labrador. It seems sending armed ships to the Arctic has finally become popular in Canada.

For more on Labrador, see her page on For Posterity’s Sake, a Royal Canadian Navy Historical Project.

Recalled!

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80 years ago today, official caption: “CPO George Sanderson. View was taken in 1942. Sanderson held the distinction of being the oldest man in the armed forces on active duty. Joined (sloop-of-war) USS Iroquois on 7 July 1882, recalled to active duty on 15 July 1942. Born 3 January 1862.”

Original print signed: Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, best wishes, George Sanderson. Naval History and Heritage Command, Yarnell collection NH 81981

The Chief Boatswains Mate has 10 (gold) hash marks on his sleeve, denoting at least 40 years of active service.

Mustachioed Gunners Mate First Class (Gun Captain) George Sanderson in the center with his gun crew, USS Oregon (BB-3) before the battle of Santiago, 1898. LOC LC-D4-32321 det 4a16563

As described over at the US Militaria Forum:

After a life of service on Civil War Sloops of War, a Coast Survey Ship in the Arctic, Screw Gunboats, Screw Sloops of War, Protected Cruisers, the first Battleships, a prize Spanish Gunboat, Hospital Ship, Schooner Rigged Steamer, Armored Cruiser plus a fleet of Receiving ships, he wanted more sea duty. Over 40 years of service ‘Sandy’ Sanderson had rounded the world 21 times, landed Marines in Panama in the 1880s, served in the Spanish American War as a Gun Turret Captain, fought Philippine Insurrectionists, Boxer Revolutionaries, Panamanian Revolutionaries, Zulu uprisings, protected seals in the Bering Sea, and made liberties in the Hawaiian Kingdom, as Sandy put it, “when they were something – when old King Kalakaua was in charge”. Recalled during World War I, he organized and was placed in charge of a gunnery school in New York City with 542 men assigned there and retired again in 1922.

Putting on his old uniform again after Pearl Harbor, he asked for sea duty.

He asked for sea duty.

Ultimately taken back into service, though restricted to shore assignments, he was assigned to Treasure Island and Recruiting Duty,

“Sandy” became one of the Navy’s best recruiters of Sailors, Seabees and in particular, WAVES, having had experience with the first Yeomanettes during World War I when he ran the NYC Gunnery School. 80-G-359957: “CBM George “Sandy” Sanderson, 81, oldest man on active duty in the Navy was nearly swamped by WAVES when he visited Portland, Oregon, recently and appeared at the Navy Mother’s Club tea on Navy Day.”

Discharged in August 1945, he earned his 11th service stripe!

CBM (PA) George ‘Sandy’ Sanderson, USN – The oldest US Navy sailor serving in World War II. All Hands, March 1949.

Attempting to reenlist for Korea but denied, Sanderson passed the bar in 1954.

Not that Georgia

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On or around July 14, 1943, official caption:

“Private Lloyd Culuck, Company A, 1st Battalion., 172nd Infantry Regiment, eats chow from a can of Ration B on New Georgia Island, SW Pacific during the New Georgia Campaign against Imperial Japanese military forces. He uses the can lid in lieu of fork or spoon. On the island since the first beachhead was established on July 2, 1943, he hasn’t changed clothes in 12 days.”

Signal Corps Photo: 161-43-2537 (DiPaola)

The 172nd was then and is now a unit of the Vermont National Guard, and has since the 1980s specialized in mountain warfare.

For more on its involvement in the New Georgia campaign and the grueling push up the Munda Trail, see Operation Toenails. 

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