95 Years Ago Today: Vought UO floatplane, arriving at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, California, 8 July 1927, marked on its fuselage as being from USS Nevada (Battleship No. 36).
U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-HAN-142-2
The Vought UO was top-of-the-line a century ago at the time it was introduced in 1922.
“As their superiority over potential competing types became evident, they became the only observation type in use on the fleet’s catapult-equipped combat ships. The 15 first-class battleships were each equipped with one or more UO-1s. Two or more UO-1s were used aboard each of the new scout cruisers comprising the Navy’s scouting fleet.”
The two-seat observation plane accomplished several firsts, including:
The first airplane to be catapulted from a battleship at night (26 November 1924, Lt. Dixie Kiefer off the USS. California in San Diego harbor while lit by the ship’s searchlights).
Vought’s first overseas sales (to Cuba and later to Peru).
The first airplane hooked in midair from the Navy dirigible USS Los Angeles (1929).
With just 141 aircraft built, the career of the Vought UO series was limited, and, obsolete only a decade after being introduced, they were retired by the Navy by 1933.
Taurus earlier this year released a stretched slide version of their well-liked G3C, promising full-size pistol performance in a compact package via the new G3XL.
Here’s what I found out.
The 9mm Taurus G3XL carries over the standard model G3’s full-size Tenifer-finished all-steel slide and 4-inch stainless-steel barrel assembly. A crossover concept, it also borrows from the G3C by using its compact grip frame. The resulting G3XL thus has the benefit of the longer sight radius, tending to better accuracy over shorter barrels, while adding a few fps to bullet velocity for increased terminal performance. Meanwhile, the smaller frame allows easier carry than the standard-sized G3.
Of course, the gun’s name is a riff on the Sig Sauer P365XL, and it is roughly the same size, although the Taurus is a good bit less expensive. Heck, both even have a 12+1 magazine capacity. Ironically, the G3XL can even use Sig P229/228/226 mags, which would have been a neat trick that Sig should have thought about.
It is pretty basic, but it works and costs well under $350.
U.S Army Maj. Gen. JP McGee, right, commanding general, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), and Command Sgt. Maj. Veronica Knapp, left, case the division colors during a color casing ceremony at McAuliffe Hall, Fort Campbell, Ky., July 5, 2022. The ceremony was held to officially mark the Screaming Eagle’s deployment to the European Command theater of operations to assure NATO allies and deter Russian aggression in the region. The casing of the colors symbolizes their departure from Fort Campbell, Ky. Their colors will remain cased until they redeploy the European Command theater of operations. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Sinthia Rosario, 101st Airborne Division Public Affairs)
While the 101st famously started their 1944-45 European vacation at Normandy– including the capture of Carentan– and ended 214 days later at the Eagle’s Nest, suffering 11,548 battle casualties along the way, the division’s post-WWII logs have seen it stay more Asia-way.
Earning 12 battle streamers in Vietnam as well as two for Southwest Asia service (along with a Meritorious Unit Commendation), the unit as a whole has kept out of Europe with the exception of exercises. However, that has changed as the division headquarters and the 2nd Brigade as a whole are headed there for the next several months.
From the Army:
Elements of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) began arriving to the Mihail Kogalniceanum Airbase in Romania June 20, and are scheduled to continue arriving during the next several days.
Headquarters, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, will support the U.S. Army V Corps’ mission to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank and engage in multinational exercises with partners across the European continent in order to reassure allies and deter further Russian aggression.
The deploying 101st Soldiers do not represent additional U.S. forces in Europe, but are taking the place of Soldiers assigned to 82nd Airborne Division Headquarters and the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Considering Fort Campbell soldiers haven’t been deployed to Europe in 80 years, to put that in perspective – in 1942, gas was 20 cents.
The most-watched film that year was Bambi, and Bing Crosby released “White Christmas” in July 1942, which would be the Billboard top hit for three months that year.
The 4,700 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division began deploying to Europe in late June.
The latest troop will depart Fort Campbell at 10:30 Wednesday night.
In related news, it is almost ironic that Bradford Freeman, the last survivor of the Easy 506th’s famed “Band of Brothers,” died on Sunday in Columbus, Mississippi. He was 97.
Soldiers of the New York National Guard’s 105th Infantry Regiment on Saipan during World War II.
(New York State Military Museum)
Formerly the 2nd New York Volunteer Infantry of the 19th Century, the 105th had a long and distinguished record in federal service including the Civil War, the Spanish-America War, the Mexican Border dispute of 1916, World War I, and finally World War II.
Assigned to the 27th “New York” Infantry Division on 15 October 1940, after training at Alabama’s Fort McClellan, the New Yorkers shipped out for the Pacific and cleared Butaritari Island in the Makin Atoll campaign before landing on Saipan 17 June 1944.
The fighting on the long-held Japanese territory continued up Mount Tapotchau where the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th in the predawn hours of 7 July “bore the brunt of the largest Banzai charge of the entire war,” standing their ground against 4,300 fanatical Japanese, an action that resulted in three of the New Yorkers earning the Medal of Honor for the price of some 918 men from the two battalions listed on the casualty rolls, more than half of their effective strength.
MAJ Edward McCarthy, then in command of 2-105 and one of the few officers of the regiment to survive the 15-hour attack, described the scene as follows:
“It reminded me of one of those old cattle-stampede scenes of the movies. The camera is in a hole in the ground and you see the herd coming and they leap up and over you and are gone. Only the Japs just kept coming and coming. I didn’t think they’d ever stop”.
The 105th, after rest and refit, was thrown into the hell that was the Shuri Line at Okinawa and was bled white once more. It was disbanded back home in December 1945 and has never been reformed.
Warship Wednesday, July 6, 2022: Dispatches from the New Navy
Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 69187
Above we see the one-of-a-kind steel-hulled dispatch boat USS Dolphin (later PG-24) off New York City, about 1890. Note the Statue of Liberty in the right background. A controversial warship when she first appeared, she later proved to have a long and star-studded career.
Dolphin was part of the famed “ABCD” ships, the first modern steel-hulled warships of the “New Navy” ordered in the early 1880s along with the protected cruisers USS Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago. While the ABC part of this quartet was built to fight, running 3,200 tons in the case of Atlanta and Boston and 4,500 tons for Chicago, with as much as 4-inches of armor plate and a total of eight 8-inch, 20 6-inch, and two 5-inch guns between them, Dolphin was, well, a lot less of a bruiser.
Laid down on 11 October 1883 as an unarmored cruiser by John Roach and Sons, Chester, PA, Dolphin hit the scales at just 1,485 tons with a length of 256 feet (240 between perpendiculars). Her armament was also slight, with a single 6″/30 Mark 1 (serial no. 1), three 6-pounders, four 3-pounders, and two Colt Gatling guns.
6″/30 (15.2 cm) Mark I gun on the protected cruiser USS Atlanta circa 1895. Note three-motion breech mechanism and Mark 2, Muzzle Pivot Mount inclined mounting. Dolphin was to carry one of these, but it wasn’t to be. Detroit Publishing Company Collection Photograph Library of Congress Photograph ID LC-USZ62-60234
However, although all the ABC cruisers would successfully carry 6″/30s along with their other wild mix of armament, it was soon seen that Dolphin was too light for the piece and she transitioned to two 4″/40 (10.2 cm) Mark 1 pieces as her main armament.
Equipped with four (two double-ended and two single-ended) boilers trunked through a centerline stack pushing a single 2,253ihp vertical compound direct-acting engine on a centerline shaft, she also had a three-mast auxiliary sail rig, a hermaphrodite pattern carried by all the ABCD ships. With everything lit and a clean hull, it was thought she could make 17 knots on a flat sea, something that was thought to equal 15 knots in rough conditions.
Brooklyn, NY. Dock No 2 with USS Dolphin (dispatch boat) showing her hull shape, masts, stack, and screw. USN 902198
Unofficial plans, USS Dolphin, published in the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 1893. By Deutsch Lith and Ptg Co., Photo-Lith, Balto. NH 70119
However, in the spring and summer of 1885, the ship was the subject of much controversy. The first of the ABCD ships nearing completion, she could not make her target speed under any condition, barely hitting 14 knots, and incapable of sustaining that for over six hours. Meanwhile, the Herreshoff-built steam yacht Stilettowas hitting 24.8 knots and the Cunard steamship Etruria was logging over 19 sustained across a 72-hour period.
That, coupled with the issue of armament, led to a special board directed by President Chester A. Arthur’s SECNAV Bill Chandler to inspect and evaluate Dolphin, which was accordingly reclassified as a dispatch boat rather than a cruiser.
A subsequent board formed by President Cleveland’s incoming SECNAV William C. Whitney, consisting of Capt. George E. Belknap, Commanders Robley D. Evans, William T. Sampson, and Caspar F. Goodrich (all of which became famed admirals); Naval Constructor Francis Bowles, and one Mr. Herman Winters, was formed to criticize the first board later that fall, and by early 1886 it was deemed Dolphin had caulking and planking issues, a few defective steel trusses, and her plant was never able to make the designed 2,300 hp on her original boilers. Further, it was thought her powerplant and battery were too exposed to any sort of fire to be effective in combat.
The papers were filled with drama, with the New York Times archives holding dozens of stories filed on the subject that year.
“Cruelty” Dolphin: “What! go to sea, Secretary Whitney! Why, that might make me seasick!'”– says the caption of this Thomas Nast cartoon published in Harper’s weekly, satirizing the mediocre performance during sea trials of the USS Dolphin, one of four vessels ordered by Congress in 1883 to rebuild a United States Navy that was in disrepair. Secretary of the Navy William Whitney refused to accept the new ship, setting off a well-publicized political controversy and eventually driving the shipbuilder into bankruptcy. Via the NYPL collection.
“John Roach’s little miscalculation” Illustration shows Secretary of the Navy, William C. Whitney, handing a boat labeled “Dolphin” to James G. Blaine who shies away, refusing to accept it; in the background, John Roach, a contractor, who built the ship “Dolphin”, is crying because the Cleveland administration has voided his contract. Published in Puck, May 20, 1885, cover. Art by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler. Via LOC
Completed on 23 July 1884, Dolphin was only commissioned on 8 December 1885, while the Navy would work out her issues and pass on her lessons learned to the other new steel warships being built.
Notably, her skipper during this period was Capt., George Dewey (USNA 1858), later to become the hero of Manila Bay.
The first of the vessels of the “New Navy” to be completed, Dolphin was assigned to the North Atlantic Station, cruising along the eastern seaboard until February 1886 when it was deemed, she was ready to undertake longer runs, embarking in a stately three-year, 58,000-mile deployment and circumnavigation of the globe under CDR George Francis Faxon Wilde (USNA 1865). America had to show off her new warship via foreign service.
Accordingly, as noted by DANFS, “she then sailed around South America on her way to the Pacific Station for duty. She visited ports in Japan, Korea, China, Ceylon, India, Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Spain, and England, and the islands of Madeira and Bermuda, before arriving at New York on 27 September 1889 to complete her round-the-world cruise.”
USS Dolphin, some of the ship’s officers, with a monkey mascot, circa 1889, likely picked up on the way round the globe. Odds are the officer holding him is CDR George Francis Faxon Wilde. Decorated as a midshipman at the Battle of Mobile Bay, Wilde would go on to command the monitor USS Katahdin, the cruiser USS Boston during the Span Am War, and the battleship USS Oregon then retire in 1905 as head of the Boston Navy Yard. NH 54538
This trip, with the ship proving her worth, led to her appearing in the periodicals of the day in a much more impressive take.
Dispatch-vessel Dolphin from The Illustrated London News 1891
Harpers Weekly cover USS Dolphin
Harper’s Weekly January 1886 USS Dolphin in sails
By the time she arrived back home, the Navy’s other steel ships were reaching the fleet and they all became part of the new “Squadron of Evolution.”
USS Dolphin (1885-1922); USS Atlanta (1886-1912); and USS Chicago (1889-1935) off New York City, about 1890. NH 69190
As with most Naval vessels of the era, Dolphin would spend her career in and out of commission, being laid up in ordinary and reserve on no less than three times between 1891 and 1911, typically for about a year or so. Today the Navy still conducts the same lengthy yard periods but keeps the vessels in commission.
In April 1891, Dolphin was detached from the Squadron of Evolution and the Navy made $40,000 available for her cabins to be refitted to assume the task of Presidential yacht from the older USS Despatch, a much smaller (560 ton) vessel that was in poor condition.
She would continue this tasking off and on mixed with yearly fleet exercises and experiments for the rest of her career.
Speaking to the latter, in April 1893, she embarked pigeons from the Naval Academy lofts, the Washington Navy Yard’s loft in Richmond, and of Philadelphia Navy Yard then released them while steaming off Hampton Roads. The birds all made it back to their nests, covering 98 miles, 212, and 214 miles, respectively, delivering short messages penned by the daughter of SECNAV Hilary A. Herbert.
The same year, she took part in the bash that was the Columbian Naval Review in New York, where Edward H. Hart of the Detriot Post Card Co. captured several striking views of her with her glad rags flying.
Dolphin LC-D4-8923
Dolphin LC-D4-20362
LC-D4-20364
In 1895, she carried out a survey mission to Guatemala
She carried President William McKinley and his party to New York for the ceremonies at Grant’s Tomb on 23 April 1897.
Grant Tomb dedication, 1897: View of Grant’s tomb, Claremont Heights, New York City, in the background, and the USS Dolphin and tugboats in the foreground. J.S. Johnston, view & marine photo, N.Y. LOC LC-USZ62-110717
Then came war.
1898!
In ordinary when the USS Maine blew up in Havanna, Dolphin recommissioned on 24 March 1898 just prior to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. She then rushed south to serve on blockade duty off Havana, Cuba, a mission she slogged away on during April and May.
It was during this period she captured the Spanish vessel Lola (31 tons) with a cargo of fish and salt.
She covered her white and buff scheme with a more warlike dark grey.
U.S. Navy gunboat/dispatch vessel USS Dolphin (PG-24), port bow. Photographed by J.S. Johnston, 1898. LOC Lot-3370-8
USS Dolphin overhauling Schooner Kate [Kate S. Flint] with an unknown young woman in white. Dolphin in distance. Santiago de Cuba. 1898 Stevens-Coolidge Place Collection via Digital Commonwealth/Massachusetts libraries system.
A second view of the same centered on Dolphin.
On 6 June she came under fire from the Morro Battery at Santiago and replied in kind. Less than two weeks later, on 14 June, Dolphin bombarded the Spanish positions in the Battle of Cuzco Well, near Guantanamo Bay, carrying casualties back to the American positions there.
Sent back to Norfolk with casualties, she arrived there on 2 July and the war ended before she could make it back to Cuba.
U.S. Navy dispatch vessel, USS Dolphin, port view with flags. Lot 3000-L-5
Good work if you can get it
Her wartime service completed; Dolphin would spend the next two decades heavily involved in shuttling around dignitaries. This would include:
Washington Navy Yard for the Peace Jubilee of 14 May to 30 June 1899.
New York for the Dewey celebration of 26 to 29 September 1899.
Alexandria, Va., for the city’s sesquicentennial on 10 October 1899.
Took the U.S. Minister to Venezuela to La Guaira, arriving in January 1903.
From 1903 through 1905 she carried such dignitaries as the Naval Committee, Secretary of the Navy, Admiral and Mrs. Dewey, the Philippine Commissioners, the Attorney General, Prince Louis of Battenberg and his party, and President T. Roosevelt on various cruises.
Participating in the interment of John Paul Jones at the Naval Academy, and the departure ceremonies for the Great White Fleet, in 1908.
Early in August 1905, she carried the Japanese peace plenipotentiaries from Oyster Bay, N.Y., to Portsmouth, N.H., to negotiate the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War.
Footage exists of her role in the event.
She also was used in survey work during this time, completing expeditions to Venezuela and the southeast coast of Santo Domingo, in addition to carrying inspection boards to survey coaling stations in the West Indies.
She also had a series of updates. For instance, in 1910, she had her original single/double-ended boilers replaced with cylindrical boilers. In 1911, she had her 6-pounder mounts deleted due to obsolescence, and in 1914 her 4″/40s were removed as well. She also had her masts reconfigured from three to two in the early 1900s.
USS Dolphin steaming alongside USS Maine (BB-10), with the Secretary of the Navy on board, circa 1903-1905. Note she still has her figurehead bow crest. Description: Collection of Mr. & Ms. Joe Cahn, 1990. NH 102421
USS Dolphin docked at the western end of the Washington Navy Yard waterfront, District of Columbia, circa 1901. The view looks north. The old experimental battery building is on the right. NH 93333
USS Dolphin (PG-24) photographed following the reduction of her rig to two masts, during the early 1900s. Note her bowcrest figurehead is now gone. NH 54536
Back to haze grey! USS Dolphin (PG 24), which was used as a dispatch ship of the Naval Review for President William Taft in New York City, New York, on October 14, 1912. Note the battleship lattice masts in the distance and the torpedo boat to the right. Published by Bain News Service. LC-DIG-GGBAIN-10794
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt in the crow’s nest of the dispatch boat USS Dolphin off Old Point Comfort, VA during the Naval review. 10/25/1913. National Archives Identifier: 196066910
ASECNAV Franklin D. Roosevelt on the USS Dolphin in 1913, observing gunnery trials of the fleet
USS Dolphin view looking forward from the bridge, taken while the ship was at sea in February 1916. Note ice accumulated on deck and lifelines. The original image is printed on postal card stock. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2005. NH 103039
War (again!)
Sailing from the Washington Navy Yard on 2 April 1917 to take possession of the recently purchased Danish Virgin Islands, four days later, Dolphin received word of the declaration of war between the United States and Germany. Arriving at St. Croix in the now-USVI on 9 April, she would carry the new American Governor-General James Oliver to and St. John on 15 April for a low-key flag-raising ceremony. The islands had initially been handed over in a ceremony on 31 March between the Danish warship Valkyrien and the American gunboat USS Hancock, but Oliver’s arrival on Dolphin sealed the deal.
Remaining in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean region to protect merchant shipping from German raiders and U-boats, Dolphin would pick up a camouflage scheme as she served as flagship for the very motley American Patrol Detachment at Key West, gaining a new 4″/50 gun and depth charges to augment her surviving 6-pounders.
USS Dolphin at Galveston, Texas, 1 March 1919. Photographed by Paul Verkin, Galveston. Note that the ship is still wearing pattern camouflage nearly four months after the World War I Armistice. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2007. NH 104949
She would remain in her quiet backwater into June 1920, when she was finally recalled to the East Coast and a short overhaul at Boston.
USS Dolphin (PG-24) at dock at Boston Navy Yard, MA, September 1920, back to a grey scheme. She had been designated a Patrol Gunboat, PG-24, 17 July 1920. S-553-J
Now 35 years old and with the Navy in possession of many much finer and better-outfitted vessels, Dolphin would have one last cruise. As the flagship of the Special Service Squadron, she joined the gunboat USS Des Moines (PG-29) in October 1920 to represent the U.S. at the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the Straits of Magellan. The next year, she would attend the anniversary of Guatemalan independence.
Dolphin arrived at Boston Navy Yard on 14 October 1921. She was decommissioned on 8 December 1921 and was sold on 25 February 1922 to the Ammunition Products Corp. of Washington, DC. for scrapping. Rumors of her further service in the Mexican navy are incorrect, confusing a former steamer originally named Dolphin for our dispatch ship.
Epilogue
Few relics remain of Dolphin. Like most of the American steel warships, in 1909 she had her ornate bow crest removed and installed ashore. It was photographed in Boston in 1911 and, odds are, is probably still around on display somewhere on the East Coast.
Figurehead, USS Dolphin photographed in the Boston Navy Yard, 15 December 1911. NH 115213.
As for her name, the Navy recycled it at least twice, both for submarines: SS-169 and AGSS-555, the former a V-boat that earned two battlestars in WWII and the latter a well-known research boat that served for 38 years– the longest in history for a US Navy submarine.
Speaking of WWII, importantly, between 1915 and 1917, our USS Dolphin’s 18th skipper was one LCDR William Daniel Leahy (USNA 1897) who, interacting with then ASECNAV Franklin D. Roosevelt, would become close companions. Although retired after service as CNO in 1939, Leahy would be recalled to service as the personal Chief of Staff to FDR in 1942 and served in that pivotal position throughout World War II. It is rightfully the little dispatch ship’s greatest legacy.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in conference with General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and Admiral William D. Leahy, while on tour in the Hawaiian Islands., 1944. 80-G-239549
Specs: Displacement 1,485 t. Length 256′ 6″ Length between perpendiculars 240′ Beam 32′ Draft 14′ 3″ Speed 15.5 kts. Complement 117 1910 – 152 1914 – 139 Armament: Two 4″ rapid fires, three 6-pounder rapid-fire guns, four 3-pounder rapid-fire guns, and two Colt machine guns 1911 – Two 4″/40 rapid-fire mounts and five 3-pounder rapid-fire guns 1914 – Six 6-pounder rapid-fire mounts 1921 – One 4″/50 mount and two 6-pounders Propulsion two double-ended and two single-ended boilers (replaced by cylindrical boilers in 1910), one 2,253ihp vertical compound direct-acting engine, one shaft.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.
70 years ago: HMS Vanguard (23), the last British dreadnought, floodlit on a visit to Rotterdam, Holland, in early July 1952.
IWM A 32246
The ship was lit for the occasion of a reception aboard the battlewagon by Commander in Chief Home Fleet, Admiral Sir George Creasy, for HM Queen Juliana and Prince Bernard of the Netherlands, and after dinner, the Queen– who was no stranger to British warships— went afloat in the C in C’s barge to see the illumination.
The building in the background is Hotel New York, former headquarters of the Holland-America Lines.
Vanguard, commissioned in 1946– with a somewhat antiquated main battery left over from the 1920s– visited Rotterdam for a week after exercises with NATO warships.
At the time this photo was taken, she was still assigned to the Heavy Squadron of the Home Fleet. Minimally manned at the time, she operated with many of her turrets sealed off and with shells loaded in the magazines of just two of her 15-inch turrets while only star shells were carried for her secondary battery of 5.25-inch guns.
“HMS Vanguard entering Rotterdam during her visit to the Netherlands, 28 June 1952. She is the largest ship to enter the port.” Nationaal Archief Materiaalsoort.
Laid up in 1955 at Portsmouth after less than a decade of service– where she appropriately became Flagship of Reserve Fleet– Vanguard was decommissioned on 7 June 1960 and scrapped soon after, still in her teens.
As we covered in 2019, starting in 1978, the Swiss Air Force bought 110 late-model F-5E/F Tigers to augment their locally made F+W Emmen Mirage IIIs and replace their older Hawker Hunter aircraft (and a few downright obsolete De Havilland Venoms), becoming the country’s primary fighter until license-produced F-18s were ordered from Emmen in 1996.
Ein F5 “Tiger” der Schweizer Luftwaffe
The F-5s served the Swiss well but, with the production line ending in 1987 and the parts supply dwindling in part due to strict U.S. sanctions on anything F-5-related as Iran still flies the type, the Swiss phased out their Tigers from front line operations by 2018.
In 2019, the U.S. Navy bought the 23 most advanced Swiss F-5s with the fewest hours, along with most of the spare parts the country had left, for $39.7 million with the intention of feeding them into Navy Air’s aggressor squadrons.
The Swiss were reportedly happy to see them go at the time:
“If the Americans want to take over the scrap iron, they should do it,” Beat Flach, a Green Liberal lawmaker, told SonntagsZeitung, which reported on the planned sale in late 2019. “It’s better than having the Tigers rot in a parking lot.”
With the Tigers now in the U.S., Tactical Air Support just picked up a fat (up to $265 million) contract to rework 22 of the 23 1970s-vintage F-5s and support them into 2027. The contract includes a big chunk of work going back to Emmen in Switzerland as well. Of course, it also includes some work to eight F-5s already in the Navy’s fleet, but still…
Via DOD.
Tactical Air Support Inc., Jacksonville, Florida, is awarded a $265,300,000 firm-fixed-price, cost-reimbursable, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. This contract provides non-recurring engineering, inspection, modification, and block upgrade efforts for 16 F-5E and six F-5F Tiger II aircraft from a Swiss Confederation configuration to a Navy/Marine Corps N+/F+ configuration. Additionally, this contract procures eight block upgrade retrofits to existing fleet aircraft. Work will be performed in Jacksonville, Florida (32%); Emen, Switzerland (16%); Carlsbad, California (8%); Clarksburg, Maryland (7%); Grand Rapids, Michigan (6%); Woodland Hills, California (5%); Olathe, Kansas (5%); Stead, Nevada (5%); Salt Lake City, Utah (3%); Minneapolis, Minnesota (2%); Waco, Texas (2%); Auburn, Alabama (1%); Deerfield, Illinois (1%); Fairborn, Ohio (1%); Avenel, New Jersey (1%); Jupiter, Florida (1%); Camarillo, California (1%); Warner Robbins, Georgia (1%); Franklin, North Carolina (1%); and Nashville, Tennessee (1%), and is expected to be completed in June 2027. No funds will be obligated at the time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to U.S. Code 2304(c)(1). The Naval Air Warfare Aviation Division, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity (N0042122D0095).
All told, this puts the sticker price on these aircraft to almost $14 million a pop if all options are used, which seems kinda high for what they are, especially when there are eight squadrons worth of very supportable F-16Cs already in storage in the desert at Davis-Monthan. Open-source databases list no less than 106 F-16C airframes at AMARG. It should be noted that the Navy formerly flew dedicated Block 30 F-16Ns as aggressors between 1988 and 1998— because they were better than the F-5s— and still fly 14 old F16A/B models they’ve had since 2002, so it’s not a dumb idea.
Seems like someone in the aggressor biz just like to keep some “MiG-28s” around or at least may have some sort of concern about the Iranian HESA Kowsar, a reworked fourth-gen(ish) F-5.
116 Years Ago: Gun drill at Newport, Rhode Island, July 5, 1906.
Photographed by Enrique Mueller. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. PR-3-Box-33-5
Note the white summer jumpers, which were at the time service dress, and broad dixie cups (rather than flat caps) as well as landing force leggings and belts, the latter complete with bayonet scabbards. Besides the trio of 3-inch landing guns in use, and the cutlasses of the blue-coated officers, the rifles appear to be M1895 Lee Navy models.
A straight-pull .236-caliber rifle designed by James Paris Lee and built by Winchester, only about 15,000 were made, with most of those going to the Navy.
U.S. Navy sailor from the 1900s with Lee rifle in landing party gear, posing by a landing gun.
Marine Barracks Norfolk, Virginia. No date on the photo but are armed with 1895 Lee Navy Rifles
Unpopular, it nonetheless saw service with the Navy and Marines in the Spanish–American War (some were in the USS Maine’s small arms locker) and securing of the Philippines as well as in the Boxer Rebellion. Supplemented by the Krag and finally replaced by the M1903 Springfield after 1907, the Navy had a few Lees still on hand well into the 1920s when they were finally disposed of.
Enjoy your BBQ today but remember those who made it possible.
80 years ago today. Official caption: “American prisoners of war celebrate the 4th of July in the Japanese prison camp of Casisange in Malaybalay, on Mindanao, Philippine Islands. It was against Japanese regulations and discovery would have meant death, but the men celebrated the occasion anyway. 7/4/1942.”
Signal Corps Photo: 111-SC-333290. National Archives Identifier: 531352
40 years ago today: The Churchill-class nuclear-powered fleet submarine HMS/m Conqueror (S-48) returns to her base at Faslane, Scotland, flying the Jolly Roger after sinking the Argentine cruiser ARA Belgrano (ex-USS Phoenix, CL-46) during the Falklands War some eight weeks prior. Pictured on 3 July 1982, it was the first time a Royal Navy submarine flew a ‘Roger since World War II.
While “Conks” was decommissioned in 1990 after just 19 years of service– in the best tradition of the Admiralty’s bean counters– and sent for recycling, the Roger is on display at the Royal Navy Museum.
