Official caption: “British Sergeant instructs U.S. gunners. A British Sergeant taking some of the U.S. troops in Northern Ireland through a course of light A.A. gun drill.”
Library of Congress, LC-USE6- D-008293.
Note the Yanks’ soon-to-be-replaced M1917 Brodie helmets, especially the camo-painted specimen used by the coverall-clad gunner. In the distance are two early M3 half-tracks. The gun is, of course, a British single-barreled Q.F. 40 mm Mk. 1 (L60 Bofors) mount, likely made in Canada and recently shipped over when this image was taken.
The first American troops, largely Midwestern National Guardsmen of the 34th “Red Bull” Division, under Maj. Gen. Russell P. Hartle, arrived in Uster on 26 January 1942– 80 years ago this week– fresh from the Louisiana Maneuvers. They were deployed as part of Operation Magnet just days after the U.S. entry into WWII as a result of Pearl Harbor– although advanced elements would arrive as early as 19 January. In all, over 30,000 Americans would be in Northern Ireland by summer.
They would soon begin training arm-in-arm with the Brits, including Hartle’s ADC, Capt. William Orlando Darby, who, along with 281 other volunteers from the 34th, would soon start running about with the Commandos. But that is another story.
Building on a spate of recent new firearm releases chambered for the once-exotic FN 5.7 round, the aisles at SHOT Show this month seemed to reinforce that the caliber is here to stay.
While the 5.7×28 was originally just designed for FN’s PDW program– which led to the P90/PS90 and the Five-seveN series pistol– the now-NATO standardized cartridge caught a boost from Ruger in late 2019 with the Ruger 57 pistol followed soon after at SHOT Show 2020 by the prototype Diamondback DBX large-format pistol. Since then, KelTec has brought its P50 pistol to market, the CMMG Mk57 has appeared, and the DBX has started to appear on dealer’s shelves. In the meantime, FN updated the Five-seveN with new features and colors.
With Vista’s ammo brands (Federal, Speer, etc.) pumping out new 5.7 rounds as fast as they can to keep up with the trend, even more 5.7-chambered guns are inbound.
The mighty Landhelgisgæslan (Icelandic Coast Guard) cutter Tyr, with a bone in her teeth. She was the bane of many British Tars in the frigate force in the 1970s.
Named for the Norse god “concerned with the formalities of war—especially treaties—and also, appropriately, of justice,” the modified Icelandic Coast Guard Ægir-class offshore patrol vessel Tyr was built at Aarhus Flydedok A/S in Denmark in 1974-75, at a time when the smallest (by population) member of NATO was fighting some of the strongest members of the Alliance, over fish.
The two-vessel Ægir-class were humble little gunboats, some 233-feet overall on a reinforced ice-strengthened steel hull. Weighing in at a slight 1,500-tons (at their largest), their West German-made diesel suite sipped gas and gave them an impressive 9,000nm range at 17 knots, enabling their 22-man crew to stay at sea virtually as long as the groceries held out.
Their sensors were commercial. Their original armament was an old 57mm low-angle Hotchkiss-style gun built under license at the Royal Danish Arsenal in Kopenhagen in the 1890s. The shells for the guns were pre-WWII dated. They had helicopter decks that could accommodate the country’s three small helicopters, a commercial Sikorsky S-62A variant (TF-GNA) and two U.S. surplus Bell 47Gs (TF-HUG and TF-MUN, named after Odin’s two ravens)
Tyr was more robust than her half-sister Ægir, and was the largest vessel in the ICG until 2011, carrying the fleet’s flagship position for most of her career.
The Icelanders got aggressive with the British anglers, cutting their nets with specially-made devices.
This brought in the support of the RN, and the ICG and a host of British frigates spent most of the early 70s trying to ram and avoid ramming each other.
The UK frigate HMS Mermaid collides with the Icelandic Coast Guard Vessel Thor in March 1976, in one of the incidents in the Cod Wars between the two countries.
The principal RN frigates sent to fight in the Second and Third Cod Wars
Ægir specifically cracked hulls with HMS Scylla (7 June 1973) and HMS Lincoln (22 September 1973) while the late-arriving Tyr counted coup on HMS Salisbury and HMS Tartar (1 April 1976) as well as HMS Falmouth (6 May 1976).
Icelandic patrol boat Ægir circles around for a run at HMS Scylla
Tyr and Salisbury
HMS Falmouth rams Icelandic Coast Guard Tyr May 6, 1976, almost rolling the smaller gunboat, taken from the Tribal Class Frigate HMS Tartar (F133)
In time, Iceland and the UK patched things up and most of the ICG’s older vessels were retired but Tyr and her sister Ægir continued in service for another 40 years, participating in NATO maritime operations, being very active in EOD removal along Iceland’s coastline, and helping old “mother” Denmark police and secure the sovereignty of the Faeroes and Greenland.
She also had run-ins with the whale hippies over Iceland’s traditional harvest.
Tyr rammed by Greenpeace.
They were given extensive modernizations in 1997 and 2005 that upgraded the ships, replaced the old 57mm hood ornament with a more modern 1960s 40mm Bofors, and other improvements.
What do you get when you take two 105,000-ton supercarriers, add two chunky 42,000-ton Goula-built LHD/LHAs, and a 20,000-ton Japanese “helicopter destroyer” along with their five principal surface warfare escorts in one big photo-ex?
This:
PHILIPPINE SEA (Jan. 22, 2022) Aircraft assigned to Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2 and CVW 9 fly over the Philippine Sea, Jan. 22, 2022. Operating as part of U.S. Pacific Fleet, units assigned to the Carl Vinson and Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Groups, Essex and America Amphibious Ready Groups, and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force are conducting training to preserve and protect a free and open Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Haydn N. Smith)
PHILIPPINE SEA (Jan. 22, 2022) Aircraft assigned to Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, CVW 9, and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) fly over the Philippine Sea as Nimitz-class aircraft carriers USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), JMSDF Hyuga-class helicopter destroyer JS Hyuga (DDH 181), America-class amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6), Wasp-class landing helicopter dock USS Essex (LHD 2), Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Spruance (DDG 111), USS Chafe (DDG 90), and USS Gridley (DDG 101) and the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers USS Mobile Bay (CG 53) and USS Lake Champlain (CG 57) transit the Philippine Sea Jan. 22, 2022.
“Operating as part of U.S. Pacific Fleet, units assigned to Carl Vinson and Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Groups, America and Essex Amphibious Ready Groups alongside Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, are conducting training to preserve and protect a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
As I previously passed on, FN pulled a Kevorkian on the elderly Browning Hi-Power in 2017 then last week announced a “we have the technology” FN High Power (note the extended spelling) that kinda uses some BHP DNA but is a totally new gun with a lot of the same styling but none of the reverse compatibility and support.
As a counter, EAA is working with Girsan in Turkey to produce the P35– a play on the fact that the original BHP was the Grande Puissance 35 when introduced just prior to WWII. Taking the MK II/MK III model of the Hi-Power as a starting point, they met with success last year with EAA telling me at SHOT last week that they have seen remarkable interest in the new, $500ish BHP clone.
Speaking of EAA at SHOT, they also had some modernized prototypes on hand that include an extended beavertail grip on the frame, a straight trigger, adjustable fiber optic sights, G10 grips, a built-in flared mag well, and an option for an accessory rail.
Eberhard August Franz Ewald Krüger was born in Berlin in 1928 and, as the son of ardent party officials, was active in the HJ. Then, at age 15, he appeared in a propaganda film (Junge Adler) and by March 1945 was a foot soldier in the cobbled-together last-ditch SS-Grenadier-Division “Nibelungen,” thrown into the meatgrinder with the Germans burning the last of the seed corn. Deserting and hiding out in Austria at the end of the war, he later joined the anti-far-right Amadeu Antonio Stiftung group late in life and decried fascism and assorted right-wing parties.
However, most do not know Kruger for his war record or anti-Nazi activism. No, “Hardy” Kruger was for years Hollywood’s prototypical blonde Prussian officer and/or South African hard case.
After a string of West German rom-coms in the late 1940s and 1950s, he made his big splash over here in 1962’s Academy Award-nominated (losing to Lawrence of Arabia) Hatari! as retired German race car driver Kurt Müller, following that up in The Flight of the Phoenix as the arrogant but brilliant German aeronautical engineer Heinrich Dorfmann opposite actual WWII B-17 bomber pilot Jimmy Stewart.
Then came stints as a German officer in The Battle of Neretva, A Bridge Too Far, and others.
In Kubrick’s oft-overlooked period epic Barry Lyndon, when the eponymous character spends his miserable time in the army of Fredrick the Great, it was at the hands of Kruger’s Captain Potzdorf.
Then, of course, his appearance as an unreformed South African merc in The Wild Geese.
Kruger, a Good German, died last week in Palm Springs, aged 93.
Magpul, a company that got started to sell and was named for a simple rubber device that attached to the bottom of a magazine to be able to easily pull it out of a pouch, has seriously diversified. This year their most forward-thinking thing at SHOT was the Maztech X4 system, a round counter that also has a ton of data to your LPVO as a bonus. While something like this– for instance the Vortex NGSW-FCU developed for the Army– costs over 10K, Magpul is saying it will be more like $2K from them.
Duane Liptak, Magpul’s boss, had this to say on the system:
So, lots of questions, I’m sure. First, both Magpul and Maztech were independently working on rounds remaining technology. We ran into each other during this, and realized that our core competencies were complimentary. So we teamed up. Who is Maztech? You don’t know them, but you know their products. Their technology has been incorporated into cutting edge military sensor suites for decades.
What’s it do? Part of it is the rounds remaining system. 100% accurate indication of rounds remaining in the current magazine and on your body. Magazines can be powered (all mag functions are automatic) or unpowered. (Exactly the same function in the gun, but individual mag contents and aggregates are more of a manual process.) The current mag total, including chamber contents, can be displayed on a small discrete display, piped into an optic (or an optic enabler mount like the X4 cradle), or pipes into everything from Bluetooth to military datalink systems.
You don’t need to know rounds remaining? You’re a pro and can tell when you’re getting empty? OK. Sure. But this keeps track of everything on your body, can indicate to small unit leaders what his element’s status is during consolidation, and can be viewed by the TOC in real time, so if you’re in a TIC, the battle captain can see if you’re getting past yellow on ammo, and send a speedball before you know you need it.
The optic mount uses your low powered variable of choice, 30 or 34mm, and pipes in the rounds remaining information, as we all as provides a ground stabilized ballistics solution if you enter range. (You can cant the gun up to 90 degrees and the ballistic aiming reference, adjusted for changes in line of bore and line of barrel relationships, dangles on a vertical line) Oh, and the system can associate a different ammo type with different magazines…so, you’re shooting subs—you get that ballistic solution. Switch to supers? It gives you the ballistic info for the last sub that’s still in your barrel, then switches to the supers as soon as you pull the trigger. Same with 855A1 and 70TSX or whatever flavors you want to party mix. There is a hot shoe that will allow you to add the Maztech range finder and then do all this automatically. There will also be a see-through, shoot through mini thermal clip-on accessory.
Anyway, we’ve been working on this for a few years. This is a technology demonstrator, and we will be developing both military and civilian products from this suite.
Cost? Less than you think. The X4 optic mount plus a low powered variable of high quality will be about a third of what anything comparable costs. The range finder add on won’t be terribly expensive. The thermal won’t be cheap, but will be downright reasonable.
The rounds remaining system itself will be relatively inexpensive for what it is. Yes, mags will likely be 2x or 3x more expensive as “dumb” magazines, but that will come down with volume, and all your existing mags will still function, just without the info.
The bottom line is that we didn’t talk about this, besides to military customers, until now because we needed to get costs down and iron out the wrinkles, and we’re there now. We’d love to hear what you’d like to see as a commercial offering from this suite.
Firearms powerhouse Beretta has announced it will support True Velocity in the production of the proposed Army Next Generation Squad Weapon and develop commercial variants.
The announcement came this week during SHOT Show in Las Vegas, where True Velocity is exhibiting. True Velocity’s subsidiary LoneStar Future Weapons is the prime contractor in the group’s bid for the NGSW program, an initiative to replace the Army’s current 5.56 NATO platforms with a new series of small arms using a 6.8 caliber cartridge. The variant submitted to the Army for testing is the RM277, chambered in True Velocity’s proprietary 6.8TVCM composite-cased cartridge.
In addition, Beretta will take the lead in developing a semi-automatic variant of the RM277 rifle intended for sale in the U.S. commercial market. The latter could prove exceptionally popular should the platform secure the potentially huge NGSW award.
The Wisconsin State Capitol building has a venerated relic on loan from the Navy, the Badger and Shield crest that was crafted from melted-down Spanish cannons seized in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and carried by the Great White Fleet-era USS Wisconsin (Battleship No.9). The crest, removed when BB-9 was given a coat of haze grey sometime after 1908, was in the USNA’s collection and loaned to the state in 1988, installed in front of the Governor’s Conference Room.
USS Wisconsin’s Badger crest, circa 1990 after it was placed at the Capitol, via the James T Potter Collection.
Well, in 2020, the Nauticus Museum in Norfolk– home to the museum ship USS Wisconsin (BB-64) likely innocently asked USNA for the Badger so that it can be installed in their venue. This sparked a back and forth with the Navy and state officials asking to retain the crest. Of course, it probably helped that the state’s Democrat governor, Tony Evers, wrote Biden’s SECNAV, Carlos Del Toro, to help smooth things out.
This week, Del Toro said the Navy will extend the loan for another 50 years, so you can expect this may come back up in 2072– if we all aren’t speaking Chinese by then.
“I prize the strong affinity that the citizens of Wisconsin have developed toward the badger statue; it reflects the state’s proud maritime heritage and deep ties to the U.S. Navy,” Del Toro reportedly wrote Evers. “The Navy feels those ties, too, and we thank the people of Wisconsin for their ongoing interest in and support of our Navy and our nation’s maritime history.”
I personally think it is the right call by the Navy, as Wisconsin has taken great care of the Badger and it is seen every day in the state that its ship was named for.
The company that owns PSA grabbed some legacy gun maker names from the Remington Outdoors federal bankruptcy sale, including Harrington & Richardson (H&R). While this sparked a lot of folks to think PSA would be making break-action shotguns for the budget market, they have apparently gone a whole new direction.
H&R was one of only four manufacturers (along with Colt, Fabrique Nationale, and GM’s Hydramatic Division) to have ever made an official M16 variant for the U.S. Military. Due to their relative scarcity, all H&R military weapons are considered highly desirable by collectors. This vintage transferable H&R-marked M16A1 went for $40K at a RIAC auction.
Well, using NoDakSpud’s retro black rifle know-how (PSA recently acquired NDS) they are sending a classic H&R-marked AR throwback to the market. Receivers and barrels are available this spring. Complete rifles available later in 2022. No price was mentioned.
