211214-M-HB658-1322 GULF OF ADEN (Dec. 14, 2021) Amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland (LPD 27) conducts a high-energy laser weapon system demonstration on a static surface training target, Dec. 14, while sailing in the Gulf of Aden. During the demonstration, the Solid-State Laser – Technology Maturation Laser Weapons System Demonstrator Mark 2 MOD 0 aboard Portland successfully engaged the training target. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Donald Holbert)
MANAMA, Bahrain – Amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland (LPD 27) conducted a high-energy laser weapon system demonstration, Dec. 14, while sailing in the Gulf of Aden.
During the demonstration, the Solid-State Laser – Technology Maturation Laser Weapons System Demonstrator (LWSD) Mark 2 MOD 0 aboard Portland successfully engaged a static surface training target. Portland previously tested the LWSD in May 2020 when it successfully disabled a small unmanned aerial system while operating in the Pacific Ocean.
The Office of Naval Research selected Portland to host the laser weapon technology in 2018. The LWSD is considered a next-generation follow-on to the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) that afloat forward staging base USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) tested for three years while operating in the Middle East.
Bzzzzzzzzzp! And this is how LWSD (Laser Weapons System Demonstrator) Mark 2 Mod 0 looks full face on USS Portland
A couple of months ago I went out to SilencerCo’s place in Utah and had a chance to play with some of their toys, some of which were under wraps. One that just went public is the Harvester EVO, a sweet little (6.24 inches long and with a weight of 10.8 ounces) tubeless suppressor intended for serious hunting use.
The EVO, about the size of a Red Bull, is meant to be maneuverable and take up negligible space on long treks, where every inch and ounce matters while still being able to make everything .300 Win and smaller hearing safe.
The EVO is rated for centerfire calibers from .223 Rem to .300 Win, and I ran it through a Tikka T3x in 6.5 CM while visiting SiCo in Utah earlier this year with no problem. Yes, my old sailor ink is sneaking out.
On 16 December 1937, Peruvian Air Force (FAP) Comandante Manuel Escalante was returning from Iquitos to Ancón in his Curtiss F-8 Falcon when a strong storm forced him to land in frigid Laguna Morococha, a clear freshwater lake some 15,000 ft. above sea level, resulting in much amusement from the locals.
Formed just eight years prior, the FAP had already been engaged in combat, tying up with identical Colombian F-8s in 1933-34 over a dispute along the Amazon, also an area where floatplanes came in handy.
The humble Falcon could carry 2 forward-firing and one rear-mounted light machine guns as well as up to 400 pounds of bombs.
Painting, oil on canvas; by Morgan Ian Wilbur; unframed dimension 15H X 30W. Naval History and Heritage Command. Accession #: 2015-012-10.
The 39th Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer was christened USS Mustin (DDG-89) on 15 December 2001 at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula.
Named after the storied Mustin family (Captain Henry C. Mustin–“The Father of Naval Aviation”– his son, VADM Lloyd M. Mustin of WWII fame, and the latter’s sons: VADM Henry C. Mustin and CDR Thomas M. Mustin), the Flight IIA destroyer recently returned to San Diego this summer after 15 years serving in the Forward Deployed Naval Forces (FDNF) in Japan.
The above painting, “Under a Pacific Moon,” was produced in 2015 for the Navy after the artist embarked on the forward-deployed destroyer for a cruise in 2014.
Official caption: “U.S. Navy Landing Party. Photographed on board ship, probably at the time of the Vera Cruz incident, circa April 1914.”
Courtesy of Carter Rila, 1986. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 100832
The bluejackets are wearing Marine Corps flannel shirts and khaki trousers, with Dixie Cups (introduced in 1886) that have been dyed with coffee grounds. Among them are a stack of early M1903 Springfield rifles and at least one man is wearing an ammunition belt while most seem to be wearing leggings for shore service.
The ship may be the new dreadnought South Carolina (Battleship No. 26) as she had landed a nearly battalion-strong force to occupy the Mexican port city’s waterfront.
It was certainly a motley look, especially with the Dixie Cups rolled down:
Vera Cruz Incident, 1914. A landing party of USS SOUTH CAROLINA (BB-26) at Vera Cruz, Mexico, in April 1914. Courtesy of Mr. Earle F. Brookins, Jamestown, N.Y., 1972. Description: Courtesy of Mr. Earle F. Brookins, Jamestown, N.Y., 1972
The fourth South Carolina on the Naval List was constructed at Philadelphia by William Cramp & Sons– ordered just months after HMS Dreadnought joined the Royal Navy– and commissioned on 1 March 1910.
Carrying eight 12″/45s in four twin gun turrets and clad in an armor belt that went a foot thick in places, the 17,000-ton South Carolina and her sistership Michigan were roughly equivalent of heavier Dreadnought, although the British battlewagon carried two extra 12-inchers and could make 21 knots whereas the SoCars were a little slower at 18.5 but could boast a marginally better armor scheme.
USS MICHIGAN (BB-27) and USS SOUTH CAROLINA (BB-26). Pen and Ink drawing by F. Muller, circa 1907 NH 46272
Just after her shakedown, South Carolina voyaged to Europe and back with the 2d Battleship Division, calling at Cherbourg, Portland, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Kronstadt, and Kiel to let all the players in the Old World know that the New World was hip to the program.
She then spent most of 1913 and 1914 involved in landings in Mexico at Tampico and Vera Cruz as well as Port-au-Prince in Haiti, carrying the Big Stick for America down south.
Her Great War service was limited, spending it mostly in training along the East Coast before escorting a single cross-Atlantic convoy in September 1918.
Obsolete when compared to later battleship construction and taking up valuable tonnage, the 11-year-old warrior decommissioned at Philadelphia, the place of her birth, on 15 December 1921– 100 years ago today– and remained there until her name was struck from the Navy list on 10 November 1923.
USS South Carolina (BB-26) crew manning the rails and firing salutes, 28 April 1921. She was just 11 years old in this image but was headed to the scrappers. NH 97499
Her hulk was sold for scrap on 24 April 1924 in accordance with the terms of the Five-Power Naval Treaty of Washington.
City of Vancouver Archives, Photo Credit W.J. Moore
Here we see, some 100 years ago this month, the fine early Royal Navy heavy cruiser and “commerce raider hunter” of the Hawkins class, HMS Raleigh, visiting Vancouver, British Columbia. As a scholar of naval history– or else, why would you ever be on this page– you’d think you would have heard and seen much more of this beautiful warship before this post. Well, there is a good reason for that as Raleigh would have a short career indeed.
The five cruisers of the Hawkins class were large for any era, pushing over 12,500 tons (full) on a 605-foot long hull with a 65-foot beam, giving them a slender 1:9.3 length-to-beam ratio. Generating 60,000 shp on four geared steam turbines fed by 10 coal-fired/oil-boosted boilers, they were rated for 30 knots, still a respectable speed these days. Their armor scheme was light, running just 3-inches at its thickest, while their armament was fairly impressive, made up of seven BL 7.5-inch Mk VI singles and a battery of torpedo tubes along with secondary and supporting guns.
Intended for anti-merchant cruiser and trade protection roles, they were ordered in 1915, at a time when the Royal Navy was still smarting after chasing down wily German vessels like the light cruisers SMS Emden and SMS Königsberg and commerce-raiding converted freighters such as SMS Möwe and SMS Meteor. The light armor, fast speed, and long legs of the Hawkins class made sense against such a foe. After all, they were a good eight knots faster than the comparatively-sized armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau— the most heavily armed ships the Royal Navy fought in the Great War outside of European waters– which had a much better armor scheme than Hawkins and slightly heavier guns (21 cm SK L/40s) albeit with a shorter range (10.1 mi at +30° for the German guns vs 12 mi on the British guns at the same elevation).
While four of the five were completed just after the end of the Great War, in a period where German surface raiders were extinct, the class was still an influencer on future cruiser design.
The construction of these ships had far-reaching repercussions. They were the direct cause of Britain’s endorsing the 10,000-ton, 8-inch treaty cruiser, a new type of warship that ultimately proved something of a failure. The Hawkins provided the basis for the “County” classes and thus gave the British a head start in the development of the heavy cruiser.
The ships of the class are sometimes called the “Elizabethans” as they were named for famed English naval commanders, courtiers, privateers, and explorers of that period (Sir John Hawkins, Sir William Cavendish, Lord Howard of Effingham, Sir Martin Frobisher, and Sir Walter Raleigh) whose names were often better remembered in the New World than the old. Speaking of which, the first warship named after Raleigh, the first to attempt the establishment of an English settlement in North America, was actually American: a 131-foot 32-gun fifth-rate that was one of the original 13 fighting ships authorized by the Continental Congress on 13 December 1775.
Sail Plan of the Frigate Raleigh built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1776. Copyright 1929 by C.G. Davis. Copied from drawing in book “Ships of the Past.” NH 2020
Commanded during the Revolutionary War by the famed John Barry, an Irishman who was No. 7 on the first list of captains begun by Congress, Raleigh was engaged in a nine-hour running fight with three Royal Navy ships in 1778 and, abandoned by her crew after she was run ashore, was refloated by the British and commissioned as HMS Raleigh, serving up the curious twist of being the first ship with that name in the Royal Navy. Of further curiosity, the colonial frigate endures on the flag and seal of the state of New Hampshire.
The second HMS Raleigh was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop active from 1806 to 1839 while the third was a 50-gun fourth-rate that had her short career ended in 1857 when she was reefed.
The new 50-gun fourth-rate HMS Raleigh, circa 1850 off Portsmouth, by artist Robert Strickland Thomas (1787–1853). The old hulk of Britannia is visible inside the harbor. Photo credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London http://www.artuk.org/artworks/hms-raleigh-175747
The fourth HMS Raliegh was never completed while the fifth, a “sheathed” iron-hulled screw frigate with a hermaphrodite sailing rig and gave lots of detached colonial service in the last quarter of the 19th century. Here, her figurehead with Sir Walter depicted, via the collection of the RMG.
This leaves our HMS Raleigh as the sixth such vessel in the Royal Navy.
Meet the cruiser Raleigh
Laid down in Scotland at William Beardmore & Company, Dalmuir on 4 October 1916, as the flower of Britain’s youth was drowning in the Somme, HMSRaleigh‘s construction was slow-rolled, only launching in 1919 and commissioned in July 1921.
Built to a modified design, Raleigh carried 12 boilers rather than 10 and Brown-Curtis turbines rather than the Parsons installed on Hawkins, boosting her shp from 60K to 70K, making her capable of clocking 31 knots.
The spanking new cruiser was soon designated the flagship of VADM Sir William Christopher Pakenham, head of North America and West Indies Station. Commander of the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron at Jutland, ironically his great-great-uncle was Edward Pakenham, the highest-ranking British officer ever killed in military service in North America, felled at the Battle of New Orleans.
With that, HMS Raleigh was off to her first duty station, making extensive visits throughout the Americas in late 1921 through most of 1922. Her first landfall in the Americas was on 11 August 1921, in Bermuda.
HMS Raleigh, likely along the Canadian coast, 1921
December 1921, at Vancouver. According to her logs, she was at the Canadian port from 27 December 1921- 9 January 1922. City of Vancouver Archives, Photo Credit W.J. Moore
Operation of Panama Canal HMS Raleigh in Upper West Chamber, Gatun Locks Feb 18, 1922. “In both number of ships and amount of tolls collected,” a record was set in the Canal by Raleigh that day, with the cruiser and 18 merchant vessels clearing with tolls of $79,808.50 paid. Panama Canal Company photo via the National Archives. National Archives Identifier: 100996554
Raleigh at the Washington Navy Yard, Note the detail on her 7.5-inch turrets, Carley floats, and her gunnery clock on the mast. Harris & Ewing, photographer, taken 29 May 1922. According to her log, she hosted the British Ambassador, Lord Geddes, and President Harding during her visit to D.C. Of interest, Geddes was a primary negotiator of the Washington Navy Limits Treaty that was signed that year. LOC LC-DIG-hec-31715
Same photographer, day as the above, LC-DIG-hec-42320
Rowing crew of the battleship USS Delaware racing a crew from HMS Raleigh, Washington Navy Yard, 3 June 1922. Via LOC.
On 8 August 1922, Raleigh, in heavy fog, ran aground at L’Anse Amour, Newfoundland, with the high winds pushing her into the rocks and eventually tearing a 260-foot gash in her hull.
3.24pm: Altered course 360º. Ran into fog. Commenced sounding 3.37pm: Land ahead & on Port bow. Reduced to eight knots 3.38pm: Sighted breakers on Starboard bow. Full speed astern. Hard a-starboard. Sounded Collision Stations 3.39pm: Grounded 3.40pm: Stopped engines. Ship bumping heavily 3.41pm: Hard a port. Ship’s stern swinging to Eastward. Full astern starboard 3.43pm: Stop Starboard Full ahead Port. Engines as requisite to prevent stern swinging on rocks 3.49pm: Finally stopped engines. Position 262º – 4.8 cables from Amour Point Light. Heading 292º. Hard aground on starboard bilge and bumping heavily 4.07pm: Let go Port anchor. Cutter & crew washed ashore on rocks 4.15pm: Two lines ashore by Coston gun. Commenced abandoning ship by lines & Carley Floats 8.00pm: Ship abandoned
Sadly, during the evacuation of her crew to shore, 11 Tars perished in the cold water.
BASHFORD, Herbert, Stoker 1c, SS 123275 EFFARD, Edward P, Stoker Petty Officer, 303078 FIELD, Silas, Stoker 1c, K 59500 FISHER, George, Stoker 1c, SS 120369 LLOYD, John E, Stoker Petty Officer, 306551 PETTET, Pat, Able Seaman, J 42323 SOWDEN, William J, Leading Stoker, K 20564 THORNHILL, George M, Stoker 1c, SS 122759 TRIPP, Sydney G, Leading Stoker, K 14053 TYLER, Reuben, Leading Stoker, K 18030 WEAVER, James, Able Seaman, 213937 WHITTON, William R, Able Seaman, J 34371
Her career had lasted just 13 months and she never fired a shot in anger.
HMS Raleigh aground at Point Amour Labrador, August 1922
Wreck of H.M.S. Raleigh, Forteau, Labrador. Donald Baxter MacMillan collection via the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum Accession Number: 3000.3.274
H.M.S. Raleigh on Rocks, Forteau, Labrador. Donald Baxter MacMillan collection via the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum Accession Number: 3000.33.2652
Epilogue
Embarrassed by the still very recognizable hulk of a brand new cruiser hard aground on the rocks with a hull too shattered to refloat, the Royal Navy was ordered to salvage what they could from Raleigh and break apart the vessel with depth charges in September 1922.
After helping wreck their once-proud ship, the crew of HMS Raleigh arrived at Liverpool on the liner SS Montrose.
On 3 October Commander Arthur Bromley left Quebec for Britain on the liner Empress of France. Commander Leslie C Bott, O.B.E., his second-in-command, was tried by Court-martial on 26 October and severely reprimanded and dismissed H.M.S. Victory. Bromley was tried on the following day by a Court presided over by Rear-Admiral Hugh F. P. Sinclair, charged with negligently or by default stranding and losing his ship. In his defense Bromley argued that had the charts he had been supplied with been accurate then his ship would not have stranded. The Court found the charge proved, and he was severely reprimanded and dismissed his ship. He was placed on the Retired List, at his own request, dated 7 November.
Aboard Raleigh as a midshipman cadet on that fateful day off Newfoundland and Labrador was the future VADM Sir Stephen Hope Carlill, who went on to command a series of destroyers during WWII and serve as the last British Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy. In 1982, an extensive diary entry from the wreck was published in the Naval Review (Vol 70, pgs. 165-173) which makes interesting reading.
Much of the vessel remains and the Royal Canadian Navy’s Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic) has conducted extensive recovery operations on the wreck over the past two decades to recover live UXO from her bones although there is still as much as 80 tons of unstable explosives aboard.
Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic) Port Inspection diver LS Dan Babich enters the water to place C4 explosives on unexploded ammunition at L’Anse-Amour on 25 May 2017 during Operation RALEIGH to remove unexploded ordnance in the area of the shipwreck of HMS RALEIGH that ran aground and sank in 1922. Photo: Master Seaman Peter Reed, Formation Imaging Services Halifax
Shells destroyed in place by RCN clearance divers. Photo by Jeffery Gallant, RCN, via the Diving Almanac.
As for Raleigh‘s sisterships, only one, Cavendish, was completed during the Great War, albeit as one of the Royal Navy’s first aircraft carriers, HMS Vindictive.
Ex-Cavendish as circa 1918 carrier HMS Vindictive, capable of carrying about a dozen light aircraft. Reconverted back into a cruiser after the war, she was demilitarized per the terms of the London Naval Treaty and converted to a training ship in 1936. She spent WWII as a repair ship and was paid off in 1945. IWM SP 669
Jane’s 1946 entry for the class, with Hawkins and Frobisher being the last ones standing. The entry was the final one for the class as well as the last entry under “British Cruisers” in the 1946 edition.
The other three ships of the class, Hawkins (D86), Frobisher (D81/C81), and Effingham (D98)had uneventful interwar service and, like Vindictive, landed their guns in the mid-1930s. They then were rearmed and clocked in for WWII with Effingham wrecked in May 1940 during the Norway campaign. Hawkins, along with Frobisher, won battle honors at Normandy. Both were disposed of soon after VE Day.
Interestingly, just 44 BL 7.5-inch Mk VI naval guns were manufactured– exclusively for the Hawkins class– and, as they were landed in the 1930s and few remounted, at least 17 were recycled into coast defense batteries during WWII. As noted by Tony DiGiulain at Navweaps:
Three were at South Shields between July 1941 to August 1943, seven went to the Dutch West Indies, three to Canada, and five to Mozambique. However, two of the guns intended for Mozambique were lost in transit in 1943. These were replaced by transferring two guns from South Shields.
Dutch 7.5s in their distinctive turrets. Via Lago Colony As Raleigh’s guns were recovered from the stricken cruiser, some of these could have come from her.
Rather than name a seventh ship to continue the name in the Royal Navy, the Admiralty bestowed the moniker HMS Raleigh to a shore establishment on the River Lynher at Torpoint on 9 January 1940. Authorized under the Military Training Act of 1938, during WWII some 300 new enlistees arrived at the base each week for 11 weeks of training and the base in 1944 became a major D-Day embarkation center for U.S. forces headed to Utah and Omaha beaches.
The site became a new entry training establishment for all types of Ratings in 1959 and continues its role to this day as the home of the Royal Navy School of Seamanship with an average of 2,200 personnel on-site on any given day.
Displacement: 9,750 long tons (9,910 t) (standard) 12,190 long tons (12,390 t) (deep load) Length: 605 ft (o/a) Beam: 65 ft Draught: 19 ft 3 in (deep load) Installed power 12 × Yarrow boilers 70,000 shp, 4 × Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines, 4 shafts Speed: 31 knots Range 5,640 nmi at 10 knots with 1480 tons oil and 860 tons of coal Complement: 690 (712 counting flag staff) Armor Belt: 1.5–3 in Deck: 1–1.5 in Gun shields: 1 in Armament 7 × single 190/45 BL Mk VI 4 × single 76/45 20cwt QF Mk I AA guns 2 × single 2-pdr 40/39 QF Mk II AA guns 6 × 21-inch torpedo tubes on the beam
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.
Every year on December 14th National Monkey Day “celebrates the unique characteristics of simians.”
With that:
Besides such nautical terms as the monkey yards and brass monkeys, obstacles such as the Monkey Cage, involvement with Space Monkeys, and tours spent at places such as Monkey Mountain in DaNang, the Navy and Marines have long had a track record of mascots of the simian variety.
USS DOLPHIN (PG-24) some of the ship’s officers, with a monkey mascot, circa 1889. NH 54538
U.S. Navy protected cruiser, USS Raleigh (C 8), Monkey Mascot. Detroit Publishing Company, 1890-1912. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
USS Connecticut (Battleship # 18) crew members with some of their mascots, during the World cruise of the Great White Fleet, circa 1908. Among the animals, present are birds, a pig, a bear cub, a monkey, goats, dogs and cats. NH 106201
USS Kittery (AK-2) Lieutenant Roger A. Nolan, USN (M.C.), on the left, and Ensign Charlie R. Steen, USN (MSC) onboard USS Kittery in the Virgin Islands, circa 1920. Note the monkey on Lieutenant Nolan’s shoulder. Ensign Steen was the father of this photograph’s donor. NH 77039
U.S. Marine and his monkey, – Corporal Thomas F. Burton is shown with Archie, a seven-month-old native of Peleliu. Burton soon to be discharged at Camp Pendleton, California, recently returned from the South Pacific with his pal, “Archie.” The veteran Marine will return to Bakersfield, California, with the pint-sized monkey, circa late 1945. 127-GC-49790
EN3 William M. Roberto, USN, of the Junk Force Station, Phu Quoc Station, Vietnam, is shown with the camp’s monkey on his head. Photographed by W. M. Powers, 18 March 1966. 428-GX-K31239
Last Friday, the Philippine Navy decommissioned the patrol craft BRP Miguel Malvar (PS19) and BRP Magat Salamat (PS20) on 10 December 2021 at Captain Salvo Pier, Naval Base Heracleo Alano.
While “Miguel Malvar’ and “Magat Salamat” may not ring a bell with naval history buffs on this side of the globe, the ships have a very long and interesting history.
Malvar was born in the Windy City of all places, originally built by the Pullman-Standard Car Company of Chicago during WWII as USS PCE(R)-852, a PCE(R)-848-class rescue patrol craft escort for the Navy. Commissioned in 1944, she has another Chicago connection as she was an ancillary part of USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60)‘s hunter-killer group that captured U-505, the German U-boat that has been preserved at that city’s Museum of Science and Industry since 1954.PCE(R)-852 carried 26 captured German POWs to Norfolk.
4 June 1944 Tug USS Abnaki (ATF-96) tows U-505 photo from USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60) Note the large U.S. Ensign flying from U-505’s periscope. 80-G-324351
Postwar, she was named USS Brattleboro and, redesignated E-PCER-852, she worked as a test vessel assigned to the Naval Underwater Sound Laboratory at New London, Connecticut until 1965 when she was laid up at Philly.
U.S. Navy photo of USS PCER-852 from the April 1958 edition of All Hands magazine
In 1966 she was transferred to South Vietnam for service in the Republic of Vietnam Navy as RVNS Ngọc Hồi (HQ-12) and served that doomed country for a decade, escaping with the fall of Saigon along with other South Vietnamese naval assets to the Philippines where she was part of the exiled fleet for a year before turned over to the PN, who renamed her Malvar and kept her on active duty under her third flag for 44 years.
As for Salamat, she was originally built by the Winslow Marine Railway and Shipbuilding in Washington State as USS Gayety (AM-239), an Admirable-class minesweeper with a similar hull to the PCE-842-class. Commissioned in time to see service off Okinawa, she suffered a near-miss from a 500-pound bomb and was damaged with several casualties who were buried at Zamami shima. Her postwar career limited largely to a training role, she was mothballed in 1954 then transferred to the South Vietnamese Navy in 1962 as RVNS Chi Lăng II, one of the first such American ships that force acquired.
CHI LANG II (HQ-08) (South Vietnamese patrol ship, ex-USS GAYETY, MSF-239) Photographed during the 1960s. NH 93779
Like Brattleboro/Ngọc Hồi, she escaped to Subic Bay after Uncle Ho’s kids took over the south, and was later folded into the PN as a corvette.
Notably, both ships maintained their WWII-era armament including 3″/50s, 40mm Bofors, and Oerlikons although their engineering suites and sensors have been upgraded over the years.
In all, these two vessels clocked in over 150 years of active duty, fighting in at least two armed conflicts, which is really not bad for being “war babies.”
The 23,000-ton submarine tender USS Emory S. Land (AS-39), ordered under the Nixon Administration and now just 42 years young, has been termed the worst cruise ship to ever call sail the Pacific. For the last half of her career, she has been forward deployed, first in the Med, then at Diego Garcia, and, since 2016, to Guam, with breaks for stateside maintenance.
APRA HARBOR, Guam (May 20, 2021) Sailors assigned to the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land (AS 39) man the rails while transiting Apra Harbor, May 20. Land returned home to Guam following an eight-month scheduled maintenance period at Mare Island Dry Dock in Vallejo, California. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jason Behnke)
The partially MSC-crewed vessel is still a “USS” rather than a “USNS” and carries topside weapons, which her Bluejackets qualified on last week in conjunction with the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Guam.
In celebration of the South Dakota Air National Guard’s 75th anniversary this year, one of the 114th Fighter Wing’s 175th Fighter Squadron (FS) “Lobos” F-16s has been given a somewhat confusing special livery– that of a Marine WWII F4F Wildcat.
A blue and white F-16 from the 114th Fighter Wing, painted at the Air National Guard Paint Facility in Sioux City, Iowa was painted for the South Dakota Air Guard in commemoration of their 75th anniversary. U.S. Air National Guard photo: Senior Master Sgt. Vincent De Groot
Foss (fourth from left) joins members of Marine Corps fighter squadron VMF-121 on a Wildcat wing at Henderson Field, Guadalcanal. (U.S. Marine Corps)
Foss, immediately after the war, was made a colonel in the USAAF and appointed to form an Air National Guard fighter squadron in Sioux Falls, equipped with P-51 Mustangs. In a little-known fact, he had begun his military service in 1939 as an enlisted man with a field artillery unit of the South Dakota guard, then hitchhiked to Minneapolis to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserves in 1940 in order to join the Naval Aviation Cadet program, making him ultimately a veteran of the Army, Marines, and Air Force, retiring from the latter in 1955 as a one-star general.
Either way, the cigar-chomping Foss, would have likely approved of the coyote tail flash.
U.S. Air National Guard photo: Senior Master Sgt. Vincent De Groot
