Ruger last week made good on its promise to start making new Marlin rifles before the year was out, releasing the M1895 Stainless Big Loop variant to the market.
The company, which purchased the historic Marlin Firearms assets for $30 million during Remington Outdoors’ federal bankruptcy auction last summer, has been teasing the return of the familiar line under new management. Christopher Killoy, Ruger’s CEO and president, this October said the company will begin deliveries of the Marlin Model 1895 in December and, true to form, Ruger showed off the first production model shortly after.
Now the 1895 SBL, chambered in .45-70 Govt, is shipping to distributors.
Men of “L” Squadron SBS (Special Boat Squadron) investigate the ruins of the Acropolis in Athens, 13-14 October 1944. Note that three of the operators carry M1 Carbines while the fourth seems to have a more British BREN gun.
Offical caption, “Once inside the Acropolis, the troops take time off to examine these famous ruins of a former civilization. Photo by Johnson, Sergeant, No. 2 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit. IWM Photo NA 19483.
When it comes to the fact that the Marines above are using American carbines, other British elite units in Greece at the time did the same thing, as referenced by this image of Paras from 5th (Scots) Parachute Battalion, 2nd Parachute Brigade, taking cover on a street corner in Athens during operations against members of ELAS, 6 December 1944.
By nature of the past 130 years frequented by conflict in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia has tons of vintage military arms up for sale.
One European importer, based in the Czech Republic, has been detailing their shopping trips to the African country where surplus firearms are stacked deep and priced cheap. Zelený Sport Defence’s mononymous globetrotting buyer, Schuster, has been sending snaps back from his trip to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s ancient capital, filled with historic firearms.
The old Ethiopian Empire fought several wars against Italy (in 1887–1889, 1895-1896, 1935-37), a cycle that was only broken after liberation in World War II. This left the country with not only stacks of guns both bought to fight off the Italians– M1874 Gras rifles, Gewehr 71s and 88s, Remington Rolling Blocks, FN-made Mausers, British Lee-Enfields, Russian Berdan and Model 91/30 Mosin-Nagants– but also those captured from the Italians including Vetterlis, and Carcanos of every stripe.
Commissioned on 12 January 1944, Basswood was one of 39 180-foot Balsam-class seagoing buoy tenders built from 1942–1944, specifically being one of the 20 improved Class C (Iris) subvariants. She is fairly well armed to tend navigational aids, with her 3″/50 gun visible pointing over her stern while” Y-gun” depth charge throwers are clearly visible on her starboard side. If you look to her stack– under her mast with an SL1 radar system– you can see two 20mm Oerlikons mounted. Unseen are two Mousetrap ASW rocket systems as well as a QBE-3A sonar suite. Several former Warship Wednesday alumni from the same class got to use those weapons during the war.
Capable of a blistering 13-knots, Basswood would go on to have a long career in the Western Pacific, supporting nuclear weapons testing during Operations Greenhouse (1951), Castle (1954), and Redwing (1956). She also completed three deployments to Vietnam in 1967, 1971, and 1972, earning a trio of both Vietnam Service Medals and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medals.
The Coast Guard Cutter Basswood works a buoy as busy Vietnamese fishermen travel to open sea and their fishing grounds from Vung Tau harbor during her 1967 deployment. The cutter battled monsoon weather for a 30-day tour to establish and reservice sea aids-to-navigation dotting the 1,000-mile South Vietnamese coastline. USCG Historian’s Office photo
Decommissioned 4 September 1998 after 54 years of service, she was disposed of in 2000, eventually scrapped.
Hayden Foster over at American Rifleman has a great piece on M1 Garand sights, “From Flush Nut To T105: The Evolution Of The M1 Garand Rear Sight Assembly,” that is worth a read. Going past the typical fluff pieces often seen in gun publications, this one has some real scholarship to it.
The various versions of the M1 Garand rear sight knobs and pinions used throughout Springfield Armory production. They include, from left to right, the flush nut with short pinion, type one locking bar with short pinion, type two locking bar with long pinion, type three locking bar with long pinion, and a T105E1 assembly.
At a Roadblock on the Road to Bataan by Don Millsap, via the U.S. Army National Guard’s Heritage Collection
Luzon, Philippine Islands, December 26, 1941 — While the main attention of the beleaguered U.S. forces in the Philippines was focused on Japanese columns streaming inland from the Lingayen Gulf in the west, another enemy force came ashore on the east coast of Luzon at Lamon Bay. Company C 194th Tank Battalion from Salinas, California, was attached to a Filipino Army regiment near the town of Lucban. The 2d Platoon was ordered to make a show of force that would take it down a narrow trail. As the tank, commanded by SSgt Emil C. Morello, rounded a sharp curve it came face-to-face with an enemy roadblock. Without any hesitation, the tank smashed into the roadblock and the Japanese gun behind it.
Before being hit, Morello’s tank fired on other gun positions. After pretending to be dead, Morello and his crew escaped the next morning only to be either killed or captured, along with the other members of the 192d and 194th Tank Battalions, at Bataan.
These two battalions were National Guard units with companies from California, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. For their gallantry in action, both units were awarded three Presidential Unit Citations. Today’s 1st Battalion, 149th Armor, California Army National Guard carries on the gallant traditions of the 194th Tank Battalion.
The U.S. Army Armor & Cavalry Collection has plans to exhibit a restored early U.S. M3 light tank, identified by the sponson-mounted .30 caliber machine guns on each side:
This type was used by the National Guard tankers of the 192nd and 194th Tank Battalions on Luzon
Alongside a Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go that has belonged to the U.S. Army since it was captured in the Philippines in 1945.
The Ha-Go was the most common Japanese tank of World War II. Introduced in 1935, the Ha-Go weighs 7.4 tons and is armed with a 37mm main gun and two 7.7mm machine guns.
Official caption: “British and German officers meeting in No-Man’s Land during the unofficial ‘Christmas truce,’ Dec. 25, 1914. British troops from the Northumberland Yeomanry (Hussars), 7th Division, Bridoux-Rouge Banc Sector.”
The very troublesome new first-in-class supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78)has a lot of gee-whiz improvements over the 10 tried-and-true Nimitz class flattops which have been the backbone of Naval Aviation since the 1990s when they surpassed the legacy “smokers” of the Midway, Forrestal, and Kitty Hawk class in numbers. This includes a new nuclear plant with the (crucial) ability to generate nearly three times the amount of electrical power, an innovative advanced arresting gear, and the electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) that enables the Navy to leave the old (reliable) steam gear behind, and other improvements that lead to a huge ship that requires fewer Bluejackets to sail and fight.
One of the improvements was the promised Advanced Weapons Elevator (AWE) which the Navy billed as “using several advanced technologies including electromagnetic motors vice more labor-intensive, hydraulic systems,” that enables fewer sailors to safely move ordnance from weapons magazines to the flight deck with unparalleled speed and agility.”
The thing is, they didn’t work and the contractor has been scrambling for years to get them fixed. Finally, on Wednesday PEO Aircraft Carriers reported that the 11th and final AWE has been installed and turned over to Ford’s crew.
Sailors assigned to USS Gerald R. Ford’s (CVN 78) weapons department, receive MK-82 500-pound class inert bombs on one of Ford’s Advanced Weapons Elevators, May 30, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ryan Seelbach)
“This is a significant milestone for the Navy, ship, and her crew,” said RADM James P. Downey, Program Executive Officer for Aircraft Carriers. “With the completion of this final AWE, we now have the entire system to operate and train with.”
The work comes as Ford is at Newport News Shipyard in support of her Planned Incremental Availability (PIA), a six-month period of modernization, maintenance, and repairs, that began in September. When she emerges in March 2022, she will start workups for her inaugural deployment.
Keep in mind that she has already gone through 21 months of post-delivery tests and trials (PDT&T) and Full Ship Shock Trials (FSST), as she was delivered to the Navy by Newport News in May 2017 after eight years of construction.
Now to get EMALS working. Designed to achieve 4,166 aircraft launches between operational mission failures, a DoD report earlier this year said it went 181 launches between failures, or “well below the requirement.”
It’s not like USS Nimitz was laid down in 1968 or anything…
This looks bad when you consider the Brits have, with a smaller shipbuilding industry and without having crafted a large-deck carrier since the 1950s, was able to construct their new 65,000-ton carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08)— laid down the same year as Ford— by 2017 and just completed an extensive halfway-around-the-world deployment with her, albeit with some of help from “The Colonies.”
Let’s hope this lengthy teething period will help streamline the (successful) delivery of Ford’s classmates, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), Enterprise (CVN 80), and Doris Miller (CVN 81).
Likewise, Navy Air is not standing still, the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation Demonstration (UCAD) of the MQ-25A unmanned air system prototype aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) has been going on this month, and shows promise, especially when it comes to halting the waste of using half the fleet’s Hornets to refuel the other half for strikes further than 400 miles out.
80 Years Ago: In December 1941, Pvts. Kotula and Queen hang their stockings on an M1920, Rock Island Arsenal-made arms rack in the middle of their squad room at Camp Lee, VA, Quartermaster Replacement Center.
They said, “Santa will have to stumble into this, so he can’t miss our socks.”
Signal Corps Photo: SC 126784. More Christmas in the Field photos from the Army, here.
Note the interwar M1903A1 Springfield .30-06 rifles, stored bolts open, on the rack. While adopted in 1937 to replace the bolt gun, researched production data points to just 401,529 the newer semi-automatic M1 Garands had been assembled for Uncle Sam by the end of November 1941.
While in the “Victory Program” devised in the fall of 1941, the War Department projected an Army with a peak strength of 213 divisions, only 91 would ever take the field during World War II. Compared to that plan, only 29 infantry, one cavalry, and five armored divisions existed in December 1941, with many of those still forming– and 15 of those being recently federalized National Guard divisions who were a long way from being combat-ready.
The TO&E for a 1941 triangular infantry division allowed for 7,327 M1 Garands, meaning the M1903 was never able to be fully replaced during WWII, and indeed, some GIs, such as in Quartermaster units like the good privates above, always used the bolt gun.
On 21 May 1942, the M1903 was put back into regular production in a simplified “U.S. Rifle, Cal. .30, Model of 1903A3” format, contracted out to Smith-Corona who made 234,580, and Remington who delivered 707,629, ensuring almost a million GIs and Allied troopers would be hanging their stockings on new ’03s for at least four more Christmases.
“Christmas Eve in the Pacific,” aboard USS LST-770.
Drawn by Coast Guard Combat Artist, BMC John J. Floherty, Jr. NARA 26-G-12-14-44
Official caption:
The Star of Peace gleams hopefully over the guns of war in this Christmas drawing by Coast Guard Combat Artist John J. Floherty, Chief aboard a Coast Guard-manned LST “Somewhere in the Pacific.” A gunner stands his lonely vigil, his eyes alert for signs of the enemy. His thought drifting over the thousands of miles of restless sea to his loved ones at home. Coast Guardsman Floherty’s home is Port Washington, N.Y.
Floherty, 37 at the time of the above work, has several other scenes of Iwo Jima and Okinawa scenes that are far less peaceful, digitized in the National Archives.
A skilled commercial artist, cartoonist, and painter, Floherty studied at Columbia University, the Art Students League with George Bridgman, and at the Grand Central School of Art with Harvey Dunn. He was a member of the Society of Illustrators and had studios in New York City and Northport, Long Island. He passed away in 1977, at age 70.
