Fire Fire Fire, or, “Hey, why does the stack look like that?”

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Always a pucker factor when you look back from the stern while underway and see this.

Via USCG Pacific Area:

By PA3 Aidan Cooney – U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Southwest public affairs

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Waesche crews battled a fire Sunday aboard the cutter that broke out during a scheduled deployment to the U.S. 7th Fleet’s area of operations.

Black smoke was reported at 5:18 p.m. (local time) and investigations revealed fires in the exhaust stack and nearby spaces.

The crew’s training and quick actions extinguished the fire after battling the blaze at sea for 90 minutes.

Five crew members reported minor injuries sustained during firefighting efforts and were treated by the onboard medical team.

“The rapid response and courageous efforts from the crewmembers aboard Waesche to quickly contain and extinguish the fire are a testament to the bravery and skill of this crew,” said Capt. Jason Ryan, Waesche’s commanding officer.

The extent of the damages and cause of the fire are currently under investigation.

Waesche arrived at Yokosuka, Japan, today. While at Fleet Forces Yokosuka, the cutter will undergo further inspection and potentially repairs.

The cutter is under the tactical control of the U.S. 7th Fleet as part of routine presence operations in support of the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

More photos here. 

Here’s MIRV: 50th Anniversary of Minuteman

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The LGM-30G Minuteman III, the first deployed ICBM with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV), is the land leg of the storied U.S. nuclear triad. The platform is also 50 years old this year, first fielded in 1970– akin to the era of the Apollo moon missions.

Keep in mind there are currently 45 underground launch control centers manned by USAF missile officers ready to deliver these terrifying birds anywhere worldwide within 30 minutes.

With the ability to carry up to three W62 or W78 warheads on Mk12 delivery vehicles, the 450 remaining Minutemen missiles have been downgraded to accept recycled W87 warheads from the MX missile program. However, with a circular error of probability of fewer than 800 feet after a 6,000+nm trip, that is, like horseshoes, close enough.

The Air Force plans to keep the Minuteman around until 2030ish, at which point the planned Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent will be online.

With that, let us gather around Brig. Gen. Jimmy Stewart and hear about the Air Force Missile Mission and consider visiting one of the decommissioned early ICBM sites currently open as museums. 

Spelunking, occupation edition

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75 years ago today.

Official caption: “Japanese Kairyu Type Midget submarine outside its cave hideaway in a Japanese coastal hillside, 22 September 1945.”

The men alongside it are from the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Boston (CA-69).

The sixth Boston was commissioned 30 June 1943 and left Pearl Harbor for points West on 6 December of the same year, going on to earn an impressive 10 battlestars for her WWII service. Following the Japanese surrender, Boston remained in the Far East on occupation duty until 28 February 1946 then headed home for mothballs.

Given a second lease on life, she was reworked as a guided-missile cruiser in 1955 and recommissioned as CAG-1, the country’s first warship carrying an impressive 144 RIM-2 Terrier missiles in her armored magazines for use on her two twin launchers– keep in mind today’s VLS-equipped Ticonderoga-class cruisers only carry a maximum of 122 SM-2/3s providing all of their Mk 41 cells are filled with them.

Aft launcher onboard USS Boston (CA 69) in 1969 off of Vietnam with a GMTRS simulator T-SAM. Note the shell powder cans coming aboard– an almost daily task when she worked the gun line. NARA Photo 80-G-379158

Boston however still got a lot of use out of her WWII-era big guns, firing thousands of rounds of eight and five-inch shells against targets in Vietnam in 1967-68.

She was decommissioned 5 May 1970 and scrapped five years later.

Or are you happy to see me?

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One of the oldest forms of walking around with a concealed handgun, the practice of pocket carry has been around for centuries and is still alive and well today but needs a few tricks to pull off properly.

While owning a gun isn’t for everyone, the prospect of carrying a gun when outside of the home is for an even smaller subset of the population. Keeping with that mantra, toting around a gun in your pocket is really not for everyone. Some will advocate against it, full stop, while others have successfully used the method for years and it is their primary method of carrying.

I weigh the good with the bad, in my column at Guns.com.

Vale, Capt. Groom

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He may have been born in D.C. but Winston Francis Groom Jr. was a true “Son of the South,” having graduated from UMS-Wright Military Academy and then the University of Alabama before spending much of his life as a Mobile Bay fixture. Commissioned through the Crimson Tide’s ROTC program, he served with the 245th PSYOP Company as a PSYOP Team Leader supporting the 4th Infantry Division in the Central Highlands of Vietnam from 1966 to 1967.

Groom in Vietnam

“My age and lowly rank notwithstanding, my impression was that I was headed for some exalted position worthy of a John le Carré novel,” Groom later wrote of his time as a “dirty trickster” in Vietnam.

Following four years on active duty and an honorable discharge, he spent eight years as a reporter and columnist for the Washington Star newspaper before, with the encouragement of Willie Morris, a literal Good Old Boy from Mississippi, he resigned and began making pages of his own.

In the end, Groom finished some 20 books, many of them excellent military non-fiction works such as Shiloh 1862, Vicksburg 1864, 1942, and his Aviators/Generals/Allies trilogy of WWII. He was a Pulitzer finalist for Conversations with the Enemy: the story of P.F.C. Robert Garwood.

He also dabbled in fiction, with the main characters often having a connection to both Vietnam and Alabama. Write what you know, they say…

A natural raconteur in that most Southern of ways, I saw Capt. Groom speak on two occasions and was all the better for it.

He passed last week, aged 77. He will certainly be missed.

As noted in his obit: 

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be made to the University of Alabama Libraries Special Collection, Post Office Box 870266, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487, or the Gary Sinise Foundation, Post Office Box 368, Woodland Hills, California, 91365. A graveside service will be held Wednesday, September 23, at 11:00 am at Pine Crest Cemetery, 1939 Dauphin Island Parkway, Mobile, Alabama 36605.

Haenel? Haenel? Haenel!

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For the first time since 1959, the German military is planning to change over their primary infantry rifle to one not made by Heckler & Koch.

The Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, Germany’s combined ministry of defense, announced last week that the firm of CG Haenel GmbH in Suhl has tentatively won the €25 million ($29.6 million) initial tender for the country’s new Sturmgewehr Basiswaffe or Assault Rifle Basic Weapon, replacing the HK-made G36. While the model was not disclosed by the ministry and Haenel has not released a statement, firearms publications on both sides of the pond are confirming the model chosen was the company’s MK556, a select-fire 5.56 NATO piston carbine.

This is ironic because Haenel, which dates back to 1840, was the house of Hugo Schmeisser, the inventor of the StG44, the world’s first “assault rifle” and during its East German phase cranked out Kalashnikov-pattern MPiK/MPiKM rifles for the DDR.

You know, these

So in a way, the Bundeswehr is just changing back to long-held family traditions.

Of course, the MK556 looks far more Stoner/Sullivan than Schmeisser/Kalashnikov.

Cha-cha-cha-changing…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Over the side

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75 years ago.

Official caption: “Japanese ammunition being dumped into the sea on September 21, 1945.”

During the U.S. occupation, almost all of the Japanese war industry and existing armament that fell into Allied hands in the Home Islands was dismantled, with the country’s self-defense forces eventually rebuilt a decade later with U.S. military aid.

The detritus of the Empire outside of the Home Islands, on the other hand, was quickly recycled. From Indonesian separatists in Java fighting the Dutch to Viet Mihn scrapping the French soon put surplus Arisakas and Nambus to use. Meanwhile, Americans fighting the Chinese in North Korea in the 1950s often found themselves on the receiving end of Japanese-made ordnance, washed clean of its imperialist origins via the hands of Mao’s eager Red Army.

Meet the brand new CI Regiment

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The Cayman Islands have stood up their first formal military formation, the appropriately named Cayman Islands Regiment. Currently numbering some 50 men and women who began their selection and training of in June, the Territorial Army “regiment” will actually be more company-sized, growing to approximately 175 strong by the end of 2021, and is commanded by a light colonel, formerly of the Royal Dragoon Guards.

As the 65,000-person autonomous British Overseas Territory known for its flexible banking and great skin diving is very much an extension, by law, of the UK, the Ministry of Defense has been supplying equipment and trainers drawn from 131 Commando Squadron Royal Engineers, 40 & 45 Commando Royal Marines, the Welsh Guards, the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, The Grenadier Guards, and the Royal Navy while a number of junior officers of the CI Regiment have been sent to Sandhurst. Other recruits will apparently train alongside the part-time soldiers of the more established (circa 1965) Royal Bermuda Regiment in that British territory.

A Royal Marine trainers with the new Cayman Island Regiment territorials. Note the traditional English pace stick, a British NCOs number one enforcement tool

The Caymans, of course, have a long military tradition, with local colonists having taken part in the island’s defenses since 1662 and many a young man enlisted in the redcoats of the West Indies Regiment or in Royal Navy for service overseas. In World War II, a 44-strong home guard unit was formed to watch out for saboteurs and German U-boats, a conflict that also saw the Empire raise the short-lived Caribbean Regiment, which served in North Africa.

Since 1907, the chain has maintained a professional police force that today has evolved into the current 400-member Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, which the CI Regiment will support with a concentration on Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) skills.

They will not be the only new British regiment in the New World. Last December, Turks and Caicos Islands Governor Nigel Dakin had announced that they will also follow the lead of the Cayman Islands in the formation of the Turks and Caicos Regiment drawn from among their 42,000 islanders.

The MoD typically has a portion of an RM Commando on tap to support West Indies deployments as well as the Royal Navy’s rotational West Indies Guard Ship (currently the OPV HMS Medway) which roam across not only the Caymans, Bermuda, and the T&Cs, but also protect the territories of Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, and Montserrat while supporting the regional Commonwealth states of Antigua & Barbuda, Belize, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, and Trinidad & Tobago.

Rule Brittania.

The more things change, Devil 155 edition, with Idaho tanker bonus

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A 155mm howitzer is fired by artillery crewmen of the 11th Marines, Guadalcanal

Marines work a 155mm gun position on Guadalcanal in 1942.

A Marine M777-A2 155mm howitzer at night using tactical red lighting as part of Marine Rotational Force Darwin, 2020

Of course, as Plan 2030 gets underway to “lighten” the Marines and trade assets like tanks, Engineer ABVs, bridging companies, and heavy-lift helo squadrons for things like rockets and UAV squadrons, the number of cannon batteries in the Corps is set to drop from the current 21 to just 5 in the next decade, so USMC-manned 155s will be few and far between in the future.

Marines loss, National Guard’s gain

In related news, 39 former Marine reservists in a recently disbanded M1A1 Abrams tank company of the (C coy, 4th Tanks) have switched teams and were sworn in at a joint ceremony into the Idaho National Guard’s 116th Brigade Combat Team.

In line with a storied Marine tradition, they will be using better mounts after shifting from Devils to Joes, as the Guard operates updated M1A2s.

The Marine Corps Reserve’s Company C, 4th Tank Battalion deactivates at Idaho National Guard Base Gowen Field, Aug. 14, 2020. More than three dozen of the former Marines enlisted in the Idaho Army National Guard on Sept. 13, 2020. THOMAS ALVAREZ/U.S. ARMY

Thunderbolt!

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Via the National Archives: This 1944 original color film captures footage of the air war over Italy during World War II, focusing on the life and death struggle of a train-busting P-47 Thunderbolt squadron operating out of Corsica.

In addition to showing how the pilots’ activities seriously crippled the Nazi fighting ability, hastening the sweep of Allied forces into Rome, the footage also shows the suffering of non-combatants on the ground. The film was directed by William Wyler and John Sturges, with an introduction by Jimmy Stewart (who flew B-17s during the war) and is narrated by Lloyd Bridges and Eugene Kern.

There are far worst ways to spend 42 minutes.

The film was compiled at Alto Air Base, call sign “Break Neck” which was home to 27-year-old Lt. Col Archie Knight’s 57th Fighter Group which consisted of the 64th, “Black Scorpion,” 65th “Fighting cocks,” and 66th “Exterminators” FS.

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