Ready on the Firing Line, Watercolor on Paper; by Chip Beck; 1991.
“A Marine of the 1st Division readies himself behind his pack during the assault on the Kuwait International Airport, 27 February 1991.”
NHHC Accession #: 91-159-K
Some 29 years ago today, the Battle of Kuwait International Airport, which saw a force consisting of the 1st & 2nd MARDIV along with the U.S. Army’s 2nd Armored Division’s Tiger Brigade, squared off against elements of no less than 14 Iraqi divisions in what went on to become a decisive allied victory.
Warship Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020: The Albrecht Marsch
Here we see the unique early casemate battleship SMS Erzherzog Albrecht of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy, the K.u.K Kriegsmarine, in Pola (Pula), sometime between 1874 and 1892. Designed as a “kasemattschiff” with a ram bow, she was built to fight at the Battle of Lissa, which predated her by a decade. Nonetheless, the obsolete Austrian would endure for 83 years in one form or another and live through both World Wars.
Lissa– as those who are fans of ram bows on steam warships are aware– was the iconic naval action in 1866 between Austria and Italy in which the tactic of busting below-waterline holes in one’s enemy’s ships proved decisive. Sadly, for a generation of battleships that immediately followed, ramming never really proved effective in combat again, save for its use in the 20th Century by fast warships against very close submarines caught operating on the surface.
Illustration of the Austro-Hungarian ironclad SMS Erzherzog Albrecht under sail published in “Europe in Arms: The Austro-Hungarian Navy”. The Illustrated Naval and Military Magazine. London: W. H. Allen & Co. IV: 384. 1886, via Wiki Commons
Beyond her reinforced ram bow, Erzherzog Albrecht was a decent brawler for her era. Based on the design of her preceding half-sister, SMS Custoza, Kaiser Franz Josef’s newest battleship went 5,980-tons, was 295-feet overall in length and carried a battery of eight 9.25″/20 cal cast iron Krupp guns in a two-tiered casemate protected by up to eight inches of wrought iron armor backed by another 10 of teak wood.
Cast iron 21cm cannon at Krupps Steel Foundry Works Essen, 1868. It was cast from single casing
The twin-funneled SMS Custoza. She differed from Erzherzog Albrecht in the respect that she was slightly larger and carried a battery of eight 10-inch guns. Erzherzog Albrecht was a “budget” follow-on.
Designed by Obersten-Schiffbau-Ingeniuer Josef Ritter von Romako, who also crafted Custoza, the two half-sisters were the country’s first iron ships. Capable of making 12.8-knots on her steam plant, Erzherzog Albrecht had a hybrid sail rig, common for her era, on three masts. Built at Trieste, she was commissioned in the summer of 1874, birthed out into the Adriatic.
She was named for Hapsburg general and war hero, Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen, the bespectacled victor in the battle of Custoza in 1866 over the Italians.
This guy.
Unlike most European powers, Austria fought no outright wars from 1866 until 1914, except for a low-key counter-insurgency campaign in the Balkans, a fact that translated to a relatively peaceful half-century for the K.u.K Kriegsmarine. With that, Erzherzog Albrecht spent her front-line career in a series of short cruises around the Mediterranean and its associated seas, with long periods in ordinary, swaying at her moorings.
Pola (Pula), the Navy Yard, Istria, Austro-Hungary, Detroit Publishing Co postcard, the 1890s, via LOC
The only time she fired her guns in anger was to bombard Bokelj rebel bands near Cattaro (Kotor), Dalmatia, in March 1882, a factor of using a hammer to crush a grape. The year before she was used in gunboat diplomacy to protest French expansion in Tunisia, calling at La Goulette (Halq al-Wadi) on the North African coast for several weeks.
Austrian steam ironclad SMS Erzherzog Albrecht with her naval ram before 1892
Modernized on numerous occasions between 1880 and 1893, she received additional small-caliber anti-torpedo boat guns as well as a quartet of 14-inch torpedo tubes while engineering updates swapped out her plant. She picked up watertight bulkheads for safety and an electrical system for lighting and communication, two things that didn’t exist when she was designed in 1868.
SMS Erzherzog Albrecht by Leopold_Wölfling via Austrian Archives
By 1908, the ram-bowed ship, with her then-quaint wood-backed wrought iron armor and stubby 24 cm/20 black powder breechloaders, was as obsolete as can be in the era of Dreadnoughts and she was semi-retired.
Renamed from the regal Erzherzog Albrecht to the more pedestrian Feuerspeier (fire gargoyle), she was tasked with operating as a naval artillery school ship in Pola. For this work, she was demasted and largely disarmed other than for training pieces.
FEUERSPEIER (Austrian schoolship, 1872-1946) former battleship ERZHERZOG ALBRECHT photographed while serving either as a naval artillery school ship from 1908-1915 or as an accommodation ship for crews of German submarines operating from Adriatic ports during 1915-1918. An Erzherzog Karl-class battleship appears in the left background. The stern of the artillery school ship ADRIA (ex-frigate RADETZKY, 1872-1920) appears to the right. The photograph was taken at Pola. Courtesy of Mr. Arrigo Barilli, Bologna, Italy. NH 75917
Erzherzog Albrecht/Feuerspeier was such a non-threat in Western circles that she was not listed in the 1914 edition of Janes, which ranked Austria-Hungary as a 7th rate naval power.
When the lights went out all over Europe in 1914, Erzherzog Albrecht/Feuerspeier continued her use as a school ship until the next summer, when she came to the next chapter of her career.
In June 1915, the Germans established U-Flottille Pola to help their submarine-poor Austrian brothers-in-arms and use the base in the Adriatic to raid the Allies in the Med. Using a mix of U-boats sailing directly from German ports and breaking through the Allied blockade, and small coastal type UB- and UC-boats, which were dissected and moved by rail to Pola for reassembly, the Germans at one time or another ran 45 boats through the port.
It was during this time that Erzherzog Albrecht/Feuerspeier became one of the accommodation ship/submarine tenders (mutterschiff) for this force of visiting sailors.
Among the “aces” sailing from Pola was the famed Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, considered the king of Great War U-boat skippers, who bagged 77 ships totaling 160,000 GRT in four months in 1916 alone.
Of interest, the Austrian martial musical Erzherzog Albrecht Marsch, by Viennese composer Karl Komzak, was used by German submariners in both World Wars as a sailing song to celebrate departures and arrivals of U-boats, a holdover of the Happy Pola times when Feuerspeier’s band would play the tune on such occasions. So much so that the music was used in Das Boot when the fictional U-96 leaves her pens for the Atlantic, then when she returns.
Nonetheless, once the war was over and both the Imperial German and Austrian navies– along with their empires– were consigned to the dustbin of history, and Erzherzog Albrecht/Feuerspeier was captured by the victorious Allies along with several floating relics and more modern U-boats in Pola, then part of the newly-established Yugoslavia.
Ex-Austrian ships at Pola, circa 1919. Surrendered ships photographed by Zimmer. The surface ships are probably the ex-torpedo gun-vessel SEBENICO (1882-1920) and the ex-submarine tender PELIKAN (1891-1920) behind her. The two submarines in the foreground are probably of the U-27 class (German UB-II type) and most of the others are probably of the U-10 (UB-I) class. The conning tower on the right probably belongs to U-5. Catalog #: NH 42825
Pola Harbor, Yugoslavia in the foreground are three ex-Austrian hulks: front to back, LACROMA (ex-TIGER, 1887-1920), CUSTOZZA (1872-1920), and BELLONA (ex-KAISER, 1872-1920). To their right are two US SC boats. In the upper left are four French ALGERIEN class destroyers: bow letters I, H, Q, and R. In the center are three Italian destroyers including one of the ALESSANDRO POERIO class. The photo was taken late 1919-early 1920. Description: Courtesy of Paul H. Silverstone, 1983 NH 95006
In 1920, the old Austrian battleship was awarded to Italy as a war trophy under the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, aged 44, and was towed to Taranto where she was to be used as a tender under the name of Buttafuoco for the submarines of IV Gruppo.
She would continue in this task for another two decades, losing her name for the more generic designation of GM 64. (Her near-sister, SMS Custoza, was likewise awarded to the Italians but was quickly scrapped and never used.)
As in 1914, the 1945 edition of Janes neglected to list GM64/Buttafuoco under Italy’s entry, although such minor craft as 600-ton water tenders did make the cut.
In a hat tip to her Italian legacy, in 1996, a group of 11 winemakers joined to form the Buttafuoco Storico, with an ode to the former RN Buttafuoco of old.
Meanwhile, Chilean and Argentine U-boaters, err, submarinos, still reportedly sortie and arrive to the sound of the Erzherzog Albrecht Marsch.
Specs:
1874, left, 1892-1908, right
Displacement: 5,980 long tons
Length:
288 ft 3 in waterline
294 ft 3 in o/a
Beam: 56 ft 3 in
Draft: 22 ft
Propulsion:
8 boilers, one 2-cylinder Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino steam engine, one screw, 3,969 IHP
Ship rig as designed, schooner rig in practice
Speed: 12.84 knots
Endurance: 2300 @10kts on 500 tons of coal
Crew: 540
Armor:
Belt- Composite 8 inches iron/10-inches teak
Casemate- Composite 7 inches iron/8-inches teak
Armament: (1874)
8 x 9.4″/20cal C.24 Krupp breechloaders
6 x 3.5″/22 Krupp breechloaders
2 x 2.8-inch Krupp breechloaders (1892)
8 x 9.4″/20cal C.24 Krupp breechloaders
6 x 3.5″/22 Krupp breechloaders
2 x 2.8-inch Krupp breechloaders
2 x 2.59″/16 L18
9 x 47mm Hotchkiss RF
10 x 25mm Nordenfeldt RF
4 x 350mm torpedo tubes with Whitehead torpedoes
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.
For over 50 years, California’s Frank Pachmayr turned out high-quality custom rifles with Old World craftsmanship. This is one of his beauties.
Frank learned his trade at the hands of his gunsmith father, German immigrant Gus Pachmayr, and young Frank reportedly learned to turn barrels by the ripe old age of eight. By age 22, in December 1929, the junior Pachmayr struck out and founded his own shop, one that he would helm with such accolades that he would go on to be described later in life as, “America’s Master Gunsmith.”
This custom Remington Model 30-S Express, in .458 Win Mag, is one breathtaking gun.
Sadly, Frank passed in 1997, aged 90, and is buried in Inglewood. Today, the address of his shop is a condo complex. Nonetheless, relics of the good old days of Pachmayr Gun Works, such as this Model 30, still endure for the next generation.
PCU USS Delbert D. Black (DDG-119), a Flt IIA DDG-51-class destroyer in the last stages of her construction at Ingalls, recently got a chance to live fire of her Mk. 45 Mod 4 5-inch/62cal gun for the first time while out on a three day long builder’s sea trials in the Gulf of Mexico.
“The Navy and our dedicated shipbuilders have continued to make strides towards delivering this exceptional capability to the fleet, and performed well during builder’s trials,” said Capt. Seth Miller, DDG 51 class program manager, Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships. “This ship continues the proud Aegis shipbuilding legacy and will provide the Navy with a 21st-century fighting edge.”
As the vessel is named for the first MCPON, formerly Master Chief Gunner’s Mate (GMCM) Delbert D. Black, the fact that her gunnery department is on point is no doubt welcome news. Of note, Black was aboard the battleship USS Maryland (BB-46) at Pearl Harbor and spent the next 26 years before making MCPON on every type of surface warfare ship imaginable including USS Doyle C. Barnes (DE-353), USS Gardiners Bay (AVP-39), USS Boxer (CVA-21), USS Antietam (CVA-36), USS Brush (DD-745), USS Carpenter (DDE-825), USS Norfolk (DL-1) and USS Springfield (CL-66).
As an interesting contrast shot of DDG-119‘s Mk 45 in relation in size to the Coast Guard’s largest cutter class, I caught this image of Black bow-to-bow with the building Legend-class National Security Cutter USCG Stone (WMSL-758) in the brackish water of the Pascagoula River a few weeks ago. Stone packs a Mk 110 57mm hood ornament, for reference.
One of the most popular weapons used to root out the Japanese on Iwo Jima, 75 years ago this week, was the M2 flamethrower, and with good reason.
Defending the fortress was Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi’s 21,000 Japanese troops, which had largely evacuated the civilian population on Iwo and has spent months preparing the island’s difficult terrain to best resist the amphibious assault. They dug 16 miles of tunnels, broken up into 1,500 different bunkers, underneath the island. Most would never leave on their own two feet.
Flamethrowers were useful in routing the defenders from the honeycomb of underground tunnels and bunkers on the island, a tactic that evolved into what was known as the “blowtorch and corkscrew,” method.
Marine CPL Hershel “Woody” Williams, the last living Medal of Honor recipient from the Pacific War, carried a 70-pound M2 on Iwo Jima and used it like a surgeon to successfully take on a network of reinforced concrete pillboxes, with four riflemen in support.
He is currently 96 years old.
In all, the Medal of Honor was presented to 22 Marines and five Sailors for their actions on Iwo Jima, many of those given posthumously. Adm. Chester Nimitz observed after the hellish battle that, “uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
Yesterday was “Defender of the Fatherland Day” (Den Zaschitnika Otechestva) in Russia. The date celebrates the founding of the Red Army in 1918 and used to be known as Red Army Day. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation posted several interesting images of the salute division of the Western Military District firing volleys on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow.
The guns are towed 76 mm divisional gun M1942 (ZiS-3) on 2A85 salute mounts, notable for their lack of muzzle brakes.
Sometimes described as the most effective Allied anti-armor gun of the war, at least against Panzer IVs and below, especially when used in massed batteries, a staggering 100,000 ZiS-3s were produced, most likely making it the most prolific field artillery piece in modern history.
Very light for a 3-inch high-velocity gun, at just over 2,500-pounds (the comparable U.S. M5 weighed twice as much), a ZiS-3 could be pulled by a Lend-Lease Ford truck, a scrawny Russian horse or two, or even man-hauled by a squad if needed.
Red Army soldiers with a ZiS-3 cannon near a wrecked Panther, East Prussia, late 1944
Battery commander of the 163rd separate guards anti-tank artillery regiment of the Kalinin front, guard senior lieutenant Viktor Tikhonovich Baranok (1922 – 03/01/1944) next to the 76-mm divisional gun mod. 1939 (F-22-USV). October 1943
When Marshall Zhukov’s legions closed in on Berlin in April 1945, he had some 41,000 pieces of artillery, including an estimated 25,000 ZIS-3s or similar 76mm pieces.
Soviet artillery bombarding German positions during the battle of the Seelow Heights.
They proved useful in house-by-house streetfighting.
It is still in use in Africa and Asia and saw combat in Europe as late as the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.
ZiS stands for the factory the guns were produced at, Zavod imeni Stalina, named for Stalin.
Even though the hunter died in 1998, police are now contacting his children, who have an opportunity to claim their lost father’s rifle.
The problem
According to a recent U.S. Department of Justice study, there is an average of at least 135,000 unrecovered guns stolen in residential burglaries nationwide each year. The main reason for guns not being recovered is that the owners did not record and keep up with their serial numbers.
In Nevada recently, law enforcement has been inundated with calls for stolen guns. Guns that when they are recovered, no one can come reclaim.
“When they are taken, more often than not the owner can’t ID them — they can’t name the make or caliber or serial number,” said Washoe County Sheriff Michael Haley told the Reno Gazette-Journal
“So, in reality, when a weapon is stolen, it can’t be traced or returned because we don’t know who it belongs to,” he said.
To help fix this, Haley said he would ask two things: “Take personal responsibility if you own a gun, secure it in your home. And two, keep the serial number in a secure place separate from the gun.”
Monthly ritual
Me and the crew on Gun Day…almost
One thing I like to do in my home is the simple ceremony I refer to as “Gun Day.”
On the third Saturday of the month (you have to set a specific day to do this or you will forget, I promise), I like to spend a couple hours in my mancave going through my personal collection. Now of course, like most gun guys, it varies from year to year, sometimes from month to month as I buy, sell, trade, swap and rearrange my collection.
However, no matter whether you have one old rusty shotgun or a half dozen bulging gun safes, Gun Day needs to happen.
If I’m out of town or something comes up, it GD can be rescheduled but it still happens.
At least once a month.
For me it’s simple. I sit, put on my gloves (I hate to leave excess fingerprints on my guns as the oils and salts left behind can lead to surface rust), and go through my collection. I have a simple Field Note Book that I write down my collection in with the date I acquired the gun, the make, model, caliber, my estimated value at the time, and serial number. The six things fit on one line.
Each month I go back over the book, remove any old guns that have been traded away (or note guns loaned out to friends, trust me, this can help figure out missing guns months later!) and add any new pieces.
While going through my guns I have a chance to notice any issues that may have come up in storage such as rust, dust, and the like, keeping the band going strong.
New guns even get a photoshoot for reference just in case something ever happens to them. Lightboxes are cheaper than you think, and if you don’t have a lightbox, just take a photo on your back porch in natural light.
Speaking of photos, I take a picture every month of that notebook entry and email it to myself, just in case something ever happens to it.
Then it’s back into the safe and cabinet, closet, holster, and nightstand for the collection.
Biomedical engineers from Duke University have demonstrated that, despite significant advancements in protection from ballistics and blunt impacts, modern military helmets are no better at protecting the brain from shock waves created by nearby blasts than their World War I counterparts. And one model in particular, the French Adrian helmet, actually performed better than modern designs in protecting from overhead blasts.
The research could help improve the blast protection of future helmets through choosing different materials, layering multiple materials of different acoustic impedance, or altering their geometry.
A high-speed video of a French helmet from World War I being bombarded by a shock wave designed to imitate a blast from German artillery shells a few meters away. Credit: Joost Op ‘t Eynde, Duke University
The results were published online on February 13, 2020, in the journal PLOS ONE.
“While we found that all helmets provided a substantial amount of protection against blast, we were surprised to find that the 100-year-old helmets performed just as well as modern ones,” said Joost Op ‘t Eynde, a biomedical engineering Ph.D. student at Duke and first author of the study. “Indeed, some historical helmets performed better in some respects.”
While primitive guided bombs and missiles were fielded in WWII (see = the U.S. Navy’s SWOD-9 Bat and the sinking of the Italian battleship Roma in 1943 by an air-launched Fritz X) it wasn’t until the P-15 Termit (NATO: SS-N-2 Styx) was developed by the Soviets in 1958 that a reliable surfaced-launched anti-ship missile was fielded. Soon answered in the West by the Swedish Saab Rb 08 and Israeli Gabriel in the 1960s, then by more advanced platforms such as Exocet and Harpoon, such weapons replaced coastal artillery batteries as well as surfaced-launched torpedos as the principal means for asymmetric forces to effect a “kill” on a capital ship.
Likewise, the age of the dreadnought and large all-gun-armed cruiser was fading at the same time.
The four Iowa-class fast battleships were mothballed in 1958 (but, of course, New Jersey would be brought back for a tour in Vietnam while all four would be returned to service in the 1980s for the Cold War– more on that later) while the British retired HMS Vanguard in 1960 while the Soviets had gotten out of the battlewagon biz in the late 1950s after their Italian trophy ship Novorossiysk (ex-Giulio Cesare) blew up and their circa 1911 Gangut-class “school battleships” finally gave up the ghost. The French held on to Jean Bart until 1970, although she had been in reserve since after the Suez affair in 1956.
With that, it was no surprise that when the quartet of Iowas was reactivated in the 1980s to play a role in Reagan’s 600-ship Navy, they were “modernized” with 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from eight funky four-shot armored box launchers as well as 16 Harpoon anti-ship missiles in place of some of their WWII-era retired AAA gun mounts. In a nod to the facts, the missiles all out-ranged the battleships’ gun armament.
Fast forward to the 1st Gulf War and Mighty Mo, USS Missouri (BB-63), chunked 28 Tomahawks and 783 rounds of 16-inch shells at Saddam’s forces while dodging a Persian Gulf filled with naval mines of all flavors– as well as the occasional anti-ship missile counterfire.
16-inch (410 mm) guns fired aboard the battleship USS MISSOURI (BB-63) as night shelling of Iraqi targets takes place along the northern Kuwaiti coast during Operation Desert Storm. Date 6 February 1991. Photo by PH3 Dillon. DN-ST-91-09306
As for Missouri, the Iowas were not able to carry Sea Sparrow point defense launchers as they could not be shock-hardened to deal with the vibration from the battleship’s main guns, so they had an air defense provided by soft kill countermeasures such as chaff, decoys, and ducks; along with a quartet of CIWS 20mm Phalanx guns and five Stinger MANPAD stations– meaning a modern anti-ship missile would have to be killed either by an escort or at very close range. Good thing the Iowas had as much as 19.5-inches of armor plate!
While closing in with the enemy-held coastline to let her 16s reach out and touch someone on 23 February 1991, Missouri came in-range of a battery of shore-based Chinese-made CSS-C-2 Silkworm anti-ship missiles. One missed while the second was intercepted by Sea Darts from a nearby screening destroyer, the Type 42-class HMS Gloucester (D96). The intercepted Silkworm splashed down about 700 yards from Missouri.
USS Missouri under Attack by Iraqi Silkworm Painting, Oil on Canvas Board; by John Charles Roach; 1991; Framed Dimensions 28H X 34W Accession #: 92-007-U Official caption: “While providing gunfire support to harass the Iraqi troops in Kuwait in preparation for a possible amphibious landing, USS Missouri (BB-63) was fired upon by an Iraqi Silkworm anti-ship missile. By the use of infrared flares and chaff, the missile’s guidance was confused. It crossed close astern of Missouri and was engaged and shot down by HMS Gloucester (D-96).”
Royal Navy Commander John Tighe told reporters two Sea Dart missiles were fired by the Gloucester less than 50 seconds after the ship’s radar detected the incoming Iraqi missiles at about 5 a.m.
Tighe said one Sea Dart scored a direct hit, destroying the Iraqi missile. He said a second missile launched by the Iraqis veered into the sea.
The commander said allied airplanes subsequently attacked the Silkworm missile launch site. He said that while he had not received a battle damage assessment, he was ″fairly confident that site will not be used to launch missiles against the ships again.”
Missouri did take some damage that day, from CIWS rounds fired by the escorting frigate USS Jarrett (FFG-33), which had locked on to one of the battleship’s chaff clouds and opened fire. One sailor was wounded by 20mm DU shrapnel.
Today, battleships left the Naval List for the final time in 1995 and all that made it that far are preserved as museums. The missiles, however, endure.
“Bloop!: A Marine grenadier fires an M-79 round into a sniper’s position in Hue as 1st Marine Division Leathernecks advance toward the Citadel.” 22 February 1968
Official USMC photo by Lance Corporal R. J. Smith. From the Jonathan Abel Collection (COLL/3611), Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections.
