Ever heard of the SIG SHR?

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Only made for a few years, the SHR 970 bolt-action rifle offered a marriage of Old World craftsmanship and modern innovation for a handful of lucky hunters.

The SHR (Swiss Hunting Rifle) series rifles were introduced in the U.S. in 1998 and imported to the country by SIG Arms with the tag line, “There are only two ways you’ll miss your target…not buying one or shooting with both eyes closed.” Pitched with one-gun functionality, the forward-looking rifle could be swapped out across seven calibers through an interchangeable barrel system– long before today’s modular platforms like the Daniel Defense Delta 5.

And they weren’t that bad looking either…

More in my column at Guns.com

Slow Death of the Nachi, 75 years on

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One of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s mighty quartet of Myoko-class heavy cruisers, Nachi was a 13,000-ton brawler built at the Kure Naval Arsenal and commissioned in 1928. Carrying five dual twin turrets each with 8″/50cal 3rd Year Type naval guns, her class was the most heavily-armed cruisers in the world when they were constructed.

Nachi fought in the Java Sea (sharing in the sinking the Dutch cruiser HNLMS Java along with Graf Spee veteran HMS Exeter) and at the Komandorski Islands (where she, in turn, took a beating from the USS Salt Lake City) before she ended up as part of VADM Kiyohide Shima’s terribly utilized cruiser-destroyer force during the Battle of Surigao Strait in October 1944.

Shima, who was later described by one author as “the buffoon of the tragedy” ordered his cruisers to attack two islands he thought were American ships then raised the signal to turn and beat feet after they found the wreckage of the battleship Fuso, a move that left Nachi, the 5th Fleet flagship, damaged in a crackup with the heavy cruiser Mogami, the latter of which had to be left behind for the U.S. Navy to finish off.

Nachi pulled in to Manila Bay, which was still something of a Japanese stronghold on the front line of the Pacific War, for emergency repairs.

Discovered there two weeks after the battle by the Americans, while Shima was ashore at a meeting, Nachi was plastered by carrier SBDs and TBMs flying from USS Lexington and Essex.

In all, she absorbed at least 20 bombs and five torpedos, breaking apart into three large pieces and sinking in about 100-feet of water under the view of Corregidor. The day was 5 November 1944, 75 years ago today.

Nachi maneuvers to avoid bomb and torpedo plane attacks in Manila Bay, 5 November 1944. Note torpedo tracks intersecting at the bottom, and bomb splashes. Catalog #: 80-G-272728

Nachi under air attack from Task Group 38.3, in Manila Bay, 5 November 1944. Photographed by a plane from USS ESSEX (CV-9). Catalog #: 80-G-287018

Nachi under air attack from Task Group 38.3, in Manila Bay, 5 November 1944. Photographed by a plane from USS ESSEX (CV-9). Catalog #: 80-G-287019

Nachi dead in the water after air attacks in Manila Bay, 5 November 1944. Taken by a USS LEXINGTON plane. Catalog #: 80-G-288866

Nachi dead in the water and sinking, following air attacks by Navy planes, in Manila Bay, 5 November 1944. A destroyer of the FUBUKI class is in the background. Taken by a USS LEXINGTON plane. Note: Destroyer is either AKEBOND or USHIO. Catalog #: 80-G-288868

Nachi sinking in Manila Bay, after being bombed and torpedoed by U.S. Navy carrier planes, 5 November 1944. Note that her bow has been blown off, and the main deck is nearly washed away. The photo was taken from a USS LEXINGTON plane. Catalog #: 80-G-288871

Nachi nearly sunk, after U.S. carrier plane bomb and torpedo attacks, in Manila Bay, 5 November 1944. Air bubbles at right are rising from her midship section, while the stern is still floating, perpendicular to the water. The photo was taken from a USS LEXINGTON plane. Catalog #: 80-G-288873

Although close to shore and with several Japanese destroyers and gunboats at hand, Nachi went down with 80 percent of her crew including her skipper, Capt. Kanooka Enpei.

Also headed to the bottom with the ship were 74 officers of the IJN’s Fifth Fleet’s staff and a treasure trove of intel documents and records, the latter of which was promptly salvaged by the U.S. Navy when they moved into Manila Bay and put to good use. The library brought to the surface by hardhat divers was called “the most completely authentic exposition of current Japanese naval doctrine then in Allied hands, detailed information being included relative to the composition, and command structure of the entire Japanese fleet.”

Even though it was late in the war, Nachi was the first of her class to be lost in action. Within six months, two of her remaining sisters, Ashigara and Haguro, were sunk while Myoko was holed up in crippled condition at Singapore, where the British under Mountbatten would capture her in September. 

Wild Wind: Terrible War Movie

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I like plumbing the depths of Amazon Prime’s streaming videos as they have lots of great old war/military movies free to watch online (e.g. King and Country, Star of Africa, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, A Bridge Too Far, The Bridge at Remagen, Catch 22, Pork Chop Hill, Fortress of War, et. al) and if nothing else, I will just have them playing in the background while I am working or doing other things.

However, they also have some unmitigated turds.

One of which is Wild Wind.

Made in the early 1980s, likely to try and riff off of Force 10 from Navarone as it has a very similar feel to it and was made at the same time, it is a Yugoslavian-filmed production that centers on Red Partisans and Nazi-allied Chetniks with a smattering of Allied and Axis toppings. It even has storied 1950s leading man and cowboy actor George Montgomery in what was his final film role.

However, the film is rubbish.

Weak story, bad performances, zero budget for SFX, and utterly filled with tropes. Don’t get me wrong, Tito’s Yugoslavia often rolled out the red carpet (no pun intended) for film crews looking to get that old-fashioned WWII feel– see the aforementioned Force 10 as well as Kelly’s Heroes— but the budget on Wild Wind must have been pocket change and no one bribed the right people.

For an example of just how bad this movie is, look at this screengrab from a “riveting” interrogation scene where the local SS guy is trying to get the secret U.S. OSS spy (chubby white guy with the Ancient Aliens hair) to confess by threatening the life of an innocent while a needlessly busty wench cackles in approval:

Wtf? Also, how about that wardrobe?!

Note that said SS goon gets his Luger, I mean Ruger 22, into play.

Come on, you are telling me there wasn’t a Luger or even a P38 available in Yugoslavia in the 1980s?

The scene looks like something more akin to a lurid cover from a 1960s pulp magazine than anything based on reality.

Pesky Nazis hiding out in South America was a reoccurring theme in 1960/70s pulp, as seen in this cover by Norem

They do manage to cough up a couple scenes of horse-mounted partisans, with Yugo M48 Mausers, but it’s just not enough to save it.

In the end, don’t waste your time. Save yourself!

HMS Urge, found on eternal patrol

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HMS Urge, IWM FL 3433

Commissioned 12 December 1940, the British U-class submarine HMS Urge (N 17) served in World War II throughout 1941, seeing extensive action in the Med. Over the course of 20 patrols, she proved a one-submarine wrecking crew to the Italian Navy, sinking the Giussano-class light cruiser Giovanni delle Bande Nere as well as extensively damaging the cruiser Bolzano and battleship Vittorio Veneto.

On 27 April 1942, the 16-month-old Urge left Malta en route to Alexandria but failed to arrive on schedule and was reported overdue on 7 May. Her crew, commanded by LCDR Edward Philip Tomkinson, DSO and Bar, RN, was never heard from again.

Her shield, which had been landed prior to shipping out, is currently on display at The Register Office in Bridgend, Wales. The town, which contributed around £300,000 to the war, had adopted HMS Urge as part of national “Warship Week” in 1941.

HM Submarine Urge was discovered in a search conducted by staff from the University of Malta just off Malta’s Grand Harbour, where she apparently was destroyed on the surface by a mine. In addition to her 32 crewmembers, she had been carrying 11 other naval personnel and a journalist.

More here.

 

Gerald, turning and burning

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Just the Ford making some high-speed turns on 29 October. Looks pretty good for a carrier that has been sidelined for the past 15 months in post-delivery repairs err, post-shakedown availability.

Hopefully she will meet the Navy’s new guideline of being operational “well before” 2024.

Note the extensive arrays on her island.

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Connor Loessin)

The Shok Valley sounds like a nice place to never go

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U.S. Army Master Sgt. Matthew Williams was presented with the Medal of Honor at the White House on Wednesday. Williams earned the award for his actions in Shok Valley, Afghanistan, on April 6, 2008, while a weapons guy on an SF A-team, Operational Detachment Alpha 3336.

“It was kind of quiet, then all of a sudden everything exploded all at once – machine gun fire, some RPGs started going off. [The insurgents] had some pretty good shooters and a lot of people up there waiting for us.”

Originally recognized with the Silver Star, which was ugraded in September, he is still on active duty.

Welcome home, Lt. Crotty

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Lt. James Crotty as lieutenant junior grade aboard a Coast Guard cutter. Crotty, a 1934 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, served throughout the U.S. including Alaska prior to service in the South Pacific. Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Memorial Library, Norfolk, Va.

R 290809 OCT 19
FM COMDT COGARD WASHINGTON DC//CCG//
TO ALCOAST
UNCLAS //N05360//
ALCOAST 335/19
COMDTNOTE 5360
SUBJ:  THE RETURN HOME OF LT THOMAS JAMES EUGENE CROTTY, USCG
1. It is my honor to report that we will bring LT Thomas James Eugene “Jimmy” Crotty, a Coast Guard and American hero, home.
2. LT Crotty was born on 18 March 1912, in Buffalo, New York. He graduated from the United States Coast Guard Academy in 1934 after serving as Company Commander, class president and captain of the Academy’s football team. He served his first seven years after graduation onboard cutters in New York City, Seattle, Sault Ste. Marie and San Diego.
3. In the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, he served with the U.S. Navy as Executive Officer onboard USS QUAIL, part of the 16th Naval District-in-Shore Patrol Headquarters, Cavite Navy Yard, Philippines. He aided in the defense of Corregidor during the Japanese invasion in the early days of WWII, supervising the destruction of ammunition and facilities at the Navy Yard and scuttling the fleet submarine USS SEA LION to prevent its use by the Japanese. As the Japanese advanced on Corregidor, LT Crotty eagerly took charge of cannibalized deck guns from the ship and led a team of brave enlisted Marines and Army personnel fighting for an additional 30 days until the Japanese bombardment finally silenced the defense of the island fortress.
4. Following the fall of Corregidor, LT Crotty was taken prisoner by the Japanese and interned at the Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Camp. After his death on 19 July 1942 from diphtheria, he was buried in a common grave along with all those who died that day. 
5. After World War II, the U.S. government moved remains from the common graves to the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Republic of the Philippines. On 10 September2019, as part of an exhaustive effort by DoD to bring every service member home, LT Crotty was positively identified from the remains exhumed from the cemetery in early 2018.
6. LT Crotty is the only known Coast Guardsman to serve in defense of the Philippines; his service authorizes the Coast Guard to display the Philippine Defense Battle Streamer on our Coast Guard Ensign. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and many other decorations. A full accounting of his service can be found in the blog at:
https://compass.coastguard.blog/2019/09/18/the-long-blue-line-lt-crotty-and-the-battle-for-corregidor/
7. On Friday, 01 November 2019, arrival honors will be held at Joint Reserve Base, Niagara NY at 1000. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, 02 November 2019 at 1200 at St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church, Buffalo, NY followed by interment with full military honors at Holy Cross Cemetery in Lackawanna, NY.
8. LT Crotty embodied our core values of Honor, Respect, and most especially Devotion to Duty. As we celebrate his life and legacy, we also celebrate the lives of the more than 600 Coast Guard members we were not able to bring home from WWII. He represents the proud legacy of the Long Blue Line of Coast Guard men and women who place themselves in harm’s way every day in the service to their country and fellow man. He is one of many who made the ultimate sacrifice; we should never forget his efforts and the sacrifices of the thousands of Coast Guard men and women who served so bravely in our service over the last 229 years.
9. To honor LT Crotty, I ask every Coast Guard unit and member to observe a moment of silence as he begins his journey home on Thursday, 31 October 2019 at 1900Z (1500 EDT/1200 PDT/0900 HST).
10. The Half-masting of the national ensign for all Coast Guard units will take place when LT Crotty is honored at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in the spring of 2020. Information will be sent SEPCOR.
11. Admiral Karl L. Schultz, Commandant, sends.
12. Internet release is authorized.

That 80s Ruger Feeling

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Bill Ruger had already made a name for his company by 1985 when it came to rifles, revolvers, and rimfires– then came the P-series pistols.

Although Ruger had missed the boat on the U.S. Air Force’s pistol replacement trials in the late 1970s, and the first couple rounds of the Army’s follow-on trails to phase out the M1911– all of which had been won by the Beretta 92– by 1985 company had a double-stack 9mm that would show up for the postscript XM10 pistol trials.

Ruger’s first production centerfire semi-automatic pistol, the P-85, had a lot going on. Using an aluminum alloy frame, stainless barrel, and cast steel slide, the 15+1 shot semi-auto was designed as a combat handgun in an era that had little competition. Double action/single action with an oversized trigger guard and an ambi magazine release, the P-85 was comparable to early “wonder nines” like the S&W 459 and then only recently introduced Sig P226 and Glock 17.

Ruger P-85

Introduced back when Atari was cutting edge, the Ruger P-85 and its descendants were the Connecticut-based gun maker’s contestant in the battle of the “wonder nines.”

More in my column at Guns.com

75 years ago: You can run…

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A Japanese Navy Kawanishi H8K2 “Emily” patrol seaplane, #801-77, flies close to the ocean while trying to escape from a PB4Y-1 Privateer patrol bomber (a U.S. Navy B-24 Liberator with only minor modifications), just East of the Ryukyu islands, (25 20’N, 130 30’E) on 31 October 1944.

The PB4Y these images were taken by, flown by LT. Herbert G. Box of VPB-117 (“The Blue Raiders”), shot this Emily down, recorded at 1345(I).

Equipped with the early AN/APQ-5 low-altitude radar bombing gear, the PB4Y-1 shown above could carry 10 .50 cal machine guns in four turrets and two waist positions as well as 1,200-pounds of bombs on up to 1,500-mile patrols.

A big help in the air war over the Pacific between the U.S. and Japanese flying boats was the armored and hydraulically-powered ERCO bow turret, with twin .50 cal machine guns and 800 rounds of tracer at the ready. It could rotate 90 degrees to either port or starboard.  

In the old adage of “he who lives by the sword,” Box’s aircraft, Sweating it Out (USAF B-24J-155-CO 44-40312, BuNo 38760), was less than two weeks later severely damaged by anti-aircraft fire from Muko-Jima Retto in the Bonin Islands, the site of a Japanese weather and radio station. The crippled PB4Y made it back to within 30 miles of its Tinian base before being forced to ditch. Upon hitting the ocean, the plane broke into three pieces and five enlisted aircrewmen were lost. Seven survivors, including an injured Box, were rescued the next morning.

Between its establishment on 1 February 1944 and its decommissioning on 4 November 1945, Patrol Bombing Squadron 117 flew an impressive 1,617 missions, averaging 11.4 hours each, primarily on 1,000-mile patrols in support of the U.S. Third Fleet.

Throughout the Blue Raider’s Pacific War, they tallied 210 Japanese ships of some 109,000 tons (24 during one three week period alone), made 300 attacks on Japanese installations, and were credited with 58 enemy aircraft shot down, earning a Presidental Unit Citation.

VPB-117s crews were so good at splashing Zekes, Emilys, Jakes, Vals, and Judys that they count the highest number of air-to-air victories among U.S. Navy patrol squadrons of all time and had an unprecedented five crews that chalked up five or more “kills,” an impressive number when you take into account that the whole fleet only had eight such crews. At least two individual PBY4Y-1 gunners earned the title of “ace” with five kills each: SFC Richard H. Thomas of VPB-117 and ARM2 Paul Ganshirt of VD-3.

In exchange, The Blue Raiders lost 17 of their own PB4Ys along with 72 officers and men.

Getting the creeps at Fort Morgan

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Every year the good folks at Fort Morgan run a historic nighttime tour around Halloween focusing on the more morbid side of things there. As the fort is 200 years old (construction began in 1819) and was the centerpiece in the Battle of Mobile Bay in August 1864 as well as being garrisoned off and on from the 1830s through 1945, there is a lot to hear and see. As a bonus, these tours often open up sometimes closed areas of the fort, which is always a treat.

Besides, as I made the Fort central to the plot of my 2013 zombie novel (shameless plug), it just made sense.

I caught these images during the tour, which was very worthwhile, so if you can take advantage of the event or others like it, please find the time to do so.

Inside the casemates before sunset

The handprints inside the usually sealed magazine of Battery Duportail, a reinforced concrete, Endicott Period M1888MII 12-inch disappearing gun battery at Fort Morgan. These are about 12 feet off the ground and were made by gunners moving around about stacks of 268-pound shells and tons of bagged powder with their sweaty, chemical-laden hands forever staining the salt and calcium of the walls. The battery was decommissioned in 1931.

Dylan Tucker, Cultural Resource Specialist, Fort Morgan, portraying Confederate B. Gen. Richard Lucian Page, the Virginia-born former U.S. Navy officer who resigned his commission in 1861 to join the Confederate Navy, only to be saddled with an Army command that was on the receiving end of 3,000 shells from the USN!

Overlooking the Endicott-era Portland concrete battery towards Mobile Bay at dusk

Now to try to get to Fort Pickens, who has a similar program, next October…

Battery Langdon, Fort Pickens, NPS photo

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