Tan is the new black

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Just in case you have had your head in the sand in the past few years, everyone in the gun industry seems to be smitten with khaki guns. Described as “coyote” or “flat dark earth” or simply just the more low-speed “tan,” Sig and Glock jumped on board with the muted sand color a few years ago with their offerings to the Army’s Modular Handgun System program which became the M17/M18 pistol– as it was a Picatinny Arsenal requirement in the contract. Since then, it has become the biggest thing not only in the rifle and riot gun market but especially in handguns.

With that in mind, in the past few weeks both Smith and Walther have come out with factory FDE/Coyote versions of their M&P M2.0 Compact and PPQ M2 pistolas.

The S&W M&P M2.0 in other-than-noir

The companion Walther.

The Smith, with a very aggressive texture on the grip, could actually be better than the traditional black as it will hide the skin that is harvested from the carrier’s side. I speak from experience!

Out of ammunition, God Save the King

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With Arnhem lost, the Britsh light infantry of 1 Airborne Division holding the increasingly pressured Oosterbeek perimeter some 75 years ago this week, was gratefully able to be evacuated.

Opposed by units that included two Waffen SS panzer divisions (albeit rebuilding) the British had mostly STEN guns, bolt-action No. 4 Enfield .303s, light mortars, and a smattering of anti-tank weapons such as 6-pdr (57mm) rifles and PIATs. Still, they held the line often without water, ammunition, and food for over a week.

Hard to image men with 9mm subguns facing down Tigers rushed to the battle directly from Germany via high-speed train Blitztransport.

British 1st Airborne Division takes cover in a shell hole, Arnhem, 17 September 1944 NAM. 2005-12-38-72

A paratrooper armed with a PIAT and Enfield rifles covers a road at Arnhem, 18 September 1944 Market Garden British NAM. 2005-12-38-50

British paratrooper with STEN defending Divisional Headquarters at the Hartenstein Hotel, Arnhem, on 23 September 1944 STEN Market Garden NAM. 2005-12-38-44

Pegasus flag: Private Morris of Acton, London, 1st Airborne Division’s HQ Hartenstein Hotel, 20 September 1944 Market Garden STEN NAM. 2005-12-38-28

Private J Connington of Selby, Yorkshire, in action with his Sten gun, 20 September 1944 Market Garden NAM. 2005-12-38-21

Troops dug in holding Brigade Headquarters, 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem, Operation MARKET GARDEN, 18 September 1944 STEN NAM. 2005-12-38-49

The RAF and USAAF tried in vain to drop supplies to the embattled Paras but some 93 percent of the loads fell into German hands, who gratefully accepted them. They could use the 9mm ammo, as well as the food and medical supplies. For the weapons they didn’t have ammo for, spares were dropped.

The rundown:

Those 16,000 PIAT rounds would have been very welcome

By 25 September 1944, on the 9th day of the operation (remember, the Paras had been expected to be relieved after just 48 hours) only 2,163 British Airborne troops were able to be evacuated back across the Rhine. The British 1st Airborne went into Holland some 9,000 strong.

1 Abn Divisional commander, Maj. Gen. Roy Urquhart, who during the battle was largely out of touch with most of his units, in concluding his 52-page report on the operation in January 1945, said it was

“…not 100% a success and did not end quite as was intended. The losses were heavy but all ranks appreciate that the risks involved were reasonable. There is no doubt that all would willingly undertake another operation under similar conditions in the future.

We have no regrets. 

Hind!

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In the Donguz training ground in the arid Orenburg region this month, the Russians have been running the division-sized Tsentr-2019 (Centre 2019) military exercise. The Russian Ministry of Defense just did a photo dump showing off the goods, complete with lots of Mi-24 Hinds and T-72B3 tanks.

Sure, they are updated 1980s monsters that scream Tom Clancy, but they still look decidedly wicked and will have you waking up in a Wolverine-style cold sweat.

 

Understanding the ‘most expensive handgun in the world’

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Between its innovative “squeeze-cocking” feature and its West German craftsmanship, Heckler & Koch’s P7 was billed as “the best combat pistol” on the market when it was released in Europe, pitched to police and military use.

Once it crossed the Atlantic, this morphed into the world’s “most expensive handgun” in marketing materials in the U.S. in the 1980s with a list of the reasons why the P7 was superior to the more economical options.

With a fixed cold hammer-forged barrel and polygonal rifling, the all-steel P7 was accurate while the 110-degree grip angle was billed as being very natural. Reliable, the P7 was designed so that an empty case would extract and eject even if the extractor was missing from the handgun. Using a hybrid gas-delayed blowback, recoil was light.

It was imported in a few different varieties.

This HK P7 PSP with a five-digit serial number is “PW Arms Redmond, WA” import marked and was produced in West Germany in the early 1990s.

This HK P7M8 is a Sterling, Virginia-marked import produced in West Germany in the mid-1990s. Note the difference in the trigger guard which now has a heat shield, the improved rear sight, and grip from the P7 above. The gun also has an ambi magazine release just below the guard and a lanyard loop in place of the original PSP’s heel-mounted release.

Add to this the P7M13, with the ability to carry 13+1 rounds, notably sported by fictional German terrorist-turned-crook Hans Gruber.

Ultimately, the P7 series was retired by HK over a decade ago but you can be sure that the legacy of these patrician pistols will endure as long as Die Hard is considered a Christmas movie.

Happy Fall, guys!

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Soviet frontoviks with a straw-camouflaged ZPU-4, a quad PM 1910 Maxim gun set up, getting ready for the Great Pumpkin.

Or maybe it was a Stuka they were looking for…

Nonetheless, Happy Fall!

Royal Mail catches the maritime bug

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Marine artist Robert G Lloyd was recently tapped by Royal Mail to paint both HMS Dreadnought, perhaps one of the most beautiful battlewagons ever, as well as the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.

The stamps are part of a eight-ship set that also includes: Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose (1st class), Charles I’s Sovereign of the Seas (later renamed HMS Royal Sovereign and in the mid-17th Century the most potent man-o-war afloat: £1.55); HMS Victory; HMS Beagle which carried Charles Darwin on his revolutionary evolutionary voyage (£1.60); ironclad HMS Warrior (£1.55); and, naturally, HMS King George V (£1.35).

Get mellow with the Commodores

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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Navy Band’s Commodores jazz ensemble. They have a gala concert at Rachel M. Schlesinger Hall in Alexandria, Va., this afternoon at 3 p.m.

Unprintable Phraseology

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In the interest of, Happy Friday, here is this May 1945 U.S. Army Signal Corps image of an M4 Sherman tank crew from the Library of Congress.

"A tank sunk in 5 feet of water waits for towing equipment. The Tank Commander gives vent to his feelings with a string of unprintable phraseology, while his driver uses a helmet to bale out the interior. Okinawa."

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Offical caption:

“A tank sunk in 5 feet of water waits for towing equipment. The Tank Commander gives vent to his feelings with a string of unprintable phraseology, while his driver uses a helmet to bale out the interior. Okinawa.”

A sight not seen since 1941

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HMS Prince of Wales (R09), second of the UK’s Queen Elizabeth-class carriers maneuvered out of the basin at Rosyth Dockyard yesterday and into the Firth of Forth. From there, she will wait for the time when the tide is right to head out to the North Sea and begin her contractor sea trials.

It will be the first time since 1941 that a British warship with the name has been at sea. Although the Royal Navy has previously used the moniker no less than six times going back to 1765, the last HMS Prince of Wales (53) was a King George V-class battleship that famously duked it out with SMS Bismarck, although still incomplete, only to be sunk by land-based Japanese bombers immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The well-worn battleship HMS Prince of Wales mooring in “peacetime” British Singapore, 4 December 1941. Only seven months earlier she had been under the guns of the Bismarck and six days after this photo was taken she was on the seabed (Photo: IWM)

THE SINKING OF HMS REPULSE AND HMS PRINCE OF WALES, DECEMBER 1941 (HU 2763) A Japanese aerial photograph showing HMS PRINCE OF WALES (top) and HMS REPULSE during the early stages of the attack in which they were sunk. HMS REPULSE had just been hit for the first time (12.20 hours). Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205022172

Let us hope the seventh Prince of Wales will see a much more happy career.

That good old-fashioned Colt Confusion

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Colt first began marketing the semi-auto AR-15 Sporter to consumers in 1963 and continued to sell the SP-1 (R6000) series with few changes until 1984, since moving on to other AR-style rifles.

So last week, Colt signaled they were getting out of the consumer rifle market, at least for now, which basically means they weren’t going to sell AR-15s to the public. This set about much hand-wringing by some pro-gun advocates who called the company all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons and some high-fiving from anti-gun groups who all thought it fit their agenda of fewer guns in fewer places until that number is 0/0.

Sure, it was a big move. But it was one that you could see coming from a mile away.

Long the only game in the AR-15 market, Colt had exclusive rights to the platform for a generation after they bought the program from the Armalite Division of Fairchild Aircraft in 1961. However, once the basic design passed into the public domain, dozens of AR-specific companies such as Bushmaster, Daniel Defense, Eagle, and Olympic sprouted up, nibbling away at Colt’s dominance of the market.

More recently, traditional gun makers such as Remington, Ruger, Sig Sauer, Savage, and Smith & Wesson all jumped on the ever-growing domestic AR train, effectively crowding Colt out of its own niche. This has seen the company switch gears and return to popular offerings it long ago put to pasture, such as revolvers.

Then, on Wednesday, the other shoe dropped with the Pentagon saying that Colt had just won a $42 million M4 contract in the form of Foreign Military Sales to several U.S. overseas allies.

“Our warfighters and law enforcement personnel continue to demand Colt rifles and we are fortunate enough to have been awarded significant military and law enforcement contracts,” said Dennis Veilleux, Colt’s president and Chief Executive Officer, in a statement Thursday. “Currently, these high-volume contracts are absorbing all of Colt’s manufacturing capacity for rifles.”

So will Colt return to the consumer market once their military orders are filled? As long as they can be competitive, you can bet your sweet bippy they will.

And the beat goes on…

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