With its custom 3.25-inch barrel and chopped-down frame, this circa 1905-06 era compact 7+1 Luger 9mm pistol is super cute and is of the style typically referred to as a “Baby Luger.”
Of note, this exact luger is well documented as having been built by DWM for inventor Georg Luger, for his personal use and has his “GL” initials on the toggle.
Chopped down, the prototype was made from a modified frame with a shortened mag and grip panels to boot and has been documented in numerous books on the Luger
The gun was produced from existing frames, rather than having a new one forged.
This is one of three original 7-shot “Baby Lugers” that are known to exist in the world today, with this example possibly being the only known example with a 3 1/4 inch length barrel. To shorten the overall length of the frame, the original grip straps were cut in two at the DWM factory and then brazed back together. This extensive of a frame and magazine modification is why these pistols were personally modified under the direct supervision of Georg Luger.
The U.S. Coast Guard’s Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron, or HITRON, is celebrating its 20th anniversary and shows no signs of slowing down. In 1999, six pilots and four newly USMC-trained aviation gunners were brought together to prove the concept of armed helicopters — a mission the USCG had steered away from in the past.
Armed with stun grenades as well as M16A2 rifles and an FN M240 general-purpose machine gun for warning shots, they carried a Robar RC50 long-range heavy rifle for disabling fire. During this early phase, the group encountered five go-fasts and stopped all five with disabling fire. They arrested 17 smugglers — none of whom were injured thanks to the accurate fire of the Coasties.
After this test, the Coast Guard gave the go-ahead to move forward with a full-scale squadron sized unit and HITRON was born.
Starting with a leased helicopter (an MD Explorer dubbed the MH 90 Enforcer), they eventually moved to field eight sweet Augusta AW109s (also leases) designated as MH-68A Stingrays from 2000 to 2008.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (June 1, 2003)–The Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) patrols the skies over the Los Angeles Harbor. The MH-68A helicopter is specially equipped with M-16 rifles, an M240 machine gun, and the RC50 laser-sighted 50-caliber precision rifle. HITRON’s primary missions are drug interdiction and Home Land Security. USCG photo by PA3 Dave Hardesty
Today, more than 200 USCG personnel are currently assigned to the squadron, based at Cecil Field’s Hangar 13 in Jacksonville, Florida. From there, helicopters and crews are deployed to wherever they are needed most, now using the standard Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin.
The Chase, by James Consor, USCG art program
The precision heavy hitter of the aviation gunner today is the Barrett M107A1 .50-caliber heavy rifle. Braced against the doorframe and the strap of the rescue hoist, the 28-pound Barrett can be balanced in a way that’s familiar to any rifleman using a standard sling just on a much larger scale, providing a surprisingly stable platform from which to shoot.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Ð Petty Officer 2nd Class (AMT2) Lee Fenton of Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron takes aim with a decommissioned .50 caliber precision rifle during training in the St. Johns River, Fla., March 26, 2008. Lee is one of several gunners getting qualified on the new MH-65C dolphin helicopter. HITRON started receiving the new helicopter in September 2007. Some additional features on the new helicopter include a forward-looking infrared device and heads-up-display to enhance night operations and an electro-optical sensor system to enhance detection capabilities. Coast Guard photograph by PA2 Bobby Nash.
The gunners train with M33 ball ammo to hit a 16×16-inch target — roughly the engine housing of an outboard motor.
The engine housings of a go-fast boat sports bullet holes, June 25, 2019, in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. A Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron precision marksman used disabling-gunfire to stop the boat during a Coast Guard interdiction. (Photo: U.S. Coast Guard)
HITRON is the only unit of its kind in the U.S. military and officials say they have stopped more than $21 billion worth of illegal drugs in the last 20 years.
Christmas afternoon 1979: my grandfather, a combat veteran of several real-life shooting wars, taught me how to shoot straight when I was just five years old when he handed me my first Red Ryder BB gun.
However, first came the basics of firearm safety.
Thus:
Fast forward 40 years and I have shot literally hundreds of different guns ranging from that .177 to 155mm howitzers across five continents and the basics of safety have all remained the same.
I’ve also trained thousands, both in LE/Security courses and “civilian” CCW classes and the first thing that happens is a check of all guns, pockets, boxes, tables, and floors to ensure that nothing resembling brass or ammo is removed– not only from the chamber and magazines but from the area altogether– before the class commences. Chambers then get inspected by at least two other sets of eyeballs and fingers beside the class member’s to build confidence that no one is going to get zapped by a negligent discharge.
Even then, said muzzle remains clear of people and fingers remain off the trigger/out of the trigger well until in a safe and cleared direction/environment. You could almost say that we treated the guns as if they were loaded, even when we believed they were not.
The number of casualties seen at my courses over the years (not caused by staplers) = zero.
A Riverside man attending a firearms training class to get his concealed weapons permit was accidentally shot by a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department trainer, the department told The Desert Sun.
On Aug. 10, the man, identified only as a civilian, was participating in a course at the Ben Clark Training Center’s gun range in Riverside.
According to a department news release issued in response to questions from The Desert Sun, gun range staff inspect students’ firearms during the course and students are instructed to unload their guns.
During the inspection, the range staff member — a civilian instructor the department did not identify — administered a “trigger pull test” and shot the student in the leg. Range staff initially treated the injured man.
Let’s get a little refresher on firearms safety here, please. Just 17 words:
Staff Sgt. Amanda Elsenboss, a Woodbury, Connecticut native and marksman/instructor on the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit’s Service Rifle Team, has been racking it up lately.
She just won the 2019 NRA National Long Range Championships held this month at Camp Atterbury, Indiana with a win in the Mustin match and a shoot-off score of 100-9x. She also won the Leech Cup with a 200-15X and 100-6X shoot-off score.
SSG Elsenboss at Camp Perry this month also won both the Viale (with a 198-11x) and Critchfield Memorial Match (200-12x) then shot a 200-12X in the Kerr Match– going on to win the Overall Long Range Champion title with a 1,641 – 95x.
At the 56th Interservice Rifle Championships in 2017, she won the High Service Woman Title, the Interservice 1000-yard Individual Match (Open Division) and the Interservice Individual Long-Range Match. She was also an integral member of two match-winning teams during this 56th annual competition between the military services.
A lefty, she is easy to spot on the range. However, don’t let this image fool you, in her 1,000-yard match at Atterbury this month she shot without a bipod, using only a sling to support the rifle, and aperture sights (no scope).
Tabbed into the Presidents Hundred, she joined the Army in 2010 and has been competing with the AMU since at least 2014 after a prep career where she made the Connecticut All-State Rifle Team out of Nonnewaug High School.
Below is an interview she gave last year.
Expect to see a lot more from her in years to come.
The Lithuanian military recently announced they have taken possession of 400 modified M14s for use by the country’s Army and National Defense Volunteer Forces, the latter roughly equal to the U.S. Army National Guard. The improved guns are built to what the Baltic country describes as the M14 L1 standard for use as a designated marksman rifle.
This includes Czech-made Meoptia ZD 1-4x22mm RD optics and M1A mounts provided by Sadlak Manufacturing in the U.S.
According to local media, the initiative has been in the works since 2016 and the first batch of reworked rifles will go to arm one marksman per squad in the Aukstaitija light infantry brigade, a new reserve unit formed in 2017. A further 500 rifles will go to the NDVF– proving this 1960’s era battle rifle still has some battlefield life left.
As it’s 100 degrees outside, this seems logical to review now.
Popular legend has it that the submachine guns of WWII had trouble penetrating the Soviet Red Army’s padded winter coats. The coats, called “telogreika” (body warmer) were first fielded during the war to help keep Stalin’s frontoviks cozy amid the frosty Russian winter while they repelled the “fascist invaders” in what the country continues to call “The Great Patriotic War.”
Hero of the Soviet Union Semyon Agafonov – intelligence officer of the 181st reconnaissance detachment of the Red Army. Note his Mosin Sniper with PE scope and padded telogreika uniform
The myth is that German MP38/40 SMGs, firing puny 9mm parabellum, were no match for the awesome Ivan thus swaddled in his quilted telogreika or two. The legend further swelled with tales of Chinese volunteers fighting in the Korean war, clad in cloned jackets, overcoming .30-caliber M1/M2 Carbines through the magic of layered cotton and wool. A more modern version of this involves Carhartt jackets and the NYPD’s 9mm handguns.
To debunk this, Kalashnikov Concern’s in-house historian, Vladimir Onokoy, coats (get it?) a dummy in not one but two telogreikas then riddles the construction with an MP40 that just happens to be around in the above video. The results tend to vindicate the burp guns.
As you have come this far, check out the below debunk of the whole NYPD thing as well.
On this day some 105 years ago, British Army Cpt. Francis Octavius Grenfell– aged 33 and a noted polo player– led the 9th (Queen’s Royal) Lancers into combat against the Germans at Audregnies, a small village west of Mons in Northern France. The Germans were advancing on the far west flank of the British Expeditionary Force during the Battle of Mons and threatened to encircle the Old Contemptibles of the 5th Division. Grenfell and his lancers were busy that day, both charging the on-coming Germans and later pulling back some abandoned British field guns, keeping them from being captured.
Richard Caton Woodville later immortalized the action at Audregnies in the below painting, from the National Army Museum collection.
NAM. 1978-09-22-1
As noted by the NAM:
Although not the first action of World War One (1914-1918) for which the Victoria Cross was awarded, Grenfell was the first to be gazetted, that is, officially listed in ‘The London Gazette’ as a recipient. The citation was for ‘gallantry in action against unbroken infantry at Audregnies and for gallant conduct in assisting to save the guns of the 119th Battery, Royal Field Artillery, near Doubon the same day’.
Notably, the 9th later took part in the final “lance-on-lance” action by British horse-soldiers when, on 7 September 1914 at Montcel à Frétoy, Lt. Col. David Campbell led a charge of two troops against a squadron of lance-armed Prussian Guards Dragoons.
After service in the Great War and as a tank unit in WWII, the 9th was amalgamated with the 12th Royal Lancers to form the 9th/12th Royal Lancers in 1960. They were later further amalgamated with the Queen’s Royal Lancers in 2015 to form the Royal Lancers, which today is an armored recon battalion equipped with Scimitar vehicles. They are the only “lancers” still in the British Army although they officially retired the weapons for field use in 1928.
However, they still use the famous skull and crossbones badge that is one of the most recognizable in the British Army with the motto: ‘Death or Glory’.
As for the heroic Capt. Grenfell, he later fell in action near Ypres in 1915, as did his twin brother, Riversdale.
The foyer of 2e RPC Colonial Paras, in Algeria showing the SKS rifles they took from the Egyptians when the unit jumped on Port Fouad during the Suez Crisis in 1956. They were the first example of the weapon captured in the West.
One of the last semi-auto-only military rifles produced (as late as the 1970s) it was fielded at the same time as the Kalashnikov, is still regularly encountered wherever the latter is found and is arguably why the 7.62x39mm round became popular in the U.S in the first place. Why? Because an estimated 1 million of these guns were imported to the states from China alone in the 1980s and likely even more than that from the former USSR and Yugoslavia since 1991.
That led the gun from looking like this:
To this, once given the Red White and Blue treatment by companies like SG Works and TAPCO:
Nothing like a flintlock in the face with no eyepro.
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jerine Lee/Released, 190820-N-QN361
Official caption: “BOSTON (Aug. 20, 2019) Chief petty officer selects, Sailors who have been selected for the paygrade of E-7, come together for Chief Heritage week aboard the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world, USS Constitution. During the selects’ week spent aboard Constitution, Sailors teach them a variety of time-honored maritime evolutions while living and working aboard the ship.”
Bored? DW just released this interesting 40~ min doc on Gerhard Mertins including first-hand interviews with his widow.
Who was Mertins? One of Kurt Student’s original fallschirmjägers, he was a Gran Sasso raider (and a Knights Cross recipient) in WWII, then became a key shadow man during the Cold War including working for/with the West German BND intelligence organ. This later included moving and shaking in the Middle East and South America with names like Pinochet and Carlos the Jackal popping up.
