The first installment of Select Fire, the show I am hosting on Guns.com where we go around checking out cool gun stuff coast-to-coast. On this one, it is a “Guncation” where I stopped off at Machine Gun America and Tank America. It is kinda campy, but tell me what you think:
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, July 10, 2019: The Slayer of Victoria
Here we see the Royal Navy’s Admiral-class early barbette-type pre-dreadnought ironclad battleship HMS Camperdown via The Engineer in 1893. A very modern ship when she was designed, she did, in fact, quickly and easily send another period battlewagon to Neptune’s cold embrace– just not as you would think.
Britain’s first barbette ships, a class that would provide the basic format for all the Victorian and Edwardian battleships right up until HMS Dreadnought broke the mold in 1906, the so-called Admiral-class vessels were, in actuality, six fairly different vessels.
While all six had roughly the same hull, running about 330 feet in length with a 68-foot beam (although even this varied a few feet between sisters), the class weighed in between 9,500 and 10,600 tons. Armor at its thickest was an impressive 18-inches of iron plate backed by another 20-inches of timber. Each had two centerline funnels and a deep (27+ foot) draft with a relatively low freeboard, a facet common on front-line capital ships of the age. Speed was 16 to 17 knots depending on the ship, which made their ram bows, popular ever since the 1866 Battle of Lissa, deadly at close quarters (more on this later!)
Each had their main armament split fore and aft with secondary and tertiary batteries arranged along the waterline in broadside while five early torpedo tubes were also carried.
A German scheme showing typical international battleships of the 1880s, with Collingwood, the nominal Admiral-class leader, shown second from the bottom right.
When it came to armament, things got wild.
Collingwood mounted two pair of 12″/25cal BL Mk V rifles
Benbow, the final ship of the class, meanwhile, mounted two single Armstrong 16.25″/30cal BL Mk I guns
Benbow, note her huge forward 16.25-incher. That’s 413mm of bore.
As for the middle four ships– Anson, Rodney, Camperdown, and Howe— they mounted four 13.5″/30 caliber (34.3 cm) Mark I “67-ton” guns, often regarded England’s first successful large breechloading naval rifle.
13.5″/30 caliber guns in barbettes of HMS ANSON, colorized by Diego Mar of Postales Navales
Capable of firing a 1,200-pound Palliser shell to 12,260 yards when at a maximum elevation of 13 degrees (!) these guns could switch to AP shells and penetrate up to 11-inches of Krupp steel at 3,000 yards or a whopping 28-inches of vertical iron plate at point blank distances.
Admiral Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleship HMS Rodney pictured in 1890 with her BL 13.5-inch naval guns. Note the 47mm/40cal 3pdr Hotchkiss Mk I anti-torpedo boat gun in the foreground.
As a negative, the ship’s magazines were shallow, carrying just 81 (20 AP, 12 Palliser, 39 common and 10 shrapnel) shells per gun while a trained crew could only keep up a rate of fire of about one round every other minute. Additionally, the open barbette construction gave said crew about 30 seconds of life expectancy when exposed to a naval engagement against an opponent firing more than just spitballs and coconuts.
H.M.S. Camperdown firing big guns, William Lionel Wyllie National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Caird Collection
While all six of Admirals carried a half-dozen BL 6″/26cal BL Mk IV guns as secondaries, their small batteries often varied, with Camperdown and Anson at least toting 12 57mm (6pdr) Hotchkiss Mk Is and a further 10 47mm (3pdr) Hotchkiss anti-boat guns.
Gun drill aboard Camperdown with the QF 6-pounder Nordenfelt guns
Colorized image of HMS Camperdown gunners taking cover on deck with a 6″/26 to the left and 57mm Hotchkiss to the right.
Laid down at HMs Naval Dockyard in Portsmouth on 18 December 1882, Camperdown was the only member of the class constructed there with the other five being built at Pembroke, Chatham, and Blackwall. She was, of course, the third such British warship named after the epic sea clash at Camperdown in 1797 off the coast of the Netherlands in which Admiral Adam Duncan bested the Dutch fleet under Vice Adm. Jan de Winter.
“Action off Camperdown” Stipple engraving by J. Greig after R. Dodd. Published in The Naval Chronicle, September 1800, by Bunney & Gold, London. A view representing the situation shortly before the action ended the Dutch Flagship is seen at center engaged with HMS VENERABLE, while the Dutch 64 gun ship HERCULES drifts afire across these ships’ bows. on the left is HMS MONARCH with her prize, The JUPITER NH 66179
While not very well known outside of the UK or Holland, the engagement was one of the largest of the Napoleonic era prior to Trafalgar and is a key point in British naval history.
Camperdown compared to Trafalgar and Jutland
Completed in May 1889, HMS Camperdown served first as the flag of the RN’s Mediterranean Fleet and then the Channel Fleet while passing in and out of reserve status for the first several years of her life.
By all accounts, she was a happy and proud ship during this time.
Gathering around the rum tub
Then came a fateful day in the summer of 1893.
THE TWIN-SCREW FIRST-CLASS BATTLESHIPS H.M.S CAMPERDOWN AND H.M.S. VICTORIA, from the Graphic
While in the Med on summer exercises under the eye of the Ottoman Turks, Camperdown was in close maneuvers with the rest of the line and struck the brand-new battleship HMS Victoria in broad daylight. In short, Victoria sank following a bizarre order from Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon– a career officer with some 45 years at sea under his belt– to perform a difficult turning order at close range to Camperdown which brought his flagship in collision to Camperdown, the latter of which flew the flag of Tyron’s second-in-command, Rear Admiral Sir Albert Markham.
HMS Camperdown ramming HMS Victoria, Thursday, June 22nd, 1893 off Tripoli. The image shows HMS Victoria (1888) in a collision with the Admiral Class battleship, HMS Camperdown (1885) during close maneuvers on the 22nd June 1893 off the coast at Tripoli in Lebanon by Reginald Graham Gregory. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
The sinking of HMS Victoria by HMS Camperdown after Victoria was rammed during a fleet exercise.
The collision of the HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown 8 July 1893 Le Petit Journal
Tyron was last seen on the bridge of Victoria, as she sank with the loss of over 350 men in something like 13 minutes, largely due to the fact that most of the ship’s hatches were open on the hot summer day in the Med. Tyron’s last words were said to be, “It is entirely my fault.” An RN inquiry into the affair was happy to let Tyron carry the blame.
In true Victorian gothic fashion, the good Admiral’s ghost is said to have appeared that night, to friends attending a party thrown by his wife back in London.
As for Camperdown, her bow ram was almost pulled completely off when she backed out of the sinking Victoria just before that stricken ship capsized, only narrowly missing joining her on the seafloor.
Damaged HMS Camperdown’s bow after collision with HMS Victoria, via Wiki
Camperdown diver suits up for hull checks, from the Army and Navy Illustrated, May 1896. Several images of this diver in harbor operations were immortalized in a series of collectible Tuck Cards
After extensive repairs, Camperdown returned to the Med where she was part of the six-power International Squadron in 1897 that was involved in what was termed the “Cretan Intervention” which ultimately led to the semi-independent Cretan State (before that island was annexed by Greece), separated from Ottoman rule.
International Squadron bombarding Chania, 21 February 1897. B. F. Gribble, from a sketch by a British officer published in The Graphic via Wikimedia Commons
The squadron included not only British ships but those sent by the Kaisers of Austro-Hungary and Germany as well as the French Republic, Royal Italian Navy and units sent by the Tsar. Camperdown, as well as other vessels of the task force, engaged insurgents ashore and landed armed tars and Royal Marines to mop up.
The gunboat diplomacy was to be Camperdown‘s swan song.
Camperdown June 1898 still in her white scheme, just before she would enter the reserve
After but 10 years with the fleet, by September 1899 she was in reserve and would spend the next decade alternating between mothballs and service as a coast guard vessel and submarine tender at Harwick. During this period, she carried a haze gray scheme, her days as a flagship long gone. Notably, she also carried a second mast.
Camperdown is shown with a flotilla of early C-class boats between 1908 and 1911 with, C5 (inboard aft), C2 and C6 in the after trot with C7, C8, and C9 in the forward trot. HM submarine C2, the middle boat in the after trot, bears the number C32 Via Pbenyon http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/RN/Photos/Camperdown_and_C-class_boats.html
She would be sold in 1911 for her value in scrap, a fate shared by all five of her sisters before her. Camperdown was just 22 years old but was hopelessly obsolete.
Her name would be reissued to HMS Camperdown (D32), a Battle-class destroyer commissioned on 18 June 1945.
HMS CAMPERDOWN, BRITISH BATTLE CLASS DESTROYER. MAY AND JUNE 1945. (A 29620) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205016213
In a twist of fate, in 1953, at Plymouth, this subsequent Camperdown was accidentally rammed by the former Flower-class corvette HMS Coreopsis (K32), the latter of which was owned by Ealing Studios at the time and was being used as a floating set for the British WWII film “The Cruel Sea.” Unlike the 1889 crack-up, both Camperdown and Coreopsis survived the encounter.
Since D32 was sold for scrap in 1970, the RN has not issued the “Camperdown” name to any other vessel.
As for the original Camperdown‘s tragic victim, HMS Victoria stands famously upright off the Lebanon coast today, with her bow stuck in the seafloor. She is a very popular wreck for skin divers.
Specs:
Displacement: 10,600 long tons
Length: 330 ft
Beam: 68 ft 6 in
Draught: 27 ft 10 in
Propulsion:
2 3-cyl Maudslay coal-fired steam engines, 12 cylindrical boilers, twin screws
11,500 indicated horsepower at a forced draught
Speed:
17.4-knots, maximum
Range: 7,000nm at 10 knots with 1,200 tons coal
Complement: 530
Armament:
4 x 13.5″/30 caliber (34.3 cm) Mark I “67-ton” guns
6 x BL 6″/26cal BL Mk IV guns
12 x 6-pounder (57 mm) Hotchkiss guns
10 x 3-pounder (47 mm) Hotchkiss guns
5 × 356mm tubes for Whitehead 14-inch torpedos
1 x very deadly bow ram
Armour:
Compound Belt: 18–8 in (457–203 mm) with 178mm timber backing
Bulkheads: 16–7 in (406–178 mm)
Barbettes: 11.5–10 in (292–254 mm)
Conning Tower: 12–2 in (305–51 mm)
Deck: 3–2 in (76–51 mm)
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While in Pascagoula a few days ago, I spotted this familiar old girl in the shallow waters of the muddy Pascagoula River along Ingalls SB’s West Bank.
(Photo: Chris Eger)
Note her Union Jack on the bow, which was only recently raised a couple of weeks ago.
About that…
Commissioned at Bath in 1995, USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) carries the nickname of “Fightin’ Fitz” and recently made international news when, on 17 June 2017, the destroyer was involved in a collision some 50 miles off Japan with the 40,000-ton Philippine-flagged container ship MV ACX Crystal. The encounter damaged the ship, killed seven of her crew were killed– lost in a flooded berthing compartment in the predawn collision– and left a number seriously injured. With her hull open to the sea, swift and effective damage control by her crew saved the vessel.
Fitz has since been in Pascagoula for the past 18 months undergoing a $400~ million repair/refit.
Three weeks ago, at morning colors on June 17, 2019, her crew unveiled a commemorative flag honoring the Sailors who died in a collision in the Sea of Japan two years ago. In addition, the National Ensign and Union Jack were raised on the ship for the first time since November 2017.
From the Navy’s presser:
Designed by current crewmembers, the flag memorializes their seven fallen shipmates. The flag is blue with “DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP” emblazoned above the names of the seven Sailors. The motto is a common Navy phrase, but all Fitzgerald Sailors embodied that spirit on June 17, 2017, when they fought significant flooding and structural damage following the collision.
190617-N-BR740-1106 PASCAGOULA, Miss. (June 17, 2019) The crew of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) unveiled a commemorative flag June 17, 2019, during a remembrance ceremony honoring the Sailors who died in a collision in the Sea of Japan on June 17, 2017. The flag, designed by current crew members, is blue with “DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP” emblazoned above the names of the seven Sailors. (U.S. Navy photo by Samantha Crane/Released)
“I am proud of this flag and proud of our shipmates who helped design it, as it is a product of respect and professionalism that symbolizes their great service and sacrifice,” said CDR Garrett Miller, Fitzgerald commanding officer, who unfurled the commemorative flag for the first time.
“Fitzgerald’s crew designed this flag from scratch as a way to embody those shipmates we lost,” said Cmdr. Scott Wilbur, Fitzgerald’s executive officer. “It will be flown every year on 17 June to honor them and to never forget their sacrifice. The current crew continues to live out that motto while bringing the ship back to the Fleet.”
Burt Reynolds was, of course, a guy’s guy. Besides his prep and college (FSU) athletic career and work on the large and small screen, he was also an avid hunter and firearms collector. As his father was the Chief of Police of Riviera Beach, Florida while he was a youth, Burt no doubt felt a sort of kinship to cop roles, especially those set in the South, and in 1989-90 he played a retired New Orleans PD detective turned Florida houseboat-residing private detective B.L. Stryker for two seasons.
While it was not his best acting, he apparently really dug the guns from the show as he kept the S&W Model 10 .38 special that was used on camera in his “B.L” role until he died and it was later sold at an estate sale, reportedly in unfired condition.
The Stryker Smith
Notably, the Smith was without the on-screen holster used by Reynolds.
That, according to auctioneers, went on to be used in his real life to carry his EDC wheelgun around his Florida homestead. It was an old-school 1970s-era carbon steel round-butt Rossi .38 that had its 4-inch barrel chopped to 2.75-inches and a new sight added.
It has a lot of honest wear.
I have a couple of these old (pre-Taurus) Rossis and will vouch that they are reliable. When talking recently with a friend of mine who cut his teeth in the Brazilain Army’s mountain troops, he also stood by those old Smith-pattern Rossis.
Sold by Julien’s Auctions, it is now on the market again (for $4K), with the verbose tag that “Every day Burt carried this Rossi concealed, where he knew if required he could draw and defend himself from any crazed maniac or other threat.”
Note the BL Stryker cocoa basketweave special…waste not, want not.
When an Army colonel is promoted to brigadier (one star) general, their promotion ceremony typically includes the pinning of their star by a family member and the presentation of the General Officer pistol and pistol belt. The latter, a thick black leather belt with an 18-karat gold-plated buckle and imprint of an eagle, was first produced in 1944. The rig is worn at the discretion of the general.
As for the GO pistol, the first issued were Colt 1908 .380s in 1943.
These bad boys.
Then came Rock Island Arsenal-made R15 .45ACPs in the 1970s before Beretta M9 GOs became the standard in the mid-1980s. All have had special “GO” serial number ranges.
Now, Sig Sauer has a GO pistol model that is part of the Army’s handgun switchover as of late.
Sig’s M18 GO series
And to get more on that, I reached out to Sig. More on that in my column at Guns.com.
The Boeing/Saab T-X was selected on 27 September 2018 by the Air Force as the winner of the Advanced Pilot Training System program to replace the aging Cold War-era Northrop T-38 Talon. In the below, the downright cute little twin tail trainer makes it first, official Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) flight test in St. Louis, Mo.
The USAF currently has some 500~ T-38A/B/C models in inventory, with the newest example coming off the lines in 1972. It is envisioned that some 351 new T-X aircraft and 46 simulators are to be supplied by Boeing as part of the $9 billion program to put the venerable Talon to bed.
Both of the current two Boeing T-Xs in flight.
The T-X, which will hopefully get a cooler name at some point, could also go on to be a sweet little scooter for budget air defense/COIN if given underwing hardpoints, after all, Saab runs the Gripen and in the past developed the Viggen, Draken, Lansen, and Tunnan, which all had a solid pedigree. .
The T-X does look pretty sweet though. I vote for the T-60 Peashooter II as a name update, in honor of Boeing’s last cute little combat-ish trainer.
Boeing P-26 Peashooters of the 17th Pursuit Group at March Field, California in 1932. (U.S. National Archives Photograph.)
Here we see the beautiful Miguel Malvar-class offshore patrol “corvette” BRP Sultan Kudarat (PS-22) of the Philippine Navy on 5 July 2019, as she gave her last day of military service in a career that began in 1944– giving her a rock solid 75 years of hard duty across three fleets. Not bad for a ship considered at the time of her construction to be disposable.
If she looks familiar, she was originally built as USS PCE-895 a former PCE-842-class Patrol Craft Escort, by the Willamette Iron and Steel Corp., of Portland, Oregon during WWII. She patrolled Alaskan coastal waters in the tail end of the war and was later dubbed USS Crestview.
A picture of USS Crestview PCE-895 as she appears in a Christmas card from the 1955 edition of Our Navy magazine via Navsource. She hasn’t changed much!
Transferred to the Republic of South Vietnam 29 November 1961, she later became Dong Da II (HQ 07)
Derived from the 180-foot Admirable-class minesweeper as a substitute for the much more numerous 173-foot PC-461-class of submarine chasers that were used for coastal ASW, the PCE-842-class was just eight feet longer but a lot heavier (650-tons vs 450-tons), which gave them much longer endurance, although roughly the same armament. They carried a single 3″/50 dual purpose mount, three 40mm Bofors mounts, five Oerlikon 20 mm mounts, two depth charge tracks, four depth charge projectors, and two depth charge projectors (hedgehogs)– making them pretty deadly to subs while giving them enough punch to take on small gunboats/trawlers and low numbers of incoming aircraft.
While the U.S. got rid of their 842s wholesale by the 1970s– scrapping some and sinking others as targets– several continued to serve in overseas Allied navies for decades.
When Saigon fell in April 1975, Crestview/Dong Da II beat feet as part of the South Vietnamese exile flotilla to Luzon, where she, like most of that force, was later absorbed into Manila’s own forces.
The Philippines has used no less than 11 of these retired PCEs between craft transferred outright from the U.S. and ships taken up from former Vietnamese service, eventually replacing their Glen Miller-era GM 12-567A diesel with more modern GM 12-278As, as well as a host of improvements to their sensors (they now carry the SPS-64 surface search and commercial nav radars, for instance.) Gone are the ASW weapons and sonar, but they do still pack the old 3-incher, long since retired by just about everyone else, as well as a smattering of Bofors and Oerlikon.
Sultan Kudarat has reportedly been retired in preparation for the arrival of a more capable Pohang-class vessel that has been donated by South Korea.
The country still has four of the class on their Naval List, expected to retire by 2022.
The latest installment in Sig Sauer‘s ever-expanding P320 pistol series is the XFive Legion competition pistol complete with a tungsten-infused grip and match bull barrel.
The new exclusive Legion Series pistol features what Sig bills as the first-of-its-kind TXG tungsten/polymer XGrip module which helps translate to an unloaded weight of 43.5-ounces. The heavier grip module with a removable magwell translates to what the New Hampshire-based company says is a substantially reduced felt recoil and muzzle flip, cutting them in half.
The $900 XFive Legion will mount any optic and accepts 1911 recoil springs, while weighing in at over 40-ounces, unloaded, due to having tungsten mixed into the polymer.
So why not just go with a steel frame to begin with? Well, Sig says the hybrid tungsten/polymer frame gives the XFive Legion the ability to still flex like a plastic fantastic pistol while it has the weight of a steel gun to offer the best of both worlds in an IPSC legal gun.
Anyway, more in my column at Guns.com.
Lots of changes among the world’s floating museum ships and those otherwise long in the tooth this week.
Centaur-class aircraft carrier HMS Hermes (R12) bouncing around the North Atlantic with her bow mostly out of the water, 1977.
Laid down at Vickers-Armstrong on 21 June 1944, two weeks after the Allies stormed ashore at D-Day, as HMS Elephant, the RN carrier HMS Hermes only joined the fleet on 18 November 1959 (after 15 years at the builders) with a much-altered plan that included an angled flight deck to allow the operation of jet-powered aircraft at sea. After legendary Cold War service and a pivotal part in the Falklands War in 1982, she was sold to India in 1987 and took the name INS Viraat (R22) and, homeported in Mumbai, served the Indian Navy for three more decades, undergoing a further five refits while in Indian service.
The last British-built ship serving the Indian Navy, Viraat was the star attraction at the International Fleet Review held in Visakhapatnam in February 2016. Her last Sea Harrier, (White Tigers in Indian service), flew from her deck on May 6, of that year and was given a formal farewell at INS Hansa, in Goa two days later. She was to be preserved as a floating museum, commemorating an amazing career.
Fast forward three years and this is not to be. Deli announced this week that she will soon be scrapped.
Subron-21’s GUPPY IIIs in formation on 18 April 1966. The boats seen are: USS BLENNY (SS-324), CLAMAGORE (SS-343), COBBLER (SS-344), and CORPORAL (SS-346)
The submarine USS Clamagore (SS-343), a Balao-class 311-foot “fleet boat” of the type that crushed the Japanese merchant fleet during WWII, commissioned on 28 June 1945– just narrowly too late for the war. However, her Naval service was rich, being converted to a GUPPY II snorkel boat in 1947 and later GUPPY III in 1962– one of only a handful to get the latter upgrade.
Decommissioned in 1973, the boat was still in pretty good shape when she was donated at age 36 to become a museum ship at Patriot’s Point, South Carolina where she has been since 1981, near the WWII carrier USS Yorktown.
The Clamagore (SS-343) being brought to Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum, Charleston, SC. 1981. Courtesy Tommy Trapp via Navsource
Now, she is suffering from extensive decay and, although a group of subvets is trying to save her (and taking the state to court) Palmetto State lawmakers have voted to spend $2.7 million in public dollars to sink the Cold War-era submarine off South Carolina’s shores.
To replace their aging Adams (Perth)-class DDGs, the Royal Australian Navy in the 1980s ordered a six-pack of Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigates. Known locally as the Adelaide (FFG01)-class in RAN service, the first four vessels were built in the U.S. at Todd in Seattle, while last two were constructed by AMECON of Williamstown, Victoria.
Besides the names of large Australian cities, the vessels carried the names of past RAN vessels including two HMS/HMAS Sydney’s that fought in WWI and WWII, and Oz’s two aircraft carriers.
Photo by ABPH Tracey Casteleijn/RAN/ #950365-10
Canberra and Adelaide were paid off in 2005 and 2008 respectively, then sunk as dive wrecks. Sydney struck in 2015 and began scrapping soon after, while Darwin was broken up in 2017. Melbourne and Newcastle were to stick it out until the new Hobart-class destroyers arrive to replace them by 2019.
With that, HMAS Newcastle (FFG06), was put to pasture this week after she traveled more than 900,000 nautical miles, visited over 30 countries, conducted six maritime security operations and earned battle honors in East Timor, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East.
Lieutenant Commander Nick Graney, RAN, salutes during the national anthem as part of HMAS Newcastle’s decommissioning ceremony at Fleet Base East, Sydney on Sunday 30th June 2019.
The final Australian FFG, Melbourne (FFG05), is set to be decommissioned 26 Oct 2019 and, like Newcastle, will be sold to Chile to begin a second career on the other end of the Pacific. Should that somehow fall through, the Hellenic Navy has also expressed interest in acquiring these classic but hard-used Perries.
And the beat goes on…
While kayaking around the Mississippi Sound a couple weeks back, I spotted this beauty in the sky, climbing out over Ship Island from Gulfport, and managed to get a snap.
While it has the profile of a Boeing 737 airliner, the U.S. Navy markings and underwing hardpoints quickly make it clear this bad boy is, in fact, a P-8A Poseidon sub buster. Specifically, it is Bu.No.169347 which was only delivered by Boeing’s Renton facility (as MSN 63197) to Uncle in June 2018. She is assigned to Patrol Squadron Thirty (VP-30), the “Pro’s Nest,” out of Jax, the Fleet Replacement Squadron for the P-8 program.
If the lifespan of the preceding P-3 Orion is any benchmark, #347 will likely still be around in the 2050s.
