For those waiting on a stamp, pack a lunch

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Multiple groups have confirmed that Examiners assigned to the NFA Division are deemed “non-essential personnel” and are not working during the shutdown, leaving Form 4’s and Form 1’s to stagnate.

Additionally, because ATF uses Bank of America (who ironically has a corporate-level anti-gun policy) to automatically process payments, the checks are still being cashed but the paperwork is going nowhere until the guv starts working again.

More in my column after the jump.

So Russia found 30 running T-34s and made a deal

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Aren’t they beautiful? Talk about a moving museum piece.

As part of a weapons deal with the Southeast Asian country of Laos, the Kremlin got a trainload of running WWII relics returned to the Motherland in exchange for a break in the price on some T-72Bs.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reports that the Lao People’s Democratic Republic recently transferred 30 T-34 tanks to Russia by sea to the Pacific port of Vladivostok from where they have been loaded for transport via rail to Naro-Fominsk, home of the elite 4th Guards Tank Division near Moscow.

Back in Laos last December. Note the Lao markings. Also, it looks like someone cleaned up the seams on the casings over the years. Apparently, these bad boys were stored by the Soviets for decades then transferred to Vientiane…where they were stored for decades.

According to state media, all 30 of the vehicles, T-34-85 variants, date from 1944 and had originally been transferred from the Soviet Union to the country as military aid back in the 1980s.

In running condition and virtually unchanged from when they left their wartime assembly lines, the T-34s will be used by the Russians in military parades and for film work.

State media footage of them loading up for Naro-Fominsk, below:

That old Ka-Bar magic

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Union Cutlery Co. of Olean, New York, began using the “Ka-Bar” name on its knives and in its advertising in 1923.

Fast forward to WWII and the company worked with the Marines to modify the old Western States L77 hunting knife to create what the Navy termed the Mark 2 Utility Knife and in the Marines as the Mark 2 Combat Knife– the blade known as the now-classic Ka-Bar.

WWII-era Ka-Bar MK2 with original fiberglass sheath via Ka-Bar. The drawing is actually of the Ka-Bar commando a very similar offering

Made during the war and since then by Camillus, Ontario, PAL, Robeson, Utica et. al while Union still trademarked the name, the knife has become an icon, a totem.

Two WWII Marine Raiders demo knife fighting– note the K.

Marines somewhere in the Pacific. Note the Ka-Bar in the boot

Today, owned by Cutco, Union long ago changed their name to Ka-Bar formally and they still make the knife in Olean, though some complain that the current version just isn’t the same as the 1943 classic. I blame a lot of that stink on Chinese counterfeits.

With that, the company posted this today, which I thought was interesting.

“The vehicle ran over the KA-BAR and it punctured the tire and lodged in the wheel. The handle did not break off until it was inside the tire.”

It looks like one of the more modern blades which are constructed with a 1095 carbon steel blade that is epoxy powder coated.

Of course, there is no telling which vintage this blade is from, but it is still impressive.

Colt reboots the 1980s classic King Cobra, but with a 3-inch barrel

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Offered in brushed stainless steel with a full-lug 3-inch barrel, the six-shot .357/.38SPL King Cobra was announced this week and will be officially on hand at SHOT at the end of the month.

The choice of barrel length on the new King Cobra is interesting. The original revolver was first introduced in 1986 and was made in 2, 2.5, 4, 6 and 8-inch variants across the revolver’s original commercial production, which ended in 1998. Just a few spec guns (less than 20) were made with a 3-inch format for various police tenders but they never went into production.

I’ve always liked the 3-inch barrel on a carry revolver as I have mentioned a few times before as it provides more velocity over a snub– not to mention a skosh longer sight radius– while being more concealable than a 4-inch combat gun. I have an old-school (pre-suck) Rossi full-lug stainless M720 in .44 Special that I have taken in the swamp several times as a hog hunting back up.

For more on the new Colt 3-inch King, head to my column at Guns.com.

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019: That time an icebreaker took on a (pocket) battleship

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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, Jan. 9, 2019: That time an icebreaker took on a (pocket) battleship

Here we see the hardy Soviet steel screw steamer/icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov with a homemade sail rig somewhere in the frozen Northern Sea Route in 1932. Built as a Newfoundland (don’t say “Canadian!”) sealer, she sailed into maritime history when it came to polar exploration and met her end at the hands of a bruiser who was many times her match.

Ordered from the Scottish shipbuilding firm of D & W Henderson & Co., Glasgow as the SS Bellaventure by the Bellaventure S.S. Co. Ltd. of St. John’s Newfoundland in 1908, she was not very large (1132 grt / 471 nrt, 241-feet overall) but was designed to withstand the rigors of the polar seal trade. Completed the next year, she made seven trips searching for the lucrative marine mammals. Steam heated and electric-lighted, she could steam at 10 knots, burning through 13 tons of coal per day until her 292-ton bunker was bare. With accommodations for a 15-man crew, she could also accommodate 10 passengers in five staterooms that had access to a separate saloon that was “handsomely fitted up.”

“SS Bonaventure. First arrival from the seal fishery, March 28, 1911, with 26,289 old and young seals” via Newfoundland Quarterly”

Image from page 24 of “Newfoundland Quarterly 1909-11” (1909) https://archive.org/stream/nfldquart190911uoft/nfldquart190911uoft#page/n24/mode/1up

The S.S. Bellaventure, 467 tons, was engaged in the Canadian seal fishery for seven springs, 1909-1915. Her record year was 1910, 35,816 seals; her total was 112,135. Source: http://bonavistanorth.blogspot.com/2007/08/ss-bellaventure.html

When the Great War erupted, the Tsar was soon looking for ice-protected ships as the Ottoman Turks’ entry into the conflict shut off the Black Sea and, with the Baltic barred by the Germans, Russia was a proverbial boarded-up house that could only be entered by the chimney– the frozen Barents Sea harbor of Murmansk (then just a hamlet with primitive facilities) and the White Sea port of Arkhangelsk.

Purchased by Russia in 1916, she was renamed Alexander Sibiryakov in honor of a gold mine magnate who financed a number of improvements in Siberia as well as various scientific expeditions and historical research projects. As a shooting war was on, she was given a high-angle 76mm gun, largely for appearance’s sake as German U-boats and surface raiders were scarce in the Barents during WWI.

Note her gun tub forward. She would pick up a 45mm gun on the stern in 1942 as well as a couple of machine guns

Briefly used by the White Russians of Lt. Gen. Eugen Ludwig Müller (also often seen as “EK Miller” in the West) during his control of the Kola Peninsula where he had declared himself Governor-General of Northern Russia in the resulting power vacuum that followed in the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Sibiryakov was operated for a time commercially by the British Ellerman’s Wilson Line concern (the British were propping up the Whites) and helped evacuate Muller and his bunch to Norway when the Bolsheviks captured his former fiefdom in 1920.

Sibiryakov was returned to the Reds who, from 1921 onward, sent her into the White Sea to support the Russian the hunting industry, and provide the various Soviet polar stations wintering of the Arctic Ocean with food, equipment, and fuel.

Academian and Hero of the Soviet Union Otto Schmidt, somewhere in the icepack, more about him below

The icebreaker managed to become the first ship in history to complete the 2,500-mile Northern Sea Route in one season when it was traveled by Otto Yulievich Schmidt’s expedition in 1932. The expedition left Arkhangelsk on July 28 commanded by CPT. Vladimir Voronin who, along with Schmidt and his deputy, Prof. Vladimir Wiese, rounded the North Land archipelago from the north and reached the Chukchi Sea in August. From there they had to power through solid ice, repair the hull in several places, free the prop (breaking her shaft) and finally sail the final leg out into the Bearing Strait at about the speed of flotsam on homemade sails made from tarps, old blankets and sheets after total engineering casualties, reaching Yokohama from there with the assistance of a tow from a Soviet fishing trawler in the Northern Pacific on 1 October.

When WWII came to Russia in 1941, courtesy of Barbarossa, Sibiryakov was taken up from academic and commercial service and placed in the Red Navy for the duration of the Great Patriotic War or her destruction, whichever came first.

Speaking of which, her still armed only with some machine guns and her 1915-vintage Tarnovsky-Lender 76mm popgun, she bumped into the Deutschland-class heavy cruiser (Panzerschiffe= armored ship, but commonly just termed “pocket battleship”) Admiral Scheer one day while out among the ice.

German Pocket Battleship DEUTSCHLAND Drawing of 1941 rig. Inset ADMIRAL SCHEER. German – CA (DEUTSCHLAND Class) 1941 NH 110853

The big German, at 15,000-tons, carried a half-dozen 28 cm/52 (11″) SK C/28 naval guns and knew how to use them.

Stern 28 cm/52 Turret on Admiral Scheer in mid-1939. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 80897.

Sailing as part of Operation Wunderland with three destroyers and a number of U-boats, Scheer aimed to penetrate the Kara Sea where they knew Soviets shipping tended to congregate as it was somewhat of a Russian lake, akin to the Gulf of Mexico and the U.S.– only a lot colder.

Encountering Scheer off Belukha Island near Middendorff Bay, the 13-knot icebreaker could not run and, rather than strike their flag, engaged the cruiser on 24 August. It was a short fight as Scheer‘s belt was 3.1-inches of armor while Sibiryakov‘s was – zero – in addition to the gross imbalance in armaments. It was all over within an hour.

Russian Icebreaker ALEXANDER SIBIRIEKOV Afire and sinking in the Barents Sea North of Murmansk after being attacked by the German cruiser ADMIRAL SCHEER in August 1942 survivors on the raft at right. NH 71384

Of the icebreaker’s 100~ man crew, only her skipper, 32-year-old Senior Lt. Anatoly Alekseevich Kacharava, and 18 crew members were pulled from the water by the Scheer while one man, a stoker by the name of Vavilov, was able to make it to shore on a leaky liferaft where he survived for a month among the polar bears on Belukha Island before he was finally rescued by a passing seaplane.

NH 71385 Sinking Of The Russian Icebreaker ALEXANDER SIBIRIEKOV as seen from Scheer, note rescued Soviet sailors on deck. The men would spend the next decade in German and Soviet camps.

Many of the Soviet mariners captured never made it home from German POW camps.

Worse, those who survived long enough to be repatriated after the war were sent to the gulag (thanks, Uncle Joe!) for several years as were many returning Soviet POWs. In 1961, Kacharava, along with the other survivor, was declared “rehabilitated” and awarded the Order of the Red Banner nearly two decades after their pitched battle. He returned to the merchant service, skippering ships along the Northern Sea Route, and headed the Georgian Shipping Company in the 1970s, retiring to Batumi.

Kacharava (1910-1982)

He died in 1982.

However, the act of trying to fight it out with a beast of a cruiser landed the humble Sibiryakov a solid spot in Russian naval lore, and relics of the ship are venerated today in the country while she has been repeatedly portrayed in Soviet maritime art.

The battle of the icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov with the cruiser Admiral Scheer by PP Pavlinov, 1945.

The last fight of the icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov on 25 August 1942. By Michael Uspensky

As for Scheer, she was sunk by British bombers in 1945 and partially salvaged, with her remains currently buried beneath a quay in Kiel.

Specs:


Displacement: 1132 grt / 471 nrt (as designed)
Length: 241-feet
Beam: 35.8-feet
Draft: 16.9-feet
Engines: T3cyl (22.5, 37, 61 x 42in), 347nhp, 1-screw
Speed: 13 knots
Crew (1942) 100
Armament: 1 x 76mm Tarnovsky-Lender M1914/15 8-K gun, 1x45mm gun (added 1942), machine guns

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

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.

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Russian Spam Can 101

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For those interested in deciphering those increasingly hard-to-find spam cans of 7N6 and the like, here you go:

Via 7.62x54R.net

Also, hope you don’t lose the can opener that it comes with…

Call me sentimenal

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So like any salty sea dog, I have a number of illustrations upon my skin in the best traditions of Danish kings and scurvy-ridden members of Neptune’s realm. One I had applied this week I thought was kind of unique. While I have sea monkeys, dragons and the like, I always wanted a ship in a bottle as well, and finally figured out just which ship I wanted in a glass.

Recognize the battleship? Of course, it was the first “warship” I fell in love with– the battleship game piece from Monopoly! I remember, um, borrowing it from the game set at my grandfather’s at about age 6 and keeping it as a good luck charm in my pocket daily for years. As a reference, Parker Brothers has used roughly the same piece since 1937 and it appeared in both the strategy games Conflict and Diplomacy as well over the years.

Anachronistic when introduced in the Depression, the piece is closest to the Navy’s earliest 1890s-era pre-dreadnoughts of the Indiana and Iowa classes, with main battery turret guns forward and aft, a tall mast forward, and two funnels.

Battleship No. 1, USS Indiana. Commissioned 20 November 1895, she served in the Spanish-American War (in combat) and WWI (as a training ship), then was sunk in shallow water as a target in aerial bombing tests in 1920. NH 105567

As all of those vessels had left the fleet in the 1920s– replaced by actual dreadnoughts– they were conspicuously old-fashioned even when Monopoly first debuted.

Kind of like myself.

FN goes G19, finally

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Fabrique Nationale Herstal was one of the early competitors for the U.S. Army’s Modular Handgun System contract to replace the Beretta M9. Their submission, a beefed up and enhanced version of their FNS striker-fired handgun, wasn’t selected but they released it last year as the FN 509 in both a tactical and standard model that, for lack of a better comparison, are the rough equivalent of the Glock 19X and the Glock 17 G5 MOS, respectively.

Now, FN has introduced a Midsize 509 that fits the same envelope as the standard G19 and moves into the same neighborhood as the S&W M&P 2.0 Compact (I’ve been carrying one of the latter for nearly a year, and have dropped 3K+ rounds through it with no issues) and CZ P-10 C series.

Not throwing rocks, but why not lead with this?

More in my column at Guns.com

Harold Brown, the MIRV-maker

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Brown helped make the SSBN the go-to element of the nuclear triad and went on to become the 8th Secretary of the Air Force and 14th Secretary of Defense.

One of the most interesting SECDEFs to ever hold the position, Harold Brown, has passed away. A nuclear physicist, he joined the team (and later became the director at) what is now Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1952 and led the group that created a smaller nuclear reentry vehicle for the Polaris missile and its replacements. To have a grasp on what this meant, the follow-on Poseidon could carry as many as 14 367-pound W68 warheads, each capable of 50 kilo-tons, whereas a MIRV’d Polaris could only carry 3 W58 warheads with a yield of 200 kilotons each. A lot more bang for the buck.

Brown was tapped by McNamara to become DoD’s Director of Defense Research and Engineering in the Kennedy administration and was the 8th SecAF under Johnson (during which the F-4 quickly replaced the F-105, which was taking a beating over Vietnam). Taking a break from government positions while Republicans were in the White House, he returned to become Carter’s SECDEF. While Carter gets a bad wrap for miserly military spending– which he actually inherited from Ford– it should be pointed out that Brown managed to shepherd modest increases in the Pentagon’s budget in FY78-80, and was a cheerleader for Trident, ALCMs for B-52s, and the MX missile, as well as deploying Pershing IRBMs to Western Europe– staying true to his nuclear roots, while pushing for the SALT II treaty. It can be argued that all of the above helped keep the Soviets, who had a massive tactical advantage, on their side of the Curtain in the 1980s.

On the downside, Brown canceled the B1 bomber (which Reagan rebooted), eschewed increasing the armament on the Spruance-class destroyers (they were so ill-armed when first built that they were called “Love Boats”) and presided over the Desert One Debacle.

Brown passed over the weekend of pancreatic cancer at the age of 91.

Plinking with a Carabiniere hogleg

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Dating back to 1814, and as such predating modern Italy, the Carabinieri are that country’s famous national gendarmerie force.

These guys

Long equipped with Beretta-made sub guns, LMGs, rifles, and handguns, the force has always been well-armed. Back in WWII, they used the M934 Beretta in 9mm Corto (.380ACP), replacing it in the 1950s with Beretta’s popular M1951 Brigadier series in 9mm Para. That gun, a single-stack 8-shot locked breech, short-recoil semi-auto, was modified and given a double-stack magazine, making the Beretta 92 that we know today.

Adopted by the Carabinieri in the 1970s, the early 92S is much the same as today’s 92FS, with the exception of some minor internal differences and the same M1951-style magazine release button located towards the bottom of the left-side grip.

Note the near-heel release

Replaced by more modern versions, these retired gendarmerie guns were imported in big numbers to the U.S. in the past couple of years.

Like, crate loads

Sure, they are 30~ years old, but the average LE handgun is only fired 2-4 times a year (if it is issued) for qualification and familiarization, with the round count likely at the 200-ish mark per annum. That translates to about 6,000 rounds downrange over a three-decade service life (if it was issued for all 30 of those years.) Even if you double that, you are only looking at 12K rounds. As the average durability of Beretta M9 slides is over 35,000 rounds, frames are over 30,000 rounds, and locking blocks are 22,000 rounds, they are only about a third of the way through their likely lifespan.

I picked up a few from SOG last fall (before they went out of business!) for sub-$300 and spent the better part of the day on Sunday giving one of these beaters a workout.

il mio amore…(also, note the cutouts for the mag release)

In all, I put some 250 rounds of Winchester White Box 124 grain FMJ (if it makes it with WWB, it will make it with anything, lol!) through it with (zero) malfunctions.

Seems to still hold the point of aim…

 

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