Take a look at this bad boy:
Under 15 inches when compacted, 1,100 rounds-per-minute cyclic rate, and takes Glock 9mm mags. What’s not to like?
Dubbed the SCW-9, the platform was submitted as Angstadt’s entry — along with those from five other companies — for evaluation for use by Army personal security details. Guns proposed for the program had to be a “highly concealable” Sub-Compact Weapon “capable of engaging threat personnel with a high volume of lethal and accurate fires at close range with minimal collateral damage.”
Aiming to meet those guidelines, the SCW-9 is some 14.7-inches long overall when its telescoping buttstock is collapsed. Featuring a 4-inch barrel with a three-lug adapter for suppressors, the 9mm sub gun takes double stack Glock pattern mags and weighs in at 4-pounds flat.
Fundamentally, it is a more modern take on the 1980s Colt SMG:
More in my column at Guns.com.
USS Minneapolis (CA-36) bombarding Butaritari Island, Makin Atoll, on 20 November 1943, shortly before U.S. Army forces landed there. Guns firing are from the cruiser’s starboard side 5″/25-caliber secondary battery. Note smoke rings. Simultaneous discharge of these guns indicates that they are firing under remote control.
(NHHC: 80-G-202518)
A New Orleans-class cruiser, Minneapolis was designed as a light cruiser but was redesignated as a heavy before she was commissoned in 1934. “Minnie” earned an impressive 16 battle stars in WWII, but it didn’t save her from the breakers. She was sold for scrap, 14 August 1959, after spending 12 years in mothballs.
Just over a year after the German-made Type TR-1700 SSK ARA San Juan (S-42) went missing with 44 souls aboard, she has been found.
The sad news from Ocean Infinity:
Ocean Infinity, the seabed exploration company, confirms that it has found ARA San Juan, the Argentine Navy submarine which was lost on 15 November 2017.
In the early hours of 17 November, after two months of seabed search, Ocean Infinity located what has now been confirmed as the wreckage of the ARA San Juan. The submarine was found in a ravine in 920m of water, approximately 600 km east of Comodoro Rivadavia in the Atlantic Ocean.
Oliver Plunkett, Ocean Infinity’s CEO, said:
“Our thoughts are with the many families affected by this terrible tragedy. We sincerely hope that locating the resting place of the ARA San Juan will be of some comfort to them at what must be a profoundly difficult time. Furthermore, we hope our work will lead to their questions being answered and lessons learned which help to prevent anything similar from happening again.
We have received a huge amount of help from many parties who we would like to thank. We are particularly grateful to the Argentinian Navy whose constant support and encouragement was invaluable. In addition, the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy, via the UK Ambassador in Buenos Aires, made a very significant contribution. Numerous others, including the US Navy’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving, have supported us with expert opinion and analysis. Finally, I would like to extend a special thank you to the whole Ocean Infinity team, especially those offshore as well as our project leaders Andy Sherrell and Nick Lambert, who have all worked tirelessly for this result.”
Ocean Infinity used five Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to carry out the search, which was conducted by a team of approximately 60 crew members on board Seabed Constructor. In addition, three officers of the Argentine Navy and four family members of the crew of the ARA San Juan joined Seabed Constructor to observe the search operation
For the San Juan: Eternal Father, Strong to Save, as performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and chorus.
I’ve always been a fan of the old-school Remington XP-100 long range pistol, essentially a bolt-action 40X short action rifle in a handgun chassis. Out of production for a generation, Thompson-Center and others have long since picked up the torch and run with it.
Well, Remington finally wised up and came out with what they are calling their M700 Chassis Pistol last week.
Using a short-action Remington 700 system, the Chassis Pistol is advertised by the New York-based company as an accurate and compact handgun for use on the range or in a hunting environment. Offered (initially) in .300 Blackout, .223 Remington and .308 Winchester, the CP in its longest version is just 21.75-inches overall. Featuring 10.5-inch barrels in its .300 AAC and .223 formats, the pistol runs a 12.5-inch barrel in the .308 version.
Slap a folding “brace” on this bad boy and a can, and call it a day with a .300 backpack sniper rifle good for 300m all day, sans SBR red tape.
More in my column at Guns.com.
The Russians have long been in love with the Maxim gun. One of the largest early users of the Gatling, but then moved to upgrade to belt-fed water-cooled Maxims in 1899, later contracting with Vickers in 1902 to manufacture the design in Russia, which led to the easily identifiable PM M1910 with its “Sokolov” shield.
I give you: Pulemyot Maxima
Made in quantity, the gun was present in Port Arthur and with Gen. Kuropatkin’s forces in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War, then in WWI (where the Russian Army actually started the conflict with some 4,000 machine guns of all type, a fact not commonly known).
The Russians and later Soviets used them in armored trains:
Maxims inside Russian armored train
From motorcycles:
Tsarist Russian soldiers with bike-mounted Maxim
In anti-aircraft mounts:
Maxim P1910 Sokolov on AAA anti-aircraft mounting Red Army, 1936
From Tachanka gun carts, a practice honed in the Russian Civil War.
Russian tachanka horse-drawn machine gun cart 1941 Tehran, Iran
The M1910 continued to see much service through WWII and then was shuffled to the reserve and given away as military aid.
A popular mounting was in Russian naval service:
Soviet navy with GAZ-AA 1931 model, a quad AA machine gun Maxim
Soviet GAZ-AA navy mount composed of four 7,62 mm maxim served by Sgt. D. Janowski aboard an armored train
A GAZ-AA quad Maxim in propaganda art. “Meet enemy planes with a shower of fire from the ground !”
However, the Russians never threw anything away and lots of Maxims have been pressed into service in the Ukraine, where they no doubt still work just as well as they did at Port Arthur.
Ukrainian soldier mans an M1910 Maxim gun at a checkpoint on the road leading to separatist-controlled Yasynuvata, Donbass.
Twin-linked Maxim guns, with red dot sight, Ukrainian Conflict.
Official caption: “MACV/SOG Naval Advisory Detachment: Two Nasty-class PTF’s returning at dawn from a sea commando mission into the DMZ area in 1971. This was a particularly successful mission, with no friendly casualties.”
From the Frederick J. Vogel Collection (COLL/5577) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division
With the hundreds of wooden PT boats all liquidated shortly after WWII ended, the Navy in the 1960s found themselves in need of a handful of small, fast, and heavily armed craft for “unorthodox operations” in Southeast Asia.
These wooden-hulled Norwegian-designed 80-foot boats, powered by a pair of Napier Deltic turbocharged diesel engines, could make 38-knots but, with a 40mm Bofors single, an M2 .50 cal/81mm combo, and 20mm cannons, they could deal some hurt.
Crew members man a 40mm Bofors gun on a PTF Jan. 5, 1973. Photo by Fred Maroon. NARA DN-ST-88-07400
Gunnery exercises aboard PTF
Some 20 were acquired in the early 60s (numbered PTF-2 to PTF-23), six lost in combat, and, laid up at Subic after 1973, retired by 1981.
PTF Nasty boats laid up at Subic Bay
A Florida spearfisherman who has been sniping invasive fish on their home turf has plans to release his “underwater suppressor” to the public.
Courtland Hunt, a spearfisherman out of Anna Maria Island, has been documenting his on-going sea hunt between man and lionfish with gently-modified Gen 3 Glock 17, lead-free ammo, and purpose-built muzzle device for the past couple years.
Now, branded as the FireFish, the NFA-compliant underwater suppressor (which is baffleless and doesn’t en-quiet anything above water), is nearing production.
I dig the shoot/don’t shoot trials…
In the (believed) friendly village of Balangiga, on the morning of 28 September 1901, local Filipino insurgents fell on the regulars of C Company, 9th U.S. Infantry, during the unit’s breakfast, effectively putting most of the 78-man unit on the casualty list.
As noted by the Army’s Center for Military History in a colossal understatement, “The Army retaliated brutally, killing large numbers of civilians as well as insurgents. When American military authorities court-martialed soldiers accused of atrocities, the trials fed the flames of controversy at home.”
Brig. Gen. Jacob Hurd Smith, USA and Major Littleton Waller, USMC, both underwent separate courts-martial for their roles in the punitive campaign. At their trials, both officers maintained that they had followed orders and Waller was acquitted but Smith drummed out of the service. A veteran of the Battle of Shiloh (from which he carried a Minie ball in his hip for the rest of his life), Smith’s call to leave the area as a “howling wilderness” and effectively shoot any male older than 10 earned him the label of “The Monster” in the press of the day. Regardless, he later was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
Part of Smith’s legacy was the capture or otherwise taking away of three church bells during the Samar campaign as war trophies. Today, one is at slated-for-deactivation Camp Red Cloud in Uijeongbu (former home of the 9th INF), while the other two are rusting away at F.E. Warren AFB (formerly Fort D.A. Russell) in Wyoming. With the only unit of the 9th, the 4th battalion, currently stateside at Fort Carson, and the Philippines increasingly vital to U.S. interests in the Far East (read = South China Sea), Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis visited Warren this week and announced the beginning of the process to return of the Bells of Balangiga to the Philippines in front of the two bells located there.
“To those who fear we lose something by returning the bells please hear me when I say the bells mark time, but courage is timeless,” said Mattis. “It does not fade in history’s dimly lit corridors nor is it forgotten in history’s compost.”
Presenting the bells supports our nation’s continued partnership with the Philippines.
Jose Romualdez, Philippine Ambassador to the United States, and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis stand for a photo, Nov. 14, 2018, in front of the bells of Balangiga on F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo. During the visit, the Bells of Balangiga were officially presented to the Philippine government. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Braydon Williams)
“History teaches us that nations with allies thrive,” said Mattis. “It reminds us too that all wars end. By returning the Bells of Balangiga to our ally and our friend the Philippines we pick up the responsibility of our generation to deepen the respect between our people.”
This Bavarian Pickelhaube spiked helmet likely was brought back to the United States as a war souvenir after the Great War. The motto on the helmet “In Treue fest” translates as, “steadfast in loyalty,” and was the motto of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Said kingdom largely ceased to exist on 7 November 1918, when King Ludwig III fled from the Residenz Palace in Munich with his family, in effect relinquishing the 700-year Wittelsbach dynasty to the self-proclaimed socialist People’s State of Bavaria (Volksstaat Bayern) of theatre critic Kurt Eisner who would, in the absence of an official abdication by Ludwig, awkwardly and briefly fill the void.
German helmet, probably acquired by soldier Walker Harrison Jordon, ca. 1918. Jordan Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (193.00.00)