Now that’s a heck of a combo

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Vierlings (from the German word Vier, meaning “four”) are very odd four-barreled combination guns that come from two layers of thought.

This four-barreled Vierling has two 8x57R rifle barrels, a .22 Hornet on top and a 20-gauge below.

One, that when packing for a great overseas hunt where an adventurer’s baggage would ideally fit all in a large steamer trunk, such a weapon could contain both small and large-caliber rifles and/or shotguns to encompass everything from varmint to big game while on safari. Two, in some countries where gun licensing restricted an owner to a numerically small number of firearms (sometimes just a single long arm), a Vierling in multiple chamberings could allow flexibility. In both cases, the idea was to get the most out of a single frame.

With that in mind, the vaunted Austrian gunmaker Johann Fanzoj, with some 500 years of builds under their name, recently produced a beautiful Vierling made of a side-by-side double rifle in hard-hitting 9.3x74mmR– a classic medium to large game round popular in both Europe and Africa — with an over-and-under 20-gauge 3-inch chambered shotgun on a single frame.

It is truly a work of art…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Combat Gallery Sunday: Repin x3

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In 1891, Ilya Yefimovich Repin completed his giant 6×11 ft painting “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire” after an 11-year effort, selling the piece to Tsar Alexander III for a princely sum.

Hung in the Tsar’s Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.at the time, the painting is still there, although the palace is now the State Russian Museum.

The Zaporozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan *oil on canvas*358 × 203 cm *signed b.c.: И.Репин 1880-91

It depicts the popular legend of the 1676 cossack reply to an ultimatum of the Ottoman sultan, Mehmed IV, that these autonomous border people submit to Turkish rule. The reply, as the story goes, was one of insults with each rough steppes horseman striving to outperform his buddy. A lot of references to Mehmed’s mother and at least one goat were mentioned in the reply.

Since then, the painting has been updated a few times with the same Russian patriotic tendency.

Zaporozhian have been swapped out for Red partisans in WWII

Note the M1910 Sokolov machine gun, captured German MP40, and at least one Red Cossack

This most recent example, by Vladimir Nesterenko, is set in Syria with the modern Russian military, complete with 30mm grenade launchers and AK74s.

The next one will probably be set in space.

The GPF of Gulf Shores

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Here we see a U.S. Model 1918M1 155mm gun, the famous French GPF (Canon de 155mm Grande Puissance Filloux, a direct copy of the C modèle 1917 Schneider) of the Great War, which equipped U.S. forces overseas and– when upgraded with air brakes, new metal wheels, and pneumatic tires to allow for high-speed towing– remained the mainstay of the interwar Army throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Note the unmodified 1918-series profile, with hard rubber wheels and no air brake, in other words, in its original WWI-era mode, suitable for being pulled by slow tractors or horses. (Photo: Chris Eger)

By the outbreak of WWII, the Army had 979 GPFs still on hand although they were being replaced by the new and much more modern M114 155 mm howitzer (many of the latter are still in use in the Third World today).

With the relegation of the old GPF to the reserve, when the balloon went up and German and Japanese subs started crawling just off the U.S. coastline, these vintage guns were pressed into service on what was termed “Panama Mounts,” a semi-fixed installation atop a circular concrete mount that allowed the gun to revolve and rotate in place. Capable of sending a 95-pound shell out to 17,700 yards every 15 seconds with a well-trained crew, they could shatter the hull of a U-boat with ease or give a surface raider far from home at least a moment of pause.

One such gun (pictured above) remains at Fort Morgan, Alabama, controlling the entrance to Mobile Bay.

In 1942 the fort received four GPFs, two of which (Nos. 176 and 802) were used on Panama Mounts on top of the old Civil War-era bastions while two others were left mobile.

A soldier sitting on top of an M1918 155mm GPF, 1942. The gun position would be located on top of Bastion 3 of the fort. Note the camouflage, sandbag revetments, and Panama Mount (Fort Morgan Collection)

Taken in 1943, this picture shows one of two 155 GPF guns that were mounted on top of the fort. Maximum elevation was 35 degrees, which is close to what this tube is (Fort Morgan Collection)

These were manned by men of Battery F, 50th Coast Artillery throughout the War. It should be noted that, while Fort Morgan was an active U.S./Confederate base from 1819 through WWI, by 1931 it had been disarmed and abandoned, with the visiting 155s of Battery F her last hurrah.

The French 155 was used by many CA units at the time and was somewhat road-mobile.

Oakland Tribune-press photo of an M1918 Canon de 155mm GPF repurposed as a mobile seacoast gun belonging to San Francisco’s Battery E, 250th Coast Artillery Regiment, California National Guard, being pulled by a pre-1932 Indiana Truck Corporation 115 3-ton truck en route to the 1940 Fourth Army Maneuvers in Monterey County. Later that year, the 250th Coast Artillery Regiment would mobilize and deploy to reinforce the Harbor Defenses of Sitka, Alaska. California Military Department Historical Collection No. 2022.1.843.

Established at Camp Pendleton, Virginia 1 February 1942, the 50th Coast Artillery was a tractor-drawn heavy artillery regiment. After just two months of training, Battery F was entrained for Fort Barrancas (Pensacola) Florida. Arriving there on 7 April 1942, the unit left in a (slow) motor convoy to Fort Morgan to establish Temporary Harbor Defenses (THD) of Mobile and remained there until 1944.

Battery E went down the coast another several miles to my hometown of Pascagoula to defend Ingalls Shipyard from a point on Beach Boulevard, but that is another story…

Morgan’s remaining GPF, head on. Yes, double solid rubber wheels on each side. (Photo: Chris Eger)

The gun still at Morgan is on M1918 carriage No. 429, one of the 626 U.S.-made produced under a license from Schneider/Puteaux. Another 577 were purchased from the French directly. All U.S.-made carriages were manufactured by Minneapolis Steel from a built-up steel alloy. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Her tube is No. 1073, Watervliet Arsenal production. All gun tubes for U.S.-made M1917/18s were made by either Watervliet or Bullard Engineering Works and marked as such on the muzzle. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Technically a 155mm/38 caliber piece, the tube is almost 10 feet long (232.87 inches) with the weight of the gun and carriage topping 19,860 pounds, or right at 10 tons. The muzzle velocity on the 95-pound shell was 2,411fps– which translates to a whole lot of energy. 

Their use in Coastal Artillery was nearly the last hurrah of the GPF in U.S. service.

By May 1941, the M1917/18 was a Lend-Lease item, and much of those stocks not used to guard the various beaches soon were on their way to the British, where they made an appearance in North Africa against Rommel and Co. The GPF also served in the Pacific, with at least 60 of the models captured by the Japanese in the Philippines.

Late in 1942, some 100 GPFs that remained in storage were mounted on the turretless chassis of the obsolete M3 Lee tank to form the M12 Gun Motor Carriage as a form of early self-propelled artillery. When teamed up with the companion Cargo Carrier M30 (also a turretless M3), which allowed them to go into the line with 40 rounds of 155mm ready, they proved popular in a niche role.

M12 Gun Motor Carriage 155mm self-propelled gun with the US 987th Field Artillery Battalion near Bayeux Normandy June 10, 1944. IWM – Laing (Sgt) Photographer. IWM B 541

155mm M12 Gun Motor Carriage sniping strongpoints along the German Siegfried Line, late 1944/early 1945. At its core, it is a French 155 from the Great War

These tracked GPFs earned the nicknames “Doorknocker” and “King Kong” in service due to their ability to pierce up to seven feet of reinforced concrete and turn pillboxes into a smokey hole in the ground– a useful thing in Northeastern Europe in 1944.

Like this:

M12 Gun Motor carriage used in direct firing mode against a fortified German position during the Battle of Aachen in October 1944.

If visiting Fort Morgan, be sure to check out the small museum just a few hundred yards from where the surviving GPF sits.

Inside the museum they have the guidon of Battery A, 104th Coastal Artillery, an Alabama National Guard unit mobilized for federal service 10 months before Pearl Harbor and then shipped to the Pacific in 1942, only returning home in January 1946.

104th Artillery patch

As well as the typical WWII Coastal Artillery uniform of sun hat, olive coveralls tucked into canvas leggings, gas mask, and cartridge belt:

Of note, interwar Coastal Artillery coveralls were blue denim. Still, they were often worn by National Guard units operating 155mm GPFs in WWII, such as one of these big guns going boom, shown in the late 1930s Kodachrome below.

Vintage greetings from the USS Rhode Island, Battleship No. 17

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Via the Thomas Crane Public Library’s Fore River Shipyard Postcard Collection:

Commissioned into the Atlantic Fleet in February 1906, Rhode Island was one of five Virginia-class pre-dreadnoughts built between the SpanAm War and WWI. She carried four 12″/40 (30.5 cm) Mark 4s in two twin turrets and eight 8″/45 (20.3 cm) Mark 6s in four twin turrets.

Made obsolete before she was commissioned by the arrival of the HMS Dreadnought, Rhode Island served in the Great White Fleet and in various sticky spots during the Wilson administration and was sold for scrap in 1923 under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, though her bell is on display at the Rhode Island State House.

The Maxim 1910 Silencer, in 30.06

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The Cody Firearms Museum has an extensive collection of historic arms and they recently got a special look at one of their original “Silencers.”

The pre-NFA vintage firearm suppressor brand named by its inventor, Hiram Percy Maxim, was x-rayed by the Cody Police Department while the agency was on hand at the Wyoming-based museum this month to verify that some ordnance at the center was inert.

The M1910 Maxim Silencer is attached to the threaded barrel of a Springfield 1903 in the Cody’s collection. Thus:

More about the M1910, which was used in small numbers by the Great War-era U.S. Army, in my column at Guns.com

A new civil war? Some people really think it is a thing

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#Loc LC-USZ62-126968

A national survey conducted last week by Rasmussen found that almost one in three polled felt there was a pretty good chance of a second civil war in the country within the decade.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted on June 21-24 by the poll taker and, when asked, “How likely is that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years?” some 31 percent responded very likely.

Those who considered it not likely at all accounted for a comparatively smaller 29 percent, with the other third somewhere in the middle on the sliding scale of possibility.

Yikes. Everyone just step back from the rhetoric, slowly. Don’t make any sudden moves…

On the brightside, now #secondcivilwarletters are now a thing on Twitter

You do know the Model 1851 Feldstutzer, yes?

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From the Hungarian site Kapszli comes a great piece on the Swiss Army’s innovative Model 1851 Federal Rifle, otherwise known as the Feldstutzer or Eidigenössischer Stutzer.

Via Cap & Ball (Kapszli)

“The Model 1851 rifle at the time of the acceptance was truly the best military rifle of its age. First of all, it fired a much smaller diameter and lighter bullet than any other military rifle. While the French military rifle fired a 17 mm bullet, the American and British a 14.7 mm bullet, the Swiss rifle fired a 10.4 mm bullet weighing only 16.5-17 g. The bullet was pushed from the bore with a relatively high 60-grain charge of fine grade black powder resulting in a 440 m/s muzzle velocity and a flat trajectory.

The flat trajectory was a key feature in Switzerland the soldier had to master shooting downhill and uphill. The Swiss army consisted of free people for many centuries. These civilians were more important to the state than to let them be killed in melee combat so sniping the enemy from a safe distance was always an important element of the Swiss tactics since the introduction of firearms. It is also a reason why the shooting sports have been always so popular in this beautiful little country.”

Much more here

Rest in peace, Dewey’s parrot

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The final resting place of the parrot mascot of the venerated protected cruiser USS Olympia, Commodore George Dewey’s flagship on that fateful day in 1898 at the Battle of Manila Bay, interned at age 86. The warbird is located at the Michigan War Dog Memorial in Lyon Township

According to legend, he was one of the few (American) casualties of the engagement that destroyed the last Spanish fleet in the Pacific.

USS OLYMPIA (C-6) Sailor with a parrot, which had lost a leg in the Battle of Manila Bay, May 1898. Cyanotype Print. Photographed by George Grantham, 15 Park Row, New York City. See NH 43356A for a halftoned version of this photo copied from Harper’s Weekly, September 30, 1899, p992. Description: Catalog #: NH 43356

Dewey’s parrot outlived the good Commodore (who passed in 1917) but not his ship.

Olympia (C-6/CA-15/CL-15/IX-40), decommissioned for the final time on 9 December 1922 after 27-years of service that included not only the Spanish American War and Great War but the intervention against the Reds in the Russian Civil War. The “Queen of the Pacific,” named after the city in Washington state and constructed in California, was only struck in 1957 and is currently a museum ship in (ironically) Philadelphia at the Independence Seaport on the Delaware.

The legality of an ATF rule banning bump stocks

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There is an estimated 500,000 bump stocks in circulation, which were purchased legally.

While many gun owners feel that a bump stock ban (even reaching out and banning similar “rate of fire enhancers” such as trigger cranks and binary triggers) is low-hanging fruit when it comes to gun control, there is still a certain smack of incrementalism attached to it. Further, the vehicle for the looming federal ban (which will almost surely happen) is through a somewhat sketchy regulatory rule change by ATF, not an act of Congress, which gives even more heartburn to a lot of folks.

Like the FPC and their attorney allies, Joshua Prince and Adam Kraut. I’ve talked to the FPC guys extensively over the years and have met both Adam and Josh and they are all on top of their game. They recently got a 923-page comment (!) in on the proposed rulemaking that calls the whole unconstitutionally of the thing into question. Their point is that the devices fire once per each pull of the trigger, meeting federal law, and to add an asterisk to it after the fact isn’t really all that legal– and sets the stage for more asterisks.

More in my column at Guns.com

Warship Wednesday, July 4, 2018: Remembering the Independence most often forgotten

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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 1859-1946 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 4, 2018: Remembering the Independence most often forgotten

NH 70472

Here we see the “444-type” freighter USS Independence (SP-3676) in striking dazzle camouflage, probably in San Francisco Bay, California, soon after her completion in late 1918. While the U.S. and Massachusetts State Navy operated no less than seven “Independences” going all the way back to 1776, and today is July 4th, I figured it would be fitting to cover #4 of these, which had a great service history and was sandwiched between a 90-gun ship of line that gave 98-years of service and two much better-known aircraft carriers of the same name.

Appropriately enough, the story of this Independence started off with the British.

In late 1916 the shipping-strapped British Admiralty contracted with Union Iron Works (UIW) shipyard, located at Potrero Point, San Francisco, for a series of 7,700-dwt, 444-foot oal, single-screw, steel-hulled freighters to a design approved by the U.S. Shipping Board’s construction program, an emergency agency authorized by the Shipping Act of 1916 that eventually morphed into the MARAD of today. The first of these, War Knight (UIW’s hull #132A), was laid down in early 1917, followed by War Monarch, War Sword, War Harbour, War Haven, War Ocean, War Rock, War Sea, War Cape, War Surf and War Wave (seeing a trend here?). Of these, just the first three, completed by Sept. 1917, were delivered to the British. By that point, the U.S. needed ships of her own and stepped in. Soon, each of the vessels under construction was renamed and taken over by the Navy of their birthplace.

War Harbour, hull 162A, became SS Independence while under construction while others lost their intended names and became, respectively, Victorious, Defiance, Invincible, Courageous, Eclipse, Triumph, and Archer. A 12th ship, Steadfast, was contracted by the USSB directly without London being involved.

War Harbour, then SS Independence, photographed on 24 October 1918 at the yard of her builder, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., Union Plant, Potrero Works, San Francisco. Behind her is a later sister, SS War Surf/Eclipse, that during World War II became USS William P. Biddle (AP-15). Source: U.S. National Archives, RG-32-S via Ship Scribe.

Taken into federal service as 18 November 1918 as USS Independence, her first skipper was LCDR O. P. Rankin and she was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service, completing one voyage to France with a load of foodstuffs. With the Great War at an end, she was decommissioned, 20 March 1919, after just four months of service, and handed over to the USSB who promptly converted her and several of her sisters to a turbo-electric powerplant capable of a speed of a very fast (for a merchant ship) speed of 16 knots, then placed the essentially new vessels in storage.

Then came 1930 and the Roosevelt Steamship Company’s award of a mail contract for a weekly run from Baltimore and Norfolk to Hamburg, Germany and Le Havre, France– a contract that resulted in the group forming the Baltimore Mail Steamship Company. Headquartered in the now-iconic but then brand-new Baltimore Trust Building (now the Bank of America Building), the Baltimore Mail Line picked up five of the old 444’s from USSB storage– Steadfast, War Surf/Eclipse, War Haven/Victorious, War Wave/Archer, and War Harbour/Independence. Reconstructed under a Gibbs & Cox design to accommodate 80 passengers, modified to hit 18-knots, and lengthened to 507 feet, the now-8,424t ships started a regular trade within a year renamed (again) as the City of Baltimore, City of Hamburg, City of Havre, City of Newport News and, our hero, as City of Norfolk, after the five hubs serviced by the line.

The launching of the SS City of Norfolk on August 14th, 1931 at the Norfolk Army Base piers (former War Harbour, ex-USS Independence) of the Baltimore Mail Line.

As reported by the GG Archives, “The single class liners offered staterooms with outside exposure, hot running water, and Simmons beds. In 1935, the Baltimore Mail Line offered fares to London or Hamburg for $90 one way or $171 round trip.” The ships had a saloon, barber shop, a surgeon’s office, an oak-paneled smoking room, a sports deck with tennis courts, and other amenities. A brochure from the period cautions that “professional gamblers are reported as frequently traveling on passenger steamers and are warned to take precautions accordingly.”

In 1937 the bottom fell out of the U.S. shipping industry after Congress withdrew all maritime mail subsidies and the Baltimore Mail Line folded. War Harbour/Independence/City of Norfolk was transferred briefly to the struggling Panama Pacific Line, carrying freight and passengers from New York to California and back again via the Canal, but that soon ended as that shipper too folded due to mounting costs.

By November 1940, the five converted former Baltimore Mail Line ships, now 20-years old and surplus once more were re-acquired by the U.S. Navy for the second time. Dubbed transports, they were taken to Willamette Steel in Portland, camouflaged, fitted to accommodate 1100~ troops, armed with a smattering of deck guns (a single 5″/51 and two 3″/50 guns as well as some .50 cals to ward off low-flying curious planes), given two light davits on each side to accommodate eight landing craft, and (wait for it) renamed yet again.

War Harbour/Independence/City of Norfolk became USS Neville (AP-16) and by June reported for duty with the Atlantic Fleet, spending six months transporting troops and naval personnel from the East Coast to new bases in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. Shortly after the U.S. entered the war, she joined a transatlantic convoy to Ireland with British personnel and Lend-Lease equipment aboard.

View of a convoy out of Brooklyn, New York (USA), February 1942: USS Neville (AP-16) is in the foreground. Other ships present include at least six other transports, a light cruiser, and a battleship. This is probably the convoy that left the east coast on 19 February 1942, bound across the Atlantic to Belfast, Northern Ireland. Note the extensive use of Measure 12 (Modified) camouflage on these ships. U.S. Navy photo 80-G-2408

Then came the Pacific war and, armed with more AAA guns (20mm’s in place of her original .50 cals) was soon carrying Army troops and Navy Seabees to New Zealand, then Marines to a place called Guadalcanal, where she helped conduct landings on Blue Beach 7 August 1942, sending Marine Combat Team 2 ashore on Tulagi.

U.S. Marines come ashore on Tulagi Island, probably during the landings there on 7-8 August 1942. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-16485

Landing at Guadalcanal. The latest shipment of reinforcements for Guadalcanal prepare to leave a landing boat, from USS Neville (APA-9) on the shores of the island. NARA photograph. Photographed through Mylar sleeve.

It was a dangerous place to be for a lightly armed transport. Class sister War Haven/Victorious/City of Havre/George F. Elliott was lost just a few miles away after she was clobbered by Japanese planes.

The U.S. Navy troop transport USS George F. Elliott (AP-13) burning between Guadalcanal and Tulagi, after she was hit by a crashing Japanese aircraft during an air attack on 8 August 1942. Date 8 August 1942 Source Official U.S. Navy photo NH 69118

Redesignated an amphibious assault transport (APA-9), Neville was then rushed to the Med for the invasion of Sicily, this time to put men of the Army’s 45th Infantry (Thunderbird) Division on Red Beach.

Shipping off the Scoglitti beaches on the first day of the invasion, 10 July 1943. Among the ships present are: USS Calvert (APA-32), second from left; USS Neville (APA-9), left center; USS Frederick Funston (APA-89), far right. An LST is in the right center, with a light cruiser in the distance beyond. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-215086

USS Neville (APA-9) off the Norfolk Navy Yard on 17 April 1943 after receiving changes to her armament and other modifications. Her 5″/51 gun aft has been removed and two twin 40mm anti-aircraft guns have been added, one forward in the tall structure over the two 3″/50 guns and one aft. She also received a radar mast over the bridge. Photo No. 19-N-45752 Source: U.S. National Archives, RG-19-LCM via Ship Scribe

Chopping back to the Pac after gaining more AAA (40mms this time), Neville landed troops at Tarawa in the Gilberts in November 1943, Kwajalein and Majuro three months later, Eniwetok in March 1944, and helped capture Saipan that June after landing her Marines on beach Green Two. In all, she was awarded five battle stars for her WWII service.

After taking Japanese POWs– a rare treasure– back to Pearl Harbor, Neville spent the rest of the war in San Diego training APA crews. The end of the conflict saw her performing Magic Carpet duty, bringing home salty combat vets from overseas and replacing them with fresh green troops for occupation duty. Arriving at Boston 5 February 1946, she was struck from the Navy List 15 August 1946, then towed to the James River National Defense Reserve Fleet. Ten years later the old girl was sold to a New Jersey company for scrap.

Her three remaining APA sisters who survived the war– War Wave/Archer/City of Newport News/Fuller, War Surf/Eclipse/City of Hamburg/William Biddle, and Steadfast/City of Baltimore/Heywood, all were likewise scrapped in 1956.

The unmodified freighter sisters were less lucky. War Cape/Triumph was sunk as SS Pan-Massachusetts by a German torpedo in 1942. War Sea/Courageous was sunk as breakwater off Normandy in 1944. In all, they were a hard luck and unsung class of ships, but they got it done, which is all you can really ask.

Specs:
Displacement 7,475 t.(lt) 14,450 t.
Length 507′ (post-conversion, 1931) 444 as built
Beam 56′
Draft 24′ (mean)
Propulsion: four Babcock and Wilcox header-type boilers
one De Laval steam turbine, geared turbine drive
single propeller, 9,500shp
Speed 16 kts as built
Complement (1945)
Officers 50
Enlisted 524
Troop Accommodations: 60-75 officers, 818-1,203 enlisted
Cargo: 145,000-150,000 cu ft, 1,800-2,900 tons
Armament (1940)
one single 5″/51 mount
two single 3″/50 cal dual purpose gun mounts
eight 0.5 in (12.7 mm) machine guns
Armament (1945)
four single 3″/50 cal dual purpose gun mounts
two twin 40mm AA gun mounts
sixteen single 20mm AA gun mounts

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