Here we see a Sikorsky S-58JT, registry# N4247V, owned by aviation firm Midwest Truxton in Cook County, Illinois.
(Photos: Deerfield PD, Illinois)
The airframe, SN 58-1547, was ordered as a U.S. Navy HSS-1N Seabat, BuNo 150754 (MSN 58-1547) in 1962 but was instead completed to CH-34C standard for West German Army (Heer), where she served as QB+483, then QW+404, and finally 8070 for the next two decades of the Cold War.
Sold on the civilian market in 1983, she first flew as N83829, then OB-T-1008, then N4247V, her current number, still going strong after 56 years.
For the record, the U.S. Navy got out of the Seabat/UH-34 business in 1973, while on the way out of Vietnam.
With the temperatures rising steadily, here is a nice cool shot of USCGC Amberjack (WPB 87315) seen here moored alongside a CG mooring buoy in Valley Cove, Maine.
Photo credit to MK2 Dakota Crow/USCG
Amberjack, an 87-foot Marine Protector-class cutter, is homeported in Jonesport, Maine. She is armed with two M2 .50-caliber heavy machine guns as well as an extensive small arms locker of M16s, Sig P229Rs, and Remington 870 shotguns.
Back last year I had a chance to tour Remington’s mega factory in Huntsville, Alabama where they made, on one giant floor, dozens of different types of platforms for many of their subsidiaries including DPMS, LAR, Bushmaster, AAC suppressors and others. One of the cooler things I saw were Remington Defense (Bushmaster, but for military contracts) Adaptive Combat Rifle lowers on the floor.
Don’t know about Remington Defense? They market militarized versions of papa’s classic 700-series sniper rifles and 870-series shotguns as well as the select-fire Remington R4 and R5 carbines and the ACR itself.
Well, the company just got a big slice of a $28.4 million firm-fixed-price U.S. Army contract for an undetailed quantity of “North Atlantic Treaty Organization commercial off-the-shelf carbines,” with Colt, Daniel Defense, and FN competing with Remington to fulfill the order by July 2019.
The end-user is unannounced, the rifle being supplied is unspecified, and the quantity is also a riddle, but the last big Remington military sale was to the Philippines for over 60,000 R4s, some of which have seen very heavy use in battling Islamic insurgents.
Philippine soldier, Battle of Marawi. The logo on his magwell: Remington Defense.
Multinational ships, (left to right) guided-missile destroyer USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110), guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70), Peruvian Navy maritime patrol boat BAP Ferré (PM 211) [ex-South Korean Gyeongju (PCC-758)] and the Philippine Navy frigate BRP Andrés Bonifacio (FF 17) [ex-USCGC Boutwell (WHEC-719)] sail in formation at sunset at RIMPAC 2018.
In a departure from our standard Warship Wednesday format, here we see an aerial port beam view of the Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carrier USS Constellation (CV-64) in her prime as crew members form the Battle E awards for excellence on the flight deck of the ship, 1 August 1986. Among these is the Pacific Fleet Battle Efficiency Award for an 18-month period. She is pictured off the West Coast just a month before she started a short two-month NorPac cruise, Capt. Melvin David Munsinger, USN, in command.
About half of her airwing is on deck, and it is a masterpiece of 1980s Red Storm Rising-style carrier warfare.
Forward you can see at least 17 F/A-18A/B Hornets from VF-A-113 and VFA-25 nestled around her starboard Sea Sparrow launcher. Next, are followed a half-dozen S-3A Vikings from VS-37, a collection of 16 KA-6D/EA-6B/A-6Es from VA-196 and VAQ-139, three E-3 Hawkeyes from VAW-113 aft her the island, along with a pair of big ole beautiful SH-3 Sea Kings from the “Eighballers” of HS-8. The huge delta-wing fighters, of course, are the F-14A Tomcats with their variable geometric wings in their closed position, from VF-21 and VF-154. All are of Carrier Air Wing 14 (CVW-14) which deployed on Connie during Vietnam as well as five times between Feb. 1985 and Oct. 1989 before chopping to USS Independence.
The above was taken the year before Connie was sent to help support Operation Earnest Will, the 14-months of nail-biting that came with escorting of re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf as a result of Iranian attacks against international shipping with assets from the Pacific’s Third and Seventh Fleets and the Mediterranean-based Sixth Fleet. This was known by the crew as “Connie’s 24-hour Escort Service” (NSFW).
Connie was decommissioned 7 August 2003 and struck later the same year. She arrived in Brownsville on 16 January 2015 for dismantling and has been going to pieces slowly ever since.
Recently B Squadron, 1st Armoured Regiment, of Royal Australian Army’s 1st Brigade deployed to Cultana Training Area to conduct live fire field training, where their M1A1 AIM SA Abrams main battle tanks were described as a “ruthlessly accurate platform” by the black berets.
A tank crew conducts a boresight check of its main gun. This is a key component of battle preparation to ensure the tank round hits its target.
The tank of the Officer Commanding B Squadron, 2C “Binh Ba”, engages a target in the distance.
Earlier this year in Dallas I got a chance to put some rounds downrange with Sig Sauer’s new SUR300, a suppressed .300 BLK upper that uses a 6.75-inch barrel with a permanently attached Ti suppressor that incorporates 19 baffles. It was hearing safe without earpro (we’re talking ~120dB range), good for 400 meters due to the combined length of the barrel and baffle stack, shorter than a comparable rifle with a threaded barrel and can, and had less blowback in my face when firing.
The SUR300, (Photo: Chris Eger)
While Sig has not released the upper on the commercial market just yet that I can find, they did recently pick up a $48 million contract for SOCCOM’s long-awaited Suppressed Upper Receiver Group (SURG) program, which intends to marry a full-auto capable full-time hushed upper with standard M4A1 lowers, so you can expect lots more quiet time on the sharp end in coming years.
Here we see the sole type of only fixed-wing aircraft ever built specifically for the U.S. Army since the Air Force was carved away to form a separate service in 1947– the humble Grumman OV-1 Mohawk, a dedicated observation, intelligence and tactical surveillance aircraft that could double in light attack roles in a pinch, replacing the old WWII-era Cessna O-1 Bird Dog “Grasshoppers” used to correct fire for field artillery units and scout just over the front line.
First flying in 1959, they were used in Vietnam and by the 1970s increasingly saw service in Army National Guard units, continuing to put in solid work right into Desert Storm.
This 70s Photo of Oregon’s Army National Guard OV-1s from the 1042nd Aviation Company in Salem flying past Mt. Hood.
Mohawk #926 flown by Curt Degner “SCAN 23” (top) leading a formation of Mohawks. The 2nd (middle) OV-1 is flown by Stephen Hammons “SCAN 21” and the 3rd (lower) OV-1 is flown by George Burns “SCAN 09” as they pass by Mt. Hood. You can just barely make out “926” on the tail of the lead Mohawk.
“It’s an unsung hero,” says Russ Wygal, a pilot with the Army’s 224th Military Intelligence Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, the last stateside unit to fly the Mohawk. Wygal says that when he tells people he flew an OV-1, they often confuse it with the North American OV-10 Bronco, a twin turboprop developed specifically for counter-insurgency campaigns like the Vietnam war. “Then I have to describe what it looks like,” he says. “It’s not like an F-14 Tomcat, where everybody goes, ‘Ooo, aah, Top Gun.’”
Capt. Albert L. Kaiss, in effect the last dreadnought skipper in any Navy, had five afloat commands including the destroyer USS Paul F. Foster (DD-964), the cruiser USS William H. Standley (CG-32), and the battleship Missouri— the latter, twice.
Kaiss recommissioned “Mighty Mo” as her 20th skipper in 1986 then left her in the hands of Capt. James Carney as he went on to command the hospital ship USNS Mercy.
Captain (CAPT) Albert L. Kaiss, commanding officer of the battleship USS MISSOURI (BB 63), speaks during the ship’s recommissioning 10 May 1986 PH2 Michael D.P. Flynn National Archives DN-SN-86-06997
Carney later subsequently handed over command of Missouri to Capt. John Chernesky in 1988.
Kaiss returned to Missouri on 13 June 1990 and took her to war for one final time as her 23rd commander. Kaiss steamed the battleship to the Persian Gulf from the West Coast, arriving 3 January 1991, and remaining until 21 March.
“We fired 783 16-inch salvos and 28 Tomahawk missiles at the Iraqis,” said Kaiss, then 51, on the eve of her decommissioning. “I’m proud of every sailor who served with me during the Persian Gulf War. We came home with the same number of people we left with, and none of our personnel was injured,” he noted. “Now we’re part of the history of this great ship.”
Kaiss, the last sailor to leave the ship on 31 March 1992, retired alongside her a few months later, a feat which led him to be described by the U.S. Navy Memorial as the last battleship sailor.
Patriot militia Capt. John Parker stood on the Lexington Green on April 19, 1775, and met a unit of the King’s men in an engagement that produced the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” He was armed that day with a .64-bore French-style fowling piece, but before the day was out, courtesy of a follow-up ambush known as Parker’s Revenge, he picked up a discarded British 1756 Long Land (Brown Bess) musket to add to his collection.
How do we know for sure? Both guns are in the collection of the Massachusetts State House and were recently shown off to a group of experts very familiar with the subject.
