On this day in 1881 in West Chester, PA, Smedley Darlington Butler was authorized one body, human, which he used to join the Marines some 38 days before his 17th birthday during the great national crisis that was the Spanish–American War.
Some 34 years later, he retired as a full Maj. Gen (the highest rank authorised in the Corps at the time) after fighting in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the “Banana Wars,” and in France during the Great War, earning not just one but two Medals of Honor.
While in the Corps “The Fighting Quaker” wrote on counter insurgency warfare which was later published along with other texts as The Small Wars Manual in 1940 and, five years before his death at the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, penned the slightly more notorious War is a Racket.
Here is Butler’s campaign hat on display at the National Marine Corps Museum.
Marine Corps Photo #530953 entitled “Ready for Anything–Maneuvers outside of Peking” showing some well-outfitted Devil Dogs clad in overseas winter gear to include fur caps readying a Browning M1917 water-cooled 30.06 machine gun while sheltering in what looks like a tilled field. Although the M1919 air-cooled Browning was around, the sustained fire M1917 was a thing of beauty on the defense.
The picture is comparable to one from RN Marines from about 30 years previous:
“The New Maxim-Gun mounting field Service with the Naval Brigade in South Africa 1900.”
While the USMC photo is undated, it likely comes from the late 1920s-30s, the heydey of the famous “China Marines” which saw the whole of the 4th Marine Regiment stationed in Shanghai from March 1927 onward to augment the Legation Guard Marines from Peking and Tientsin in protecting American citizens and property in the International Settlement during outbreak of violence that came with the Chinese Revolution– and, after 1937, the Japanese invasion of China.
“Technical Sgt-USMC-1938, Mounted, by Maj. J.H. Magruder, USMCR” typical of the kit of the 4th Marines in Northern China at the time of the photo at the top of the post.
Reduced over time to just two (sometimes horse-mounted on Mongolian ponies) battalions, each with only two rifle companies of two platoons each and one machine gun company (but augmented by the only fife band in the Corps), by 1940 the Marines were the only large international force in Shanghai as the French and Brits had withdrawn due to pressing needs elsewhere.
A group of horse Marines gallops in formation in Peking, China. These Marines were members of the American Legation Guard. 1936
Horse Marine, China, circa 1913 USMC photo
One of several Mark VII 3-inch landing guns remaining in the hands of the Marine garrison in Peking in service with the 39th Company, Marine Artillery. Just 51 of these handy 1,700-pound guns were built from a German Ehrhardt design 1909-12 and were used extensively by the Marines in the Banana Wars (although not in France in the Great War). China was the last hurrah of these peculiar 3″/23 caliber field guns– and the Japanese captured six of the example in storage at Cavite in 1942.
The 4th Marines was itself pulled from China less than a month before Pearl Harbor. These hardy regulars were withdrawn to the Philippines aboard the chartered Dollar liners SS President Madison and President Harrison, where they were soon ground down against the Japanese to the point that the remnants burned their colors on Corregidor before the surrender there in 1942.
Of the 204 remaining Legation Marines and their Navy support personnel under Col. William W. Ashurst in China not directly assigned to the 4th, their own planned extraction to the PI was interrupted by Pearl Harbor and, on 8 December 1941, they were captured by overwhelming Japanese forces. The men were interned in a prisoner of war camp in Shanghai under harsh conditions until it was liberated, 19 June 1945.
If ever there was a lesson in why you should store your guns in good condition, here we see the Iowa-class battlewagon, USS New Jersey (BB-62), as she was put to pasture after her WWII service.
The Sailors are removing the muzzle seals from two of her forward turret’s 16″/50cal Mark 7 guns, while she was being reactivated at the Naval Supply Depot, Bayonne, Oct. 1950, for use in Korea.
New Jersey, of course, would go back into retirement following Korea, only to be recommissioned a third time for Vietnam, and a fourth in the 1980s to help the Reagan-era 600-ship Navy make weight.
Using a bucket full of reclaimed old brass, a home handyman created a gold-hued AR-10 lower receiver, with some assembly required.
Nothing really high-tech involved, although it took 60 hours to work out it. Using a greensand mold, he melts down 1,425 assorted casings to form a 13-pound solid block of brass, which he then machines to a 10~ pound blank.
Ok, 10-pounds, 5-ounces.
Then, after a lot more milling and cutting, he has a workable lower over the course of a condensed and distilled 20-minute video.
If the concept and the guy seem vaguely familiar, he took 256 soda and beer cans and made an AR-15 last year from their recovered aluminum. Who needs 3-D printing, right?
Meant primarily for emergency hunting and fending off polar bears rather than parting the hair of a Russian submariner, the C19 rifle is definitely unique to the needs of those that use it.
In the above video members of the Canadian Rangers are shown in Newfoundland meeting their newly issued .308 Win-chambered bolt guns for the first time and getting the 411 on nomenclature and the rifle’s specifics. Based on the Sako T3 CTR (Compact Tactical Rifle) with tweaks for the Rangers as they have to use their guns in whiteout conditions at -50 C weather.
The cold weather testing, by Colt Canada, who is making the C19 under license from Sako.
Said differences include an oversize bolt and trigger guard so that it can be used with heavy gloves (you don’t want to touch metal with bare hands when it’s that cold) as well as a high-viz laminated stock complete with the Ranger crest.
A relaxed President John F. Kennedy talks to three “All American” officers of the 82nd Airborne Division during his visit to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, 12 October 1961
JFK, a Navy man, of course, has his hands in his pockets but his suit fits great and would blend right in on Mad Men. Note the officers as well, with shined jump boots, bloused and starched OD fatigues (complete with sharp creases) and tie-downs for the M1911 holsters. The WWII-era M1 Carbines (the Army had not moved to the M16 at the time and the M14 was often seen as too bulky for airborne operations) as well as the old Duck Hunter camo covers on their steel pots complete the setup.
What a great view of the underside of a T-11 Personnel Parachute System, with para attached. U.S. Army photos by Lt. Col. John Hall
Check out that C17 and the Julian Alps in the distance. Jôf di Montasio, some 9,000-feet high, is in the area
Paratroopers, most likely “Sky Soldiers” of the Vicenza-based 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, conduct airborne operations during exercise Bayonet Strike East onto Juliet drop zone in Pordenone, Italy, June 13, 2018.
Founded in 1917 during the Great War and going on to fight its way through the Rhineland in 1945 as a leg infantry unit, the 173rd transitioned to an airborne task force in 1963 and hasn’t looked back.
Warship Wednesday, July 25, 2018: Tsar Nicky’s lost (crypto) millions?
Colorized by my good friend Diego Mar of Postales Navales
Here we see the semi-armored frigate (often classified as a cruiser) Dmitriy Donskoy (or, Dmitri Donskoi) of the Tsarist Imperial Navy in her classic black and buff scheme. Note the Romanov double eagle crest in yellow– house colors– on her bow.
She was the last warship claimed by the military fiasco that was the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 and notably has popped back in the news last week with her (re)discovery by a Singapore-based South Korean treasure-hunting group, thus:
Via the Shinil Group
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s get some context.
In the late 1870s, the Russian navy was fairly powerful, the proud owner of several U.S.-built coastal monitors ready to mix it up with anything sent into their waters, and a reasonable fleet of blue water steam vessels. What they really needed, however, were armored blue water ships capable of ranging far and wide. Enter the armored frigate Minin, some 295-feet overall and 6,100-tons, she was capable of 14-knots and carried a quartet of 8-inch guns and as much as 7-inches of locally made iron armor. Not bad for 1878. At the same time came the Russian cruiser General Admiral, considered the world’s first armored cruiser, combining an armor belt with an armored protective deck in a 285-foot/5,038-ton package capable of making 12 knots.
General Admiral, shown in New York in 1893– but we’ll get to that (LOC photo)
By 1880, the Admiralty ordered the follow-on Dmitriy Donskoy, named after St. Dmitry of the Don who beat the Tartars at the Battle of Kulikovo in the 14th century, one of the largest battles of the Middle Ages and the event that signaled the beginning of the end of the Mongol Yoke over Rus.
The guy on the white horse…
She was the fifth Russian naval ship since 1771 to carry the name– and the last until 2000.
Beefier than General Admiral and about even 10 feet longer and 100-tons heavier (she used heavier steel armor ordered abroad from Cammell Laird to include a belt and armored deck) than Minin, the new armored frigate had more economical engines coupled with larger coal bunkers that gave her three times the range of Minin and a speed of 16-knots (making 16.16 on trials). She could travel for a week at full speed and up to 30 days at a more pedestrian 10-knots. Then, in 1883, came her half-sister, the more refined Vladimir Monomakh, a tweaked 306-foot/6,000-ton vessel to the same layout.
All four of these experimental ships had copper sheathed hulls to cut down on drydocking– and allowing more distant deployments– and were heavily ship-rigged on three wooden masts for extending their range under sail. Their props were originally designed to be lifted to prevent drag while under canvas, but that did not work in practice.
Referred to as armored cruisers by the rest of the world, there was a legit concern (mainly by the British) at the time that these ships would create havoc on sea lanes as commerce raiders in the event of war.
Donskoy spent the first two years of her career with the Mediterranean Sea squadron, then in 1887 transferred to the Pacific, where Russia was eagerly looking to expand.
An 1889 modification saw her wooden masts replaced by lighter steel ones, followed by another tour of the Med, and by 1891 she was back in the Pacific and would sail the world extensively for several years.
She participated in the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 as the flagship of the Russian squadron, sailing up the Hudson along with the already-mentioned General Admiral, gunboat Rynda (c1885/3,537t) and the new and mighty armored cruiser Admiral Nakhimov (c1888/8,609t), the latter a Warship Wednesday alum.
Dmitri Donskoi, Russian navy_LOC-D4-21190
Dmitri Donskoi, Russian navy_LOC-D4-21191
Her officers were a hit with the New York social crowd.
Capt. 1st Rank NA Zelenoy, skipper of the Donskoy, in his full uniform, colorized photo from Detriot Post Card company, via LOC
In 1895 she was extensively modified with new engines and boilers, and her armament updated, shipping for the Far East again the next year, carrying a white scheme for a time.
Ironclad IRN Dmitrii Donskoi picture at the opening of the Vladivostok Drydock, October 7th, 1897
She would spend six years in Vladivostok, then the new Russian enclave at Port Arthur (which they basically stole from the Japanese), and her crew formed a naval battalion that participated in the Boxer rebellion.
Russian Sailors Defending A Barricade Before The Peking Legation 1900 in Boxer Rebellion via the London Illustrated News
At the end of 1901, she returned to the Baltic again for another refit and armament swap (honestly, she changed her batteries so much that it is irrelevant to cover each update, check the specs at the bottom for more details).
She was aging, slow for her times, and poorly armed for her size, and a 1900 Jane’s entry characterized her as such.
Early 1904 saw her leaving for the Far East once again with the cruiser Almaz and a group of new destroyers, but they only got as far as the Red Sea before war came with Japan– over Port Arthur– and she was recalled to the Baltic.
With the war going exceptionally bad for the Russians militarily, and the Tsar’s Pacific Squadron largely bottled up behind minefields and Japanese blockade at Port Arthur, the Baltic Fleet suddenly became dubbed the 2nd Pacific Squadron and soon received orders to sail to the Far East and throw down. The epic story is told best by Constantine Pleshakov in his “The Tsar’s Last Armada: The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima.”
It’s a good read…
In the book, Donskoy appears a dozen or more times, derided by Vice Adm. Rozhestvensky as the “cabbie” of the fleet due to her slow speed. First, she caught a broadside from her own fleet in the Baltic (!) during a confusing nighttime skirmish that injured several men and, as British trawlers were harmed, forced the ill-fated warships to sail all the way around the Cape of Good Hope rather than via the London-controlled Suez Canal.
Then, Donskoy became the great fisherman of the fleet in Madagascar– catching some 1,800 pounds of fish in one go via nets but losing a man to a shark. Then came her officers’ rather racy involvement with the nurses of the hospital ship Orel. Anyway, pick up the book, it’s a great read.
The blue line…
Now, in the third act, we have our valiant frigate’s destruction in the Strait of Korea. Part of a four-ship column of cruisers under the flag of the unpopular but politically connected Rear-Admiral Oskar Enkvist– she joined Oleg, Aurora, and her sister Monomakh and were tasked with guarding the auxiliaries in the rear column of the fleet by Rozhdestvensky.
Escaping the carnage of the main fleet action, he ordered the group to make their way as best they could to Vladivostok. The Admiral later caught up to them in the leaking torpedo boat Buiny but during the night of May 27/28, they became separated again. Meanwhile, the Japanese were busy hunting the stragglers. Monomakh was torpedoed by a Japanese torpedo boat in the night and surrendered the next day. The Zhemchug, Aurora, and Oleg damaged managed to make it to Manila to be interned by the Americans under the guns of the old monitor USS Monadnock (BM-3).
By the morning of the 28th, Donskoy, now just accompanied by two torpedo boats– Bedovy and Grozny— found the wounded Rozhdestvensky on his languishing Buiny and transferred him, along with the Donskoy‘s surgeon, to the Bedovy for the final 400-mile run to safety in Vladivostok. Donskoy remained behind to cover the admiral’s retreat and rescue the crew from Buiny then sink her with gunfire. Overall, the ship had more than 300 survivors aboard, mostly from the lost battleship Oslyabya.
Ultimately, Rozhestvensky was captured after his new torpedo boat suffered an engineering casualty later that morning, but Donskoy pressed on alone, filled with survivors she picked up along the way. By 5 p.m. she was sighted by the pursuing Japanese and, some two hours later, was some 30 nautical miles south of Ulleungdo (Dajelet) Island. Over the next two hours, she dueled with the Japanese cruisers Otowa (3,000t) and Niitaka (3,400 tons), together with the destroyers Asagiri, Shirakumo, and Fubuki. It was a hell of a fight by all accounts and the Japanese caught a few rounds in return fire– a rarety in the typical Russo-Japanese exchange.
Zaikin A.Yu. (born 1954) “The last fight of Dmitry Donskoy,” 1995
This left the old Donskoy battered and her skipper, the valiant Capt.1st Rank Ivan Nikolayevich Lebedev, a veteran with some 38 years of service behind him, on his literal last leg, one of some 190 casualties suffered in the final act of Tsushima.
From a Russian memoir of the hellish scene on Donskoy, of her XO, Capt. 2nd rank Konstantin Platonovich Blokhin, being called to the bridge:
The senior officer was on deck when one of the sailors flew up to him and, choking on words, reported:
“Your Honor … the commander asks you.”
Blokhin immediately climbed to the bridge and, peering into the warped and dilapidated cabin, for a moment was dumbfounded. The whole deck shone with fresh blood. Lieutenant Durnovo, leaning against the wall, sat motionless, bent, as if thinking about something, but he and his cap had a skull and horribly pinked frozen brain. The helmsman Quartermaster Polyakov curled up at the binnacle. Lieutenant Giers was lying with his belly open. Above these corpses, gritting his teeth in pain, Lieutenant commander towered alone, barely holding onto the handles of the wheel. He had a through wound in his thigh with a bone fracture.
In addition, his entire body was wounded with small fragments. He stood on one leg and tried to hold the cruiser on the course, himself unaware that the steering gear was broken and that the ship was steadily rolling to the right. Seeing the senior officer, he raised his eyebrows in surprise and said with blue lips:
“I hand over the command…”
“I’ll arrange for you to be transferred, Ivan Nikolayevich, to the dressing station.”
“Do not. I’ll stay here. Try to get to the shade of the island. Do not hand over the ship. Better to scuttle her.”
And with that, Lebedev died and his battered ship limped closer to Ulleungdo Island and was scuttled by her crew in deep water some two miles offshore on the morning of the 29th, sending her survivors ashore where the Japanese took them, prisoner.
Blokhin survived, later becoming a rear admiral. Her mine officer, Lt. Alexander Oskarovich Stark (whose father, Vice Adm. Oskar Viktorovich Stark had ironically been in command of the 1st Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur), went on to command the cruiser Bayan in the Baltic during WWI and died in exile (along with his dad) in Finland in the 1920s.
As for Rozhestvensky, after ducking a death sentence at a court-martial after the war, he lived out the last years of his life in St Petersburg as a recluse and died in 1909 of a bad heart, aged 60. He had lost 4,380 men and 21 vessels– including an amazing seven battleships– over the course of about 24-hours, while another seven of his warships were captured by the Japanese along with a staggering 5,900 men– to include the survivors of Donskoy, of course. The Japanese lost no major ships and suffered about 700 mixed casualties in what could be called the all-time benchmark for a decisive naval victory.
Fast forward a few years, and the stories of the gold started to come out, with the legend going that the vessels were piled high with a mini-fortune to be used to buy coal and supplies aboard as needed because Russia had precisely zero coaling stations between the Baltic and Vladivostok.
In 1933, an author named Garry Berg published a hard-to-find pamphlet, “600 Billion in Water,” holding that four ships of the Rozhestvensky’s 2nd Pacific Squadron sunk at the Battle of Tsushima had a horde of gold, then worth US $5 million, with the largest portions on two cruisers– $2 million carried on Admiral Nakhimov, and another $2 million on Donskoy. In 1980, Japanese salvors located Nakhimov and pulled up an unspecified amount of gold bullion, platinum ingots, and British gold sovereigns– over the howls of the Soviets. The ship reportedly carried 16 platinum bars, 48 gold bars, and about 5,000 pounds of British gold coins. The funny thing is– the ingots shown off in 1980 were later found to be made out of lead.
In 2001, a South Korean group said they found Donskoy, which is rumored to hold 5,500 boxes of gold bullion and 200 tons of gold coins aboard her– an incredible cache that today is worth some $130 billion if it is to be believed. The ROK-government-run Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology followed up with a claim on the wreck a few years later.
However, no one has been able to salve it.
Now, the Singapore-based Shinil Group has once again stirred the Donskoy pot, saying they have located her stern (she is nearly broken in two) at N37°-29′.2″ E130°-56′.3″ to be precise.
“The bottom of Donskoy is about 40 degrees on the slope of the seabed with its stern 380 meters below the water level, and its bow is at 430 meters. One-third of the stern is bombarded, and the hull is severely damaged. It is a half-broken situation. However, the upper deck of the wooden hull is almost untouched. The armor on the side of the hull is also well preserved, while the anchors, guns, and machine guns remain in place. In addition, all three of the masts and the two chimneys are broken, there was also a partial attacked trail of marking on the sides.”
Now, as reported by the Singapore Straits Times, the group is offering a swing at the “Donskoi International” crypto currency exchange providing tokens called Shinil Gold Coins (SGCs), backed apparently by gold futures on the wreck, which makes the whole idea of the 2nd Pacific Squadron’s ridiculous 18,000-mile journey to Valhalla seem like an innovative idea in comparison…
As for the Russians, after spending some 95 years trying to forget Donskoy, they renamed the 20-year-old TK-208, a huge Project 941 Akula (NATO: Typhoon-class) ballistic missile submarine built in 1980, as Dmitriy Donskoy.
She is the largest submarine in the world in regular fleet service, assigned to the Northern Fleet at Severodvinsk, and the last of her class on active duty. Her aging R-39 ballistic missiles were replaced with launchers for the new RSM-56 Bulava SLBM and she has been testing them out over the past several years.
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.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
These books were returned to us this week by the son of a former faculty member who taught in the Department of Economics, Government, and History from 1956-1962. These books predate formal departmental libraries and were likely office copies that were packed up with his belongings when he departed in 1962.
So FN was one of the many companies that courted the Army for years over the Modular Handgun System contract– which of course Sig won with their P320 variant which has now been adopted by everyone across DOD (and the USCG, which is part of DHS) as the M17/M18 series pistol.
To recoup losses in their failed bid, manufacturers who lost out introduced tweaked versions of their MHS submissions (see the Beretta APX, Glock 19X and the FN 509 among others) which are proving to be surprisingly popular. Now, FN has come closer to the original MHS styling to offer a more “combat ready” version of said 509.
I feel like this is what the Glock 19X should have been…
Just my two cents here: I really like the suppressor-height sights and the fact that it is optics-ready, shown in the below video with a Trijicon RMR Type II, Leupold Deltapoint Pro, Burris Fastfire III, and a Vortex Venom, all with no milling needed and the ability to co-witness with the factory sights intact.
Also, the 24-round mag is sure to be a crowd-pleaser, although the mag seems really long for just an extra 7 rounds.
That 24-rounder, tho…
On the downside, the $1K+ MSRP, sans optics, is kind of a buzzkill, especially for trigger snobs who will want to do an immediate swap out for something with a flat face.
Via FN:
(McLean, VA – July 19, 2018) FN America, LLC announces today the expansion of the FN 509® Series of striker-fired pistols with the release of the FN 509 Tactical, an optics- and suppressor-ready 9mm pistol. The pistol features the company’s patent-pending Low-Profile Optics Mounting System™ that enables the platform to accept more than ten commercially-available miniature red dot (MRD) optics and remain adaptable to future optics releases with no requirement of direct milling of the slide.
“The FN 509 Tactical and the FN Low-Profile Optics Mounting System are another leap forward in the optics-ready pistol market,” said John Keppeler, vice president of sales and marketing for FN America, LLC. “FN set the trend for factory optics-ready pistols with the release of the FNP-45 Tactical nearly a decade ago and we’re set to do it again with this release. From barrel to base plate, the FN 509 Tactical really is the ultimate tactical pistol.”
The FN 509 Tactical, an extension of the FN 509 family, is based on FN’s submission pistol that the U.S. Army tested for its Modular Handgun Trials, but includes the significant improvements to the design that were implemented in the FN 509. Like the optics mounting system, FN’s team of engineers set out to develop the ultimate tactical pistol by addressing the market’s existing limitations.
As a result, the FN 509 Tactical features an FN-signature 4.5-inch, cold hammer-forged, stainless-steel barrel with target crown, ½” x 28 threads that accept the bulk of 9mm suppressors available and thread cap with integrated O-ring to prevent loosening during use. Lastly, the 24-round magazines, nearly identical in length to the pistol’s slide, maximize ammunition capacity without impacting carry convenience.
The optics mount accepts the majority of MRD’s on the market with no need to direct mill the slide, allowing for a low-profile mount and co-witness with the suppressor-height iron sights. The slide cap, for use when not shooting with an optic, has raised sight wings that protect iron sight alignment if the pistol is dropped or jostled, and provides a textured ramp for racking the slide against a belt loop, pant pocket or boot.
With the gun new to the market, Patrick with the Firearm Rack spends some time with the 509 Tactical with a concentration on the milled slide optics mount system, which he dubs, “amazingly cool.”
