So maybe hold off on that Sig P365 purchase

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It looks like there may be trouble in paradise with Sig’s new subcompact P365 carry gun. While the double stack micro is about the same size as Glock’s G43 (which has sold an amazing one million units in the past two years), the Sig comes to the party with 10+1 rounds of 9mm rather than the Glock’s 6+1, which guarantees it to be a smash hit.

However, growing word on the street is that Sig’s gun is not a rival for Glock’s reliability.

Not my words, but check out the below from Max Life Tactical, who got 550~ rounds through one on a review before the fit hit the shan (the review starts off glowing but then rapidly makes a 180 at the 6-minute mark)

Then, Tim Harmsen from the Military Arms Channel dropped this on social media yesterday. The words “failed catastrophically” are used.

Yikes.

Could just be a bad batch of guns. Could be that Sig used the customer as a beta tester. All platforms have hiccup periods. I’ve seen it before, regularly.

Still, you may want to wait until the hiccups are over on this one…

The carriers that aren’t

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The below piece of shipbuilding history is a 1974 status report on the then-under construction Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship (LHA) class at Pascagoula’s Litton-Ingalls Shipbuilding.

Capt. Jack Lisanby, the LHA project manager, sums up the project, which married the old 17,000-ton LPH helicopter carrier with a 14,000-ton LSD style landing ship dock to create a 40,000-ton ship that was the same size as a WWII Essex-class fleet carrier, but could accommodate 20-30 rotor-wing aircraft (and harriers) and four LCU-sized landing ships along with 1,700 transient Marines. It must have been a good idea because it has become standard ever since.

The lead ship, Tarawa, was laid down in 1971 and the last of the class, Peleliu, did not commission until 1980, meaning these “aircraft carriers that aren’t” were a fixture of my childhood. You could always go down to “The Point” across from Ingalls’ East Bank and see these flattops under construction. This was extended with the visually and mission-similar Wasp class of LHDs (1985-2009, with me, personally, working on USS Boxer in my own time at Ingalls) and now the new America-class LHAs went into production, leaving an almost unbroken chain of LHA/D’s that has stretched across almost 50 years.

LHA-6 USS America under construction at Ingalls in 2011, image as seen from Singing River Island across from the yard’s West Bank, by Chris Eger

Member of a shooting club? Want CMP to do a Small Arms Firing School there? Done

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From CMP:

The Civilian Marksmanship Program is looking to expand the reach of its Small Arms Firing School beyond its regular schedule, which is held annually at the National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, the CMP Travel Games at Oklahoma City Gun Club, Camp Butner – North Carolina, CMP Talladega – Alabama, New England Games at Camp Ethan Allen – Vermont and the Ben Avery Shooting Facility in Phoenix, Arizona.

Currently, the CMP welcomes 400 to 800 attendees each year at the national Small Arms Firing School at Camp Perry as part of the National Matches.  CMP travel games SAFS programs serve between 40 and 100 participants per event. The CMP provides rifles and ammunition for all SAFS programs, home and away.

As a part of our firearms safety and marksmanship mission, with an emphasis on youth, the CMP is looking for a few more qualified sites around the U.S. to host the classroom program of instruction and 200-yard Excellence-In-Competition rifle match to reach those who lack the time or means to travel to a current CMP instruction site. The SAFS EIC rifle match is the only match which allows a beginning competitor to earn four leg points toward a Distinguished Rifleman Badge – the highest honor most marksmen seek to achieve in our sport. Firing the match is not a requirement of the class.

The CMP will provide instructional and administrative staffing to conduct the classroom activities, rifle match staging, squadding, firing, awards, and record-keeping.

SAFS Remote Location Training Course and Match Criteria

Classroom

  • Appropriate seating accommodations for the size of the group your club/range expects to accommodate – minimum 20, maximum 50 participants
  • Overhead lighting and electrical outlet(s) to supply laptop PC and projector
  • Projection screen and 6′ or 8′ demonstration table
  • Attendee accessibility, parking, restroom(s) in the vicinity
  • Participants age 16 and over

Rifle Range

  • CMP Affiliated Club preferred, but not mandatory
  • Minimum 10 firing points
  • Volunteers to assist with range safety, labor, firing line and target line maintenance
  • Porta-johns or restrooms, running water in the vicinity, preferred
  • Responsible range owner-operator/approved range superintendent, insurance coverage
  • Secured, established range fan, safety danger zone identified
  • 200-yard high power range with safety berms, range flags, easily-accessible roads, trails, etc.
  • Well-maintained pit-served targets or easily-accessible walk-up targets to accommodate standard NRA SR 200-yard targets and cardboard backers
  • Raised firing line, grass-covered, concrete or other suitable surface for three-position shooting
  • Range communication system preferred – loudspeakers, chief range officer tower, (or pickup truck bed). Range to pits communication if pit-equipped. (Communications equipment can be provided by CMP if necessary)
  • A medical facility, 911-ready, first-aid, medic in close proximity
  • Housing, hotel/motel/restaurant accommodations in the area for CMP staff and event attendees from out of town, etc.

If your range facility would like to be considered by the CMP to schedule a future Small Arms Firing School and rifle match and your facility meets the criteria listed above, respond via email to CMP special projects coordinator, Amy Cantu, at acantu@thecmp.org, or by phone at 419-635-2141, ext. 602.

Now that’s a blaster

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For the record, this is not a factory option from Hudson– but it should be! (Photos: Chris Eger)

Making an appearance at a range day just before this year’s NRA Annual Meeting in Dallas was a Hudson blaster that looked a little far from its home world.

Elijah Henry, Hudson’s chief of product training, was on hand for the American Suppressor Association’s Fifth Annual Media Day at Elm Fork Shooting Sports with a selection of the company’s H9 and H9A handguns which were a crowd pleaser, but he also had what he described as a “shop gun” hidden away in a green kydex holster, because even intergalactic skip tracers choose kydex.

The customized Hudson 9mm is complete with Mandalorian and Clan Fett crests along with modified Metschan alphabetic script complementing the green, blue, yellow and red cerekote scheme as an homage to a certain bounty hunter from the Star Wars saga who has was inadvertently knocked into the open maw of the Sarlacc.

If only it had a disintegration switch.

Green Beret dive teams before they were actually Green Berets

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This Big Picture film on Special Forces Amphibious Training in 1956 Okinawa is insightful.

Of note is the fact that the “fighting frogman” detachment receives instruction in conducting water insertion and demolition training off the coast of White Beach aboard a U.S. Naval ship while wearing their floppy Lovat Scouts-style green berets– which was not officially approved for wear by the Army until 25 September 1961 in an evolved, more close-fitting, format.

The tactics covered are classic late WWII/Korean War-era UDT team and Marine recon evolutions. Good stuff regardless.

Those triple tank rigs, tho…

Thanks, Jeff!

A special Warship Wednesday: Remembering Scorpion

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Whereas normally this post would be some vintage ironclad, battleship or steam sloop, today we honor the men who lost their lives 50 years ago this week when USS Scorpion (SSN-589) a Skipjack-class nuclear powered submarine sunk some 750-miles south-west of Azores under 9,600 feet of cold Atlantic water.

Her brave crew of 99 Sailors lost their lives in one of the greatest non-wartime tragedies in the U.S. Navy’s history.

Gratefully, it was over in moments.

Time based on hydroacoustic events of the Scorpion sinking recorded at the Canary Islands. Source: Supplementary Record of Proceedings of Court of Inquiry by commander-in-chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet:
1859:35: Torpedo warhead explosion on port side of middle of sub causes rapid flooding of control room and other areas amidships. Water passes through access tunnel to reactor and auxiliary machinery room.
1901:06: Torpedo compartment bulkhead collapses, causing rapid flooding.
1901:10 Engine room bulkhead collapses aft into engine room, causing 85-foot stern section of submarine to telescope forward into auxiliary machinery and reactor compartments.

Today, we honor their courage, their service to our country and their commitment to duty.

Vale, Scorpion, may your final crew rest peacefully and on eternal patrol.

Sig 1-6x Tango optic to outfit Army’s new SDMR

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Sig’s 1-6x24mm TANGO6 optic will top off a variant of the Heckler & Koch G28E rifle to serve as the Army’s new SDMR, replacing legacy accurized M14 rifles. (Photo: Sig Sauer)

The Army has announced that Sig Sauer’s 1-6x24mm Tango6 optic has been selected to equip the service’s new Squad Designated Marksman Rifle.

The Tango6 series scope, as selected for a 6,069-unit SDMR requirement, will include a flat dark earth aluminum main tube, 762 extended range bullet drop compensation illuminated front reticle and a red horseshoe dot for daylight target acquisition.

More in my column at Guns.com

Meanwhile, off the HoA

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Here we see the Spanish Navy replenishment oiler ESPS Patiño (A14) providing refueling at sea for EUNAVFOR Flagship, the Italian Navy frigate ITS Carlo Margottini (F592), in support of counter-piracy and maritime security patrolling duties, April 2018.

A 17,000-ton offshoot of the HNLMS Amsterdam of the Royal Netherlands Navy, Patiño was commissioned in 1995 and has been very busy– enforcing the NATO/WEU trade embargo against the former Yugoslavia and during the Kosovo War in 1998, capturing the North Korean freighter So San and her cargo of Scud missiles bound for Yemen in 2002, and several times serving in the anti-piracy operations off Somalia to include repelling an armed attack on her by seven pirates in a trawler in 2012.

Margottini, a Bergamini-class FREMM-type multipurpose frigate of the Marina Militare, was commissioned in 2014. A score of FREMMs are in commission or on order for the French, Italian, Moroccan and Egyptian navies, while the U.S. is considering the type for its new frigate program, so you could very well see these 6,700-ton warships operating in haze gray soon.

The ships are assigned to the European Union Naval Force (Op Atalanta) Somalia, conducting anti-piracy duties at sea off the Horn of Africa and in the Western Indian Ocean. Since 2009, Atalanta ships have protected 437 World Food Programme (WFP) and 139 African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)-chartered humanitarian aide vessels without losing one to pirates yet.

Oy!

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Matt Easton of Schola Gladiatoria, whose great-grandfather was Glasgow’s chief of police, goes in-depth with a classic Victorian police truncheon, which is more interesting than you would expect.

As someone who has a half-dozen different “impact tool” trainer certs and has taught the use of such behavior modification devices to LE, military and security forces for two decades (and have the old PR-24 to prove it!), I found the take curious but not too far off-base considering the time the baton dated from. Even with today’s tasers and stun guns, I maintain that a properly used airweight 21-inch ASP can work wonders in many circumstances.

A closer look at a surviving Ha-Go, the only Japanese tank at Bovington

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David Willey, the curator at The Tank Museum, talks about their captured Japanese Ha-Go in the above video.

The Tank Museum’s Type 95 was captured in Burma during WWII and was examined in Calcutta before being sent to Britain. Surviving Japanese tanks from the Second World War are extremely rare.

As for the Ha-Go, the 16-ton tank was the most numerous Japanese armored fighting vehicle ever made and saw extensive use from China to Siam. With its 37mm gun it 25mph road speed, it was roughly comparable to the M3 Stuart, though with just 12mm of armor it could easily be knocked out with a 37mm anti-tank gun (or the British comparable QF 2-pounder) from as far away as 1,400 yards, or the average bazooka later in the war at ranges much closer.

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