Here we see the USS San Francisco (CA-38) silhouetted against a snowy mountain in Kulak Bay, Adak, Aleutian Islands, 25 April 1943.
NHHC 80-G-72059
A New Orleans-class cruiser, “Frisco Maru” received an amazing 17 battle stars during WWII. Decommissioned 10 February 1946 on her 12th birthday, she was kept in mothballs for another 12 then sold for scrap.
“A Southern Black Racer slithers across the barrel of a NationalGuard Soldier’s sniper rifle during a 1-173 Infantry training exercise Saturday, April 7, 2018, at Eglin Air Force Base. Snipers are trained to remain still for hours and invisible to enemies and even to wildlife.”
US Army photo by Staff Sgt. William Frye
Eglin’s panhandle training area is the stomping ground not only of Air Force SOF commandos but also the Army’s co-located 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), and the black bears and assorted snakes in the area see lots of company.
1st Battalion, 173rd Infantry Regiment is part of the Alabama National Guard based in Enterprise, AL. Since their activation in 2016, they have been aligned as a mobilization asset of the Louisiana-based 256th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, also known as the Tiger Brigade. The latter is sure to be a matter of heartburn during Alabama/LSU games.
So long shave profile!
So, a Norse religious group aided a Soldier in providing supporting documentation for a Religious Accommodation Request Requiring a Waiver to Army Grooming Policies, saying a beard was part of the serviceman’s religion– and it was approved.
Tromso, Norway’s NORSKK reportedly helped with the request.
In the Minigun biz, Garwood is a household name. Mr. Garwood himself, who started a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company specializing in an improved generation of the multi-barreled 7.62mm machine gun in 1999, allegedly told the ATF that a number of M134G rotor housings– considered the receiver of the Minigun– were destroyed, but the parts, controlled items under the National Firearms Act, were recovered in a 2017 search warrant at a suspected cross-border weapon smuggler’s home in Texas with their markings partially obliterated.
The U.S. Attorney’s office was not pleased…more in my column at Guns.com
Bump stocks popped up in 2010, and, according to ATF, as many as 500,000 are in circulation legally* (except in California, Vermont, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington), but until 2017 when they were used by a madman, were generally just seen as a range toy or novelty (except for those in “constitutional militias” who advocated their use as a poor man’s squad automatic weapon when coupled with drum mags for suppressive fire). No matter what DOJ on Congress decides on them, those are big numbers.
With as many as a half-million factory-produced bump stocks in the wild, worth north of $100 million, what is going to happen to them all?
Now the only maker of the much-vilified devices is closing shop, though what is going to happen to his patents in a world of freely-shared CAD files and 3D printing, is subject to interpretation.
More on that prospect in my column at Guns.com
Meanwhile, in other news, photos of a relatively sophisticated operation to make off the books TEC-9/KG-9 style pistols/machine pistols complete with K-baffle suppressors at a Montreal-area machine shop have just surfaced, begging the further question of genies and bottles…
Delivery of the remains of Sottocapo Silurista (Chief Torpedoman) Carlo Acefalo, late of the Royal Italian Navy submarine Macalle, to Italian Ambassador Fabrizio Lobasso for their repatriation to Italy after 78 years in the Sudanese desert.
The event occurred at Port Sudan, 18 April 2018.
Acefalo, 24, died of food poisoning after the 600-Serie Adua-class submarine was scuttled in WWII and the crew forced to escape and evade the British along the coast of the Red Sea. Italy has sought the return of the remains for years and the lost submariner is the subject of a documentary in that country.
Macalle was one of four Italian submarines lost in action in the Red Sea during WWII.
For the frugal warbird flyer in search of a fleet of fixer-uppers, there is a dealer selling 34 retired piston-engine trainers — in various conditions.
Platinum Fighters is selling a few squadrons’ worth of North American T-28 Trojans. The T-28 was a hearty little single-engine plane built in the 1950s and used to train pilots for the Air Force and Navy. Capable of being fitted with underwing hardpoints for guns, rockets, and small bombs, a number of armed T-28s flew in combat in Vietnam, including a batch of operated by CIA-trained Laotian military pilots.
Most of the aircraft shown for sale are U.S. Navy-marked, and the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola says the sea service purchased and operated almost 800 T-28s from the 1950s onward, with the last one retired from active duty with the Naval Air Training Command in 1984.
What a T-28 Trojan looks like restored. This one is not for sale and is in the collection of the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola (Photo: NAM)
If “some assembly required” is your thing, the lot offered by Platinum includes enough new parts to build five complete aircraft in addition to stocks of wings, engines (9 Wright Cyclone 1820-86Bs), factory blueprints, trailers and the like.
Although T-28s could mount various gun pods including .30-caliber, .50-caliber and 20mm flavors, sadly none of those party favors are mentioned in the stack of parts.
Price for all of this joy? $249,000, which is kinda neat if you have the time and inclination to fool with it, as you could end up with a more viable air force than many third world countries.
These are not the kind of guys you want to pick a fight with.
NHHC NH 100612
Ensign Schuyler F. Heim and other members of the landing party from the South Carolina-class battleship USS Michigan (BB-27) preparing to disembark, 22 April 1914, at Vera Cruz, Mexico.
Their white uniforms have been crudely dyed for camouflage purposes. Heim is wearing an M1912 pistol belt and magazine pocket, with a very newly issued M1911 automatic .45cal pistol in a swivel holster. The immense First Class Boatswain’s Mate beside him wears the M1910 dismounted cartridge belt for the Springfield M1903 rifle. Note additional ’03s in chests on deck.
BB-23’s career was cut short by the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922 and she was decommissioned in February 1923 and broken up for scrap the following year.
Heim went on to become a commodore and was in command of the Naval Air Station on Terminal Island in 1942, resulting in a bridge named in his honor crossing the Cerritos Channel at the Port of LA that remained in service until 2015.
No word on what became of the Hulk BM1.
On 21 April 1967 French politicians Gaston Defferre and Rene Ribiere met at the private residence of Neuilly-sur-Seine to conduct the duel over a petty matter of public honor. Fought with epees, the men were deadly serious and in the four-minute combat, Defferre wounded Ribierre twice on the arm. After the second wound, the engagement was stopped by the combined intervention of the duelists seconds, and Defferre declared the winner.
Story Corps has this great bit of relation from PFC Roman Coley Davis, who grew up in a small town in southern Georgia.
After graduating from high school in 2004, he joined the military. By the time he was 20 years old, Roman found himself 7,000 miles away from home, in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan — one of the most remote outposts in the U.S. war there. At StoryCorps, he told his friend Dan Marek about his family and his time in Afghanistan.
After the military, Roman enrolled in culinary school. He used his GI Bill to attend Le Cordon Bleu. He’s now a chef, based in Arkansas.