So it looks like the Zimbabwe bogeyman, Mugabe and his wife, has been replaced in a coup that officially isn’t one.
Can you believe this guy has been in power since 1980? And thought it would be cool that his batshit wife inherits the throne? Yikes.
Maj. Gen. Sibusiso Moyo of the 30,000-strong ZDF appeared on state-run TV and said, in his best Mars Attacks address to Congress, that all is going perfectly well.
This came as the BBC reported that “Heavy gun and artillery fire could be heard in northern parts of the capital Harare early on Wednesday.”
As a side note, I always did like the Belgian and later Rhodesian “brushtroke” pattern camo, though the ZDF uses a gently modified version of it today.
Warship Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017: The big Hawaiian Swede
Photo via Sjöhistorisk Musumet, Göteborg, #Fo49335A Note her “neutral flag” as well and fore and aft blue and yellow racing stripes to help identify her during the war
Here we see the mighty four-masted barque, Abraham Rydberg, a Swedish cargo carrying schoolship (skolskeppet) that trained sailors and officers, as she approached New York in 1940. She managed to survive both World Wars and the end of her era of sea trade while putting in a lot of honest work.
Laid down for the merchant service in the heyday of the fast transcontinental clipper ships, she was ordered in 1892 from the Clyde firm of Charles Connell & Company, Glasgow (Yard #184) by the Hawaiian Construction Co. of San Francisco.
At some 2,400-tons, the big 270-foot four-master was built to run cargo on the cheap and she entered service as the Hawaiian-flagged Hawaiian Isles, operating out of Honolulu on the sugar trade, later inherited by the Planters Line by 1900, which added her to the U.S registry– one of just 24 Hawaiian-flagged vessels to which this was done.
The Matson Navigation Company of San Francisco bought her from Planters in 1906 and used her on a South American run for several years until she was sold once again to the Alaska Packers’ Association for $60,000 in 1910, a stalwart of the West Coast lumber trade alternating between running “100 or more Chinese and Mexican cannery workers to the fishing grounds in the spring and bringing them back in the fall, together with a hold full of canned salmon.”
That California-based company changed her significantly, reduced the rig and leaving her baldheaded as they elongated the poop over 30-feet to better accommodate the severe weather of the Northern Pacific. Sailing as Star of Greenland under the command of one Captain P.H. Peterson, she was a regular along the Pacific Northwest and in the frozen territory for 15 years until laid up at Alameda in 1926, managing to escape German raiders during the Great War (remember the raider Seeadler was active at the time and captured three American-flagged schooners in June-July in the Southeast Pacific, and the raider Wolf had poked her nose into the West Pac).
Her speed likely had her in good graces– she once made the 2,400-mile Unalaska to Golden Gate run for the Packers in just 7 days– a feat that took most of the other slow craft in the business 35 or more.
After three years of hard luck layup on the West Coast, the aging barque was acquired by the Rydbergska Stiftelsen organization from Sweden for a song ($19,000) and, carrying a full new triangular canvas set, made London in 134 days with a cargo of grain and a scratch crew. A number of changes were implemented in the vessel, including construction of a midships bridge deck and adding classroom spaces for up to 70 cadets– which were required by Swedish law to take a full-year of courses before gaining a certificate as a merchant seaman.
Founded in 1850 by an endowment left by Swedish shipping magnate Abraham Rydberg, the maritime school trained youth in practical sailing, in large part by taking them on lengthy cargo hauls from the Baltic to Australia and the Caribbean. Ages of the trainees, which came in many instances from all over Europe, ran from 14-20 and the Rydbergska foundation produced thousands of sailors for the Swedish merchant and naval forces over the course of a century.
Here is first Abraham Rydberg stiftelse schoolship, a 101-foot three master built in 1879. She served the school until replaced by the larger Abraham Rydberg II in 1912.
Here we see 129-foot three-master which served as the second Abraham Rydberg, which our ship replaced. As an aside, this ship was in U.S. waters in WWII as a privately owned yacht and used by the Navy as USS SEVEN SEAS (IX-68), performing a role as a station/training ship at Key West.
Purchased in 1930, the Hawaiian Isles/Star of Greenland became the institute’s third Abraham Rydberg under a Swedish flag, undertaking yearly training excursions on the wheat trade to Australia alongside other such school ships as the Kristiania Schoolship Association’s Christian Radich out of Norway and the Danish East Asiatic Company schoolship København— the latter of which disappeared on such a run.
Our Rydberg, taken from liner S/S Mauretania in seas, 1 April 1934, off Australia. Fo202759
By all accounts, she was a happy ship during this time apart from a collision with the British steamer Koranton (6,695-tons) just off Eddystone. While Rydberg, loaded with 3,200-tons of wheat at the time, lost several plates on the port side and her main top-gallant, she could make for England and repairs.
She was a celebrated Cape Horn windjammer still in operation during an age of steamships and drew a crowd every time she came near shore. As she carried some 35,000sq yds. of canvas and could make 14-knots on it with no sweat, she was a sight, indeed.
In the Thames:
Her cadets hard at work both on deck and aloft in the below video, with her skipper talking about the great “Grain Races” of the 1930s. Rydberg made seven round trips from Europe to Australia between 1933-38:
When WWII started, Rydberg kept in the dangerous service of merchant shipping under the nominal shield of her country’s flag. Operating on the less-risky Brazil-to-Boston run, a neutral ship between two neutral ports, she made Santos in just 49 days on one trip.
Skolskeppet ABRAHAM RYDBERG off New York, 1940. Note the ship’s name and Swedish flag amidships for the benefit of U-boat periscopes. The two stripes are in blue and yellow, national colors. Her crew participated in the New York World’s Fair that year. # Fo15244A
From astern, again note her flag, stripe, and marking. #Fo148032AF
Immediately following the outbreak of the war, both the Britsh and Germans thought some travel by Swedish merchantmen was good and entered into an odd agreement between the three that Stockholm’s ships going into and out of the Baltic through the two belligerents’ respective naval blockades were fine as long as all three parties agreed to each voyage. In all, some 226 sailings to and 222 sailings from Sweden were cleared in such a manner– though nine ships were lost on these “pre-screened” runs as not everyone got the message. Further, the agreement didn’t apply to Swedish ships outside of Northern Europe, hence Rydberg‘s change to operations from the U.S.
Make no mistake though, the Swedish merchant service suffered during the war (as did the Swedish Navy– the submarineHMSwS Ulven was sunk by the Germans in 1943), neutrality be damned. In all, an estimated 2,000-2,500 Swedish sailors and fishermen were killed during the conflict as no less than 201 unarmed Swedish-flagged merchant ships and 31 fishing vessels were sent to the bottom in attacks from the Germans, Soviets, and British. You can be sure that many men who trained as boys on the Rydberg are on this butcher’s bill.
However, when Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war and German U-boats became a regular sight off the East Coast as part of Operation Drumbeat, keeping Rydberg in service was considered too risky and she was laid up in Baltimore harbor, her crew transiting back to Sweden. She had retained a Lloyds 1A classification her entire career with the Swedes, an accomplishment for any merchant vessel pushing 50 years on her keel.
It was then that she was given the dishonor of becoming a diesel-powered freighter when, after she was bought by the Portuguese firm of Julio Ribeiro Campos in 1943 for $265,000, had her masts stepped and a pair of Fairbanks Morse M6s installed at Kensington Shipyard in Philadelphia. Her new name, Fox do Duoro.
As Fox do Duoro, taken in New Orleans, 1949. Note the maimed masts and black hull. Quite a difference from her gleaming white scheme and a sky full of canvas.
Poking around for another decade, she was resold twice more to various concerns in Lisbon until finally being offered for her value in scrap metal to Société Anonyme Bonita, Tangiers, who broke her in 1957.
Sadly, that was also the last year the Abraham Rydbergs group was in operation as a maritime institute, though it still exists as a foundation which provides a scholarship to other schools’ training programs. A fourth Rydberg, the former British yacht Sunbeam II, a 194-foot three-masted schooner built by Lord Runciman, was bought by the school in 1945 and used for a decade before they got out of the schoolship business for good. Incidentally, this final ship is in the service of the Hellenic Navy currently.
Our Rydberg, is, however, widely remembered in maritime art.
Deep Waters, by Montague Dawson, showing Rydberg on the high seas.
By Adolf Bock
Joe Francis Dowden, watercolor The Abraham Rydberg as she would have appeared in Planter Line Service as Hawaiian Isles in the 1900s
Specs:
Displacement: 2345 grt
Length: 270 ft.
Beam: 43 ft.
Draft: 23 ft.
Engines (1943) twin Fairbanks M6cyl 14″x17″ 1300bhp, 2-screw, machinery aft
Crew: 40 + up to 70 cadets on a one-year course (1930-42)
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The Glock 19M won a 2016 award from the FBI to provide agents with a decent duty handgun in 9mm with a number of features that were different from the Gen4 G19, such as lack of fingergrooves on the grip, a flared magwell, and other misc internal changes. The 19M, with a few tweaks, became the Glock Gen5 G19 which hit the market a couple months back.
Now, it seems like the Marines have piggybacked on the FBI contract and have acquired 400 19Ms (dubbed, and no this is serious– the M007) to equip members of HMX-1– the famous “Marine One” unit responsible for the transportation of the President and other dignitaries– as well as military and civilian investigators of the Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division. This shouldn’t be too surprising as standard Glock 19s have been used by MARSOC units off and on for a couple years and they have had NSN numbers for a decade.
Some 19Ms are also reportedly headed to Afghanistan with 2MarDiv members who have a need to be armed in dangerous situations at all times– likely to help balance the odds in green-on-blue encounters.
Thousands of Motor Launch (ML), Coastal Motor Boat (CMB), Motor Torpedo Boat (MTB), Motor Anti-submarine Boat (MASB), Motor Gunboat (MGB), Steam Gunboat (SGB), Fast Patrol Boat (FPB) and Fast Training Boat (FTB) craft served in the RN’s often forgotten Coastal Forces during WWII.
Scrapping with the Germans S- and E-boats up and down the English Channel and French coast, as well as birddogging U-boats and supporting both overt and covert landings in occupied Europe, these “splinter boats,” supported by legions of WRENs ashore, had a lot of pluck.
Though these, just two days before D-Day, look a little derpy.
WESTERN PACIFIC (Nov. 12, 2017) The aircraft carriers USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) and USS Nimitz (CVN 68) and their strike groups are underway, conducting operations, in international waters as part of a three-carrier strike force exercise. The U.S. Navy has patrolled the Indo-Asia Pacific region routinely for more than 70 years promoting regional security, stability, and prosperity. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. j.g. James Griffin/Released)
Currently, the Navy has 11 commissioned nuclear aircraft carriers in service (as well as two under construction and two conventional carriers laid up pending disposal). Well, for the first time in a long time, 7 of those 11 are underway with three– USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71)— fully armed and conducting operations forward deployed in the Western Pacific. Those three flattops are currently off the Korean Peninsula with vessels of the Republic of Korean Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force.
WESTERN PACIFIC (Nov. 12, 2017) Three F/A-18E Super Hornets, assigned to the Eagles of Strike Fighter Attack Squadron (VFA) 115, fly in formation over the aircraft carriers USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), USS Nimitz (CVN 68) and their strike groups along with ships from the Republic of Korea Navy as they transit the Western Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Aaron B. Hicks/Released)
There haven’t been seven carriers underway since 2004 and it’s been a decade since three carrier strike groups operated together in the big blue of the Pacific during exercise Valiant Shield 2007.
“It is a rare opportunity to train with two aircraft carriers together, and even rarer to be able to train with three,” said U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander, Adm. Scott Swift in the Navy’s presser on the ops in the West Pac. “Multiple carrier strike force operations are very complex, and this exercise in the Western Pacific is a strong testament to the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s unique ability and ironclad commitment to the continued security and stability of the region.”
It’s 2017, if you don’t carry a tourniquet, you need to address that.
The American Red Cross and American Heart Association changed their guidance to include bleeding control in standard first aid since 2015 and courses are readily available, often for free. Good EDC tourniquets cost about $25.
As an offering to the expanding novel market for mini-pump action shotguns that aren’t, Remington’s Tac-14 is a solid and shootable offering that has some niche uses and a broad appeal.
Going back to the old Remington 870 “Witsec” specials designed for U.S. Marshals, shorty shotties have filled a niche role for years but fell under National Firearms Act regulations as Short Barreled Shotguns or Any Other Weapons — the latter as in the case of the Serbu Super Shorty.
Then, a couple of years ago, Black Aces Tactical introduced a series of 12 gauges “firearms” that were not legally shotguns and, though their barrels fell well below the 16-inch benchmark for shotties, since they remained over 26-inches long, allowed buyers to pick one up without the nearly year-long wait and stamps required for SBSs and AOWs. Big name shotgun maker Mossberg caught on to this concept last year with their Shockwave firearm, and Remington jumped aboard with both feet this Spring with the Tac-14.
I’ve had one on T&E for the past several months, and it is a blast to shoot– even one handed.
“Infantryman” by Capt. Harry Everett Townsend, American Expeditionary Force to France, 1918, via U.S. Army Museum/CMH
In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words
To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…
It’s been a long way from Tun Tavern. Some 242 years to be exact.
How about some throwback uniforms from the early 1980s, around the time of the Beirut bombing and the Grenada invasion?
Note the white undershirts, legacy M-1 helmets, and pre-1986 M16a1’s and 1911s as well as the lack of PASGIT vests, but the post-1982 woodland and chocolate chip BDUs.
PLATE TEN – FIELD UNIFORMS :
Green linen or cotton hunting shirts were worn by Continental Marines. Work or fatigue uniforms of the same material were worn by Marines as early as 1808, but such uniforms generally were not used as combat uniforms until World War II. From 1898 to World War II, the Marine Corps’ commitment was mostly in the tropics, and cotton khaki was worn in the field. Blue denim coveralls or overalls and jacket were issued for dirty work. The familiar sage-green herringbone twill (HBT) utility jacket and trousers were introduced in 1941 and cap in 1943 and worn in all of the Pacific campaigns as a work and combat uniform. After undergoing several slight modifications during World War II a camouflage utility uniform printed with a green pattern on one side, brown on the other, was issued to raiders, parachutists, and scout-snipers. The “green sateen” uniform which replaced the HBT was developed and procured by the Army and was designated a universal issue uniform to be worn by all services. In 1968 the green sateen utilities were replaced in Vietnam by the Army green poplin jungle uniform. Subsequently, personnel in Vietnam wore the camouflage pattern rip-stop poplin jungle utilities. These were phased into the recruit issue in 1978, and were later replaced beginning in 1982 by the current woodland camouflage utility uniform.
Shown in this plate are the various different field /utility uniforms. At left is a male captain in the desert camouflage utility uniform. This uniform, which is issued, when required, as organizational property, is intended for personnel engaged in combat in a desert environment. (Marine Corps Uniform Regulations, paragraph 8100) Although a white undershirt is shown here, brown undershirts are being phased into the Marine Corps Supply System for future organizational issue and wear with this uniform.
Second from the left is a female enlisted Marine wearing the older-style “poplin” camouflage utilities. As shown here, the service sweater, when worn, is worn under the utility coat. (Marine Corps Uniform Regulations, paragraph 4129) Enlisted Marines shall wear their metal/plastic insignia of grade on the utility coat and field coat. (Marine Corps Uniform Regulations, paragraph 5303) The utility uniform is only authorized for wear for field type exercises, for work conditions where it is not practical to wear the service uniform, and within the Fleet Marine Force where the wear of utility uniform is an enhancement of readiness. (Marine Corps Uniform Regulations, paragraphs 3108, 3209, 3306, 3408)
The figure in the center is a male enlisted Marine wearing the “woodland camouflage” utility uniform with “782” field equipment. The Marine is also wearing the newly introduced lightweight camouflage body armor. When the helmet is worn, the appropriate camouflage helmet cover will normally be worn to match the surrounding terrain. The fourth figure from the left is a male captain wearing the “woodland camouflage” utility uniform with the recently adopted camouflage field coat and “782” field equipment. The field coat is not presently authorized for wear with the service uniform. (Marine Corps Uniform Regulations, paragraph 8108)
The Marine at far right is wearing the Arctic camouflage uniform. The items shown here include the white parka, overpants, and cold weather dry boots (also known as “Mickey Mouse” boots). This uniform, issued as organizational property, would be worn for combat or exercises when the surrounding terrain is predominantly white. (Marine Corps Uniform Regulations, paragraph 8100)
As a side note, I always did like the Belgian and later Rhodesian “brushtroke” pattern camo, though the ZDF uses a gently modified version of it today.
