Designed to be the Russian military’s new light machine gun, the 5.45x39mm RPK (Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova)-16 sprouted from the Rostec state-owned Kalashnikov Group last year and is expected to be placed in service with the Rosgvardiya (think National Guard), internal affairs troops and Army to replace older RPKs.
It draws from the AK-12 program and comes in a few different barrel lengths while including a folding stock that, when swung shut, drops the overall length to just 25-inches. Weight without the detachable bipod and mag is 8.8-pounds.
I saw this on display at the Berman Museum in Anniston and thought you would appreciate it.
This beautiful ivory-handled Nepalese kukri belonged to an officer of the 10th Princess Mary’s Own Gurkha Rifles, during WWII. The unit served in Iran and Syria before seeing much harder service in Italy.
There, the unit was stationed close to the U.S. 10th Mountain Div and gave a good account of itself with one Gurkha, Rifleman Ganjabahadur Rai, earning the Military Medal for his “naked kukri” attack on a German patrol.
The 10th ended its war in Burma, where the Japanese no doubt tasted cold steel.
While 10 GR was one of the few Gurkha regiments retained in the British Army after the end of the Empire, in 1996 they were amalgamated with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, bringing the regiment’s 104 years of service to an end.
This summer marks the 60th anniversary of the three Coast Guard cutters and one Canadian ship that convoyed through the Northwest Passage.
The crews the U.S. Coast Guard Cutters Storis, SPAR and Bramble, along with the crew of the Canadian ice breaker HMCS Labrador, charted, recorded water depths and installed aids to navigation for future shipping lanes from May to September of 1957.
Storis, SPAR and Bramble in the Northwest Passage, 1957, by D. Ellis 1989 via USCGC Spar homepage.
All four crews became the first deep-draft ships to sail through the Northwest Passage, which are several passageways through the complex archipelago of the Canadian Arctic.
As a nod to that, the 225-foot Juniper-class seagoing buoy tender USCGC Maple, accompanied for most of the way by the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier under the 1988 Canada-US Agreement on Arctic Cooperation, departed Sitka, Alaska on 12 July and will reach Baltimore, Maryland, 23 August.
In another milestone that the agency is expanding their polar reach, the Coast Guard dived in the Arctic for the first time since two divers perished in 2006 while on the icebreaker Healy. The mission was supported by Coast Guard Regional Dive Lockers San Diego and Honolulu and U.S. Navy Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Intermediate Maintenance Facility, with the latter providing a portable recompression chamber and a DMT.
Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Adam Harris, a member of a joint Coast Guard-Navy dive team deployed on the Coast Guard Cutter Healy, holds a Coast Guard ensign during a cold water ice dive off a Healy small boat in the Arctic, July 29, 2017
Healy is also conducting, as part of the RDC Arctic Technology Evaluation, a number of tests of tech in the polar region including the InstantEye small unmanned aircraft system and others.
Marine with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, conducts a company attack range in Twentynine Palms, note the Surefire can on his M4. The can is a KAC (Knight’s Armament Company) NT4 which has long had an NSN number.
The Marine Corps has posted a Request for Information on commercially available suppressors that can work across all of their 5.56mm platforms.
The RFI, posted Aug. 3, is feeling out the industry for current availability of a detachable suppressor capable of reducing the sound of a 5.56mm round to 139dB. To be used by the M4 and M4A1 carbines, as well as the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle — a select-fire HK416 — the Corps is interesting in buying in bulk.
This majestic beast is a Consolidated P2Y-1, coded “10-P-1” denoting it as the command plane of LCDR Knefler “Sock” McGinnis, of patrol squadron VP-10F, as it peaks over the Hawaiian coastline, en route to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, near the end of the nonstop formation flight from San Francisco, USA, 10-11 January 1934. But more on that later.
NH 81664
The U.S. Navy fell in love with seaplanes back in the days of Glenn Curtiss and, by the end of WWI, had numerous models in regular service around the country, chief among them being the Curtiss H.16 and Felixstowe F5L. By the 1920s, the Naval Aircraft Factory at Philadelphia was making what they termed the PN flying boat, variants of the F5L with a massive 72-foot wingspan and a pair of Cyclone 9-cylinder single-row radial engines.
In 1925, in a show of force of the Navy’s ability to respond quickly to attacks on far-flung Pacific bases at a time when Japan was starting to flex serious muscle, two PN-9’s tried to fly from San Francisco to Honolulu– 2,400 miles.
I mean that is a big distance. Especially just 20 years after the Wright brothers first flew.
To put it into perspective, it is only 1,000 miles by air from Berlin to Moscow and 1,100 from New York to Miami. Even going cross-country, from Charleston, South Carolina to Los Angeles is 2,200. The 2,300 miles from Pearl Harbor to San Fransisco is serious.
80-G-465336: PN-9 flying boat flying off the coast of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, September 22, 1925
Then came civilian attempts.
The ill-fated Dole Air Race (aka the Dole Derby) from California to Hawaii in 1927, started off with 18 “civilian” crews trying for the prize and only two made it. The lucky ones that didn’t crack up near the California coast. The unlucky ones, including early aviatrix Mildred Doran, were never seen again.
The winner of the $25K Dole prize? Two Army Air Corps pilots (!) who made it to Wheeler Army Airfield on Oahu in 25 hours and 50 minutes in the “Bird of Paradise,” a converted Fokker C-2 tri-motor. The gauntlet had been thrown down.
A couple of years after the PN-9 debacle and while the Dole racers were risking their lives, Consolidated Aircraft built the huge Commodore, a flying boat designed for long-range clipper service for Pan Am and others. With a 100-foot wingspan, the aluminum-hulled parasol wing monoplane could carry as many as 32 passengers on short hops and half as many on 1,000-nm+ legs.
One thing led to another and by 1931, the Navy ordered 23 of the big Commodore variants of their own, powered by two Wright R-1820-E1 engines, dubbed P2Y-1’s. The first 10 of these boats, capable of carrying three machine guns for self-defense and up to 2,000-lbs of bombs, were delivered to Patrol Squadron 10, float (VP-10F) at Norfolk in 1933 and soon embarked on a series of epic long-distance flights.
P2Y flying boat pictured taking off from the water at Naval Air Station (NAS) Hampton Roads 9 September 1933, via the NNAM
The most important of these was when six Consolidated P2Y-1s set a record for flying in formation from San Francisco to Honolulu– in 24 hours and 35 minutes, erasing the sting of the PN-9 affair of the 1920s and the Army-flown tri-motor of the Dole race.
P2Y-1 flying boat assigned to VP-10F off the California 1930s note the admiral’s flag on the nose of the airplane
Newsreel footage of VP-10’s P2Y-1 boats attempting the SF to Pearl run in January 1934:
They made it without sails, as a unit, flying all night. In doing so, they established three world records. The flight bettered the best previous time for the crossing; exceeded the best distance of previous mass flights; and broke a nine-day-old world record for distance in a straight line for Class C seaplanes with a new mark of 2,399 miles (3,861 km).
VP-10 Non-Stop Formation Flight 10-11 January 1934. View taken of the squadron’s P2Y-1 (consolidated) patrol planes, over Diamond Head, near Honolulu, Hawaii, en route to Pearl Harbor. Courtesy of Mrs. Laurence van Fleet, 1974 Catalog #: NH 81663
After their flight, five of the six P2Y-1 aircraft of US Navy squadron VP-10F at Naval Air Station Ford Island, US Territory of Hawaii, Jan. 1934.
The 30 crew members of the assembled aircraft were celebrated on arrival.
LCDR Knefler “Sock” McGinnis, USN left, with members of his crews of patrol squadron VP-10 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 11 January 1934 after the Trans-Pacific flight from San Francisco, USA, in consolidated P2Y patrol planes, one of which (McGinnis’) is in the background coded “10-P-1”. Description: Courtesy of Mrs. Laurence van Fleet, 1974
The reign of the P2Y was to be short-lived, with the Hawaii record the highlight of their service. In 1935, the first Consolidated PBY Catalina flew and the next year set a distance record of 2,992 miles with ease.
In all, only about 75 P2Ys were built in all variants and were replaced by 1941 with the famous and imminently capable PBY-1 Catalina, which it inspired.
What a great picture! A P2Y right, of VP-7 with a PBY-1 left, of VP-11 flying over USS DALE (DD-353) of DESRON-20, during an exhibition for Movietone News off San Diego on 14 September 1936. Description: Courtesy of Commander Robert L. Ghormley Jr., Washington DC, 1969 Catalog #: NH 67305
USS Farragut (DD-348) staged for Movietone News, off San Diego, California, 14 Sept 1936. At left is a PBY-1 of Patrol Squadron Eleven-F (VP-11F). The other four are P2Ys of Patrol Squadron Seven-F (VP-7F)
The P2Y’s seaplane jaunt was commemorated in “Record-Breaking Flight, 1934” a 1999 oil painting by artist Morgan Ian Wilbur, which portrays the boats in all their full-color peacetime livery.
Sock’s 10-P-1 up front! The painting currently in the NHHC collection, Accession #: 99-155-C
The modern equivalent of Han Solo’s DL-44 blaster, via SureFire:
The above set up consists of a Glock 17 with ALG Defense 6 Second Mount & mag well, Aimpoint T1, KKM Precision barrel & comp, and SureFire X300 U-Boat.
I prefer Inforce on my G19, as well as a mounted RMR and have always thought comps were unneeded on anything less spicy than .38 Super, but the above is still a nice blaster.
More on the innovative Integrated Virtual Shipboard Environment (IVSE), a 3-dimensional, interactive, LCS simulator, complete with voice controls and ultra-realistic sound effects that is used in conjunction with an up-to-date EOSS to put engineering plant technicians in their machinery long before they report.
They have 626 immersive environments…sure, it’s virtual, but it they have a point that it helps new strikers coming in who have only known video games before MEPPS.
This just in from the U.S. Army Quartermaster Museum:
This C.1948 shirt was used at Fort Riley, Kansas, the site where the Army’s full-time Aggressor Force training concept was articulated from its inception in 1946 until its discontinuation in 1978, at which point transformed to the dedicated OPFOR groups at Forts Polk and Irwin.
Your standard OD had been dyed darker and collars and shoulder straps sewn over in red to mimic Warsaw Pact style uniforms.
Known as Circle Trigon forces, they also had vismodded M1 helmets with a wire ridge down the top, kinda like Flash Gordon badguys.
A 48-star 34″x52″ flag, log and pictures from “Coral Queen/Coral Princess,” officially known as PT-520, a PTRon 35 80′ Elco that served in Europe during WWII is up for auction next week at Cowans.
The flag was used by PT-520 until August 25 1944 when the radio mast it was affixed to was shot away by a German shell and was preserved by a coxswain. According to Navsource, PT-50 was transferred to the Russkis in April 1945 and later scuttled in the Barents in 1956– but the flag and log remain.
Serving in the European Theater of World War Two from June to November 1944, PT-520 participated in numerous actions against German sea and air forces in the English Channel and coast of France. This flag was present during its participation in Operation Overlord, where it was assigned to the “Mason Line”, a net of defensive measures on the western flank of the invasion preventing the attack of German ships. PT-520 was stationed two to three miles from Omaha and Utah areas, sweeping for mines and performing search and rescue operations. After the success of the invasion, PT-520 continued to operate along the French coast, rescuing downed pilots, fending off aerial raids and engaging German minesweepers and fast attack craft. The log states that during its operational career, the vessel sunk two R-Boats, two E-Boats, and one “T.L.C.”
The Kampfschwimmer units are the rough equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALS and, as noted in a video from the German military, they really dig that Heckler & Koch.
The above spot is in German, but relax if your Deutsch ist rusty because you could fit all the dialog onto a fortune cookie strip. The gist is: innocent German citizens are in deep sauerkraut somewhere sketchy and the KSM get tasked to pull them out before bad guys with Kalashnikovs can do weird scheisse to them.
After jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, the German frogmen are taken aboard a sneaky little Type 212 diesel-electric submarine — which has a convenient compartment for combat swimmers while their gear gets passed out via 533mm torpedo tube. Then, said KSM platoon pops up silently all spec ops pimp in the shallow water offshore and moves in. That’s when you see the beauty that is tricked-out HK MP7 SMGs along with G38 and G36 rifles and other assorted goodies right from the Willy Wonka of precision steel schmidt that is Oberndorf am Neckar.
After finding the good guys, then checking their names and mother’s names, the group exfils under the cover of snipers armed with what looks like HK417s in 7.62x51mm, dusting some Eurotrash clowns in a tiny pursuit vehicle.
