U.S. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Brittany Rayne
A student from Tactical Bow Gunner Course (TBGC) fires blank ammunition at a target vessel during a simulated non-compliant scenario at Camp LeJeune, NC. TBGC is designed to train tactical bow gunners for Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security (PWCS) missions.
The TBGC is a five-day course s for enlisted members E-7 and below designed to train tactical bow gunners for PWCS missions. They get schooled on the M240B, the LA51 Warning Device and the M-870 Remington shotgun (a nice SBS with a 14-inch barrel) as well as security zones; command and control; crew member equipment; and response boat tactics.
The LA51 is a sweet little shotgun-fired flash-bang that is guaranteed to get your attention.
Bristling with 20mm and 37mm cannon, .50 cal machine guns and torpedoes, the 80~ foot long plywood wonders that were WWII mosquito boats were pound for pound one of the stoutest warships ever to serve the Navy.
Note the huge 30-round 37mm drums and boxes of ammo at the ready. NHHC Photograph Collection, L-File, Unnamed U.S. Navy vessels
Secured to their tender, five PTs float in the calm waters of the Pacific as they are refueled and given rudimentary repairs. The brief recess from the wars is a boon to the officers and men of the PT unit as well. A group of them is gathered under the canvas “canopy” on the center boat, circa early Summer 1945. In the foreground, a crewman gives a gun the check-over.
They are equipped with a 37 mm M4 Automatic Gun– a huge 213-pound autocannon designed by John Browing and taken from P-39 Airacobra and P-63 Kingcobra fighters, as well as at least two 20mm Oerlikon forward, likely a 40mm Bofors single aft, and two twin M2 .50 cal tubs.
The Elco boats look to be those of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron THIRTY THREE (PTRon 33) under the command of Lt. A. Murray Preston, USNR. They served at Aitape, New Guinea; Morotai in the Halmaheras; and San Pedro Bay and Panay in the Philippines.
Here we see a 12 gauge Winchester Model 1897 shotgun as modified for military service then subsequently whittled down sometime later. This pump-action smoothbore was reportedly utilized by a Florida police department as an entry weapon for raids and is currently in the collection of the National Firearms Museum.
The trench gun, likely passed on after World War II from military stores, is a really well done chop, with the brass buttplate being moved up to the end of the abbreviated stock.
As noted in Canfield’s excellent U.S. Infantry Weapons of World War II, some 20,000 M1917 Trench Guns were ordered during the Great War and as many as 48,000 subsequently modified ’97s during the second, all with the ventilated hand-guard, sling swivels and Enfeld bayonet adapter.
After 1945, with the Army purchasing upwards of 500,000 commercial shotguns of all kinds for training and constabulary use during the conflict, among the first surplused out was the Winchester trench brooms– making them exceedingly rare in original condition today.
The rifle in the grainy photo is something of a mystery all its own, though it is definitely an early 20th Century Winchester autoloader, which narrows things down a bit.
In 1902, Thomas Crossley Johnson was a well-respected engineer and designer who coughed up the patents responsible for the first commercially available rimfire self-loading rifle, a gun which Winchester would term their Model 1903. A neat little .22 that fired 10-rounds from an under-barrel tubular magazine as fast as you could pull the trigger, the rifle was a hit.
T.C. came up with a much modified hunting version in 1905, that deleted the tube mag for one with a detachable box magazine (5 or 10 shot) chambered in .32SL and .35 Winchester Self-Loading (.35 WSL), the latter a beast of a round whose 180-grain bullet was slow (like 1,400 fps) but packed a wallop good enough for taking most large land mammals in North America.
This Model 1905 rifle went on to be updated in the Model 1907 and 1910 (the latter chambered in the even tougher .401 WSL).
These novel semi-auto blowback action rifles were popular in military circles to a degree, especially when using the longer magazines.
The first U.S. Army aviators to fly in a war-zone were those of General Pershing’s 1st Aero Squadron of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Air Service. These hardy fly boys were shipped 19 Winchester Model 1907 rifles and 9000 cartridges of .351SL ammunition to use in arming their craft if they got lost over the Chihuahua desert while looking for Pancho Villa in 1916. The Winny ’07 was thought to be lighter than the then-current issue Springfield 1903 rifle.
The Russians bought some 500 Model 1907 rifles, another 500 Model 1910s, and 1.5 million rounds of .351WSL in 1916 (along with 300,000 Winchester Model 1895 muskets in 7.62x54R) for use in World War I.
The French also picked up 5,000 Model 1907s, 150 Model 1910 rifles, spare magazines, and something on the order of 425,000 .401 WSL and 2 million .351SL cartridges on their own.
The Brits brought up the rear with 120 Model 1907 rifles and 78,000 rounds of .351SL ammunition for back seat observers in the Royal Flying Corps.
As far as our hunter goes, it’s hard to tell from the image at the top of the post just which one of T.C.’s Winchester autoloaders he has.
Between 1907-57, some 58,456 Model 1907s were made– the most prolific of the series. The 1905, which was put of of production in 1920, saw just 29,113 rifles produced while the M1910 had 20,787 guns made by 1936. As such, the numbers would make the odds that our hunter is carrying a M1907 model.
In the end, he seems well-equipped no matter which model took to the woods with.
As for the evolutionary legacy of Thomas Crossley Johnson, he died in 1934 with more than 124 patents active.
Across the pond, one Fedor Vasilievich Tokarev, using Johnson’s work for the benefit of the Motherland and equipped with a collection of old Winchesters to reverse engineer, came up with the Tokarev Model 29, an autoloader chambered in (wait for it) .351 WSL, which served a a kind of stepping stone to his later SVT-38/40 rifles.
Using technology originally designed for the Mars Rover, the Office of Naval Research has developed a kit that can be added to any boat and used to make a swarm of autonomous boats.
Navy officials see the new capability as a force multiplier to make the other guy work harder to get through our technology without putting Sailors at risk.
“It’s a great capability to relieve the Sailor of the dirty, the dangerous, the dull missions out there,” said Rick Simon, the Demonstration Director with Spatial Integrated Systems, one of the contractors working on the project. “Instead of having four patrols boats out there with four or five Sailors on each boat, you have one or two Sailors sitting at an operations center controlling four or five boats.”
The robot boats are inexpensive and expendable. The technology, called CARACaS (Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing) can be put into a transportable kit and installed on almost any boat. The boats can choose their own path, network, then intercept a contact, transmitting situational awareness data back to the control center the whole time.
The new mission tests is geared for harbor defense. The boats can use cooperative decision making between the boats to handle business in deterring and detaining possible threats.
Entering the market on the heels of Springfield Armory’s Saint series, Savage joins the ranks of traditional rifle makers such as Mossberg, Ruger and Remington in producing a modern sporting rifle, continuing to entrench the AR as “America’s Rifle.”
Instead of the standard AR-style charging handle, the gun shows a side-mounted folding charging handle, which could point to radically different internals, possibly even a delayed blowback action of some sort as seen on Savage’s popular and very well-liked A17 line.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are lots of non reciprocating side charging AR uppers out there, with uppers made by Eisenach Arms, Gibbz, BCA, X-products and Stoner– but this is Savage, one of the OG makers who stocks big box stores across the country. And this is an all-up gun, not just an upper.
The Savage MSR is set to premier in January 2017, meaning it will likely be shown off at the upcoming SHOT Show in Las Vegas. I will keep you informed.
I really dig old military arms of all sorts, ever since I was a kid. I guess you can say I am just a big, 42-year old kid these days.
One of my latest edged weapons is a Nepalese Gurkha Kukri Bhojpure Fighting Knife that I bought to go with my semi-cleaned Nepalese 1878 Martini-Henry Francotte pattern short-lever rifle and bayonet as created by Gen. Gahendra Rana’s cottage gun smiths in the 1880s (more on that here.)
Like the Francotte and its bayonet, the $89 Bhojpure Kukri, came from IMA’s 2003 purchase of the Royal Nepalese Arsenal, which was located at the palace of Lagan Silekhana in Katmandu.
As spears and the Kora sword were being replaced by firearms, the kukri was the weapon of choice for hand-to-hand combat.
The Bhojpure region kukri was typically produced at the turn of the 19th century and after. This style is a somewhat down scaled version of the Victorian Long Leaf kukri. It appears these saw service from the 1880s through the first quarter of the 20th century when they were withdrawn from service and placed in arsenal storage. With that in mind, the blade is anywhere from 90-130 years young and has spent most of that time “on the shelf.”
It came covered in… who the frack knows what. Pureed leaves, cosmoline, dirt, tar, yak grease I don’t know. It was horrible. Of course, it was as to be expected though, as it has been in arsenal storage for probably a century, and the Francotte came similarly dressed.
Cleaned via Ballistol and elbow grease, it is very nice, measuring out to just a hair over 17 inches overall with 13 of that being a rat-tailed steel blade almost as thick as my pinkie finger (around 3/8″) at its fullest point. This kukri was handmade; the steel was smelted, forged, shaped and hammered in Nepal by individual Kami blacksmiths. As such it is very dirty impure century-old steel that is kind of soft when compared to modern steels.
Still, it’s a great piece of history.
Check out how thick this beast is when compared next to the same length of modern Ontario 6420 OKC Kukri which uses 1095 carbon steel.
It’s also rather sharp and has seen a good bit of service, but the wood, though dark, is solid.
The yak butter was such a good preservative that there doesn’t seem to be hardly any rust or patina…
What is the blade notch for? Some say its to represent the god Shiva, which doesn’t make sense because the Kora– a Nepalese sword of the same period– doesn’t have the same notch. Some say it is for capturing an enemy blade in a knife fight, or as a “blood notch” which is even goofier. I think that it is meant to be a tool notch of some sort (to be used, for example, in removing nails, etc) as the kukri is something of the multitool for the Nepalese of all working castes.
I also have a set of chakmak and karda blades; a sharpening tool and small secondary knife usually stored in the sheath of the kukri. They have a great patina on them as they did not get the yak butter treatment so I will keep them as is.
Here is the cleaned Bhojpure compared with my much more modern Ontario Kukri in an ode to the Brigade of Gurkhas cap badge.
I still would like to buff out the blade with Flitz, strip and refinish the handle with boiled linseed, and maybe touch up the edge a bit. Overall, I think the old soldier has a lot of life left in him.
This is what I think I look like with it:
From the Illustrated News of London Feb. 22, 1908.
But this is probably closer to the truth:
British Home Guard display an array of close-combat weaponry at a training session, 1942. including kukri.
A common method of training is to shoot a particular model firearm chambered for a smaller cartridge. That way, you get familiar with the platform but do so with less recoil and (generally) cheaper ammo. That was the case with this Springfield Armory 1911 chambered in .22 Long Rifle. One of only 25 made, this example belonged to Major General and NRA Technical Editor Julian Hatcher.
The “U.S. Pistol, Model 1911, Gallery Practice” was designed by J.H. Carl and developed at the Springfield Armory. It was a mixed model with a specially made Springfield slide and Colt frame. “In 1912 Springfield Armory began work on an adaptation of the .45 caliber weapon to fire .22 caliber cartridges. The object of the government experiments was to develop a gallery practice pistol that would use less expensive .22 caliber cartridges.”
Notes on their use by Hatcher himself:
“The pistols all functioned exceptionally well.
The accuracy compares favorably with pistols of this type previously tested at the Armory.
The following precautions should be observed in using the pistols.
The action, particularly the bolt and recoil rod, should be oiled every 200 rounds.
The action should be brushed out frequently, as residue from the powder and lubricating wax accumulates rapidly.
In loading the magazines, seven rounds only should be loaded; care being taken to see that the last cartridges lays flush with the mouth of the magazine and not down or up.
In charging the chamber, the bolt should be drawn clear to the rear and released suddenly.
The parts of the pistol are all hand made and fitted, and should not be interchanged.” – James L. Hatcher, June 26, 1919.
Springfield has two, SN# 565686 and SN# 499988 — the latter of which had its slide go mysteriously missing sometime after 1960.
U.S. Marine Sgt. Kirstin Merrimarahajara captured a Marine walking through Rukla Training Area, Lithuania during Exercise Iron Sword 16. The Marines, after all, have a history of fighting deep in the primordial forests of Europe despite their reputation as sea soldiers.
“It would seem from this fact, that man is naturally a wild animal, and that when taken from the woods, he is never happy in his natural state, ’till he returns to them again.”
Speaking of Lithuanian forest dwellers, check out the below video that NATO published this week on the life of one of the 8,000 reservists in the Lithuanian National Defence Volunteer Forces (the same size as the regular active duty Land Forces). Note both German HK G3s and G36s being used side by side.
Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday!): The dazzling President of the Royal Navy
IWM SP 1650
Here we see a “warship-Q” of the World War I Royal Navy, the Flower/Anchusa-class sloop HMS Saxifrage masquerading as a seemingly innocent British merchantman in dazzle camouflage, circa 1918. Should one of the Kaiser’s U-boats come close enough to get a good look, two matching sets of QF 4.7 inch and 12-pounder guns would plaster the poor bugger, sucker punch style.
With Kaiser Willy’s unterseeboot armada strangling the British Isles in the Great War, the RN needed a set of convoy escorts that were cheap to make and could relieve regular warships for duty with the fleet.
This led to a class of some 120 supped-up freighters which, when given a triple hull to allow them to soak up mines and torpedoes and equipped with a battery of 4 or 4.7-inch main guns and 3 or 12 pounder secondaries augmented with depth charges, could bust a submarine when needed. Just 1,200-tons and 267-feet overall, they could blend in with the rest of the “merchies” in which they were charged with protecting. Classified as sloops of war, they could make 17 knots with both boilers glowing, making them fast enough to keep up.
Built to merchant specs, they could be made in a variety of commercial yards very quickly, and were all named after various flowers, which brought them the class nickname of “cabbage boats.” Ordered under the Emergency War Programme for the Royal Navy, class leader HMS Acacia ordered in January 1915 and delivered just five months later.
The hero of our story, HMS Saxifrage, was named after a pretty little perennial plant also known as a rockfoil or London Pride.
Laid down by Lobnitz & Co Limited, Renfrew, Scotland, who specialized in dredges, trawlers and tugs and endures as a marine engineering company, she was completed 29 January 1918 as a Q-ship– a job that the last 40 of her class were designed to perform.
The concept, the Q-ship (their codename referred to the vessels’ homeport, Queenstown, in Ireland) was to have a lone merchantman plod along until a German U-boat approached, and, due to the small size of the prize, sent over a demo team to blow her bottom out or assembled her deck gun crew to poke holes in her waterline. At that point, the “merchantman” which was actually a warship equipped with a few deck guns hidden behind fake bulkheads and filled with “unsinkable” cargo such as pine boards to help keep her afloat if holed, would smoke said U-boat.
In all the Brits used 366 Q-ships, of which 61 were lost in action while they only took down 14 U-boats, a rather unsuccessful showing. One storied slayer, Mary B Mitchell, claimed 2-3 U-boats sunk and her crew was even granted the DSO, but post-war analysis quashed her record back down to zero.
As for Saxifrage, commissioned with just nine months and change left in the war, did not see a lot of hot action, escorting convoys around British waters. While she reported nine U-boat contacts, she was never able to bag one.
Soon after the Great War ended, the Flower-class vessels were liquidated, with 18 being lost during the conflict (as well as Gentian and Myrtle lost in the Baltic to mines in 1919). The Royal Navy underwent a great constriction inside of a year. At the date of the Armistice, the fleet enumerated 415,162 officers and men. By the following November, 162,000, a figure less than when the war began in 1914, though the Empire had grown significantly after picking up a number of German and Ottoman colonies.
Saxifrage was one of the few ships of her class retained.
Her engines removed, she was tapped to become the training establishment HMS President (replacing the former HMS Buzzard, a Nymphe-class composite screw sloop, shown above) when her sistership Marjoram, originally intended for that task, was wrecked in January 1921 off Flintstone Head while en route to fit out at Hawlbowline.
Moored on the River Thames, Saxifrage by 1922 became used as a drill ship by Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
Alterations to her physical fabric included fitting square windows on the lower decks and adding a top deck for parade, drilling, and small arms gunnery practice. After her change of use to a training vessel, she boasted four decks, with internal spaces including the Captain’s Quarters, Drill Hall and adjacent Gunroom, Quarter Deck and Ward Room.
HMS President moored on the Thames at high tide in 1929. Photograph Planet News Archive.
By the time WWII came, just a handful of Flower-class sloops remained afloat.
HMS Laburnum, like her a RNVR drill ship, was lost to the Japanese at Singapore then later raised and scrapped.
HMS Cornflower, a drill ship at Hong Kong, suffered a similar fate.
HMS Chrysanthemum, used as a target-towing vessel in Home Waters, was transferred to the RNVR 1938 and stationed on the Embankment in London next to President where she would remain until scrapped in 1995.
HMS Foxglove served on China station and returned to Britain, later becoming a guard ship at Londonderry in Northern Ireland before being scrapped in 1946.
Ex-HMS Buttercup, ironically serving in the Italian Navy as Teseo, was sunk at Trapani 11 April 1943.
Two of the class, ex- HMS Jonquil and ex- HMS Gladiolus, remained in service in the Portuguese Navy classified as the cruisers (!) Carvalho Araújo and Republic, respectively, until as late as 1961.
Saxifrage/President continued her role as a stationary training ship. One of President‘s main roles during the war was to train men of the Maritime Royal Artillery, soldiers sent to sea and serve with naval ratings as gunners on board defensively equipped merchant ships (DEMS).
After the war, President was the last of her class in British service and reverted to her role as HQ of the RNVR London Division, which she held until 1987, remaining the whole time at her traditional mooring next to Blackfriars Bridge.
The name HMS President is retained as a “stone frigate” or shore establishment of the Royal Naval Reserve, based on the northern bank of the River Thames near Tower Bridge in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
In 1987, the old girl was donated to the HMS President (London) Limited non-profit who has extensively refitted her for use in hosting private parties, weddings, receptions, etc. while somewhat restoring her appearance.
In 2014, as part of the First World War commemorations, her hull was covered once more in a distinctive ‘dazzle’ design, courtesy of artist Tobias Rehberger.
Today President is on the National Register of Historic Vessels, is the last Q-ship, last of her class and last RN ship to have fought as an anti-submarine vessel in the Great War.
She is nothing if not historic.
However, due to the upcoming construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel to tackle sewage discharges into the River Thames, President had to leave Blackfriars Bridge this February.
Her funnel and deckhouse was removed for the tow downriver and she is in limbo, with the current management team trying to raise money to secure a new mooring along the Thames but without much luck.
The HMS President, one of the UK’s last remaining WWI ships, has been unsuccessful in its bid to secure Libor funding in today’s Autumn Statement from the Chancellor.
The funding bid that had seen support in national newspapers and a parliamentary motion, with more than 20 signatories, has failed to secure vital restoration funding – this could now see the country’s last remaining submarine hunter of the Atlantic campaign scrapped.
Paul Williams, Director of the HMS President Preservation Trust, said; “The lack of recognition for this worthy cause if hugely disappointing. The HMS President Preservation Trust, and our friends in Parliament and elsewhere, has been working extremely hard to secure the future of this wonderful war heritage site.
“Her hull is only a few millimetres thick now in some places. Therefore, if restoration funding is not found soon she will be consigned to the scrap heap – as her sister ship the HMS Chrysanthemum was in 1995. As we mark the centenary commemorations of WWI it seems an absolute travesty that we will potentially be saying goodbye to one of only three remaining warships from that era. What a loss to our heritage that will be.”
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph MPs and Peers, including the Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Boyce, and Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, Dr Julian Lewis MP, had called for the ship to be rescued. The parliamentarians had urged the Chancellor to look favourably on the bid, or risk losing her forever, stating “This would be an irreplaceable loss to our war heritage, and a sorry way to mark the country’s First World War centenary commemorations.”
Hopefully she will be saved, as she is literally one of a kind.
1,290 long tons (1,311 t)
Length:
250 ft. (76.2 m) p/p
262 ft. 3 in (79.93 m) o/a
Beam: 35 ft. (10.7 m)
Draught:
11 ft. 6 in (3.51 m) mean
12 ft. 6 in (3.81 m) – 13 ft. 8 in (4.17 m) deep
Propulsion: 4-cylinder triple expansion engine, 2 boilers, 2,500 hp (1,864 kW), 1 screw
Speed: 16 knots (29.6 km/h; 18.4 mph)
Range: Coal: 260 tons
Complement: 93
Armament:
Designed to mount :
2 × 12-pounder gun
1 × 7.5 inch howitzer or 1 × 200 lb. stick-bomb howitzer
4 × Depth charge throwers
As built:
2 × 4 in (102 mm) guns
1 or 2 × 12-pounder guns
Depth charge throwers
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