The 14,000-ton Naval Auxiliary Service collier Vestal was christened in 1908 and later was redisignated a repair ship in the Navy proper becoming USS Vestal (AR-4).
Vestal deployed “Over There” in 1918, serving in Queenstown, Ireland with the U.S. fleet during World War I then made her way to the Pacific where she was moored at berth F 7, off Ford Island, to provide services to USS Arizona during the battlewagon’s scheduled period of tender upkeep when the Japanese planes came buzzing into the harbor on that infamous Sunday morning.
Hit by two Japanese bombs of her own, Vestal was nearly pulverized by Arizona‘s magazine explosion. Listing, ablaze and heavily damaged, the old repair ship saved herself and her skipper, Commander Cassin Young, later came away with the MOH for his actions.
Her mooring quay is still a place of honor at Pearl to this day.
Remarkably, Vestal survived and went on to conduct forward repairs in the war zones of the South Pacific, keeping the battleships South Dakota and Washington; carriers Saratoga and Enterprise; cruisers Minneapolis, St. Louis, HMNZS Achilles, HMAS Hobart, San Francisco, and Pensacola among others in the fight and afloat at desperate times when their loss would have been a great blow to the war effort.
Decommissioned and stricken, she was sold to breakers and disappeared in 1950.
Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck spoke at City Hall last Wednesday next to a table of guns including what appeared to be a Thompson semi-auto carbine, a few AK-pattern rifles, and some AR-15 lower receivers. The guns were part of a 791-weapon haul from the City’s annual Gun Buyback event held last Saturday that saw $200 gift cards from Ralph’s traded for the guns.
Sure, they are unwanted guns that could have eventually found their way into the hands of criminal elements who are prohibited from buying guns from lawful dealers over the counter, but there most likely weren’t any honest crooks themselves in line last weekend to turn their gatts in.
Most of the guns weren’t worth much, as evidenced from the fact that Papa Garcetti could only cough up a few pitiful examples to show off, but there was one really nice piece that probably could have been saved.
It was a milsurp M1911A1 that, at least until his death, was registered to Sammy Davis Jr.
The entertainer died May 16, 1990 at age 64 in Beverly Hills after a battle with throat cancer. Besides being a talented performer and founding member of the Rat Pack, SDJ was an accomplished trick shooter.
Occasionally wearing his custom 1873 Colt SAAs on stage with his highly-tooled one-of-a-kind Western rig, SDJ would captivate fans with an exhibition of his quick-draw abilities.
He also reportedly loved to target shoot and was a guest star on a number of popular Western TV shows of the 50s and 60s such as “The Rifleman,” “Zane Grey Theatre,” and “Wild, Wild West” where he got to use hardware on screen.
As for his M1911, I spoke with the public affairs people with the LAPD and the Mayor’s office, championing the possibility (which would cost the city nothing) of exhibiting SDJ’s .45 at the LAPD Museum. They could even have scrapped the barrel or internals in an effort to render it harmless and included an anti-gun treatise on how it was bought “off the streets” in an effort to save lives.
Nope, they advised. As the gun was not stolen or used in a pending crime as far as they knew of, it would be scrapped.
Seven Days in the Arctic by Keith Woodcock, Oil on Canvas, 2007, CIA collection
A true Renaissance man, Leonard A. LeSchack in 1962 jumped out of a perfectly good (CIA-flown) converted B-17 bomber over the Arctic. At the time, he was a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve but before joining up he had already cut his teeth as a petroleum geologist with Shell and some 14 months in the Polar Regions on Air Force Drift Station T-3 and during the International Geophysical Year as an assistant seismologist.
However, the geologist-turned-sailor who was falling through the air from the B-17 was up to something that, when compared to the rest of his epic life story, was altogether unique.
LeSchack was jumping into an abandoned Soviet Ice Station adrift on an ice floe. Then came a week poking through the remnants the Russkis thought would have gone down with the floe to the frigid sea floor looking for secrets and a Fulton Skyhook zip line in reverse pulled him and his Air Force Russian linguist companion back into the safety of a surplus aircraft.
I spoke to Len back in 2006 when I was working on an article about the ice station break in, known appropriately as Project Coldfeet, and have remained in contact with this gentleman and scholar over the past decade.
He even has crossed paths with a relative of mine (Scott) on a few occasions and I penned another piece or two on Coldfeet for Eye Spy Magazine and others to help preserve the sheer elan of the act.
Picking up the presidential Legion of Merit in 1962, LeSchack again returned to the Antarctic with the Argentine Navy, roamed Europe from Paris to Moscow on a number of research assignments, created and led an intelligence unit operating out of the Florida Keys in the years just after the Bay of Pigs.
Then there was service in Panama, Colombia, Siberia; owning his very own yellow research submarine. Hanging out with world leaders, terrorists and scientists all.
Then, there were the women.
Len’s story, his autobiography that could never have been told in real time due to the OPSEC, stretches two volumes but is well worth the read, as he has somehow managed to fit two lifetimes into one and is available over at Amazon in paperback and e-book.
Part James Bond, part Sylvanus Morley, part William ‘Strata’ Smith, part Penguin, my hat is off to you, Mr. LeSchack.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Thomas Hennell
Born 16 April 1903 in Ridley, Kent, Thomas Barclay Hennell was the son of a good Protestant minister who studied at Regent Street Polytechnic before teaching art at various schools in Bath and Bruton in the late 1920s and 30s.
He specialized in watercolors, such as this vivid one, entitled “Interior” produced in 1930 and in the collection of the Tate.
Then, in 1932 long term problems with schizophrenia led to a nervous breakdown.
This break with reality led to a three-year stay at the infamous Maudsley psychiatric hospital in South London, which Hennell wrote of in the autobiographical study, “The Witnesses” one of the few period pieces about mental illness and how it was perceived.
Besides The Witnesses, he also wrote Change in the Farm (1936), Poems (1936), British Craftsmen (1943) and The Countryman at Work (which was published 1947, after his untimely death) and provided illustrations for nearly a dozen more. He became an accepted member of the Royal Watercolour Society and exhibited in the New English Art Club.
When he emerged from Maudsley, his work was a bit darker. Compare these with Interior above.
When the War came in 1939, the 36 year old sought and obtained a commission as an official war artist for the Ministry of Information and roamed from Reykjavik to Flanders to the Far East sketching and painting.
A view of the Royal Navy submarine HMS Rorqual (N74) in a dry dock at Portsmouth. The submarine is a rusty orange colour and is supported by a series of steel struts. Numerous workmen are busy on the vessel and the surrounding dock, with a large crane to the left and a barrage balloon immediately above. HMS Rorqual was a Grampus-class minelaying sub commissioned 10 February 1937. Her mines chalked up more than 25 Axis ships in the Med and Pacific. She was broken up on 17 March 1946.
The interior of the engine room of Attacker-class Royal Navy escort aircraft carrier HMS Hunter (D80), with three crew members busying themselves and a further two men visible in the background. The two foremost men are both bare-chested, emphasizing the heat of the engine room, which is a confusing mass of pipes and metal work. Hunter started life as the USS Block Island (CVE-8), built in Pascagoula, and was converted back to a merchant hull, Almdijk, after the war, broken up in 1965.
HMS Hunter parachute rigging compartment. One sailor can be seen rolling up a yellow parachute on a large table while another carries a rolled parachute above his head. A third soldier stands to the right, in front of a fourth soldier who sits at a sewing machine
A Dutch concrete stronghold at Nijemgen, 1944
Gun-Team Firing in the Rain, Normandy June 1944
Boulogne Bassin-a-Flot
Calais: La Tour de Guet and the Ruins of the Museum
An AA Battery in Holland January 1945
Pioneers on a frozen road at Kapelle
A view from the bridge of HMS Nelson, looking down onto the crowded deck towards the Japanese vessel in the upper right. Sept 1945.
After the war, he remained in the conflict-plagued Far East and was captured by Indonesian terrorists in Batavia, November 1945, and was never seen again. He was 42 when he vanished into the jungle.
The Imperial War Museum holds no less than 90 of his works and other pieces are on display at the Tate and elsewhere.
You know you want one…after you get your tetanus shot
The Kingdom of Nepal was isolated and in some very real struggles with its neighbors in the 19th Century. Bumping against the East India Company led to the Anglo-Nepali War during which the plucky Nepalese Gorkhali soldiers smacked the Brits around a good bit until some 17,000 redcoat regulars and Indian mercenaries could be mustered to roll over the locals. Still, the peace of the Treaty of Sugauli in 1816 led to an uneasy alliance with Nepal that saw the British Army induct 5,000 Gurkhas right off the bat and keep coming back steady for the past 200 years for more.
Then came the Rana dynasty and ever-increasing British influence who provided some arms for the local Nepal forces, capped at 16,000-men, who proved useful in the Sepoy Mutiny. These arms included stocks of Brown Bess flintlocks, P.1853 Enfield muskets, Brunswick Fusils and other guns which by the 1880s were well past being obsolete.
Gurkhas in the 1870s, note the 1867 pattern Snider-Enfield breechloader conversions and giant Kukris!
Never to fear though, as the Gorkhali were resilient.
Local engineers found a few examples of 1878 Martini-Henry Francotte Pattern Short Lever Infantry Rifles which used a simplified detachable action fitted without the classic Martini cocking Indicator and decided to clone them Khyber Pass style for local use.
Some argue Francotte’s “improved system rifle” tweaks to the Martini-Henry made a better gun and while the British didn’t use Mr. Francotte’s changes for their standard issue rifles, the Francotte patent was used in tens of thousands of miniature Cadet rifles made by BSA and Greener, most of which went to Australia and New Zealand chambered in .310 Greener/ Cadet. Westley Richards also made many large bore commercial hunting rifles using the Francotte patent.
The thing was, the Nepalese didn’t actually have a firearms factory to make the gun. This in turn led to a cottage industry where these rifles were largely made by hand using sourced parts in a purpose-built site at Naku.
The worst thing about these guns is the suspect metallurgy as the steel was locally sourced and scrounged from whatever they could use including remelted plows. The screws and springs– cast by hand. The barrels were formed with bar steel wrapped in a coil and forged into the barrel, which was common for the era, just not in industrialized countries. The wood was originally coated in asphaltum, a mixture of tarmac and mineral spirits used to seal the grain. In short, they were hand-built guns with damascus wrapped barrels made by unskilled labor in a Third World country long before there was a concept such as QC, CNC or ISO.
Likely less than 16,000 were ever produced and the country, limited to a very small supply of powder for their indig ammo works, were only occasionally fired in musketry drills, so none saw exceptionally high round counts.
The breechloaders worked to a degree and were better than muskets, and the Nepalese took the lessons learned in the making the Francotte and used them to build the Gahendra Martini, which they based off a loaned Martini-Henry trials rifle given to them by the British that had a Peabody type action with a flat mainspring, instead of the improved coil spring used by the Martini, and Henry rifling. That is why Gahendras only “look” like Martinis.
As soon as the Gahendras were available around the 1890s, the Francottes moved to reserve use.
British Gurkhas from Navy And Army Illustrated, 1896, note the Martini-Henrys
Then around 1894, with the British Army moving to the Lee-Metford rifle, no less than 8,000 “real” Mk II Martini-Henry rifles were surplussed to Nepal. By 1906 and after another shipment of more modern Mark IV Martini-Henrys appeared, both the Francottes and Gahendras were placed in arsenal storage alongside the old Brown Besses, Enfields and Brunswicks– just in case– while the newer British-made guns were the primary arm.
Nepalese troops in 1901, note the difference between these soldiers and the ones shown above in British service at the same time. These men still used Francottes and Gahendras to a degree and saw a good bit of campaigning on occasion in border disputes with the even less well-equipped Tibetans and bandits.
In 1912, King George V visited the country and saw the various Martinis were still in very active use after the rest of the Empire had moved on, and whistled up some Boer War surplus Lee-Metfords for the country while Short Magazine Lee Enfields appeared after World War I and remained in use up to the Civil War in the 1990s and are still seen in imagery from the region.
By 1919 and enduring for a half century or more, the Nepalese have used the SMLE, though the example shown is a very well equipped Gurkha in HMs service in WWII
However, instead of throwing out the Brown Besses, Brunswicks, Francottes, Gahendras and Martinis, the Nepalese just kept stacking them deep, never throwing them out. After all, an old rifle can still be used in a pinch.
Then in 2003, Atlanta Cutlery and International Military Arms made the score of a lifetime when they gained access to the crumbling, open-air 16th Century Lagan Silekhana Palace in Katmandu where all of these guns were stored.
In the end, they bought and moved out of the country more than 52,000 rifles, 25,300 bayonets, 13,100 Kukris, 600 swords, 20 hand-built Bira double-barreled machine guns (all with non-interchangeable parts), 1.3-million Revolutionary War-era flints and 170 antique black powder cannon.
The two have been selling the cache for the past decade and just a couple months ago Atlanta Cutlery tapped out and sold their remaining inventory from Silekhana to IMA, who has been making some deals of their own lately.
Which led me to pick up this original Nepalese Francotte in “untouched condition” for $169 on sale with a 24-inch socket bayonet for $29, free shipping.
Isn’t she a beaut!
I’m not trying to restore it or refinish it, I’m just looking to clean the gross accumulation of junk off while preserving as much of the original finish and patina as possible, then lube it up and set it aside for display.
I understand the Nepalese used yak grease (not kidding) as sort of a Himalaya cosmoline to coat these guns before they were stored long term.
Nice shiny bore!
The screws haven’t been turned in 100~ years. Like most of these guns, the brass buttplate was salvaged by scavengers years ago and likely sold for scrap while the buttstock itself is cracked and loose. But on the bright side, the action works like a charm and the springs still seem tight.
Image via the National Firearms Museum, Fairfax, VA
One of the first revolvers to shoot metallic cartridges, this Smith & Wesson Model No. 1 First Issue had a cylinder that held seven .22 short cartridges, patent of 1857. This particular Model No. 1 is engraved, “Mad Harry / Fairfax Court House / July 15th 1861.” on one side and on the other, it is engraved, “Lt. Col. HD Townsend / 1st Cavalry.” On the butt, is engraved “Charlotte”
Lt. Col. Townsend served in the 1st Connecticut Cavalry and received this revolver 153 years ago – less than a week before the battle of 1st Manassas on July 21, 1861. As for the “Mad Harry” nickname or just who Charlotte was? That remains a mystery
The First Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Cavalry was organized 23 Oct 1861 which means that Townsend had unit marking at least added after he received the pistol. The regiment fought with the Army of the Potomac and was present at the Battle of Cross Keys, Second Battle of Bull Run, Spotsylvania Court House, Petersburg, Strasburg, Five Forks, Appomattox and others, being mustered out of service on August 2, 1865. So you can bet this little S&W saw a good bit of campaigning.
Just going to drop this right here as I have always been a fan of pre-Edo period Imperial Japanese Ukiyo-e imagery, and Star Wars, which as many have noted, draws many inspirations from the old Empire.
On Sept. 17, 2009, President Obama announced that the United States would provide missile defenses to NATO, to include the deployment of SM-3 interceptor missiles at landbased sites in Romania and Poland. Now of course the SM-3 is a naval missile, so this led to a new take on an old idea.
The Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System (AAMDS) at Naval Support Facility (NSF) Deveselu, Romania is Phase 2 of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) to ballistic missile defense. AAMDS has many of the same components used at sea on guided-missile destroyers and cruisers, to include the Aegis Weapon System, Mk. 41 Vertical Launch System, and SPY-1 radar, but it can only fire the SM-3.
In short, it’s an unsinkable cruiser in a corn field so to speak.
The Navy just released some B-roll footage of the base inside and out including the “Deckhouse” and CIC, which is kinda rare access, so take the silent tour in the two videos below, before they disappear in the name of OPSEC.
I’ve long been a fan of flamethrowers, both civilian and military. It probably dates back to my youth spent losing my eyebrows with the assistance of a can of AquaNet and a Bic lighter, but I digress.
I did an article back in 2013 as kinda a primer on flame weapons in which I referred to the leading expert in the country on U.S. martial flamethrowers, Charles Hobson, who has gotten several of these all too-often scrapped devices back to their natural state.
Well my homie Ian over at Forgotten Weapons managed to track Hobson down and did an excellent walk through on flamethrower doctrine and timelines in the below video. Great job!
British army sniper with a.338 Lapua caliber Accuracy International AWM complete with a Schmidt & Bender 5-25×56 (MoD designation L115A3) rifle deploying on a mission in Afghanistan. Coming standard with a suppressor, these 20-pound+ beasts can reach well out to 2,000m and count coup on adjacent hilltops, with the round reaching the target before the sound of the supersonic crack does.
You can look at his weapon and note the “come ups” for ballistics MOA adjustments written on buttstock in sharpie and just four spare 5-round mags in his plate carrier. Though he likely has a few boxes of rounds in his bergen as well as any number of other weapons about his person and that of his spotter(s).
This Tommy, though thousands of miles from the UK, is likely close to home as you can tell from the Royal Gurkha Rifles (RGR) patch on his right arm. Also note the service number on said patch and on his knee pads along with blood type. Good for his mates, he is a universal donor (O+). Bad for him though.
