Warship Wednesday, March 19, 2025: Bucoup Malchanceuse

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday, March 19, 2025: Bucoup Malchanceuse

Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 64442

Above, we see the unique cuirasse d’escadre Bouvet of the French Marine Nationale sitting quietly at anchor, likely in the Mediterranean in the 1900s. More a floating castle than a man-o-war, this tumblehome-hulled battlewagon would find herself very unlucky in the Dardanelles some 110 years ago this week.

The “Sample Fleet”

While France and Britain were at peace since 1815, there was still enough lingering animosity between the two traditional enemies that, when the Royal Navy began work on a series of eight new 1st rate warships that would become the Royal Sovereign-class battleship in 1888– vessels that hit 14,000 tons, carried four 13.5-inch guns, and were clad in as much as 18 inches of armor but could still make 17 knots or better– the French knew they needed a response.

This led the French naval ministry to order four, and later a fifth, new and experimental battleship around a series of mandatory specs: 14,000 tons or less, a “diamond” gun arrangement with turreted 12-inch guns fore and aft and 10.8-inch guns amidships, an armor plate topping out at 18 inches, and a speed of at least 17 knots. Dubbed the “flotte d’échantillons” (sample fleet), the idea would be that the ministry would pick and choose what worked best from these one-off prototypes and come up with the best design moving forward.

The first four ships were all designed by four different esteemed French naval architects and built at four different domestic yards at roughly the same time to cut down on the suspense:

  • Charles Martel, designed by Charles Ernest Huin, built at Arsenal de Brest 1891-1896
  • Jauréguiberry, designed by Amable Lagane, built by F et C de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-sur-Mer 1891-96
  • Carnot, designed by Victor Saglio, built at Arsenal de Toulon 1891-1896
  • Masséna, designed by Louis de Bussy, built at A et C de la Loire, Saint-Nazaire 1891-1897

French pre-dreadnought battleship Masséna, alongside one of her sisters

Before any of the above Echantillons had entered service, Charles Ernest Huin received the singular honor of drafting a fifth design that would begin construction at Arsenal de Lorient in January 1893. Regarded as a bit of a genius by the French, the 57-year-old Huin had graduated from the École Polytechnique during the Crimean War, sat on the Gavres Commission on artillery development, and became general director of the Gironde Shipyards in Lorient in 1881 where he designed the early battleships Hoche, Brennus, and Marceau before his Charles Martel design, picked as first of the Echantillons to be laid down, drew interest.

Hoche, seen operating in relatively flat waters along France’s Atlantic coast in 1890, was one of Huin’s babies

Huin’s swansong is our subject.

Meet Bouvet

Although a continuation of the sample fleet concept, our Bouvet would be a testbed for several new technologies. Whereas the other four Echantillons used Lagreafel d’Allest boilers, Bouvet would carry 32 (!) more modern Indret-Bellville boilers arranged on three engines driving three shafts (three of the four sample ships were twin shafters). She went a bit heavier than the preceding battleships, but with 15,000 shp available, she was designed to make 18 knots in theory and could steam 4,000nm on 10 knots with 980 tons of good coal in her bunkers.

While she carried a similar armor plan, Bouvet’s was improved Harvey nickel steel face-hardened armor with a higher tensile strength against incoming projectiles than that used on previous French ships. Further, while she had roughly the same hull type, it was not cut down to the main deck at the stem, and she carried a downsized superstructure with a pair of smaller military masts compared to the previous Echantillons, all of which suffered from dramatic stability issues in any sort of seas.

Her drawings on paper seem elegant.

She also had more modern guns, albeit of the same caliber as the four prior sample ships. Rather than two single Canon de 305 mm/45 (12″) Model 1887s as on Charles Martel, she had updated 305 mm/40 (12″) Model 1893s as her main armament. Capable of firing 770-pound AP shells to 13,000 yards at about one round per minute, these guns would later be mounted in two twin-gun turrets on the follow on the Gaulois, Iena, Suffren, Republique, and Liberte battleship classes.

Bouvet, bow shot, showing off her forward 12-inch gun

Note all the light guns in her superstructure

The secondary battery was a pair of 274 mm/45 (10.8″) Model 1887/1893s in amidship single gun turrets, an experimental model only carried on Bouvet and the sample ship Massena. Her sloping tumblehome hull form was largely to allow these “wing” guns a wider field of fire.

Battleship Bouvet beam turrets.

The tertiary armament was downright wild, with eight single 5.5″/45 M1891s, another eight 3.9″/45 M1891s, a dozen single 47mm/40 M1885 3-pounders, five single 37mm/20 M1885 1-pounders, and a pair of Hotchkiss 37mm 5-barreled Gatling-style guns. This was deemed more than enough to tackle incoming waves of enemy torpedo boats.

Bouvet, Janes 1914

Speaking of torpedoes, she maintained four separate 17.7-inch torpedo stations, two amidships above water with single tubes on trainable turnstiles, and another two submerged forward with fixed tubes that simply fired 90 degrees outward from the beam. Each station had its own magazine, and Bouvet could carry a dozen M1892 Whitehead-type fish, which had a 1,100-yard range and carried 220 pounds of guncotton.

Modern, she carried four dynamos that allowed for force ventilation belowdecks, electrical lighting, and six high-output searchlights. Heady stuff for 1892.

The Salad Days

Bouvet was ordered 8 April 1892 from Lorient Arsenal at a cost of £1.2 million, or 21 million French francs. Laid down to a completed design by Huin on 16 January 1893, she was launched 27 April 1896, her hull decorated with trees.

Named for the trio of famed 18th/19th century French navigator/admirals Bouvet, our battleship was at least the third to carry the name under the Tricolor, preceded by a steam aviso famously sunk off Haiti in 1871 in a storm just after she fought the German gunboat SMS Meteor off Havana (see: Warship Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020: A German and a Frenchman walk into a Cuban bar…).

Bouvet fitting out

Bouvet was completed and was commissioned in June 1898, amid the spectacular naval developments of the Spanish-American War.

Bouvet circa 1900, Symond & Co photograph, IWM Q 22256

She joined the Mediterranean squadron and visited the Italian sovereigns in 1900, before becoming flagship of the entire French fleet for a couple of years. She then participated in several diplomatic voyages to Spain, Italy, Greece, the exotic Ottoman ports, and other spots in the region before taking part in numerous maneuvers and exercises in the Med.

For a time, she was a favorite subject of naval postcards.

Notably, she participated in the large French naval review at Cherbourg in July 1900, suffered a minor collision with the battleship Gaulois in 1903, and assisted in the international response to the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy.

It was a quiet life.

By 1907, she was given an overhaul that included deleting her above-deck torpedo tubes and other minor efforts to help trim her top-heavy design. By the summer of 1908, with better battleships taking their place in the fleet’s 1st and 2nd Battleship Divisions, Bouvet was downgraded an assignment in the 3rd.

In and out of ordinary, her roles increasingly took on a more auxiliary tasking outside of the spotlight, no longer the proud flagship of her early career.

Battleship Bouvet in Toulon harbour 1912, BNF image

By 1913, the French Navy had a surplus of steel-sheathed, steel-hulled battlewagons, each class generally better than the last in an evolutionary sense, and all more advanced than Bouvet. Going past the Echantillons, they had three 11,000 ton Charlemagnes, the one-off 9,000-ton Henri IV, the 12,725-ton Suffren, two 15,000-ton Republiques, three 14,000-ton Democraties, six 18,000-ton “semi-dreadnought” Dantons, four modern 23,000-ton Courbets mounting a full dozen 12″/50 guns, three brand-new 24,000-ton Bretagnes with ten 13.5″/45s, and a class of five 25,000-ton Normandie class dreadnoughts under construction. With all that– including 13 legit dreadnoughts and six semi-dreadnoughts for the battle line and 10 still functional pre-dreadnoughts for expeditionary use– the need to keep the cranky and grossly obsolete Echantillons on the Navy List any longer was fading.

The four earlier sample ships were soon withdrawn. Charles Martel was placed in reserve in 1912 before being decommissioned outright in early 1914, permanently disarmed to become a floating barracks hulk at Brest. Carnot was placed in reserve in January 1913 and, disarmed, was used as an accommodation ship at Toulon. Massena, suffering an explosion in 1913, was withdrawn from service and hulked, pending scrapping.

Jaureguiberry and Bouvet were transferred to the Division de complément (Supplementary Division) and assigned to fire control development and gunnery training, respectively, surely the last stop before being laid up. These two ships were reportedly left in poor condition, with maintenance funds diverted to newer and more capable battleforce elements. After all, why waste money on ships earmarked for disposal?

War!

The Great War saved Bouvet and fellow sample battleship Jaureguiberry from the scrappers. Ordered to arm up and make ready for combat– with German and Austrian ally Italy thought ready to enter the conflict at any moment and German RADM Souchon’s Mediterranean Squadron at large– the two dated but still useful warships were soon escorting troopships in the Med. These included both French colonial troops heading to the Metropolitan Republic and British/Indian troops likewise headed to the Western Front.

Bouvet, May 1914, BNF

Once Souchon’s squadron, the battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the cruiser Breslau, had fled to the Dardanelles under the protection of Ottoman guns, and Italy gave assurances they had no immediate intention of honoring their pact with Berlin and Vienna, Bouvet soon shifted to Greek waters to join the force gathering there should the German ships attempt to break back out into the Med.

This force soon made the logical transition to supporting the doomed Franco-British Gallipoli campaign in 1915 once the Turks found themselves in the war. By late February 1915, a force of 16 British battleships under VADM John de Robeck and four French ones (Suffren, Bouvet, Charlemagne, and Gaulors) under RADM Emile Guepratte, augmented by a host of cruisers (including a random Russian) and destroyers, began to try to force the straits.

Among the 230 artillery pieces that supported the Dardanelles, defenses were at least 10 aging Krupp 24 cm (9.4-inch) K L/35 fortress guns from a batch of 30 pieces shipped to the country in 1889. They could heave a 474-pound shell via bagged charges out to a range of 8.1 miles.

Ottoman 24 cm artillery at the Rumeli Medjidieh battery Bouvet. That shell hoist would dramatically fail on 18 March 1915

Relatively obsolete by the Great War, they could still be deadly should an enemy ship obligingly get close enough to find out. Four of these were installed in the masonry fort at Rumeli Mecidiye Tabyası (Fort No. 13) on the European shore of the peninsula, backing up a pair of larger but less capable 28cm L/22s.

Ottoman 24 cm artillery at the Rumeli Medjidieh battery, 1915. Shown are the battery commander, Captain Mehmet Hilmi (Şanlıtop) Bey, and 2LT Fahri Bey.

Beyond the guns, the Turks had sown almost 400 mines in 10 fields, most laid by the humble little Ottoman minelayer Nusret.

Turkish Minelayer Nusrat

On the morning of 18 March 1915, a three-part attack was launched to reduce the Ottoman’s central forts, with the four most powerful British battlewagons (HMS Queen Elizabeth, Lord Nelson, Agamemnon, and Inflexible) kicking off the assault with a heavy two-hour bombardment from 8 miles out, followed by a second prong– the four French ships– boldly sailing to within just 5,000 yards to destroy the fortifications at point blank range, relying on their heavy armor to shrug off any remaining Turkish guns. Meanwhile, the 12 remaining British battleships would line up in a third division in three groups to provide covering fire and then follow the French in.

The problem with that plan was that the first bombardment was nowhere near as effective as the British thought it would be, and Nusret had crept in to sow an 11th minefield that the British and French didn’t know about.

The day would prove very bad for the Allied forces.

Inflexible, Queen Elizabeth, and Agamemnon in the British first line, along with Irresistible and Ocean in the second line, started taking hits, most from the little Rumeli Mecidiye battery but also other guns at Dardanos and Sogandare.

The French, drawn point blank with the forts, got the worst of it, with Suffren, flagship of RADM Guepratte, receiving 14 hits in 14 minutes and set ablaze, effectively out of the fight. Gaulois was hit twice, with one lucky shell plunging and penetrating her hull under the waterline, forcing her to retreat and beach on Tavsan in the Rabbit Islands to keep from sinking, the wounded Charlemagne at her side.

Bouvet received at least eight hits from Rumeli Medjidieh’s 9.4-inch guns, riddling her masts and funnels and putting her forward turret out of action. Not grievously injured, she answered the signal to withdraw and promptly stumbled into one of Nusret’s mines at 13:58 just under her starboard 10.8-inch mount.

Never having an abundance of stability, she quickly started to roll and, with water pouring down her funnels, turned turtle and sank in less than a minute, taking a stunning 660 of her 710 crew down with her.

Bouvet sinking after being mined 18 March 1915. Note how close to shore she is. Photo via the Surgeon Parkes collection. IWM SP 682A

A handful of waterlogged and shocked survivors were plucked from the water by the battle-damaged Agamemnon.

Survivors from the French battleship Bouvet coming on board the battleship HMS Agamemnon on 18 March 1915 during the Anglo-French naval attempt to force the Dardanelles. The Bouvet struck a Turkish mine and sank with the loss of over 600 of her crew. IWM HU 103301

With Roebuck ordering his ships to withdraw from the failed effort to reduce the forts, Irresistible and Ocean likewise struck Turkish mines and quickly sank within sight of Bouvet’s watery grave. Irresistible sank with the loss of only 12 of her 780 crew and had her survivors rescued by Ocean then, following the holing by that ship, she slowly sank and the combined crews were taken off by the destroyers HMS Jed, Colne, and Chelmer which were able to come alongside. Of note, the British battleships, while similarly dated, were not tumblehome designs, and Ocean only lost a single crewman in the battle.

Epilogue

Both at the time of the sinking and in modern Turkey, the loss of Bouvet was widely celebrated and remembered.

Le Bouvet aux Dardanelles

Illustrated First World War, Sinking of Bouvet

German wartime postcard depicting the sinking of Bouvet

Sinking of Bouvet

“Bouvet’nin Çanakkale’de Batışı (The Sinking of Battleship Bouvet at the Dardanelles)” by Turkish maritime artist Diyarbakırlı Tahsin Bey

“Bouvet’nin Çanakkale’de Batışı (The Sinking of Battleship Bouvet at the Dardanelles)” by Turkish maritime artist Diyarbakırlı Tahsin Bey

Charles Huin didn’t live long enough to see his penultimate battleship fail so spectacularly. Retiring from the French navy in 1902 after almost 50 years of service as a Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, he was struck by a car and killed on a Paris street at age 76 in December 1912 while on his way to collect his pension from the Ministry.

Charles Ernest Huin

RADM Guepratte, who commanded the French force on the fateful day that Bouvet was lost, was relegated to a desk job at Bizerte for the rest of the war and then retired. He passed in November 1939, gratefully missing out on the twin humiliations of Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940 and Toulon in November 1942. Post-war, historians rehabilitated his record and came to the conclusion he got a bad rap, and he is generally seen as a naval hero of sorts today in France, with a destroyer (D632) and frigate (F714) named after him. After all, he was ordered by Roebuck and Carden to take his four obsolete battleships right down the Turks’ throat and by all means should have lost all four.

The French Navy went on to recycle the Bouvet name twice- for a Free French auxiliary in WWII and a Cold War era Surcouf-class destroyer (D624) in operation between 1952 and 1981.

For years, it was believed that Bouvet sank only due to the 9.4-inch coastal artillery hits.

The Ottoman battery commander who landed the hits on Bouvet and several of the other ships, Capt. Mehmet Hilmi Şanlıtop, despite winning a series of decorations, including the Iron Cross, was cashiered post-war in the aftermath of the end of the empire. Welcomed into the ranks of the newly formed Turkish Army in 1920, he eventually retired as a colonel of artillery. He wrote a book about his service and passed in 1946. A statue of him stands near the location of the battery today, which is now a museum.

The Rumeli Medjidieh site, disarmed in 1919, today contains a single 9.4-inch Krupp fortress gun, albeit one moved from another fort. The site has bronze statues of Capt. Şanlıtop and his XO, along with Corporal Seyit Ali Cabuk, who famously hand-carried three 474-pound shells up to one of the 9.4s from the magazine to the breech after the shell hoist failed during the latter stages of the Allied attempt to force the Dardanelles on 18 March 1915, the rounds credited with hitting Ocean.

The story of Bouvet’s ultimate loss by mine strike caught up to the public.

The Ottoman minelayer Nusret, retired from naval service in 1955, was sold to commercial concerns and, derelict, sank in 1989.

Raised in 2002, she has been reconstructed on land at the Tarsus Çanakkale Park.

Nusrat Tarsus Çanakkale Park wiki commons

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

***

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Shooting Britain’s Last Mag-Fed LMG

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In the early 1980s – just after the Falklands War – the British government moved to ditch the combat-proven inch-pattern semi-auto-only FN FAL (dubbed the L1A1) and the 7.62 NATO-chambered Bren gun (L4A1) with a new and radically different platform, the SA80 family.

Adopted in 1985 was a bull-pupped Enfield select-fire rifle in 5.56 NATO that accepted standard 30-round magazines. Fielded with the 4x fixed-power SUSAT (Sight Unit Small Arms, Trilux) optic, this new series of guns was designated the L85 rifle – with a 20-inch barrel – to replace the L1A1.

Whereas 350,000 SA80 pattern firearms of all types were made, the lion share were L85A1s, most later updated to L85A2 standard by HK, and finally to L85A3– the current standard. Besides the standard rifles, there was a comparative handful (2,500) of shortened L22A1/A2 Carbines for use by aircrew and the like produced. Training aids in the form of the L103A2 Drill Purpose, L98 Cadet Rifle, and L402A1 0.22 Small Bore Rifle were also made.

One of the more eclectic variants is the comparatively rare (22,000 made) L86 Light Support Weapon. Designed to replace the 7.62 Bren L4A1 in squad service, it had a longer 24-inch barrel, a rear grip, and a folding bipod.

The SUSAT-equipped L86 LSW (top) and the L85 rifle, are compared. Note the longer barrel with a shorter handguard and outrigger support, the rear grip, and the folding bipod on the LSW. (Graphic: MoD)

Among other features are a folding butt strap that flips up to assist with stability. (Graphic: MoD)

Now withdrawn from British service and replaced by a proper squad automatic weapon, the belt-fed FN Minimi, we recently were able to go hands-on with a retired (but still functional) L86 at BFV earlier this year.

The L86 is a beefy weapon, hitting the scales at 16 pounds with the SUSAT installed and a 30-round magazine inserted. However, it is still “light” compared to the L4A1 Bren it replaced, which hit the scales at 19 pounds, unloaded. Plus, the L86 is only a little over 35 inches long, or about the length of a Mini-14!

The L86 is probably one of the oddest Enfields ever produced.

The chunky L9A1 SUSAT, which was cutting-edge when introduced in the early 1980s, has since been phased out by the Trijicon ACOG and the Elcan Specter in British service. Note the fixed iron backup sights located atop the sight body. The SUSAT uses an illuminated inverted aiming point that looks something like the Washington Monument.

More after the jump in my column at Guns.com. 

Oldest Cutter Not Looking Too Bad at 61 Years Young

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The seniormost blue-water cutter, the USCGC Reliance (WMEC-615), has been in service almost continuously since she was commissioned on 20 June 1964, with the only break being regular yard periods and a 20-month Major Maintenance Availability from April 1987 to January 1989.

Constructed across a 22-month period for the sum of $4,920,804 by the Todd Houston Shipbuilding Corporation, the country has gotten its money’s worth out of Hull 615.

The lead ship of her class of 16 cutters, she originally carried a CODAG propulsion system and a 3″/50 gun forward as well as weight and space reserved for ASW weapons to serve as a patrol escort in the event of WWIII.

This black and white photo shows newly the commissioned Reliance (WMEC-615) with an HH-52 Sea Guard helicopter landing on its pad and davits down with one of its small boats deployed. Notice the lack of smokestack and paint scheme pre-dating the Racing Stripe or “U.S. Coast Guard” paint schemes. She has a 3″/50 forward as well as 20mm cannons for AAA work and weight and space for Mousttraps, a towed sonar, and Mk.32 ASW tubes, although they were never fitted. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

After her $16 million MMA in the late 80s, she lost her 3-incher, replaced with an early model manned MK38 25mm chain gun, while her engines were replaced with twin Alco diesels. Keep in mind that the MMA was supposed to just add 10-to-15 years to her lifespan, with a planned retirement along those lines in 2009-2015.

Post MMA

The crew of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Reliance (WMEC 615) interdicts a low-profile vessel carrying more than $5 million in illicit narcotics in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Feb. 15, 2024. Patrolling in support of Joint Interagency Task Force-South, the Reliance crew stopped two drug trafficking ventures, detaining six suspected traffickers and preventing nearly 4,000 pounds of cocaine and 5,400 pounds of marijuana, worth more than $57 million, from entering the United States. (U.S. Coast Guard photo courtesy of Reliance)

She has earned at least four Coast Guard Unit Commendations, a Coast Guard Meritorious Unit Commendation, multiple Joint Meritorious Unit Awards, and numerous USCG “E” ribbons. She has put out oilrig fires, saved at least four ships adrift on the sea, served on the Campeche Patrols for three years, picked up thousands of Haitian and Cuban migrants in the Florida Straits, bagged over 400 tons of MJ and $50M worth of cocaine, and just generally been a floating mensch.

Reliance just completed a 60-day patrol in the Florida Straits, Windward Passage, and Gulf of America, and managed to have a short video captured of her underway in the Gulf.

At some point in the coming years, she will be replaced by the future USCGC Reliance (WMSM-925), a Heritage-class 360-foot Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPCs), and will be the fifth vessel to bear the distinguished name going back to 1861.

Perhaps the old girl will be retained as a museum, with the new National USCG Museum in New London being a good candidate.

Diorama worthy Phantom

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I though this was a very well done scale model scene until I found the original photo in the NARA and zoomed in enough to see expressions on faces. It was taken 40 years ago today in the coldest stretch of the Cold War.
Official caption: “An elevated view of the refueling of an F-4E Phantom II aircraft undergoing maintenance. The aircraft belongs to the 81st Tactical Fighter Squadron, 52nd Tactical Fighter Wing. Spangdahlem Air Base, Rheinland-Pfalz, West Germany. 18 March 1985″

USAF Photo DFST8511926, National Archives Identifier 6389752

The photographer was TSGT Jose Lopez Jr., who was seriously skilled. NARA has over 200 images of his that are digitized and several of them are incredibly stirring, especially when you remember they were all snapped back in the analog manual camera days when you had to be in touch with your F-stops and film speeds.
Check these two out:

“An air-to-air right side view of two F-15 Eagle aircraft from Detachment 1, 318th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, passing the rear of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.” January 1, 1988. DFST8808317. National Archives Identifier 6427662. TSGT Jose Lopez Jr.

“A moisture cloud forms on the wings of a 96th Bomber Wing B-1B bomber aircraft as the plane executes a tight turn.” March 9, 1987. DFST9110024. National Archives Identifier 6462842. TSGT Jose Lopez Jr.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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Here we see, some 80 years ago this month, four leaf clover-wearing General Motors FM-2 Wildcats and Grumman TBM-3 Avengers of Composite Squadron (VC) 93 aboard the Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) as they prepare for their first mission supporting the invasion of Okinawa, 25 March 1945. It was VC-93’s inaugural taste of combat. 

Image from Storm of Eagles: The Greatest Aviation Photographs of World War II, by John Dibbs, Kent Ramsey, and Robert “Cricket” Renner (Osprey Publishing), via Navsource

Petrof Bay’s war diary for the above day, March 25, 1945

Built under a Maritime Commission contract by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Co., Vancouver, Wash., Petrof Bay was laid down on 15 October 1943; launched on 5 January 1944; and commissioned on 18 February 1944 with Capt. Joseph Lester (“Paddy”) Kane (USNA 1923)– formerly the skipper of the Clemson-class seaplane tender (destroyer) USS McFarland (AVD 14)— in command.

With VC-76 aboard, Petrof Bay had already seen extensive combat in the Philippines with RADM Felix Stump’s Task Unit 77.4.2 (“Taffy II”) that included one probable hit on Yamato, two probable hits on Nagato, two on Kongo, and one on an unidentified cruiser, plus strafing runs on Yamato, the cruisers, and destroyers, going far to avenge the slaughter of Taffy III.

Battle off Samar, 25 October 1944 Japanese battleship Yamato (foreground) and a heavy cruiser in action during the Battle off Samar. The cruiser appears to be either Tone or Chikuma. Photographed from a USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) plane. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-378525

VC-76 went ashore at Guam in early March 1945 to re-equip and retrain after conducting a grueling 786 sorties over Iwo Jima, tapping in the newly formed and above-seen VC-93, which had only a few months prior made their carrier quals off California on sistership USS Matanikau (CVE-101).

Established at NAS Seattle on 23 February 1944, VC-93 had embarked on their trip from California to Hawaii on USS Shamrock Bay (CVE 84) in December and from there to Seadler Harbor, Manus, aboard USS Long Beach (CVE 1) in January 1945, and finally, via USS Barnes (CVE 20) for Guam via Ulithi in February.

While aboard Petrof Bay, VC-93 quickly got broken in, and during the March-April 1945 Okinawa operation, shot down at least 17 enemy planes in addition to flying close air support missions ashore and neutralizing the Japanese airfields on Sakashima from where kamikaze was operating.

In 70 operational days aboard Petrof Bay, VC-93 logged 1,143 Wildcat sorties (in 20 FM-2s) and 598 in the squadron’s 12 Avengers. 

FM 2 Wildcat VC 93 “White 20” over USS Petrof Bay (CVE 80) off Okinawa 1945

Disembarked in Pearl Harbor in June as Petrof Bay headed to California for an overhaul after being 16 months at sea, the Shamrocks crossdecked to the Westbound sistership USS Steamer Bay (CVE-87) where they remained until the end of the war.

VC-93’s war, between Petrof Bay and Steamer Bay, accounted for some 8,500 logged hours in the air across 2,360 sorties. 

VC-93 was disestablished in August 1945 while Petrof Bay, who received five battle stars for World War II service, was placed out of commission, in reserve, in the Boston Group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet in July 1946 then later sold in 1959 for scrap.

VC-93’s excellent 39-page War History is in the National Archives as is the ship’s own 90-page History. 

An FM-2 (White 29, Bu No. 74512) that had served on Petrof Bay with VC-93 somehow managed to survive and has been on public display for the past 25 years, in her period four-leaf clover livery, on loan from the National Naval Aviation Museum at The Museum of Flight, Boeing Field, Seattle.

Classic Walther Burp Gun Spotted in the Wild

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The Portuguese Navy’s Marine Corps has deployed a 170-strong reinforced company (about a quarter of the service’s strength) to the Baltics. Dubbed the Força de Fuzileiros Lituânia (FFZ LTU) it is on a roughly three-month mission under the auspices of NATO and is the largest deployment of the Corpo de Fuzileiros since Portugal evacuated its African colonies more than 50 years ago. Notably, it includes two UAV elements.

The Portuguese Marines are also sort of old-school, in many ways being stuck in the 1960s-70s when it comes to small arms, still using HK G3 battle rifles, and Walther MP subguns. They only recently retired the P-1 (P-38) pistol in favor of the Glock 17.

Everyone knows the Walther brand, and for good reason. The company makes great guns that are often extremely innovative. The PP/PPK, P-38, P-99, PPQ, PDP, the OSP, and Olympia – the list goes on. However, Walther only made one production submachine gun: the Maschinenpistole, or MP.

Designed in the late 1950s and entering production around 1963, the MP is a blowback action 9mm select-fire SMG with a tubular receiver that fires from an open bolt. It beat the much better-known Heckler & Koch MP5 to production by a few years and was made in two different variations: the MP Lang (Long), or MPL, and the MP Kurz (Short), or MPK.

The difference in size between the two was negligible. The more full-sized MPL ran a 10.2-inch barrel for an overall length of 29.4 inches with the side-folding wire stock extended, whereas the MPK went about 3.5 inches shorter with a 6.8-inch barrel.

Seen at Walther’s in-house museum in Ulm last year…

Although well-made, the MP never really caught on. Its only European customer, besides some German police units as the MP4 (they made several on-camera appearances during the Munich Olympics in 1972), was the Portuguese Navy as seen above

Overseas, it was bought by a few third-world users and the U.S. Army, picked for use by the elite Delta Force commandos in the 1970s and the secretive Detachment A “stay behind” Special Forces unit in West Berlin.

Whereas the MP5 is a bit of a race car that needs special tools for in-depth maintenance, the MP is made simply of metal stampings. For instance, the barrel on the Walther can be swapped out by a user in the field with no tools. Plus, its 550-round cyclic rate, slower than that of the HK, was closer to that used by the M3 Grease Gun and earlier MP38/40, allowing a more familiar learning curve to those already used to those platforms. Little wonder it was adopted by the early U.S. Tier 1 counter-terror operators when Delta Force was first stood up. (Photos: U.S. Army, National Archives, Springfield Armory National Historic Site)

We recently got to shoot one earlier this year and can see why Delta dug it. 

Behold, the MPK

It is ambi and is set up kind of funny. The safety (Sicher=safe) is to the rear of the grip, full-auto (Dauerfeuer= continuous fire) straight down, and semi-auto (Einzelfeuer=single fire ) with the switch rotated forward toward the magazine well. The HK MP5 has a similar S/E/F marked switch for Sicher-Einzelfeuer-Feuerstoss

Could Indonesia be the last Harrier operator?

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Other than prototype airframes going back to the P.1127 in 1957, between 1969 and 2003, just 824 Harrier variants of all types were delivered to end-users.

That’s not a lot of aircraft.

This is the same subsonic strike fighter that scared the Guatemalans enough for Belize to gain (and keep) independence, liberate the Falklands, give Italy, Spain, and Thailand their first operational aircraft carriers; provide the Soviets a moment of pause in their plans to sweep through the Fulda Gap, give India a strong naval upper-hand over Pakistan since 1983, and deliver ordnance on the “X” in combat sorties over the Balkans, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Oh, yes, and led Pepsi into a pretty legit lawsuit. 

Talk about a little plane that could!

However, a dated design, surpassed by the F-35 and several generations of helicopter gunships (keep in mind the AH-1 Cobra was only just coming online when the AV-8A was introduced), the Harrier has been on its way out for the past two decades.

The Royal Navy folded their birds into the RAF which ditched the type in 2010.

India completed 33 years of jump jet operations in 2016.

The Thai Navy’s handful of surplus Spanish Matadors have been long out of service.

The USMC– the largest Harrier operator– plans to retire the last of its birds in 2026/27 (the fleet largely living off British spare parts and through cannibalizing 72 retired airframes acquired in 2011). The Marines are already shifting airframes to museums. 

That just leaves the navies of Spain (12 EAV-8B Plus and 1 TAV-8B operated by 9 Escuadrilla) and Italy (14 AV-8B Plus and 1 TAV-8B of Gruppo Aerei Imbarcati along with 15 stored airframes) as the keeper of the Harrier flame outside of the U.S. with the Spanish planning on putting the type to bed in 2030 (no doubt inheriting the final couple of pallets of parts from the USMC) and the Italians doing the same sometime this year.

Speaking of which, word comes that Indonesia may acquire its first aircraft carrier, the soon to be retired ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Italian Navy ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi (C-551) with nine AV-8B Harrier II and one Sea King in the flight deck carrier

While smaller than the 22,000-ton British Invincible class jump carriers and even the 17,000-ton Spanish Príncipe de Asturias, the 14,000-ton Garibaldi is newer than all of those (now scrapped) flattops. Don’t get me wrong, she had a full career, having retired last October after 29 years of service that included combat sorties off the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya, and can carry a mixed airwing of some 20 helicopters and AV-8Bs from her 570-foot flight deck.

Will the Indonesians get Harriers as part of the deal?

Maybe, but do they really want to try operating them? The learning curve is steep on the aircraft, and it is even more unforgiving in old age, so that may not be the best idea, especally for planes so long in the tooth. One method of getting into a type for which no conversion training program exists would be to have contract foreign maintainers and aviators (ex-USMC, Italian etc.) which is a whole different can of worms that may be politically unpalatable.

My bet is that the juice won’t be worth the squeeze and the Indonesian Navy will use Garibaldi, if she is acquired, as a host for its helicopters (they have a mix of about 50 AS565 Dauphin, AS332 Super Puma, MBB Bo 105, EC725 Caracal, and other types) while bringing on a wing or two of navalized drones– which is what all the cool kids are doing.

The old spaghetti carrier could eke out another 10-20 years in low-impact UAV operations, not underway in a traditional aircraft carrier sense, but shuffling around the Indonesian littoral and operating as a mobile drone airfield and heliport that can be parked in any bay or cove that will accommodate her 27-foot draft.

A concept roughly akin to the way seaplane tenders were deployed in the first half of the 20th Century.

KAMIKAWA MARU (Japanese seaplane tender, 1936) Anchored off Amoy, China, 16 July 1939, with a deck load of KAWANISHI E7K-2 and NAKAJIMA E8N floatplanes both forward and aft. I can count at least 14 aircraft. This vessel, the first of the class converted to a seaplane carrier, saw extensive service in Chinese waters from 1938 to 1940, with her planes often bombing and strafing key Chinese positions. NH 82154

Irish Tommies in British Army finally get the local nod

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“For the Queen and old Ireland”, circa 1900 by Frank T Copnall, depicts the Irish soldier. NAM. 1973-12-55-1

A new museum is to be established to tell the story of Irish soldiers in the British Army down the centuries. The £13.6 million project will be developed across two sites in Northern Ireland, in Belfast and Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. Keep in mind that over 300,000 Irishmen fought with the British Army in the Great War alone, with some 35,000 never coming home.

The planned Belfast Gallery is a new development and is set to open in 2027. The museum will tell the stories of men like Private James Duffy from Gaoth Dobhair in County Donegal who won a Victoria Cross as a stretcher bearer during the First World War.

During the 19th Century around 40 percent of the British Army was made up of soldiers from across the island of Ireland.

The traditional Irish folk song, As I Roved Out, recalls this tradition of service to the Crown.

As it is, the “Micks” of the Irish Guards are set to celebrate their 125th anniversary in just a few days.

Quis Separabit!

Air Force Drops $2B (more) on Long Range Strike Game

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From yesterday’s DOD Contract announcements, emphasis mine:

Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, Orlando, Florida, has been awarded a not-to-exceed $1,925,877,406 firm-fixed-price, undefinitized contract action modification (P00003) to a previously awarded contract (FA8682-24-C-B001) for Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) Production Lot 23 and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) Production Lot Nine, as well as economic order quantity for JASSM Lot 24 and LRASM Lot 10. The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract to $5,180,154,533. Work will be performed in Orlando, Florida, and is expected to be completed by July 31, 2029. Fiscal 2024 missile procurement funds (Air Force) in the amount of $684,233,360; fiscal 2025 missile procurement funds (Air Force) in the amount of $612,699,675; and fiscal 2025 weapon procurement funds (Navy) in the amount of $149,250,015, are being obligated at time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity.

Lockheed has been steadily ramping up production of JASSM and LRASM, as the long-range strike missiles and ship killers have been vetted for the Air Force’s B-1B and Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. B-52, P-8A, F-18C/D, and F-35 are on the way.

In related news, LRASM just began flight tests with F-35Bs at Pax River. The Bravo model is the STOVL that is being used by the Marines expeditionary units.

BF-3 flt 752 WAC Envelope Expansion

Lockheed says more than 1,100 F-35s are currently operational around the globe, and the fleet has surpassed a cool 1 million flight hours. 

Achilles and the Leopard

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“Destruction of the German Raider Leopard by HMS Achilles and the HMS Dundee,” by maritime artist William Lionel Wyllie.

IWM collection Art.IWM ART 15814

The piece portrays the “Action of March 17, 1917,” a surface battle with the Warrior-class armored cruiser Achilles (14,500t, 505 ft oal, 23 knots, 6x 9.2 inch, 4×7.5 inch, 3 tt.)in the foreground firing on SMS Leopard (9,880t, 390 ft oal, 13 knots, 5x 155mm SK L40, 4x88mm SK L45, 2 tt.), shown smothered in flames in the background. Meanwhile, the armed boarding steamer Dundee (2,187t, 290 ft oal, 15 knots, 2x 4 inch, 1x 3 pdr) is shown as the grey smudge to Leopard’s left.

Leopard, formerly the Mackill Steamship Co’s SS Yarrowdale, had been captured by the German commerce raider SMS Möwe in the Atlantic just before Christmas 1916 then sent through the blockade safely back to Germany with 400 interned Allied mariners aboard.

Converted to become the final commerce raider that the Kaiserliche Marine sent out in the Great War, her only sortie began on 7 March and ended just nine days later in the above action.

It took less than an hour and even though Leopard fired at least three torpedos at Dundee (who in turn fired every shell she had in her magazine at the German) and several salvos at both Dundee and Achilles, the Brits suffered no damage and six MIA (a boarding party sent by Dundee that never returned) while Leopard went down with all 319 souls aboard.

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