Official period caption, 1st Marine Brigade aboard the carrier USS Hancock (CV-19)on 28 April 1975. Operation Frequent Wind. “Sgt. M.C. Murdock, assigned as a side gunner in one of the CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463 (HMH-463) onboard the USS Hancock, poses beside the .50 caliber machine gun prior to flying into Saigon for evacuation exercises.”
Marine Photo A150915 (091-0850-86-75) by: GySgt.D.L.Sbearer, via NARA 127-GVB-279-A150915
Founded originally as a SBD bombing squadron (VMB-463) in 1944, by 1966 HMH-463 was reborn hard as a CH-53 unit and not only served in Frequent Wind– the evacuation of Saigon– but also in Eagle Pull, the evac of Phnom Penh two weeks prior.
“Our 53s were picking up 60 (evacuees). On our second load, we took on three sticks since we had no problem with 60, so then we had 90 aboard. On the third flight, we still had room on the ramp, and so we waved the CIA guy to have him send another stick. With a six-man crew and about 120 passengers, we left the DAO compound just east of Saigon for the Hancock at sea.”
HMH-463, flying CH-53s to the last, was decommissioned on 22 April 2022 as part of the Marines’ “divest to invest” budget cuts to fund the Marine Littoral Regiments.
Taurus came to the NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta with a curious new (to the U.S. market) double-action/single-action .380 pistol.
The original Model 58 was introduced in 1988 as the 12-shot Model PT-58.
Thus:
Its more modern variant has been popular in Brazil for years and is now available on this side of the equator.
With a layout similar to the iconic Beretta Model 92 (PT 92/99 for Taurus), the handgun sports a 4-inch barrel inside an open slide that has a familiar feel in the hand despite its stubby 7.2-inch overall length. The full-sized grip contains a flush-fit 15-shot double-stack magazine.
The combination gives you a great feel and a decent magazine capacity.
With the sudden resurgence in double-stack .380s such as the Beretta 80X and assorted Turkish-made M84 clones like the MC-14, the time may be right for some more competition in the field.
80 years ago this week: 26-year-old Australian Army Private Rosslyn Frederick Gaudry (Service Number: NX94822) of 2/3rd Infantry Battalion, 16th Brigade, 6th Division “watches his sector with his Owen submachine gun in a forward observation pit at Kalimboa Village” in Aitape, Wewak, New Guinea, 26 April 1945.
Australian War Memorial AWM 091259
Raised for WWII at Victoria Barracks, Sydney on 24 October 1939, 2/3 Aust. Inf. Battalion A.I.F. sailed from Sydney just 11 weeks later for North Africa and disembarked in Egypt on 14 February 1940. Fighting first against the Italians in Libya in early 1941, they were sent to the fiasco in Greece then evacuated to Palestine where they fought the French in July 1941 then remained here until March 1942 as a garrison force. Returned to Australia, they were soon fighting along the Kokoda Trail and would remain in and around the green hell of New Guinea until the end of the war. The battalion left 207 of its men on the Roll of Honour, earned boxes of decorations (4 DSO; 16 MC; 12 DCM; 30 MM; 2 BEM; 73 MID), and 16 battle honours stretching from Tobruk to Mount Olympus to Damascus and Kokoda.
As for the very haggard Pte. Gaudry shown above, he was born in Gulgong, New South Wales in 1918 the son of George Henry Gaudry and Maude Gaudry (nee: Lyons). He enlisted in the Australian Army on 10 April 1942 in Paddington, Kandos, NSW and served in 2/3 Bn across New Guinea from the Owen Stanley Mountain Range along the Kokoda Track to the Aitape-Wewak Campaign.
Discharged from service on 4 October 1946, he returned to NSW and became a salesman. Married to Joan May Gloede in 1953, Gaudry passed at age 61 on New Year’s Eve 1979 in Homebush, Australia.
He is buried in the New South Wales Garden of Remembrance in Rookwood.
CMP has a rare and very legit NSWC MK13 Mod 3 sniper rifle up for grabs at auction. The heavily modded AICS platform built on a Remington 700 Long Action in .300 Win Mag has a Harris Ultralight bipod and McCann scope mount but sadly, no glass. Of course, it wears a five-color desert camo all over, and the images are sure to be of interest for cloners.
It was a workhorse among Navy SEAL snipers in Afghanistan and Iraq back in the GWOT. Coupled with Mark 248 and Mark 248 Mod 1 ammo, it was credited with some very long shots.
The auction ends 5/3/2025, and proceeds go towards the CMP’s mission of promoting marksmanship, primarily to America’s youth.
The CZ Shadow 2 is one of the best guns of the century. Full stop.
The original Shadow line, an all-steel, large-capacity SA/DA pistol, was descended from the CZ 75 SP-01 and used successfully to pull down a first-place production division finish in the 2005 IPSC World Shoot. Given improved sights, a longer barrel, and better ergos, the Shadow 2 debuted in 2016, followed by an optics-ready model in 2020.
Today, it is used by two out of three of the top competitors in IPSC Production and Production Optics divisions, most notably by nine-time IPSC World Champ Eric Grauffe.
With Shadow 2 fans petitioning CZ for a slimmed-down version of the gun, the company introduced the Shadow 2 Compact in 2023, which cut weight with a forged 7075 aluminum frame and a 4-inch barrel. The magazine’s capacity is 15+1 with a flush-fit double-stack mag. Like the standard Shadow 2, the Compact ships with textured aluminum grips and a “butter smooth” trigger pull (single action 3.4 pounds; 10.3 for double action).
We shot the Shadow 2 and Shadow 2 Compact side by side while touring the CZ factory at the foothills of the Carpathians in Czechia last year and were thoroughly impressed with how they performed.
The Shadow 2 Compact, for all intents and purposes, is just a little brother to the more competition-oriented Shadow 2. It is smaller, lighter, and easier to carry, but retains the DA/SA with a manual safety. As it’s based on a competition gun, there’s no firing pin block plunger system, which can be a pucker factor for some on being drop-safe if carried with a round in the chamber.
With the Shadow 2 Compact’s safety question, folks were gun-shy, pardon the pun, about carrying it, especially concealed.
However, CZ has updated the design in the new Shadow 2 Carry, introduced this week. It retains everything folks loved about the Shadow 2 Compact but deletes the manual safety lever in favor of a simple de-cocking lever while adding a safety notch on the hammer and an automatic firing pin block.
I’ve been testing one that CZ sent me, and I have to admit, it is pretty sweet. I mean, it should be at $1,400…
26 April 1918. Original Caption: “Naval hydroaeroplanes visit Nantucket. One of the four naval hydroaeroplanes which visited Nantucket to assist in the third Liberty Loan campaign carried on there by the Naval Reserves. One of the hydroaeroplanes was wrecked on landing. It was the first time many of the inhabitants of the famous island had seen a plane, this being the first flight so far out to sea.”
Signal Corps image 165-WW-188A-33, National Archives Identifier, 31485855
The floatplane is A919, a Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Corporation Model 2As (Curtiss R-6L). As detailed by Swanborough the Navy ordered 40 (A162-A197 and A873-A994) of these aircraft in 1917-18 fitted with big 400 HP Liberty 12 engines rather than the anemic Curtiss 200 hp V-X-X.
Capable of an impressive (for the time) 565nm range and 100-knot airspeed, the Navy’s R-6Ls were the first U.S.-built aircraft to serve overseas during the Great War with American forces, as the Navy deployed a squadron– the First Marine Aeronautic Company— to Ponta Delgada in the Azores for ASW patrols in January 1918.
1st Marine Aeronautic Company, U.S. Naval Base, Azores, Portugal. 1918. Note the R6 behind them. NH 122248
Postwar, the above photographed Nantucket R-6L was one of a dozen aircraft (A919, A920, A925, A943, A956, A958. A963/A966, A970, A976, A991, and A994) converted to Liberty Torpedo Carriers, one of the Navy’s first torpedo strike planes.
Torpedo dropped from a Navy Curtiss R6L plane, circa 1919. National Archives Identifier 295606
The future museum’s physical footprint is taking shape. Elevator shafts are now in place, and electrical and utility work is actively underway. These milestones represent real progress toward opening day.
When finished, the 80,000 sq. ft. museum in New London, built in the shadow of the USGCA and its training barque, “America’s Tall Ship,” USCGC Eagle, will host more than 200 galleries covering the service going back to 1790.
I think they have enough room to host the USCGC Reliance, which is set to strike in a couple of years, and has an amazing history. At 210 feet oal, she is almost pocket-sized compared to other museum ships that are out there. Plus, rather than most potential museum ships that have been in mothballs gathering rust for decades, she is still in active service and looks great, even with 61 years on her hull.
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)
The location has a lot of potential, being just a half-mile from I-95, inside Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor route, which brings 11 million passengers a year through the city, and near the ferry to Orient Point, New York that has some 1.3 million passengers annually.
KelTec recently added a 5.7x28mm chambering to its popular third-generation SUB2000 carbine line, and we have the full review.
Introduced in 2001 with a host of different common magazine well choices, the SUB2000’s biggest claim to fame is that it folds neatly in half for storage.
Evolving into a second and currently third generation since then, the pistol-caliber carbine had previously been offered in 9mm or .40 S&W, with KelTec adding 5.7 to the catalog late last year, followed by 10mm Auto more recently.
The 5.7 SUB2000 uses common 20 and 30-round FN Five-seveN pattern magazines. It can also accept aftermarket mags such as ProMag’s 55-round drum. Running from a blowback action, standard features include lots of integrated M-LOK and Picatinny rails for accessories and optics. It is also threaded (1/2×28 TPI) for easy suppressor use.
The KelTec SUB2000 Gen 3 Carbine in 5.7 is 30.45 inches when fully extended and ready to go. We added the 2 MOA Aimpoint Patrol Rifle Optic on a QRP2 mount. Weight, so equipped, is just 4.86 pounds.
Folded, the SUB2000 Gen 3 runs just 16.15 inches in overall length and can be deployed in seconds.
We had issues with FTEs early in testing on the factory-supplied magazine. This problem abated the more we shot the gun, and with the use of FN-made mags. The second half of the test proved it to be more reliable. Lightweight, in most configurations, the gun remained under 6 pounds even when loaded and sporting a light, suppressor, and optic. It is simple and intuitive to use, functional and deploys rapidly.
If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says, “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”
Warship Wednesday, April 23, 2025: The Seas are Alive…with the sound of Torpedoes
Above we see le croiseur cuirasseLeon Gambetta.
She was a beautifully obsolete ship that intersected history in several unusual ways and was lost to an infamous Austrian submarine skipper some 110 years ago this week.
French armored cruiser Amore
The French invented the concept of the true armored cruiser when Dupuy de Lome was ordered in 1888. A 6,300-ton steel-clad iron-hulled steamer, Dupuy de Lome could make 20 knots on her 11 Amirauté fire-tube boilers and three engines and had no auxiliary sail scheme.
The French armored cruiser Dupuy de Lome
Swathed in as much as 5 inches of plate armor, she carried eight large (7.6 and 6.4-inch guns) as well as 18 smaller pieces (37mm, 47mm, and 65mm) while also carrying four small (17.7-inch) torpedo tubes.
Able to operate alone and far from home if needed (Dupuy de Lome could steam at 12.5 knots for 4,000 nm), she was capable of defeating anything smaller than a genuine battleship, which she could outrun.
The concept ship was followed by the four-ship Amiral Charner class, the one-off cruisers Pothuau and Jeanne d’Arc, the trio of Gueydon-class cruisers, the three ships of the Dupleix class, and the five-unit Gloire-class. In all, in the 13 years between 1888 and 1901, the French had ordered 18 armored cruisers, with each class learning from the preceding one.
The result, the Gloire and her sisters, ran 9,996 tons, had an amazing 28 boilers (!) to drive three engines to obtain a 21-knot speed, and could steam 6,500 miles ecumenically. They carried 10 large guns (2x 7.64″/40, 8x 6.5″/45) as well as six 3.9″/50s, 18 x 45mm guns, and 4 x 37mm guns, plus five 17.7-inch torpedo tubes. All of this was protected by as much as 6.9 inches of armor.
Gloire-class armored cruiser Conde is pictured at Arsenal de Brest, c1918. A true floating castle with four funnels and a curious mix of armor and armament.
The three follow-on Gambetta class armored cruisers (class leader Leon Gambetta and Jules Ferry, followed by half-sister Victor Hugo) were up-sized Gloires, displacing 11,959 tons on a hull some 30 feet longer (489 feet vs 458 feet) and four feet beamier.
All three ships used different boiler arrangements (Gambetta 28 Niclausse boilers, Ferry 20 Guyot du Temple boilers, and Hugo 28 Belleville boilers) with triple engines that produced roughly 28,500 shp to make about 22 knots and steam 6,600nm at 10 knots.
Armament on the Gambettas was a repeat of the Gloires, albeit with two fewer 6.5-inch guns and a third more 47mm mounts (24 up from 18). Likewise, they only had two torpedo tubes. The armor plan was also similar to that of the Gloire.
To speed things up, the trio was laid down at three different naval yards, with Gambetta constructed at Brest, Ferry at Cherbourg, and Hugo at Lorient, with all constructed between January 1901 and April 1907.
A heavier update to the class with more guns and armor, the 13,000-ton Jules Michelet, was constructed soon after joining the fleet in 1908.
French cruiser Jules Michilet, American cruiser USS Huron, and Japanese Cruiser Yakumo in the Whangpoo River, Shanghai, 1925
Naval architect Emile Bertin kept tinkering with the Gambetta design to produce the 13,644-ton cruiser Ernest Renan in 1909 and her half-sisters Edgar Quinet and Waldeck-Rousseau, which were the most powerful (and last) armored cruisers built in France, commissioned in 1911.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Meet Gambetta
Our subject is the first French warship named after the 1870s political and cultural juggernaut, Leon Gambetta, who was key to the formation of the Third Republic and served at various times as the country’s minister of the interior, Président du Conseil, and Président de la Chambre des deputes before his young death at age 44 in 1882. Something like 200 towns have a Rue Gambetta in France to this day, and his likeness remains borne in numerous statues throughout the Republic.
Odds are, if you have been to France in the past 140 years, you have either walked upon a street named for Leon Gambetta or gazed on his face. He is right up there with Leclerc, Ferry, Foch, and Clemenceau.
The armored cruiser ordered in his honor was laid down at Arsenal de Brest on 15 January 1901.
Lead ship, Armoured Cruiser Léon Gambetta, construction at Arsenal de Brest, 1901
She was launched into the waters of the Bay of Biscay on 26 October 1902.
Brest. Launching of the armoured cruiser Leon Gambetta.
Lancement du croiseur cuirassé Léon Gambetta Petit Journal 10 novembre 1901
While on sea trials in February 1904, she ran aground in the fog and required dry docking for another six months, then promptly ran aground a second time, sending her back to the yard for further repair.
Gambetta, Brassey’s Naval Annual 1905
She finally finished her trials and was accepted and commissioned on 21 July 1905, with her cumulative construction cost hitting 29,248,500 francs.
Made the flagship of VADM Camille Gigon’s (later VADM Horace Jaureguiberry’s) 1re Division de croiseur as part of the Northern Squadron, she immediately sailed to Portsmouth in August 1905 for the Anglo-French naval review to celebrate the historic Entente Cordiale, which ended centuries of tension between London and Paris and helped set the stage for the Great War.
Entente Cordiale: The French squadron in Portsmouth Harbor – from the French magazine Le Petit Journal, August 13, 1905.
The French ships were reviewed by King Edward VII and hosted in a variety of events ashore for the Gallic visitors throughout the week, including a garden party in Victoria Park.
Remaining a ship of state, she carried President Clement Armand Fallieres to England in May 1908 for an official visit and, later that summer, represented France at the Quebec Tercentenary.
French cruiser Léon Gambetta at the Quebec Tercentenary 1908 LAC 336185
Gambetta and HMS Minotaur at the Quebec Tercentenary 1908 LAC
Quebec Tercentenary, HMS Minotaur, Leon Gambetta, Don de Dieu, and HMS Indomitable
Quebec Tercentenary Illumination of Indomitable, Minotaur, Leon Gambetta and the Chateau Frontenac
By 1911, the three Gambetta sisters would make up the 1re Division legere in the French Mediterranean fleet with RADM Louis Dartige du Fournet hoisting his flag on our subject.
War!
Carrying the flag of RADM Victor-Baptistin Senes, Gambetta entered the Great War at the head of the 2e Division legere out of Toulon and was soon busy escorting troopships moving colonial troops from French North Africa to the Republic proper.
Then came orders to join the force of ADM Augustin Boue de Lapeyrere’s fleet of two dozen battlewagons and cruisers blockading the Austro-Hungarian coast along the Adriatic. This included several sharp skirmishes with Austrian ships, tracking the neutral Italians, supporting the Serbian and Montenegrin armies ashore, and escorting troop ships through U-boat-infested waters.
Speaking of the latter, on 26 April 1915, she was found at sea by SM U-5 of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine. A humble 105-foot gasoline-electric submarine designed by Electric Boat of Connecticut to the same plans as used by the U.S. Navy’s C-class, U-5 only carried four 17.7-inch Whitehead torpedoes to be fired from her two forward tubes.
Kuk S.M. U 5
The tiny boat, good only for 10 knots under the best sea conditions, her new skipper, Linienschiffsleutnant Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp, had only assumed command nine days prior. Von Trapp, from a noble family and husband to Agathe Whitehead, granddaughter of the torpedo godfather, had joined the Austrian fleet at age 14 in 1894 and had served in China during the Boxer Rebellion with the surface fleet before switching to submarines in 1908.
SM U-5 of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine and her commander, Linienschiffsleutnant Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp, at the joint Austro-German U-Boat base in the northern Adriatic in the Brioni (Brijuni) islands off Pula in Croatia during the War.
Von Trapp, in his tiny a risky little boat, continued to stalk Gambetta in the Ionian Sea off Italy’s Cape Santa Maria di Leuca into the night and, closing to within 500 yards, fired both tubes at point blank range just after midnight on 27 April.
With hits against the massive target inevitable, both fish exploded and created havoc on Gambetta, which soon began settling in the water, her boilers knocked out. Ten minutes later, it was all over, and the proud cruiser was on the bottom, taking every single one of her officers and the bulk of her 800-man crew with her.
Escorted by Italian destroyers who had only entered the war that week, they rescued 137 waterlogged survivors from the lost French cruisers.
Von Trapp made history that pre-dawn morning, conducting the first-ever underwater nighttime (and only the second) submarine attack on a vessel in the region. Gambetta remained one of the largest ships hit by a U-boat during the war.
For the feat, he would eventually earn the coveted Militär-Maria-Theresien-Orden, the highest military honor of the old Habsburg monarchy, and he would become a household name in both Austria and Germany.
Propagandists on both sides took advantage of the loss to show how brave French sailors met Poseidon without fear and how, for the Central Powers, the U-boat was a modern marvel of war, commanded by a brave modern-day knight of the sea
Engraving from the Petit Journal of May 5, 1915: “How French sailors know how to die.” Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France
French armoured cruiser Leon Gambetta, sinking SMS U-5. 2
German propaganda art of Gambetta sinking by Alexander Kircher
Sinking of the French armoured cruiser Léon Gambetta on 27 April 1915, by German artist August von Ramberg
Torpedoed and sunk by the Austro-Hungarian Submarine U-5 on 27 April 1915. Austrian War Art painting. NH 60194
As for Von Trapp, just three months after sending Gambetta to the bottom, he sank the Italian submarine Nereide on 5 August 1915, just off Pelagosa (Palagruza) Island. He followed that up with capturing the Greek steamer Cefalonia three weeks later. Before the end of the war, Von Trapp would add 11 more steamers to his tally sheet, surviving 19 war patrols.
Epilogue
Little remains of Gambetta topside that I can find.
Her sisters, Jules Ferry and Victor Hugo, survived the war and, after overseas service policing French colonies in the Far East, were retired and scrapped in the late 1920s.
French armored cruiser Jules Ferry at sea, around 1905-1911, Gambetta class
Léon Gambetta-class cruiser Victor Hugo Melbourne 1923
Von Trapp, left without either a navy or a sovereign when Austrian Emperor Karl left the throne in November 1918, had to fall back on his personal inherited fortune. Left a widower with seven children in 1922 upon the passing of his wife due to scarlet fever, he hired one Maria Augusta Kutschera, a young novice from the nearby nunnery, as a live-in tutor, and the old sea dog later married her in 1927 despite the 25-year age difference, and had three further children.
The Von Trapp family then drifted into a singing career, and the rest is history.
Von Trapp, exiled from Austria in 1938, later settled in the U.S., where he passed in 1947, aged 67. He is buried in Stowe, Vermont.
Christopher Plummer portrayed him in the 1965 movie, The Sound of Music, which was very loosely based on the family’s story in the 1920s and 30s.
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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Infantry troops of Company B, 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry “Victory” Division, marching towards the Mindanao River in pursuit of Japanese forces retreating near the Fort Pikit Ferry, Mindanao Island, Philippines. 22 April 1945. During the PI campaign, the 19th carried the radio call sign “Doughboy.”
Photographer: Pfc. Mack Gould. Signal Corps SC 270579
As for the 19th Infantry (Regulars who earned the title “Rock of Chickamauga” during the Civil War), they had fought at Hollandia for months before landing at Leyte with as part of X Corps of the Sixth Army in October 1944, with the regiment’s 2nd battalion the unsung “Lost Battalion” of WWII.
As the rest of their division moved up the Leyte valley, the 19th was carved off and assigned to the Western Visayan Task Force, landing at San Jose on Mindoro on 15 December 1944. They then assaulted Romblon Island and Simara Island in March 1945 before moving onto Mindanao in April.
Following a half-decade of garrison duty in the PI, in 1950, they would see much service in Korea during that war, keeping their “Doughboy” call sign.
19 September 1950. L-R: M/Sgt. Albert R. Charleton, Salem, Ill., and 1st Lt. Harry J. Lumani, Cumberland, Md., both of the 19th Inf. Regt., 24th Div., put up welcome sign for the newly-arrived Philippines combat troops at Pusan, Korea. SC 348885
Part of TRADOC today at Fort Benning, the colors of the 19th Infantry are decorated with the streamers of 30 campaigns, and the regiment has participated with distinction in 86 battles and engagements. Eight of those streamers are for Korea, while nine are from the Philippines including three for WWII (Leyte, Luzon, Southern Philippines) and six for the 1899-1901 Insurrection.
