I recently covered Walther’s reintroduction of the PP and PPK in its original .32 ACP caliber and was, candidly, impressed as it actually worked, something that a lot of other Walther pocket pistols haven’t done over the years.
Showing they can both look good and shoot good as well, Walther has introduced the Exquisite variant of the PPK/s which combines fancy-grade Turkish walnut grips with a brushed stainless finish, high-coverage scroll engraving, and 24KT gold appointments including inlays, hammer, trigger, magazine release, and grip screw.
All have special serial numbers prefixed with “JB” because of course they do.
Limited to a 1,000-gun run, the PPK/s Exquisite has an MSRP of $1,849.
How about this great shot some 80 years ago this week showing the stern of the destroyer USS Claxton (DD-571), at left, a bow-on view of the heavy cruiser USS Canberra (CA-70), center, and another tin can stern, of USS Killen (DD-593), right, undergoing battle damage repairs in the forward deployed 927-foot floating drydock ABSD-2 at Seeadler Harbor, Manus, Admiralty Islands, 2 December 1944.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-304088
All of the above would go on to have a rich, long life.
The famous “Kan-do-Kangaroo,”Canberra, earned seven battle stars for her WWII service, became the country’s second guided-missile cruiser (CAG-2) in the 1950s, carried the Unknown Serviceman of World War II home, walked the line during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and blistered her guns off Vietnam and only fading to the scrappers in 1978.
Killen, a Fletcher-class destroyer commissioned in May 1944, got in a torpedo against the Japanese battleship Yamashiro at Surigao Strait, and, despite being mothballed in 1946, would serve, unmanned, as a ghost ship for atom bomb and high explosive tests for another 15 years. She was expended as a target off Vieques in 1963.
ABSD-2, consisting of ten sections, continues to have at least three of them in use at Pearl Harbor, one of WWII’s forgotten yeoman vessels.
As for the hard-fighting Claxton, a sister of Killen, she earned a Presidential Unit Citation with DESRON 23 at Rendova, fought in tough surface engagements at Augusta Bay, Cape St. George, and the Surigao Strait; bombarded Japanese positions just yards off the beach in the Philippines, and fought off a dozen-strong kamikaze swarm while performing hazardous radar picket duty off Okinawa. Ending the war with eight battle stars along with her PUC, in 1959, she was transferred to the West German Navy with whom she served as Zerstörer 4 (D 178).
Claxton as Zerstörer Z-4. Ironically, in March 1943 while on her shakedowns, the Texas-built Claxton patrolled briefly in Casco Bay, Maine, awaiting the possible sortie of German battleship Tirpitz from Norwegian waters.
Claxton served with the Germans until 1981, then was passed on to the Greek (Hellenic) Navy for use as a spares ship for that country’s fleet of seven second-hand Fletchers.
Components of Claxton are no doubt aboard ex-USS Charrette (DD-581)/Velos (D16)which, still ceremonially active, has been preserved as a museum in Thessaloniki.
Ambuscade, the last of the Amazon class, is the sister ship of both HMS Ardent and Antelope, which were lost in the Falklands to Argentine air strikes.
The Pakistani Navy donated Ambuscade to the cause last year. It has served there as PNS Tariq (D181) since 1993. The Falklands vet is to leave the Karachi Naval Dockyard in February 2025 and will be moved to a private mooring so preparation work can begin for her journey back to Britain.
A team from the UK will be heading to Karachi to carry out some of the work required. The frigate will subsequently make the 6,000nm journey on a heavy-lift vessel back to the Clyde.
It has not yet been decided exactly where the ship will be berthed in the long term but Glasgow City Council is supportive and there are several sites under consideration. There are two main options, either at Custom House Quay, Inverclyde or at the Govan Graving Docks when renovated. A temporary berth might also be found at the Riverside Museum area close to the tall ship Glenlee.
80 years ago today, 2 December 1944, in an ode to the ’27 Yankees. Third Fleet fast carriers anchored in Ulithi Atoll, Carolines, in a brief lull before the start of the Mindoro landings in the Philippines.
NHHC Catalog #: 80-G-294150. Copyright Owner: National Archives
Ships are (L to R): USS Wasp (CV-18), USS Yorktown (CV-10), USS Hornet (CV-12), and USS Hancock (CV-19). A destroyer escort and LCI are passing by. Planes in the foreground on board USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) are F6F-5 Hellcats of VF-80 with a TBM-3 Avenger of VT-80 making a cameo on the far right.
One of Tico’s F6F-5P Photocats got a great profile shot of the group on 8 December, with a sixth sister, Lexington, joining the line-up. The much better known 80-G-294129:
U.S. Third Fleet. Caption: Aircraft carriers and other ships at anchor at Ulithi Atoll, on 8 December 1944. Carriers in line are (from the front): USS Wasp (CV-18), USS Yorktown (CV-10), USS Hornet (CV-12), and USS Hancock (CV-19); USS Ticonderoga (CV-14); USS Lexington (CV-16) is in the left background. Note camouflage schemes used with Wasp, Yorktown, and Ticonderoga all clad in camouflage Measure 33, Design 10a. Photographed from a Ticonderoga plane. 80-G-294129
Of note, none of these six Essex class carriers were in commission during the Pearl Harbor attack just three years prior. Indeed, Hancock and Ticonderoga had only joined the fleet six months before these images were snapped.
It’s worth remembering that when Nagumo’s carriers closed in on Oahu on the early morning of 7 December 1941, the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet only had three carriers to its name.
The Republic of Chad, a French colony from 1900 with the defeat of Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr at the one-sided Battle of Kousssri (4,500 Sudanese casualties to 103 French), to 1960 when it gained independence, was long key to the Republic’s control of Equatorial and North Africa.
On 26 August 1940, just two months after the fall of metropolitan France to the Axis, Chad was the first French territory in Africa to break with the Vichy government and join De Gaulle’s Free French movement.
Free French infantryman, native of the Chad colony, who was awarded the Croix de Guerre, in 1942. Note the tribal face scars. (NARA)
In all, some 15,000 Chadian troops would serve De Gaulle in the push for Liberation.
The Republic remembered, too, and, still patrolling the desert post-WWII, the new nation became a hub for the French Foreign Legion post-1962 after it withdrew from Algeria.
Then, after 1969 when Mummar Qaddafi/Gaddafi overthrew the Libyan king and started getting close to the Soviets, this only increased.
When Libyan troops pushed over the line into the country from the North in 1979, the French supported Chad’s president, Hissene Habre, and over the next decade, with the help of upwards of 3,000 French troops, forced the Libyan army off Chadian soil in the Toyota Wars and Jaguar Diplomacy that followed.
August 31 – September 7, 1983 – Chad Portrait of a legionnaire from the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment (REC) at the Biltine campRéf. F 83-382 LC308 Photo by Bernard Sidler/ECPAD/Défense
Libyan tanks stand abandoned in the desert after being captured by FANT (Forces Armees Nationales Chadiennes), the Chadian National Army, as troops reconquered the Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti region of Chad. The Chadian Army recaptured Faya-Largeau and Wadi Doum airport, where the retreating Libyan army abandoned many dead and a great deal of military equipment, most of it of Soviet manufacture. Libyan planes made a bombing raid on the same day in an attempt to destroy material that had fallen into Chadian hands. Between April 6 and April 10, 1987, Wadi Doum, Chad
Even with Gaddafi gone for more than a decade, the continued instability in Libya to the North, the fight against Boko Haram to the South, and the tension along the 1,400 km border with Sudan to the East, meant a continued– and even welcome– French presence in Chad.
Now, following the election of Gen. Mahamat Idriss Déby, son of the late strongman Gen. Idriss Déby Itno (who served as Chad’s president from 1991 to 2021), apparently, the good times are over and the country is moving to “fully assert its sovereignty” and is demanding the departure of the 1,000 French troops left in the country, as it leans closer to Russia.
Chad earlier this year sent a 70-member U.S. Army SF det home from a training mission in the country, although talks were apparently looking good a few months ago to send them back. Maybe not after this.
Notably, the French have been kicked out of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso in recent months, signaling a much smaller role for the traditional “Gendarme of Africa.”
6 January 2013. Period caption: “Guided-missile frigate USS Halyburton (FFG 40) transits the Gulf of Aden. Halyburton is deployed with Commander, Task Group 508, promoting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility.” (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jamar X. Perry/Released)
We’ve talked about the Oliver Hazard Perry Shipyard in Erie, Pennsylvania, and their half-decade-long effort to secure one of the 7 long-decommissioned FFG-7 class frigates currently stored at the NAVSEA Inactive Ships facility at Philadelphia.
The vessel they were looking to acquire, ex-USS Halyburton (FFG-40)has been in storage since 2014 and is the most complete of her class in mothballs, having been on donation hold.
Well, it looks like that isn’t going to happen.
From the museum, repeated in whole for posterity should their site disappear.
November 25, 2024: United States Navy Declines OHPS Phase II Application For Donation of USS Halyburton (FFG-40)
U.S. Navy has declined the Phase II application of the USS Halyburton (FFG-40) to the Oliver Hazard Perry Shipyard. The U.S. Navy listed several reasons for the decision including additional funding on hand, the first 5 years of operating expenditures, and a long-term lease with the Western Erie Port Authority. These were several of the items that the Navy wanted to see more concrete information about.
This is the end of the nearly 6-year-long journey to bring an Oliver Hazard Perry Class Frigate to Erie, Pennsylvania. “This is a sad day for the Oliver Hazard Perry Shipyard and the many Navy veterans who served on the Perry Class Frigates. For the past 5 years, our efforts to bring the USS Halyburton (FFG-40) to Erie have been rigorous and diligent. We have exhausted all available avenues with the Navy and now we have brought the project to an end.” said Dr. Joe Pfadt Chief Executive Officer of the Oliver Hazard Perry Shipyard.
“We gave it our best effort but came up short. This was a long and very detailed process,” said Pfadt. There are no other known plans on the part of the Navy to release a Perry Class Frigate for historic display anywhere else in the country. The USS Halyburton (FFG-40) will most likely be reduced to scrap or used as a target ship and sunk by the Navy.
Of the 51 former USN FFG-7s (another 20 were built for Australia, Spain, and Taiwan), one was sold/transferred to Pakistan, two each went to Poland, Taiwan, and Bahrain (the last just arriving at its new home early this year after a $150 million update), four to Egypt, and eight to Turkey. Of the rest, 12 were sunk as targets, and 13 were scrapped.
The handful that is left in Philly only escaped the cull as they were typically on hold for potential foreign military sale, with Mexico, Thailand, Greece, and Ukraine all mentioned as possible end users but those transfers never materialized, leaving them often open for plunder by the active Navy, foreign governments operating their sisters, and the Coast Guard for useable gear including turbines, Mk 75/38 mounts, CIWS systems, gun control panels, barrels, junction boxes, and other components– meaning they are far less than ideal for use as a museum ship and will more than likely be bound for SINKEXs.
That means, unless a second-hand frigate can be “acquired” from Egypt, Turkey, Poland, Taiwan, or Bahrain by some veterans group at some point in the future once those countries are done with them (it happened before, that’s how USS Orleck and Slater made it over here, purchased privately from Turkey and Greece, respectively), that’s a wrap for the class in U.S. waters.
Perhaps a CG-47 class cruiser could be preserved instead. The time to get started on such an effort would be now.
Some 80 years ago today, a dicky White M3 25-pounder GMC (Gun Motor Carriage) being inspected by a trooper of the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards (note the KDG badge on his sleeve) while operating as part of “Porter Force” on the Adriatic coast near Ravenna, 1 December 1944. The “woolly pully” sweater worn under his jacket is a must when touring the Italian countryside in winter as the Royal Armoured Corps black beret does nothing to keep in the heat.
Photo by Bowman (Sgt), No 2 Army Film & Photographic Unit, IWM NA 20341
The senior line cavalry regiment of the British Army, the KDG was formed in 1685 and has campaigned all over the world.
Its WWII the “Welsh tankies” were deployed to Egypt as an armored car regiment using Marmon Herringtons, Daimlers, and Humbers along with AT portees in November 1939. It fought extensively in North Africa and Italy for the next five years, earning 17 battle honors in the former campaign and eight in the latter, before being shifted to Greece, which was sliding towards civil war.
By the last couple years of the war, they had shifted from Britsh hulls to Yank armor, using Staghounds and half-tracks.
Two M3 half-tracks mounting 75mm guns of the King’s Dragoon Guards, 7 May 1944. Photo by Menzies (Sgt), No 2 Army Film & Photographic Unit, IWM NA 14653
In 1959, the KDG merged with The Queen’s Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards) to form “The Welsh Cavalry,” 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards (QDG) which has gone to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. It remains one of six Light Cavalry regiments in the British Army along with two other Regulars (The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and The Light Dragoons) and three reserves (Royal Yeomanry, The Queen’s Own Yeomanry and Combat Recce, The Scottish & North Irish Yeomanry.)
Today, the Robertson Barracks (Dereham) based QDG rides Jackal 2s, which are probably about as reliable as a 1944 White M3 but much less lethal.
Curiously, the regimental cap badge and flag of the QDG is the Hapsburg double-headed eagle. It was granted to the KDG by Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria when he became colonel-in-chief in 1896.
80 years ago this week, a fantastic series of photos of the late South Dakota-class battleship USS Indiana (BB 58) conducting a high-speed turn in Puget Sound, November 30, 1944.
BuShips photos via Navsource and the Indiana State Library collection.
How about this great shot showing off her 9 16″/45s, 20 5″/38s, 28 40mm/60 Bofors, and 35 20mm/80 Oerlikons.
Indiana, commissioned on 30 April 1942, had spent two years forward deployed in the Western Pacific, earning her stripes, before arriving at the Navy Yard at Bremerton on 23 October for a refit. She would remain there into early December before arriving at Pearl Harbor on New Year’s 1945. By 24 January 1945, her guns were ringing out against Iwo Jima and she would spend the rest of the war operational.
She traveled 180,000 nm during her war service, conducting six shore bombardment campaigns, bagging 15 Japanese planes, and earning nine battle stars in the process.
Decommissioned on 11 September 1947, she languished in mothballs for 15 years until stricken from the NVR and sold in 1963 for her value in scrap metal.
Her home state has an extensive collection of her relics at the War Memorial Museum in Indianapolis.
The Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Minnesota (SSN 783) arrived at her new homeport of Naval Base Guam, on 26 November as part of the U.S. Navy’s “strategic laydown plan for naval forces in the Indo-Pacific region.”
241126-N-VC599-1007 U.S. NAVAL BASE GUAM (Nov. 26, 2024) – The Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Minnesota (SSN 783) arrives onboard U.S. Naval Base Guam, Nov 26. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Justin Wolpert)
“Regarded as apex predators of the sea, Guam’s fast-attack submarines serve at the tip of the spear, helping to reaffirm the submarine forces’ forward-deployed presence in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” says the Navy.
Joining a quartet of older Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines of Polaris Point’s SubRon15, she is the first of her class to be forward deployed to Guam.
Official period caption. “80th Infantry Division. Near Faulquemont, France. 23 November, 1944. Three American infantrymen eat K Rations on Thanksgiving day in a dugout somewhere in France. They will be relieved later and will have Thanksgiving dinner in the evening with their unit.”
Photographer: Pfc. Howard E. James, 166th Signal Photo Co. SC 197157, U.S. National Archives. Digitized by Signal Corps Archive.
The soldiers are left to right: Sgt. Albert E. Burns, 1308 E. Gilbert Street, Muncie, Ind., Pfc. John K. Smith, Munderstar Route, Brookville PA., and Pvt. Robert H. Seymour, Newark, N.Y.
Nicknamed the “Blue Ridge Division,” the 80th was ordered activated on 15 July 1942. Arrived in England on 7 July 1944, they landed in France on D+58, 3 August 1944, then were in combat five days later.
In just 239 days on the line from Northern France to the Ardennes to the Rhineland and Central Europe, the outfit suffered 180.8 percent casualties (some 25,472 men killed, wounded, or missing).
Besides 4 MoHs, 33 DSCs, 671 Silver Stars, and 3,557 Bronze, the 80th’s biggest prize was probably the whopping 212,295 enemy prisoners they took on the push through Bavaria and Austria.
Remember to be Thankful for what’s in front of you, today, gents.
