The deal is with these is that no one really knows what the deal is with these.

A product of U.S. wartime production in WWII, these knives popped up in a few hands in the Pacific Theater while cameos in the ETO and elsewhere were less certain. This at least hints at a West Coast supplier with some mentioning the name could be in relation to Everitt, WA, though this is a reach.

These scabbards will have 10 rivets, six staples at the throat, metal ring at bottom for leg tie, long strap w/ snap that goes around knuckles & handle, & no metal plate at bottom of sheath and a reinforcing patch on the back. Kinda like the M-6 Leather Scabbard for the US Marine Corps Combat Fighting Knife but different. The sheath has no markings.

Marked only “Everitt” these cast metal knuckle knives used a steel blade of a simple double-edged spear-point design, about 6.75-inches long with central fullers. OAL was about 11.75 inches and weighed approximately 10 ounces. The handle is an early aluminum.

There have been persistent rumors these knives were made “sterile” with few markings so they could be used in clandestine operations without leading back to any particular country. However, as these were offered for private sale and not bought through government channels, this is unlikely.

WWII Everitt 2nd Model Trench Knife with Scabbard.

The knives were finished with either black or green enamel paint, and the blades were painted black, while some have been noted as having chemically blued blades– though this may not be original.

The elusive green Everitt (it’s a really dark green) in immaculate condition

The scabbard is a simple leather affair with rivet and stitch construction though these knives are often found in GI M series bayonet scabbards which they fit.

Another green Everitt in the wild.

They are often encountered “in the white” with the paint long since worn away. After all, they are 70+ years old.

They are pretty rare on the collector’s market but appear from time to time and command anywhere from $550-2200 depending on condition and if the scabbard is minty and correct. They have occasionally been spotted for far less from sellers who did not know what they had.

There have been a few fake knock offs floating around. Watch for the markings on the handle. Real Everitt’s have raised letters, while the fakes often have stamped letters or a removed name plate. The unique sheath is also hard to get right for fakers.

Everitt has further been tied to an even more reclusive single-knuckle loop triangular spike knife.  Like the knuckle duster, it is “sterile” and uses green paint for the handle.

Because you never know when you need an ice-pick in the field.

Here we see a young guards officer of the Tsar’s Russian Imperial Army, Staff captain of the Life-Guards Lithuanian Regiment Bogutskiy in June 1915 during some of the darkest days of the First World War. The good captain wears the Order of St. Vladimir, to the 4th degrees with swords.

Note he has an officer’s sword on his left and a holstered revolver, likely a Nagant 1895 on his right, both set up to cross-draw. The photobombing guardsman with the Mosin 91 and eschew cap is the moneymaker in this one. Olga Shirnina from Russia colorized this image and the original is here.

By the time Bogutskiy’s picture was taken, the Lithuanian regiment, which started the war as part of the 23rd Army Corps of General AV Samsonov’s doomed II Army had escaped German encirclement the Battle of Tannenberg East Prussian operation and gone on to fight the Kaiser’s troops halfway across Poland. This officer with the sad eyes and well trimmed mustache, incidentally, was killed on the front in 1916.

The Regiment had much history in its short life.

Originally, a part of the Moscow Life Guards Regiment (formed in 1811) they fought Napoleon at Borodino and all through Europe, marching through France at the end of the little Emperor’s Empire. When the Tsar picked up the Kingdom of Poland in the peace that followed, the Lithuanians were split from the Regiment and sent to Warsaw and a new Life Guards unit, being officially given its standard on 12 October 1817.

1830s uniform

They helped put down Polish uprisings in 1830 and 1863, marched into Hungary in 1849 to do the same there for the Austrian Kaiser on the Tsar’s behalf, fought in the Crimean War and against the Turks in 1877 and Japanese in 1905. Drawn from ethnic Lithuanians, they had distinctive yellow trim to their uniforms in all of its variations (though only a thread on the shoulder boards of the 1909 field uniform shows at the top of the post). Their regimental crest, below, is however seen distinctively on Bogutskiy’s blouse.

Below is an interesting German newsreel archive of Emperor Nicholas II and his son Alexei watching the military parade of the Life Guards regiment of Lithuania at the annual maneuvers at Kransoe Selo just south of St. Petersburg in the summer of 1914. Of interest is the parade of the unit that begins about the 3.18 mark after Major General Konstantin Schildbach, then unit commander, takes a toast to the Emperor health. You will notice the color’s company come through wearing all of the Regiment’s various uniforms issued from 1811 through 1914.

Schildach was in interesting fellow. An ethnic Baltic German from a wealthy ennobled family with some 200 years of service to the Tsar, he graduated from the Alexander Military School and joined the Army in 1888, serving far and wide in the Empire. He commanded the Lithuanians during WWI until June 1915 when he changed his last name to Lithuania due to anti-German sentiment in the country. That’s ballsy. Could you see an officer with an Arabic-sounding name today in the U.S. Army change his to “Ranger” or some sort. That’s being married to the Army there.

The toasting Schildach seen in the video

Anyway, Schildach left the unit to command the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Guards Infantry Division then six months later was made chief of staff of the 39th Corps and by the end of 1916 was commander of the 102nd Infantry Division of 16,000 recently trained men. When the March Revolution came that swept away the old order, he was cashiered by the new government but quickly called back in May to command the rapidly disintegrating 79th Infantry Division as a Lt. Gen. When the war ended and the Civil War began he found himself first working in the Ukrainian puppet army of Skoropadsky with the Germans then in the White Army.

However when the Whites left in permanent exile in 1920, Schildach stayed in Russia and talked his way to a job as a military instructor in Moscow with the Reds but was later thrown in the gulag for three years and, even though allowed to return to Moscow, was arrested again in 1938, shot, and dumped in a bag in Donskoy cemetery. The Putin government declared him officially rehabilitated in 1996, which is nice.

Anyway, back to the war service of the Lithuanian Regiment.

Soon after the good Captain Bogutskiy’s photo bomb above, the unit kept up its fighting retreat during the great defeats by the Russian Army in the summer of 1915 but remained intact. Rebuilt over the winter, they participated in the Brusilov Offensive that came very close to knocking Austria out of the war. Interesting that a unit that helped keep the Austrian Kaiser on the throne in 1849 would come so close to sweeping him off just 60 years later.

Speaking of thrones….

On March 12, 1917, the day the Lithuanian Life Guards Reserve Regiment in St. Petersburg (Petrograd) mutinied, Capt. Bogdan K. Kolchigin was elected commander by the committee of soldiers at the front and remained in command until the Moscow Regional Commissariat for Military Affairs, in their Order No. 139, disbanded the former regiments of the Imperial Guard on March 4, 1918 (though the order did not cover the Reserve Regiment in St. Petersburgh which lingered until the Commissariat of Military Affairs of the Petrograd Labor Commune ordered it disbanded on June 6, 1918).

Interestingly, Kolchigin threw his hat in with the Reds and, taking his ex-Guards with him in an orderly withdrawal to Voronezh when the front collapsed after Russia withdrew from WWI, they became the Lithuanian Soviet Regiment and were one of Trotsky’s most professional units in the Civil War.

Kolchigin went on to keep his head and rose to become a Lt. Gen in the Red Army proper, ending his career as commander of the 7th Guards Rifle Corps, 10th Guards Army in 1945 after having lost his foot to a German mine and picking up three Order of the Red Banners and an Order of Lenin from Papa Joe Stalin in the Second World War to go along with his Knights of the Order of St. George awarded by Tsar Nicky in the First.

Kolchigin, in Red Army regalia. Look at all of those Red Banners.

He became a military historian of some note and, when he died in in 1976, was given a hero’s funeral, taking the Lithuanian Regiment of Life Guards with him in his heart to the rally point in the great drill field in the sky. It’s likely Kolchigin had an interesting conversation with Bogutskiy and Schildach when he got there.

And was maybe even photobombed by a guardsman with a crooked hat.

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Vernon Howe Bailey

Born in Camden, New Jersey in the peaceful time that was 1874 in the United States, young Vernon Howe Bailey was a skilled artist already in his youth, earning a place at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Art in Philadelphia at the tender young age of 15. This led to further study in London and Paris and by 1892, at age 18, he was a regular illustrator on the staff of the Philadelphia Times back in the day when virtually every image was drawn rather than photographed.

Fitchburg elevator fire of 1898

While at the Times, he submitted works to weekly and monthly periodicals such as Scribner’s, Harper’s, Leslies Weekly and Colliers— all big names at the time. In 1902, he left Philly and took a job at the Boston Herald.

Before the Great War, he toured Europe extensively and created enduring architectural studies that preserved the lamplight era just before the lamps themselves were blown out.

Brasenose College, Oxford by Vernon Howe

Red Lion Passage

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Antwerp

When WWI came, he did war work for the Navy and some of these images grew acclaim for their attention to detail. in fact, he was the first artist authorized by the U. S. Government to make drawings of America’s war effort in the Great War.

NH 86449 USS Kaiser Wilhelm II

NH 86451 USS NEW YORK (BB-34) and USS ARIZONA (BB-39) fitting out note torpedo boat loading fish

NH 86454 USS NEW MEXICO (BB-40) Building

USS Barracuda in dry dock

Postwar, it was more architecture and travel, though the number of pieces he did per month began to dwindle as his rates had gone up in accordance with his renown. He was even commissioned to produce watercolors for the Vatican.

When the Second World War came, it was back to work with the Navy. Throughout the war he toured extensively stateside and created some of the best military art of the era from any pen or brush.

An entire set of 22 watercolors sprang from a three-week long stay in March 1942 at NAS Jacksonville where he recorded the seaplane operations there with a more painterly approach than he did in 1918.

Landing planes at NAS Jacksonville.

PBY Patrol planes at the beach.

Patrol plane on the air station apron.

Crane hoisting a sea plane from the St. Johns River.

Apron with patrol squadron planes.

Hauling a Kingfisher sea plane up the ramp.

Patrol Plane 33.

Seagoing Rescue Tugs,” by Vernon Howe Bailey, Watercolor, 1942, 88-165-LN. This painting went south but, as noted by the NHC, was recovered: “This painting recently returned to us from a DC area auction house. The consignor had found it at a Goodwill store, I’m told. Its last location before it went missing was with the Bureau of Ships before 1969. One of our local NCIS agents very kindly visited the auction house two hours before the start of our first big snowstorm in February to let them know the Navy had a claim on the painting.”

Postwar, he returned to New York and continued where he left off, never fully retiring.

In addition to numerous medals, ribbons and awards, Bailey was a full and celebrated member of the Society of Illustrators and of the Architectural League of New York.

He passed in 1953 in New York City, at the ripe old age of 79.

Besides works maintained by the NAS Jacksonville and the Naval Historical Command, he is also exhibited in the Smithsonian’s extensive collection who maintain some 600 of his illustrations and papers, North Carolina State University the French War Museum in Paris and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. A number of his architectural drawings from the Victorian era can be found online at The Victorian Web.

Thank you for your work, sir.

During the Civil War, an enterprising cavalry colonel attached to the Springfield Armory came up with the idea to put a mill in the stock of a Sharps Carbine to grind feed and the rest is fakery legend.

As noted by the Arsenal’s records, one Lt. Col. Walter King was on loan from the 4th Missouri State Militia Cavalry Regiment (itself a four company amalgamation formed in 1862 by consolidation of the colorful Fremont Hussars and three companies of the Hollan Horse) to the site from 1864-65 and though it would be pretty sweet if he could add a hand cranked mill to the stock of the standard .52 caliber Sharps Carbine.

The idea was that the mill would be enclosed in the stock itself with a detachable crank on the right-hand side. The horse trooper would dump wheat or oats in the opening at the bottom and grind them up for horse feed while on the move if needed.

Over the years, people just kinda took it that the Sharps was meant to grind coffee, which is often more important to an Army on the move, but they were wrong. Historians with the National Park Service attempted to grind coffee beans with one of the rifles in their collection and found that it was unsuitable.

As for the guns themselves, its believed that fewer than 100 were ever converted and only 12 are believed to be around today.

In fact, so few verified “coffee grinder” Sharps are in circulation, that Springfield Armory specifically mentions them as an example of one of the more commonly faked relic firearms of the 19th Century saying, “There are probably more weapons with ‘coffee grinder’ adaptations on the market today than were ever originally produced.”

For instance, a few years ago RIA had an 1863 Sharps (wrong model) with a repro Coffee Mill attachment built in up for grabs. Why was it obviously a repro besides being on the wrong model carbine? Well, the crank was on the left and not the right…

Whoops

The 4th Missouri, after seeing lots of Nathan Bedford Forrest across Northern Mississippi and Alabama while King was making bad ideas at Springfield, was mustered out of service on November 13, 1865 at San Antonio where they were watching the border and keeping an eye on Maximilian as part of Phil Sheridan’s 25,000-man force.

As for the good Lt.Col King himself, he faded into history though tales of his time with the 4th, which included bumping into but not fighting with Quantrill’s raiders around Lawrence and being the victim of a stage coach robbery by bushwhackers leave a quiet legacy all their own.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: Feb. 10, 2016, The Long Serving Chinco

USS Chincoteague (AVP-24) Photographed in mid-1945 following a West Coast overhaul. Her quadruple 40mm mount has been moved forward, but she retains an unshielded 5/38 gun on the fantail. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 19-N-88909

Here we see an overhead shot of the Barnegat-class seaplane tender USS Chincoteague (AVP-24). This hardy but unsung vessel would see myriad service in both the Atlantic and Pacific under numerous flags for some 60 years.

Back in the days before helicopters, the fleets of the world used seaplanes and floatplanes for search and rescue, scouting, long distance naval gunfire artillery spotting and general duties such as running mail and high value passengers from ship to shore. Large seaplanes such as PBYs and PBMs could be forward deployed to any shallow water calm bay or atoll where a tender would support them.

Originally seaplane tenders were converted destroyers or large transport type ships, but in 1938 the Navy sought out a purpose-built “small seaplane tender” (AVP) class, the Barnegats, who could support a squadron of flying boats while forward deployed and provide fuel (storage for 80,000 gallons of Avgas), bombs, depth charges, repairs and general depot tasks for both the planes and their crews while being capable of surviving in a mildly hostile environment.

The United States Navy Barnegat-class seaplane tender USS Timbalier (AVP-54) with two Martin PBM-3D Mariner flying boats from the Pelicans of Patrol Squadron 45 in the late 1948. Timbaler´s quadruple 40mm gun mount on the fantail was added in around 1948. National Archives #80-G-483681

The 41 Barnegats were 2500-ton, 310-foot long armed auxiliaries capable of floating in 12 feet of water. They had room for not only seaplane stores but also 150 aviators and aircrew. Their diesel suite wasn’t fast, but they could travel 8,000 miles at 15.6 knots. Originally designed for two 5-inch/38-caliber guns, this could be doubled if needed (and often was) which complemented a decent AAA armament helped out by radar and even depth charges and sonar for busting subs.

All pretty sweet for an auxiliary.

The hero of our study, Chincoteague, was laid down 23 July 1941 at Lake Washington Shipyard, Houghton, Washington. Commissioned 12 April 1943, she sailed immediately for Saboe Bay in the Santa Cruz Islands where the Navy was slugging it out with the Japanese and the Empire was striking back on its own.

On 16-17 July, she underwent eleven bombing attacks ranging from single airplane strikes to the onslaught of nine bombers at a time. While she beat off many of these, they left their toll.

From the Navy’s extensive report of Sept 1944.

-At 0738, on 17 July, two bombs missed the ship and landed in the water about 50 feet from the starboard side, detonating a short distance below the surface. Numerous fragments pierced the shell, some below the waterline. Several fires were ignited, including a gasoline fire, but these were effectively extinguished. Flooding through the fragment holes below the waterline reduced the GM of the vessel from about 3.2 feet to about 1.6 feet. In spite of this reduction in GM, the stability characteristics were still satisfactory for keeping the vessel upright in case of some additional damage or flooding…

-At 1150, some four hours later, a small general-purpose bomb* with a short delay in the fuze struck and penetrated the superstructure, main and second decks and detonated in the after engine room. The hull was not ruptured, but the engine room was flooded through a broken 8-inch sea suction line supplying cooling water to the main propulsion diesel engine. As the draft increased, water entered the ship through the fragment holes above the second deck, which had not been plugged effectively. Large free surface areas were created on the second deck…

-At 1420, another bomb landed in the water about 15 feet from the port side, detonating underwater. This did not rupture the hull, but the shell was indented in way of the forward engine room. The forward main engines stopped due to shock, leaving the vessel dead in the water…

Bomb damage diagram of USS Chincoteague (AVP-24) suffered on 17 July 1943 at Saboe Bay off the Santa Cruz Islands. Navy Department Library, USS Chincoteague (AVP-24) War Damage Report No. 47. Plate I

Chincoteague was able to get underway, suffered nine dead, and was towed to California for overhaul after just 12 weeks of active service.

The Corsairs of VMF-214 helped a bit with air cover.

Frank Murphy later chronicled this in USS Chincoteague: The Ship That Wouldn’t Sink.

Emerging at Christmas 1943 with her repairs effected, her AAA suite was modified slightly.

USS Chincoteague (AVP-24) A port side view of the forward portion of the ship taken on 15 December 1943 at the Mare Island Navy Yard. The ship was completing repair of severe battle damage incurred in July 1943. Circled changes include new antennas on the foremast and just forward of the stack. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 97709

USS Chincoteague (AVP-24) Photographed on 27 December 1943 off the Mare Island Navy Yard following repairs to severe battle damage incurred in July 1943. One of the four 5/38 guns in her original armament has been replaced by a quadruple 40mm mount. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 19-N-57482

Returning to the fleet in 1944, she saw heavy duty in the Solomon Islands around Bougainville, the occupation of the Marshall Islands, action in the Treasury Islands, then tended seaplanes at Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Kossol Roads in the Palau Islands, Guam, Ulithi Atoll, and Iwo Jima, earning six battlestars the hard way for her wartime service.

This led to occupation duty in Chinese waters post-war.

USS Chincoteague (AVP-24) Photographed in mid-1945 following a West Coast overhaul. Her quadruple 40mm mount has been moved forward, but she retains an unshielded 5/38 gun on the fantail. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 19-N-88911

Like most of her 35 completed sisterships (the other six planned were canceled), she was decommissioned shortly after the war on 21 December 1946 and laid up at the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, Texas Group, Beaumont.

Also, like a number of her sisters (Absecon, Biscayne, Casco, Mackinac, Humboldt, Matagorda, Absecon, Coos Bay, Half Moon, Rockaway, Unimak, Yakutat, Barataria, Bering Strait, Castle Rock, Cook Inlet, Wachapreague, and Willoughby) she was loaned to the US Coast Guard where the class was known as the Casco-class cutters.

On 7 March 1949, with her armament greatly reduced, her seaplane gear landed, and her paint scheme switched to white and buff, she was commissioned as USCGC Chincoteague (WAVP-375). She was actually the second such cutter to carry the name, following on the heels of an 88-foot armed tug used in the 1920s.

To be used in ocean station duty, Chincoteague and her sisters were given a balloon shelter aft and spaces formerly used to house aviators were devoted to oceanographic equipment while a hydrographic and an oceanographic winch were added. For wartime use against Soviet subs, she was later given an updated sonar and Mk 32 Mod 5 torpedo tubes.

Sisters Absecon and Chincoteague USCG Base Portsmouth VA circa 1964. Note one has racing stripe and other does not.

Homeported in Norfolk, she spent long and boring weeks on station far out to the Atlantic. This was broken up by an epic rescue in high seas when, on 30 October 1956, Chincoteague rescued 33 crewmen from the German freighter Helga Bolten in the middle of the North Atlantic by using two inflatable lifeboats, landing them in the Azores.

November 12, 1956 While on patrol weather station DELTA the cutter CHINCOTEAGUE rescued the crew of the stricken German freighter HELGA BOLTON

By the late 1960s, the Navy was divesting itself of their remaining Barnegat-class vessels as they were getting long in the tooth and seaplanes were being withdrawn. Further, with the new Hamilton-class 378-foot High Endurance Cutters coming online, the Coast Guard didn’t need these ships either.

Nevertheless, someone else did.

A beautiful image of sistership USS Cook Inlet in Coast Guard service as WAVP-384. She would be transferred to the Vietnamese Navy as RVNS Tran Quoc Toan (HQ-06) in 1971

Between 1971-1972 Chincoteague and 6 of her sisters in Coast Guard service (Wachapreague, Absecon, Yakutat, Bering Strait, Castle Rock, and Cook Inlet) were transferred to the Navy of the Republic of Vietnam. Chincoteague became RVNS Ly Thuong Kiet (HQ-16) on 21 June 1972.

However, her war service in Vietnamese waters was short lived.

When Saigon fell in April 1975, she sailed along with Yakutat (RVNS Tran Nhat Duat), Bering Strait (RVNS Tran Quang Khai), Castle Rock (RVNS Tran Binh Trong), Cook Inlet (RVNS Tran Quoc Toan) and Wachapreague (RVNS Ngo Quyen) to the Philippines as a navy in exile filled with not only service members but also their families.  Absecon remained behind and served in the People’s Navy for a number of years.

The Philippine government disarmed the seaplane tenders-turned-frigates and interned them, then finally took custody of them after a few weeks to forestall efforts by the new government in Vietnam to get them back. As the U.S. still “owned” the ships, they were sold for a song to the PI in 1976.

In poor condition, some were laid up and stripped of usable parts to keep those in better shape in service. As such, Chincoteague sailed in Philippine Navy as patrol vessel BRP Andres Bonifacto (PF-7), the flagship of the fleet, for another decade along with her faithful sisters BRP Gregorio Del Pilar (Wachapreague), BRP Diego Silang (Bering Strait) and BRP Francisco Dagohoy (Castle Rock) along for the ride.

The Philippines planned to give these ships new radar systems (SPS53s) and Harpoons in the 1980s but the latter never came to fruition. Despite this, the aft deck was replaced by a helipad for one MBB BO-105 light helicopter.

Left in a reserve status after 1985, Chincoteague/Ly Thuong Kiet/Andres Bonifacto was finally withdrawn from service in 1993, her three sisters already sold for scrap by then.

She endured as a pierside hulk used for the occasional training until she was sent to the breakers in 2003, the last of her class afloat. As such, she far outlasted the era of the military seaplane.

The closest thing to a monument for these vessels is the USS/USCGC Unimak (AVP-31/WAVP/WHEC/WTR-379), the last of the class in U.S. service, which was sunk in 1988 as an artificial reef off the Virginia coast in 150 feet of water.

Her name endures in the form of the USCGC Chincoteague (WPB-1320), an Island-class 110-foot cutter commissioned in 1988.

Specs:

Displacement 1,766 t.(lt) 2,800 t.(fl)
Length 311′ 6″
Beam 41′ 1″
Draft 12′ 5″
Speed 18.2 kts (trial)
Complement
USN
Officers 14
Enlisted 201
USN Aviation Squadrons
Officers 59
Enlisted 93
USCG
Officers 13
Enlisted 136
Largest Boom Capacity 10 t.
USCG Electronics
Radar: SPS-23, SPS-29D
Sonar: SQS-1
Philippine Navy electronics
Radar: AN/SPS-53, SPS-29D
Armament
USN
four single 5″/38 cal
one quad 40mm AA gun mount
two twin 40mm AA gun mounts
four twin 20mm AA gun mounts
USCG
one single 5″/38 cal. Mk 12, Mod 1 dual purpose gun mount
one Mk 52 Mod 3 director
one Mk 26 fire control radar
one Mk 11 A/S projector
two Mk 32 Mod 5 torpedo tubes (later deleted in 1972)
Fuel Capacities
Diesel 2,055 Bbls
Gasoline 84,340 Gals
Propulsion
Fairbanks-Morse, 38D8 1/2 Diesel engines
single Fairbanks-Morse Main Reduction Gears
Ship’s Service Generators
two Diesel-drive 100Kw 450V A.C.
two Diesel-drive 200Kw 450V A.C.
two propellers, 6,400shp
20 Kts max, 8,000 miles at 15.6 knots.

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Although the 8-inch (200 mm) gun used by federal Brigadier General Quincy Adams Gillmore and the 11th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment known as the “Swamp Angel” went down in history for its use against the gray-coats at Fort Sumter in the Civil War, there was another, larger gun there that doesn’t get as much love.

“The first 300 pound Parrott gun. The gun is named Col. Brayton. It throws its shell into Fort Sumpter (i.e. Sumter)” Via LOC

The Washington Republican described the technical accomplishments of the 10-in Parrott:

The breaching power of the 10-inch 300-pounder Parrott rifled gun, now about to be used against the brick walls of Fort Sumter, will best be understood by comparing it with the ordinary 24-pounder siege gun, which was the largest gun used for breaching during the Italian War.

The 24-pounder round shot, which starts with a velocity of 1,625 feet per second, strikes an object at the distance of 3,500 yards, with a velocity of about 300 feet per second. The 10-in rifle 300-pound shot has an initial velocity of 1,111 feet, and has afterward a remaining velocity of 700 feet per second, at a distance of 3,500 yards.

From well-known mechanical laws, the resistance which these projectiles are capable of overcoming is equal to 33,750 pounds and 1,914,150 pounds, raised one foot in a second respectively. Making allowances for the differences of the diameters of these projectiles, it will be found that their penetrating power will be 1 to 19.6. The penetration of the 24-pounder shot at 3,500 yards, in brick work, is 6.2 inches. The penetration of the 10-inch projectile will therefore be between six and seven feet into the same material.

To use a more familiar illustration, the power of the 10-in rifle shot at the distance of 3,500 yards, may be said to be equal to the united blows of 200 sledge hammers weighing 100 pounds each, falling from a height of ten feet and acting upon a drill ten inches in diameter. — The Washington Republican, August 12, 1863

However, the gun itself went kaboom after a while, quite famously.

Morris Island, South Carolina. 300-poinder Parrot Rifle after bursting of muzzle, as photographed by Haas & Peale via the LOC

New York, 1917. “Actors’ Fund Fair.” 5×7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection, via Shorpy.

The Navy deck guns on loan look to be either Hotchkiss 1-pdr (37mm) or 3-pdr (47mm) breechloaders, which by 1917 were thoroughly obsolete. I’m about 99 percent sure its they are the smaller guns due to the shoulder braces.

SOFREP has this really interesting take on what it was like as a foreign volunteer soldier of fortune in the Ukrainian Army during the late great hate there in recent years.

As a former professional soldier in my own country’s NATO army, I found myself embroiled in the conflict in Ukraine by my own choice in late July, 2014. While technically I was a “volunteer,” I viewed myself as a professional soldier serving in a foreign country’s armed forces. Far from trying to make this some kind of dramatic personal narrative, I will attempt to portray a picture of the Russian soldier from my own limited point of view—that of an opponent.

At this point, I’d like to sidetrack a bit so as to make some things more clear to the reader. The Ukrainian “volunteer battalions” should not be seen as militias or irregulars, but rather as a sort of “Rough Riders”-style unit, a unit formed by volunteers, yet armed and supplied by the Army and subjected to the regular command structure, having normal combat duties at the front line. The foreign volunteers themselves, again, should not be seen as the like of all these colorful characters that join the Marxist and Arab irregular militias in the Middle East, but rather like the Swedish volunteers during the Winter War, integrated normally within their unit and most of the time taking up a front-line role either in operations or training. The opposing forces can be divided easily in two parts: the bandits who initiated the rebellion and the Russian regulars who intervened later that same year.

The bandits, no matter what the pro-Western propaganda claims, were not mercenaries or Russian regulars posing as rebels. Many Russian nationals flocked to their banner from the onset of the rebellion out of pure patriotism. Of course there were exceptions, but these were just that—exceptions. That doesn’t mean that Russian military advisors or SOF units didn’t directly aid them in the beginning of the conflict. The military effectiveness of said bandit militias was horrendous.

More here

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: Feb. 17, 2016, The Frozen Northern Lights(hip)

Shot of the lightship renamed for the Flensburg station post 1924, pre-1939. Note the two lights shown on fore and aft masts

Here we see the one of a kind lightship (feuerschiff) Flensburg as she appeared while on station about 1924 as an auxiliary for the Weimar Republic’s Seezeichenbehörde service. Before the days of large offshore buoys, LORAN, Omega, and GPS, lightships were needed to warn ships at sea about dangerous shoals too far at sea for traditional lighthouses.

A three-masted schooner rig with a relatively shallow draft, this particular feuerschiff was ordered in 1909 for the Kaiserliche Marine (though paid for via 184,000 Goldmarks by the Royal Government of Schleswig) from Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft (the same yard that went on to build the huge Deutschland and Bremen merchant submarines during WWI) and named Feuerschiff Kalkgrund (with that designation written in white letters on both sides of the vessel’s red hull).

The 118-foot vessel was assigned to the Kalkgrund shoal (go figure) at position 53 °49’45” north latitude, 9 ° 53’30”O-Lg off the Flensburg Firth until further notice in July 1910, replacing the lightship that held that duty since 1874.

The old Kalgrund lightship…not much to look at…

The new and improved 1910 model Feuerschiff Kalkgrund

With alternating 15-man crews that shuttled out every six weeks, the vessel shone her lights, rang her bell, and, at night and during fog, fired off a shot from a black powder signal cannon every five minutes (talk about monotony). Besides this, they saluted passing foreign warships (as they were technically a naval vessel), observed the weather, and just tried to keep from being run over by passing steamers in the dark. When the Baltic iced over in winter, the crews would spend a very cold season aboard the locked-in schooner.

Changing station in 1910, every six weeks or so a harbor tug would bring out a rotating crew and provisions.

World War I came and went and Kalkgrund remained put but kept a lookout for Allied naval ships. After the war, when the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet was interned and the Reichsmarine took over, the lightship was transferred to the Seezeichenbehörde and, in 1924, moved slightly to 54°50´18´´N, 9°53´55´´O, where she picked up the new name Flensburg and some decent radio gear.

There she remained, shone her lights, rang her bell, and, at night and during fog, fired off a shot from a black powder signal cannon every five minutes (talk about monotony). Besides this, they saluted passing foreign warships (as they were technically still kind of a Naval vessel), observed the weather, and just tried to keep from being run over by passing steamers in the dark. (Sound familiar?)

When war came again in 1939, she chopped to the Kriegsmarine proper who removed her center-most mast and replaced it with a deckhouse, added a 20mm AAA gun and a few machine guns, and waited out the war. Remarkably, she wasn’t holed by a Soviet submarine or a British bomber and survived long enough to land her guns in 1945 and just get back to the business of shining her light, ringing her bell…

As she appeared in 1960 with a boat from the Wanderfahrt rowing club very far out to visit her. Note her mid mast has been jettisoned and a pilot house has been built in its place

Anyway, in October 1963 a large automated leuchtturm (“light tower”) was built in the Flensburg Firth and our trusty lightship was put to pasture after over 50 years of continuous service in four different agencies and two world wars.

1961, she would be retired in just two years

Laid up by the government, she languished until 1991 when the Möltener Segelkameradschaft Yacht Club bought her for a paltry 16,000DM for use as a floating clubhouse.

This led to a subsequent sale to Ted van Broeckhuysen of the Netherlands who refitted and restored the old lightship to a sailing schooner with room for 20 passengers in double cabins, new nav gear, two zodiacs for going ashore, an auxiliary engine for the first time, and a lengthened and rebuilt bow.

After rerigging in Holland

After putting her to use in cruises of the Canaries and Azores, she found a new lease on life after 2002 as a one-of-a-kind ice hotel cruising in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago under the name S/V Noorderlicht— Dutch for “northern lights” (call sign PGJG) out of Enkhuizen.

As Noorderlicht

In the 2014 season, which was uncommonly warm, there was no ice in the fjords

She sails with a crew of Captain, 1st Mate, 2nd Mate, Chef, and Expedition Leader. We say expedition leader because the red-hulled ship with white letters (somethings never change) likes to park in Spitsbergen and freeze in over the winter there, proving service as literal ice station, offering tours of the glaciers and polar bear-ridden attractions.

Located 60km northeast of Longyearbyen, this ship was accessible only by snowmobile or dog sled from mid-February to mid-May, dependent on ice condition.

Since 2002, an estimated total of between 6,600 and 7,200 guests stayed on board while she wintered over in Svalbard, averaging about 600 guests each season. In the Spring each year, the Norwegian Coast Guard Cutter K/V Svalbard broke the Noorderlicht out.

Every day there will be excursions on land, weather and ice permitting. The landings will take three to six hours per day over untracked area. According to circumstances (the weather, the ice-situation or the passengers´ wishes) the program can sometimes be adjusted. Ample time will be devoted to wildlife, vegetation, geography and history.

Can you tell where she gets her current name from?

“We thought then that we had to have a ship that has a greater relation to the Fram and came on the trail of the Noorderlicht,” said Steinar Rorgemoen, administrative director Basecamp Spotsbergen. “This is the only freeze-in hotel ship on Earth and kind of a symbol of what one can achieve if one dares to think outside the box.”

However, the days as a floating ice station are over. Noorderlicht‘s owners, Oceanwide Expeditions, advised this last freeze-in will be her final one in Svalbard. However, the ship, now in her 116th year, is far from retiring from the land of the Northern Lights altogether and has more than a baker’s dozen cruises scheduled for this year alone.

“Sv Noorderlicht will now spend her winter time sailing the beautiful fjords of North Norway, starting 30 October, 2016,” says a statement on their website.

For more information on the ship, including an amazing photo gallery, please go to their website

Specs:

As feuerschiff Kalkgrund/Flensburg
Displacement: 251 tons
Length overall 118 feet
Beam 6,50 meters (21.33 feet)
Draught 9 feet
Propulsion: Sail only. Three master 1910-1939, two master 1940-63.Gasoline generator for powering signal and lights only
Speed: 6 knots though rarely moved.
Crew: 15 (likely double during wartime service)
Armament: Signal cannon. (1914-18) small arms (1939-45) 20mm AAA guns, light weapons

As Gaffelschoner “Noorderlicht” post 1994
Displacement: 300 tonnes
Gross tonnage 140 GT
Net register tonnage 60 NT
Length overall (LOA) 46,20 meters, (151 feet)
Load waterline (LWL) 30,58 meters
Beam 6,50 meters
Draught 3,20 meters
Ice class: Strengthened bow
Propulsion: Caterpillar 343D 360 hp diesel
Sail area 550 m2
Speed: 7 knots maximum
Passengers: 20 in 10 cabins
Staff & crew: 5

Current armament: Mauser carbines for polar bear defense as the number of those great predators dwarfs the number of inhabitants and attacks are a real possibility.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

By the time the wreaths are ready to drop on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland/Skagerrak (May 31-June 1 1916), Danish diver and historian Gert Norman Andersen, in connection with the Sea War Museum, and working with Danish sculptor Paul Cederdorff, will be hard at work on 26 11.5-foot high stone obelisks, one for every ship lost in that great naval battle (25 were lost, the 26th will be for casualties from other vessels).

Positioned along the coast near the Danish fishing village of Thyborøn– the closest spot on land to the battle, each ship obelisk will be surrounded by their own collection of 4-foot high lost sailors, one for each who went down with their ship.

For more information, visit the Memorial page

The 36-Hour War from November 19, 1945 — only a few months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki– LIFE Magazine

Click to big up and drink in the Atomic kool-aide.

The text if you are interested, courtesy of Drexel University :

This week General Henry H. Arnold, commanding officer of the Army Air Forces, published his third formal report to the Secretary of War. The report was not only a history of Air Forces activities at the end of the late war but a warning of future wars. Said the general: “In the past, the United States has shown a dangerous willingness to be caught in a position of having to start a war with equipment and doctrines used at the end of a preceding war…. Military Air Power should…be measured to a large extent by the ability of the existing Air Force to absorb in time of emergency…new ideas and techniques.”

The Army Air Forces, said General Arnold, were fully prepared to absorb new ideas: “We can run a large air operation for the sole purpose of delivering one or two atomic bombs….When improved antiaircraft defenses make this impracticable, we should be ready with a weapon of the general type of the German V-2 rocket, having greatly improved range and precision….”

Such weapons as these, in the hands of other nations as well as the U.S., would make possible the ghastliest of all wars. Hostilities would begin with the explosion of atomic bombs in cities like London, Paris, Moscow or Washington (above). The destruction caused by the bombs would be so swift and terrible that the war might well be decided in 36 hours. The illustrations on these pages show how such a war might be fought if it came.

But General Arnold did not suggest that improved weapons were the only safeguard of the U.S. It would be better, he said, to use bombs for peace now rather than for war later, possibly by using them as a power to enforce decisions of the United Nations Organization’s Security Council.

The start of another war, said General Arnold, might come with shattering speed: “With present equipment an enemy air power can, without warning, pass over all formerly visualized barriers and can deliver devastating blows at our population centers and our industrial, economic or governmental heart even before surface forces can be deployed.”

In the panorama above, looking eastward from 3,000 miles above the Pacific, LIFE’s artist has shown the U.S. as it might appear a very few years from now, with a great shower of enemy rockets falling on 13 key U.S. centers. Within a few seconds atomic bombs have exploded over New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boulder Dam, New Orleans, Denver, Washington, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Kansas City and Knoxville. One bomb (second from left) has been exploded high above the earth by a U.S. defensive rocket (see illustration on page 31). In the cities more than 10,000,000 people have been instantly killed by the bombs. The enemy’s purpose is not to destroy industry, which is an objective only in long old-fashioned wars like the last one, but to paralyze the U.S. by destroying its people.

The rockets above, white-hot from traveling part of their journey through the atmosphere at three miles a second, have in a little more than an hour soared 1,800 miles up and some 8,000 miles around the earth from equatorial Africa. There an enemy of the U.S. has built its rocket-launching sites quickly and secretly in the jungle to escape detection by the UNO Security Council. In their flight the rockets coast most of the way through empty space, where the stars are out at noon. The thin luminous band on the horizon is the earth’s atmosphere.

“Radar,” said General Arnold, “is an outstanding contribution to the effectiveness of an air force. It is a device which enormously extends…human vision.” In the picture above, radar has been applied to the war of the rockets. A radar beam of enormous power sweeps the sky so that even objects thousands of miles in space send back radio echoes. The echoes are then translated into images on the luminous screen. If such a radar were in use, it would give the U.S. about 30 minutes to get ready for the attack shown on these pages.

But even 30 minutes is too little time for men to control the weapons of an atomic war. Radar would detect enemy rockets, plot their course and feed data to electronic calculators in defensive rockets. These would then be launched in a matter of seconds to intercept the attackers (see next page).

Radar, however would at best be a spotty defense in future wars. Like human sight, it extends only to the horizon. Low-flying robot planes like the German buzz-bomb might evade it more effectively than high-flying rockets. And radar would be no proof at all against time bombs of atomic explosive which enemy agents might assemble in the U.S.

Said General Arnold: “Although there now appear to be insurmountable difficulties in an active defense against future atomic projectiles similar to the German V-2 but armed with atomic explosives, this condition should only intensify our efforts to discover an effective means of defense.” The only defense now conceivable against a rocket, once it is in flight, is illustrated above. It is another rocket, fired like an antiaircraft shell at a point where it will meet its enemy. Once it had been launched, such a rocket might detect the attacking machine with radar and make its own corrections. When it came near the enemy rocket, it could be exploded by radio proximity fuse, a development of World War II. But inevitably it would miss some of the time.

Shown above is the instant before the two rockets meet. The enemy rocket, coasting through space with its fuel exhausted, is beginning to fall toward the U.S. The defensive rocket, racing upwards under full power, is incandescent from the friction of its short passage through the earth’s atmosphere. When the two collide, the atomic explosion will appear to observers on the earth as a brilliant new star.

Concerning other possible defenses in an atomic war, General Arnold said: “Three types of defense against an atomic bomb can be conceived: First, we should attempt to make sure that nowhere in the world are atomic bombs being made clandestinely; second, we should devise every possible active defense against an atomic bomb attack, once launched, and third, we might redesign our country for minimum vulnerability….” But the U.S. , he continued, “…must recognize that real security against atomic weapons in the visible future will rest on our ability to take immediate offensive action with overwhelming force. It must be apparent to a potential aggressor than an attack on the United States would be immediately followed by an immensely devastating air-atomic attack on him.”

On these two pages is a combination of two of General Arnold’s ideas: decentralization and counterattack. This cross section shows an underground rocket-launching site and atomic bomb factory. It is completely self-contained except for raw materials, which are assembled in big stockpiles. Its workers live underground near their machines, secure against anything except a direct atomic bomb hit or an airborne invasion. Altogether the US might have several dozen such units, all independent so that the destruction or capture of one would not affect the others. At the beginning of the 36-hour war the US has not yet decentralized its entire population, an operation which might cost $250,000,000,000, but only the absolute essentials of national defense.

At the moment illustrated above, the U.S. has sent its first offensive rocket of the war toward an enemy city, just one hour after the enemy attack.

Said General Arnold: “Airborne troops have become one of the most effective units of a modern fighting force….Fully equipped airborne task forces will be able to strike at far distant points and will be totally supplied by air.”

In spite of the apocalyptic destruction caused by its atomic bombs, an enemy nation would have to invade the U.S. to win the war. The enemy’s airborne troops would be equipped with light rocket weapons of great destructive power (above, rear) and devices such as goggles which make troop-directing infrared signals visible. The enemy soldier above is repairing a telephone line in a small U.S. town.

By the time enemy troops have landed, the U.S. has suffered terrifying damage. Some 40,000,000 people have been killed and all cities of more than 50,000 population have been leveled. San Francisco’s Market Street, Chicago’s Michigan Boulevard and New York’s Fifth Avenue are merely lanes through the debris. But as it is destroyed the U.S. is fighting back. The enemy airborne troops are wiped out. U.S. rockets lay waste the enemy’s cities. U.S. airborne troops successfully occupy his country.

The U.S. wins the atomic war.

(who else?)

The 369th INF Regiment (15th New York National Guard Infantry Regiment) was formed in 1913 and was known after their WWI service as the Harlem Hellfighters, the Black Rattlers and the Men of Bronze due to the demographic make up of their rank and file.

Fighting with French weapons, helmets and web gear, they wore U.S. uniforms into battle as they were assigned to French Army command because many white American soldiers refused to perform combat duty with black soldiers.

Max Brooks, the WWZ guy, has written a graphic novel about the Hellfighters, and it sounds rather interesting in the NPR’s All things considered interview below.

http://www.npr.org/player/embed/294913379/297866888

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: Feb. 24, 2016, Calling the Conestoga, Calling the Conestoga…

Courtesy of W.P. Burbage, 1970. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 71299

Here we see the civilian designed and built, ocean-going steel-hulled tugboat, USS Conestoga (AT-54) at San Diego, California, circa early 1921. Note her popgun forward. While everyone likes a happy ending to our Warship Wednesday tales, sometimes it just doesn’t work that way…and the above picture may be the last one ever taken of her.

SS Conestoga was designed as one of a pair of large seagoing tugs built to the same design by the Maryland Steel Co. Sparrows Point, MD for the Philadelphia and Reading Transportation Line of Philadelphia in 1904-1905. She and her sister, SS Monocacy, were meant to pull huge coal barges up and down the East Coast. These hardy tugs were 170 feet in length and displaced some 420 tons when fully loaded.

(American Tug, 1904) Photographed before being acquired by the U.S. Navy. This tug was USS Conestoga (SP-1128, later AT-54) from 1917 until 1921. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 89793

Conestoga (American Tug, 1904) in port, prior to World War I. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 89794

Commercial service suited the pair, but when the Great War came a-calling to the United States in 1917, both Conestoga and Monocacy were purchased by the Navy, on 14 September and 27 July of that year respectively, and sent to the Philadelphia Naval Yard where they were given a haze gray paint scheme, fitted with a 3″/50 gun mount and some smaller guns as well.

Both were placed in commission on 10 November with Conestoga being classified as a patrol craft, USS Conestoga (SP-1128), while her sister was renamed USS Genesee (SP-1116).

As noted by DANFS, both ships soon found themselves busy as they transported supplies and guns, escorted convoys to Bermuda and the Azores, served as standby for deep sea rescue work, and operated with the American Patrol Detachment in the vicinity of the Azores and Ireland (respectively).

USS Genesee (SP-1116) under way at Queenstown, Ireland, in 1918. Wartime fittings included the gun platform and 3″/50 gun forward and the crow’s nest on the foremast. US Naval History and Heritage Command. Photo # NH 53873, Photographed by Zimmer. Via Navsource.

Conestoga remained in the Azores for a year after the guns fell silent, towing charges as needed among the war weary shipping crossing the Atlantic, only returning to New York on 26 September 1919.

While most ships taken up from trade by the Navy were quickly disposed of in the days following the Armistice, the sea service kept Conestoga as a fleet tug, redesignating her AT-54 in 1920. Genesee was likewise reclassified as AT-55 and, sent to the Pacific, arrived at Cavite, Luzon, 7 September 1920 for permanent duty on the Asiatic Station.

Conestoga, on the other hand, was to become the station ship at Tutuila, American Samoa, the literal “gun boat” in gunboat diplomacy. As such, she was refitted first at Norfolk then at Mare Island in California after she transitioned oceans.

USS Conestoga (AT-54)’s six-man “Gunnery Department” posing with her sole 3″/50 gun, 1921. The Sailor at left marked “me,” may be Seaman 1st Class W.P. Burbage. US Navy photo # NH 71510, Courtesy of W.P. Burbage, 1970, from the collections of the US Naval Historical Center. Via Navsource. Burbage, luckily, was not aboard Conestoga when she left California.

USS Conestoga (AT-54) at Mare Island, California, February 1921, preparing to ship to Samoa. Courtesy of H.E. (Ed) Coffer, 1988. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 102094

With a sole officer– Lt. Ernest L. Jones– in command, and a crew consisting of three chiefs and 49 men, our proud little tug sailed from Mare Island on 25 March 1921…

And was never seen again.

While the steamship Senator found what is believed to be an empty and waterlogged lifeboat from the Conestoga some 650 miles from Mexico, no other wreckage ever turned up.

Across the Pacific, mariners placed a weather eye on the horizon and burned oil and coal through the night looking for the unaccounted for ship for weeks.

Our Navy, the Standard Publication of the U.S. Navy, Volume 15, June 1921

One particular piece of naval lore came from USS R-14 (SS-91), a cranky diesel submarine who left out of Pearl on 2 May with several surface vessels to search for the missing tug.

From the Submarine Force Museum:

“By 12 May,” writes LCDR Robert Douglas, “she was dead in the water…and had been that way since late afternoon of the previous day, when the diesel engines had stopped. At about the same time, the radio transmitter had failed (not an uncommon occurrence then), so the boat was also without communications to shore.” The culprit was soon found: large amounts of seawater mixed in with the fuel. Try as they might, “they could neither prevent the contamination nor purify enough oil to run the engines for more than a few minutes.” Plus, there was only enough charge in the batteries to power one of the boat’s two motors for about 100 miles, not enough to get them home.

So, the R14 used sails, and limped along until 0530 on 15 May, when Hilo came into view.

(SS-91) Under full sail in May 1921. While searching for the missing USS Conestoga (AT-54) southeast of Hawaii, the R-14 lost her power plant. As repairs were unsuccessful, her crew rigged a jury sail, made of canvas battery deck covers, to the periscope, and sailed her to Hilo. She arrived there on 15 May 1921, after five days under sail. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 52858

Seen in the photo above are the jury-rigged sails used to bring R-14 back to port. The mainsail rigged from the radio mast is the top sail in the photograph, and the mizzen [third sail] made of eight blankets is also visible. LCDR Douglas is at top left, without a hat.

After the extensive search by all available assets, Conestoga was declared lost with all her crew, 30 June 1921 and stricken from the Naval List, consigned to the deep as part of Poseidon’s ever-growing armada.

From what I can tell, there is no marker or monument to her.

As for her sister, Genesee spent the summer of 1921 with the Asiatic fleet at Chefoo, China, and returned to Cavite 19 September. Subsequently she operated as a tug, a ferry, and a target tow in the Philippines until she was scuttled at Corregidor 5 May 1942 to avoid capture, earning one battle star for her World War II service the absolute hardest way possible.

Specs:

SS Conestoga drawing published in the August 1904 issue of the journal Marine Engineering via Navsource/ Courtesy Shipscribe.com. Note the auxiliary sailing rig

Displacement: 420 long tons (430 t)
Length: 170 ft. (52 m)
Beam: 29 ft. (8.8 m)
Draft: 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Speed: 13 kn (15 mph; 24 km/h)
Complement: 56
Armament: 2 × 3 in (76 mm) guns, 2 machine guns (1917-19) later reduced to a single 3/50.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Photo via The Aviationist

The Royal Navy’s Commando Helicopter Force (CHF) will soon end a 37-year-long love affair with the Sea King when the last 7 of its HC4 fleet from 848 Naval Air Squadron are retired next month. The “cabs” for 3 RM Commando Bde have carried HM Marines into battle across the globe in the past four decades and have the scar tissue to prove it with one of the remaining “Junglies” having been shot down an amazing three different times in three different warzones.

They will be replaced by 19 HC4 and five HC4A Merlins for 845 and 846 NAS (848, which dates back to WWII and flew Avengers from Warship Weds alumni HMS Formidable off Okinawa, will disband).

From The Aviationist:

“All the way back to the Falklands and into every operational theatre the UK has been into, the HC4 ops have been relentless. We recently calculated that it has spent 25 years constantly on operations around the globe – probably an unparalleled contribution to UK defence – in such different conflict environs ranging from Northern Ireland and the Falklands to the challenges Bosnia and into the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan… plus the ongoing peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. It has been a forerunner in helicopter warfare – it is versatile, forgiving and incredibly versatile.” –Capt Niall Griffin MBE is the Commanding Officer of the Commando Helicopter Force, with over 3,000 flying hours.

More details here

West Virginia had a huge stockpile of medals minted in 1866 but is still looking for the descendants of many men who never claimed their “tokens of respect.”

Honoring Union soldiers who fought for the state to include African-Americans of the 45th Regiment of USCTs, the medals were designed on a pattern used by similar decorations issued to Ohio veterans and British medals issued after the Crimean War.

Commissioned by then-Governor A. I. Boreman, 29,099 of the medals were made in three designs: enlisted men who received one with the banner “Honorably Discharged,” those lost in the war marked “Killed in Battle,” and for officers and soldiers who had died of wounds or disease marked “For Liberty.”

In all versions, the medals carry a red, white a blue ribbon that has aged over the centuries, the words “Presented by the State of West Virginia” and a WV insignia.

Although most were issued through veterans groups just after the war, the West Virginia Department of Culture and History’s Archives and History Library has held on to thousands that were never claimed for generations. By 1982, the agency still had 5200 stored in their original cardboard boxes.

Today, archive officials advise Guns.com there are some 4,000 still on hand waiting for anyone who can establish a line of descent from the men who earned them to take these now 150-year-old medals into custody. Claimants can send copies of heirloom birth, death, marriage, will, deed, military, census or Bible records, etc. as well as other documents such as old letters, diaries, marriage announcements and obituaries.

“The medals represent an important part of the state’s history but more importantly they are part of the heritage of the heirs of the West Virginia troops represented in this list of Union veterans’ names,” advises the Archives.

To browse the list for an ancestor and find out more about providing documentation to claim his medal, visit the website set up by the state specifically for the purpose.

(Mirrored from my column at Guns.com)

Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Edward C. Byers Jr. is set to receive the Medal of Honor at the end of the month. He recounts the mission in his own words, above, taking time and making a point to honor his friend, Chief Nicolas Checque, who did not return from the same mission.

Byers, as noted by the Navy, will receive the award on 29 FEB from the POTUS in a ceremony at the White House as a result of his actions as part of a team that rescued an American civilian held hostage in Afghanistan in 2012.

Byers, 36, already has an impressive salad bar of awards and decorations to include five Bronze Stars with Combat V device, two Purple Hearts, the Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Combat V device earned across seven combat tours and eight overseas deployments.

A native of Ohio, he joined the Navy in 1998.

Byers will be the first Seal to be presented with the Medal of Honor since the survivors of Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Michael Anthony Monsoor received his posthumously in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

Further, no image existed of Byers in the public domain before this week other than his high school yearbook photo, as special operations guys tend to stick to anonymity.

They are literally the quiet professionals.

I’ve been around these men in work capacities and, when working as a journalist have been allowed to take images of certain cleared equipment and non-identifiable personnel (far in the distance, or from the back), always clearing imagery with the PAO to make sure no faces or sensitive gear/equipment/place identifiers got out. OPSEC, PERSEC, etc.

So you can expect to see Byers step from behind the cloak of invisibility for the next few weeks– because he is being ordered to. After all, the Pentagon went to all the trouble for a MOH, they want to show it off.

And then, as detailed in an interview this week, the active duty Senior Chief will slip back into the teams, and continue to keep his mouth shut rather than cash in and start blabbering.

What he has more trouble stomaching, though, are the books written by retired SEALs that reveal secrets of their trade. No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden, was a best-seller in 2012 and has spawned several other books about SEALs. Don’t look for a first-person account by Byers of the mission that saved Joseph anytime soon.

“I’ve been in the military almost 18 years,” Byers said. “I’ve lived a very quiet life. I’m not exactly sure what their motives are and what they’re trying to accomplish by writing those. I’ve never read their books. I have no plans in the future to write a book or do a movie or anything like that. It’s not what I believe in.”

Can I get a Bravo Zulu for the Senior Chief.

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Vietnam Combat Artists Program

Usually on CGS, we cover individuals, but this particular weekend is dedicated to the 40~ soldier artists of the U.S. Army’s Vietnam Combat Artists Program:

Between 15 AUG 1966 and 14 JAN 1970, nine Combat Artist Teams (CATs) operated in Vietnam traveling with various units, gathering information and making sketches of U.S. Army related activities. They would embed with troops on the ground for 60 days then rotate to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii for 75 days to decompress and paint from their sketches, photographs and imagination. The work then became government property curated by the  U.S. Army Center of Military History to help document the war.

Private  First  Class Jim  Pollock was sent to Vietnam as a soldier artist on US Army Vietnam Combat Art Team IV from Aug. 15 to Dec. 31 1967 and has a 26 page article (with more than a dozen varied images) of his experience online. In this work he described the varied nature of the art produced.

The  idea of rotating teams of young soldier-artists from a variety  of  backgrounds and experiences through Vietnam was innovative. What was even more remarkable is that these soldier-artists were  encouraged to freely express and interpret their individual experience  in  their own distinct styles. The artists responded enthusiastically to  their artistic free reign, and the resulting products were wide-ranging and comprehensive.

Styles and media used were as diverse as the artists themselves, some  chose detailed literal images while others preferred expressive almost abstract explosions striving to replicate the horrors of war. Certainly,  a  lasting legacy of the army’s soldier art program is that it helped bring military art into the modern era.

After the Battle Tan Hep, Vietnam By Michael R. Crook, 1967.

COMBAT IN THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS Vietnam by Bruce J. Anderson

Member of a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol by Bruce J. Anderson, Vietnam

Soldiers Getting the Word by Theodore J. Abraham Vietnam

Mortar Attack Counterfire Ronald A. Wilson, CAT IV, 1967

The Cave by Ray Sarlin, 1970

Roger Blum, Vietnam Combat Artist Team I, discusses his painting Attack at Twilight,

Attack at Twilight, Roger Blum, Vietnam, 1966

“Last Stand” – Phillip W. Jones, 1967-68 vcap

“Unreal Realities” – Ronald A. Wilson, 1967 vcap

“Looking Down the Trail” – James Pollack, 1967 vcap

“Killed In Action” – Burdell Moody, 1967 vcap

“Wounded” – Robert C. Knight, 1966 vcap

“Swamp Patrol” – Roger Blum, 1966 Vietnam combat art project

Easter Sunrise Base Camp English, Vietnam By Michael R. Crook, 1967

Street Scene Vietnam By Kenneth J. Scowcroft, 1967

Viet Cong Suspects Vietnam By Ronald A. Wilson, 1968

Much of their work is on display across the nation in various military museums, installations and federal buildings while Pollocks’s essay is part of the Library of Congress and he continues to be outspoken about his time in South East Asia as well as the program as a whole.

Much of the paintings are available online at the CMH’s website.

Thank you for your work, gentlemen.

76,2mm armata forteczna wz.1938/1939. Note the machinegun saddle mount behind it

At the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw they have a few neat examples of a 76.2mm armored gun emplacement salvage from a bunker at Slucz junction at Hulsk, some 10 km southeast Zwiahel. A Soviet emplacement on the so-called Molotov Line of defenses of the CCCP’s far Western border with Poland, it started life as a 3″/30 caliber M1902 Pulitov field gun.

The saddle mount (Schartenlafette) was actually designed by the Tsarist Army in 1913 and manufactured during WWI, but wasn’t used until the early 1930s when Stalin created the Molotov line.

The base plate was made of two halves, each of which was a 30 mm thick cast, reinforced by horizontal and vertical edges. The gun itself was shortened to 22-calibers and, when using AP rounds, had a maximum firing range of 4.8 thousand meters of armor penetration on a 500m distance of 55 mm.

More on the mount here (German)

Warisboring has an interesting report on Tinian, long a U.S. Territory/Dependency that makes up one of the three principal islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands just a few miles off from Saipan (where a maritime prepositioning squadron of ships chills out).

If you are a military history buff, you know Tinian well.

Part of the Spanish Empire from 1521, the Spaniards sold the chain to Kaiser Wilhelm in the great worldwide colonial going out of business sale that followed that country’s defeat in 1898 by the US of A.

Fast forward to 1914 and British ally Japan quickly gobbled up the island, moving over 15,000 colonists from the overcrowded Home Island there by the time the balloon went up in 1941. The island was then pried from Tojo’s hands during the Battle of Tinian in 1944 during which only 313 survivors were left standing from the 8500-man Japanese garrison. You don’t want to know what happened to the Japanese and Korean civilians.

2nd Division Marines disembark from their LST at Tinian Island, 24 July 1944.

Anyway, Seebees landed and built a huge airstrip from which, on 6 and 9 AUG 1945, B-29s of the 509th Composite Group (Enola Gay and Bockscar) took off from to carry Little Boy and Fat Man to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The military kept a presence on Tinian through the 1980s and now, with a population of just ~3,000 locals, is looking to get back into the swing of things.

Tinian’s North Field

You see, besides holding on to semi-abandoned fields at Shemya, Wake, French Frigate Shoals and Midway, with the possibility of China plastering Guam and Okinawa in a Pacific WWIII scenario, Tinian would be nice to have as a backup– and is within strategic air-range of Beijing and Taiwan.

More here

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: March 2, 2016 Fritz and the short career of an Italian battlewagon

Photo colorized by irootoko_jr 

Here we see the Littorio-class battleship (corazzata) Roma, the pride of the WWII Regia Marina and last flagship of Admiral Carlo Bergamini. While her 15 months of service to Mussolini’s Italy was uneventful, she ended her days with a bang.

Although the modern Italian Navy saw little service in the first few decades of the 20th Century– primarily being used in an uneventful blockade of the Austro-Hungarian fleet in World War I and a few skirmishes with the Turks before that– the admirals in Rome had a twinge of panic in the 1930s when the French laid down new, fast battleships for service in the Med.

To augment the Regia Marina’s four modernized Conte di Cavour (29,000-ton/10×12.6-inch guns) and Andrea Doria-class (25,000-ton/13×12-inch guns) World War I battleships, four new fast battleships of the Littorio-class (Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Roma, and Impero) were envisioned with the first laid down in 1934.

These ships, which if you squint and look at them from a distance look a lot like the U.S. North Carolina-class battleships which followed just after, were beautiful, modern vessels.

With a full load displacement pushing 50,000-tons, they carried nine 381 mm/50 (15″) Model 1934 guns in three triple turrets guided by distinctive “Wedding Cake” Fire Control Directors and were  capable of firing a 1,951-pound AP shell to a maximum range of a staggering 46,807 yards– and keeping it up at 1.3 rounds per minute.

Her 381 mm (15.0 in)/50 cal guns were tested to nearly 50,000 yards in experiments on land.

While the Littorios were reasonably fast, capable of 30 knots, they achieved this by using thin armor (just 11 inches in belt and much less on deck) which put them at risk against other large battleships (or significant aircraft-dropped ordnance) though below the waterline they used the innovative Pugliese torpedo defense system, a 40mm armored bulkhead blister outer hull over a 15-inch liquid-filled void. Although the Pugliese wasn’t ideal, the Soviets copied it for their last battleship class and the Littorios survived no less than four serious torpedo attacks during World War II (though air attack is another story).

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

The hero of our sad tale, Roma, was the third and last of the class to be completed (Impero was canceled, her unfinished hulk ultimately sunk as a target). Laid down 18 September 1938 at Cantieri Riuniti dell’Adriatico in Trieste, when WWII came less than a year later, work slowed on Roma and she was only completed on 14 June 1942.

Photo colorized by irootoko_jr

Roma upon commissioning

Gunnery trials

Upon completion

Roma was beautiful on the inside too it would seem – rather lavish officer’s quarters.

Arriving at Taranto on 21 August, she was assigned to the Ninth Naval Division, though with the general lack of fuel experienced in all of the Axis countries by that stage of the war, she rarely went to sea.

In November, with the Americans landing in North Africa in Operation Torch, all three Littoros were moved from Taranto to Naples to lay low. The Americans quickly found them, however, and after air attacks Roma and her two sisters were moved to La Spezia where, for the next several months, they endured near-weekly air attacks that left all of the ships bruised and battered though unbroken.

Soon after commissioning she was given a distinctive camo pattern

In all, over a 15-month period, Roma spent a grand total of just 130 hours underway under her own steam.

Her deck fore and aft had red and white diagonal stripes

As Rommel was defeated in North Africa and the Allies began landing on Sicily in July 1943 during Operation Husky, the Italian fleet at La Spezia consisting of the three Littoro sisters, a few cruisers and eight destroyers was put under the command of Admiral Carlo Bergamini, who chose Roma as his flag. An old-school surface warfare officer, Bergamini had picked up a silver medal in 1918 during the Great War while the gunnery officer of the cruiser Pisa, and commanded the Italian battleship division from the deck of Vittorio Veneto during the Battle of Cape Spartivent– which was about the closest thing to an Italian victory over the Royal Navy during WWII.

Then in September, the Allies began Operation Avalanche, the invasion of Italy proper. This led Bergamini, under orders from the new Italian government who sought an armistice with the Allies, to take his fleet across to La Maddalena in Sardinia where King Victor Emmanuel III was setting up new digs, thus keeping the flower out of navy out of German hands.

The only thing was, the Germans weren’t a fan of that plan, as the Allies jumped the gun and announced the secret Italian armistice on the radio in Algeria on 8 Sept.

Battleship Roma, date unknown

Slipping out in the predawn hours of 9 Sept, Bergamini’s fleet, joined by three cruisers from Genoa, made for Sardinia and just after dawn saw Allied planes observing their movements– but not attacking. Then, around 1340 that day came the news the Germans had seized La Maddalena, leaving Bergamini in a pickle as he cruised through the narrow Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia.

Over the next two hours, six German Do 217K-2 medium bombers from III. Gruppe of KG 100 (III/KG 100) were seen by lookouts, each carrying what appeared to be a single large bomb. At 1530, these bombers climbed and hurled one of these oddball new bombs– that seemed to maneuver in flight– at the battleship Italia (Littorio), exploding just off her stern, damaging her rudder.

Then at 1545 a second bomber dropped a 3,450-pound, armor piercing, radio-controlled, glide bomb, which the Luftwaffe called Fritz-X, right down Roma‘s gullet.

Depiction of the Dornier Do-217 Fritz X attack on Italian battleship Roma. The glide bomb had a flare in its tail to allow the bombardier to guide it to its target from up-to 5km away

“End of the Roma 1943” by Paul Wright. Note the very distinctive markings on deck. However, the flare on the Fritz-X seems a little too rocket-like as the bomb was unpowered.

The Italian battleship Roma listing after being hit by German Fritz X radio-controlled bombs launched by Do 217s, Sept. 9, 1943. Italian Navy photo

Eight minutes later, another Fritz struck the already crippled ship, leading to a magazine explosion that killed the vast majority of her crew– including Bergamini.

Explosion aboard Roma, Strait of Bonifacio

Capsized, she broke in two and sank by 1615. In all, two Admirals, 86 Officers and 1264 sailors were taken down to the seafloor with the stricken flagship who had less than 3,000 miles on her hull.

The rest of the fleet carried on and eventually made Malta where they were interred under British guns for the duration of the war, later moving to Alexandria where they remained until 1947. While Roma’s sisters, Italia/Littorio and Vittorio Veneto were on paper given to the U.S. and Britain respectively as war prizes, this was largely to keep them out of Soviet hands and both were scrapped at La Spezia in the early 1950s.

On Fritz, KG 100 continued to use these amazingly destructive weapons– the first effective smart bombs and precursors to current anti-ship missiles– in attacks on the cruisers USS Savannah, USS Philadelphia, HMS Uganda and the British battleship HMS Warspite, though without sinking them. Within months, the Allies figured out Fritz could be foiled by attacking his radio waves and by the Normandy invasion had issued some of the first electronic countermeasures to the fleet to jam the German wunderweapon.

German aerial picture of the KG100 attack on Warsprite

As for Roma, her wreck was discovered in 2012, found at a depth of 1,000 meters around 25 km off Sardinia’s coast. It is preserved as a war grave.

An Italian Navy picture of a AAA gun on the Roma, found at a depth of 1,000 meters around 25 km off Sardinia’s coast.

Bergamini in death was promoted to the rank of Ammiraglio d’Armata and two frigates, one in 1960 and another in 2013, have been named in his honor, the latest of which had top of the line air defenses against anti-shipping missiles.

Italy’s first FREMM class frigate, Carlo Bergamini (F590)

Specs:

Image by Shipbucket

Displacement: Full load: 45,485 long tons (46,215 t)
Length: 240.7 m (790 ft.)
Beam: 32.9 m (108 ft.)
Draft: 9.6 m (31 ft.)
Installed power:
8 × Yarrow boilers
128,000 shp (95,000 kW)
Propulsion: 4 × steam turbines, 4 × shafts
Speed: 30 kn (56 km/h; 35 mph)
Complement: 1,920
Armament:
3 × 3 381 mm (15.0 in)/50 cal guns
4 × 3 152 mm (6.0 in)/55 cal guns
4 × 1 120 mm (4.7 in)/40 guns for illumination
12 × 1 90 mm (3.5 in)/50 anti-aircraft guns
20 × 37 mm (1.5 in)/54 guns (8 × 2; 4 × 1)
10 × 2 20 mm (0.79 in)/65 guns
Armor:
Main belt: 350 mm (14 in)
Deck: 162 mm (6.4 in)
Turrets: 350 mm
Conning tower: 260 mm (10 in)
Aircraft carried: 3 aircraft (IMAM Ro.43 or Reggiane Re.2000)
Aviation facilities: 1 stern catapult
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