160817-N-PM781-002 WASHINGTON (Aug. 17, 2016) An M1 Garand rifle used by U.S. Marine Corps Raiders during the World War II attack on Japanese military forces on Makin Island is at Naval History and Heritage Command’s (NHHC) Underwater Archaeology Branch. Due to the rifle’s significant surface concretions, corrosion and other physical damage, NHHC Underwater Archaeology Branch is performing an assessment of the artifacts stability. (U.S. Navy photo by Arif Patani/Released)

During the darkest part of the war in the Pacific, a group of Marine Raiders stormed Japanese-held Makin Island. Today one of their Garands left behind is undergoing long-term preservation.

Scarcely eight months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and just weeks after the fall of Corregidor, the U.S. Navy was planning to take the war to Imperial Japan at a little known island in the Solomons by the name of Guadalcanal. As part of the initial assault on that chain, “Carlson’s” 2nd Marine Raider Battalion were to carry out a diversionary strike on Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

Carried to Makin by two submarines, USS Argonaut and USS Nautilus, some 211 Raiders came ashore in rubber rafts in the predawn hours of August 17, 1942. By the end of the day they had annihilated the Japanese garrison, sunk two of the Emperor’s boats, and destroyed two of his planes. As part of the withdrawal the next morning, 19 fallen Marines were left behind in graves on the island.

In 1999 the military returned to Makin, now known as Butaritari in the island nation of Kiribati, to recover the Marines, 13 of whom are now interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Now, attention is being paid a rifle found during the recovery process, a corroded M1 Garand discovered in the grave and returned to Hawaii before its eventual transfer to the Raiders Museum located at Marine Corps Base Quantico.

After an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team inspected the rifle to make sure it was not loaded, it has now been transferred to the Naval History and Heritage Command’s Underwater Archaeology Branch at the Washington Navy Yard.

There, the archaeological conservators are formulating a plan to treat the rifle, buried in wet sand on a Pacific battlefield for over 50 years, and preserve it for future generations.

Portrait of female partisan, Sara Ginaite at the liberation of Vilna, 10 August 1944. She is just over 20 years old.

Her weapon? A Soviet-made M44 Mosin-Nagant rifle, likely newly acquired, and (at least) two German Eierhandgranate 39 egg-type hand grenades, which the Soviets put into production post war as the modified RDG5.

Ginaite was just 15 when the war started. The Soviets came into Lithuania in 1940 and the Germans occupied the country in June 1941 during Barbarossa.

As noted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sara was among the first group of 17  underground members of the Kovno Ghetto who in mid-December 1943, left for the Rudninkai Forest and became partisans.

Over the next nine months she repeatedly snuck back into the ghetto to lead more partisans out, pretending to be a nurse and claiming that she needed to escort sick workers to the ghetto hospital, bringing them to the forest instead. Her unit helped liberate Vilna (Wilno/Wilna), where the above image was taken by a Soviet major who was surprised to see a female, Jewish partisan standing guard when they entered the town.

Ginaite survived the war, married her wartime boyfriend who was another underground member, and settled in Vilna.

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, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Emil Hünten

Emil Johannes Hünten was born the son of a German composer residing in Paris on 19 January 1827. Studing at the at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, then later in Antwerp and Dusseldorf, he was a painter who specialized in oils on canvas. Choosing to cover historical subjects, his work on Fredrick the Great and his battles drew attention.

This led to Hunten being attached to the Prussian Army in the 1864 war with Denmark, the 1866 conflict with Austria and, in his magnum opus period, the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71.

Marshall Forwards

Prussian Hussar

Raid on rail line. Note the dead Prussian sentry.

Wounded Lifeguard

Prussian Army Crown Prince and Chief of Staff Helmuth Moltke (the elder) meet at Battle of Königgrätz. Note our lifeguard from above is making a cameo

Prussian Army Crown Prince and Chief of Staff (Generalstabschef) Helmuth Moltke

He became a member of the Berlin Academy, was well liked, garnered numerous awards, and created some of the most memorable portraits of the German Kaisers out there before his death in 1902.

Hunten’s paintings hang throughout Europe, mostly in Germany.

Thank you for your work, sir.

Caption: Members of the 108th company of the FTP (Francs-tireurs et partisans français), the communist resistance group pose with their weapons at a mountain base. Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Marion Loewenstein

Claude Lowenstein (lying down at lower left behind the British-made Bren light machine gun, notably the other weapons are captured German models), was born on 12 February 1928 in Luxembourg, making him a preteen when the Germans thundered across the country in a single day in 1940. Soon, the Germans instituted anti-Jewish measures and young Claude was exiled to an internment camp in France with his family.

Allowed to work as a farm hand in the countryside, as noted by the USHMM:

In July 1944 a cell from the underground Franc-Tireurs et Partisans raided the farm to search for gasoline. They also asked the Jewish farm hands if they cared to join the cell. All 15 teenagers left with the partisans. England gave the partisans orders for their operations, guns and ammunition which they provided by parachute drop. In one operation the partisans climbed a mountain over-looking a road and dropped home-made grenades on an open truck filled with German soldiers thereby disrupting the convoy.

Just 16, Claude participated in the liberation of Lyon and other fighting as the Allies moved into the country from Normandy and the Riviera.

By the autumn of 1944, De Gaulle merged both the nationalist French Forces of the Interior (Forces françaises de l’intérieur) and the now 100,000-stong communist FTP, which Claude was a part of, into the overall French Army under Gen. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.

As the Germans withdrew East, Claude was reunited with his family in early 1945.

Pushing a hardy 17, he joined the reformed Luxembourg army (whose coat of arms includes a lion) and assisted in the occupation of Bitburg near the Luxembourg border before the war ended.

The 2nd Battalion of the Luxembourg Army took command of the Caserne in 1945 and would remain in the area until 1952, two years longer than the armistice required.

Claude emigrated to the U.S. in 1956.

“Train Advise Assist Command – Air (TAAC – Air) advisors from the 438th Air Expeditionary Wing fly Afghan Air Force’s newest MD 530F Cayuse Warrior helicopters for a training event. The new helicopters are capable of firing 2.75” rockets and .50-cal machine guns for close air support.”

The U.S. Army adopted the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse (nicknamed “Loach”, after the program acronym LOH—Light Observation Helicopter) in 1965 and fielded more than 1,400 of these egg shaped killers in the Vietnam era and, while largely replaced by the 1980s, the AH6/MH6 Little Bird variants did yeoman work with special operations units in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere during the Reagan era (see Operation Prime Chance).

Over Mogadishu during the Blackhawk Down affair, it was four MH-6s (Barbers 51-54 of the 160th SOAR) that kept the city at bay overnight.

“In the movie, the gunships are shown making only one attack. In fact, they were constantly engaged all night long. Each aircraft reloaded six times. It is estimated that they fired between 70 and 80,000 rounds of minigun ammo and fired a total 90 to 100 aerial rockets. They were the only thing that kept the Somalis from overrunning the objective area. All eight gunship pilots were awarded the Silver Star. Every one of them deserved it.” (source)

Today the Army still has about 47 Little Birds of various marks, and the Afghan Air Force is using the next best thing.

The MD 530F Cayuse Warrior, shown turning and burning above, is flown jointly by U.S. and Afghanistan forces and see combat just about every day. The last four of 27 MD 530Fs arrived at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul aboard a U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III airlifter in late August as noted by Janes.

They are all moving to use the Enhanced-Mission Equipment Package (EMEP) which offers the FN Herstal 12.7 mm Heavy Machine Gun Pod (HMP) or 70 mm rockets.

With the anniversary of VJ Day this week, I was brainstorming something.

The jury will always be out on just what won the U.S. Civil War: the defeat of Lee in the North, Grant’s splitting of the Confederacy by capturing Vicksburg, Sherman’s total war campaign across Georgia and the turn to take on Johnston in the Carolinas, the South being bled white by losses that it could not replace as the North grew stronger every day, the refusal of Britain to come into the war in support of the South…maybe all of the above.

Of course, I wager that without the Anaconda plan, all of the above would have been much harder to pull off, if not impossible.

Envisioned by that “The Grand Old Man of the Army,” Gen. Winfield Scott. The North’s war chief at the beginning of the conflict, Scott, aged 74 when the balloon went up, earned his commission as a captain in the Light Artillery in May 1808, and knew firsthand how much the War of 1812 sucked when the Brits had default naval superiority and controlled the coastline. Sure, the plucky U.S. Navy and a force of privateers raided around the globe and took the fight to the Brits in their home waters, but they couldn’t keep the RN out of the Chesapeake or from landing at New Orleans.

Then there was the blockade.

Robert, 2nd Viscount Melville, who had become the First Lord of the Admiralty in June 1812, noted that,

“We do not intend this as a mere paper blockade, but as a complete stop to all trade and intercourse by sea with those ports, as far as the wind and weather, and the continual presence of a sufficient armed force, will permit and ensure. If you find that this cannot be done without abandoning for a time the interruption which you appear to be giving to the internal navigation of the Chesapeake, the latter object must be given up, and you must be content with blockading its entrance and sending in occasionally your cruisers for the purpose of harassing and annoyance.”

In the end the war, Scott, who advanced to major general (brevet) during the conflict, remembered the lessons when it came to 1861 and he recommended an idea coined “The Anaconda Plan” to rigorously (if somewhat passively) blockade all of the major and minor Confederate seaports, and seize control of the mouth of the Mississippi, to ensnare and strangle the budding rebellion, cutting them off from imports of munitions and manufactured goods they had no factories for, as well as exports and of agro goods on which their economy was based.

Implemented in the first few weeks of the war, the blockade of the rebel coast proved extremely effective, though some blockade-runners always got through even in the last days of the war. In true capitalist fashion, many of these runners carried luxury goods on their return trips rather than muskets and shells, as there was more profit per pound in the former.

Enter July 1945

With the end of the war in Europe in May, the culmination of the apocalyptic battle for Okinawa (Operation Iceberg) at the end of June, the starving remnants of Yamashita’s Japanese Fourteenth Area Army reduced to isolated pockets on Mindanao and Luzon in the Philippines, and the British annihilation of the Sakurai’s Twenty-eighth Army in Burma the same month, the biggest nut left to crack (other than bypassed forces Java, Southeast Asia and China which was a whole ‘nother thing), was the Japanese home islands.

We all know what came next.

A continuation of the intense and unrelenting long range air campaign by the AAF’s heavy bomber force that flattened and rained fire across Japan while the Army proper prepared Operations Olympic–the land invasion of the southern island, Kyūshū; Coronet–the assault on the main island, Honshu; and Pastel, a diversionary fake out. The effort, expected to use four full U.S Armies as well as a combined Commonwealth force, would have heaved 55~ infantry and armored divisions across Japan’s beaches under the world’s largest umbrella of Allied air and Naval power in an effort that would have made D-Day look like a yacht club regatta.

The thing is, Olympic/Cornet/Pastel were expected to cost, as noted by Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s staff, upwards of 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. With the Japanese plan for absolute resistance, Operation Ketsugō, putting millions of untrained and laughably equipped civilians into bitter village-to-village, street-to-street, room-to-room fighting, those figures may have been conservative.

The Kokumin Giyū Sentōtai (Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps) — that included men and boys 15-60 and women 17-40 — were armed with everything from obsolete 1880s black powder Murata rifles to clubs and bamboo sticks with anti-tank mines attached.

Even with that being said, the Japanese did have a significant stockpile of small arms and light artillery in the Home Islands.

On 31 August 1945 the Japanese reported on hand 1,369,063 rifles and light machine guns with limited ammunition of only 230 rounds per weapon. Records later indicated that actually some 2,468,665 rifles and carbines were received by the Occupation forces and later disposed of. The Japanese reported more artillery ammunition than small arms ammunition. Ammunition for the grenade launcher, often known as the “knee mortar,” was also more plentiful; some 51,000,000 rounds were reported, or an average of 1,794 rounds for each weapon.

This, as we know it, led Harry Truman to drop a couple atom bombs and threaten more, leaving the Emperor to sue for peace and avoiding the above. In effect, saving the lives of those 6-14 million lost on both sides in estimates.

But was there a third option?

Anaconda 1945

Murderers Row at Ulithi atoll. The Japanese could never match the U.S. and her Allies on the high seas after 1944.

The invasion fleet in place in the Pacific by the end of July 1945, made up of U.S., Commonwealth and French naval assets, amounted to no less than 42 fleet and light aircraft carriers, 100 escort carriers, 24 battleships, 500 destroyers and destroyer escorts, and nearly 180 fleet submarines including British, Australian, and Dutch boats. The majority of these were new wartime construction with a large portion just off their shakedown cruises.

To oppose this armada, in Japanese Home Waters there was a small and battered Imperial naval force consisting of four battleships (all damaged), five aircraft carriers (all damaged), two cruisers, 23 destroyers/large escorts, 46 seagoing submarines, 115 short-ranged Kōryū-class midget submarines (with another 496 building), 200+ smaller Kairyū-class midget submarines (with 760 planned), 120 Kaiten manned torpedoes (with another 500 planned), 2,412 Shin’yō suicide boats, and 13,000~ aircraft of all sorts.

Koryu Type D Midgets at Kure at war’s end. Though hundreds of these would have no doubt caused havoc among the LSTs on X and Y day, they were short-legged and hard to use in open sea, making them less of a threat to bluewater forces.

Of these, most were capable of littoral operations only, which, due to extensive mining of Japanese coastal waters by Allied forces, was a danger all its own.

Yamoto’s last cruise. By July 1945 very few Japanese naval assets remained afloat and in the Home Islands

In effect, there was no way that the Japanese Navy could lift a blockade of their shores, especially if one was done far enough out to sea to limit the affect of manned torpedoes and kamikazes.

The islands were suffering from an extended lack of food, fuel, and raw materials, all of which had to come by sea.

The Japanese merchant fleet by August 1945 had been reduced to 1,466,900 tons, about 1/5 of its pre-war strength, and many of these ships were damaged or incapable of operations. With every wave hiding an Allied periscope and every cloud a B-24 ready or PBY/PBM, it was hazardous to a Maru’s health to poke around in blue water.

During the war, U.S. Navy submarines over the course of an amazing 1,474 patrols sank around 1,300 Japanese merchant ships, as well as roughly 200 warships, accounting for most of these losses.  By 1945, Navy bombers and flying boats had become adept enough with the new SWOD Mk.9 (Special Weapon Ordnance Device) “Bat” radar-guided glidebomb to become a verified standoff shipkiller.

Therefore, this leads to the speculation that the Allies could have paused in late July 1945, kept the Manhattan Project up their sleeve, placed Operations Olympic/Cornet/Pastel in a holding pattern, and concentrated on a renewed Anaconda plan around the Home Islands.

With Guam, Tinian and Saipan-based B-29s continuing their operations over the skies of Kyūshū and Honshu, flatting factories and military targets; PBYs and PBMs could haunt the coastline looking for things to sink while sowing sea mines so thick you could walk across Tokyo Bay without getting your feet wet.

The surface fleet could establish an exclusion zone around the islands, standing far enough offshore to avoid Shin’yō and Kaiten, enforcing a blockade on the high seas to cut off communications and supply coming from Java, Southeast Asia and China, letting Japan wither on the vine.

While the Empire still had thousands of aircraft ready for kamikaze attacks, most were single-engine trainers and fighters with short legs. Of course, there was the possibility of long range suicide raids, such as the Japanese Operation Tan No. 2 in which 24 Yokosuka P1Y Ginga (Francis) bombers flew from Kyushu to attack Ulithi on a one way 1,100-mile trip, but such strikes took planning, knowledge of Allied fleet movements, and– most importantly– lots of fuel and well-trained aircrews capable of navigating precisely over water, neither of which the Japanese had in abundance at that stage of the war.

With the Okinawa campaign showing the Japanese were capable of one-way single engine aircraft attacks some 400 miles out from Kyushu , a surface fleet blockade zone some 600-700 miles out would keep the Japanese supply lines severed while remaining relatively safe. With F6F’s capable of a 850nm combat range and TBMs as well as the larger follow-on F8Fs some 1,100, its conceivable that Hellcats/Avengers and Bearcats could be launched by carrier groups coming in a tad closer from time to time to get in some coastal strikes over Japanese harbors if Halsey and Spruance felt strongly about it.

Inside the exclusion zone, the massive Allied submarine fleet could keep doing what they did best: sinking Marus and anything afloat with a meatball on its flag. While doing so, they could form early warning pickets for outgoing long-range kamikaze raids and lifeguard service for downed B-29 and PBY crews. Nighttime shore bombardment with their 3 and 5-inch guns could add an element of harassment to outlying areas. This could work with deception and psywar operations to keep the Japanese land forces shuttling from point to point, wasting resources and keeping men tied down on the beach and in the hills waiting for an amphibious assault while the cities, plants and marshaling yards in the rear burn.

However, what of the Japanese forces overseas?

On the day of surrender, the Imperial Japanese Forces totaled 6,983,000 troops including construction units, naval and air forces. Of these, Army and Navy forces stationed within the home islands numbered 3,532,000, which meant that nearly as many, some 3.4 million, were still scattered around the Pacific from Manchuria to the Solomons:

-In China, the 900,000-strong Kwantung Army of Gen. Otozō Yamada (along with another 200,000 toy soldiers of the Mengjiang and Manchukuo Imperial Armies) sounded massive on paper, but was filled with bottom of the barrel units and armor that could be stopped with your average sticky bomb much less a Sherman or T-34. When the Soviets muscled in starting on 9 August, they swept through all of Manchuria with their 1.5 million Ivan force within two weeks. Sure, you can argue they could have held out longer if the Emperor had not ordered Yamada to lay down his arms on 15 August, but either way, this force would have been steamrolled by Stalin by October regardless. The same could be said of Lt.Gen. Yoshio Kozuki’s 17th Area Army in Korea, though allowing Moscow to sweep through the whole Korean Peninsula may not have been politically acceptable in the West.

-Stroke-addled Gensui Count Terauchi Hisaichi’s 680,000-man Southern Expeditionary Army Group controlled French Indochina, Singapore, Thailand, Malaya, New Guinea, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and a dwindling slice of Burma but was facing a huge Indo-British-Australian effort to keep pushing him out. Though they laid down their arms to Lord Mountbatten on 12 September 1945 following the surrender order, the odds that they could have held out against the tide was slim and Hisaichi’s scattered command would likely have folded by that Christmas regardless of events in Japan. Sure, far-flung units would likely have held out longer (it should be remembered that an estimated 1,000 Imperial Japanese Army troops joined Indonesian guerillas and fought the Dutch into 1948) but this would not have ended the blockade of the Home Islands.

-General Rikichi Ando’s 10th Area Army in Taiwan consisted mostly of poorly trained reservists, conscripted students, and local Boeitai home guard militia with some units equipped with sharpened bamboo pikes and longbows. They surrendered to Kuomintang General Chen Yi on 25 October 1945 as almost as afterthought but could have been left, like Japanese garrison island Truk, to remain isolated in our Anaconda redux effort.

-Smaller forces existed in the Philippines, New Britain, the Japanese naval and air base at Truk, Wake Atoll, the Bonin Islands, Mili Atoll, Jaluit, the Ryukyu Islands and others. Over the course of a July-December 1945 Anaconda campaign, they could continue to either languish as being strategically invaluable, or be captured in small-scale sideshow operations. By that time, most of these areas had been pulverized.

Mili Island, in the Marshalls, for instance, had been the target of 18 months of ceaseless bombing by U.S. Marine Corps aircraft when the surrender order came in Sept. 1945.

Photo #: USMC 134057. Mili Island, Mili Atoll, Marshalls Group. Damaged Japanese Navy Type 89 5″/40 twin dual-purpose gun mount on Mili, at the time of the island’s surrender in late August 1945. Photographed by R.O. Kepler, USMC. U.S. Marine Corps Photograph.

Photo #: 80-G-347131. Emaciated Japanese Naval Personnel. Photographed at a Japanese hospital in the Marshall Islands, 15 September 1945. They show the effects of the blockade and constant bombardment of “bypassed” Japanese-held islands in the central Pacific over the last year-and-a-half of World War II. Location is probably Wotje or Maloelap Atoll. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class Louis Lazarow, of Naval Air Base, Majuro.

So as the theory goes, could a six-month naval and air blockade/bombardment of the Home Islands, say stretching to January 1946, the bitter winter of the new year, coupled with the eventual reduction of the Empire’s overseas outposts, have resulted in Japan seeking peace?

During this time, the B-29s and the newly introduced Consolidated B-32 Dominators would have covered Japan with fire from sea to sea.

It should be noted that in the first six months of 1945:

Between January and July 1945, the U.S. firebombed and destroyed all but five Japanese cities, deliberately sparing Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital, and four others. The extent of the destruction was impressive ranging from 50 to 60% of the urban area destroyed in cities including Kobe, Yokohama and Tokyo, to 60 to 88% in seventeen cities, to 98.6% in the case of Toyama….Overall, by one calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…

Suffer the POWs

At risk during the pressure cooker of Anaconda 1945, would be the more than 36,000 Allied personnel of various categories located in approximately 140 POW camps in the Home Islands. Another six months of firebombing and evaporating supplies of medicine and food would likely have led to most if not all Allied POWs in the Home Islands losing their lives either through neglect or culling by the Imperial Army.

At least one source maintains that in the last three months of the war, 173 American POWs were murdered in Japan including 62 who were burned alive in their cell blocks. Surely, these instances would have increased if the war continued.

Also, there is the nuclear option.

Japan managed a small-scale atomic program going as far back as 1931 and had both centrifuges and cyclotrons as well as a tiny amount of uranium on hand during WWII, which they attempted to weaponize. Hitler tried to help a brother out and sent U-234 to Japan in the last days of the Third Reich with plans for radars and super-weapons as well as 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide. However, when Germany surrendered, the U-boat’s commander was ill inclined to complete his epic voyage and made for the U.S. where he raised the white flag to an American destroyer south of the Grand Banks, Newfoundland on 14 May.

This left the Japanese woefully short of heavy water and uranium and, while some reports have surfaced that hinted the program was still making progress in the last days of the war, was likely never going to produce a workable bomb. Further, even if by some unlikely miracle Tojo pulled off an atomic strike on a U.S. anchorage via aircraft, or West Coast port city via submarine, the retaliation made possible from the more advanced American atomic program would have seen the last remaining Japanese cities glow in the dark– while still not breaking the blockade or clockwork firebombs.

Further, barring a radio broadcast by the Emperor or military coup by the peace faction, Japan’s government may have still been willing to fight to the last bullet in January 1946, leading to Truman dropping the bombs anyway and/or Operation Downfall getting the green light.

In conclusion

Would a rehashed Anaconda worked and brought peace by 1946?

Possibly. But would it be worth it?

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of additional Japanese would have perished between 1 July-31 December 1945 due to famine and flame that otherwise survived following the actual events. Further, thousands of Allied POWs that made it home in real life would have likely found shallow graves in Japanese soil. Add to this Allied submariners sunk by uncharted mines in the winter of 1945 and even more American airmen parachuting into hostile and very hungry villagers below.

Strategically, Anaconda would have extended the war by six months and cost billions of extra dollars keeping huge fleets at sea, B-32s in production, and men under arms. Further, the Soviet Union and likely Mao’s Red Chinese Army, would have made much more extensive gains during the last half of 1945 than actually occurred, leaving the prospect of Korea and Taiwan still being vassal states of one or the other.

In retrospect, and in my personal opinion, Anaconda 1945 may have worked, but the A-bombs and Hirohito’s subsequent decision to run a peace appeal was and is the better choice.

Captain Robert L. Faurot with his P-38F Lightning 42-12623 Nose 16 parked at 14 Mile Drome (Schwimmer) Credit: US Army Signal Corps, NARA SC-168885 Date: January 20, 1943. He was killed in action just 41 days after this picture was taken.

Robert L. (Bob) Faurot was born on the 19th August 1917 in Missouri and attended Mizzou, playing in the Orange Bowl in 1939. Joining the Army Air Corps and training at Randolph and Kelly Fields, Foults was picked to head to Great Britain in 1940 to fly as an observer during the Battle of Britain. He got some hours in single seat Spitfires and Hurricanes with the Nos. 303 and 306 Squadrons, RAF, which were manned by Polish exiles before returning to the states just before Pearl Harbor.

When the balloon went up he was flying P-39s with the 39th Pursuit Squadron at Selfridge Field, Michigan and the squadron, reclassified as the 39th Fighter Squadron, got orders to rush to Australia. Converting to the P-38 Lightning, Faurot led a bombing mission (yes, using P-38s) on the Japanese Air Base at Lae, New Guinea, destroying a Zero that was taking off in the process.

On March 3, 1943, during the Battle of the Bismarck sea, Capt. Robert L. Faurot was killed-in-action when the B-17s his squadron was jumped by about 30 Zeros.

More on Faurot below.

The 39th, the famed “Cobra in the Clouds” squadron is still around as the 39th Flying Training Squadron (39 FTS) at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas.

The Germans in WWII were the ultimate locusts when it came to re-purposing captured weapons. Not only did they quickly turn around and put everything they found that went bang in an occupied country to good use, they also kept the local factories churning out new guns and munitions for the war machine. In Belgium, FN’s Herstal works kept pumping out Browning Hi Powers for the Third Reich just as Poland’s Radom worked around the clock to make 9mm VIS pistols.

Czechoslovakia was no different and the CZ concern in Brno was forced to keep making their pistols, rifles (which were Mauser 98 copies anyway) and light machine guns until as late as 1945– but for Teutonic use.

One of the more peculiar CZ produced guns made during occupation was a special Böhmische Waffenfabrik 7.65×17mm Browning SR (.32 ACP) CZ Model 27 pistol with an over-length 5-inch barrel, some 30.4 mm longer than normal.

What a curious proboscis

As you can see, the muzzle is slatted at the bottom with a notch

And is made to accommodate a coupling of some sort

Given a phosphate finish, these guns were marked “fnh Pistole Model 27 Kal. 7.65” and the barrel served as a male counterpart to the knurled female coupling of a rather large steel suppressor can.

One of the first “quick detach” suppressor designs….

Fitted with a sight on the top of the can (as the body occluded the standard front post on the slide) the suppressor was made specifically for the CZ27.

There is at least some anecdotal evidence of a more svelte silencer design being issued as well, sans sights.

While some .32ACP is spicy enough to be supersonic, the Germans had a run of “X” headstamped 7.65 Browning rounds made by Geco and DWM Berlin-Borsigwalde which were suitably subsonic for use in these guns. Coupled with a very large baffle can, they were likely very quiet indeed.

According to Czech sources, some 5000 of these guns were ordered in September 1944 (OKH Wa JRu /Wu.G.Z G2-0161-0121 IV  44) and about 4220 were delivered. While some claim they were meant to be used in concentration camps, it is more likely they were intended for commando operations such as those run by Skorzeny which were increasingly popular in the late stages of the war (remember he went into the Ardennes with a unit illegally dressed as U.S. Army MPs in December of that very year).

Another likely use for these guns was in “stay behind” operations by Werwolf resistance units.

A silenced pistol (possibly a CZ27?) was used by an SS hit team in Unternehmen Karneval to assassinate Burgomeister Openhoff after Aachen fell to the Allies in 1945, arguably one of the only documented operations undertaken by Werwolf-style units (though they were parachuted in behind the Allied lines and not overrun in this case).

While they were not fielded in great numbers before the conflict ended, there is some rumor that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Iron Curtain used inherited examples of these pistols throughout the Cold War– with a few even popping up in North Korea of all places. After all, what is more “sterile” and deniable than a German contract Czech-made pistol that both East and West captured at the tail end of WWII and takes .32ACP, which is commonly encountered in even the most exotic third world country?

Today, the cans are a rarity, but the pistols themselves sell for about $3,000 at auction.

The gun/can design did go on to inspire others by CZ.

In 1959, Miroslav Rybář of CZ designed the .32 ACP-chambered closed-bolt blowback action vz. 61 Škorpion machine pistol which proved popular in Warsaw Pact countries throughout the Cold War, and still endures today. The suppressor designed to accompany the gun attaches by a quick attach/detach knurled collar that clamps onto the barrel in much the same was as the CZ27 that preceded it by 15 years.

From the CIA archives:

As an attempt to control currency during the worst days of the Depression Presidential Executive Order 6102 (1933) and the Gold Reserve Act (1934) made owning or trading gold a criminal offense and required American citizens to sell their private possessions of gold (with limited exceptions— like wedding rings) to the U.S. Treasury. The U.S. Government instituted this policy to help the country weather the Great Depression and did not relax it until 1964 (and since then, investment in gold has skyrocketed).

Despite this barrier, the secret agent men of OSS acquired gold coins to cache in Occupied Europe during WWII and retrieve as needed to finance their efforts or those of the Nazi resistance. Although the coins were not legal tender, their inherent value ensured their usefulness. OSS never distributed this one, a $20 Gold Piece made in 1858, currently housed in the CIA Museum.

Photo: CIA

In the first part of 1943, the Army began flirting with a two-piece (jacket and pants) herringbone twill (HBT) camouflage uniform. Now, one thing to note is that this differed from the Marine HBT “duck hunter” camo that was introduced around the time of the invasion of Tarawa as the Devil Dog kit was based on their P41 design while the Army’s was a slightly different variant based on Big Green’s M1942 fatigue uniform.

Jacket, Herringbone Twill, Camouflage, via U.S. Military Forum

Trousers, HBT, Camouflage, via U.S. Military Forum

These two-piece camouflage uniforms were fielded by units of the 2nd Armored Division, including the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment and 17th Armored Engineer Battalion for D-Day. They appear in photos between June to September 1944.

Private Joseph De Freitos of Yonkers (New York) of the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment, 2nd US Armored Division, heats his rations on a stove, taken at Pont-Brocard in late July 1944. There is nothing particularly strange about the way he is wearing his e-tool; this was fairly common when the M1928 haversack was not being used.

There are records and photos indicating that at least some units of 2nd Infantry Division and 30th Infantry Division received them also.

U.S. soldiers in HBT camouflage uniforms in a Half-track M2, Pont Brocard July 28, 1944, 41st Armored Inf. Regiment, 2d Armored Division. Cherbourg Library via Flickr.

These surviving examples from the Normandy Tank Museum shows a diorama of 2nd Armored Div troops in your typical battlefield mix-match:

The first dummy has the regular GI shirt, HBT camouflage pants, M1 Garand ammo holder belt, M36 web, M1 Garand reproduction, M28 bag, M1 helmet, gaiters very similar to the medic above. Second dummy has much the same but adds a T shovel worn in the same way as the C-rat connoisseur Pvt. De Freitos above, and gas mask cover. The third has the full HBT suit, original camouflage pants and jacket, M36 webbing with FM-BAR belt and charger holder. He also seems to have ditched his gaiters because he is that kinda guy.

The thing is, with so many Waffen SS guys and German Fallschirmjäger wearing camo smocks, the idea of GIs in camo proved unpopular and they were soon withdrawn from the ETO.

Some U.S. Army units were issued some of the two-piece HBTs in the Pacific late in the war.

U.S. Army Alamo Scouts, two in HBT uniforms. William E. Nellist (middle) pictured with unidentified trainees from the 4th Class. Cape Kassoe, Hollandia, DNG. August 1944. Dig the folding stock para model M1A1 Carbines, very useful in jungle fighting. Via Alamo Scouts website.

That theater also saw the use of a one-piece uniform jumpsuit. They were reversible with regular mustard green on the inside.

27th Infantry Division trains in Hawaii before embarking on the amphibious operation to seize Makin in the Gilbert Islands, Fall 1943. Soldier in one piece camouflage uniform is to the right.

Issued briefly, this zippered onesie was found by the Joe in the field to suck balls and was withdrawn.

Many of the Army’s surplus HBT went on to be donated to French forces such as was seen operating in French Indochina, and the Dutch trying to pacify their East Indies archipelago.

HBT-clad French Paratroops in Indochina circa 1953 ready their Mat 49 sub machine guns for a assault on Viet Minh guerrillas

Dutch KNIL infantry with British SMLE Enfields fighting Indonesian separatists in 1948– dig the ex-Army HBT

Army SF guy rebooted the pattern briefly in the early 1960s, complete with a camo beret, and issued the same to CIDG units in the hills.

U.S. Army Special Forces, Vietnam, Sept. 1966. Note camo beret, BAR and M3 Grease gun. D-Day in the A-Shau

And of course as with anything, both surplus and recreations were popular with hunters in the 1950s and 60s as seen in this 1952 sportsman’s catalog image:

Dig the pith helmet, srsly?

They are popular with reinactors who likely wear it more frequently than the Army ever did.

In honor of the anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem, here is a kit layout for a British Para Lance Corporal from Operation Market Garden in 1944. Can you say STEN mags? Note the one for the gun, seven in the stick pouches, and eight in the two hip pouches for a total of 16 30-round mags or 480 rounds of ammo. When that ran out, well, there are always the two Mills bombs and the Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife. The para who wore this would likely add a couple 50mm mortar bombs and a belt or two of .303 ammo for machine guns.

Image via the Parachute Regiment

One of the Texas Flying Legend Museum’s enduring fleet of P-40s.

Texas Warhawk

And she has a great history. From the Commemorative Air Force’s Website:

This P-40E is a cold weather survivor coming out of Elmendorf Field in Anchorage, Alaska. The plane rolled off of the assembly line on January 13th, 1942 as a Curtiss Model H87-A3. The military accepted her as P-40E s/n 41-5709. America was still recovering from the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese were marauding up and down the Aleutian Island Chain. On June 3rd, 1942 the Japanese attacked Fort Mears and Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. P-40s scrambled from Fort Randall but were too late to turn the Japanese back. The Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor again the next day, but this time American P-40s disrupted the force, shooting down one bomber. On June 5th, 1942 daily P-40 patrols started up in an effort to prevent surprise attacks.On September 26th, 1942, P-40E 41-5709 departed Fort Randall with 1st Lt. Dennis Crisp at the controls as part of the two-ship, daily patrol. Upon landing in the formation, his wingman landed long and ran into 5709′s tail.

Both planes were write-offs that day and ended up on the scrap heap in Cold Bay after the salvage of all usable parts.

The late Dick Odgers and a team of enthusiasts started excavating the dump at Cold Bay in 1987 and recovered significant chunks of 41-5709 among other wrecks. Odgers sold on his projects over the years, and by 1990 ’5709 was with Don Brooks in Douglas, Georgia. She was ready to fly again by August 25th, 2009, when Eliot Cross, a proven test pilot and air show performer, took 41-5709 to the skies again for the first time in 67 years. After the test flights were done, Ray Fowler, Chief Pilot and Executive Producer of the Liberty Foundation, got a turn at the stick and after several hours of flying the P-40E he convinced the board to purchase the fighter to go on tour with their B-17. They removed the rear fuel tank and installed a seat for passenger rides. Walter Bowe purchased the P-40E in 2013, who in turn sold the fighter to the Texas Flying Legends Museum in 2014, although Bowe remains a regular pilot. The P-40E wears the colors of Colonel Robert L. Scott Jr’s aircraft while he commanded the 23rd Fighter Group in the China-Burma-India Theatre during WWII.

She will be one of 7 P-40s at the upcoming 2016 Atlanta Warbird Weekend Sept 24-25, celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) so if you are in Georgia or can get there, it will be worth it.

Ian from Forgotten Weapons wraps his scholarly hands around a Marine Corps MC-1952 Sniper Garand, an Army M1C Sniper, and a series of Springfield 1903 sniper rifles for an in-depth look.

In the above video, he chronicles a Marine 1903A1 Springfield with an 8x Unertl scope, a Springfield 1903-A4 with a standard WWII-era M73B1 scope (which was just the commercial Weaver 330C), and a second 1903-A4 with a post World War II M84 rifle scope of the type used through the Korean Conflict into the early stages of the Vietnam War.

If bolt guns aren’t your thing, Ian picks up in the two videos below with the MC-1952, a Marine variation on the M1C Garand sniper rifle with a 4x Stith Kollmorgen Bear Cub scope; an authentic M1C itself with the M84; and of course an M1D.

Enjoy your lunch hour today!

Today we have narco subs (self-propelled semi-submersibles, or  SPSSs) to deal with but they are an idea that is almost a century old.

The Volstead Act in 1919 came at a time of technological innovation and, with a lot of Great War era soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines out of work, some quickly fell into the quick and easy field of bootlegging. While there were plenty of overland smugglers, rum row operations where speedboats (often powered by surplus Liberty aircraft engines) zipped up and down the coast, and some aerial smuggling, there also seems to be at least some evidence of submarine ops.

Some were apparently large scale as related in Smugglers, Bootleggers and Scofflaws: Prohibition and New York City by Ellen NicKenzie Lawson, which contains a 1924 aerial photo, purporting to show rum-smuggling submarines in the Hudson River near Croton Point.

The photo appears in the chapter “Rum Row”—the name of the smuggling area of the Atlantic coast from Nantucket to New York City and New Jersey. Lawson writes:

“News of a submarine being used on Rum Row appears to have some substance to it. One smuggler testified in court that he saw a submarine emerge on the Row with a German captain and a French crew. Newspapers in 1924 reported that submarines were smuggling liquor to New Jersey and Cape Cod. An aerial photo, taken by a commercial Manhattan map-making firm that same year, suggested submarines were thirty miles up the Hudson River near Croton Point. (German submarines were kept out of the river during World War I by a steel net strung low across the bottom of the Narrows.) The photo purported to document two submarines below the surface of the Hudson River, each 250 feet long [as big as a German Type U-93 class boat or a UE-II minelaying sub] and 600 feet apart. The aerial firm sent the photograph to the U.S. Navy, which had no submarines in the area, and the startling image was given to Coast Guard Intelligence and filed away.”

A firearms blog also contends that, “During prohibition a syndicate of bootleggers operating out of Puget Sound somehow managed to acquire a World War I German U-Boat.  They used the submarine to smuggle booze from Canada to Seattle.”

This is backed up by newspaper reports of the time (see The Evening Independent – Feb 16, 1922)

As Roy Olmstead, the “King of the Puget Sound Bootleggers,” was very well connected and financed, it may have been theoretically possible.

So there is that.

The only thing is that at this time the U.S. Navy (as well as those of France, Britain and Italy) were really stingy with selling surplus subs to the public with the exception of established ship breakers and other subs that may seem like there were floating around on the open market just weren’t.

Former Warship Wednesday alumni, the obsolete Lake-built submarine USS USS O-12 (SS-73) was stricken after being laid up during Prohibition and was soon leased for $1 per year (with a maximum of five years in options) to Lake’s company for use as a private research submarine– as far as I can tell the first time this occurred. But, as part of the lease agreement, she was disarmed and had to be either returned to the Navy or scuttled in at least 1,200 feet of water at the conclusion of her scientific use.

Further, in 1919 the Allied powers agreed that Germany’s immense U-boat fleet should be surrendered without the possibility of return and, while some boats were kept for research, the majority were dismantled and recycled or gesunken in deep water in the 20s. Of course, there is always the possibility that a scrapper may have resold a scratch and dent U-boat for the right price, but good luck keeping that quiet as subs of the era had to spend most of their time on the surface and most certainly would have been noticed by some busy body.

Then there is the crew, and a former bluejacket or unterseeboot driver who worked on such a project–providing he didn’t wind up in Davy Jones locker with said rum sub– would be sure to pass on the wild tale to their family post-Prohibition leading to the inevitable “my great uncle told me about his whisky U-boat” anecdotal recollection on a Ken Burns’ documentary.

Build your own

A 1926 newspaper article tells a similar tale of a towed submersible caught coming across the U.S./Canadian border via Lake Champlain.

“[S]ubmarine without motors, has been seized at Lake Champlain with 4800 bottles of ale. The seizure was made by the Royal Canadian Boundary Waters and Customs officials. It is pointed out that bootleggers have been using every known method of conveyance to run contraband liquor from Canada to the United States, including automobiles, motorboats, aeroplanes, and submarines. The latter have been known an mystery boats, having a length of 28ft., with a device for submerging and rising to the surface, but without any propelling mechanism, they being towed by the hawser 175ft. long. Air and vision are obtained by periscopes. The authorities say these vessels are extremely expensive, but they have successfully conveyed so much liquor that they have quickly paid for themselves.”

A history of the anti-smuggling patrol from U.S. Customs on the Lake, collected by the Vermont Historical Society, relates a similar tale, with a better take on a smaller unmanned semi-submersible:

While in the main channel of the lake a bit west of the Rutland Railroad fill, we saw an object which, from a  distance, looked like a  floating log. Whenever we found logs or other floating hazards to navigation, we dragged them ashore. As we approached the presumed log, to our surprise we saw instead a sort of barge anchored in such a way that the top of it lay awash. About 10 feet long, 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep, it had a hatch on the top which, when removed, disclosed a cargo of sacks of beer which weighted the barge sufficiently to keep it awash. Presumably towed by a small boat in stages over several nights,  we assumed that the smugglers would tow it as far as they dared during the night hours and would then anchor it in the hope that no one would discover it during the day. We towed the barge with its contents back to St. Albans Bay and again destroyed the alcoholic contents. The 1932 clippings from the St. Albans Messenger refer to a “submarine” bought at auction. Jack Kendrick later told me that this was the same barge which we had found floating in 1926.

Another Lake Champlain tale:

To disguise themselves on the water, some bootleggers tied a long rope to one end of the bags of alcohol and towed it behind them in a hollow log under water like a submarine. The disadvantage here, however, was that the log would immediately float to the surface and become visible if the boat were to be stopped by an officer. The method that worked best was to tie the bags of alcohol to one end of a rope and tie a box of rock salt to the other: if chased, the bootleggers could push the setup overboard, the bags and box would sink to the bottom, and later, as the rock salt dissolved, the box would float to the surface and act as a buoy-like marker for bootleggers to recover their lost cargo.

Then, there is the small scale home-built river running submersible on public display at the Grand Gulf Military Park near Port Gibson, Mississippi.

Apparently the one-man submarine was powered by a Model T Ford Engine and used during the early Prohibition period to bootleg whiskey and rum from Davis Island to Vicksburg.

A turn of phrase

Another popular action of the period (and even today), moon-shining, saw the advent of “submarine stills” large black pot stills with a capacity of  up to 800-gallons of mash.

Submarine stills…like Japanese midget subs waiting for the 7th Fleet

This led to the inevitable possibility of bootleggers passing off bottles of hootch that, when asked where they came from, would be told “From a submarine”….which may have made the legend of surplus U-boats full of whisky more popular than the reality.

Either way, it is a great story.

In the ongoing crapshow that was the Katanga conflict, A Company, 35th Irish Infantry Battalion, led by Commandant Pat Quinlan, was part of the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) peacekeeping mission in the region in 1961.

The mixed force of 150 men, armed with the random collection of WWI/WWII era equipment that the Irish forces were known for at the time, held the village of Jadotville (modern Likasi) against a determined force of (up to) 3,000 Katangan gendarme–mostly bands of Luba warriors– led by French, Belgian and Rhodesian mercenaries and supported by light artillery (WWI-era French 75s) and a French-made Fouga CM.170 Magister*, a jet trainer that could carry cannon, rockets and small bombs.

Winning a tactical victory, the Irish refused to quit for a full week until they were out of ammo, short of water, and with no relief in sight– without losing a life. Surrendering, their story was one of shame instead of victory due to striking their flag. Well, that has finally been reversed in recent years and a film has been made of the fight. Great footage of the Vickers dotting up the Magister.

The film, set to release on October 8 on Netflix, is based on the book and scholarship about Jadotville book by Declan Power, who gives a great synopsis and overview in the interview below.

(*Ironically, the Irish Air Corps operated six Fouga Magisters from 1975 to 1999, four of which equipped the Silver Swallows display team, and were the last armed jets the Irish flew).

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 Sept. 28, 2016: From the Lingayen to the FloraBama

NHHC Collection photo # UA 22.02.01

Here we see the Catskill-class vehicle landing ship (or Terror-class fleet minelayer depending on how you look at it) USS Ozark (CM-7/AP-107/LSV–2/MCS-2) showing off her stern and high helicopter deck with hanger clearance in 1966.

The Navy in its entire history has only had 12 vessels that carried a Cruiser-Minelayer (CM) designation. These started with the old retyped cruisers USS Baltimore and San Francisco (reclassified in 1919), the converted passenger freighters USS Aroostook (CM-3) and USS Oglala (CM-4) who helped sow the North Sea Barrage; the purpose-built fleet minelayer USS Terror (CM-5) commissioned in 1942; and five other WWII-era freighters and passenger ferries converted to the designation around the same time (USS Keokuk, USS Monadnock, USS Miantonomah, USS Salem, and USS Weehawken).

The two I missed? Well that’s USS Catskill and her sister USS Ozark, which were very simple updates to the Terror design.

Terror, Catskill, and Ozark had all been names of Civil War monitors that were recycled.

USS Ozark on the Red River in 1864. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

The class of 454-foot long/6,000-ton minelayers were fast enough to keep ahead of submarines (20 knots), sufficiently armed enough (4x 5-inchers and a healthy AAA suite) to not need an escort, and room enough for several hundred of the latest sea mines.

Terror was completed 15 July 1942 and rushed into fleet service in her intended role. However, it turned out that purpose-built minelayers were a waste of resources when other ships could be converted and both Catskill and Ozark were modified while still at the builders from their original roles.

Ozark was authorized by Congress on 19 July 1940 as a Fleet Minelayer, CM-7, and laid down at Willamette Iron and Steel Corporation, Portland, Oregon. Her designation was subsequently changed to a Troop Transport (AP-107) in June 1943 and finally to a Landing Ship, Vehicle (LSV-2, with Catskill being LSV-1) before her commissioning 23 September 1944.

Now swelled to some 9,000-tons full load, she was designed to transport a reinforced battalion-sized unit of 80 officers and 788 troops and land them using 31 Army DUKWs from her large vehicle (former mine stowage) deck and  a number of LCVPs and 26-foot motor launches.

You know the 31-foot DUK, right? Now that’s amphibious!

By November 1944, Ozark was part of Transport Squadron Thirteen warming up in the Solomons for the big push on Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, Philippine Islands.

When the landing started, she was baptized.

From DANFS:

The 7 January 1945 marked the first day in the lives of many aboard the Ozark for experiencing visual contact with the enemy. About 1706 that day an enemy aircraft flew at masthead height across the formation pursued by four U.S. Navy fighters, and was shot down seconds later. Much tension was relieved by witnessing that sight. The next day, the 8th of January 1945, proved to be more exciting. About mid-morning a twin-engine Japanese bomber flew out of the sun over the formation and narrowly missed hitting the ship next ahead with its bombs. About dusk the same day Japanese bombers and suicide planes attacked the formation from all points. Several dive bombers were shot down by the Combat Air Patrol. One suicide plane singled out Transport Squadron Thirteen in particular. He circled out of range of the automatic weapons to the port quarter of the formation. Then he started his death plunge. All guns on the port side of the Ozark opened fire. The Kamikaze was headed for the ship on our port beam. Tension mounted. The amount of flak being put up was uncanny, but still the plane headed for its target apparently unaffected. The Ozark’s 40MM and 5″/38 cal. Were nippin at the tail of the plane all the way in its downward plunge. The climax came when a burst at the tail rocked the plane in its path of flight and sent it to a firey end a few feet from the stern of the vessel it had intended to crash.

The next day, 9 January 1945, the formation approached Lingayen Gulf for the assault. The area was frequented by enemy aircraft, suiciding combatant and transport vessels, in a vain attempt to halt the operation. The Ozark landed her personnel and equipment according to plan. Casualties and survivors from damaged and sunken ships were taken aboard and the Ozark left Lingayen Gulf that night with Transport Squadron Thirteen for Leyte Gulf, Philippine Islands.

Then came the invasion of Iwo Jima (Ozark landed three waves of troops there 19 February 1945 and continued logistic support to the beach until 27 February), the Okinawa operation (landing her men on April 1), and more of the same. In mid-August, she took aboard 911 Marines and Sailors from some two dozen ships via breeches buoy in the mid-ocean (!) to be used in upcoming garrison operations in Japan.

She finished the war present in Tokyo Bay during the Surrender Ceremony, 2 September 1945, having landed her troops and received some 970 recovered prisoners-of-war.

Ozark left for Guam and Pearl Harbor directly to take her recovered heroes, many suffering horribly and in need of desperate medical attention, home.

60 buses and ambulances await the arrival of the first 970 POWs returning to the U.S. from Japan aboard USS Ozark, Agana, Guam 13 Sept. 1945

Ozark earned three WWII battle stars in less than 10 months deployed to the war zone.

After the war the remaining minelayers (Miantonomah was sunk by a mine off the coast of France in 1944), were decommissioned and disposed of with only purpose-built Terror, Catskill and Ozark retained– and then only in mothballs.

Ozark was on red lead row in Texas from 29 June 1946 and was struck from the Naval Vessel Register 1 September 1961. However, in a rarity, she was reacquired from the Maritime Administration in 1963 for conversion to a mine countermeasures support ship (MCS) — or mother ship to small minesweeping craft and RH-3A helicopters.

Recommissioned 24 June 1966 with the old monitor USS Ozark ship’s bell, the revamped ship was different. Gone were the DUKWs and the WWII batteries of 20mm and 40mm guns. In their place were added the capability to carry up to 20 36-foot Mine Sweep Launches MSL’s, two minesweeping equipment-carrying LCM’s, and two big Sea King minesweeping helicopters.

The 36 ft MSL, Ozark/Catskill’s primary weapon against mines in the 1960s. Each ship could carry 20 of these little wooden vessels

Each MSL could carry their own paravanes and sweep gear as shown in this 1953 National Geographic shot of a Korean War-era MSB

USS OZARK (MCS-2) Underway off Norfolk, Virginia, on 31 August 1966. Along minesweeping launches embarked are: MSL-33, 31, 40, 48, 47, and 42. Catalog #: USN 1117513, Copyright Owner: National Archives

Sister USS Catskill as similarly converted MCS-1 with MSL’s and one HC-7 RH-3 Helicopter aboard

An RH-3A mine busting Sea King at play. Note the sweep gear. Catskill and Ozark could carry two of these aircraft while the other former LSDs converted to MCS configuration could carry as many as four

As noted by Ed Sinclair, the ships were a sight:

In Long Beach, sailors nicknamed the Catskill “The Mail Ship”. She evidently had so many steadying lines for the MSL’s housed in their davits, which were rolled up and stored in white canvas bags while underway, sailors thought she looked like she was carrying the US Mail.

After recommissioning and shakedown, Catskill became MineFlot1 Flagship and Mine Countermeasures Support vessel for COMinRon 3 vessels homeported in Sasebo, Japan. She deployed to Vietnam 1969-70.

Five other WWII landing ships, the USS Osage (LSV-3), USS Saugus (LSV-4), USS Monitor (LSV-5), USS Orleans Parish (LST-1069), and USS Epping Forest (LSD-4), were given similar conversions to mine countermeasures support ships and designated MCS-3 through MCS-7 respectively.

The thing is, with Vietnam drawing down and mines being seen at the time as a dated weapon not to be used again, the Navy seemingly moved to do away with all things mine related. The grand old USS Terror, decommissioned since 1956 and still comparatively low-milegae, was sold for scrap in November 1971 to the Union Minerals and Alloys Corp. of New York, NY.

Catskill was decommissioned December 1970 and, though she received three battle stars for World War II service and five campaign stars for Vietnam, was quickly disposed of.

Ozark was based in Charleston and spent a quiet seven years on a series of cruises to the Med and South Atlantic.

In 1969, she was part of Task Force 140 that plucked Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins from the drink in the Atlantic after their moon landing. She had previously been used to help recover Apollo 10.

The U.S. Navy mine countermeasures support ship USS Ozark (MCS-2) with an Sikorsky RH-3A Sea King helicopter aft, and her crew manning the rails in summer whites, circa 1968-1970. Source: U.S. Navy Naval Aviation News March 1982

Decommissioned and struck from the Naval Register, 1 April 1974, Ozark was towed to Destin, Florida the next year and anchored there to be used as a target by the Air Force from nearby Eglin and Tyndal.

The other converted landing ship MCS’s 3-7 would all be stricken and disposed of by 1974.

The plucky little MSL’s were sold from the boat lot mole pier in Long Beach, CA in April 1975.

The MCS designation would lie dormant in the Navy until the old helicopter assault ship USS Inchon (LPH-12) would be converted to MCS-12 in 1995 and would be retired in 2004. Today the former landing ship ex-USS Ponce serves much the same role as a laser-equipped floating MCS in all but name in the Persian Gulf.

As for Ozark, she had a few more tricks up her sleeve.

When Hurricane Frederic came barreling into the Gulf of Mexico in September 1979, the old minelayer/LSV, last of either type still in the Navy’s possession, drug her mooring and took to the sea once more, washing up some 30 miles to the East near the Florida-Alabama state line at Perdido Key close to where the current FloraBama bar is located.

She was salvaged by Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 (MDSU-2) in October.

ex-USS Ozark aground on Perdido Key, Florida. Note the Army Sikorsky CH-54 Tarhe flying crane lifting gear

Taken back to Destin against her will, she was lost in 1981 during a live fire event.

Per Mike Green at Navsource:

The ship was unintentionally sunk with a Maverick missile launched from an F-4 “Phantom” from Eglin AFB in 1981. The missile’s warhead entered on her starboard side approximately 13 feet above the waterline, went through 2 decks and exploded above the hull leaving a hole approximately 3 feet in diameter in her hull. The hole in the bottom of the ship wasn’t noticed until the next day when Air Force personnel and Hughes Missile Systems Co. engineers entered the ship for damage assessment. By this time, she was listing at 16 degrees and all personnel were ordered off the ship.

This photo shows Ozark listing at 16 degrees to starboard 12 hours before she sank. Wikemedia Commons, Gordon Starr, photographer

Today the wreck currently lies upright and intact in approximately 330 feet of water,  about 30 miles due south of Destin. She is a popular wreck for experienced technical divers.

The Navy has not reused the names Terror, Catskill, or Ozark since the class of minelayers.

Ozark‘s name, as well as all those involved in mine warfare, is kept alive by the Naval Minewarfare Association and Association of Minemen.

For a good in-depth look at these LSVs and small minesweeping craft, check out Ed Sinclair’s archived “Iron Men In Wooden Boats” over at Navsource here (pdf) and for more information about the Terror there is a 62-page album online with snapshots and stories as well as a dedicated website of her own including this great piece of maritime art:

“High level bombing attack on USS Terror in Oceania: a true incident related by ship’s personnel,” by LR Lloyd

Specs:
Displacement: 5,875 long tons (5,969 t), 9,000 tons FL
Length:     454 ft. 10 in (138.63 m)
Beam:     60 ft. 2 in (18.34 m)
Draft:     19 ft. 7 in (5.97 m)
Propulsion:     2 × General Electric double-reduction geared steam turbines, 2 shafts, 22,000 shp (16,405 kW)
four turbo-drive 500Kw 450V A.C. Ship’s Service Generators
four Combustion Engineering D-type boilers, 400psi 700°
Speed:     20.3 knots (37.6 km/h; 23.4 mph)
Complement: 481 as commissioned along with space for 850+ embarked troops
Boats:
LSV Configuration – 31 DUKWS plus LCVPs
MCS Configuration – 20 36′ MSLs plus 2 LCMs
Aircraft two helicopters (MCS Configuration)
Armament:     (designed as CM)
4 × 5″/38 caliber guns
4 × quad 1.1 in (28 mm) guns
14 × 20 mm guns singles
(LSV Configuration)
4 single 5″/38 cal DP gun mounts
4 twin 40mm AA gun mounts
20 single 20mm AA gun mounts
(MCS)
two single 5″/38 cal DP gun mounts

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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.

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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, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of James Arthur Pownall

Not much is known of James Arthur Pownall, coming from the landed gentry and born in to a family of cotton merchants. Pownall apparently eschewed work in the cotton concern to take up painting full time.

Soon afterward, starting around 1882, his work chronicling British and Indian military units began to circulate and continued to do so until the early 1930s.

A Mounted Sowar in Drab Full Dress, Guides Cavalry, James Arthur Pownall, 1902, National Army Museum.  Note the Martini rifle while the rest of the empire was going Lee-Metford. The Corps of Guides was raised in 1846/1847 by Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Harry Lumsden (1821–1896). In 1886, as part of the later nineteenth-century reform of the Indian Army, the Guides were transferred from the control of the Governor of the Punjab to that of the Commander-in-Chief. The cavalry regiment was later numbered 10th in the 1922 reorganization of the Indian Army.

Bringing Up the Guns, James Arthur Pownall, 1898,Atkinson Art Gallery Collection

Indian Corps of Drums,1918, James Arthur Pownall, Cheshire Military Museum

Mounted Lancer, James Arthur Pownall, 1918, Cheshire Military Museum

On exhibit extensively in the UK, a number of his pieces have also passed into private collections in recent years and has appeared in a number of books about the Indian Army (Soldiers of the Raj: The Indian Army 1600-1947, et. al)

Thank you for your work, sir.

Star trails over an Apache AH Mk 1 of 4 Regiment Army Air Corps (4 Regt AAC) sitting in the Mojave Desert during a Joint Helicopter Command (JHC) training exercise, working alongside Dutch, US and Singapore troops as part of Ex Black Alligator currently taking place in California. MoD photo.

Starting in 1998, the Brits arranged for AgustaWestland Apache to produce 67 license-built versions of the AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter for the British Army’s Army Air Corps to replace 1980s-era Westland Lynx AH7s. Since being delivered they have done yeoman work around the world seeing particularly heavy service in Afghanistan (with Prince Harry at the throtle of one) as well as operating from HMS Ocean off Libya in 2011–engaging targets there at least 39 times.

The Brits still have 50 aircraft in active service in seven squadrons of the 3 and 4 Regt AAC out of 66 airframes (one was written off in 2008 after cracking up shortly after takeoff in Helmand province, no loss of life occurred) and are expected to be replaced around 2024 by 50 Boeing AH-64Es bought direct via US Foreign Military Sales (FMS).

Photo via LIFE archives, originally black & white, cleaned up & colourised by Paul Reynolds

A Naik (corporal) of either the 7th or 9th Gurkha Rifles, part of the 4th Indian Division of the British 8th Army, swinging his curved knife known as khukri (kukri), 1st August 1943.

Unit Moto: Kafar Hunu Bhanda Marnu Niko (Better to die than live like a coward)

I bumped into a few Gurkha in my travels and dearly love a good khukri. Besides a collectable Bhojpure model that I display with my vintage Nepalese Francotte, I keep an Ontario Cutlery Kurkri in my camping gear and it is hellah functional for clearing brush and cleanup…or zombies.

Numbers increasing

The British military recently announced at a passout for new troops that, while other forces are declining, the number of Gorkha in the Army will be growing by a quarter.

Lieutenant General J I Bashall CBE, inspecting new members of the Brigade of Gurkhas, 6 October– note the Kukri. They are not ceremonial.

All Gurkha soldiers undergo nine months of training at the Infantry Training Centre, in Catterick, which includes cultural integration trips to Darlington and Richmond.

Lt Gen Bashall said last week: “It is because of the excellent professionalism and first class reputation of Brigade of Gurkhas that we have decided to increase Brigade of Gurkhas by 25 per cent. This will see those on parade today offered far greater opportunity for longer service, wider employment and promotion.”

Source http://defenseimagery.mil; VIRIN: DA-ST-86-06121

What better way to celebrate the 11th of October with this snap of members of the 11th Armored Cavalry stooped to talk with West German Bundesgrenzschutz border police while patrolling the border between the DDR and FGR in Ford M151 MUTT light vehicles (marked with 7th Armored Cav Regt). Date 1979.

Dig the M1911s in leather holsters, OD green uniforms which would be replaced by woodland BDUs in just a few years, distinctive Blackhorse patches and black berets long before it was cool– as a homage to the British Royal Tank Regiment who adopted the headgear as standard in 1924 (while the German Panzer units did the same in the late 1930s and brought them back in 1956 with the Bundeswehr).

As noted by an 11th Cav veteran’s group, “In the US Army, HQDA policy from 1973 through 1979 permitted local commanders to encourage morale-enhancing distinctions, and Armor and Armored Cavalry personnel wore black berets as distinctive headgear.”

Formed in 1901, the Blackhorse served in the Philippines, along the border, and in the 1916 pursuit of Villa in Mexico (where they rode 22 hours straight to the rescue of United States forces besieged in Parral), before cooling their heels stateside in the Great War. Ditching their horses for armor in 1940, they served in Western Europe during WWII, fighting at the Bulge, then alternated Cold War service between West Germany and Vietnam (1966-71) and finally Kuwait before being sent to the NTC at Ft. Irwin in 1994 as the designated OPFOR (with breaks since then to go to the sandbox for real).