The 65th Infantry Regiment has a long and unsung history. Founded originally in 1901 as the “Porto Rico Provisional Regiment of Infantry,” based at Camp Las Casas, the unit engaged a German support ship trying to violate the territory’s neutrality in 1915 then in WWI was sent as an emergency reinforcement for the Panama Canal zone. On 4 June 1920 the unit was renamed the 65th Infantry, and was commonly, then and now, referred to as the Borinqueneers. The name is a combination of the words “Borinquen” (which was what the Taínos called the island before the arrival of the Spaniards) and “Buccaneers”.

When WWII came the unit again was rushed to defend the Canal Zone but then, when the great push came in Europe, they were sent overseas, landing in France in Sept 1944 and remaining engaged in combat operations until VE-Day and beyond, with her soldiers earning 2 silver and 22 bronze stars.

Borinqueneers: the only all-Hispanic unit in U. S. Army history Soldiers of the 65th, North of the Han River, Korea, June 1951. (U. S. Army photo

Then in 1950, when the balloon went up, the still-segregated 65th was rushed to Korea, arriving at Pusan, ROK on 23 September 1950. As part of the 3rd INF Div, they helped hold the line at the Chosin in November, allowing the Marines to withdraw. They went on to fight at the Han River, the Uijonbu Corridor, the Iron Triangle, and others. In all the 65th was awarded battle citations for nine campaigns, and they are credited with the last battalion-sized bayonet assault in U.S. Army history.

During the Korean War, the Borinqueneers were awarded 10 Distinguished Service Crosses, 256 Silver Stars, 606 Bronze Stars, and 2,771 Purple Hearts. Of the 3900 men who shipped to Korea with the regiment, 743 troops from the 65th were killed and 2,318 were wounded.

In what is viewed by many to have been a slight due to politics of the time, Master Sergeant Juan E. Negron, the only member of the 65th so far to have received the MOH,  was awarded it this March.

Painting depiction of the U.S. 65th Infantry Regiment’s bayonet charge against a Chinese division during the Korean War by Dominic D’andrea

On Tuesday at the White House, President Obama signed bills passed by the House and Senate to honor the legacy of the 65th with the award of the Congressional Gold Medal.

Currently, only the 65th Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion is active, as part the 92nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the of the PRARNG.

Graffiti of Gavrilo Princip in Belgrade, Serbia. Text in Serbian reads: “Our ghosts will wander through Vienna, stroll around the palaces and scare the masters“

Scary to think that two pistol shots from a Browning .380ACP would cause 38 million casualties and sweep three empires into the dustbin of history.

Behold! The 276-foot, 1100-ton British S-class destroyer HMS Stronghold. Built by Scott’s, laid down March 1918, launched 6 May 1919, and completed 2 July 1919, she was used as a test-bed for an interesting bit of kit in the 1920s.

Here she is fitted with the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Larynx. This designation was for the Long Range Gun with Lynx Engine, an inert unmanned missile on a cordite-fired catapult mounted aboard Stronghold. The picture was taken July 1927. The man on the box is Dr. George Gardner; later Director of RAE.

That year the device was tested three times. On the first, the craft, which could reach 200mph and was controlled by radio, crashed at sea. The second, it roared off, was spotted about 100 miles away (at sea) and then was never seen again. The third test, on October 15, 1927, flew some 112 miles and impacted some 5 miles from its intended target.

The catapult was removed from Stronghold after this test although a sister-ship, HMS Thanet, conducted two more launches in 1928 while a final two were done over British-occupied Iraq in 1929 with similar results.

HMS Stronghold herself was lost in action south of Java 4 March 1942, destroyed by (manned) warplanes of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Click to big up

1st Lieutenant, 7th Cavalry Regiment

This figure wears a typical uniform for US officers during the border fighting. The M1911 “olive drab” Montana-peaked hat has officers’ black and gold cords with two acorn tassels. His wool pullover campaign shirt in a similar shade has four dark brown buttons on the placket, and bears his rank bars on the collar; he chooses not to wear the black necktie. His wool riding trousers are a rather darker “olive drab” shade. He is armed with a .45 cal Colt M1911 semi-automatic pistol in a cavalry-type swiveling russet brown holster with “US” embossed on the flap, and secured by a long khaki lanyard looped diagonally around his torso. The M1912 belt also supports a double pistol magazine pouch, and is itself supported by a pair of leather suspenders.

Dispatch rider, 1st Provisional Motorcycle Company

The motorcyclist wears an M1911 olive drab knit wool service sweater with two open hip pockets, worn over the soldier’s campaign shirt and cavalry-style wool trousers. Bandanas were often sported by American soldiers. His goggles are commercially manufactured – the US Army never issued them for Mexican border service. His equipment is limited to the M1910 cartridge belt, leather cavalry-style gloves, and cavalry brown leather leggings worn over the russet brown shoes. Slung across his back is his M1903 Springfield, and on his right hip a non-regulation early model dispatch case of olive drab canvas. His mount is an early Harley-Davidson; the Army began using motorcycles as early as 1913, and in 1916 the Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company’s product became the vehicle of choice during the pursuit of Pancho Villa. By 1917 roughly one-third of all Harley-Davidsons produced were sold to the US military. In the background is a US/Mexican border marker.

Sergeant, 24th Infantry Regiment

This NCO from the African-American US 24th Infantry wears the M1911 Montana-peak hat with light blue infantry cords, a well-worn OD campaign shirt, wool trousers and laced khaki canvas leggings, with the M1910 pack, cartridge belt and first aid pouch. The bayonet for his M1903 Springfield is carried in a scabbard covered with canvas and a leather chape. He is drinking from his M1910 aluminum canteen. In the foreground is the M1909 Benet-Mercie machine rifle, which made its combat debut with the US Cavalry during Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico.
-Hattip (Stephen Walsh)

Here we see the flying monotonicity known as the Barling Bomber, which flew from 1923-27. Offically designated as the Witteman-Lewis XNBL-1 (Night Bombardment – Long Distance) this prototype war engine of the sky had six Liberty engines, three wings and a 10-wheel landing gear. Although this beast carried 7 machineguns (a feat not bested until WWII) and more than two tons of bombs, it was slow (try 60mph) and had short legs (combat radius of just 75 miles) even when carrying 2000-lbs of fuel, and as such was never put into production.

Long distance indeed.

Her nose wheel and landing gear are on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton.

Built in 1913, 10-stories below New York’s Grand Central Terminal, lies perhaps the most strategically important room in the United States for during the World Wars. The video is a pretty neat way to spend 4-minutes

Ernst Udet (1896 – 1941), second most successful fighter pilot of the first World War with 62 confirmed victories, was requested by Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen for the Jasta 11 in March 1918, he received the Pour le Mérite in April 1918 and took over the command of Jasta 4 after Richthofen was killed in action. After the First World War he took up work as an aircraft constructor, actor, and pilot for stunts, shows and advertisements. His close relationship to Göring opened up his career path in the Luftwaffe in 1935, which came to an end on 17.11.1941. At the time of his suicide he was a Director General of Equipment in the rank of a Colonel General.

The following 8 drawings of aircraft, dating from 1915 – 1941 were made by Ernst Udet in watercolor and drawing ink over pencil on identically sized sheets of paper (37 x 50 cm). Very detailed studies in profile with inscriptions and short notes in block letters handwritten by Udet with the typical spelling mistakes known from his other handwritten documents. The (slightly foxed) paper and colors are more or less identical, suggesting that the fair drawings were made around 1940/41. He signed and dated them after original sketches he largely made during the First World War. The crop marks on each drawing indicate that the drawings were intended for a book project on the development of aeronautics which Udet had in mind, but were not realized due to his suicide in November 1941.

Udet´s drawing skills are well known from numerous small sketches and caricatures, especially famous are his extremely rare illustrations of captured allied aircraft re-lacquered in German colors – only a few were captured and re-used, and practically none of them survived the First World War – which could only have been observed and documented by experienced front pilots such as Udet. With a comprehensive expert opinion.

Rumpler C.I. bomber of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1915

Junkers J.I. of the Imperial German Flying Corps.

Hannover C.L.III.a. of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1918

Junkers J.I. of the Imperial German Flying Corps

O.A.W.R.VI. bomber of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1918 (Zeppelin Staaken R.VI. built by the OAW East German Albatros Plant)

Albatros D.V. of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1918

Albatros B.II. of the Imperial German Flying Corps 1916

Lohner C.I. Bomber of the Austro-Hungarian Flying Corps

Ref: Ernst Udet in Aquarellfarben und Tusche über Bleistift auf einheitlichem Papierformat (37 x 50 cm) angefertigt.

Letter to an Unknown Soldier is creating a digital memorial for WWI by asking people to submit letters to the unknown soldier at Paddington Station. Deadline is August 4.

Why?

In a year jammed-full of WW1 commemoration our PROJECT invites everyone to step back from the public ceremonies and take a few private moments to think.

If you were able to send a PERSONAL message to this soldier, a man who served and was killed during World War One, what would you write?

Who?

The response to this project has been extraordinary. Over 10,000 people have sent letters so far – and all sorts of people: schoolchildren, authors (including Stephen Fry, Malorie Blackman, and Andrew Motion), nurses, serving members of the forces and even the Prime Minister. If you write to the soldier, your letter will be published alongside theirs.

When?

The website will remain open until 11 p.m. on the night of 4 August 2014.

Between now and then every letter that the soldier receives will be published and made available for everyone to read.  Eventually all of the letters will be archived in the British Library where they will remain permanently accessible online.

Your letter will help us create a new kind of war memorial – one made entirely of words, and by everyone.

Find out more information,

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 Aug 6: Of an General, an Admiral, a cadet, Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo

Here we see the Cañonero corbeta-escuela “General Zaragoza” at anchor around the 1890s. She was the backbone of the Armada de México for more than three decades, one of the first modern warships of that navy, and as such the birthplace of that current military force.

Zaragoza , the General who brought us Cinco De Mayo

Named for the famous 33-year old General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín, the leader of the Mexican forces during the first part of the French Intervention in Mexico. The Secretary of War in the cabinet of Benito Juárez, Zaragoza resigned from his desk job and led a rag tag force of some 4500-men against 6000 hardened French regulars at the battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. This victory is still remembered by Mexicans at home and abroad in the regular Cinco de Mayo festivals in which everyone suddenly loves Corona, Dos Equis, and Modelo Negros.

In 1890 a modern 213-foot steel hulled corvette was ordered from the Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée ship ways at Le Havre, France. A steam-engined barque-rigged ship, she was capable of 13-knots with her boilers lit, slightly less with her canvas aloft and a good breeze, or slightly more with a following gale. The man-of war was configured to be crewed by 21 officers and 98 enlisted, she had berthing for 20-40 midshipmen trainees in her intended role as the navy’s first modern buqueescuela or school-ship in addition to her primary duties as a steel warship.

A nice view of the Zaragoza with her original rig. The “Chocolaterie d’aiguebelle (Drome)” label on this card is from the French Chocolat d’Aiguebelle company, a candy maker in the late 19th and early 20th century who included produced a series of naval vessel cards drawn tyically from French and French-made vessels.

Being built in France, her armament consisted of a half-dozen Schneider-Canet made 140mm (5.5-inch) rapid fire naval rifles as her main battery, two Nordenfelt 57mm guns, and a pair of 37mm (1.5-inch) Hotchkiss revolving guns for defense against small boats. The ship also carried enough small arms for a decent landing party and small, wheeled cannon for the same.

A force of officers and contract sailors commanded by Brigadier Gen/Vice Admiral Angel Ortiz Monasterio (at the time the Navy was part of the Army) collected the ship from France November 16, 1891, placing her in commission then. She then sailed in her maiden voyage to Veracruz at a slow rate in nine weeks, carrying the first national prototype kilogram of platinum-iridium to arrive in Mexico.

Angel Ortiz Monasterio, the Admiral

She re-crossed the Atlantic that fall to have her rig improved for faster sailing and some other technical modifications. As luck would have it, she was in Cadiz in time to attend the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, serving as an escort ship for the Queen Regent of Spain’s royal yacht, a duty that led to the ship, officers, and men being decorated by the regent. The fact that Monasterio had served in the Spanish Navy for 13 years and at one point was an ADC to the King probably helped ease that process.

With her improved rig

To display the new ship, it was decided to attempt the first Mexican circumnavigation of the globe in 1895-97. It was divided into two stages: the first was commanded by experienced Cape Horn master English merchant skipper Carey Brenton, who took command in Tampico, where he sailed on April 5 to tour Central, and South America, and passed through the Strait of Magellan to reach Acapulco on July 29. The second stage was to be commanded again by Monasterio with a young captain by the name of Manuel Azueta as ship’s master, who brought his toddler son Jose along for the epic trip. Zaragoza had her hull inspected and cleaned in dry-dock in San Francisco in August at which point while on the circumnavigation that the corvette was boarded and observed by Americans in California.

One of whom left the following impression:

San Francisco Call, August 9, 1895

ON BOARD THE ZARAGUZA

The Mexican War Vessel the Scene of a Public Reception.

Yesterday afternoon a public reception was held on board of the Mexican war vessel Zaragoza, lying off the oil works, and a large party of visitors enjoyed the graceful and hearty hospitality of Captain Azueta and his brother officers. . . . To exhibit the seamanship of his crew Captain Azueta put them through the naval evolutions of sail drill and sending down the lighter yards. At the order, the little Mexican tars ran aloft arid in a short space of time the canvas dropped simultaneously from the yards. The sails were quickly furled and presently the topgallant and royal yards and topgallant masts all came down together on deck with a precision not always found even on crack American and English men-of-war. Prominent among the nimble sailors was the little live-year-old son of the commander . . . The Zaragoza is a French built steel corvette with an armament of six 14-centimeter, or about 5-inch guns, two Nordenfeldt quick-fire and two Hotchkiss guns. . . . Captain Manuel Azueta was born in Mexico 33 years ago, and was educated at the naval school in Spain, and has been in the service of the republic 18 years. He is a highly polished gentleman, a thorough sailor and an earnest patriot of the Mexican Republic. The Zaragoza has completed her repairs and will sail for Guaymas to-morrow.

From there the ship sailed to Honolulu, Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hong Kong, Ceylon, Adam, Port Said and up through the Suez, Toulon and back to Veracruz on July 3, 1897 after showing the Mexican tricolor throughout most of the seven seas in a 27-month cruise. During this trip, the hardy little ship’s name was repeated with pleasure and praise in the columns of the newspapers of those distant countries.

Once back in Mexico, the trio of Zaragoza, Captain Azueta and Vice Adm. Monasterio went about establishing the Republic’s first naval academy, the Escuela Naval Flotante/Escuela Naval Militar, at Veracruz. With just 26 students seconded from the Army, the installation for the Naval Academy consisted of a wooden house at the intersection of Landeros and Coss street consisting of two bodies or eaves of two floors, with an intermediate court where the offices of naval command were installed on the south side of market seafood port. After conditioning the building, it finally opened on July 1, 1897 with the Zaragoza serving as the floating classroom and school ship.

Peace and quiet, however were not to be the Zaragoza‘s plight, however and by 1898 she sailed under Azueta’s orders to assist the government in the pacification of the Maya Indian rebels in southeastern Mexico. Zaragoza reached the coast of Yucatan with orders to seize the strongpoint at the El Castllio Tulum ruins, the ancient landmark of the Maya. Azueta landed on the beach there with a 150 man Army/Navy landing force and seized the castle after a siege. Over the next seven years, the ship remained in near constant combat against the rebels, transporting her landing force along the coast and seizing Progresso, Xcalax, Isla Mujeres, Puerto Morelos, Cozumel, Ascension Bay, and Rio Hondo, sometimes more than once. It was a bloody conflict that is not remembered well by the history books for good reason. During this time, Monasterio retired and Azueta moved up to command the Naval Academy, leaving the Zaragoza in the Yucatan.

It was while at Tampico the aging corvette served alongside the warships “Veracruz” and “El Bravo” during the siege by the Constitucionalistas from December 1913 to May 1914, where she operated as floating artillery for federal troops under General Ignacio Morelos Zaragoza. On March 14, 1914, then-Commodore Manuel Azueta hoisted his flag on the old girl and took command of the combined Gulf squadron (Flotilla del Golfo), then proceeded to bombard rebel troops along the coastline with shrapnel at close range. During this time the Tampico Incident, a poorly handled event from both the Mexican and American standpoints, occurred where an unannounced U.S. Navy landing party from the gunboat Dolphin bumped into Federal troops and, both parties being armed and unable to speak the other’s language, ended off in a quite literal Mexican standoff.

This led to an American response in the form of a reinforced squadron of battleships and torpedo boat destroyers landing several hundred sailors and marines at Veracruz April 21. To defend the vital port, local Federal troops gathered all the men they could find, including the 50 or so cadets of the Naval Academy to oppose the landings. One of these cadets, José Azueta Abad, the 19-year old son of Manuel Azueta– the same one who sailed the Zaragoza as a toddler around the world, found himself operating a Hotchkiss light machinegun outside the Academy’s walls. There, alone, the young Azueta held off the advancing column of bluejackets until BM2 JG Harner of the USS Florida ended the young man’s stand at a range of 300-yards, earning the MOH.

….The cadet who is remembered on Mothers Day in Mexico.

Azueta died on May 10 after lingering for nearly three weeks of his wounds, but became a hero in the process after he refused to meet U.S. Rear Adm Frank Friday Fletcher or accept care from American doctors that could have saved his life. His resulting funeral was attended by hundreds in opposition to Fletcher’s orders forbidding public assembly. The day of his death is remembered now as Mother’s Day in Mexico and the Naval Academy was renamed the “Heroica Escuela Naval Militar” to honor Azeuta and the other cadets who fought.

The Zaragoza did not take part in the combat at Veracruz, remaining at Tampico with the rest of the vastly outnumbered Mexican fleet. The elder Azueta retired after the Americans left Veracruz in November. The corvette was on its last legs and, in the resulting drain from the years of the cyclical purges, deaths, and defections during the Mexican Revolution, fell into disrepair.

Zaragoza in haze gray by 1914. She had seen a hard 25-years, crossing the Atlantic four times, the world once, and fighting rebels of all kinds for more than fifteen years.

However, she was still seaworthy enough to escort the remains of noted Mexican modern poet Amado Nervo (Juan Crisóstomo Ruiz de Nervo), who died while Mexico’s Ambassador in the Republic of Uruguay in 1919, back home.

Immobile by the 1920s, Zaragoza was decommissioned 6 March 1926, stripped, and sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as a target ship.

Specs:

Displacement: 1,226 tons

Length:            213 ft. (65 m)

Propulsion:      Steam engine

Sail plan:          Barque

Speed: 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph)

Complement: 139 max

Armament:

6 × Schneider-Canet 140mm cannon

2 × 37 mm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon

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/

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

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 Aug 13, 2014 A Sad Story of Fish, Genius, Sightseeing and Neglect

Here we see the majestic yacht Celt. Built by Pusey and Jones Co., Wilmington, Delaware (hull number 306), the 170-foot long steel hulled vessel with fine lines was built to the specs of one Mr. J. Rogers Maxwell, a long-time member of the Atlantic Yacht Club who had owned a number of famous racing yachts including the Peerless, Emerald and Yankee. Designed by Mr. Wintringham, Celt was 138-feet at the waterline and 170 oal. Intended for New York Bay and Long Island Sound, she was to be a tender and flagship to Maxwell’s racing fleet. Outfitted with a number of mahogany adorned cabins on two berthing decks, she was a a magnificent vessel. Two Almy boilers fed by some 42 tons of bunkered coal pushed a  four-cylinder triple expansion Sullivan that generated 1200 shp. Completed in 1902, she was the toast of the New York coastline for a decade.

Maxwell’s racing team won the King’s Cup in 1907 in the Queen, but by 1914, the whole trans-Atlantic sprint had fallen into a slump due to the start of World War One. With this, Celt was laid up and at sometime during this time was renamed Sachem upon her sale to one Manton B. Metcalf. When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, Metcalf offered the craft up for use by the Navy. As such, in July 1917 she rightfully became the USS Sachem (SP-192), an anti-submarine patrol craft.  Her armament was an unimpressive 6-pounder 57mm deck gun, a pair of 3-pounder 37mm guns, and two Colt potato digger light machine-guns.

Then something odd happened.

According to Thomas A. Edison: Unorthodox Submarine Hunter by E. David Cronon archived over at the WWI.com website, Thomas Edison had a queer fascination with producing any number of novel ideas to sink the Kaiser’s U-boats. But he needed a ship as a floating laboratory. Keep reading:

“Edison would not rest, however, until he had acquired a boat for his anti-submarine experiments. In the spring of 1917 he obtained Secretary Daniels’ permission to charter a yacht for this purpose, but had great difficulty finding a suitable one at a cost he thought reasonable. He suspected this was because the owners hoped the government would commandeer their boats so they would “then get a good price for them.” “Many of them are old and the engines defective, approaching the character of junk,” he cautioned Daniels. “I think Roosevelt should be warned not to fall into this trap and be saddled with a lot of junk.”(31). This last was a reference to F.D.R.’s well-publicized enthusiasm for solving the U-boat problem with a fleet of small anti-submarine boats. After a number of false starts, Daniels finally arranged for Edison to have use of a Navy submarine patrol boat, the S.P. 192, and the Edisons moved to New London, Connecticut, to conduct experiments on Long Island Sound. Always protective, Mrs. Edison insisted on sharing the small cabin aboard ship with the inventor, much to the dismay of the Navy crew. “I detest it on the boat and long to be home, ” she wrote one of their sons. “I wish I knew just how much and what Papa wants me out here for. . . . The more cluttered the place the better contented father seems to be. I could kill Hutchinson for ever getting him into this mess.”(32). Mrs. Edison worried about her husband’s susceptibility to seasickness and his unwillingness to conclude his experiments or ever concede defeat. “It looks like a winter’s job as far as father is concerned, as you know father,” she lamented in another letter. “He constantly gets new ideas that leads [sic] to more experimenting and halfway never counts with him.”(33).

The use of a suitable Navy boat enabled Edison to conduct experiments on a number of projects requiring tests simulating conditions at sea. One of these was a water brake or sea anchor, which he called a “kite rudder,” and which when used in conjunction with a ship’s engines and regular rudder might enable it to turn quickly enough to avoid an oncoming torpedo. “On a merchant ship I propose to use 2 or 3 fastened to rail of ship.” Edison reported. “On signal, they are dropped and instantly act to turn the ship.”(34). In one experiment, a fully loaded cargo ship was able to turn 90 degrees in only 200 feet using four sea anchors, whereas it advanced 1,000 feet while executing the same turn with no sea anchors in use (35).

Two of the inventor’s other schemes might have come from Rube Goldberg. Noting that 75% of torpedoed ships took more than fifteen minutes to sink, Edison experimented with what he called “collision mats” rolled up at the rail on both sides of a ship for its full length. When torpedoed, these-large mats would be released to cover the hole, and water pressure would hold them against the cargo, slowing the influx of water. “I think 50% of all the torpedoed boats can be saved and got to port,” Edison reported to Daniels in a handwritten note from Key West; “officers here think so.”(36). An even more fantastic Edison contraption was a 25-foot long tube of rolled up wire mesh made of quarter-inch cable. “It resembles a large window curtain,” he explained, which would be fired from the ship in the path of an oncoming torpedo.

In add Edison worked on some 45 inventions to fight submarines during the war, and none were put into production

The hardy Sachem never saw active combat and was returned to Mr. Metcalf in Feb. 1919 who sold it to a Philadelphia banker for use as a yacht (and rumored as a rum runner mother-ship during Prohibition) before selling it again to Sheepshead Bay New York charter fisherman Jake Martin in 1932. Martin soon put the now-30 year old craft into use each summer as a junket ship for tourists along the Jersey and New York coast.

Martin had the old steam engines replaced with a more modern 7-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse 805hp diesel during the winter of 1935-36 and continued her in service chasing tuna and sharks for day passengers. Then came another war.

On on 17 February 1942, just ten weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Navy bought the now-40 year old ex-yacht turned fishing boat for $65,000. Giving her a haze gray paint scheme, an obsolete 3″/23 cal gun recycled from a Coast Guard cutter who had traded it in for something bigger, four M2 water-cooled Brownings and some depth charge racks, she was commissioned USS Phenakite (PYc-25), 1 July 1942.

During the war the old girl plied the Eastern seaboard from Key West to New York doing patrol work but, like in her first war service, found no combat. By November 1944 she was laid up again and a year later Martin reclaimed her.  He promptly sold her in poor shape to the Circle Line group of tour boats in New York City who spiffed her up and renamed her Sightseeker.

Moored at the popular Pier 83, the craft was very distinctive with its sleek turn of the century clipper lines (and welded over deck gun mounts). Even when the Circle Line divested themselves of most of their oldest vessels in the 1950s, they kept the Sightseer around as she was a crowd favorite. Captained by an experienced Norwegian master by the name of Harold Log, she was the flagship of the line well into the 1970s (being renamed the apt Circle Line V) until the Circle Line finally sold her for her value in scrap metal. Apparently, while derelict in New York harbor, she made it into Madonna’s “Papa Dont Preach” video.

The rest of her life is a mystery until she was picked up by one Robert Miller in 1986, nearly a decade after she was sold for scrap. Miller repaired her a bit, crewed her and sailed her to his property near Lawrenceburg, Indiana on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River

Unfortunately, she is still there as a ghost ship along the river frequented by kayakers and would-be treasure hunters searching for reasons to get a tetanus shot.

Now, some 112 years old, she rests in the mud.

Specs:
Displacement 317 t.
1942 – 360 t.
Length 186′ 3″
1942 – 183′
Beam 22′ 6″
Draft 8′
1942 – 9′ 7″
Speed 15 kts.
1942 – 13.5 kts.
Complement 49 (1917)
1942 – 40
Armament: One 6-pounder, two 3-pounders and two machine guns (1917)
1942 – One 3″/23 mount, four .50 cal. machine guns and two depth charge tracks
Propulsion: One 1,200ihp vertical triple-expansion steam engine, one shaft
1936 – One 805hp 7-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse 37D 14 diesel engine.

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/

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out 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.

- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday August 20 The Impressive Italian 17-inch Heroes

Here we see the giant and remarkable for the time  Italia-class battlewagon Lepanto. Designed by the famous Benedetto Brin in the 1870s to bring peace and tranquility to the Med– under the Italian tri-color– the two-ship Italia-class was the pride and joy of the Regia Marina.

Tipping the scales at over 15,000-tons, these 409-foot steel-hulled brawlers could make an impressive 18.4-knots on their 15,797 shp plant. What is truly remarkable about these ships is that they had a brace of four 17-inch (432mm) naval guns. That’s not a misprint– we are talking about 17-inch rifled cannon in 1876. Of course they were black powder and only some 26-calibers long, but you have to admit that is impressive.

Due to their length and weight, these guns were set up en echelon amidships in a single, large, diagonal, oval barbette, with one pair of guns on a turntable to port and the other to starboard.

Notice how deep the hull is. You have to put 10,000 troops somewhere!

Italia was laid down in 1876 at Castellammare Naval Shipyard while Lepanto began construction at Orlando in Livorno at the same time. However, these ships were so new for the time, I mean think about it, the U.S. Civil War had just ended a decade before, that they languished on the builders ways until after 1885, nearly a decade later when they were commissioned.

These were huge, deep ships for the time. Besides the massive main armament and a dozen secondary 6-inch and 4.7-inch guns, each could carry a full 10,000-man infantry division in a pinch. Now that is power projection.

These gentle giants, with their distinctive six-funnel profile (Lepanto always just had four though), cruised the Med for a generation but saw little active use. By 1902 Lepanto was placed in reduced service as a gunnery training ship and then a non-functional depot vessel within the decade.

Sistership Italia lasted a bit longer, earning a refit in 1905 then serving as a torpedo training ship and floating harbor defense craft in World War One. While Lepanto was sold for scrapping on 27 March 1915, Italia suffered an even worse fate. Disarmed after the war, she was used to carry grain to Italian troops in North Africa until being finally stricken 16 November 1921 and subsequently scrapped.

No known memorial exists to these interesting 17-inch Roman battlewagons.

Specs:

Displacement: 13,336 long tons (13,550 t) normal
15,649 long tons (15,900 t) full load
Length:     400 ft 3 in (122.0 m) between perpendiculars
409 ft 1 in (124.7 m) length overall
Beam:     73 ft 4 in (22.4 m)
Draft:     30 ft 9 in (9.4 m)
Installed power: 15,797 ihp (11,780 kW)
Propulsion:     4 shafts, vertical compound engines, 8 oval and 16 cylindrical boilers
Speed:     18.4 knots (21.2 mph; 34.1 km/h)
Range:     ca. 5,000 nautical miles (9,260 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Troops:     Up to 10,000
Complement: 669, later 701
Armament:     As built:
*4 × 17-inch (432 mm)/26 guns
*8 × 6-inch (152 mm)/32 guns
*4 × 4.7-inch (119 mm)/32 guns
*4 × 14-inch (356 mm) torpedo tubes
Added later:
*2 × 75mm guns
*12 × 57mm quick-firing guns
*12 × 37mm revolvers
*2 × machine guns
From 1902:
*4 × 17-inch (432 mm)/26 guns
*4 × 4.7-inch (119 mm)/32 guns
9 × 57mm guns
6 × 37mm/25 revolvers
2 × machine guns
Torpedo tubes removed after 1902
Armor:     Steel armor
Belt and side: None
Deck: 4 in (101.6 mm)
Citadel: 19 in (483 mm)
Funnel base: 16 in (406 mm)
Conning tower: 4 in (102 mm)

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

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The German army had an almost perverse love of railroads. During the lead-up to WWI, it was said that the German General Staff spent every waking moment working out the shortest route to move mobilized troops across the excellent Imperial rail network and into France, or Russia, or Denmark or wherever as needed. By shaving ten minutes off a troop train here, or thirty seconds off an artillery convoy there, a war could be won.

In the end, the legend has it, that when the balloon went up in 1914, German trains only narrowly missed colliding with each other at rail crossings by scant seconds– so tight was the schedule to make the trains run on time.

With that the Germans understood how important the rails were to their enemies as well. Afterall the first “modern war,” the U.S. Civil War, made extensive use of railways to move men and supplies from place to place at speeds that would have made Napoleon squee with joy.

The Germans therefore obsessed about tearing up the enemy’s rail system if they themselves couldn’t use it, or they retreated tactically withdrew. That’s where the Schienenwolf (‘rail wolf’) or Schwellenpflug (‘rail plow’) came in at.

Pulled behind a locomotive, the German army could detail a team of railway engineers to rip up rail lines at a rate of several miles per hour as long as the coal and steel held out.

A railroad plough (also known as a Schienenwolf (‘rail wolf’) or Schwellenpflug (‘sleepers plough)

They proved so successful in the tail end of WWI for the Kaiser that old Adolph revamped them for use in Europe when falling back from the Allied advance 1943-45. If it wasn’t for these rail chompers, Berlin likely would have fallen more rapidly. Afterall, while the soldiers could march on their feet, and the vehicles could keep up, both needed large amounts of food/fuel to keep rolling forward which meant who owned the (working) railroad lines won the war.

One of these beasts in action

Ian, my homie over at Forgotten Weapons, a man who probably has forgotten more about obscure guns than anyone has ever known, does it up with a Model 1902 Krupp-made 50mm Mountain Gun made for the Kingdom of Siam. Well worth under five minutes of your time. (If not, the money shot is at about 3:45)

If you have ever picked up a bolt-action rifle made in the past century or so, odds are, at least a few of its features owe a hat tip to a gun that dates back to an age when men were men and mustaches were waxed. That’s right, we are talking about the Mauser M71, and it launched a gun-making empire.

In 1870, the most advanced rifles in the world were arguably the tubular-magazine repeaters of Mr. Winchester and Mr. Spencer, both residents of the United States. The lever action Spencer had accounted well for itself during the just-ended U.S. Civil War, while the Winchester carbines, also lever guns, were selling like hotcakes.

Meanwhile, Imperial Germany had just become its own unified country, defeating the French in the Franco-Prussian War. And during this conflict, the German Army had been saddled with their obsolete Dreyse zundnadelgewehr (needle-gun).

This single-shot breech-loader was better than muzzle loading muskets, and could fire 4-5 rounds per minutes but its paper cartridges were easily damaged. The Germans learned harsh lessons from French infantry who were equipped with the more rapidly fired Chassepot rifle, which could easily double the firepower of the Teutonic hordes. Had the Germans not used superior tactics as well as enjoyed a good bit of martial luck, the war would have likely ended with a French victory.

This left the newly minted German Kaiser crawfishing for better rifles, and a set of hungry brothers by the name of Mauser were ready…

Read the rest in my column at Guns.com

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 3: Four Italian sisters in Argentine service.

click to bigup

Here we see the Giuseppe Garibaldi-class armored cruiser Armada de la República Argentina (ARA) General Giuseppe Garibaldi of the Argentine Navy as she appeared around the turn of the century in her gleaming white and buff scheme. She was a ship representative of her time, and her class outlived most of their contemporaries.

Ordered from Gio. Ansaldo & C shipbuilders, Genoa, Italy, in 1894 the General Giuseppe Garibaldi was designed by Italian naval architect Edoardo Masdea to provide a ship, smaller than a 1st-rate battleship, yet larger and stronger than any cruiser that could oppose it.

One large 10-inch gun fore and another aft gave these ships some punch.

The concept predated battle cruisers by a decade or two and had its apex at the Battle of Tsushima, where so-called ‘armored cruisers’ gave a poor showing of themselves. The final nail in the coffin of the armored cruiser design was the Battle of the Falklands in 1914 in which a German force of armored and light cruisers under Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee was annihilated by a group of larger and faster RN battle cruisers of Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves…

The Garibaldi class was innovative for 1894, with a 344-foot long, 7200-ton hull capable of making 20-knots and sustaining a range of more than 7,000 nm at 12. Although made in Italy, she was almost all-British from her Armstrong batteries to her Bellville boilers to her Whitehead torpedoes and Harvey armor.

Armored with a belt that ran up-to 5.9-inches thick, she could take hits from faster cruisers and gunboats while being able to dish out punishment from a pair of Armstrong 10-inch guns that no ship smaller than her could absorb. Capable of outrunning larger ships, she also had a quartet of torpedo tubes and extensive rapid fire secondary batteries to make life hard on the enemy’s small ships and merchantmen.

She was designed for power projection on a budget and the Argentine Navy, facing a quiet arms race between Brazil and Chile on each side, needed modern ships.

They therefore scooped up not only the Garibaldi (commissioned in 1895) but also the follow-on sister-ships General Belgrano and General San Martín ( built by Orlando of Livorno in 1896) and Genoa-made Pueyrredón (1898) to make a quartet of powerful cruisers. These ships, coupled with the Rivadavia-class battleships ordered later in the U.S., helped make the Argentine navy for a period of about two decades the eighth most powerful in the world (after the big five European powers, Japan, and the United States), and the largest in Latin America.

Belgrano making steam with a bone in her mouth. These chunky cruisers could make 20-knots, which was fast for 1894 when they were designed

The gunboat diplomacy of these ships soon paid off, with Belgrano being used as the signing platform for the 1899 peace treaty between Argentina and Chile to settle the Puna de Atacama dispute.

These ships proved so popular when built, in fact, that Spain quickly ordered a pair (one of which, Cristóbal Colón, was soon sunk in the Spanish-American War), Italy picked up three more (including confusingly enough, one also named Giuseppe Garibaldi-- he was an Italian hero after all!) and Japan acquired two of their own in the 1900s.

ARA Pueyrredon. Note deck awnings in use and extensive view of broadside secondary casemated guns

The four Argentine ships long outlived their foreign sisters.

Although the country had built a huge naval armada, they remained on the sidelines during a number of crisis in their time. The country remained more or less (some would contend less) neutral in both World Wars as well as in regional conflicts. They did, however, often sail the world and show the flag. Garibaldi for instance, was often seen in Caribbean ports while Belgrano made an extensive European tour in 1927, spending most of that year overseas.

One of the more popular assignments for theses ships over their lifetimes were yearly midshipmen cruises. Typically from August to December, they would alternate between circumnavigating the continent to trips to Europe and Africa.

For example, in 1941, with the world at war, ARA Pueyrredon still had time to travel some 14,964 miles from Puerto Belgrano to New Orleans and back, stopping for lengthy port stays at such popular destinations as Havana, Rio, and Aruba.

San Martin warping into harbor. Photo by City of Art

By 1920 Garibaldi– the Argentine one– was in poor condition and relegated to duty as a training ship while her three sisters were modernized, disarmed a good bit, and overhauled. By 20 March 1934, with the world in a global recession, Garibaldi was stricken, cannibalized so that her classmates could live longer lives, and sold for scrap at the end of 1936.

ARA San Martin was stricken 8 December 1935 but retained for twelve years as a dockside depot ship and scrapped in 1947.

ARA Gen. Belgrano, who was used after 1933 as a submarine tender, was stricken May 8, 1947 and sold in 1953.

ARA Pueyrredon in Dublin in 1951. At this point this pre-SpanAm War vet was pushing her sixth decade at sea. Her white and buff scheme long since replaced by haze gray with black caps. Note, she still has her 10-inch Armstrong guns, although by the 1950s 254mm blackpowder bagged naval shells were very out of style to say the least. Photo by Historymar

Finally, ARA Pueyrredon, as far as I can tell, was the last ‘operational’ armored cruiser in naval service in the world. As late as 1951 the veteran was making cruises to Europe to show the blue and white banner of the Argentine navy while training naval officers. That summer she moved more than 20,000 miles underway on a round trip from Buenos Aires, Pernambuco, Liverpool, Dublin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Le Havre, Naples, Genoa, Villefranche, Barcelona, ​​Casa-blanca, Dakar, Santos, back to Buenos Aires.

She was stricken on 2 August 1954 after nearly six decades in commission, spending half of that as a training ship assigned to the Naval Academy, and towed in 1954 to Japan to be scrapped.

ex-Pueyrredon being towed, 1954. Photo by Historymar

Thus she outlived by two years what is considered by many to be the last armored cruiser afloat, the Greek Navy’s Georgios Averof (c.1911) which was decommissioned in 1952.

Sadly, the only monument to these beautiful and hard-serving Argentine ships is the bow coat of arms from ARA Pueyrredon, preserved on the grounds of Argentine Naval Academy.

The Argentine Sun of May (Spanish: Sol de Mayo) national emblem on the bowcrest of ARA Pueyrredon

Specs:

Displacement: 7,069 long tons (7,182 t)
Length:     344 ft 2 in (104.9 m)
Beam:     50 ft 8 in (15.4 m)
Draught:     23 ft 4 in (7.1 m)
Installed power:     13,000 ihp (9,700 kW)
Propulsion:     2 shafts, vertical triple-expansion steam engines
8 cylindrical Bellville boilers (replaced 1920s)
Speed:     20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) as designed. Later 15-knots after 1925.
Range: 7000 nm at 12 knots on 1,000 tons coal. Later 4200 nm at 9kts after 1925 refits.
Complement: 520 as designed (typical Argentine service, 25 officers, 300 crew or 28 officers; 60-95 cadets; 275 crew)

Armament:     (As commissioned, greatly reduced after 1925)
2×1 – Armstrong 10-inch (254 mm) guns
10×1 – 152mm Armstrong rapid fire (120mm in Garibaldi)
10×1 – 57mm 6-pounder Nordenfeldt guns
8×1 37mm Hotchkiss guns
2×1 8mm Maxim water cooled machine guns
4×1 – 18-inch (457 mm) torpedo tubes with Whitehead fish (Five tubes in ARA Pueyrredon)
+ 2×1 – 3-inch (75 mm) guns landing guns (cañones de desembarcode)

Armour:  (All Harvey-type armor)
Belt: 3.1–5.9 in (79–150 mm)
Barbettes: 5.9 in (150 mm)
Gun turrets: 5.9 in (150 mm)
Conning tower: 5.9 in (150 mm)

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/

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

When the Tsar of Holy Russia was kicked from the throne by his own act of abdication in March 1917, he set in motion a chain of events that led to a short-lived democratic government swept away by the later Red October revolution. This, in turn, sparked an almost immediate civil war and famine that left the country fractured and largely turned to ash. You know, the last half of Dr. Zhivago.

Tsarist Imperial Navy Admiral Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak, who led the White Russian volunteer army in Siberia against the Bolshevik Reds. Things didnt work out too well for The Admiral, who before the war was a noted polar explorer. When turned over to the Reds by his own troops, he was interrogated, led to a hole in the ice of the frozen Agara River, and told he was to be executed. The Admiral asked the commander of the firing squad, “Would you be so good as to get a message sent to my wife in Paris to say that I bless my son?” as his last words, then was shot and stuffed through the ice as depicted in this painting by FA Moskvitin.

After the anti-communist Whites lost the Civil War (1917-22), some two million Russians fled to all points of the globe. If they didn’t leave, certain death was sure to follow. In short, they lost their Russian privileges when they lost the war.

Nearly a quarter of these were military men who quite naturally formed veterans groups such as the Society of Gallipoli and the Russian Common Military Union (ROVS). This latter organization, founded in 1924 and led by former General Grand Duke Nicholas, then Lt-Gen Baron Wrangel, numbered some 100,000 members spread around the world within just a couple years. These organizations were officer-heavy, as many of the rank and file of the White volunteer armies were either professional military officers under the Tsar, or were officer cadets at one of more than 100 military schools spread across the country. These officers in exile tended to band together.

Lieutenant General PN Pyotr Wrangel (bottom row, second from left), next to Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and other Russian émigrés in Yugoslavia 1927. Although this group had left Russia more than seven years prior to this picture, they still have immaculate uniforms. Soviet agents would soon poison Wrangel within a year of this image.

For a generation in the 1920s and 30s, ROVS formed an exile Army in waiting and held large training camps and schools in which battalion and even regimental size units participated. The old generals had troops to salute. The young children born overseas who had never seen Russia were given an idealized account of life in the good old days under the father Tsar. Most of all, the exiles maintained some sort of legitimate military cohesion.

Indeed, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a nearly division-sized force of Whites patrolled the borders of that country looking for smugglers. The 2nd Cavalry Regiment of the French Foreign Legion (2REC), a unit that still survives today, was formed in Northern Africa in the 1920s from former cossacks and guards cavalry of the Tsar. The foreign legation in Shanghai was patrolled by a White Russian regiment employed by the Shanghai police until 1942.

These veterans groups also formed underground units to send sabotage and intelligence gathering teams into the Soviet Union. Under the auspices of such names as the Brotherhood of Russian Truth and the Fighting Organization General Kutepov, (which in Cyrillic has the unenviable abbreviation BORK), they gave the Reds a series of bloody noses.  This got the attention of the Soviets and the OGPU/NKVD soon started rubbing out influential White Russian officers in the West, including Gen. Kutepov himself, bundled out of France in a trunk by three OGPU agents back to Moscow, his ultimate fate still unknown for sure.  Kutepov’s replacement, Lt-Gen. EK Miller, was likewise liquidated.

Kutepov

Other Russian officers became soldiers of fortune. They appeared in Mexico during the government oppression of the Cristeros and as well as in the Chaco Wars in Latin America in the 1930s where Maj-Generals NF Erna and IT Belyaev helped keep the Paraguayans in the fight against, ironically, German-led Bolivians.

Whites then showed up in the Spanish Civil War carrying the torch for Franco, with some 34 émigrés, including former Maj. Gen Fok, killed in action. Many a Chinese warlord of the period owed their military might to the assistance of a former Tsarist commander.

In 1934 one infamous Boris Skossyreff, a self-styled former White Russian officer, once adviser to the Japanese Army, and full-time con man seized power in the tiny nation of Andorra (pop 20,000), calling himself “Boris I, Prince of the Valleys of Andorra, Count of Orange and Baron of Skossyreff, sovereign of Andorra and defender of the faith.” Spain, it would seem, who is jointly in charge along with France of Andorra’s defense in times of war, two weeks later sent a group of military police into the country to politely show Boris I the fastest way over the Pyreness. This did not stop him from serving later in the German Army in World War II.

The image of a scarred White Russian officer, wandering the globe from conflict to conflict like a Ronin of Old Japan, or a Mandalorian of a galaxy far, far, away became familiar trope between the World Wars.

When WWII came, many of these now elderly officers dusted off their spurs and helped to form the 30,000-strong XV Cossack Cavalry Corps in the German Army (who began the war often in the uniform of the Russian Imperial Army!). Leaders, in spirit if not in deed, included Kuban Cossack Maj-Gen. Pytor Kransov, the swashbuckling White bandit Andrei Shkuro, Sultan Kelech Ghirey, and Timofey Domanov among others. While the corps mostly fought against Yugoslav red partisans and was able to withdraw in good order to Austria at the end of the war to surrender to the British, they were handed over to the Soviets for execution and exile in Siberia.

Cossack Maj.-Gen. Vyacheslav Naumenko (tall) and Lt.-Gen Andrei Shkuro (short) seen inspecting Hitler’s cossacks during World War II. These elderly White generals did not lead troops during the war, but helped with support, morale and recruiting among captured Soviet army personnel. Naumenko survived the war, escaping to the U.S. while Shkuro was turned over by the British to the Soviets and hung in 1947. Note the decorations for the old Emperor Nicholas Military Academy on Naumenko’s lower left tunic along with the Cross of St Ann. The medal on the upper left tunic, is the Ice March award, showing a sword piercing a crown of thorns, awarded to White volunteers who survived the 1st Kuban Campaign in 1918.

A smaller unit of Whites, operating under the protection of the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria, was likewise dismantled in 1945 by the Soviets first-hand once they occupied that region.

Don’t get the idea that the Whites just worked for the Germans or Japanese. They also carried water for the Allies as well. It should be noted that most professional European armies, especially countries in the east such as Yugoslavia, Poland, and Greece, prior to 1939 contained cadres of field-grade officers who cut their teeth in the service to the Tsar.

One former Imperial Russian naval officer, George Ermolaevich Chaplin, fled to England to exile and became a major in the British Army, even leading a group of engineers ashore at Normandy on D-Day. He later retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel as the head of the Royal Pioneers. Moreover, of course you cannot forget exiled Georgian Prince Dimitri Zedguinidze-Amilakhvari, who died as a Lt. Col in the French Foreign Legion during the Second Battle of El Alamein against the Germans.

Heck even Finland’s Field Marshal Carl Mannerheim had learned his military service in the Imperial Guards– and was such a fierce monarchist, he was forced to leave Russia at the onset of the Revolution for Finland under penalty of prison.

Immediately following the war, the CIA made careful efforts to revitalize the vehemently anti-communist White officer groups by using them as a backdoor into the old country. However, this was only marginally successful as whatever contacts they had that Stalin had missed, time soon claimed.

By the 1960s, with even the youngest of these exiled, stateless officers in their seniors, the veterans groups became smaller and smaller. The battalion sized gatherings were no more. Typically, meetings would be held with only a handful of veterans from the First World War/Russian Civil War at the head, with the bulk of attendees instead being sons and grandsons of such men. With this, the group lost its last semblance of a military force in exile and became more of a historical and genealogical association.

Lampe

The final Imperial Army general in exile, Alexei von Lampe, who had served in the Russo-Japanese War, was a member of the Tsar’s General Staff at Stavka during WWI, and had led ROVS for the last ten years of his life died in Paris in 1967 at age 81. Old von Lampe had served as an intelligence organizer during the Russian Civil War and the Nazi’s thought him such a threat that they threw him in prison in Germany in the 1930s. Odds are he likely remembered where a lot of bodies were buried. Indeed, the Nazis let him go and he continued to live in Berlin until 1945 when he beat feet.

Harzhevsky

The last of the White Russian generals, Vladimir G. Harzhevsky, had started World War I as a reserve ensign in the 47th Infantry Regiment. Advancing through the ranks, he was a captain by the time the Tsar fell and later rose meteorically through the officer list of the Southern White Russian army under Denikin and later Wrangel, making Maj. Gen in Sept 1920 at the age of 28. However just three months later, he was exiled when the shattered remnants of Wrangel’s forces were evacuated from the Crimea. Bouncing around Europe for decades, he settled finally in New Jersey. Picking up the helm of ROVS on von Lampe’s death, being the senior most officer left, he died in 1981 at age 89.

Smyslovskiy as a cadet

The last of the old guard who wore the epaulettes of an officer in the Tsar’s military was one Boris Smyslovskiy. Born in 1897, Boris was a military academy cadet (junkers) in the 1st Moscow Cadet Corps (Mikhailovsky academy) when the First World War erupted. As a young Lieutenant, he was wounded in the Russian Revolution, fighting against the Reds in Moscow in October 1917. He went on to serve in the White Army under Denikin, as a captain then a major, before exile in Germany. Taking up with various underground groups there, he found himself working for the Abwehr (German army intelligence), helping to run agents in Poland and the Ukraine. During World War Two, Smyslovskiy took a commission in the German army as a Major in the Wehrmacht, and was leading a battalion of Russian troops on the Eastern Front by the end of the war. In March 1945, he led some 500 Russian veterans of the German army into exile once again, crossing over into tiny but neutral Liechtenstein where he surrendered to the principality’s 33-man army. While the Soviets steadfastly petitioned the Liechtenstein government to hand over Smyslovskiy on war crimes, they did not. He then wandered to Argentina in 1947 and became an adviser to Peron’s army before returning to Liechtenstein in 1966. Smyslovskiy died in 1988, just before the Berlin Wall came down.

The ROVS organization continued in the West for another decade, its commanders being chosen from men who were officers in White Russian units in World War Two, as all of the Tsar’s few good men were gone. The last commander of ROVS in the West was Cadet Vladimir Vishnevsky. Born in 1917 and leaving the country of his birth for the last time in 1922, he had served in the Yugoslav Royal Army before joining the German/White Russian Corps during World War Two, rising to the rank of an officer cadet in the organization.

Finally in 2000, after 76 years, RVOS  dissolved (after Vishnevsk’s death) as even this pool of veterans dwindled. However, with the recent resurgence of Tsarist love in the new Russia, a Moscow-based version has taken its place.

In a final gesture of homecoming, the remains of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin and his wife, who were buried in the Orthodox Cossack St. Vladimir’s Cemetery in New Jersey, were repatriated to Russia in 2005.

He was buried with military honors and is now seen as something of a patriot there, bringing the saga to a full circle.

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 10. 2014, Australia’s Most Silent Sub

Here we see the E-Class submarine AE2 of the Royal Australian Navy Presenting the Submarine Threat in the Sea of Marmara, April 1915 by Charles Bryant. The ship, just 181-feet long, sailed into history and proved her mettle.

One of the 58 British-built E-class submersibles constructed between 1912-1916, these ships were considered the first really successful Royal Navy submarines. Built from experience with earlier D-class boats, these 780-ton (submerged) ships could make a decent 15-knots on their twin 800hp Vickers diesels when surfaced on an attack run, or a more sedate 10-knots while submerged and on a set of 313kW electric motors. Although very small and cramped ships, they had a respectable 3,000-nm range and were capable of spending two weeks or more at sea before hiding places for food to stoke their 30-man crew ran out. Four 18-inch tubes (arranged bow, stern, port and starboard– talk about variety!) and four torpedo racks allowed the boats to carry as many as eight warshots with a fish in every spot. Cheap (about 100,000-pounds) and able to both conduct ops in blue and brown water due to their shallow 12-foot draft, they were the perfect steel shark for the Royal Navy.

Therefore, the infant Royal Australian Navy ordered up two of their own designated HMAS AE1 and HMAS AE2 from Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, England, in 1912. Commissioned in the spring of 1914, they were the first subs to carry the Australian flag. Therefore, to spin up the Aussie crew, they carried a mixed complement of RN/RNAS personnel. For instance, it is known that of the 37 crewmembers who served on the ship in 1915 only 14 were born in Australia. Twenty-one crew members were born in Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland), one in New Zealand, and another in Brazil.

Sailing for the Pacific, these ships covered an epic 13,000-nm route in 83 days, impressive for the time.

HMAS AE2 passing through Suez Canal

When the war broke out, the subs, a rarity on the West Pac, were dispatched as part of the Australian force to capture the German colony of Rabal, Deutsch-Neuguinea (Kaiserwilhelmsland). With no German ships to oppose the landing of some 2000 Australians, a force of about a tenth that size German reservists and local police lost the sharp but bloody Battle of Bita Paka. However, HMAS AE1 vanished while on patrol during the operation, never to be seen again. This was Australia’s first major loss of World War I.

With the German colony’s surrender, and the destruction of Adm. Von Spee’s Asiatic Squadron leaving the Pacific free of the Hun, AE2, Australia’s only remaining sub, left for Europe where she could be put to good use. Leaving in December 1914, she was the sole escort for a convoy of 17 ships carrying Australian troops to Africa, being towed most of the way to be able to keep up. Since AE2 had no deck guns, her value as an escort was questionable at best, but nonetheless her charges arrived at the Suez Canal at the end of Jan. 1915 without a scratch on them.

On route to take part in the Dardanelles campaign, the AE2 is making her own way into Aden after being towed across the Indian Ocean by the transport HMAS Berrima (background). Australian War archive P02029.027

Once in the Med, the Royal Navy soon detailed the Australian sub to penetrate the Dardanelles, work its way through thick Turkish minefields that had foiled the combined fleets of Great Britain and France, and then run amok in the Sea of Marma. With traditional pluck, the ship set off and did just that on April 25, 1915.

From the Australian Navy’s website of the event as told from the report of Lieutenant Commander H H G D Stoker, commander:

‘Having proceeded from the anchorage off Tenedos, I lay at the entrance off the Dardanelles until moonset and at about 2:30 am on 25th April entered the straits at 8 knots. Weather calm and clear. As the order to run amok in the Narrows precluded all possibility of passing through unseen, I decided to travel on the surface as far as possible.’

Searchlights continually swept the Strait but AE2 continued unmolested until 4:30 am when batteries opened fire from the northern shore. The submarine dived and began her passage through the minefield. Wires, from which the mines were moored, continually scraped AE2’s sides for the next half hour. Twice she surfaced in the minefield to make observations. At 6:00 am she was within two miles of the Narrows submerged at periscope depth. The sea was flat calm. Forts on both sides of the Narrows sighted her and immediately opened heavy fire. Stoker, watching through his periscope, observed a number of ships and decided to attack a small cruiser of the PEIK-E-SHETHEK type. His report continued:

‘At a range of three hundred yards I fired the bow tube at her. One of the destroyers was now very close, attempting to ram us on the port side, so at the moment of firing I ordered 70 feet. A last glance, as the periscope dipped, showed the destroyer apparently right on top of us, and then, amidst the noise of her propeller whizzing overhead, was heard the big explosion as the torpedo struck’.

After a brief interval underwater Stoker decided to risk a look around.

‘As the vessel was rising, she hit bottom and slid up on to the bank to a depth of ten feet, at which depth a considerable portion of the conning tower was above water. Through the periscope I saw that the position was immediately under Fort Anatoli Medjidieh.’

The fort opened fire and for some minutes shells fell on all sides until efforts to refloat her succeeded. AE2 then slid into the safety of deep water. The relief on board the submarine proved brief and it was not long before AE2 was again stranded.

‘Through the periscope I judged the position to be immediately under Serina Burnu, and I further observed two destroyers, a gunboat, and several small craft standing close off in the Straits firing heavily and a cluster of small boats which I judged to be picking up survivors of the cruiser.’

‘As my vessel was lying with inclination down by the bows I went full speed ahead. Shortly afterwards she began to move down the bank, bumped, gathered way and then bumped very heavily. She, however, continued to descend and at 80 feet I dived off the bank. The last bump was calculated to considerably injure the vessel, but as I considered my chief duty was to prove the passage through the Straits possible, I decided to continue.’

Shortly afterwards AE2 again rose to periscope depth. She was seen to be approaching Nagara Point. On all sides she was surrounded by pursuit craft. Each time she showed her periscope the destroyers tried to ram her and each time she eluded them. At last in an attempt to shake the enemy off Stoker decided to lie on the bottom on the Asiatic shore to await developments.

All day, 25 April, AE2 lay in 80 feet of water while the searching enemy ships passed and repassed overhead. Once she was hit by a heavy object being trailed along the bottom. At 9:00 pm she rose to the surface to charge batteries. All signs of shipping had vanished.

At 4:00 pm on 26 April, AE2 proceeded on the surface up the Straits. Stoker commented:

‘As soon as light permitted, I observed through periscope, two ships approaching – both men-o-war. Sea was glassy calm and I approached with periscope down. On hoisting periscope I observed ship on line of sight of port tube. I immediately fired but ship altered course and the torpedo missed. I discovered I had fired at the leading ship and found it impossible to bring another tube to bear on second ship (a battleship Barbarossa class) with any chance of success. I therefore did not fire.’

‘I continued on course through the Straits, examined the Gallipoli anchorage, found no ship worthy of attack and so proceeded in the Sea of Marmora, which was entered about 9:00 am.’

About 9:30 am AE2 sighted several ships, but since only six of her eight torpedoes remained Stoker decided not to fire until he was certain his target was a troop transport.

‘With this intention I dived close to the foremost ship – a tramp of about 2,000 tons. Passing about 200 yards abeam of her I could see no sign of troops; but as I passed under her stern she ran up colours and opened rifle fire at the periscope. I dived over to the next ship and attacked at 400 yards with starboard beam torpedo. The torpedo failed to hit.’

Half an hour later AE2 surfaced and spent the rest of the day on the surface, charging batteries and making good defects. Shortly after dark she was attacked by a small anti-submarine vessel and throughout the night of 26/27 April she was attacked on several occasions shortly after surfacing.

At dawn on 27 April she sighted a ship escorted by two destroyers. Evading the escort, she manoeuvred into position at 300 yards but this time the torpedo refused to leave the tube. A destroyer tried to ram, forcing a hurried dive. Nothing else was sighted that day. The following night Stoker rested his crew on the bottom of Artaki Bay. Twice on 28 April she made attacks only to see the torpedoes narrowly miss the target.

‘At dawn on 29 April I dived towards Gallipoli and observed a gunboat patrolling ahead of Strait off Eski Farnar Point. Dived under gunboat down Strait, and returned up Strait showing periscope to give the impression that another submarine had come through. Destroyers and torpedo boats came out in pursuit; having led them all up towards Sea of Marmora, I dived back and examined Gallipoli anchorage but found nothing to attack.’

AE2 then proceeded out into the Sea of Marmora pursued by anti-submarine units. She surfaced half an hour later, spotted the gunboat, fired and missed by one yard.

On the same day, off Kara Burnu Point, she met HMS E14, the second British submarine to successfully pass through the Dardanelles. A new rendezvous was arranged for 10:00 am the following day.

On the night of 29/30 April, AE2 lay on the bottom north of Marmora Island. Arriving at the rendezvous at 10:00 am she sighted a torpedo boat approaching at high speed. Stoker commented on subsequent events:

‘Dived to avoid torpedo boat; whilst diving sighted smoke in Artaki Bay, so steered south to investigate. About 10:30 the boat’s nose suddenly rose and she broke surface about a mile from the torpedo boat. Blew water forward but boat would not dive. Torpedo boat firing very close and ship from Artaki bay, a gunboat was also firing; flooded a forward tank and boat suddenly assumed big inclination down by the bows and dived very rapidly. AE2 was only fitted with 100 foot depth gauges. This depth was quickly reached and passed. After a considerable descent the boat rose rapidly, passed the 100 foot mark and in spite of efforts to check her broke the surface stern first. Within seconds the engine room was hit and holed in three places. Owing to the inclination down by the bow, it was impossible to see torpedo boat through the periscope and I considered any attempt to ram would be useless. I therefore blew main ballast and ordered all hands on deck. Assisted by LEUT Haggard, I then opened all tanks to flood the sub and went on deck. The boat sank in a few minutes in about 55 fathoms, in approximate position 4 degrees north of Kara Burnu Point at 10:45 am. All hands were picked up by the torpedo boat and no lives lost.’

Stoker and his crew, although saved, spent the next four years in a series of Turkish prisons, only freed by the end of the war.

The AE2 herself lay forgotten for 83 years until a joint Turkish-Australian effort found the stricken sub in some 236-feet of seawater. She is not set to be salvaged, but instead saved as a war wreck, marked and protected. In 2010 the RAN awarded the sub the two official honors, “Rabaul 1914″ and “Dardanelles 1915″.

A very active society is in place to celebrate the legacy of Australia’s sacred submarine.

Specs:

Click to embiggen

Cost:    £115,000
Built:   Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, England
Launched:       18 June 1913
Commissioned: 28 February 1914
Complement: 35
Length:            181 feet [55.17m]
Beam: 22 feet 6 inches [6.86m]
Draught:          12 feet, 6 inches [3.81m]
Displacement: 660 tonnes surfaced, 800 tonnes submerged
Speed:             15 knots surfaced, 10 knots submerged
Armaments: Four 18-inch Whitehead torpedo tubes – single bow tube: two tubes in the beam port and starboard, stern tube. AE2 carried 8 torpedoes: two at each of the 4 firing positions
Periscopes: Two: the main a fixed lens and another with moveable optics to view the sky
Crew: 32 (three officers and 29 seamen)

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

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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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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 September 24, 2014, the Kaiser’s Far Eastern leviathans

Scharnhorst, 1907. Click to bigup.

Here we see the armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst of the Kaiserliche Marine, the Imperial German Navy. The huge cruiser, along with her only sister ship, SMS Gneisenau, was Kaiser Wilhelm II’s muscle in the Pacific Ocean for their brief existence.

When old Willy picked up the concession (in a lease like the Brits did with Hong Kong) from the old Manchu Chinese government at Tsingtao (Qingdao, pronounced “Ching-dow”) in 1898, he added that Chinese port to a growing list of islands he bought from Spain after the Spanish American War (they weren’t using them anymore) as well as the new colony of German New Guinea. What’s a list of oddball far-flung colonies without a fleet to protect them though, right? This meant an upgrade to the small German East Asia Squadron (Ostasiengeschwader) from a handful of rusty gunboats and obsolete cruisers to something more dramatic.

With the Russians and Japanese mixing it up right on the German Far East’s door in 1904, the Kaiser pushed for a pair of very large, very well-equipped armored cruisers to be the core of a new Teutonic blue-water fleet in the Pacific. As the Grand Admiral of the Kaiserliche Marine was none other than Alfred von Tirpitz, former commander of the run-down East Asia Squadron, the Kaiser found easy support. This led to the Scharnhorst-class.

Scharnhorst and her sister were very distinctive in profile with their four large funnels and two masts fore and aft.

These ships were huge, comparable to pre-Dreadnought style battleships only with less armor (remember that later). At nearly 13,000-tons and over 474-feet long, they commanded respect when they sailed into a foreign port in the Pacific–, which was the point. Able to steam at 22-knots, they could outpace older battleships while upto 7-inches of armor protected them from smaller vessels. An impressive main battery of eight 8.3-inch (210mm) guns, backed up by a further two dozen 5.9 and 3.5-inch guns gave her both the firepower of a heavy cruiser and a light cruiser all in one hull. In short, these ships were built to tie down British and French battleships in the Pacific in the event of a coming war– keeping them away from the all-important Atlantic.

The two cruisers each had tw0 double turrets and four single mounts, each with stout Krupp-made 8.3-inch/210mm guns

The crews of these ships were blessed with a fire control center and artillery pieces that worked better than hoped, as evidenced by the fact that between 1909 and 1914, these two cruisers consistently won the Kaiser’s Cup naval gunnery contests, often coming in first and second place when stacked up against the rest of the fleet.

The German Armored cruiser Gneisenau. Date unknown.

Scharnhorst was laid down in 1905 at the Blohm and Voss shipyard in Hamburg, while her sister Gneisenau was simultaneously being built at AG Weser dockyard in Bremen. Germany, being short of naval heroes, named these two ships after a pair of Prussian generals during the Napoleonic Wars. Scharnhorst was completed first and sent to Tsingtao, where her 750+ crew made a big splash on the local scene. Gneisenau followed within a year.

The two white-hulled cruisers, among the largest warships of any nation in the world’s largest Ocean, were joined by an ever-increasing cast of small and fast light cruisers (SMS Dresden, SMS Emden, SMS Leipzig, and SMS Nurnberg) until the Kaiser had a half dozen new ships to protect his little slice of Germany in Asia. The commander of the force, Vice Admiral Maximilian, Reichsgraf von Spee, chose Scharnhorst for his flag. A wily veteran with over 30-years of colonial service under his feet, Von Spee was the perfect commander for what was coming next.

Scharnhorst

When World War One broke open in August 1914, the ships of the East Asia Squadron were spread around the Pacific at their pre-war stations. Von Spee wisely left Tsingtao, just ahead of a large Japanese force that would place the concession under siege with a preordained outcome.

Bringing his forces together in the Northern Marianas islands (then a German colony, now a U.S. territory, after capture from the Japanese in WWII, what a story!), Spee detached the fast ship Emden to meet her fate as an independent raider, while taking his five remaining cruisers to a place the British and French fleets that were hunting him never imagined– the South American coast

After just missing a British fleet at Samoa, and bombarding the French at Tahiti (where the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sank the French gunboat Zélée and the captured freighter Walküre in a very one-sided battle that was more of a waste of ammunition than anything else was), Von Spee made for Chile in the hopes of catching British shipping headed to and from the Atlantic.

The German steamer Walküre sunk in the harbor of Papeete, Tahiti, when the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau shelled the town

What he found was a force of four cruisers led by British Rear Adm. Sir Christopher Cradock.

On All Saints Day 1914, now coming up on its 100th anniversary, Craddock and Von Spee fought it out. While it would seem that four British cruisers, with a navy of long traditions in coming out on top in ship-to-ship engagements at sea, would best the five German cruisers, it would only seem that way.

By large matter of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau‘s enormous advantage in gunnery skills and armor/armament, the Germans smashed Craddock’s fleet at what is now known as the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile. It was simply a case of who had more large guns. The Germans had sixteen 8.3-inch guns against just two British 9.2-inchers. The engagement ended with the deaths of some 1500 British sailors, and the cruisers HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth at the bottom of the ocean. The Germans sailed away largely unscathed.

Sinking of the HMS Good Hope. The 14,388-ton Drake-class armored cruiser was formidable when designed in the 1890s, but she only had two breech-loading 9.2-inch Mk 10 guns that could be used in the battle. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau gave her no chance.

Von Spee then rounded the bottom of South America and made for the British crown colony of the Falkland Islands, then an important coaling station and stop-over point for Cape-bound ships. His ships low on coal, low on ammunition, and starting their fourth month on the run, were surprised when they met Vice Adm. Doveton Sturdee’s strong force that consisted of two new 20,000-ton HMS Invincible class battle-cruisers, backed up by five smaller cruisers and the old battleship HMS Canopus on December 8, 1914. In a direct mirror image of the Battle of Coronel, Von Spee was doomed.

Chart of the engagement, showing Sturdee’s chase of Von Spee’s fleet. Click to make much larger. From Project Gutenberg

Again, it came down to who had more heavy guns. The British this time had 16 quick firing 12-inch guns against the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau’s sixteen 8.3-inchers. Engaging the now-fleeing Germans at extreme range, the Scharnhorst turned into the two British battlecruisers, taking Invincible and Inflexible on in turns while Von Spee ordered the rest of his squadron to try to escape. However, it was no match By 16:17, ablaze and listing, she capsized. In the end, Scharnhorst took every single man who was aboard her that day, including Von Spee, to the bottom of the Atlantic.

The British were so pleased in the destruction of Scharnhorst that not one but two pieces of martial art were soon produced to celebrate it.

Sinking of the Scharnhorst painted by Admiral Thomas Jacques Somerscales currently on display at the Royal Museums Greenwich

Battle of the Falkland Islands, 1914 by British Artist William Lionel Wyllie, showing Scharnhorst slipping below the waves as Gneisenau battles on

Gneisenau’s life would only be scant minutes longer. Her engines barely able to break 16-knots against the Invincible and Inflexible’s 25, they soon caught up to her and at 17:50, out of ammunition and dead in the water, the mighty cruiser joined her sister in the depths. While a few of her crew were picked up by the British battlecruisers, over 600 perished.

HMS Inflexible picking up German sailors from Gneisenau after the battle

Later the same day they Royal Navy caught up to Nurnberg and Leipzig, completing a near hat trick of destroying the German East Asia Squadron in a single day. Dresden, out of coal and ammunition, scuttled herself in Chilean waters in March 1915, while her intelligence officer, a young Lt. Canaris, later to lead the Abwher in WWII, managed to escape destruction with her.

The Royal Navy had avenged the shame of Coronel. However, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would in turn be avenged at Jutland in 1916 when accurate large caliber shells of the German High Seas Fleet sent HMS Invincible to Valhalla while Inflexible, whose crew watched their sister ship vaporize, only narrowly avoided a salvo of torpedoes.

Scharnhorst’s battleflag was recovered; legend has it from a waterproof shell tube tied to the leg of a German bosun’s mate, and returned to Germany where it disappeared in 1945. Likely, it is hanging on a wall in Russia somewhere.

To the ships lost at Coronel, there is a memorial run by the British.

As far as a memorial to these, two armored cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were remembered in a pair of later German battlecruisers who, as fate would have it, were destroyed by the British in another World War. Von Spee himself, who not only lost his life at the Battle of the Falklands but those of his two sons, was memorialized in a pocket battleship that carried his name, before being the only German capital ship to be sunk in South America in another strange twist of fate.

As a side note, the Germans set up a brewery in Tsingtao, in part to provide good beer for the fleet still stands and is well known and even loved today as the best German beer in China. So if you ever run across one, pour out the first sip for Adm. Maximillian Von Spee and the 2200 sailors of the German East Asian Squadron that never saw their homeland again.

Specs:

Displacement: 12,985 t (12,780 long tons; 14,314 short tons)
Length: 144.6 m (474 ft.)
Beam: 21.6 m (71 ft.)
Draft: 8.37 m (27.5 ft.)
Propulsion:
18 Schulz Thornycroft Boilers
3 shaft triple expansion engines
27,759 ihp (trials)
Speed: 23.6 knots (44 km/h)
Range:
5,000 nmi (9,300 km; 5,800 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph)
2,200 nmi (4,100 km; 2,500 mi) at 20 kn (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Crew: 38 officers, 726 enlisted men
Armament:
8 × 8.2 in (21 cm) (2 × 2, 4 × 1)
6 × 5.9 in (15 cm) (6 × 1)
18 × 3.45 in (8.8 cm) (18 × 1)
4 × 17.7 in (45 cm) torpedo tubes
Armor:
Belt: 6 in (15 cm)
Turrets: 7 in (18 cm)
Deck: 1.5 in (3.8 cm)–2.5 in (6.4 cm)

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/

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

“In Proud Remembrance of the Forty Nine Thousand and Seventy Six of All Ranks of the Royal Regiment of Artillery Who Gave Their Lives for King and Country in the Great War 1914-1918″

Royal Artillery Memorial. Hyde Park, London, depicting a gunner shielded by a tent half from the rain, leading the first two horses of a gun caisson through a forgotten battlefield in Flanders

Born 1919 in Waverly, Missouri, Kenneth ‘Ken’ Riley is known primary as a ‘cowboy artist.’ This is because some of his best known works were Crow Fair, Split Horn Bonnet, and Legends of the Mandan. As such he is regarded as something of the modern Frederick Remington but in canvas. This led him to become a founding member of NAWA (the National Academy of Western Art) in 1973 and inducted as an Emeritus member of the Cowboy Artists of America .

Grasslands By Ken Riley. Image from From “First People“

Well, Riley did a lot of other stuff too. Before the war he was he was a student of Thomas Hart Benton. He also signed up for the military in WWII and cut his teeth as a combat artist in the U.S. Coast Guard (which included a mural at the Coast Guard Academy.)

“Offloading Supplies” By Ken Riley. Drawn and painted from what the USCG combat artist observed. Note the distinctive gold circles on the naval stevedore’s M1 helmets. Current in the collection of the USCG Museum. You can really feel the influence of Benton Hart in this painting.

“Marines Disembark at Tarawa.” Sketch by USCG combat artist Ken Riley in the collection of the Mariners Museum

Sketch by Ken Riley of WWII boat-crew from the collection at the Mariners Museum

“Coastguardsman Under Fire at Tarawa” By USCG Combat artist Ken Riley. From the USCG Museum

After the war he made a hard living by cranking out pulp illustrations for $15 a pop and unsigned comics to further earn his stripes.

Ken Riley pulp for The Saturday Evening Post, 1948

He was a frequent illustrator for National Geographic, painted Yellowstone for the Society of Illustrators and painted a series of iconic images in the history of the U.S. Army National Guard’s Heritage Command.

The Surrender of the Army of Northern Virgina April 12, 1865 by Ken Riley. Currently in the U.S. Military Academy Museum, West Point, New York

Ken Riley, “The visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to the U.S”, New York, July 14, 1825. 2nd Battalion, 2nd Regiment of Artillery, New York State Militia welcomes the visiting hero of the American Revolution Marquis de Lafayette. To honor him on his day of departure home to France, the unit adopted the name “National Guard” in remembrance of the Garde National de Paris, once commanded by Lafayette during the early days of the French Revolution. Taking note of the unit and its new name, Lafayette left his carriage and went down the line of troops clasping hands. It was this instance the the modern term of “National Guard” came from in the U.S. From the collection of the U.S. Army National Guard. Click to very much big up

Ken Riley, Buena Vista, Mexico, February 23, 1847 Showing the charge of the 1st Mississippi Rifles under then-Col. Jefferson Davis. Wearing their characteristic red shirts and straw hats, these men were equipped with 1841 pattern musket rifles and bowie knives. They saved Zach Taylor’s bacon that day and are still remembered in the lineage of the Mississippi Army National Guard . From the collection of the U.S. Army National Guard. Click to very much big up.

“Remember the River Raisin!” by Ken Riley, depicts a scene from the October 1813 Battle of the Thames, a decisive victory for the Americans in which Chief Tecumseh gave his life and Americans re-established control over the Northwest frontier. Kentucky troops were encouraged to fight this battle as revenge for an earlier massacre of Kentucky militia at the River Raisin. From the collection of the U.S. Army National Guard.

29th Infantry Division. D-Day, Omaha Beach Painting by Ken Riley. The 29th “Blue and the Grey” was made up of National Guard units drawn from both the North and South.  Painting by Ken Riley From the collection of the U.S. Army National Guard. Click to big up.

“The Whites of Their Eyes” Colonial militia at Bunker Hill 1775. Ken Riley. Located at the JFK Presidential Library.

Riley’s paintings hang in the permanent collections of the White House, the U.S Military Academy, the Air Force Academy, and the Mariners Museum and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and he is alive today at 95. Thank you for your work, sir.