Between the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII, the U.S. Navy experimented with a number of, ultimately spurned, designs to create a hybrid aviation carrier or cruiser carrier– basically a cruiser hull, engineering suite, and partial main battery, but with an aircraft carrier flight deck and abbreviated hangar. Basically, a light carrier that could escort itself while still outrunning most submarines and battleships of the day– a perfect weapon! Also, there was the prospect of using such designs to thread loopholes in the various naval treaties of the day and getting the most bang for the buck.

Here are some of the concepts, designated as Light Aircraft Carrier (CLV) in the 1930s:

The initial 1931 design, with nine 8″ guns forward and a short, angled deck:

“Proposed Flight Deck Cruiser, type CF”

NHHC S-511-4

Proposed Flight Deck Cruiser Preliminary design plan prepared for the General Board during the final effort to develop a flight deck cruiser (CF). This plan, dated 19 December 1939, is for a 12,000-ton standard displacement ship (14,220-ton trial displacement) with a main battery of three 8/55 guns, a secondary battery of eight 5/38 guns and an aircraft complement of 24 to 36. Ship’s dimensions are waterline length 640′; waterline beam 67′; draft 21′ 8. Powerplant has 100,000 horsepower for a speed of 33 knots. The scale of the original drawings is 1/32 = 1′. The original plan is in the 1939-1944 Spring Styles Book held by the Naval History and Heritage Command. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

“Proposed Flight Deck Cruiser Preliminary design plan prepared for the General Board during the final effort to develop a flight deck cruiser (CF)”

NHHC#: S-511-9.

This plan, dated 8 December 1939, is for a 12,000-ton standard displacement ship with a main battery of three 8/55 guns and a secondary battery of eight 5/38 guns (six specified in the table). Ship’s waterline length is 640′. The data table leaves other characteristics blank, and the plan is annotated Void – sec. batt arr. changed. The scale of the original drawings is 1/32 = 1′. The original plan is in the 1939-1944 Spring Styles Book held by the Naval History and Heritage Command.

“Proposed Flight Deck Cruiser, CF-2 Preliminary design plan prepared for the General Board during the final effort to develop a flight deck cruiser (CF).”

NHHC S-511-5

This plan, dated 31 January 1940, is for a 12,200-ton standard displacement ship (14,560-ton trial displacement) with a main battery of six 6/47 guns, a secondary battery of four 5/38 guns and an aircraft complement of 36 scout-bombers. Ship’s dimensions are waterline length 640′; waterline beam 67′; draft 22′. The powerplant has 100,000 horsepower for a speed of 33 knots. The scale of the plan and side elevation drawings is 1/32 = 1′. The original plan is in the 1939-1944 Spring Styles Book held by the Naval History and Heritage Command.

As noted by Global Security:

In 1933 Retired Admiral Hilary Jones called the ship “a hermaphrodite – neither a real cruiser nor a real airplane carrier. It has all the weaknesses of both and none of the efficient characteristics of either.” Admiral Joseph M. Reeves, commander-in-chief of the United States Fleet, summed up the case against the flying-deck cruiser in a memo to the General Board dated 08 October 1934 “Each study shows it to be a hybrid type entirely unsuitable as a cruiser or a carrier.” The idea of the flying deck cruiser, though kept alive until 1940, finally disappeared into the land of what-might-have-been.

Of course, the Navy did turn actual cruiser hulls into light carriers, sans armament (the Independence-class), while the Japanese did convert some battleships (Ise and Hyūga) into hybrids during the War.

Further, in the Cold War, the Russians produced the ill-fated and relatively unsuccessful Kiev-class of carrier-battlecruisers while the British billed their Invincible-class “harrier carriers” as through-deck cruisers, a concept that the U.S. experimented with in the 1970s as a “strike cruiser” for VSTOL aircraft, but never got off the ground.

Soviet Kiev-class “Aircraft Carrier” Novorossiysk, more cruiser than flattop.

HMS Invincible with her Sea Harrier airwing, more flattop than cruiser…

The U.S. “strike cruiser” concept of the 1970s, which never grew beyond the model phase.

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

Warship Wednesday, May 16, 2018: Schermerhorn’s contribution to naval history

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 53955

Here we see the pride of the New York Yacht Club, the steam patrol yacht Free Lance, in her newly-applied gray military scheme on duty off New York City, probably in August 1898. The brand-new pleasure craft would, oddly enough, be called upon not once, but twice, to defend her country.

But first, let us speak of that great knickerbocker, Frederick Augustus Schermerhorn.

As a young man, Schermerhorn came from a prominent Empire State family and, after a string of private schools and tutors, was accepted at what was then Columbia College for the Class of 1865. However, as the Civil War evolved, he promptly dropped out of school at the ripe old age of 20 in 1864 and sought an appointment to West Point, which was denied. Not to be outdone, he applied to a series of New York volunteer units and was enrolled to the roster of the newly-formed 185th New York Volunteer Infantry regiment’s C Company in the fall of 1864 and shipped off to the Petersburg Campaign in Northern Virginia.

Portrait of a soldier F. Augustus Schermerhorn standing, via the Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth collection

By the end of the war, the bloodied and decorated 1st Lt had been breveted a captain and was assigned as the aide-de-camp of MG Charles Griffin, the V Corps commander during its final campaign, and was present in the yard when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. In all, Schermerhorn served less than a year, but it was a hell of a year.

MG Charles Griffin and staff officers posed in front of the Cummings House. Our fellow is to the right

Returning to New York after the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, Schermerhorn went back to school, picking up his mining degree from Columbia in 1868, and continued his service with the famed “Blue-Bloods” of the 7th New York Militia regiment for another several decades. By 1877, he was a Columbia trustee and member in most of the clubs and societies in The City that meant anything including the Riding, Knickerbocker, Metropolitan, and Tuxedo clubs. He rose to become a Director of the N. Y. Life Insurance and Trust Co.

The good Mr. Schermerhorn was duly nominated and confirmed by the membership to the New York Yacht Club on 25 March 1886 and by 1897 was elected to a position as a flag officer with that esteemed organization, a post he held through at least 1903. During his time with the NYYC, he was one of the backers of the 1893 (eighth) America’s Cup contender Colonia but was beaten by Nathanael Greene Herreshoff’s Vanderbilt-backed centerboard sloop Vigilant.

Schermerhorn’s Colonia via Detroit Publishing Co, LOC LC-D4-21915

Moving past cutters, Schermerhorn commissioned Mr. Lewis Nixon of Elizabethport, NJ’s Crescent Shipyard to construct him a beautiful screw steam schooner designed by A. Cary Smith for personal use. As noted by the Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers at the time, his new ship, Free Lance, was 108-feet on the waterline and 137 from figurehead to taffrail with a cross-section “different from all other steam yachts” due to its long bow and lapped steel plating. A pair of Almy water tube boilers drove a 600 IHP triple expansion steam engine.

Yacht Free Lance in civilian livery, 11 June 1896, most probably on Long Island Sound. Note her guilt bow scroll and extensive canvas awnings over her twin deck houses. Also note her yacht ensign on the stern, NYYC pennant on her foremast, and Schermerhorn’s Maltese Cross pennant on her after mast. Photo via Detroit Publishing Co. 8×10 glass negative photographed by Charles Edwin Bolles LOC# LC-D4-62113

Her 25 September builder’s trials report made the Oct. 12, 1895 issue of Forest and Stream which noted that with a forced draft and 200-pounds of steam she was able to clear 19 miles in 62 minutes. By the turn of the century, she regualry hit 17 knots in civil use and utilized the novel Thorne-patent ash ejector, which gave steady work for her stokers.

However, the Free Lance only got two seasons in before war came with Spain, and Schermerhorn freely volunteered the services of his yacht to the Navy, which were promptly accepted.

The armed yachts of the Spanish-American War are fascinating reading as they were often very handsome sailing ships such as past Warship Weds alum Peter Arrell Brown Widener’s custom-built schooner-rigged Josephine and Massachusetts textile magnate Matthew Chaloner Durfee’s rakish and very well-appointed steam yacht, Sovereign.

At the time the Navy needed to rapidly expand and among the ships acquired for Spanish-American War service were no less than 29 armed and hastily converted yachts, primarily drawn from wealthy Northeast and New York Yankees such as our very own Mr. Schermerhorn. A baker’s dozen of these former pleasure craft were rather large ships, exceeding 400 tons. With relatively good gun-carrying capacity and sea-keeping capabilities, these bigger craft saw service off Cuba where they were used as auxiliary cruisers, scouting vessels, and dispatch ships.

Others, such as our newly commissioned USS Free Lance, were used in what was termed the Auxiliary Naval Force, keeping a weather eye for Spanish raiders just over the horizon of the increasingly undefended U.S Eastern Seaboard.

USS Free Lance underway off New York City, probably in August 1898. A small sailboat is just astern of Free Lance, and USS New York (Armored Cruiser # 2) is in the background. Also, note that her awnings have been stripped away, she is no longer flying her yachting pennants, and she has guns on her pilot house and stern. NH 53953

Her armament: a pair of .65-caliber Royal Navy contract 1870s-vintage Mark I 10-barrel Gatling guns mounted atop the yacht’s pilothouse and on her stern, reportedly picked up through the offices of local NYC military surplus guru Francis Bannerman.

USS Free Lance (1898-1899), Gatling Gun Crew, 1898. Note the “Free Lance” bands on their flat caps, the .45-70 rounds and Springfield Trapdoor bayonets on their Mills belts, and the gun’s hopper which held 20 rounds. Detroit Publishing Company.

Each Gatling gun weighed 725-pounds, not including the mount and fired a 1,421-grain projectile at 1,427fps. The rate of fire (theoretically) was 1,200 rounds per minute but the gun was limited by the speed that assistant gunners could drop rounds down the beast’s top-mounted Bruce Feed-style chute.

USS Free Lance (1898-1899), Petty Officers 1898. Detroit Publishing Company

With her unconventional armament and small relative size, she was used as a harbor patrol craft during the conflict, commissioned as USS Free Lance, 12 May 1898.

USS Free Lance at anchor off New York City, probably in August 1898. Note the small sailboats in the left background and Free Lance’s pilot house-mounted Gatling gun. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 53954

Her term of service was short, decommissioning on 24 August 1898 after just 14 weeks on active duty.

Returned to her owner, when WWI came the aging Schermerhorn once more contributed his love to the Navy, with the yacht leased for $1 on 19 July 1917 and commissioned as USS Freelance (SP-830) with no space between the two words. This was because from 1905 on, her name was spelled “Freelance.”

Freelance Underway, prior to World War I. This yacht served as USS Free Lance in 1898 and as USS Freelance (SP-830) in 1917-1918. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 102819

Under command of Ensign J. B. Nevins, USNRF, and armed with a pair of recycled 3-pounder guns (Gatling’s were reserved for museums by 1917) she was once more put in service patrolling in the New York area. Her DANFS record is slim.

USS Freelance (SP-830) In port during the World War I era. The original print is in National Archives’ Record Group 19-LCM. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 101720

Freelance was decommissioned on Christmas Eve 1918 and returned to her owner the same day. Schermerhorn passed in March 1919, age 74, during a speech he was giving before the Union Club and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.

His epitaph is Psalm 37:37: “Mark the perfect man and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.”

Schermerhorn’s 1915 portrait by August Franzen is in the Smithsonian‘s National Portrait Gallery.

I cannot find what became of his cherished Free Lance, but I would like to think she is still in Gotham somewhere, perhaps on the bottom of the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard, which in a way would be fitting.

Specs:
Displacement 132 t.
Length 137 feet overall
Beam 20′ 8″
Draft 7′ 6″
Propulsion: One 600ihp steam engine (3cyl, 11,17&29×20 Crescent), one shaft. Two Almy WT boilers
Speed 14 knots in naval service, almost 19 on trials
Complement 18 (military service)
Armament: Two .65-caliber Gatling guns (1898)
Two 3-pounders (1917)

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A U.S. Army Machine Gun Team from Company A, Ninth Machine Gun Battalion, 6th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, AEF, man a machine gun set up in railroad shop in Chateau Thierry, France, on June 7, 1918, 100 years ago today.

This was during the Aisne Defensive, which in days saw the entire division take to the front line for the first time and three weeks later switched to holding the southern crossing of the Marne against the Germans even when surrounding units retreated.

Although the U.S. military had access to a number of machine guns going into WWI– including the 25-pound Model 1909 Benet Mercie, which was cranky but proved its worth in repelling Villa’s raid on Columbus, NM in 1916; as well as the 35-pound Colt-Browning M1895 “Potato Digger” which was mass-produced by Marlin during the war; and the excellent 28-pound Lewis light machine gun– the American Expeditionary Force to France was armed in large part with 7,000 French Mle 1914 Hotchkiss machine gun of the example shown above.

A 53-pound weapon, it was far from “light” though it was designed by the same Mssrs. Benet and Mercie as the M1909, but it was simple (just 32 parts, assembled with no pins or screws) and reliable. Fed through a 30-round metal strip, a three-man crew could keep em coming enough to get a 120~ round-per-minute cyclic rate and keep it up until the ammo ran out which it made a good complement to the vaunted (but twice as heavy) Browning Model 1917A1 water-cooled machine gun.

Though the U.S. Army would replace the M1914 with the much better Browning M1919 in the 1920s, the “Mitrailleuse Hotchkiss modèle 1914” remained in use with other countries through WWII and even into the 1950s and later with the Chinese and in various Latin American countries.

The unit shown above, the 9th Machine Gun Battalion was formed just for the war in October 1917 and fought with the 3rd ID through Chateau Thierry, and the Meuse-Argonne, leaving a number of its brave gunners “Over There.”

General Pershing called the stand of the 3rd ID along the Marne “one of the most brilliant pages of our military annals,” and today the division is known, of course, as “The Rock of the Marne.”

Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Lord Howard de Walden, was a polymath who had ridden with the 10th Hussars in the Boer War and was always ready for a fight.

From the National Trust

Tommy’s enormous range of interests included: documenting heraldry as a medieval historian, editing Burke’s Peerage, competing in the 1908 Olympics at speed boat racing (the only time this has ever been an Olympic event), horse racing, sailing, hawking, golfing, flying, model-boating, writing libretti for operas (with music by his friend Joseph Holbrooke) and writing both pageants and pantomimes for his six children and their friends – he did the lot!

When the Great War came, Lord Walden became involved with the 9th Batt., Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and as can be expected, began searching for a blade that set his Welshmen apart.

That’s where antiques dealer, arms collector and scholar Felix Joubert of Chelsea came in. The so-called Welsh sword was a trench dagger that Joubert said was based on the traditional “Welsh cleddyd” (or cledd), but this has been ruled out as just so much window dressing to appeal to Lord Walden.

Welsh Knife with scabbard (WEA 785) The ‘Welsh Knife’ was designed in 1916 by the sculptor and armourer Felix Joubert and patented by him, as a ‘new or improved trench knife’. It was allegedly based on an ancient Welsh weapon, although the existence of such a distinctly Welsh mediæval sword has since been disproved. An unknown, but limited, number of Welsh Knives were manufactured by the Wilkinson Sword Company, Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30001257

The pommel is heavy and pointed, the hand guard folds flat against the blade for sheathing and the ricasso is inscribed “Dros Urddas Cymru”, Welsh for “For the honour of Wales”

The blade was some 17.6-inches long, leading to a two-foot long, 36-ounce weapon.

Joubert’s Welsh sword trench knife, patent drawing. Note the folding mechanism

He patented the blade in 1916 (GB108741) and it was produced by both Wilkinson (who apparently made 200) and locally in France by firm(s) unknown. Originally only for use by bombers (grenadiers), trench-pirates and machine gun crew, it was later issued to most officers and ranks of 9th RWF.

They were reportedly “used with great effect in a raid at Messines Ridge, 5 June 1917.”

From the Royal Armories

As noted by the Royal Armories, “The ‘Welsh knife’ inspired the design of the Smatchet fighting knife of The Second World War by the renowned hand-to-hand combat expert and innovator, Lieutenant-Colonel William E. Fairbairn.”

Behold, the famous Fairbairn Smatchet…or is it a Welsh cleddyd?

The Welsh trench swords are widely reproduced by Windlass in India as well as others, while the Smatchet is even more common.

View of a Ford 3-Ton M1918 tankette, used during World War I and powered by a pair of Model T gaslone engines:

Courtesy of the National Automotive History Collection, Detroit Public Library

Handwritten on back: “Ford 2-man tank, World War I. Credit: Col. Robert J. Icks Collection. Ford 3 ton light tank, c. 1918. 3.4 tons, max. speed 8 mph, two Ford Model T engines, one cal. 30 machine gun. Historical motor vehicles.”

Armed with just a single M1917 Marlin light machine gun (itself an updated M1895 Colt potato-digger), the Army wanted 15,000 of these to smother the Germans in 1919 on the Western Front but only 15 were built before the end of the war.

According to wiki: There are two known survivors; one is at the National Armor & Cavalry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia; the second is with the Ordnance Collection at Fort Lee, Virginia.

Built over two decades at the expense of huge portions of the French defense budget, the brainchild of French Minister of War André Maginot– some 5,000 interconnected concrete and steel blockhouses arrayed against Germany– was to provide a huge defensive line for “la Guerre de longue durée” (the war of the long duration) just in case the Germans ever came back.

“Finally the Maginot Line was rolled up. What France considered invincible broke before the might of German arms. In Alsace alone, 500,000 Frenchmen laid down their arms.” Photo Via NY Public Library

Of course, the Germans ran around the wall through the Low Country and Ardennes and the vaunted line was rolled up largely intact after the Battle of France, some 78 years ago today.

Something kinda like this:

The Franco-German Armistice of 22 June 1940 was signed at 18:36 near Compiègne, France, knocking the French ostensibly out of WWII after just nine months of campaigning. Of course, the Vichy regime was non-viable from the start and by November 1942 the Germans went ahead and occupied the whole of metropolitan France as De Gaulle grew in power from London, but that is a whole different story.

Here is a great image from the Cody Museum showing a Great War-era Colt M1911 (bottom) compared to a post-war M1911A1.

Via the Cody Museum

The A1 designation came about in 1924 and changes to the standard include a thicker front sight, an arched and checkered mainspring housing (to improve aim/ergonomics), a longer hammer spur (to help curb reports of slide bite on firing), a shorter trigger with checkering and relief cuts in the guard to help those with smaller hands, and a longer grip safety spur.

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

Warship Wednesday, July 4, 2018: Remembering the Independence most often forgotten

NH 70472

Here we see the “444-type” freighter USS Independence (SP-3676) in striking dazzle camouflage, probably in San Francisco Bay, California, soon after her completion in late 1918. While the U.S. and Massachusetts State Navy operated no less than seven “Independences” going all the way back to 1776, and today is July 4th, I figured it would be fitting to cover #4 of these, which had a great service history and was sandwiched between a 90-gun ship of line that gave 98-years of service and three much better-known aircraft carriers of the same name.

Appropriately enough, the story of this Independence started off with the British.

In late 1916 the shipping-strapped British Admiralty contracted with Union Iron Works (UIW) shipyard, located at Potrero Point, San Francisco, for a series of 7,700-dwt, 444-foot oal, single-screw, steel-hulled freighters to a design approved by the U.S. Shipping Board’s construction program, an emergency agency authorized by the Shipping Act of 1916 that eventually morphed into the MARAD of today. The first of these, War Knight (UIW’s hull #132A), was laid down in early 1917, followed by War Monarch, War Sword, War Harbour, War Haven, War Ocean, War Rock, War Sea, War Cape, War Surf and War Wave (seeing a trend here?). Of these, just the first three, completed by Sept. 1917, were delivered to the British. By that point, the U.S. needed ships of her own and stepped in. Soon, each of the vessels under construction was renamed and taken over by the Navy of their birthplace.

War Harbour, hull 162A, became SS Independence while under construction while others lost their intended names and became, respectively, Victorious, Defiance, Invincible, Courageous, Eclipse, Triumph, and Archer. A 12th ship, Steadfast, was contracted by the USSB directly without London being involved.

War Harbour, then SS Independence, photographed on 24 October 1918 at the yard of her builder, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., Union Plant, Potrero Works, San Francisco. Behind her is a later sister, SS War Surf/Eclipse, that during World War II became USS William P. Biddle (AP-15). Source: U.S. National Archives, RG-32-S via Ship Scribe.

Taken into federal service as 18 November 1918 as USS Independence, her first skipper was LCDR O. P. Rankin and she was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service, completing one voyage to France with a load of foodstuffs. With the Great War at an end, she was decommissioned, 20 March 1919, after just four months of service, and handed over to the USSB who promptly converted her and several of her sisters to a turbo-electric powerplant capable of a speed of a very fast (for a merchant ship) speed of 16 knots, then placed the essentially new vessels in storage.

Then came 1930 and the Roosevelt Steamship Company’s award of a mail contract for a weekly run from Baltimore and Norfolk to Hamburg, Germany and Le Havre, France– a contract that resulted in the group forming the Baltimore Mail Steamship Company. Headquartered in the now-iconic but then brand-new Baltimore Trust Building (now the Bank of America Building), the Baltimore Mail Line picked up five of the old 444’s from USSB storage– Steadfast, War Surf/Eclipse, War Haven/Victorious, War Wave/Archer, and War Harbour/Independence. Reconstructed under a Gibbs & Cox design to accommodate 80 passengers, modified to hit 18-knots, and lengthened to 507 feet, the now-8,424t ships started a regular trade within a year renamed (again) as the City of Baltimore, City of Hamburg, City of Havre, City of Newport News and, our hero, as City of Norfolk, after the five hubs serviced by the line.

The launching of the SS City of Norfolk on August 14th, 1931 at the Norfolk Army Base piers (former War Harbour, ex-USS Independence) of the Baltimore Mail Line.

As reported by the GG Archives, “The single class liners offered staterooms with outside exposure, hot running water, and Simmons beds. In 1935, the Baltimore Mail Line offered fares to London or Hamburg for $90 one way or $171 round trip.” The ships had a saloon, barber shop, a surgeon’s office, an oak-paneled smoking room, a sports deck with tennis courts, and other amenities. A brochure from the period cautions that “professional gamblers are reported as frequently traveling on passenger steamers and are warned to take precautions accordingly.”

In 1937 the bottom fell out of the U.S. shipping industry after Congress withdrew all maritime mail subsidies and the Baltimore Mail Line folded. War Harbour/Independence/City of Norfolk was transferred briefly to the struggling Panama Pacific Line, carrying freight and passengers from New York to California and back again via the Canal, but that soon ended as that shipper too folded due to mounting costs.

By November 1940, the five converted former Baltimore Mail Line ships, now 20-years old and surplus once more were re-acquired by the U.S. Navy for the second time. Dubbed transports, they were taken to Willamette Steel in Portland, camouflaged, fitted to accommodate 1100~ troops, armed with a smattering of deck guns (a single 5″/51 and two 3″/50 guns as well as some .50 cals to ward off low-flying curious planes), given two light davits on each side to accommodate eight landing craft, and (wait for it) renamed yet again.

War Harbour/Independence/City of Norfolk became USS Neville (AP-16) and by June reported for duty with the Atlantic Fleet, spending six months transporting troops and naval personnel from the East Coast to new bases in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. Shortly after the U.S. entered the war, she joined a transatlantic convoy to Ireland with British personnel and Lend-Lease equipment aboard.

View of a convoy out of Brooklyn, New York (USA), February 1942: USS Neville (AP-16) is in the foreground. Other ships present include at least six other transports, a light cruiser, and a battleship. This is probably the convoy that left the east coast on 19 February 1942, bound across the Atlantic to Belfast, Northern Ireland. Note the extensive use of Measure 12 (Modified) camouflage on these ships. U.S. Navy photo 80-G-2408

Then came the Pacific war and, armed with more AAA guns (20mm’s in place of her original .50 cals) was soon carrying Army troops and Navy Seabees to New Zealand, then Marines to a place called Guadalcanal, where she helped conduct landings on Blue Beach 7 August 1942, sending Marine Combat Team 2 ashore on Tulagi.

U.S. Marines come ashore on Tulagi Island, probably during the landings there on 7-8 August 1942. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-16485

Landing at Guadalcanal. The latest shipment of reinforcements for Guadalcanal prepare to leave a landing boat, from USS Neville (APA-9) on the shores of the island. NARA photograph. Photographed through Mylar sleeve.

It was a dangerous place to be for a lightly armed transport. Class sister War Haven/Victorious/City of Havre/George F. Elliott was lost just a few miles away after she was clobbered by Japanese planes.

The U.S. Navy troop transport USS George F. Elliott (AP-13) burning between Guadalcanal and Tulagi, after she was hit by a crashing Japanese aircraft during an air attack on 8 August 1942. Date 8 August 1942 Source Official U.S. Navy photo NH 69118

Redesignated an amphibious assault transport (APA-9), Neville was then rushed to the Med for the invasion of Sicily, this time to put men of the Army’s 45th Infantry (Thunderbird) Division on Red Beach.

Shipping off the Scoglitti beaches on the first day of the invasion, 10 July 1943. Among the ships present are: USS Calvert (APA-32), second from left; USS Neville (APA-9), left center; USS Frederick Funston (APA-89), far right. An LST is in the right center, with a light cruiser in the distance beyond. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-215086

USS Neville (APA-9) off the Norfolk Navy Yard on 17 April 1943 after receiving changes to her armament and other modifications. Her 5″/51 gun aft has been removed and two twin 40mm anti-aircraft guns have been added, one forward in the tall structure over the two 3″/50 guns and one aft. She also received a radar mast over the bridge. Photo No. 19-N-45752 Source: U.S. National Archives, RG-19-LCM via Ship Scribe

Chopping back to the Pac after gaining more AAA (40mms this time), Neville landed troops at Tarawa in the Gilberts in November 1943, Kwajalein and Majuro three months later, Eniwetok in March 1944, and helped capture Saipan that June after landing her Marines on beach Green Two. In all, she was awarded five battle stars for her WWII service.

After taking Japanese POWs– a rare treasure– back to Pearl Harbor, Neville spent the rest of the war in San Diego training APA crews. The end of the conflict saw her performing Magic Carpet duty, bringing home salty combat vets from overseas and replacing them with fresh green troops for occupation duty. Arriving at Boston 5 February 1946, she was struck from the Navy List 15 August 1946, then towed to the James River National Defense Reserve Fleet. Ten years later the old girl was sold to a New Jersey company for scrap.

Her three remaining APA sisters who survived the war– War Wave/Archer/City of Newport News/Fuller, War Surf/Eclipse/City of Hamburg/William Biddle, and Steadfast/City of Baltimore/Heywood, all were likewise scrapped in 1956.

The unmodified freighter sisters were less lucky. War Cape/Triumph was sunk as SS Pan-Massachusetts by a German torpedo in 1942. War Sea/Courageous was sunk as breakwater off Normandy in 1944. In all, they were a hard luck and unsung class of ships, but they got it done, which is all you can really ask.

Specs:
Displacement 7,475 t.(lt) 14,450 t.
Length 507′ (post-conversion, 1931) 444 as built
Beam 56′
Draft 24′ (mean)
Propulsion: four Babcock and Wilcox header-type boilers
one De Laval steam turbine, geared turbine drive
single propeller, 9,500shp
Speed 16 kts as built
Complement (1945)
Officers 50
Enlisted 524
Troop Accommodations: 60-75 officers, 818-1,203 enlisted
Cargo: 145,000-150,000 cu ft, 1,800-2,900 tons
Armament (1940)
one single 5″/51 mount
two single 3″/50 cal dual purpose gun mounts
eight 0.5 in (12.7 mm) machine guns
Armament (1945)
four single 3″/50 cal dual purpose gun mounts
two twin 40mm AA gun mounts
sixteen single 20mm AA gun mounts

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

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

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

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

The Cody Firearms Museum has an extensive collection of historic arms and they recently got a special look at one of their original “Silencers.”

The pre-NFA vintage firearm suppressor brand named by its inventor, Hiram Percy Maxim, was x-rayed by the Cody Police Department while the agency was on hand at the Wyoming-based museum this month to verify that some ordnance at the center was inert.

The M1910 Maxim Silencer is attached to the threaded barrel of a Springfield 1903 in the Cody’s collection. Thus:

More about the M1910, which was used in small numbers by the Great War-era U.S. Army, in my column at Guns.com

Via the Thomas Crane Public Library’s Fore River Shipyard Postcard Collection:

Commissioned into the Atlantic Fleet in February 1906, Rhode Island was one of five Virginia-class pre-dreadnoughts built between the SpanAm War and WWI. She carried four 12″/40 (30.5 cm) Mark 4s in two twin turrets and eight 8″/45 (20.3 cm) Mark 6s in four twin turrets.

Made obsolete before she was commissioned by the arrival of the HMS Dreadnought, Rhode Island served in the Great White Fleet and in various sticky spots during the Wilson administration and was sold for scrap in 1923 under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, though her bell is on display at the Rhode Island State House.

Here we see a U.S. Model 1918M1 155mm gun, the famous French GPF (Canon de 155mm Grande Puissance Filloux, a direct copy of the C modèle 1917 Schneider) of the Great War, which equipped U.S. forces overseas and– when upgraded with air brakes, new metal wheels, and pneumatic tires to allow for high-speed towing– remained the mainstay of the interwar Army throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Note the unmodified 1918-series profile, with hard rubber wheels and no air brake, in other words, in its original WWI-era mode, suitable for being pulled by slow tractors or horses. (Photo: Chris Eger)

By the outbreak of WWII, the Army had 979 GPFs still on hand although they were being replaced by the new and much more modern M114 155 mm howitzer (many of the latter are still in use in the Third World today).

With the relegation of the old GPF to the reserve, when the balloon went up and German and Japanese subs started crawling just off the U.S. coastline, these vintage guns were pressed into service on what were termed “Panama Mounts,” a semi-fixed installation atop a circular concrete mount that allowed the gun to revolve and rotate in place. Capable of sending a 95-pound shell out to 17,700-yards every 15-seconds with a well-trained crew, they could shatter the hull of a U-boat with ease or give a surface raider far from home at least a moment of pause.

One such gun (pictured above) remains at Fort Morgan, Alabama, controlling the entrance to Mobile Bay.

In 1942 the fort received four GPFs, two of which (Nos. 176 and 802) were used on Panama Mounts on top of the old Civil War-era bastions while two others were left mobile.

Soldier sitting on top of an M1918 155mm GPF, 1942. The gun position would be located on top of Bastion 3 of the fort. Note the camouflage, sandbag revetments and Panama Mount (Fort Morgan Collection)

Taken in 1943, this picture shows one of two 155 GPF guns that were mounted on top of the fort. Maximum elevation was 35-degrees, which is close to what this tube is (Fort Morgan Collection)

These were manned by men of Battery F, 50th Coast Artillery throughout the duration of the War. It should be noted that, while Fort Morgan was an active U.S./Confederate base from 1819 through WWI, by 1931 it had been disarmed and abandoned, with the visiting 155’s of Battery F her last hurrah.

Established at Camp Pendleton, Virginia 1 February 1942, the 50th Coast Artillery was a tractor-drawn heavy artillery regiment. After just two months of training, Battery F entrained for Fort Barrancas (Pensacola) Florida. Arriving there on 7 April 1942, the unit left in a (slow) motor convoy to Fort Morgan to establish Temporary Harbor Defenses (THD) of Mobile and remained there until 1944.

Battery E went down the coast another several miles to my hometown of Pascagoula to defend Ingalls Shipyard from a point on Beach Boulevard, but that is another story…

Morgan’s remaining GPF, head on. Yes, double solid rubber wheels on each side. (Photo: Chris Eger)

The gun still at Morgan is on M1918 carriage No. 429, one of the 626 U.S.-made produced under a license from Schneider/Puteaux. Another 577 were purchased from the French directly. All U.S.-made carriages were manufactured by Minneapolis Steel from built-up steel alloy. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Her tube is No. 1073, Watervliet Arsenal production. All gun tubes for U.S.-made M1917/18s were made by either Watervliet or Bullard Engineering Works and marked as such on the muzzle. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Technically a 155mm/38 caliber piece, the tube is almost 10-feet long (232.87 inches) with the weight of the gun and carriage topping 19,860-pounds, or right at 10-tons. Muzzle velocity on the 95-pound shell was 2,411fps– which is a whole lot of energy. 

Their use in Coastal Artillery was nearly the last hurrah of the GPF in U.S. service.

By May 1941, the M1917/18 was a Lend-Lease item and much of those stocks not used to guard the various beaches soon were on their way to the British, where they made an appearance in North Africa against Rommel and Co. The GPF also served in the Pacific, with at least 60 of the model captured by the Japanese in the Philippines. Late in 1942, some 100 GPFs that remained in storage were mounted on the turretless chassis of the obsolete M3 Lee tank to form the M12 Gun Motor Carriage as a form of early self-propelled artillery. When teamed up with the companion Cargo Carrier M30 (also a turretless M3), which allowed them to go into the line with 40 rounds of 155mm ready, they proved popular in a niche role. These tracked GPFs earned the nicknames “Doorknocker” and “King Kong” in service due to their ability to pierce up to seven feet of reinforced concrete and turn pillboxes into a smokey hole in the ground– a useful thing in Northeastern Europe in 1944.

If visiting Fort Morgan, be sure to check out the small museum just a few hundred yards from where the surviving GPF sits.

Inside the museum they have the guidon of Battery A, 104th Coastal Artillery, an Alabama National Guard unit mobilized for federal service 10 months prior to Pearl Harbor and then shipped to the Pacific in 1942, only returning home in January 1946.

As well as the typical WWII Coastal Artillery uniform of sun hat, olive coveralls tucked into canvas leggings, gas mask, and cartridge belt:

Of note, interwar Coastal Artillery coveralls were blue denim but were often worn by National Guard units operating 155mm GPFs in WWII, such as one of these big guns going boom, shown in the late 1930s Kodachrome below.

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 their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 11, 2018: a Big gun in a little boat

From the collections of the Danish National Museum #92-1993

Here we see the Danish kanonbaadene (gunboat) Møen of the Royal Danish Navy, a prime example of the late 19th Century “flat-iron,” or Rendel-type gunboat popular in Europe for coast defense for a generation. Just 112-feet overall, she mounted a very stout Armstrong 10-inch, 18-ton muzzle-loading rifle as her main armament.

Seriously:

Click to big up 2000×1321. Note the two covered 83mm guns on the bridge wings, the accordion player, and bugler. Oh, and the big ass 10-incher in the center. And yes, that is the whole crew.

Named after the lonely but beautiful island of Møn, the hardy vessel was ordered from Orlogsværftet, Copenhagen in 1875 and commissioned 24 August 1876. Based on the British Ant-class (254-tons, 85-ft overall, 1x RML 10-inch 18-ton gun) the 410-ton Møen was the *largest* of a five-ship lot consisting of three 240-ton Oresund-class vessels and her near-sister, the 383-ton Falster, all completed by 1876 and mounting the same giant 10-incher.

British Ant-class. In all, between the 1870s and 80s, some 100 or so Rendel-type gunboats like these were built and used by a dozen navies to include those of Argentina, the Chinese and Japanese. By the 1900s these were largely replaced as an idea that had quickly expired.

Meanwhile, just to the south of Denmark, the German Kaiserliche Marine had ordered 11 similar Wespe-class gunboats mounting an impressive 12-incher forward. It should be remembered that at the time Denmark and Germany were only a decade removed from a sharp war that went kind of bad for Copenhagen.

German Wespe class Rendel gunboats– the opposite of Moen and Falster

Powered by a 500hp steam engine, the proud Møen could make a stately 9-knots on her iron-hull when wide open but could float in just nine feet of water, enabling her to hide in the shallows around Denmark’s coastline and burp out a 400-pound shell to 6,000 yards. In tests, the Danes found that the 10-inch main battery of these five gunboats could penetrate 270mm of wrought iron at 628 meters, which was pretty good for the day.

Joining the fleet by late 1876, the plucky gunboat joined in regular Eskadren (squadron) maneuvers each summer from June to the end of September in the Baltic, assisting with cadet cruises as needed and practicing her gunnery while the Øresund-class ships were gradually removed from service, found to be just too small of the task.

Sister Falster, pre-1903. Note the big 10-inch forward

On 30 September 1901, while anchored in front of Fort Middelgrund between Copenhagen and Malmö, Møen suffered a catastrophic hull breach while testing new (and apparently finicky) incendiary shells for her Armstrong. While her 35-man crew was safe aboard the nearby coastal defense ship Skjold, Moen‘s rifle was fired electrically via a cable from 400m away and on the third shot a fire started aboard that triggered her magazine just seconds later.

The ship “disappeared” and settled on the bottom of Øresund, gratefully without any casualties. Only her masthead was visible over the surface.

The news was widely reported in naval journals of the time.

The sinking of the Moen from the Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers, Volume 13

The sinking of the Moen from the Naval Institute Proceedings, Volume 27 1901

Sister Falster, the last Danish Rendel-type gunboat, soon after the accident landed her big gun and she was rearmed with a much safer 57 mm popgun in 1903.

Kanonbaaden Falster sometime between 1903 and 1914, note the much more sedate 57mm L44 M1896 mount forward. Interestingly enough, this model gun remained in maritime service well into the 1990s, only retired by the Icelandic Coast Guard in favor of slightly more up-to-date Bofors 40mm singles.

Retained for another decade, she was listed as having an armament consisting of seven machine guns (likely domestically-produced Madsens) in Janes‘ 1914 edition:

6th down, at the time the oldest armed gunboat in the Danish Navy

During WWI, Falster served as a guard ship between Amager and Saltholm. The highlight of this service was when the British submarine HMS E.13 ran aground near her in 1915, and some of the RN officers were brought aboard until they could be sent ashore to be interned for the duration.

Kanonbåden Falster, stern, as guardship

At the end of hostilities, she was withdrawn, disarmed and was sold in February 1919. As such, Falster was pretty much the swan song of Rendel-type iron gunboats except for the Greek Amvrakia, which mounted an 11-inch gun on a ridiculous 400-ton hull and remained in (nominal) service until 1931.

Converted to a coastal freighter under the name Holger, Falster was lost in 1930 with seven merchantmen aboard in a winter snowstorm north of Djursland with a load of cement.

As for her sister, the Danish Navy salvaged the guns and most of the more valuable equipment in 1902, but the wreck of kanonbåden Møen, in just 19m of sheltered water, is a popular and easy dive.

The two ships were later commemorated by the Danes in the much larger Falster-class minelæggeren (minelayers) which were active from the 1960s through 2004.

As for Denmark, of course, the Royal Danish Navy was an armed neutral in the sharp crossroads between the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet and Imperial German Navy’s High Seas Fleet in the Great War, a semi-active combatant against the Germans in WWII, and, since 1949, has been an important contributor to NATO.

Specs:
Displacement 409 t.
Length: 112.5-feet
Width: 28.8 ft.
Draft: 9 ft.
Engine: 500 hp steam engine, one screw
Speed: 9.0 knots, 20-tons of coal
Crew: 30 to 35
Armament:
Single RML 10-inch 18-ton gun (254mm/18cal) M.1875 Armstrong
Two 83mm/13cal M.1872 Krupp rifled breechloaders (later replaced with 6 37 mm rapid-fire guns).

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

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

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

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here we see the Illinois-class pre-dreadnought type battleship USS Wisconsin (BB-9) drawing 23 feet of water in Gatun Lake, Panama, 16 July 1915.

Obsolete within five years of her commissoning, she served with her two sisteres, Illinois and former Warship Wednesday alumn Alabama on the epic Great White Fleet and then, after a modernization in 1909 that left her looking more haze gray as seen above, she was used for training until 1919 when she was laid up for good and scrapped without ceremony in 1922.

In 1944 another battleship entered the fleet with the same name, which had a rather longer life.

Marine Corps Photo #530953 entitled “Ready for Anything–Maneuvers outside of Peking” showing some well-outfitted Devil Dogs clad in overseas winter gear to include fur caps readying a Browning M1917 water-cooled 30.06 machine gun while sheltering in what looks like a tilled field. Although the M1919 air-cooled Browning was around, the sustained fire M1917 was a thing of beauty on the defense.

The picture is comparable to one from RN Marines from about 30 years previous:

“The New Maxim-Gun mounting field Service with the Naval Brigade in South Africa 1900.”

While the USMC photo is undated, it likely comes from the late 1920s-30s, the heydey of the famous “China Marines” which saw the whole of the 4th Marine Regiment stationed in Shanghai from March 1927 onward to augment the Legation Guard Marines from Peking and Tientsin in protecting American citizens and property in the International Settlement during outbreak of violence that came with the Chinese Revolution– and, after 1937, the Japanese invasion of China.

“Technical Sgt-USMC-1938, Mounted, by Maj. J.H. Magruder, USMCR” typical of the kit of the 4th Marines in Northern China at the time of the photo at the top of the post.

Reduced over time to just two (sometimes horse-mounted on Mongolian ponies) battalions, each with only two rifle companies of two platoons each and one machine gun company (but augmented by the only fife band in the Corps), by 1940 the Marines were the only large international force in Shanghai as the French and Brits had withdrawn due to pressing needs elsewhere.

One of several Mark VII 3-inch landing guns remaining in the hands of the Marine garrison in Peking in service with the 39th Company, Marine Artillery. Just 51 of these handy 1,700-pound guns were built from a German Ehrhardt design 1909-12 and were used extensively by the Marines in the Banana Wars (although not in France in the Great War). China was the last hurrah of these peculiar 3″/23 caliber field guns– and the Japanese captured six of the example in storage at Cavite in 1942.

The 4th Marines was itself pulled from China less than a month before Pearl Harbor. These hardy regulars were withdrawn to the Philippines aboard the chartered Dollar liners SS President Madison and President Harrison, where they were soon ground down against the Japanese to the point that the remnants burned their colors on Corregidor before the surrender there in 1942.

Of the 204 remaining Legation Marines and their Navy support personnel under Col. William W. Ashurst in China not directly assigned to the 4th, their own planned extraction to the PI was interrupted by Pearl Harbor and, on 8 December 1941, they were captured by overwhelming Japanese forces. The men were interned in a prisoner of war camp in Shanghai under harsh conditions until it was liberated, 19 June 1945.

Today, 84 years ago, the lion that was the 6′ 5″ German Field Marshal and President Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg shuffled off to the great parade ground. He had the unique lot in life to accomplish most of the heavy lifting in his life after he had already retired.

Born 2 October 1847 in Posen, old Hindy became a military academy cadet at age 11 as expected and by age 19 was a lieutenant in the 3rd Garderegiment of the Imperial Prussian Army riding off to fight the Austrians. He later saw combat against the French in 1870 as a battalion adjutant and retired from the military in 1911 at the mandatory retirement age of 64, sure the service was done with him.

Then, of course, came WWI and a rushed call to return to the colors to fight to Russians in East Prussia (where he took much of the credit from Max Hoffman for Tannenberg), a move so ad hoc the sexagenarian appeared at his new headquarters at Marienberg just three weeks into the war still decked out in his old blue Prussian uniform, reeking of mothballs.

He died at age 86, while still on public service in the last gasps of the Wiemar Republic, the bridge from the old monarchy to something far worse. Soon after the old lion’s death, his son, Maj Gen. Oskar von Hindenburg, was discharged from the Reichswehr while only 51, and retired to his family estate, later testifying against Franz von Papen– who persuaded his father to appoint Hitler as Chancellor– at Nuremberg after WWII.

German president Paul von Hindenburg lying-in-state at his country house in Neudeck, Prussia, guarded by two Reichswehr cavalry officers, both Great War Iron Cross holders. 1934.

Pres. Roosevelt, Admiral Dewey and Sec. Navy Moody reviewing war fleet from the patrol yacht USS Mayflower (PY-1) at Oyster Bay, Aug. 17, 1903. Flat followed by red-cyan stereo anaglyph to be viewed 3D. Library of Congress images

Built for millionaire real-estate developer Ogden Goelet, he died aboard the 273-foot luxury yacht in 1897– the very year it was built. Sold to the Navy the next year for the Spanish-American War, Mayflower joined the blockade of Cuba out of Key West with six 6-pounders aboard and captured a number of vessels including a Spanish schooner.

Serving as the floating office of Puerto Rico’s first American Governor Charles H. Allen, she soon became a presidential yacht, a role she played until damaged in a fire in 1931 which resulted in her sale on the open market.

Patched back up, the MARAD picked the ship again for military service and she performed as the gunboat USCGC Mayflower (WPE-183) with a Coast Guard crew and some 3-inch guns and depth charges running coastal convoys on the Eastern Seaboard. Decommissioned for a final time after the war, she worked as a sealer and carried Jewish refugees to the promised land in 1948 before dropping off the books.

The great combined Austro-Hungarian Army of Emperor Franz Josef– as well as its two national reserve forces, the Royal Hungarian Honvéd and Imperial Austrian Landwehr–fielded the enbloc clip-fed Mannlicher M1895 rifle for the last few decades of its existence.

Chambered in 8x50mmR, some 3.5 million(ish) of these were made by FEG in Hungary and Steyr in Austria as well as by CZ/Brno (the latter just starting in 1918.)

The straight-pull bolt action typically used a 30-inch barrel to produce a very hefty 50-inch rifle.

Thus. Also, great overshoes.

However, one of the rarer variants, sniper rifles which used telescopic sights made by Reichert, Kahles, Suss, Fuess, and Oigee, saw much lower production numbers, with just 13,000 made. Luckily Austria was home to the lion-share of optics makers at the time!

An even rarer subset of these was the M95 sniper carbine. Yes, sniper carbine.

And, as the Italians took most of these for war reparations in 1919-20, which Rome subsequently scrapped, they are one of the rarest of all sniper breeds.

A WWI-era Steyr M95 sniper rifle with a 20-inch barrel and a three post-C. Reichert Wein-marked 3x optic. It carries a “Wn-18” acceptance mark. (Photos: RIA)

The optic uses a three-post European style reticle and a very…peculiar mount.

My homie Ian has details on such a rifle, below.

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

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2018: Oscar’s boldest pansarbat

(Photos: Karlskronavarvet/Marinmuseum)

Here we see a colorized photo of the Swedish pansarskepp HSvMS Dristigheten (Swedish= “The Boldness”) passing under the iconic Levensau High Bridge in Germany’s Kiel Canal during a visit to that country, between 1912 and 1927.

Pansarskepps (literally “armored ships”), or pansarbats, were a peculiar design that was popular in the Baltic from about 1900-45. These short, shallow-draft ships could hug the coastline and hide from larger capital ships while carrying big enough guns to be able to brutally bring the pain to any landing ship escorted by a shallow draft light cruiser or destroyer approaching from offshore. Sweden had kept out of wars since Napoleon was around, but she was still very wary of not only Russian and German but also British designs on the Baltic. With her neutrality only as good as the ships that could protect it, the country built a series of 15 coastal defense vessels, or pansarskepps, from 1886-1918.

Sometimes referred to as battleships, or cruisers, these warships were really neither. Nor were they destroyers.

They were pansarskepps.

Sandwiched roughly in the middle of these vessels was Dristigheten, preceded by the trio of Svea-class vessels (3,200-tons, 2×10-inch guns) and a matching threesome of Oden-class ships (3,445-tons, 2×10-inch guns), while she was followed by eight more advanced Aran, Oscar II, and Sverige-class ships.

A standalone vessel, Dristigheten was laid down at Lindholmen, Goteborg in October 1898 just after the world was amazed by the recent steel navy combat that was the Spanish-American War. While most of Sweden’s pocket battleships carried names drawn from Norse mythology or the country’s royal family, Dristigheten is a traditional Swedish warship name going back to the 18th Century where it was carried by a 64-gun ship whose figurehead is preserved to this day.

Some 3,600-tons, she was just 292-feet overall or about the size of small frigate these days. However, she had as much as 247mm (that’s pushing 10-inches) of good (for the time) Harvey nickel-steel armor and a pair of domestically-produced 209mm/43cal M1898 naval rifles.

One of those pretty 209mm/43s. Dristigheten, the first to mount such guns in the Swedish Navy, carried one forward and one aft. She was also the first Swedish naval ship to use water tube boilers.

These 8.3-inch guns, as noted by the 1914 Janes, could fire a 275-pound AP shell on a blend of special Bofors-made nitro-compound that was capable of penetrating 9.5-inches of armor at 3,000 yards. A half-dozen smaller 152mm guns were the secondary battery. A dozen 6-pdr and 1-pdr popguns would ward off torpedo boats. As such, she was the first Swedish capital ship with only quick-fire artillery. A pair of submerged torpedo tubes added to the party favors.

Commissioning 5 September 1901, Dristigheten was a happy ship and was inspected on several occasions by King Oscar II of Sweden, a septuagenarian who had joined his country’s navy at age 11.

The picture shows four Swedish armored ships Göta, Wasa, Äran, Dristigheten (without her later tripod foremast which was fitted in 1912) and collier Stockholm, which anchors during the winter season in Karlskrona’s naval harbor. Ships are flagged for King Oscar II’s birthday on January 21, 1903. The boats frozen solid in the ice and people can be seen moving around on the pack. (2289×1213)

1899 impression of the Swedish fleet with several Swedish pansarbats featured including #2. ODEN (1896) #3. THOR (1898) #4. NIORD (1898) and #5. DRISTIGHETEN (1900), then under construction. Via Karlskronavarvet 11788 (2778×728)

For a quarter-century, Dristigheten steamed around European waters, showing the flag, training naval cadets and visiting friends (Sweden knew nothing but friends, although some were friendlier than others).

Swedish coast defense ship DRISTIGHETEN, note the early single foremast she carried from 1900-1912

Postcard of the Swedish battleship HMS Dristigheten in Algiers, 1906

Dristigheten, 1920, Bordeaux. Note the tripod foremast, added in 1912.

The non-colorised version of the Kiel photo (Marinmuseum Fo113541A)

While the Baltic would freeze over, she would traditionally voyage on a long-haul winter cruise (in times of peace) to the Mediterranean, visiting Southern Europe and North Africa. Malta, Tangier, Vigo, Salonika, Suda Bay, Toulon, Bizerte, and Smyrna all saw the big Swede on a semi-regular basis.

Janes listed her as a “battleship” in 1902, 1914, and 1919. A 3,445-ton battleship.

During WWI, she, along with the rest of the pansarbats, kept a cautious neutrality in Swedish waters between the warring Allies (composed of the Tsar’s Baltic fleet and the occasional British submarine) and German surface and untersee units.

Once the war ended, the days of these plucky ships were numbered, with the goal of bringing more modern cruisers and destroyers online while keeping a few of the newer pansarbats around as a strategic reserve.

As such, in 1927 Dristigheten was refitted as a seaplane carrier (flygmoderfaryget.) With this conversion, she lost her big guns and torpedo tubes, trading them in for a few smaller caliber AAAs and the capability to handle a few floatplanes as well as tend small craft such as patrol boats and coastal gunboats. Also gone was her aft mast. Her magazine space was largely converted to avgas bunkerage.

The Swedish Navy’s Marinens Flygväsende (MFV) at the time flew a host of early Friedrichshafen and Hansa models with Dristigheten lifting these recon seaplanes from her deck to take off on the water and retrieving them from the drink on their return. In her later years, she carried Heinkel HD 16/19s

She continued her service as a seaplane tender through WWII, during which she was augmented with a dozen additional AAAs and served as a key mothership for coastal patrol/artillery units.

Dristigheten in Karlskrona WWII note camo. Note the 40mm Bofors mounts under weather protection.

Decommissioning 13 June 1947 after a solid half-century on the King’s naval list, Dristigheten was converted to a training hulk and target ship, continuing to serve for another 13 years, testing Sweden’s new weapons, keeping the fleet’s existing guns in action, and teaching fresh classes of sailors in damage control.

In 1960, the testing reached a tipping point and she sank.

Raised, she was scrapped in 1961, outliving most of her contemporaries.

Shown in the Oscarsdockan in Karlskrona

As for her contemporaries, she outlived almost all of them. For the record, the last of the pansarskepp-era mini-battleships, HSvMS Gustav V, was used as a training hulk and pier side until 1970 when she was scrapped.

Dristigheten is remembered extensively in maritime art.

Herman Gustav af Sillen Swedish, (1857–1908) “Dristigheten under stridsskjutning 1903.”

Pansarbat Dristigheten by Axel A. Fahlkrantz

Specs:

Displacement: 3445 t
Length: 292 ft overall
Beam: 48 ft 6 in
Draught: 16 ft 0
Propulsion: Steam triple-expansion engines, 2 screws, 8 Yarrow boilers, 5,570 shp
Speed: 16.8 kn
Range: 2,040 nmi at 10 kn on 310 tons coal. 400 tons maximum coal would allow for “6 days at full speed.”
Complement: 262 (1901) up to 400 as tender
Armament:
(1900)
2 x 209 mm/44cal. Bofors 21 cm M/98
6 x 152 mm/44cal. Bofors M/98
10 x 57 mm/55cal. Ssk. M/89B 6-pdrs (Janes also lists a pair of 1-pdrs)
2 × 457 mm submerged torpedo tubes. Whitehead torpedoes (1901-1917) Karlskrona torpedoes (1917-22)
(1922)
2 x 210 mm/44cal. Bofors M/1898
6 x 152 mm/44cal. Bofors M/98
8 x 57 mm/55cal. Ssk. M/89B 6-pdrs
1 x 57 mm/21,3cal. Bofors lvk M/16
1 x 57 mm/21,3cal. Bofors lvk M/19
(1927)
4 x 75mm/60cal. Bofors lvk M/26-28 AAA
2 x 40mm/56cal. Bofors lvk M/36 AAA
4 x 8 mm/75,8cal. lvksp M/36 MGs
Armor: Harvey Nickel: 247mm in the conning tower, 6-8 inches main belt, barbettes, and turrets; 4-inches casemates, 2-inches deck.
Aircraft carried (1927-47) : 2-4

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

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

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

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

When looking at the rare images of the Ottoman Army in the Great War, one thing stands out– the odd headgear.

German 7.7 cm Feldkanone 96 used by Turkish gunners as an anti-aircraft gun. Note the ready rounds to the left of the gun.

An Ottoman army heliograph station in Palestine. A heliograph flashes sunlight to make Morse code messages.

Speaking of Spandaus, here we see Ottoman soldiers posed “shooting at a British plane” with their gun mounted on a cartwheel for balance and traverse, somewhere in the Sinai, 1916

Ottoman Machine-gun Corps, Gaza, 1917. Note the German-supplied Spandaus with their distinctive ammo cans

1914, Ottoman 3rd Army with winter gear

Ottoman gun crew at Gallipoli

Middle East in WWI. Turkish Infantry Column at rest, April 6, 1915. George Grantham Bain Collection. Note the stacked Mausers and Crescent flag

Ottoman Turks with Mauser rifles

For info on the headgear– I give you a quick and easy reference to the M1909 Kabalak & Bashlyk!

Around the 1900s, the French firm of Schneider-Creusot, or Schneider et Cie, or simply just Schneider, was a steam-era industrial powerhouse. Starting off with locomotives and the Creusot steam hammer generation before, the company soon branched out into munition with their small and medium-caliber Canet guns for French-built warships and the famous “French 75,” the Canon de 75 modèle 1897, which would be the staple field gun of the coming Great War for her country.

By the 1910s, the company was regularly making bigger guns in 107, 120, 122, 152 and 155mm respectively, with guns and mortars of up to 280mm on the drawing board. Following a substantial contract for stubby 152mm howitzers to the Tsar in 1909 (with the local Putilov firm making them through 1919 in Eastern Europe), Schneider reworked the mount to take a 155mm bore tube and shopped it to the home team who adopted it in 1915. The aptly named Canon de 155 C modèle 1915 Schneider became the standard heavy howitzer of the French Army, who kept it in service through the Vichy era and sold spares to Allies in Belgium and Portugal.

Speaking of Allies, when the U.S. entered the war and went heavily into French and British weaponry (the main rifle of the AEF was the British-contract P14 Enfield modified for 30.06, while the principal LMG was the French Chauchat for better or worse and the primary field gun was the French 75 backed up by the French GPF), the U.S. dutifully ordered 155mm Schneiders as well.

The M1917/M1918 Schneider gun used by the U.S. was an interrupted-screw breech, 155mm bore, 13.4-caliber, built-up nickel steel cannon on a two different carriages with the first model (made in France) having a curved shield and metal tires coupled to a continuous-pull firing mechanism while the latter (U.S.-made variant) used a straight shield and pneumatic tires with a firing lock mechanism. In each variant, the total weight was about 7,600-pounds.

A total of 3,008 were bought or built with U.S. guns made under license by the American Brake Shoe Co. on carriages by Osgood-Bradley Car, using recoil mechanisms made in Detroit by Dodge.

Canon de 155 C modèle 1917 (Schneider et Cie); the curved shield and metal tires indicate that this was taken in 1918 (in France). The American produced model, 155mm Howitzer Carriage, Model 1918 (with straight shields and rubber tires) didn’t make it into action before the end of the war. The cannon cockers are wearing the M1909 holster for M1917 .45 revolver.

The last American shot fired during the Great War was fired by a 155mm Schneider howitzer called Calamity Jane, of the 11th Field Artillery Regiment.

WWI, 1918 – The French-made artillery piece, nicknamed “Calamity Jane,” operated by a crew from the US 11th Artillery Brigade, that fired the last shot of the war for the Allies near Laneuville sur Meuse, France, November 11, 1918.

The guns, especially the M1918s, remained popular interwar.

SGT James B. Aets uses a quadrant to determine the elevation of the 155mm Howitzer M1918, while CPL Charles J. Hines sights on the aiming stake. Circa 1930s. Note the straight shield and rubber combat tires of the U.S.-built model. Photo courtesy the National Archives

Another photo of the 11th FA, taken in 1936 while the unit was located in Hawaii. These artillerymen are armed with M1911 pistols carried in M1916 holsters.

The M1917/1918s were used extensively in WWII by both the Army and Marines (as well as Allies in Australia and the PPhilippines) who appreciated the compact howitzers for use in island hopping during which their 7-mile range was not a handicap.

An M1918 155mm howitzer is fired by artillery crewmen of the 11th Marines in support of ground forces attacking the enemy, Guadalcanal, 1942. Despite the lack of sound-flash equipment to locate hostile artillery. Col del Valle’s guns were able to quiet enemy fire. Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 61534

Below is a surviving example I ran across outside of a VFW in Wetumpka, Alabama.