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

Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Alphonse Mucha

Born 24 July 1860 in the small Moravian mountain town of Ivančice–a neighbor to the current and historic CZ arms concern in Brno– in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was one Alfons Maria Mucha. Taking up painting as a youth more or less as a hobby, by his twenties, he grew more serious and attended the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and later schools in Paris.

The artist

By 1895, he had become a professional poster illustrator and had even begun his own unique style of artistic impression in his depiction of the female form, taking otherwise imperfect reference models dressed in contemporary clothes and creating the highly-stylized soft featured, long-haired beauties garbed in neo-classical robes that became his hallmark.

With the coming of Spring, and today being Easter, I find these below images to be very refreshing.

Alphonse Mucha The Seasons, 1896, Spring and Summer .

…followed by Fall and winter. Note how the flowers create a halo effect, commonly seen in Mucha’s female portrayals.

Inset of “Madonna of the Lilies,” 1905…This one reminds me of someone special

Luna

The application of the artist’s eye.

The model and final artwork for a 1903 illustration

Zodiac 1896

job cigarettes ad Alphonse Mucha

Soldier’s Dream

By the 1900 Exposition Universelle where was an esteemed exhibitor, he had become acclaimed and his style soon known as Art Nouveau.

However lovely his style for commercial art was, he preferred more serious historical art depicting great battles and events– but that didn’t pay the bills. By 1910, he had found a benefactor in Chicago millionaire Charles Richard Crane, who brought luminaries such as Czech independence advocate Thomas Masaryk, Russian constitutional monarchy (Kadet) proponent Pavel Milyukov, and peacenik Maksim Kovalevsky to the U.S. to speak on Eastern European revolutionary ideals against the Tsar and Kaisers.

He toiled away on his Slav Epic for more than a decade, often working 10 hours or more everyday.

Crane financed Mucha’s dream work, a series of 20 immense panels that became known as the Slovanská Epopej (Slav Epic) that told the history of the Slavic peoples. Funded by Crane, Mucha rented part of the old historic 13th century Zborov Castle (which according to legend is built on the site of a gate into hell), near the Russian border and worked on his saga for several years until the advance of the Tsar’s Army into the region in 1915 sent him away from the castle, which became a battlefield of Slav-on-Slav violence for the next several years.

Nevertheless, before the Epic was complete, in 1919, his country had become Czechoslovakia and Mucha the Slavic patriot drew up the first currency, stamps, Army recruiting posters, and government insignias (even using a model of Crane’s wife for the 100 crown note!)

The 50 Crown note designed by Muncha

100 C note– with Crane’s old lady on it

By 1928, his Slav Epic was complete and the now-68 year old patriot donated it to the city of Prague for public display– then went on to design a stained glass window for St. Vitus Cathedral, a national landmark.

Petr Chelcicky at Vodnany: Do not repay evil with evil – 1918.Vodnany was a small town caught in the crossfire between the Hussites and the Germanic forces. They chose to flee to Petr Chelcicky, a religious peasant philosopher. When they arrived, they lay down exhausted and dieing, consumed by anger and grief, their homes burning in the background. Chelcicky moves amongst them with a Bible, offering comfort and support, asking that they do not seek vengeance.

After the Battle of Grunwald (1st Tannenberg) 1410 during the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War. The early fourteenth century was marked by military incursions by the German Order of Teutonic Knights into the land of the Northern Slavs. In response, The Polish King Wladyslaw Jagiello and the Czech King Vaclav IV signed a defensive treaty which was first acted upon at the battle of Grunwaldu in 1410 when the Slavs won an important victory. Mucha elects to illustrate not the fighting but the aftermath, with the Polish King holding his face in sorrow as he views the cost to both enemy and ally.

Defense of Sziget against the Turks by Nicholas Zrinsky, during the the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, 1566 In 1566 The Turks began advancing along the Danube into the Hungarian plains. Their advance was eventually halted at the city of Sziget by a citizens’ army let by Croatian nobleman, Nicholas Zrinsky. With the town under siege, he was obliged to fire the Old Town to deter advances. After a further nineteen days and with Zrinsky dead, the women of the city took refuge a watchtower; Zrinsky’s widow, realizing the inevitability of defeat, threw a touch into a gunpowder store, destroying the city but inflicting damage on the Turkish army which halted their progress.

After the Battle of Vitkov Hill during the Hussite wars 1420. In the early stages of the Hussite wars, the German King occupied the castle at Prague and was crowned king. A peasant army of Hus’s followers arrived from Southern Bohemia to oppose the Germans, led by a brilliant military leader, Jan Zizka of Troenov. Their position at the hill of Vitkov was under siege until relieved by a group of Czech soldiers from Prague arrived, led by a priest bearing a monstrance. The mural shows the priest at a field bearing the monstrance and surrounded by supplicating clergy, with Prague’s Hradcany Castle visible to the right.

Stained glass by Mucha at St. Vitus, 1931

Czechoslovakia became one of Hitler’s first targets and by early 1939, in violation of the Sudeten Agreements, the Germans had taken over the country (in a curious twist of fate, Crane, who funded the first U.S. oil investments in Saudi Arabia, was a big fan of Hitler’s).

Non a smile in the bunch on either side. German troops enter Prague,March 1939. Mucha would be dead within four months and his very funeral a spark of resistance in occupied Europe– one of the first.

Eager to stamp out anti-German (or pro-Czech/Slav) dissent, the Geheime Staatspolizei soon rounded up the usual suspects to include the 78-year old Mucha who was interrogated and imprisoned for several weeks under horrible conditions. This led to the artist contracting pneumonia and dying in July of that year from lung infection.

The Nazis had banned all public demonstrations during the occupation, nevertheless the people of Prague turned out by the thousands for his funeral. He is interred at the famous Vysehrad cemetery near Anton Dvorak and remembered in a huge monument there.

Fearing the Nazis would seize or destroy the Epic, the paintings were stripped from their frames, rolled up, and spirited away to be hidden in a tomb in the countryside.

After the war, the newly Communist Czech government found Mucha’s works petit bourgeois and even the Epic was kept rolled up, only finally returning to public display in 1963 in a dilapidated chateau in Moravsky Krumlov, just outside of Brno– although Prague really wants them back.

The Epic on display. Keep in mind its 20 panels

He is remembered today as one of the most well known masters of, and perhaps the inventor of Art Nouveau besides being viewed as a national hero in the Czech Republic.

As such there are many of his works online in addition to several societies, foundations, galleries  and museums.

There are even hundreds who walk around with Mucha-inspired personal illustrations and a steady business in art nouveau Much ink.

Thank you for your work, sir.

I try not to bombard you guys with too many videos but I saw this doc on the 2nd Platoon, Golf 2/5 (5th Marine Regiment) in Afghanistan and thought I would share.

The hard charging Devils of the 2/5 fought at Belleau Wood and other actions on the Western Front where they covered themselves in glory, mud, and blood, not necessarily in that order.

A German trench mortar—Minnenwerfer—captured at the Battle of Belleau Wood by the US Marines 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment while under the command of Col. Frederic M. Wise.

2/5 Marines gets their motto from some 98 years ago in Northern France when a company commander of the battalion, Captain Lloyd W. Williams was advised to withdraw by a French officer at the defensive line just north of the village of Lucy-le-Bocage on June 1, 1918. Williams replied: “Retreat? Hell, we just got here!”

In the World War One era, the U.S. Army did a number of low key experiments in attaching lights to small arms for various purposes. Here are two rather steampunk examples that I stumbled across in the Springfield Armory Museum Collection.

This US Model 1911, SN 58237, was made in 1913 and shipped to SA the next year. It was modified as a training pistol complete with a SIRT-gun style light.

This was the SIRT gun of the 1900s– if only the bulbs didn’t keep breaking!

The construction of this pistol is as follows: The lamp itself is a small tungsten bulb, such as is used in small Ever-Ready pocket flashlights….this lamp is mounted on an empty cartridge case, one terminal being grounded to the case, the other terminal is carried to the insulated base of the cartridge from which a small wire leads to a switch in the upper part of the magazine, which is operated by pressing on the trigger pistol. From this switch, another wire leads to the to the top terminal of battery concealed in lower part of the magazine, the other terminal or battery is grounded to the receiver through the follower and magazine.

In front of the lamp a tube carrying a lens is inserted in the barrel being held there by friction between its outer surface and the lands of the barrel. This tube can be moved in or out to change the focus….

It is necessary to remove the extractor to prevent its short circuiting the lamp as well as to prevent it extracting the lamp when the slide is pulled back. It is also necessary to remove the forward end of the firing pin to prevent its traveling far enough forward under its own momentum to damage the lamp.

“This Colt M1911 is the only “Flashlight Pistol” ever made. This training pistol would project a light onto a target to show where the bullet would hit. The lens on the tip of the barrel projected a light from inside that was powered by a battery concealed in the magazine. While the Flashlight Pistol did work, it was determined not to be sturdy enough for use and rejected by the Secretary of War.”

Then there was the Neary Springfield 1903…

This 1909-made Model 1903 bolt-action rifle equipped with Thomas E. Neary’s sight illuminating device powered by three Ever Ready cells in the stock.

Oh yeah, you know this is what you came here for

Close up of the Neary sight light

It had three Every Ready batteries that dont look that bad for being from the 1900s!

This Model 1903 contains batteries in the butt stock that powers light bulbs on both sides of the sight. Tested at Rock Island Arsenal, problems were found with the light beam obscuring the front sight, making the gun difficult to aim. This design was determined to be impractical. Later, during conservation work, the rifle was x-rayed showing the battery design hidden in the stock.

This is a very unusual and very rare gun. It features tiny lights to illuminate the front and rear sights. They are powered by three dry cell batteries which are housed inside the butt. Wires run from this power source through the stock – terminating inside the trigger-guard cavity and also at the nose-end of the forestock. The batteries were swollen and only the outermost one was initially removed. This was accomplished by tapping the butt end repeatedly with a leather hammer until the outermost battery was eventually backed out. The next battery followed the first part-way out and then was stuck. The was confirmed by X-radiography a (see photo) which showed the innermost battery pushed fully outward by its spring. The middle battery was removed by drilling through its lead end and then grabbing it with a strong dental pick followed by long-nosed pliers. The third battery came right out.” – David Arnold, NPS Conservator

Guess they figured tracers were an easier and more effective way of firing in the dark at the time or to pop a flare.

Of note, SA also mentions that, “President Theodore Roosevelt was given a M1903 rifle with a Neary front sight illuminating device. This rifle was threaded at the muzzle for a Maxim silencer and fitted with a Warner & Swasey musket sight.”

Now THAT would be a find!

In a direct rebuttal to the current state of German Army battle rifles, lets take a look at the downright primitive stuff they had a hundred years ago…

Bavarian troops pose in a trench, 1915. Note the man at the rear – his Gew98 is outfitted with a scope, and he wears both the lanyard of a Schutzenschnur that identifies him as a marksman, and the steely look of a man not to be trifled with. Click to big up

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 April 29, 2015: The Red Taxi of the Black Sea

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Here we see the Svetlana-class light cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz (Red Caucasus), pride of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet steaming on a summer day in 1940 on the eve of the Soviet Union entering World War II.

In 1906, the Imperial Russian Navy had the luxury that many fleets never do: the chance to start from scratch building their naval list with the benefit of real-world modern combat lessons under their belt. This of course was because they had lost more than 2/3 of their Navy in combat with the Imperial Japanese Navy during the late war with that country.

The Tsar’s naval planners envisioned a fleet of nine top-notch all-big-gun dreadnoughts of the Gangut, Imperatritsa Maria, and Imperator Nikolai I-class. These 25,000-ton+ bruisers needed a screen of fast destroyers to prevent torpedo boats from getting close (as the Japanese had pulled off at Port Arthur) as well as speedy light cruisers to scout over the horizon.

That is where the Svetlana’s came in. These modern cruisers went 7,400-tons when fully loaded and were 519-feet overall. They were built in Russia with extensive British help. Powered by 16 Yarrow oil boilers pushing a quartet of Parsons turbines, these ladies were fast– capable of 30-knots when needed. A battery of 15 rapid fire 130 mm/55 B7 Obukhov (Vickers) Pattern 1913 naval guns could fire a 81.26 lbs. shell out to ranges that topped 24,000-yards. With these cruisers carrying an impressive 2200 of these shells in their magazines, they could fire all of these (theoretically) in just under 19 minutes. For protection against threats smaller than they were, the Svetlana’s were sheathed in up to 120 mm of good British armor plate.

The subject of our study, Krasnyi Kavkaz, was laid down at the Russud Dockyard, Nikolayev (currently Mykolaiv, Ukraine) on 31 October 1913, just ten months before the beginning of World War I. Her name at the time for the Tsarist Navy was to be Admiral Lazarev after Russian 19th Century explorer and fleet commander Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev. With wartime shortages in the Empire, she was only launched in the summer of 1916 and, when the Revolution came, was still fitting out.

She was captured in turn by the Germans, the Reds, the Ukrainians, the French, the Whites, and then the Reds again during the tail end of WWI and the madness of the Russian Civil War. Of course, since she was only 2/3rds complete and incapable of either sailing or fighting, all of the flag exchanges meant nothing.

Finally, the Soviets completed her on 25 January 1932 (just 19 years after she was laid down), with the brand new name of Krasnyi Kavkaz, to celebrate the geographic region added gloriously back to the worker’s paradise in 1921 after post-Tsarist secession and brief independence.

However, since her original British-designed 130mm guns were not available, Krasnyi Kavkaz was completed instead with a set of unique 180 mm/60 (7.1″) B-1-K Pattern 1931 that were relined from old 1905-era 8-inchers with the help of Italian gunnery experts (the Russians never throw anything away).

Note her forward 7.1-inch guns

Equipped with just four of these larger guns in single mounts, our oddball cruiser could only get off about 16 rounds per minute, but these rounds were 215 lbs. each in weight and could reach out to 40,000 yards, making her a light cruiser with nearly heavy cruiser armament.

As completed. She traded 15 casemated 130mm guns for 4 180mm singles.

She was also given a quartet of twin 100 mm DP guns, a dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes (original design was for fewer 17.7-inch tubes), Brown-Boveri turbines as no fine British Parsons were available, a catapult for two KOR-1 seaplanes, and the capability to lay up to 120 M-08 naval mines.

A happy vessel during the 1930s in a Navy that was short on capital ships (out of the legion of Svetlana-class cruisers planned, the Soviets only had one other, class leader Krasnyi Krym –Red Crimea– afloat), the Krasnyi Kavkaz was extensively photographed and showboated to show off the modern Red Banner Fleet of the happy People’s Republic. She made a well-publicized 6-month Mediterranean cruise in 1933 in which she traveled over 2600 miles and made extensive stops in ports throughout the region– a rarity for a Soviet naval vessel of the era.

Sailors of the Soviet cruiser “Red Caucasus” with the ship’s pet bear

On her Med Tour, 1933

Sailor on a cruiser of the Black Sea the “Red Caucasus” in front of his 100mm flak piece

In 1933 on her Med cruise, with selected sailors going ashore at Istanbul under close watch of comrade commisars.

A junior Red Caucasus cadet sailor

From 1936-37 she came face to face with German and Italian naval vessels in the Bay of Biscay patrolling the Spanish coastline during the Civil War in that country.

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By the time World War II came to the Black Sea in June 1941, the Krasnyi Kavkaz spent a hard 28 months shuttling around the coasts of Rumania, the Crimea, Kerch, and Novorossiysk. In that time she sewed minefields under darkness, covered the evacuation of Odessa just ahead of the Germans, landed battalions of Naval Infantry and Red Army troops in amphibious operations under heavy Luftwaffe air attack, and provided naval gunfire support during the epic 9-month Siege of Sevastopol.

Loading troops. She shuttled thousands to and from some of the most contentious fighting on the Eastern Front

The light cruiser often carried as many as 1,800 troops on her runs across the Black Sea

In the latter, she and her sister was a vital lifeline to the port, bringing in ammunition and reinforcements and taking away the wounded and the city’s valuables.

The Red Caucasus was used extensively on shoe-string amphib landings

Notably, on January 4, 1942, she survived a close in bombing run by Ju-87 Stukas that left her holed, nearly dead in the water, and full of over 1700-tons of seawater, pushing her to a 12,000-ton displacement. However, after a quick patch-up, she was back in action. This translated into more evacuations, amphibious landings, mine laying, and duels with Stukas and gunfire support. Continuing limited operations from Batumi and Poti in the Caucus in 1943, she was one of the last remaining operational Black Sea Fleet vessels to survive the war.

She saw lots of unsung action during the war

Post war surveys found the ship, which had been repaired during the war in many cases with concrete, was in poor condition.

It was planned at one point to turn her and her sister into hybrid aircraft carriers in 1946 with 370 foot flight decks, but they were too badly damaged from hard wartime service

Decommissioned from fleet duty on May 12, 1947, she was retained as a dockside training ship and berthing barge.

Red Caucasus on payoff 1947

She was disarmed in 1952, her 180mm guns being transformed into railway mounts. Finally, on November 21, 1952 Krasnyi Kavkaz was sunk near Feodosia by a regiment of Tu-4 bombers testing their new SS-N-1 missiles. Her name was stricken from the Soviet Naval list in 1953.

Her only completed sister, Svetlana/Krasnyi Krym, was scrapped in 1959.

She was remembered by a series of Soviet stamps

Specs

Image by Ship Bucket  Click to big up

Displacement: 7,560 metric tons (7,440 long tons; 8,330 short tons) (standard)
9,030 metric tons (8,890 long tons; 9,950 short tons) (full load)
Length: 159.5 m (523 ft. 4 in)
Beam: 15.7 m (51 ft. 6 in)
Draught: 6.6 m (21 ft. 8 in)
Propulsion: Four shafts, Brown-Boveri geared turbines
16 Yarrow oil-fired boilers
55,000 shp (41,000 kW)
Speed: 29 knots (33 mph; 54 km/h)
Complement: 878
Armament: (as completed)
4 × 1 – 180 mm cal 57 guns
4 × 2 – 100 mm cal 56 AA guns
2 × 1 – 76 mm AA guns
4 × 1 – 45 mm AA guns
4 × 1 – 12.7 mm (0.50 in) AA machine guns
4 × 3 – 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes
60–120 mines
Armor: Upper and lower armored decks: 20 mm (0.79 in) each
Turrets: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Lower armor belt: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Upper armor belt: 25 mm (0.98 in)
Conning tower: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Aircraft carried 2 × KOR-1 seaplanes
Aviation facilities: 1 catapult

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The tiny central European country of Switzerland was renowned for centuries for the quality of their fighting men and was one of the few countries on that continent that was never attacked in either of the great World Wars. One reason may be the grueling armed marathon that they call the Waffenlauf.

Swiss martial tradition

Long a country known for their belief in freedom, the Swiss have kept that notion alive through force of arms. During the Renaissance, citizen sportsmen such as the legendary William Tell kept his crossbow skills sharp– just in case. At a small mountain valley named Sempach in 1386, an Austrian army of professional soldiers attempted to invade Switzerland.

A small militia force of a few farmers led by a man named Arnold Winkelreid met them in battle.  The farmers were outnumbered 6:1 and trapped. The only sane thing to do was for them to surrender and submit to the invader.

But they didn’t.

Arnold ran forward alone and yelled, “Make way for liberty.” The farmers followed him and the stunned professional solders of the Austrian army broke and retreated, with the farmers harassing them all the way back to the border.

19th-century painting of Winkelried’s deed by Konrad Grob.

That 1386 battle was the last time Switzerland was invaded.

Sometime after this, Swiss mercenaries (Reisläufer) became the toast of military service for over four centuries. To this day, the Pontifical Swiss Guards– all highly trained veterans of the Swiss Army– ensure that the Vatican is secure from invasion.

Speaking of which, the “Swiss model,” that of requiring all fit males of military age to serve in the armed forces or civil defense, even going so far as to keep all of their arms and equipment at home, ready to go when needed, has been largely cited as a reason that Hitler never came across the Alps during WWII. The prospect of fighting 850,000 Winkelreids on their own turf Wolverines-style likely kept it that way.

Enter the Waffenlauf

In 1916, with Europe at war on all sides of Switzerland’s borders during the First World War, an event called the “Gun Barrel” (Waffenlauf) was run to help showcase military skills and provide a bit of sport. This run, a marathon run in military uniform with marching shoes, full pack, and rifle at distances up to 43 kilometers (26 miles), sounds about as fun as slip and slide made out of cactus, but hey, it’s Switzerland!

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

Click to big up. Note the Empire State Building in the skylne

Battleships of the New York-class, USS New York and USS Texas, in New York City during the New York World’s Fair, 3 May 1939.

The two 28,000-ton pre-WWI era dreadnoughts at this time were among the oldest in the world still in front line service, with some 25 years of service behind them. Refitted to burn oil in the 1920s and given  updated fire control, they still mounted an impressive battery of ten 14 inch/45 caliber guns.

When war broke out just under four months after this picture was taken, both ships served in the Neutrality Patrol in the Atlantic which kept them off Battleship Row in Pearl on Dec. 7th, 1941.

Texas went on to escort convoys, protect the Torch, D-Day and Dragoon landings before heading to the Pacific and hammering Okinawa.

New York did much the same but also squeezed Iwo Jima in, firing a total of 3,548.9 metric tons of ordinance during the conflict. Surviving both the Able and Baker nuclear tests, she was expended as a target in 1948 at age 34.

Texas on the other hand, was turned over to her home state that year and has been on display ever since. She has since been commissioned as the flagship of the Texas Navy

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 May 6, 2015: The unsinkable battleship of Manila Bay

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Here we see the concrete battleship Fort Drum as she appeared before 1941. While yes, this is not a ship but a U.S. Army coastal defense fortification, it has all the aspects of a ship above the waterline!

When Dewey swept into Manila Bay in 1898, the battle that his Asiatic Squadron gave the outgunned Spanish fleet was brief and historic– leaving the U.S. with defacto control of the island chain (or at least the Bay) that was made official after the war ended. After the Japanese defeat of the Russian Pacific Fleets (both of them) in 1905– during which a number of the Tsar’s ships took refuge in Manila Bay under the watchful eye of the USN, it became a priority to beef up the defenses around the harbor to keep the Navy there from turning into another Port Arthur.

The island, before 1909. If you prefer, you can refer to this as the ‘keel’ of Fort Drum

In the mouth of the Bay was El Fraile Island, a small slip of rock that the Army, in charge of Coastal Defense, decided to place a mine-control battery atop. However, this plan soon changed and the Army, with the Navy’s blessing, went about building their own static battleship.

Under the plan of Lt. John Kingman of the Army Corps of Engineers, the military leveled off El Fraile starting in 1909 and encased the entire island in steel-reinforced concrete with an average depth of 36-feet thick along the walls.

Several stories deep, a fort was constructed that included water cisterns, fuel tanks to run electrical generators, barracks for artillerymen, dining facilities, and storage for enough food to last the defenders months if needed.

Topside Plan

Engine tank section. Click to big up

Powder magazines and “navy-type” electrical passing scuttles. Drum could stock 440 shells for its main batteries. Click to big up

Atop the roof of the structure, which itself was 20-feet thick, were mounted a pair of M1909 turrets that each houses a pair of 14-inch (360mm) guns. Although a Navy-style mount, it was all-Army and contained unique wire-wound guns modified from the standard M1907 big guns mounted in coastal defense forts stateside.

While the standard CONUS 14-inchers were “disappearing” mounts, these larger 40-caliber tubes, with their 46-foot length, allowed the 1,209-pound AP shells to fire out to some 22,705-yards. To protect these turrets (named Batteries Marshall and Wilson), they had 16-inches of steel armor on their face, 14 on the sides and rear, and 6 on the roof. Of course, these giant turrets, with their outsized guns, tipped the scales at 1,160-tons or about the weight of a standard destroyer of the era, but hey, it’s not like they were going to sink the island or anything.

For comparison, the huge 16-inch/50 cal Mk.7 mounts on the Iowa-class battleships– commissioned decades after the Army’s concrete fort was built, weighed 1,701-tons but had three larger guns rather than the two the boys in green staffed.

The M1909 mount being tested at Sandy Hook Proving Ground, New Jersey before shipment to the PI. Only two of these mounts were ever constructed and, to the credit of the Army, are both still in existence despite an epic trial by combat.Click to big up

As befitting a battleship, the fort had a secondary armament of four casemated 6-inch coastal defense guns (dubbed Batteries Roberts and McCrea) as well as an anti-aircraft/small boat defense scheme (Batteries Hoyle and Exeter) of smaller 3-inch guns.

To direct all this a 60-foot high lattice mount (just like those on the latest U.S. battleships) was fitted to the ‘stern’ of the fort that contained fire control spotters (that fed to plotting rooms protected deep inside the facility), as well as 60-inch searchlights, radio and signal facilities to keep in contact with the rest of the harbor defenses.

Finally commissioned in 1913– just in time for World War One, the concrete battleship was named Fort Drum after former Adjutant General of the Army Richard Coulter Drum, who had died in 1909– the year construction, began.

The man…

The fort was a happy post until December 8, 1941 when, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese struck at the Philippines. Largely relegated to providing some far-off gunfire support and exchanging pot shots with Japanese planes until Manila fell, this soon changed.

In December two water-cooled .50 caliber machine guns manned by a 13-man platoon of 3/4 Marines (withdrawn only days before from China), was sent to the concrete battleship to beef up her dated AAA defenses. They joined the 200~ soldiers, officers, Philippine Scouts and civilian ordnance-men of the 59th and 60th U.S. Army Coastal Artillery Regiments, commanded by Lt. Col. Lewis S. Kirkpatrick. Later, when Bataan fell, about 20 tank-less soldiers from an armored unit– Company D, 192nd Tank Battalion (formerly Harrodsburg’s 38th Tank Company of the Kentucky National Guard)- managed to escape to Drum and lent their shoulders to the wheel for the last month of the campaign.

As the Japanese had did at Port Arthur in 1904 where they brought in 10-ton Krupp L/10 280mm howitzers from the Home Islands to churn the Russian fortifications to gruel, the Imperial Army shipped new 40-ton Type 45 240 mm howitzers just to batter Fort Drum in March.

Although they peppered the fort’s concrete and knocked out some small guns, Drum kept firing and after April, along with Corregidor and the other harbor forts, became the last piece of real estate owned by the U.S. When the Empire tried to take Corregidor in the end, Drum’s 14-inchers made Swiss cheese of a number of their thin-skinned landing barges, sending many of the Emperor’s best troops to the bottom of the Bay.

On May 6, 1942, some 73 years ago today, when General Wainwright surrendered Corregidor, he included the harbor forts in his order. Although still capable of fighting, the defenders of the fort obeyed orders, smashed their generators, burned their codebooks, spiked their weapons, turned the fire-hoses loose in the interior– paying special attention to the powder rooms, and raised a white flag at noon.

Although the 240~ soldiers and Marines of the garrison did not suffer any deaths in direct combat, their time in Japanese prison camps was by no means easy. A number of their unit, to include Kirkpatrick, did not live to see the end of the war. Only one officer, battery commander Capt. Ben E. King, survived. Casualties among the enlisted were likewise horrific.

In the end, they were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation and that of the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation, which the 59th carries to this day (as the 59th Air Defense Artillery Regiment)

While the Japanese occupied the concrete battleship and used it as a coastal defense position for the rest of the war, they never did get the M1909s operable again.

US Army landing on Drum

Following bombardment by the USS Phoenix (CL-46), on April 13, 1945 the U.S. Army landed on the roof of the once-great fort. They found the Japanese defenders, shut inside its concrete warren under their feet, unwilling to surrender. Therefore, with McArthur’s blessing, a detachment of B Company/13th Engineers, poured 3,000 gallons of gallons of diesel/oil slurry down the ventilation shafts and set it off with timed charges as they withdrew.

The fort burned for two weeks and no Japanese prisoners were taken, only 68 body remnants recovered. These men were sailors and survivors from the ill-fated super battleship Musashi, sent to the bottom just six months prior. So in the end, her final crew were battleshipmen.

According to an Augus1945 Yank magazine article:

First there was a cloud of smoke rising and seconds later the main explosion came.  Blast after blast ripped the concrete battleship.  Debris was showered into the water throwing up hundred of small geysers.  A large flat object, later identified as the 6-inch concrete slab protecting the powder magazine was blown several hundred feet into the air to fall back on top of the fort, miraculously still unbroken.  Now the GIs and sailors could cheer.  And they did.  As the LSM moved toward Corregidor there were continued explosions.  More smoke and debris.

Two days later, on Sunday, a party went back to try to get into the fort through the lower levels.  Wisps of smoke were still curling through the ventilators and it was obvious that oil was still burning inside.  The visit was called off for that day. On Monday the troops returned again.  this time they were able to make their way down as far as the second level, but again smoke forced them to withdraw.  Eight Japs-dead of suffocation- were found on the first two levels.

Another two days later another landing party returned and explored the whole island.  The bodies of 60 Japs-burned to death-were found in the boiler room on the third level.   The inside of the fort was in shambles.  The walls were blackened with smoke and what installations there were had been blown to pieces or burned.

In actual time of pumping oil and setting fuses, it had taken just over 15 minutes to settle the fate of the “impregnable” concrete fortress.  It had been a successful operation in every way but one:  The souvenir hunting wasn’t very good.

Starboard beam view of the battleship USS NEW JERSEY (BB-62) passing between CORREGIDOR (background) and FORT DRUM as she enters Manila Bay. Date: 3 Jul 1983 Camera Operator: PH2 PAUL SOUTAR ID: DN-SN-83-09891 Click to big up

Now, abandoned, the unsinkable battleship with its charred interior spaces lies moldering away in Manila Bay.

Over the years, it has become a tourist attraction and target for scrap hunters who have carried off every piece of metal smaller than they are.

For more information on Fort Drum, please visit Concrete Battleship.org

As for Gen. Drum himself, he is buried at Arlington Section 3, Site 1776.

Specs:

Image by Ship Bucket. Click to big up

Image by Ship Bucket. Click to big up

Displacement: It is an island
Length: 350 feet
Beam: 144 feet
Draught: nil, but the fort stood 40-feet high and the lattice tower over 100
Propulsion: None, although the fort had numerous generators
Speed: In time with the rotation of the earth
Complement: 200 men of Company E, 59th Coastal Artillery Regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. Lewis S. Kirkpatrick (1941-42)
Armament: (as completed)
4xM1909 14-inch guns
4xM1908 6-inch guns
Armor: Up to 36 feet of concrete, with up to 16-inches of plate on turrets

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!

The Mauser brothers and their company, the famous Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken A.G. (DWM) concern, was perhaps the world’s premier bolt-action rifle makers for decades and armed the military of their own country and dozens of others with their rifles. They also made millions of pistols, the best know of these being the Luger series and the C96 “Broomhandle” Mauser. Then there was the much smaller and often forgotten “other” pistols.

Why were they made?

DWM had come out strong in the full-sized military pistol market by 1908, with their 7.63x25mm, 7.62x21mm (.30 caliber Luger) and 9mm C96 and P08 offerings. These guns were even sold with extended magazines, extra length barrels, and buttstocks, which in effect could turn them into carbines for cavalry and artillery use. However, they were lacking a smaller pocket and vest style gun that could be carried by gentlemen who desired such additional protection of their person and by staff officers who likely only needed a pistol as a badge of honor– not for a firefight.

That’s where the Mauser M1910/14/34 pistols came in.

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

William R. Wilson (right) and brother Cpl. Jack Wilson (left) standing by a German 88 mm gun at Verdun, France on VE Day] via LOC

Update: above caption was from the LOC, as sharp-eyed Roger noted, its actually a “captured French Model 1930 AA gun on a 1917 wheeled mounting. The 3 rings on the barrel denote Allied aircraft shot down by this effective weapon.”

Today each Army and Marine fire team contains at least one hard charger who is designated the squad automatic weapon man. This position, first conceived back in 1918, was until the disco era composed of a Joe or Leatherneck armed with a BAR. What’s a BAR you ask?

Officially designated “Rifle, Caliber .30, Automatic, Browning, M1918,” this 16-pound light machine gun was revolutionary when it was introduced in the tail end of the First World War. At the time, the US Army grew from 200,000 to over 4-million in the span of about 18-months. Far outstripping all of the arsenals of weapons, the new Doughboys needed a machine gun capable of being mass-produced, then carried into the field in huge numbers.

Looks comfy, no? This was the rig to help carry the BAR for the WWI-concept of “walking fire.”

It was to be used along with such wonder weapons as the Thompson submachine gun, Pedersen-device equipped Springfield rifles, armed airplanes, and modern field artillery to scour “No Man’s Land” of the Kaiser’s Imperial storm troopers.

Capable of full-auto fire, the gun, usually just referred to as the BAR, could fire 30.06 rounds as fast as 550 rounds per minute, which meant it could drain its 20-round detachable box magazine in as few as two seconds if set to rock and roll (or we should say, the Charleston).

However, with the magazine change in there, typical effective rate of fire was between 40-60 rounds per minute. Although a beast, it was designed to be carried and operated by a single solider, which gave squad-sized units an incredible boost in firepower.

In September 1917, the Army ordered some 25,000 of these weapons from Winchester. With the prospect of having to put one in every squad in what was projected to be the world’s largest military, Uncle called up Connecticut manufacturers Colt and Marlin-Rockwell to help army the boys “over there.”

A 1918-made Marlin-Rockwell BAR that was reworked for WWII service as a M1918A2. Image via RIA

Read the rest in my column at Marlin Forum

Paris, 6 août 1914. Soldats du 5e régiment d’infanterie (“Navarre sans Peur”), Il fait partie de la 12e brigade d’infanterie, 6e division d’infanterie, 3e corps d’armée juste avant le départ pour le front (photo ‘Excelsior’) (Colorised by Luc Heinrich from France) Via WWI Colorised Photos. Click image to big up

Regular French Army poliui of the 5th Infantry Regiment (“Fearless Navarre”) in their beautiful 1914 blue double-breasted wool uniforms and kepis, throwbacks to the Crimean War. Then part of the 12th Infantry Brigade, 6th Infantry Division, 3rd Army Corps., these men are waiting to depart from Paris to the Western Front on 6th August 1914. The 5th Regiments first action was at the Battle of Charleroi, just two weeks later on 21st-24th August 1914 where they were decimated and likely many of these men in the image gave their last full measure.

The 5th RI traces its roots back to 1558 and covered itself in glory in places as diverse and legendary as Valmy, Fleurus, Castiglione, Wagram, and Antwerp– then was the first regiment to rally to Napoleon in 1815 (where, sent to arrest the Elba escapee they met him with fixed bayonets south of Grenoble and, once the man walked forward alone and with his arms outstretched saying, “If any of you will shoot your Emperor, do so now!” threw their hats in the air and cheered him on).

The 5th upon Napoleon’s Return from Elba, by Charles Auguste Guillaume Steuben. Those guys really liked a good Corsican.

The men of the 5th later fought the Kaiser’s boys on the Marne, Aisne and Verdun, fought in the Ourcq and at Lys, survived the Lowlands Campaign in 1940 to become one of the few active regiments of the Vichy Army, then went underground in 1942 (taking its battle flags with it) and joined the Free French.

Château de Madrid / December 1944 – Members of the reformed 7th company, 2nd Battalion of the 5th RI, Free French Forces before departure towards the Ardennes and the Vosges and the final push to Germany. Note the mix of U.S. and French gear to include U.S. M-1 steel pots and Mas 36 rifles.  Via 5e RI Historical Association  Click to big up.

After their Second World War, the 5th was off to the horror of 1950s Algeria, held the line in Metropolitan France during the Cold War, then served UN duty in Bosnia in the 1990s.

In 1997, this long and dedicated service to king, emperor and republic came to an end when the regiment was dissolved and its soldiers split between the 110e RI and the 16e Chassuers, losing their unit identity and casing their flags.

C’est la vie.

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 May 27, 2015 The coldest boat in the Russian Navy

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Here we see the unique vessel of the Tsar’s Imperial Russian Navy, the icebreaker Yermak (also spelled Ермак, Ermak, and Yermack due to transliteration) doing what she did best—breaking sea ice. She was the first true modern sea-going icebreaker in any navy and lasted an impressive 80~ years and through five world wars in which she got bloodier than could be expected for a ship of her type.

In the late 1890s, polar exploration was all the rage and Holy Russia, pushing ever further to control the Western Pacific, sought to join Europe and Asia via the Northeast Passage across the top of the country. The thing is, the ships that had tried this arduous journey had all failed. One renowned Russian polar explorer and naval officer, Stepan Makarov, fresh off his expeditions to the mouth of the north-flowing Siberian rivers Ob and Yenisei, proposed a radical new steel-hulled steamship with powerful engines and screws on both the stern and bow, ready to chop up polar ice as she went.

Note the close arrangement of her three stern screws

The ship, some 319 feet long and 70 abeam, was very tubby in design. Six boilers fed either three shafts aft or one forward, allowing her to back and ram if needed– now standard procedure for icebreakers but novel at the time. Speaking of bow, she had a strengthened hull of 29 mm plate steel sandwiched with oak and cork to allow her to break sea ice at over 7 feet thick.

Under construction. Note the strengthened steel ‘nose’ over which in essence a second double hull would be constructed.

Her twin 55-foot high stacks and round sloping bow with small stem and flare angles made her readily distinguishable and came to typify early icebreaker design. Even today, her hull form is imitated in even the most advanced polar icebreaker design.

The resulting design was authorized by Count Witte in 1897 at the cost of 3 million gold rubles and ordered abroad to ensure fast and reliable delivery. Laid down in December at Sir W.G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd, Newcastle upon Tyne, she was completed 29 January 1899– and delivered at half the price.

Launching

On trails. How many times have you seen an icebreaker with a bone in her mouth?

She carried the name of cossack ataman (head man) Vasiliy `Yermak` Timofeyevich Alenin, the Don Cossack who conquered Siberia under the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 1580s, her purpose was clear.

Surikov’s “The Conquest of Siberia by Yermak” The cossack swashbuckler took 800 men east and won an empire from the khans of the tartars and tribal people of the region that the Russians hold until today.

Arriving at the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet in March after a ten day voyage from the UK, Yermak made her smashing debut ( I love a pun) by breaking her way into the ice-bound harbor Kronstadt and then up the Neva River to St. Petersburg– where thousands thronged to see her across the frozen river.

Yermak in St Petersburg on the Neva

By that November, she came in handy. The massive 12,500-ton armored cruiser Gromoboi had been forced by early ice from her moorings to the shore, and future ice movement threatened to sink the ship. Three days later, Yermak pulled her free.

Then, just weeks later, she had to help pull the 4,200-ton Admiral Ushakov-class coastal defense ship General Admiral Graf Apraksin from the rocks and tow her back to Kronstadt.

Yermack was the first polar icebreaker in the world, colorized photo of it assisting the Graf Apraksin in 1899. Whoever colorized the photo neglected to add the correct cap bands to the breaker, which should be blue.

She was one of the first ships to use a wireless for rescue at sea when she rescued 27 lost Finnish fishermen from the rocks near Hango and transmitted the fact to a land station there with the help of Professor Alexander Stepanovich Popov (the Russian Marconi) who had set up a station near Apraksin and relayed messages back and forth.

“Icebreaker ” Yermak “, who worked for the removal of stones from the battleship “Adm. Apraksin “, saved the 10th February 1900 27 fishermen, the news of the death of the first of which was received on a radio installation”

In 1901 Yermak helped Makarov complete his Third (and last) Siberian exploration expedition, reaching as far as Nova Zemyla. It was the last time the admiral was aboard the ship that was his magnum opus.

Painting by M. G. Platunova “First swimming polar icebreaker Ermak,” depicting her first encounter with polar sea ice. Note her buff superstructure and blue cap bands.

Makarov, sadly the best Russian naval mind of his era, was blown sky high on his flagship, the battleship Petropavlovsk, on a sortie out of Port Arthur in 1904.

During the Russo-Japanese War, Yermak helped rush reinforcements to the front, freeing first the cruisers of Capt. Yegoryev’s unit in February 1904 from Libau and then the 12 ships of Rear Admiral Nebogatov’s division the next January.

In port, click to big up

She was ordered to follow the fleet as a coal supply ship and, once in the Pacific, assist in helping to Vladivostok free of ice. Five days after leaving Russian waters however, Yermak suffered a shaft failure, which Adm. Rozhdestvensky, enraged at the time, did not believe, and took as an act of mutiny until he personally came aboard and verified it himself.

In the end, she was allowed to limp back to Kronstadt after cross-decking a number of her officers and crew to other vessels that were short. This act saved Yermak from what would certainly have been death at the hands of the Japanese at Tsushima (though not the men she transferred).

In the summer of 1905, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway all-important to a Russian victory in the Far East and her shaft repaired, she escorted supplies and rails for the project to along the Russian Arctic coast to the mouth of the Yenisey River, about half way the distance.

Yermak in heavy sea ice

A great stern shot in warm waters. Click to big up

She conducted some of the first through-ice dives in frozen waters

With the war over, she went back to merchant and research service, breaking ice around the Baltic. In 1908, she rescued her third warship when she pulled the cruiser Oleg from the ice off Finland.

By the time of the next war in 1914, Yermak was armed with some small deck guns to help ward off German submarines but again stuck to breaking out Russian warships when needed. This included freeing the cruiser Rurik for a sortie in March 1915 and the battleships Slava and Tsarveitch. Stationed in Revel for most of the war and with little for an icebreaker to do in summer months, she served as a depot ship for submarines.

Note the mascot and Tsarist uniforms with British influence

When the rest of the Baltic Fleet raised the red flag in March 1917, she was one of the last ships to do so and even then her crew re-elected her longtime skipper, Estonian-born Capt. Rudolf Karlovich Felman, who had commanded the ship since 1903– one of the few fleet vessels to do so.

However, Felman in the end was kicked out in November with the coming of the Bolsheviks and promptly left Russia only to find easy work in Estonian service. He was the longest serving of her more than 21 captains spanning seven decades.

Felman. This intrepid polar explorer and ship driver lived until 1928

With the Germans fast approaching and the war at its end (for the Russians anyway) Yermak sailed from Revel to Helsinki and broke out the fleet to include 7 battleships, 9 cruisers and 200~ misc vessels so that they could assemble in Kronstadt and not fall into the Kaiser’s hands. This event was later referred to as the Great Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet, and is seen as saving the Soviet Navy. (It should be noted that the Whites sailed away in 1920 and 22 with the majority of serviceable vessels of the Black Sea and Pacific fleets respectively, leaving only those in the Baltic under the Red Flag)

At the end of March, Yermak tried to return to Helsinki with a contingent of Red Navy sailors to seize the town but after trading some naval artillery with the local Finnish ship Tarmo (2400-tons, 1 47mm gun), she turned back around when a German plane dropped a few small bombs danger close to the hapless Russian icebreaker.

Nonetheless, her service in the Revolution and later Civil War, where her crew were sent to fight on land, earned her the Revolutionary Red Banner of the Central Executive Committee for outstanding service in her third war.

By 1921, she was disarmed and back in service around the Baltic since she was one of the few operational vessels left. She was even loaned to the Germans in 1929 (at a price of 1 million DM, which was music to the ears of the cash-strapped Kremlin) to open the Kiel Canal early.

In 1935, she made an Arctic expedition equipped with a seaplane and helped pick up floating North Pole Station 1 under the famous explorer Ivan Papanin, cementing her place in polar history.

Note the Red Banner flag

Yermak’s fourth conflict, the Russo-Finnish Winter War; saw her again armed, this time much more heavily. In December of that year, the Finns came close to sinking the old girl when the German-built submarine Vetehinen (Merman) stalked her without success over an 8-day period off Libau. By early 1940, Yermak helped escort Soviet Naval troops to occupy disputed islands in the Gulf of Finland—and again was scrapping with her old Civil War enemy, the Finnish Tarmo, without effect.

Click to big up

In 1941, her fifth war was upon her and she was soon going toe to toe with German and Finnish bombers and attack planes. According to Soviet historians, Yermak‘s gunners splashed 36 aircraft during the war while, again, she served as a depot and berthing ship for submarines as needed. In 1942, with the Axis powers closing in on Leningrad, most of her armament was shipped to the front, with all but 15 of her crew going with it to fight on shore as they had in the Civil War.

By 1944, disarmed, and her crew of dirt sailors advancing on Berlin, Yermak was transferred back to merchant service with the ship earning the Order of Lenin for her WWII service.

1950, at this point she had seen a solid half-century of service.

By 1950, after inspection found her half-century old hull still sound, she was sent to Antwerp for refit and then assigned to the White Sea based at Murmansk. Her floatplane long since gone, she was given a helicopter and pad in 1954 and spent the next decade assisting in breaking submarines in and out of Poliarni as well as escorting seal fishing expeditions out into the Arctic.

With new atomic icebreakers coming into Soviet service, the days of the old steam Yermak were numbered. On 23 May 1963, she was withdrawn from service and, when a bid to preserve her as a museum failed, she was ordered stripped. Her good British steel was stolen from her and everything of value slowly disappeared over a ten-year period.

What was left was burned 17 December 1975 in the bleak ship cemetery at nearby Gadzhiyevo. It is believed that part of her keel is still visible at the radioactive summer low tide in that rusty ship graveyard today.

Her monument in Murmansk

A monument stands to her in Murmansk that includes one of her anchors, while a number of stamps have been issued by the Soviets and Russians to honor her memory. She has also been commemorated in Soviet maritime art.

Icebreaker Yermak by noted Soviet maritime artist Eugene Voishvillo

Yermak at revel by Yuri Sorokin

A 20,000-ton icebreaker (made ironically in Finland) was commissioned in 1974 with her old name and continues service today.

In a twist of Baltic fate, Yermak’s lontime nemesis, the Finnish icebreaker Tarmo, retired in 1970, has been preserved in the Maritime Museum of Finland in Kotka since 1992. Her hull, also built by Armstrong, is still sound.

Tarmo via Wiki Via wiki

Specs:

Displacement 7875 tons as designed, 10,000 by 1941
Length 319 feet
Width 70.8 feet
Draft 24 feet
Engines steam engines, 10,000 hp as designed
Three shafts, VTE steam engines, 6 boilers. Bow shaft as designed (removed in 1935)
Speed: 15 knots when new. 10 by 1939
Cruising range 5000 miles on 2200 tons of coal (bunkerage for 3,000 if needed). Coal consumption was 100 tons per day while underway.
Crew 89 as designed with berths for 102, 166 in naval service, 250 in 1939
Armament: 1914-1921: 2-4 small mounts of unknown caliber
1939-42ish:
2x 102 mm/45 (4″) B-2 Pattern 1930 mounts
4x 76.2 mm/30 (3″) Pattern 1914/15 mounts
4×45 mm/46 (1.77″) 21-K anti-tank guns in navalized AAA mounts
4x quad Maxim machineguns on GAZ-4M-AA 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/

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!

The below sold for $72,000 at auction last weekend in the UK.

Which is actually a bargain as it is one of the last surviving WWI-era British Matchless motorcycles complete with a Vickers machine gun sidecar.

The motorbike, a Matchless-Vickers 8B2/M Russian Military model, is one of a contract of some 250 of the vehicles made for the last Tsar of Russia in 1916, then a key British ally in World War One. However, before these war chariots could be shipped to the Eastern Front the Tsar got kicked off his throne by the Revolution, stranding the bikes in England.

For more info click the below in my column at Guns.com

Via LOC

You have to love the Springfield 1903.

Be careful this weekend. Lots of under-supervised barbeques and illegal fireworks. Not that I’m complaining or anything, just saying.

Boom!

While, yes, it may be a phrase from Act 3, Scene 1, line 273 of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and was likely written sometime around 1599, both Caesar’s army and those of Shakespeare’s own time, as today, contain military working dogs and canine mascots.

And the one thing that unites them all, is our desire to mark them as part of the unit.

U.S.S. New York circa 1896. Ship’s tailor The dog is Nick.

Sergeant Stubby, the mascot of the 102nd Infantry, 26th Yankee Division WWI

Gefreiter Hund A German WWI era mascot dog complete with his own jacket with rank button, feldmutze with cockade and his very own Iron Cross Second Class. Photo via Flickr

Those Germans love their dogs… another WWI era shot

1925. “Sgt. Jiggs.” The Marine Corps mascot in Washington, D.C., with an actual Marine. National Photo Company Collection glass negative

Sgt. Jiggs, close up

M1919 with sled dog Alaska WWII

Finnish soldier and dog in position near Kiestinki, 25 April, 1942, note the Mosin rifle

You will take this Mauser and like it

Flak Observer

Co-pilot

Field promotion

U.S. Scout dog, Luzon, 1945

K9 handler and trainer Mike Forsythe and his dog Cara break the world record for highest mandog parachute deployment by jumping from 30,100 feet

The official mascot of the United States Marine Corps, English bulldog Pfc. Chesty the XIV, sits for his official photo at Headquarters Marine Corps Combat Camera in the Pentagon, Arlington, Va, May 15, 2013 at Headquarters Marine Corps Combat Camera, Pentagon, Washington, D.C. Chesty the XIV will officially take over as the mascot when his predecessor, Sgt. Chesty the XIII, retires in the fall of 2013. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Adrian R. Rowan HQMC Combat Camera/Released)

WMD memorial at Eglin AFB. Image by Chris Eger

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 July 15, 2015: The Great War’s Granite State

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Here we see the Connecticut-class battleship, USS New Hampshire (BB-25) at age 12 in the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal. At this point of her life the young girl had already been in two real live shooting wars, had sunk a friendly battleship, and had but three years to live.

As part of the international naval race, the Connecticut-class was the top of the line in your U.S. predreadnought ships of the line. A century ago, the Connecticuts were the best and most intensely beautiful warships in the US Navy.

Connecticut herself was such an important ship that a crowd of some 30,000 civilians as well as most of the entire active battle fleet of the Atlantic Squadron was present for her commissioning in 1906. As a 15,000-ton ship with 11-inches of armor belt and carrying four 12-inch guns, she was a hoss.

USS Connecticut with a bone in her mouth on trials, 1906

Of course, the commissioning of the all-big-gun HMS Dreadnought the very same year, with her 10×12-inch guns, 21-knot top speed, and up to 12-inches of armor in a 21,000-ton package, the Connecticut was already sadly and badly obsolete.

That didn’t stop the Navy from finishing five sisters, Louisiana, Vermont, Kansas, Minnesota, and our hero, New Hampshire by 1908, spread across four east coast shipyards. Antiquated before they were even finished.

View of the ship’s bow decoration, taken while the battleship was in dry-docks at the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York, 6 January 1909. Note gilt-work on the eagle figurehead and associated decorations, stockless anchors in hawsepipe, stocked anchor on billboard further aft, Sailors leaning on the bow bulwark, jack at half-mast, bell mounted in front of the ship’s pilothouse, and barred portholes. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives / USNHC # NH 19-N-4-8-21, via Navsource. Click to very much big up

New Hampshire was laid down 1 May 1905 (just days before the pivotal Battle of Tsushima Strait., the apogee of predreadnought battlewagons). She was built alongside sistership USS Kansas at New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, NJ at a cost of $3,748,000 and was commissioned 19 March 1908– then was rushed into front line service.

New Hampshire on trails note no main 12 inch guns have been fitted. Also note her twin military masts.

On her shakedown cruise, New Hampshire schlepped a provisional Marine regiment from Hampton Roads to Panama to protect the Canal there. You see her five sisters, all completed the year before, had set off on an around the world cruise of the Great White Fleet, and she was left holding the line until they returned and, afterwards, was one of the first ships made “combat ready” by replacing her original military masts with lattice cage masts, trading gleaming white and buff for haze gray, and landing her ornate bow crest seen above.

In March 1911, she got to warm up her four 12 inch /45 Mark 5 guns as well as her extensive (20 gun!) mixed set of 7 and 8 inchers on the former battleship USS Texas. Renamed the USS San Marcos, that 1892-era 6,300-ton vessel was one of the nation’s first modern heavy warships. By 1911, she was barely considered a warship anymore by modern standards so it made sense that her 12-inches of armor plate should be tested on the New Hampshire‘s still relatively modern guns.

USS New Hampshire B-25 firing on the target ship San Marcos (ex-Texas) at Tangier Sound in Chesapeake Bay, March 1911. This photograph is of historical interest as it was one of the first gun shoots where a spotter in the cage masts was used to spot fall of shot. Previously, each gun layer or turret captain utilizing their turret gunsights was responsible. This new technique increased the maximum possible engagement range from 12,000 yards (11,000 m) up to about 24,000 yards (22,000 m). Also note the ship’s wake and that firing a broadside did not push the ship sideways. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 73105. Photo colorized by irootoko_jr  Oh yeah, and CLICK TO BIG UP

And the 870 lbs. AP shells of New Hampshire did their job very well, destroying her above the waterline and holing her below so many times she sank at her moorings and the current was allowed to flow without hindrance from side to side.

The below images are from Navsource via USNIP, 1938, courtesy of Pieter Bakel, and are attributed to Lt.Cdr. Radford Moses, USNR who was among the inspectors of the old San Marcos after New Hampshire was done with her.

After sinking San Marcos, New Hampshire trained mids from Annapolis and conducted peacetime cycles of training and flag waving missions abroad.

In April 1914, she was among the ships who landed shore parties to occupy Veracruz.

By the time the U.S. entered WWI, New Hampshire was relegated to train gunnery and engineering rates in Chesapeake Bay and by September 1918 was tasked with escorting convoys across the North Atlantic.

In the Hudson River, New York, 27 December 1918. Note wartime modifications, including removal of some of the seven-inch and three-inch broadside guns and fitting of blast deflection shields on the “cage” mast fire control positions. Photo courtesy of Larry Bonn. Text courtesy of USNHC # NH 2891

Then came magic carpet rides bringing Doughboys back from ‘Over There’ through the first part of 1919.

Lloyd Brown, a 104-year-old World War I veteran takes a moment to pause as he remembers being in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard with his ship the day WW I ended, at his home in Charlotte Hall, Maryland, on November 9, 2005. Brown remembered Armistice Day in 1918 as few, ever so few, veterans can. “For the servicemen there were lots of hugs and kisses,” he recalls Brown, a teenage seaman aboard the battleship USS New Hampshire when the fighting stopped. “We were so happy that the war was over.” Brown added, “There’s not too many of us around any more.” An estimated 2 million Americans served in Europe after the U.S. entered the war in 1917. Lloyd Brown passed away in April of 2007, at the age of 105. (AP Photo/Chris Gardner)

Peacetime service after the war for the relatively young ship (she was but a decade old) was more of the same midshipmen cruises and flag-waving.

On Nov. 10, 1923, in one of the saddest days for any naval buff, all six of the Connecticuts were stricken from the Naval List and very soon after scrapped in accordance with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty.

By the end of 1924, the entire class was nothing but so much re-purposed steel, although it’s likely that some of her smaller mounts were retained in storage and used during WWII to arm merchantmen.

Perhaps the only tangible piece of the old battleship New Hampshire is her 72-piece silver service and bell. Expertly made by New Hampshire’s W.B. Durgin Co. and presented to the PCS in 1908, it is currently on display at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord.

Via Robert Dole, Maritime Quest.

Her bell is preserved at Portsmouth. Image by Jim Cerny

Specs:

Displacement: 16,000 long tons (16,000 t)
Length: 456 ft. 4 in (139.09 m)
Beam: 76 ft. 10 in (23.42 m)
Draft: 24 ft. 6 in (7.47 m)
Propulsion: 12 Babcock & Wilcox boilers
16,500 ihp (12,300 kW)
Speed: 18 kn (21 mph; 33 km/h)
Complement: 827 officers and men
Armament:
4 × 12 in (305 mm)/45 cal Mark 5 guns
8 × 8 in (203 mm)/45 cal guns
12 × 7 in (178 mm)/45 cal guns
20 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 cal guns
12 × 3 pounder guns
4 × 1 pounder guns
4 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor:
Belt: 6–11 in (152–279 mm)
Barbettes: 6–10 in (152–254 mm)
Turret Main: 8–12 in (203–305 mm)
Turret secondary: 7 in (178 mm)
Conning tower: 9 in (229 mm)

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The Webley and Enfield series of top-break .455 and .38/200 wheelguns were the standard issue British officer’s kit from the 1880s through the early 1960s when they were finally replaced by the Browning HP.

Webley MK VI .455 Infantry Revolver, MK IV .38 SW short Police Revolver, Albion .38 SW Tankers Revolver.

These guns were even the subject of a popular after-market bayonet sold for the discerning English gentleman trench raider in the Great War.

The Webley with the 1915-era Pritchard-Greener Revolver Bayonet

British trench raider with Webley 455 and Pritchard-Greener Revolver Bayonet (Via Osprey)

In the end they remained in service into the next World War, even while England’s enemies all used semi-autos (Germany = Walther, Luger, Mauser;  Italy= Beretta; Japan= Nambu) as did her Allies (U.S= 1911, Soviets= TT30, France= MAB and Modèle 1935 pistols).

A girl shooting a Webley under the instruction of British sailors, England, 1939

Mmmmmm, let it wash over you. Also note the Smith 1917 .455 wheelgun to the bottom left

A British officer aims his revolver at a smiling suspected Mau Mau during a night raid. 1952, Kenya note the trigger discipline trigger discipline and the similarity to the depiction from the Trenches above…some things never change

Rule, Britannia.

You may remember a few months back when the Swedish coastal artillery and naval forces went ape shit on a possible non-NATO (read= Russki) midget sub in their territorial waters– and reportedly dropped a good number of ASW weapons on active contacts. Well, it seems like they have found a 20m (66 foot) long 3m (10 foot) abeam submarine in their waters with Cyrillic letters on its hull.

Note the groovy Steampunk hatch

As reported by The Express, a Swedish newspaper, the submarine is just under two miles off the coast of Sweden, although Ocean X, the team that discovered it, are not disclosing its exact location.

It was discovered last week, and the Swedish armed forces confirmed to the paper that the images of the craft are currently being analyzed.

HI Sutton over at Covert Shores thinks it could be an unknown Russian midget, possibly a variant of the Piranha-M.

While Per Andersson, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Swedish Coastal Artillery, says he is “sure” it is a much older submarine, and says he has been in touch with former military colleagues who agree with him.

Electric Boat built the Fulton (renamed the Som/Catfish) in the U.S. then disassembled her in 1904 and shipped the craft to Russia

They feel it could be the old Tsarist Navy’s Som, the 66-foot long, 11-foot abeam craft built originally as the private submarine Fulton by the Electric Boat Company in 1901 and sold to the Tsar during the Russo-Japanese war.

Som at dock. Note the Cyrillic letters on her hull (big up)

Som ensnared in fishing nets, DOH! Note the Cyrillic on the hull (Click to big up)

The humble Som was lost in the Baltic in 1916 but her grave has been lost to history.

Either way, its going to be interesting to find out just which one it is.

UPDATE:

It looks like its the Som.

Dig the watch (altimeter?) on his cuff. And you know that nose piece has to suck after about 3 seconds

A pilot in the Imperial German Air Service, wearing leather attire and the classic cork and leather flight helmet he also carries the oxygen “pipe stem” for high altitudes.

Germany was one of the earliest nations involved in the First World War to recognize and address the need by aviators of aircraft and dirigibles for supplemental oxygen. The great Zeppelin dirigibles, by virtue of their ability to fly at higher altitudes, were the first war craft outfitted with aircrew oxygen systems, which were at first of the conventional compressed gas type, contained in iron storage flasks.

Soon, however, the heavy storage flasks were replaced by early liquid oxygen generating systems. These systems were devised and produced by the Draeger Company, a company long associated with respiratory and resuscitation equipment for mining use. Other systems were produced by the Ahrend and Heylandt Company.

It wasn’t long before some higher flying German bombers and fighters were equipped with these small, lightweight liquid oxygen systems. Oxygen could be breathed from these small ‘personal’ liquid oxygen systems through use of a mouthpiece (frequently called a ‘pipe stem’) that could be held clenched in the mouth of an aviator. The tube providing the oxygen was attached (on the German systems) to a large rebreathing bag positioned nearer the unit than the ‘pipe stem’, so that although the oxygen flow rate was continuous, more of the gas could be saved and reused in the process that would have otherwise been wasted.

(Colourised by Royston Leonard from the UK)