Matt Easton takes an extended look at a vintage French officer’s sword. Overall, its in pretty good shape for a 130~ year old martial blade.

Scorched by fire, blackened by soot and cordite, this is the silk battle ensign of the Royal Navy’s greatest ‘castle of steel’, last seen flying from HMS Warspite as she clashed with the Germans at Jutland.

With the 100th anniversary of the greatest naval battle fought in World War I approaching in few months, the Royal Navy is pulling out all the stops to revisit its greatness at its pinnacle of strength and celebration of their strategic (tactical is up to debate) victory at the Battle of Jutland.

Currently the IWM is taking their remaining Jutland battle flags out of storage and prepping them for display. The Jutland ensigns found  range in size between 148 square feet down to just 15½ square feet and belonged to battleships Warspite (she suffered heavy damage and 30 casualties) and Bellerophon (came through unscathed), battle-cruiser Indomitable (where she severely damaged the German battle-cruisers Seydlitz and Derfflinger), destroyers Marksman and Obedient, and cruiser Warrior (lost on June 1 1916).

Services of thanksgiving in the Orkneys, a combined Anglo-German sail past and ceremony over one of the vessels lost in the titanic clash of dreadnoughts, the unveiling of cruiser HMS Caroline in Belfast as a museum ship and living memorial to the Grand Fleet, plus commemorations at the naval memorials in Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth – where the names of most of the 6,094 sailors and Royal Marines killed are listed.

More here

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

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Albert Brenet

Born June 25, 1903 at Harfleur, a small coastal town on the Normandy Coast, Albert Victor Eugene Brenet was almost delivered into saltwater. As a youth, he sketched the fishing boats and coastal craft that frequented his city and by 1920 at age 17 had earned a place at the École des beaux-arts in Paris.

However, the young rake soon left school and arranged passage on the leaky old three-masted barque Bonchamps, one of the last French sailing ships in commercial service, and spent several months aboard her on the Australian run with an extended stay in the French West Indies.

Bonchamp, as she looked in 1902

This undoubtedly influenced his paintings even more. More travel was offered him when he ventured to equatorial Africa with a prize funds from awarded by the Salon des Artistes Français.

By the late 1920s he was a regular with the magazine L’Illustration and soon took to other commercial work than included much travel advertising for Air France, Imperial Airways and Air Algeria in the 1930s.

1935.

By 1936 he was named an official illustrator of the French Department of Marine and in that line painted French warships, sailors, aircraft and Marines.

Le Bouvet aux Dardanelles

Le Bougainville arrivant à Tahiti

Early French predreadnought battleships Amiral Duperré, in the center is the Redoutable and to the right is the Formidable

Bréguet 521 Bizerte en panne va être remorqué par torpilleur

Caught in London in June 1940 on business, he was effectively exiled from France for the war but contributed to the war effort through illustration.

SPITFIRE XIV au décollage

Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk

Hydravion survolant un convoi maritime

charge of the spahis la bataille de La Horgne le 15 mai 1940

CHANCE VOUGHT V.156 à l’attaque

Avro Lancaster

In 1946 he was awarded the Legion of Honor for his service to the country and was made an official artist to all three service branches.

French military gendarmes. Note the breech cover on the MAS rifle

French Marins commandos, 1960s, note MAT-49 subguns

He continued his work, specializing in Gouache board, and moved into illustrations for books (illustrating a release of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, in 1976), models, and continued his duties to the Republic, venturing out on the carrier Foch as late as the 1991.

SS France at Saint-Nazaire, 1961

Super Etendard launching, 1991, Foch

Mural for the 8th Cavalry regiment, 1993

He died in 2003.

A number of his works are at the Musee National de la Marine at Toulon, the Musée portuaire de Dunkerque, the Gallimard National Maritime Museum, and elsewhere and are available on the Portail des collections des musées de France (for example here) and there are numerous online galleries that host his images.

Thank you for your work, sir.

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 Oct. 21, 2015: The humble yet resilient Frenchman

 Photo colorized by irootoko_jr

Here we see the French aircraft carrier Bearn, the only one of her kind, in pre-WWII aircraft operations. She was too young for WWI and too old for WWII, but she remained with the fleet for some 50 years.

In 1912, the Republic ordered five brand new battleships to augment the (26,000-ton, 10 × 340mm/45 Modèle 1912 guns in five twin turrets, powered by four direct drive steam turbines) Bretagne-class.

These new ships, Normandie, Flandre, Gascogne, Languedoc, and Béarn, would carry a full dozen 340mm guns in three quadruple turrets (the French loved that arrangement, using it on all their later battleships) and be powered by a hybrid powerplant of two turbines and two reciprocating engines, each on their own shaft. Insulated by up to 12 inches of armor, they were thought to be comparable to the latest Italian, Austrian, and German designs of the 1911-era and fast enough at 21 knots to make due.

To speed up construction, the five ships were to be built around the country at three different yards with class leader Normandie laid down 18 April 1913 at St Nazaire and her four sisters likewise started over the next eight months with Bearn, begun 10 January 1914 at F C de la Méditerranée, La Seyne, the last of the class.

However when the Great War began in August 1914, France, allied to the mighty Royal Navy and soon to that of the Italian Regina Marina, was good in the battleship department with both the Austrians and Germans bottled up in their respective harbors and unlikely to sail on Toulon or Brest any time soon.

This meant that the five new battleships were suspended and the first four their hulls, able to float but not much else, launched to clear the ways for other more pressing projects. Bearn, even less along than the other four, was left on the ways. Several of the battleships’ intended 340mm and 138.6 mm guns were mounted as railway artillery instead and went to pounding the Kaiser’s thick gray line along the Western Front and then lingered as coastal artillery emplacements into the 1940s. (Some of these coastal guns saw action in August 1944 during the Allied invasion where they were fired upon by USS Nevada (BB-36))

At the end of the war, the prospect of a financially strapped France completing five 1911-era battlewagons whose hulls were already covered with enough kelp and sea growth to make an instant reef, was slim. In the end, it was decided to scrap the four floating leviathans and launch Bearn‘s own incomplete hull in April 1920 and figure out what to do with her later.

The French hit upon the idea to do what the Brits, Japanese and Americans were doing with their likewise unfinished battleship/cruiser hulls– turn them into an aircraft carrier. You see the RN did that with the three 27,000 ton Courageous-class carriers (converted from battlecruiser hulls), the 22,000 ton (battleship-hulled) HMS Eagle; the Japanese followed course with the 42,000-ton Akagi (converted from a battlecruiser hull in 1927), and the 38,000-ton Kaga (converted from a battleship hull in 1928), while the Americans rolled with former 36,000-ton battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga in 1927.

To be fair, the French beat the Japanese and Americans to the punch and started converting Bearn in 1923, with her shakedown complete and entering service with the fleet in May 1928.

Interesting arrangement of the flight deck and hanger elevator on French aircraft carrier Bearn

Covered with a 590-foot flight deck, she had two below-deck hangars served by three elevators (all in the center of the deck) and could carry about 40 aircraft.

Close up of her pre-war. Note the two casemated 6.1-inch guns Photo colorized by irootoko_jr

Like other carriers of her day, she was equipped largely with the same suite as a decent-sized cruiser, with eight 6.1-inch guns mounted in casemates (!) for surface action, a host of modest anti-aircraft guns and a quartet of 22-inch torpedo tubes (unique in carrier development). She also had a modicum of armor above the waterline but no torpedo blisters.

French carrier Béarn viewed from another warship, date unknown

Her peacetime role in the 1930s saw her sprout the flower of French naval aviation, which was to be used on two follow-on 18,000-ton purpose built flattops, Joffre and Painlevé, ordered in 1937. As Bearn was somewhat stubby (with a 590-foot flight deck, far outclassed by the big Lexington and Akagi), the newer carriers would go almost 800-feet long, which was thought ideal.

When those two carriers joined the fleet, she was to convert to a seaplane depot ship in 1942.

However when the next war started, Bearn was all the French had as the other two carriers were still under construction (and never completed).

“Le porte-avion Bearn et un latecoère 298″by Albert Brenet

In 1939, Bearn was assigned, alongside the new battleship Dunkerque (with quadruple turrets!) and three cruisers to go and hunt down German surface raiders, which turned out to be uneventful.

In May 1940, with things not going so well for the French Army, she was ordered to Toulon where she secretly took aboard the 3880 boxes of the Republic’s gold reserves (over 250-tons) and, escorted by the 6500-ton school cruiser Jeanne d’Arc and the new 8400-ton light cruiser Émile Bertin, sailed for Canada under the command of Rear Admiral Rouyer.

There, news of the fall of France reached the vessels. Instead of offloading their cargo in Canada, the carrier took on a shipment of 102 stowed aircraft for France and sailed for French-controlled Martinique.

Six Belgian Brewster Buffalo’s aboard the French aircraft carrier Béarn during the journey, which would end on Martinique. Besides the Buffalos, she was carrying 27 Curtiss H-75s (P-36s), 44 SBC Helldivers and 25 Stinson Voyagers.

Unwilling to join the Free French forces, the three-ship task force offloaded their gold and planes on the island and made ready to defend it against any invader, be they British or German and remained on this footing for almost two years. Finally, after pressure from the Americans, on 16 May 1942 they were ordered by the Vichy authorities to be immobilized and interned.

With the fall of Vichy France following the invasion of North Africa, the ships joined the Free French forces in June 1943 when the local government recognized DeGaulle’s.

At that point, Jeanne d’Arc immediately left for the Med where she participated in the capture of Corsica and helped the Allied fleets for the rest of the war. Bearn and Émile Bertin, in need of refit, sailed for the U.S.

French carrier Béarn, date unknown, seen in the May 1963 issue of US Navy publication Naval Aviation News

After modernization at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Bertin joined Jeanne d’Arc in the Med in time for the Allied invasion of southern France (Operation Dragoon) in August 1944 and later bombarded Axis positions along the Italian Riviera.

As for the aircraft Bearn left in the Caribbean, they were shipped from the West Indies to Morocco during 1943-44, placed in flying condition, and used for training, with some of the Stinsons reportedly remaining in service as late as the 1960s.

For Bearn, her refit took far longer due to her size, complex engineering suite, and the fact that her pre-war AAA suite was considered wholly inadequate by 1943 standards for a ship her size.

She traded in her 6-inch casemates, 13.2mm machine guns and 75mm low-angle pieces for 4 5″/38s, six quad 40mm Bofors, and 26 20mm Oerlikons, which sounds about right. Her flight deck was shortened, central elevator was removed, modern electronic equipment was installed, and complement reduced to 650. Oh yeah, and her torpedo tubes, inactive since 1939 anyway, were deactivated.

Bearn after her WWII American refit. Note the casemates are empty and a number of AAA guns are fitted as are emergency rafts and liberal camo. Note stored planes on deck Photo colorized by irootoko_jr

Emerging from Philadelphia in April 1945 and with the European war ending, she was sent with her old Martinique piermate Émile Bertin as part of the immense French Armada sailing to liberate Indochina from the Japanese, arriving there just after the end of the War in the Pacific.

Although the only French aircraft carrier from 1928-45, her final days were numbered. Instead of an air wing, she arrived at Haiphong loaded with troops and supplies.

French carrier Béarn, 1946

Serving as an aviation transport rather than a full-fledged carrier, (the French immediately after the war operated F6Fs, Bearcats, Douglas Dauntless dive bombers, Helldivers and F4Us from loaned jeep carrier HMS Biter/Dixmude, the Independence-class light carriers Langley/Lafayette, and Belleau Wood/Bois Belleau as well as the British-built Arromanches and didn’t need Bearn‘s flattop anymore), she was recalled to Toulon and served as an immobile submarine accommodation and training ship.

Dutch submarine Dolfijn (3) moored alongside the French aircraft carrier Bearn, Toulon Mar 1963

French carrier Bearn in port at Toulon, France, 1964. Note the moored submarines, lack of any armament, and helicopter landing zones marked on her deck.

Bearn continued this sad role until November 1966 when she was stricken. She was sold for scrap the following year. Although her hull had more than 50 years on it, she was only in active service in fleet operations for about 14 of those and reportedly never fired a shot in anger or launched a combat sortie.

Specs:

Image via Shipbucket

Displacement:
22,146 long tons (22,501 t) (standard)
28,400 long tons (28,900 t) (full load)
Length: 182.6 m (599 ft. 1 in) (o/a)
Beam: 35.2 m (115 ft. 6 in)
Draft: 9.3 m (30 ft. 6 in)
Installed power:
2 Parsons steam turbines, 2 VTE, 6 Normand du Temple boilers, 4 shafts
22,500 shp (16,800 kW) (turbines)
15,000 ihp (11,000 kW) (reciprocating engines)
Speed: 21.5 kn (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph)
Range: 7,000 nmi (13,000 km; 8,100 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement: 865 as completed
Armament:
Original: 8 × 155 mm (6.1 in)/50 cal guns (8 × 1)
6 × 75 mm (3.0 in)/50 cal anti-aircraft guns (6 × 1) 8 × 37 mm (1.5 in) anti-aircraft guns (added 1935)
16 × 13.2 mm (0.52 in) anti-aircraft machine guns (6 × 1) (added 1935)
4 × 550 mm (22 in) torpedo tubes
After 1944 Refit: 4 × 127 mm (5.0 in)/38 cal dual-purpose guns
24 × 40 mm (1.57 in) anti-aircraft guns (6 × 4)
26 × 20 mm (0.79 in) anti-aircraft autocannons
Armor:
Main Belt: 8 cm (3.1 in)
Flight Deck: 2.5 cm (1.0 in)
Aircraft carried:
35-40 as designed
1939: 10 × Dewoitine D.373, 10 × Levasseur PL.7 and 9 × Levasseur PL.10

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!

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Isaac Newton Lewis took a failed design and ran with it, producing one of the best light machine guns the world saw in the first half of the 20th Century.

The Buffalo Arms Company or Buffalo, New York in 1910 was high and dry. They owned a series of patents to rather forward-thinking gun designs, to include a 37mm auto cannon and a huge tripod-mounted, gas-operated, water-cooled machine gun in .30-40 Krag, both of which were produced by one Samuel MacLean. Unable to get these off the drawing board and into production, BAC approached Lewis and asked him to moonlight.

At the time Lewis was the director of the U.S. Army Coastal Artillery School at Fort Monroe and known as something of an inventor and accomplished engineer in his own right, having designed the Depression Position Finder– the Army’s fire control device to aim artillery over distance, as well as electric lighting systems, modern electric windmill generators, and chart plotting systems.

The gun he came up with, while based on MacLean’s original patents, was altogether different.

Fully Transferrable Class III BSA Lewis Mark II Medium Machine Gun, (sold at auction in 2014 for $11k)

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

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 Oct. 28, 2015: The Rime of the Ancient marine research ship

Image via Navsource

Here we see the 30-year old United States Fish Commission Steamer (and past/future warship) USS Albatross in the Mare Island Channel on 14 February 1914.

That’s not a misprint, the USFC was founded back in 1871 as the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries and transitioned through a number of names until 1940 when it became part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and when NOAA was established on 3 October 1970, took over the Bureau’s assets and lives on today as part of that agency– leading the one of the primary reasons that NOAA has a commissioned officer corps (trained at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy).

The hearty little 234-foot steel hulled steamer with a brigantine auxiliary sail rig, USS Albatross was laid down at Pusey and Jones, Wilmington, Delaware in March of 1882 and by November of that year was commissioned into service, a Navy-manned (by a 70 man crew) and commissioned ship loaned to the USFC.

Upper laboratory on the U.S.S. Albatross, 1900

Albatross was designed from the outset as a research vessel, and in fact was the first of its kind, though she had weight and space reserved for armament and could be used as an auxiliary cruiser if needed (more on this later). As such,she was the first research vessel ever built especially for marine research.

Taking soundings

Dredging for soil and sea life. She did this tens of thousands of times all over the world. Its not glamorous, but her body of research is still being digested nearly 100 years later.

Her crew working a sounder as USFC gentlemen observe

Albatross was very futuristic for 1882, being equipped with full service on-board laboratories, storage space for specimens, and sophisticated dredging equipment. The first U.S. government vessel to be wired for electric interior lighting, she could process specimens and conduct research around the clock.

1901. Note her partial sail rig in use.

She was also equipped with provision to drop “dynamite stations” to perform the first underwater acoustic experiments.

Dredging 1901

She spent all but three of her 39 years of service to the government in the employ of the USFC and journeyed from the Bahamas to the Philippines and everywhere in between.

As noted by the Smithsonian Institution, who have most of her collected specimens, Albatross‘s work was groundbreaking:

The Albatross occupies an important place in history, as her life spanned a period of growth in the marine sciences. Some well-known naturalists served on the Albatross and many young men trained on the research ship became eminent scientists. Over the course of her career, the Albatross collected more marine specimens than any other ship. Most of the material collected was deposited at the Smithsonian Institution, but some can also be found at other museums. These specimens have formed the basis of many scientific papers and are still being studied today.

War Service

As a naval vessel, Albatross had to close up her labs, pull in her sounding machines and dredges, and get to the business of high seas combat twice during her service.

As she appeared early in her career. The house shown in the 1914 image at the top was installed in 1898– for her first war service

From 21 April- 8 September 1898 Albatross was reclassified as an auxiliary cruiser during the Spanish-American War, landing her USFC personnel, and taking on extra bluejackets to man two 20-pounders, two 37mm guns, one 53mm gun, and two Gatling guns. Her coal bunkers expanded, she served in the quiet Pacific and never fired a shot, and her guns were traded back in for fish doctors.

Then during WWI Albatross chopped back to the Navy’s operational control on 19 November 1917, taking on four 6-pounders and one Colt automatic gun and served first with the 12th Naval District, then transferred to the East Coast. Stationed at Key West on coastal patrol against German U-boats and surface raiders, she participated in the epic but fruitless search for the lost collier USS Cyclops in 1918. Her active service with the fleet ended with transfer back to Fisheries control on 23 June 1919.

Albatross in poor state, 1920

Following her Great War service, she clocked back in for a couple years but by 1921 was decommissioned and sold soon after. Acquired by a Boston concern, she lived on very briefly as a school ship but by 1928 was high and dry in Hamburg Germany, “under attachment for indebtedness.”

Her final fate is unknown, however being a worthless ship in Wiemar Germany; she was likely broken up on the cheap.

Remembered in this portrait, “Albatross” by maritime artist Eugene Voishvillo

The government kept the name alive as a research vessel, literally tacking on suffixes to the original as a sign of respect.

RV Albatross II, formerly the USS Patuxent (Fleet Tug No. 11) carried the name from 1926 to 1932.

RV Albatross III saw service with the United States National Fish and Wildlife Service from 1948 to 1959 (and with the Coast Guard in WWII).

NOAAS Albatross IV (R 342) was commissioned for USFWS in 1963 and served with NOAA until 2008. She now is inactive in NOAA ’s Atlantic Fleet.

NOAAS Albatross IV

Specs:
Displacement: 638 long tons (648 t)
Length: 234 ft. (71 m)
Beam: 27 ft. 6 in (8.38 m)
Draft: 16 ft. 9 in (5.11 m)
Propulsion: Steam engine
Speed: 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement: 70 USN, up to 25 scientists and research civilians. 110 USN in wartime.
Armament:
(1898)
2 × 20-pounder guns
2 × 37 mm guns
1 × 53 mm (2 in) gun
2 × Gatling guns
(1917-19)
4× 6-pounder guns
1 × Colt machine gun

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!

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

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Claus Bergen

Born 18 April 1885 in Stuttgart, Claus Friedrich Bergen was a product of Kaiserian Imperial Germany. Studying at the at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, under the American-born master Carl von Marr, young Claus shined.

By his 22nd birthday had been selected to illustrate Karl May’s classic Teutonic fiction novels about Winnetou, the wise chief of the Apaches and Old Shatterhand, Winnetou’s white blood brother in the American Old West and Kara Ben Nemsi and his manservant Hadschi Halef Omar in the Sahara and Far East.

As May’s works were sold in upwards of 200 million copies, the more than 400 illustrations that Bergen did between 1907-14 for these books have been seen world wide.

When the war came, Bergen was appointed as a naval artist to the Kaiserliche Marine and, in the weeks and months following the pivotal Battle of Jutland, created some of his best work.

High Seas Fleet setting sail 31 May 1916

German battleships passing Heligoland

SMS-Grosse-Kurfurst-

German battleships in action

Bridge of SMS Markgraf

Hipper leaving Lutzow for SMS Moltke

Inside a battleship main turret

German destroyers attack the British battleship line at Jutland 31 May

SMS-Seydlitz seeing what hell looks like

Night action

SMS Thuringen lighting up HMS Black Prince

The Kaiser addressing the High Seas fleet after Jutland

In 1917, Bergen embarked on tiny SM U-53, a 213-foot Type 51 unterseeboot conned by legendary Fregattenkapitän Hans Rose, who won both the Pour le Mérite and the Ritterkreuz for sending a staggering 79 Allied ships to the bottom of the Atlantic (including six while bobbing off the Nantucket Lightship in 1916) and went to sea on a two month war cruise. The images he saw in the heavy seas were burned into his memory and he committed them to canvas for posterity.

In den Wellenbergen

U-53 in the summer of 1917

During WWII, Bergen, then in his 50s, was a party member and one of the Reich’s favored painters. He continued working, composing military subjects on the list of those approved by Berlin.

Battleship Schlesig-Holstein on 1st-September 1939 fires the first naval shots of the War at Danzig

1942 U-boot Type IX

Prinz Eugen at Denmark Strait Painting by Claus Bergen

Dornier Flugboot X

After the war, he escaped his Nazi party associations and, living in West Germany at 8172 Lenggries/OBB, painted simple sea scenes and landscapes…

Mit Wind und Wellen

Though he did paint the cover of the 1950s board-game Bismarck, one of the most popular in the U.S. at the time.

He donated several large pieces to U.S. and British public museums and the Admiralty after the Second World War, many of which are on display around the UK. He is also celebrated, of course, by the Karl May Society and others. The Hellmann Art Gallery in Munich contains a large body of his more famous works.

Dr. Bergen was impressed with the President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Germany (Ich bin ein Berliner) and wanted to present him with one of his paintings because of the President’s love of the sea and maritime art. His gift, The Atlantic, shows the windswept Atlantic at twilight and hung in the Atlantic Room of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum for years, making Bergen possibly the only artist to have presented canvas to Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler and JFK.

Bergen died 4 October 1964 in Lenggries, Bavaria at age 79.

For more Bergen pieces on Jutland, see British Battle’s excellent series of articles on the clash.

Thank you for your work, sir.

The C. L. Best Tractor Company of San Leandro, California built two mock-up armored vehicles based on their CLB 75 Tracklayer tractor in 1916 for trials with with the California National Guard. These vehicles were steampunk before steampunk was cool.

One had a semi-cylindrical hull with a turret (of which most pictures exist) and the other was similar but the hull had flat surfaces.

Equipped with 6-pounder Naval guns which were apparently fitted but never fired, they had up to a half-inch of steel armor.

These two machines appeared at a Fourth of July celebration in San Francisco in 1917, and in maneuvers with the 5th Infantry Regiment of the California National Guard, as well as in recruiting posters and brochures for the next several years. As noted by some accounts, they were termed “Bison” by the guardsmen.

Best merged with the Holt Tractor company after the war to become Caterpillar.

More here.

And here.

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

Warship Wednesday Nov.4th, 2015: HMs long-lasting welterweight sluggers

IWM photo

Here we see the head of her class, the Royal Navy monitor HMS Erebus at a buoy in Plymouth Sound in early 1944, as she was prepping to pummel the jerries overlooking Normandy. Though a cruiser-sized hull with a destroyer’s draft, this ship and her sister, HMS Terror carried a very impressive set of battleship 15-inchers and her crew knew how to use them.

Rushed into service in the darkest days of World War I, these ships were built not to slug it out with the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet (as the whole rest of the RNs battle line was!) but rather to close into old Willy’s stormtroopers along the French and Belgian coasts and plaster them but good.

As such, these 405-foot/8,450-ton ships, with a shallow 11 foot draft, carried an impressive armament but very little armor (just 4-8 inches, enough for splinter protection from German destroyers and field artillery), and were very slow, at a very pedestrian 12 knots.

Huge anti-torpedo bulges were fitted to these squat ships to allow them to suck up German fish and keep punching (These proved so effective that when Erebus was attacked by a German Fernlenkboote remote controlled boat carrying a very serious 1550-pound charge, all it did was cave in 50 feet of her bulge and knock loose a lot of equipment– but failed to sink her. Terror likewise survived German torpedo boat love while in service).

Named after the two ships, HMS Erebus and Terror, of the 1839-43 expedition to Antarctica of Sir James Clark Ross which resulted in mapping most of the Antarctic Coastline (and for whom the Ross Sea is now named) and later of the ill-fated expedition of Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin, their namesakes were tiny 100~ foot long “bomb vessels” with huge 13 and 10 inch mortars– which in the end was surprisingly fitting. (As a footnote, the “bombs bursting in air” part of the Star Spangled banner comes from the 1814 mortaring of Fort McHenry, for which bomb vessel Terror was on scene).

‘Erebus’ and the ‘Terror’ in New Zealand, August 1841, by John Wilson Carmichael, via wiki

As with any monitor, its the guns that steal the show and both 1916 Erebus and Terror carried a pair of huge 15″/42 (38.1 cm) Mark I naval guns, which proved to be among the most popular and hard-service type carried by HMs battleships throughout WWI and WWII, being carried by everything from the Queen Elizabeth to Vanguard classes, as well as being fitted as giant coastal artillery pieces at Dover and Singapore.

These were really big guns: Worker being helped out of a BL 15 heavy gun after she had finished cleaning the rifling, Coventry Ordnance Works, England, United Kingdom .

Terror’s 15s, these ships had their turret set so high to enable her shallow draft. Note the observation tower.

These beasts could fire a 1,920 lb. shell (of which the stubby monitors carried 200 in their magazine) out to 29,000 yards. It should be noted that the monitors were able to elevate their guns to an amazing 30 degrees (most of the battleship fittings were limited to 20 degrees, with only HMS Hood able to match the monitors’ arc), giving them about 5,000 yards more range. Later SC super charges boosted this to 40,000~ yards, which is downright impressive for guns designed in 1912!

Erebus‘s guns came from the 355-foot monitor HMS Marshal Ney (and were originally built for the Revenge-class battleship Ramillies) while the smaller Ney was given a more appropriate single 9.2-inch mount. Terror‘s guns came from a spare turret left over from the Courageous-class battlecruiser HMS Furious that was finished as an aircraft carrier and didn’t need them.

Both ships were laid down at Harland and Wolff yards, Erebus at the concern’s Govan, Scotland site, Terror at H&W’s Belfast site (the same yard that had just three years before completed RMS Titanic) in October 1915.

By the fall of 1916, they were both in commission with their abbreviated 204-man crews and headed to the Continent.

They proved their worth at bombarding German naval forces based at Ostend and Zeebrugge as part of the Long Range Bombardment force for the Zeebrugge raid and in plastering the Kaiser’s forces on shore during the Fourth Battle of Ypres.

Erebus kept slugging into 1919-20 when she participated in the British Intervention in Northern Russia, sailing around the White Sea as needed and popping off shots at the Bolsheviks around Murmansk and Archangel.

Terror at Malta, 1930s

After the war, while other monitors were laid up or went to the breakers, T&E remained somewhat active, flexing their guns in a series of tests against captured German armor and serving as gunnery training ships, guard ships and depot vessels as needed.

Oh the fate of peacetime service! Note the school house/barracks on Erebus in this 1930s photo.

Terror at Singapore, early 1939, with camo added

When the next war came, the aging monitors were stripped of their peacetime housing, given an updated AAA suite, and called back to service, first in the Mediterranean Fleet, where Erebus‘s shallow draft enabled her to become a blockade-runner into besieged Tobruk and Terror stood to in Malta to provide a floating anti-air battery against incessant Axis air attacks.

Speaking of which, Terror was severely damaged in attacks by German Junkers Ju 88 bombers on 22 February 1941 off the coast of Libya and sank while under tow the next day, gratefully with very few casualties.

Erebus finished her Second World War, returning to French waters where she helped bombard British beaches at Normandy. Suffering a detonation that crippled one of her guns, she nevertheless continued the war into late 1944, advancing with the land forces along the coast into Belgium and Holland.

Decommissioned at the end of hostilities, she was scrapped in 1946 although her single good 15-incher left was kept as a spare for the RN’s last battleship, HMS Vanguard.

Hard serving, indeed.

Specs:

Displacement: 7,200 long tons (7,300 t)
Length: 380 ft. (120 m) (p/p); 405 ft. (123 m) (o/a)
Beam: 88 ft. (27 m)
Draught: 11 ft. 8 in (3.56 m)
Installed power: 6,235 ihp (4,649 kW) (trials); 6,000 ihp (4,500 kW) (service)
Propulsion:
2 × triple expansion reciprocating engines,
Babcock boilers
2 × screws
Speed: 13.1 kn (24.3 km/h; 15.1 mph) (trials); 12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph) (service)
Capacity: Fuel Oil: 650 long tons (660 t) (normal); 750 long tons (762.0 t) (maximum)
Complement: 204 WWI, 315 WWII
Armament:
(1916)
2 × 15-inch /42 Mk 1 guns in a single turret
2 × single 6-inch (150 mm) guns
4 × single 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft (AA) guns
(1939)
2 × 15-inch /42 Mk 1 guns in a single turret
8 × single mount 4-inch (102 mm) BL Mk IX guns
2 × single mount 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft guns
2 × quadruple .50-inch (12.7 mm) Vickers machine gun AA mounts
6 × .303 Vickers

Armor:
Deck: 1 in (25 mm) (forecastle); 1 in (25 mm) (upper); 4 in (100 mm) (main, slopes); 2 in (51 mm) (main, flat); .75 to 1.5 in (19 to 38 mm) (lower)
Bulkheads: 4 in (100 mm) (fore and aft, box citadel over magazines)
Barbettes: 8 in (200 mm)
Gun Houses: 4.5 to 13 in (110 to 330 mm)
Conning Tower: 6 in (150 mm)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

When you think of the Australian Light Horse, this comes to mind:

Nº.1457 Sergeant Clement Edward Hill, 3rd. Australian Light Horse Regiment Colourised by Jared Enos

However, these also served…

An unidentified soldier on his donkey gazing across the barren plains. Each regiment of the Australian Light Horse operating in Palestine had a few donkeys which were ridden by batmen and grooms. c1918.

This ship graveyard contains the graves of 230 United States Shipping Board Merchant Fleet Corporation ships sunk in the river in 1925. These ships were wooden hulled steamships made to a poor design during the Great War– the Liberty Ships of WWI if you will– then sold for their value as scrap.

Bethlehem Steel came down there in WWII and scraped up all the easy to reach steel for use in other enterprises, but the keels and wooden parts that escaped burning are still there, in the mud.

Mallows Bay is now in the process of protection under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act

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 Nov. 18, 2015: The Brooklyn Stinger of the Calico King

Here we see the steam gunboat USS Scorpion (PY-3) in her gleaming white scheme in an image taken in 1899. She may not look it, but when the Detroit Photographic Co. snapped this photo, the mighty Scorpion was already a killer.

Mr. MCD Borden (not Franz Ferdinand)

Ordered by Massachusetts textile magnate Matthew Chaloner Durfee Borden, commonly referred to at the time as “the Calico King” due to his huge factories in the Fall River area, Scorpion began life in 1896 as the very well-appointed steam yacht Sovereign built by the private yard of John N. Robins in South Brooklyn, New York to a design by J. Beaver Webb.

The rakish vessel, a 212-footer at the waterline (250-foot oal) with twin masts and twin screws powered by 2500shp of triple expansion engines, she could touch 15 knots with ease and, when running light in just ten feet of seawater, surpass that when needed.

The New York Times wrote she was, “supposed to be the fastest craft of its size on the Atlantic seaboard, and all the Jersey Central Railroad commuters between Seagirt and Atlantic Highlands know all about it.”

Borden entered her into the New York Yacht Club, where he was an esteemed member and she sailed under his care with the Seawanhaka Yacht, South Side Sportsmen’s, and Jekyll Island Clubs as well.

When war with Spain came, Borden did the patriotic thing and placed his yacht at the Navy’s service, who promptly hauled her to the New York Navy Yard, painted her haze gray, added a quartet of 5″/40 guns located on her sides, fore and aft of the superstructure– the heaviest battery fitted to any yacht converted for service during that conflict, and commissioned her four days later as USS Scorpion on 11 April 1898.

While only a yacht, her powerful 5″ guns, typically reserved for cruisers, made her a brawler able to dish out some heavy blows and the Navy Department had just the man to conn her. You see Scorpion’s skipper was German-born LCDR Adolph Marix (USNA Class of 1868) and the former executive officer of the battleship USS Maine whose explosion in Havana four months earlier had sparked the war.

By May she was off the coast of Cuba and spent an eventful ten weeks capturing lighters, assisting with landings, enforcing blockades and patrolling the shallows and high seas alike with the Flying Squadron.

On July 18, she was part of a 7 ship attack force, including two gunboats of shallow draft—Wilmington and Helena; two armed tugs—Osceola and Wampatuck; and two converted yachts—Hist and Hornet that sailed into the heavily fortified Spanish base at Manzanillo and, with using her big 5-inchers to good effect, kept the Spanish coastal batteries tied down while the smaller ships destroyed five Spanish gunboats, three blockade runners and one pontoon in less than four hours with little damage to themselves.

When the war ended, Scorpion was recalled to New York, painted white and refitted with a smaller armament while Marix left on his way to become a Vice Admiral. He wasn’t the only one. Over the course of her 31 years in the Navy, she had a staggering 21 skippers to include a Medal of Honor winner and no less than five who went on to become admirals.

In October 1900. Description: Catalog #: NH 2742 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command

Another Detroit Publishing Co. shot, this one from 1903, with her laundry hanging. LOC

View of officers and men circa 1904. Note the six-pounder Description: Catalog #: NH 83748

Photograph of ship, with diary entry and roster of officers. Lieutenant Commander Richard G. Davenport was aboard as passenger. Description: Catalog #: NH 43803

As you may have guessed, Borden never got the Scorpion back and the Navy paid good money for her. She spent six years with the North Atlantic Squadron as a dispatch ship and flag waver small enough to venture into backwater ports around the Caribbean and protect U.S. interests.

Speaking of which, by 1908 she was on her way to Europe. Keeping the svelte gunboat with her 60-70 man peacetime crew in semi-permanent anchor in the Bosporus near the Dolma Bagtchi Palace, she became the station ship in Constantinople. There she remained, leaving to take the occasional Black Sea or Med cruise, for a decade.

Several times she took part in international actions, helping to assist earthquake victims in Messina, Italy; landing armed sailors to guard the U.S. Legation in Constantinople during riots in the city; and venturing into the disputed Balkan ports during the tumultuous events that led up to the Great War.

Speaking of which, when the U.S. entered WWI on the side of the Allies, the humble Scorpion faced the might of the German-cum-Ottoman battlecruiser Goeben and, a suddenly a stranger in a strange land, was peacefully interned on 11 April 1917 without a fight, her breechblocks removed and a guard posted.

View taken at Constantinople, Turkey, in 1919 of ship’s officers. Front row (L-R): Lieutenant Samuel R. Deets, USN; Commander Richard P. McCullough, USS; Lieutenant Leonard Doughty, USN. Back row: Lieutenant George P. Shields (MC), USN; Paymaster Clarence Jackson, USN; Lieutenant William O. Baldwin, USN; Lieutenant Gale A. Poindexter, USN. Description: Courtesy of LCDR Leonard Doughty, 1929 Catalog #: NH 50276

When the war ended, she rearmed and remained as the flag of the U.S. High Commissioner to Turkey, keeping her place in now-Istanbul until 1920 when the influx of White Russian exiles and tensions with Greece forced her relocation to Phaleron Bay, Greece, where she remained on station until recalled back to the states 16 June 1927.

Anchored off the Dolma Bagtche Palace, Constantinople, probably during the early 1920s. Description: Original negative, given by Mr. Franklin Moran in 1967.Catalog #: NH 65006 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command.

1925

Decommissioned, Scorpion sat on red lead row for a couple years, a Spanish-American War vet in a fleet of 1920s modern marvels.

On 25 June 1929, she was sold for her value in scrap. Very few artifacts remain from her other than some postal covers.

Her name has gone on to become something of an albatross for the submarine force. USS Scorpion (SS-278), a Gato-class submarine, was lost in 1944 to a mine in the Yellow Sea while USS Scorpion (SSN-589), a Skipjack-class submarine, was lost in an accident in 1968. In each case there were no known survivors and her name has been absent from the Naval List for 47 years.

As for Borden, he passed away in 1912 at age 69 while his beloved Sovereign/Scorpion was in Europe. His leviathan American Printing Company outlived them all, but by 1934 was shuttered because of the Great Depression.

Specs:

Displacement: 775 long tons (787 t)
Length: 212 ft. 10 in (64.87 m)
Beam: 28 ft. 1 in (8.56 m)
Draft: 11 ft. (3.4 m)
Installed power: 2 × WA Fletcher Co, Hoboken NJ triple expansion steam engines; 2500 IHP total; powered by twin Babcock and Wilcox 225# boilers. (as built) later Four Yarrow boilers, two 1,400ihp vertical inverted triple expansion steam engines, two shafts.
Propulsion: Twin screw
Speed: 14 kn (16 mph; 26 km/h)
Complement: 35 (civilian service) 90 (1898) 60 (1911)
Armament:
(1898) – Four 5″/40 guns
(1905) – Six 6-pounder (57mm) guns and four 6mm Colt machine guns
(1911) – Four 6 pounders in rapid fire 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.

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!

Ian from Forgotten Weapons takes a look at the curious inner workings of a Danish Madsen light machine gun. Its an oddball falling block action that originates from the gas lamp era. Oh, and the neat thing, is the gun he is looking at is was made in 1950. Yup, even with such designs as the MG42 and Browning M1919 out there, the Madsen was still in production that late.

More on the Madsen from an earlier article I wrote: 

Designed in 1896 in Denmark, the Madsen Light Machinegun has served dozens of countries in more than a hundred years of warfare from 1904 to the present day.

The Madsen Light Machinegun was developed in 1896 in Denmark by Captain W. O. Madsen of the Danish artillery and adopted by the Danish Marines in 1897. Originally a sort of assault rifle it was perfected into the final design as a light machine gun in 1902.

It served with the Danish military for more than fifty years, only retiring in 1955. When Hitler’s Germany invaded the country on April 9, 1940 they fired to preserve Denmark’s honor in the Danish military’s hopeless one-day defense of their country. Ordered turned over to the Nazis these same weapons served Hitler throughout the Second World War. The odyssey of the Madsen Light Machine Gun however, is even more complex that this one chapter.

The Madsen Company early on won a large foreign contract to Denmark’s Baltic neighbor, Russia. Imperial Russia, rich with gold due to being a huge exporter of grain, but poor in industry, was forced to buy many of its most sophisticated weapons overseas. The Tsar, Nicholas II, was a son of a Danish princess, bought several items, including naval vessels (his own yacht, the Standart— officially an auxiliary cruiser– was Danish built) and small arms from non-aligned Denmark.

Bought in numbers by the Tsar for the military buildup in the Russian Far East, Madsen machine guns were used in 7.62x54r caliber by Cossack light cavalry in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Russian Madsens continued in active service and were seen often in World War One and in the subsequent Russian Civil War by dozens of end users.

The guns made an early appearance in Mexico’s series of civil wars, shown here in 1913 in the hands of military school cadets

Kaiser Wilhelm’s Imperial Germany also bought a number of Madsens from Denmark, chambered in 8mm Mauser. These weapons served alongside overly complicated Mexican Monodragon rifles in early German scout planes and balloons in the aerial war in World War One. Germany also created the first light machine gun units, called Musketen Battalions, based on the Madsen in 1915.

German soldiers with Madsen machine guns 1915

The Musketen Battalions carried as many as 150 of the weapons which provided an amazing suppressive fire capability. Latin America was a huge customer of the Madsen.

Soldiers, possibly Czechoslovak Legion, using a Madsen machine gun note french Adrian helmets

The new countries of Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Poland, and Estonia, who emerged from the wreckage of that war, used captured stocks of those old Tsarist weapons into the opening stages of WWII against both German and Soviet invaders.

Countries as diverse as Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador bought the light machine gun in a multitude of calibers. They saw combat in the Chaco War (1932-1935) between Paraguay and Bolivia, and untold coups, insurgent operations and civil wars.

Short barreled Madsen light machine gun, a Danish manufactured weapon used in the 1930’s and 40’s in the Dutch West India Colonies

Portugal used the weapon in their wars in their African colonies of Mozambique and Angola and left enough behind there to ensure that they pop up all over the continent.

Two members of the 4th special hunter company manning a Madsen machine gun. By then somewhat of an antique, in 1970s Angola. Observe how the little pooch is completely unconcerned with the development.

When Denmark was liberated after World War II they began exporting the Madsen again and continued production of the slightly modified weapon as late as 1957. Dansk Industri Syndikat A.S. produced weapons as late as the 1970s. Their wares included the ubiquitous Madsen Light Machine gun, the Madsen model 50 submachine gun which was also very popular in Latin America and Africa, and a number of bolt action rifles that also saw service in such countries as Colombia and Bolivia.

They are still to be encountered in trouble spots around the world. The fact that no spare parts have been made for these weapons in over fifty years attests to the machine gun’s reliability. The Madsen was recently pictured in use with the Brazilian military police during battles with drug gangs in 2013.

Madsen still giving a strong showing with Brazilian special police in 2013

You are a 29-year old mechanical engineer and the city you live in, the second largest city in the country, is besieged by enemy troops. The defenders need a simple gun that can be made quickly but is still effective. You are Alex Sudayev, its 1941 Leningrad, and your solution is the PPS.

Born in battle

In 1941, the Soviet Red Army was the largest in the world but found itself far outclassed in terms of weapons, leadership, and tactics when Hitler launched his immense invasion of the Soviet Union in June of that year. Within weeks, the German Army Group North under Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad and placed it effectively under a siege that would last some 900 grueling days.  Civilians drafted right off the streets were augmenting the defenders of the city but they needed weapons faster than you could say bad borscht.

Alexey Ivanovich Sudayev at the time was an engineer working inside the city. Taking the PPSh-41 submachine gun design of firearms legend Georgi Shpagin, he reworked it. Whereas the 41 used a heavy, carved wooden stock, and required nearly 8-hours of machining per weapon, he produced a simplified blowback weapon that fired from an open bolt and could be made in just 2.7-hours, using half the raw steel as the PPSh-41, and best of all, no wood.

Dubbed the Pistolet-Pulemet Sudaeva model of 1942 (PPS-42), the gun was rushed into production locally.

Design

Sudaeva’s gun was a rough looking piece of work cut from a sheet of basic stamped steel and of blocky construction, with an upper and lower receiver that hinges open. Its bolt was simple and the cocking handle placed directly to it, reciprocating the whole time the full-auto only weapon fired. To keep the rattling of this open bolt from cracking the stamped steel receiver, a simple leather recoil buffer was installed.

Weighing in at 6.5-pounds, it was 35.7-inches long with its stock extended. With its folding metal stock collapsed atop the gun it was a very compact 25.2-inches long. A 10.7-inch barrel proved accurate enough for spraying Nazi storm troopers and was enclosed in a square barrel shroud with air holes for cooling. The gun used a 35-round detachable box magazine with a very slight banana curve to it to feed the weapon with 7.62x25mm Tokarev pistol cartridges at a rate of 600 per minute.

field stripping the pps is simple

The gun fieldstripped incredibly easy: dropping the hinged lower away from the upper and removing the bolt and spring, it could be taught in about 30 seconds. This made the gun perfect or issuing to a conscript that up until yesterday was a student, factory worker, or farmer. Give em a uniform, a PPS, and some bullets and send em to the front to fight the Fascist invaders. Of course, often the front could be just two blocks over, which made transport easy.

The Soviets loved the design and after some 45,000 of the PPS-42 were made, while a gently finished version, the PPS43 was put into more widespread production. The PPS-43 was about an inch shorter in all of the dimensions and used a chrome-lined barrel that was good for up to 20,000 rounds of corrosive ammo.

Use

The PPS became the standard sub gun of the late war Soviet Army. The gun was a good two pounds lighter than the PPSh-41, and almost a foot shorter, which made it a better fit for tank crews and vehicle drivers. Also, being cheaper, faster to build, and using fewer materials helped in its choice for adoption.

The pps was the soviets favorite sub gun in late World War Two

In possibly the most famous Soviet image of the war, a young Red Army soldier is seen raising a flag over the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin in 1945—with a PPS slung over his back. The image is seen as the Russian version of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima and the PPS was there, front and center.

possibly the most famous image of a soviet soldier in wwii and he has a pps

Sadly, Sudaev died in 1946 just before his 34th birthday, and his gun was already being phased out in favor of the newly introduced AK-47. Like the PPS, it was simply made of steel stampings and later AKMS models carried a very similar folding stock. Even while the Soviets started to withdraw the gun from their service, they shipped machine tooling and expertise abroad to allies to help them make their own versions of the Leningrad typewriter. In Poland, it was put into production as the PPS wz.1943/1952 and continues being churned out by Radom to this day.

The pps lived on in asia as the type 54

In Red China, the PPS43 became the Type 54. GIs fighting in Korea encountered this dreaded Asian burp gun and also in Vietnam where it’s service spread for generations out over a 30-years. As such, these guns are still quite often seen in the hands of guerilla types and drug-runners throughout the jungles of South West Asia to this day.

If you watch enough footage from conflicts in the Third world, you will see the PPS popping up everywhere from the Ivory Coast to Thailand and everywhere in between. They are rusty and crusty, but they still work.

PPS in Africa

Fighters loyal to Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara celebrate in the main city Abidjan, April 11, 2011. Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo was arrested by opposition forces on Monday after French troops closed in on the compound where the self-proclaimed president had been holed up in a bunker for the past week. REUTERS/Emmanuel Braun

A soldier of the United Nations Mission in Ivory Coast (MINUCI) inspects weapons handed in by soldiers of the New Forces (FN) on June 15, 2010 at the military camp of Korhogo during a ceremony where the former rebels started joining the army. AFP PHOTO / SIA KAMBOU (Photo credit should read SIA KAMBOU/AFP/Getty Images)

Collectability

The PPS43 is one of the great bargains today in terms of affordable surplus guns that are both historical and shootable.

These guns, crazy cheap on the surplus market, were imported off and on into the US Pre-1986 and a number of full-auto originals are floating around. They proved popular with Hollywood prop houses in the 1980s and 90s, with a handful being visually mocked up to resemble the more popular (and much more expensive) Heckler & Koch MP5. Other non-working models were mocked up for movies including the Mel Gibson Vietnam epic, We Were Soldiers and are available for collectors out there for under $400.

PPS dummy gun used in We Were Soldiers

Radom in Poland makes an almost perfect semi-auto pistol version of the PPS43 that is currently being imported. Dubbed the PPS43-C, it still has the 10-inch barrel and folding stock—but its tack is welded to keep it from being classified as a SBR.

New made ppsh43 PPS-43 pps subgun carbines semi auto

This is one of the few subguns that are still widely available in torched kit form for cheap. Sportsman’s Guide , MGS, Centerfire Systems, and others stock these for about $80, which makes the likely hood of a getting a kit and doing a reweld well within reach of the common hobbyist. Remember to keep your ATF regs in line, as you do not want to make an illegal machine gun. There are many pistol builds out there with new receivers and no buttstock as well as 16-inch barreled carbines made by Wiselite, and others.

It makes a great starting point for an under $600 SBR build as well.

Safety and known issues

The leather buffers on these guns are problematic and, while you can always create your own if the going gets tough, it may be wise to pick up several ‘OE’ models while you can and store them in a clean dry area for when the Germans come. Keep in mind these should be inspected and replaced every few hundred rounds or so. It’s a good idea to have enough buffers in stock to get you through the ammo you have on hand at least, so get in touch with your buffer math each time you buy ammo.

Speaking of bullets. Ammo used to be crazy cheap for these guns, running about $75 a case on the surplus market just a couple years ago, but today tends to go a little higher. There is still a good bit of Polish and Bulgarian bulk floating around for now. New made Sellier & Bellot production go for about .50 cents per round, which will keep you from burning through a whole lot.

No matter how many Germans are surrounding your city.

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

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of C. LeRoy Baldridge

Born May 27, 1889 in Alton, New York, Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge was a gifted artist even as a youth. Accepted at age 10 as the youngest student at Frank Holme’s Chicago School of Illustration, he paid his way through the University of Chicago painting signs and selling sketches, graduating in 1911.

About that time he joined the Illinois National Guard as trooper in the Chicago Black Horse Troop, 1st Illinois Cavalry Regiment and, like all the other mounted units of the U.S. Army and reserves, was called up in 1916 and rushed to the border with Mexico following the attack on Columbus by Pancho Villa’s raiders. Once demobilized, he sought adventure in Europe and, as the U.S. wasn’t in the war just yet, enlisted as a medical orderly (stretcher bearer) with the French Army.

When the Americans did go “over there” Baldridge was able to transfer to the AEF but, instead of using him as a cavalryman or corpsman, Pershing used him as a member of the growing number of war correspondents. Roaming the Western Front embedded with the doughboys, he made hundreds of sketches from the front line. He even bumped into his old mates from the Illinois National Guard who had left their sabers behind as their regiment had been rechristened the 124th U.S. Field Artillery and saw the elephant at St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne and the Lorranie.

This immense body of sketches appeared back home in Leslie’s Weekly and Scribners while the troops he covered saw them in Stars and Stripes. He remained in Germany into 1919 with the army of occupation.

“Along the Rhine; To Make Sure He [Prussianism] Stays Down.” Illustration by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge. The Stars and Stripes, December 13, 1918, p. 4, col. 4.

An idealist who once said of war, “If only I can make the public see what war is – what a dirty, low thing it is, and how brutal it makes men, fine clean men – then they’d fight to the last ditch for the League of Nations,” Baldridge was a champion of peace in the 1920s and 30s, leading a small and controversial segment of the American Legion.

He co-founded and later led the New York-based Willard Straight Post of the American Legion who took what was seen then as a leftist and downright pacifist attitude towards war. The post was later investigated in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

During this time he roamed the Earth with his wife, producing hundreds of works for books and magazines alike, bring the world back to readers in the U.S. the way a camera never could.

During WWII he helped illustrate and produce a series of Pocket Guides to West Africa and Iran for the War Department as well as lending his brush to war loan art.

Once his beloved wife died in 1963, Baldridge began something of his own quiet decline.

The end of his career saw him in the desert, painting haunting landscapes in which people seem far off and in a dream. No more trenches. No more machine guns. Just high desert and adobe for as far as the eye can see.

One summer afternoon at his Santa Fe, New Mexico home in 1977, he ended his own life with a pistol he had been issued in World War I while “with the Yanks.”

His work is celebrated extensively by the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, to which he made large contributions while smaller collections exisit at the Smithsonian,  New Mexico Museum of Art, and Fisk University.

Baldridge’ old unit remains as the 106th Cavalry Squadron, part of the 33rd Brigade Combat Team of the Illinois Army National Guard.

Thank you for your work, sir. May you find peace.

Reds of “Budyonny’s Cavalry Army” (Konarmia) the key Bolshevik fire brigade of the Russo-Polish War. Note the mix of French Adrian helmets, Cossack shapskas and Trotsky caps for headgear. Also note the Cossack at the left is wearing the 1909 pattern officer’s sam browne web gear to include a trench whistle near his left armpit. As pre-Civil War Cossack officers in the Konarmia were rare (Budenny himself had only been a senior NCO in the Imperial Dragoons) this officer is likely had an interesting tale– though notably he has ditched his shoulder boards. Then again he could just be a guy who found some web gear.

Sputnik, which is more or less a pro-Russian propaganda site masquerading as news, kind of Moscow’s Fox News if you will, actually has an interesting historical piece about the lost Bolshevik Red Army POWs from the 1919-21 Russo-Polish War.

Of course it bends to the East in slant, but honestly I have never read anything about this facet of that war before, so I found it a good read, especially as they tried to spin the Katyn Massacres of World War II as a sort of fair-play retaliation for what happened back in 1921. Whatever you have to tell yourself to get through the night…

During the Polish-Soviet war over 150,000 Soviet military servicemen became prisoners of war and were held in Polish POW camps. The camps were located in Strzalkowo, Pikulice, Wadowice, and Tuchola.

Professor Gennady F. Matveyev of Moscow State University carried out thorough research on the matter and published the book “Polskiy Plen” (“The Polish Captivity”) which sheds light on this controversial historical episode.

Citing Russian and Polish archival documents the professor underscores that Poland had captured up to 206,877 Red Army soldiers, while 60,000 to 83,500 died in captivity due to unbearable living conditions, poor nutrition, torture and disease.

More here

The Germans really loved submachine guns, adopting them in the last part of WWI and by WWII had masses of MP38 and MP40 room brooms in service. However, one design that has faded to the background of use is the Bergmann MP-35 and its variants.

Bergmann’s backstory

Theodor Bergmann, born in Bavaria in 1850, started a company to make bicycles and later early automobiles that bore his name in the factory town of Suhl.

Later, in 1893, his Bergmann Industriewerke started making semi-automatic handguns as a side business (Waffenbrink) that saw limited success. However, they sold better than his cars did and he sold that branch of his factory to a young man named Carl Benz (yes, of Mercedes-Benz).

In World War I, Bergmann himself designed a light machine gun, the MG 15nA, which saw limited service during the conflict and some later overseas sales.

The MG 15nA as used by the Danish military in the 1920s. Note the design of the barrel cooling fins as the follow-on M32/34/35 would mimic it.

However his company was best known for the 9mm Maschinenpistole Bergmann  18/1 (MP18) designed by the later-legendary Hugo Schmeisser towards the tail end of the conflict.

MP18

In April 1918, the Imperial German Army placed an order for 50,000 of the new firearm. Envisioned to equip six stosstruppen per infantry company fewer than 12,500 were produced before the end of the war of which only an estimated 70 percent of those ever made it to the Western front.

Bergmann’s first sub gun

It was the first practical production submachine gun to achieve widespread service with any country. While the German police kept a handful of these, most were turned over to the victorious Allies in 1919.

Unable to keep making these guns in Germany on account of the Versailles Treaty, Bergmann licensed production in Switzerland to SIG who produced an estimated 30,000 of the weapons in both 9x19mm, 7.63x 25 mm and 7.65x 21mm between the two world wars for Japan, Spain, Finland, China and a number of Latin American countries. Nationalist China, hungry for weapons to feed its Civil War, made unlicensed copies in its Jinan Arsenal in the 1920s.

When Hitler came to power in 1932, Germany started a quiet and then later very public rearmament and the Bergmann works in Suhl went back to work– although with a different design.

The MP35/I…

Recognize the barrel?

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

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 Dec. 16, 2015: The Long Legged Bird of the Java Sea

Naval History and Heritage Command#: NH 85178

Here we see the humble Lapwing-class minesweeper USS Heron (AM-10/AVP-2), while fitting out at her builders in late 1918, being rushed to completion to help serve in the Great War. While her service “over there” was rather quiet in the end, her trip to the other side of the world and experiences in another world war would prove more exciting.

When a young upstart by the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the Navy Department in 1913 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he helped engineer one of the largest naval build-ups in world history. By the time the U.S. entered World War I officially in 1917, it may have been Mr. Wilson’s name in the role of Commander in Chief, but it was Mr. Roosevelt’s fleet.

One of his passions was the concept of the Great North Sea Mine Barrage, a string of as many as 400,000 (planned) sea mines that would shut down the Kaiser’s access once and for all to the Atlantic and saving Western Europe (and its overseas Allies) from the scourge of German U-boats. A British idea dating from late 1916, the U.S. Navy’s Admiral Sims thought it was a bullshit waste of time but it was FDR’s insistence to President Wilson in the scheme that ultimately won the day.

While a fleet of converted steamships (and two old cruisers- USS San Francisco and USS Baltimore) started dropping mines in June 1918, they only managed to sow 70,177 by Armistice Day and accounted for a paltry two U-boats gesunken (although some estimates range as high as 8 counting unaccounted for boats).

And the thing is, you don’t throw that many mines in international shipping lanes without having a plan to clean the up after the war (while having the bonus of using those mine countermeasures ships to sweep enemy-laid fields as well).

That’s where the 54 vessels of the Lapwing-class came in.

Review of the Atlantic Fleet Minesweeping Squadron, November 1919. USS Lapwing (AM-1) and other ships of the squadron anchored in the Hudson River, off New York City, while being reviewed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels on 24 November 1919, following their return to the United States after taking part in clearing the North Sea mine barrage. The other ships visible are: USS Lark (Minesweeper No. 21), with USS SC-208 alongside (at left); and USS Swan (Minesweeper No. 34) with USS SC-356 alongside (at right). Heron was there, but is not seen on the photo. U.S. Navy photo NH 44903. Note the crow’s nest for sighting floating mines.

Inspired by large seagoing New England fishing trawlers, these 187-foot long ships were large enough, at 965-tons full, to carry a pair of economical reciprocating diesel engines (or two boilers and one VTE engine) with a decent enough range to make it across the Atlantic on their own (though with a blisteringly slow speed of just 14 knots when wide open on trials.)

Not intended to do much more than clear mines, they were given a couple 3-inch pop guns to discourage small enemy surface combatants intent to keep minesweepers from clearing said mines. The class leader, Lapwing, designated Auxiliary Minesweeper #1 (AM-1), was laid down at Todd in New York in October 1917 and another 53 soon followed. While five were canceled in November 1918, the other 48 were eventually finished– even if they came to the war a little late.

Which leads us to the hero of our tale, USS Heron.

Laid down at the Standard Shipbuilding Co. in Boston, she was the first U.S. Navy ship to carry that name, that of a long-legged seabird of the Gulf Coast. Like all her sisters, they carried bird names.

Commissioned 30 October 1918, the war ended 12 days later but she was still very much needed to help take down that whole barrage thing. Therefore, she arrived in the Orkney Islands in the spring of 1919 where, along with 28 of her sisters and a host of converted British trawlers, she scooped up Mk.6 naval mines from the deep for the rest of the year.

When she returned home, she was transferred to the far off Asiatic Fleet, sailing for Cavite PI in October 1920.

There, she was laid up in 1922, with not much need of an active minesweeper.

Then, with the Navy figuring out these economical little boats with their shallow draft (they could float in ten feet of seawater) could be used for any number of side jobs, started re-purposing them.

Six of the “Old Birds” were reclassified as salvage ships (ARSs) while another half-dozen became submarine rescue ships (ASRs). The Coast Guard picked up USS Redwing for use as a cutter during Prohibition while the U.S. Coast & Geographic Survey acquired USS Osprey and USS Flamingo and the Shipping Board accepted USS Peacock as a tug.

A few were retained as minesweepers in the reserve fleet, some used as depot ships/netlayers, one converted to a gunboat, another to an ocean-going tug, three were sunk during peacetime service (USS Cardinal struck a reef off Dutch Harbor in 1923 while USS Curlew did the same off Panama in 1926 and USS Sanderling went down in 1937 by accident in Hawaii) while nine– Heron included– became seaplane tenders.

While these ships could only carry 1-2 seaplanes on deck, they typically milled around with a converted barge alongside that could park a half dozen or more single-engine float planes for service and support.

U.S. Navy Small Seaplane Tender USS Heron (AVP-2); no date. Note the floatplane service barge alongside. Image via USNI collection.

Recommissioned in 1924 (later picking up the hull number AVP-2, as a Small Seaplane Tender), Heron was photographed with a variety of floatplanes including Grumman JF amphibians and Vought O2U-2 scout planes in the 20s and 30s.

Carrying two Vought O2U-2 scout planes of Scouting Eight (VS-8) while serving in the Asiatic Fleet on 15 December 1930. Photo No. 80-G-1017155 Source: U.S. National Archives, RG-80-G

Serving as an aircraft tender before 1936. Note the aviation roundel on her bow.

She continued her quiet existence in the South China Sea and elsewhere in Chinese and Philippine waters, filling in as a target tower, survey ship, and gunboat when needed.

U.S. warships inside and outside the breakwater, circa the later 1930s. Color-tinted photograph by the Ah-Fung O.K. Photo Service. Among the ships present are USS Black Hawk (AD-9), in left center, with a nest of four destroyers alongside. USS Whipple (DD-217) is the outboard unit of these four. USS Heron (AM-10) is alongside the breakwater, at right, with a Grumman JF amphibian airplane on her fantail. Another JF is floating inside the breakwater, toward the left. Two Chinese sampans are under sail in the center foreground. The four destroyers outside the breakwater are (from left to right): USS Stewart (DD-224), unidentified, USS Bulmer (DD-222) and USS Pillsbury (DD-227). Collection of James E. Thompson, 1979. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 90544-KN

Stationed at Port Ciego, Philippines when the balloon went up, Heron was luckier than several of her sisters in the same waters, with six sunk in six months.

• USS Tanager (AM-5), Sunk by Japanese shore battery fire off Bataan, 4 May 1942.
• USS Finch (AM-9), Damaged by Japanese bomb (near miss), 9 Apr 1942 while moored at the eastern point of Corregidor. Abandoned, 10 Apr 1942. Salvaged by Imperial Japanese Navy; renamed W-103. Sunk for good by US carrier aircraft in early 1945.
• USS Quail (AM-15) Damaged by Japanese bombs and guns at Corregidor, she was scuttled 5 May 1942 to prevent capture.
• USS Penguin (AM-33) Damaged by Japanese aircraft in Agana Harbor, Guam, 8 Dec 1941; scuttled in 200 fathoms to prevent capture.
• USS Bittern (AM-36) Heavily damaged by Japanese aircraft at Cavite Navy Yard, Philippines; scuttled in Manila Bay to prevent capture.
• USS Pigeon (AM-47) Sunk by Japanese aircraft at Corregidor, 4 May 1942.

Heron was ordered to leave the PI for Ambon Island, part of the Maluku Islands of then Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), a strategic key to the area held by some 3,000 Dutch and Australian troops. There, along with USS William B. Preston (AVD 7), she supported PBYs of Patrol Wing TEN until the going got tough and the island was overrun in February 1942.

It was during this time at Ambon that Heron became a legend. Upon hearing that the four-piper USS Peary (DD-226) was damaged, she sortied out to help assist or tow if needed but was caught by Japanese flying boats and proceeded to fight them off over several hours.

As noted dryly in the combat narrative of the Java Sea Campaign:

The Heron, which was sent north to assist the Peary, was herself bombed in a protracted action in Molucca Strait on the 31st. Shrapnel from near hits penetrated the ship’s side and started fires in the paint locker and forward hold. About the middle of the afternoon, a 100-pound shrapnel bomb struck the foremast near the top and sprayed the ship with splinters, which did considerable damage. The Heron acquitted herself well, however, in spite of her 12-knot speed, and succeeded in shooting down a large enemy seaplane.

“Evasion of Destruction” by Richard DeRosset portrays a strafing run by three Japanese “Mavis” flying boats following their unsuccessful torpedo attack on the USS Heron (AVP-2) on 31 December 1941. Heron shot down one of the aircraft with her starboard 3-inch gun; her port gun had been disabled by earlier combat action. This final attack followed a series of earlier ones by twelve other enemy aircraft against the seaplane tender as she sailed alone in the Java Sea. Due to heroic actions by her captain and crew, Heron survived seemingly overwhelming odds during the long ordeal. Heron had approximately 26 casualties, or about 50 percent of the crew, because of the attack.

For her valiant action during this period, Heron received the Navy Unit Commendation.

The rest of her war service was less eventful, serving in Australian waters as a patrol boat and seaplane tender until 1944 when she began moving back to the PI with the massive Allied armada to retake the archipelago. She conducted search and rescue operations and assisted in landings where needed, still providing tender service until she was decommissioned at Subic Bay, Philippines 12 February 1946, earning four battle stars for the War.

Sold for scrap to a Chinese concern in Shanghai in 1947, Heron‘s ultimate fate is unknown but she may have lingered on as a trawler or coaster for some time or in some form.

As for the rest of her class, others also served heroically in the war with one, USS Vireo, picking up seven battle stars for her service as a fleet tug from Pearl Harbor to Midway to Guadalcanal and Okinawa. The Germans sank USS Partridge at Normandy and both Gannet and Redwing via torpedoes in the Atlantic. Most of the old birds remaining in U.S. service were scrapped in 1946-48 with the last on Uncle Sam’s list, Flamingo, sold for scrap in July 1953.

Some lived on as trawlers and one, USS Auk (AM-38) was sold to Venezuela in 1948, where she lasted until 1962 as the gunboat Felipe Larrazabal. After her decommissioning she was not immediately scrapped, and was reported afloat in a backwater channel as late as 1968. Her fate after that is not recorded but she was likely the last of the Lapwings.

For Heron‘s memory, the Navy passed on her name to two different mine countermeasures ships since WWII.

The first, the 136-foot USS Heron (MSC(O)-18/AMS-18/YMS-369), was renamed in 1947 and went on to win 8 battlestars in Korea before serving in the Japanese Self Defense Forces as JDS Nuwajima (MSC-657) until 1967.

The second and, as of now final, U.S. Navy ship with the historic name, USS Heron (MHC-52) was an Osprey-class coastal minehunter commissioned in 1994 and transferred while still in her prime to Greece in 2007 as Kalipso.

But that’s another story.

Specs:

Displacement: 950 tons FL (1918) 1,350 tons (1936)
Length: 187 feet 10 inches
Beam: 35 feet 6 inches
Draft: 9 feet 9 in
Propulsion: Two Babcock and Wilcox header boilers, one 1,400shp Harlan and Hollingsworth, vertical triple-expansion steam engine, one shaft.
Speed: 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph); 12~ by 1936.
Complement: 78 Officers and Enlisted as completed; Upto 85 by 1936
Armament: 2 × 3-inch/23 single mounts as commissioned
(1930)
2 x 3″/50 DP singles
4 Lewis guns
(1944)
2 x 3″/50 DP singles
Several 20mm Oerlikons and M2 12.7mm 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.

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.

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I’m a member, so should you be!

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

Warship Wednesday Dec.23, 2015: The lost jewel from Bizerte

960×633

Here we see the French Émeraude-class diesel-electric submarine (Sous-Marin) Turquoise (Q46), captured by the Turks, in dry dock undergoing repairs in Constantinople, 1916.

The French got into the submarine business about the same time as the Americans, launching Admiral Simeon Bourgois’s Plongeur in April 1863.

Before the turn of the century the Republic had flirted with a half dozen one-off boats before they ordered the four boats of the Sirene-class in 1901 followed quickly by another four of the Farfadet-class, the two Algerien-class boats, 20 Naiade-class craft in 1904, Submarines X, Y and Z (not making it up), the two ship Aigrette-class and the submarine Omega.

All told, between 1900-1905, the French coughed up 36 submersibles spread across nine very different classes.

After all that quick learning curve, they proceeded with the Emeraude (Emerald) class in 1903. These ships were an improvement of the Faradet (Sprite) class designed by Gabriel-Émile-Marie Maugas. The 135-foot long/200-ton Faradet quartet had everything a 20th Century smoke boat needed: it was a steel-hulled hybrid submersible that used diesel engines on the surface and electric below, had 4 torpedo tubes, could dive to 100~ feet, and could make a stately 6-knots.

Farfadet-class boat Lutin (Q10), leaving port in 1903.

While they weren’t successful (two sank, killing 30 men between them) Maugas learned from early mistakes and they were significantly improved in the Emeraudes. These later boats used two-shaft propulsion– rare in early submarines–, and were 147-feet long with a 425-ton full load. Capable of making right at 12-knots for brief periods, they carried a half dozen torpedo tubes (four in the bow and two in the stern). They also had the capability to mount  a machine gun and light deck gun if needed.

Again, improvements!

Profile of the Emeralds surfaced.

Class leader Emeraude was laid down at Arsenal de Cherbourg in 1903 followed by sisters Opale and Rubis at the same yard and another three, Saphir, Topase, and the hero of our story, Turquoise, at Arsenal de Toulon in the Med.

Launching 1908

Turquoise was commissioned 10 December 1910 and, with her two Toulon-built sisters, served with the French Mediterranean Fleet from the Submarine Station at Bizerte.

She repeated the bad luck of the Farfadet-class predecessors and in 1913 lost an officer and several crew swept off her deck in rough seas.

When war erupted in 1914, the jewel boats soon found they had operational problems staying submerged due to issues with buoyancy and were plagued by troublesome diesels (hey, the manufacturer, Sautter-Harlé, was out of business by 1918 so what does that tell you).

To help with surface ops, Topase and Turquoise were fitted with a smallish deck gun in 1915.

Saphir probably would have been too, but she caught a Turkish mine in the Sea of Marma on 15 January trying to sneak through the straits and went down.

Topase and Turquoise continued to operate against the Turks, with the latter running into trouble on 30 October 1915. Around the village of Orhaniye in the Dardanelles near Nagara there were six Ottoman Army artillerymen led by Corporal G Boaz Deepa who spotted a periscope moving past a nearby water tower.

Becoming tangled in a net, the submarine became a sitting duck. With their field piece they were able to get a lucky shot on the mast and, with the submarine filling with water, she made an emergency surface. There, the six cannoners took 28 French submariners captive and impounded the sub, sunk in shallow water.

Turquoise’s skipper, Lt. Leon Marie Ravenel, was in 1918 awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honour as was his XO. These sailors suffered a great deal in Turkish captivity, with five dying.

German propaganda postcard, note the Ottoman crew and markings

The Turks later raised the batter French boat and, naming her Mustadieh Ombashi (or Müstecip Ombasi), planned to use her in the Ottoman fleet.

Ottoman Uniforms reports her conning tower was painted with a large rectangle (likely to be red), with large white script during this time.

Via Ottoman Uniforms

However as submariners were rare in WWI Constantinople, she never took to sea in an operational sense again and in 1919 the victorious French reclaimed their submarine, which they later scrapped in 1920.

Her wartime service for the Turks seems to have been limited to taking a few pictures for propaganda purposes and in being used as a fixed battery charging station for German U-boats operating in the Black Sea.

As for the last Bizerte boat, Topase, she finished the war intact and was stricken 12 November 1919 along with the three Emeraudes who served quietly in the Atlantic.

Turquoise/Mustadieh Ombashi has been preserved as a model however.

If you have a further interest in the submarines of Gallipoli, go here.

Specs:

1884×1543

Displacement 392 tons (surfaced) / 427 (submerged)
Length, 147 feet
Bean 12 feet
Draft 12 feet
No of shafts 2
Machinery
2 Sautter-Harlé diesels, 600hp / electric motors (440kW)
Max speed, kts 11.5 surfaced / 9.2 submerged
Endurance, nm 2000 at 7.3kts surfaced / 100nm at 5kts submerged
Armament:
6×450 TT (4 bow, 2 stern) for 450mm torpedoes with no reloads
1x M1902 Model 37mm deck gun, 1x8mm light Hotchkiss machine gun (fitted in 1915)
Complement 21-28
Diving depth operational, 130 feet.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here we see a Colt Government Model Serial # C8792 and it shows all the classic signs of the initial M1911s including the double-diamond grips, the lanyard loops on the frame and magazine, early patent numbers and C-prefix serial that traces back to a 1914 commercial run of these guns.

The gun is currently in the NRA Museum in Fairfax, VA, but has a rather spotty history from 1917-2007.

Note the marking, “1st Reserve Park Division” CANADA, Storer’s original unit before he transferred to the flying corps. The 1st Canadian Division embarked for France during February 1915 and was soon holding the line near Ypres.

After over a year of sitting in the trenches as a member of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps, young Lt. Hume-Storer had endured enough and put in for re-assignment to the Royal Flying Corps. In December of 1916, pilot officer candidate Hume-Storer passed his flight training in Britain and soloed.

On February 17, 1917, Captain John Cameron Hume-Storer R.F.C.(C.A.S.C.), took off on a routine morning patrol from Ramsgate to Dover on the English Channel, a short 15-mile journey. He was never heard from again. No trace of wreckage from his plane was ever found and no ground reports indicated that the young pilot had experienced any adverse weather.

Did he overshoot Dover and wind up ditching in the English Channel? Did he make it all the way to the Western Front and wind up behind the lines somewhere, forgotten in some shell hole?

Did he fly into limbo?

All we know for certain is that John Cameron Hume-Storer’s battered pistol was to turn up in an American gunshop in 2007. Did he pass it into the care of a friend for safekeeping during his routine flight? Or perhaps only this pistol was destined to return from whatever place his plane traveled to on that fateful day in 1917?

As for the good Captain himself, he is memorialized at Hollybrook Cemetery, Southampton and is recorded on page 260 of the First World War Book of Remembrance