Here we see a beautiful Springfield Armory 1903 MK I .30-06 SPRG caliber rifle with an uber rare and original Pedersen device.

Mr. Pedersen’s device was a very simple top loading, blowback-operated pistol without a grip. Its barrel was the exact size, shape, and length of the standard .30-06 M1906 cartridge case. All the soldier had to do was pull out the regular turnbolt of his Springfield and any .30-06 ammo, insert the Pedersen Device, attach the device’s 40-round magazine, and let her rip. The device used the host rifle’s trigger group, sights, barrel, and stock. The device would cycle new rounds, and eject spent cases through a small port cut in the side of the rifle.

Other modifications to the rifle were to the sear, magazine cut off, and trigger to allow the regular bolt or the Pedersen device to be used interchangeably. In tests a trained infantryman could rip off two full magazines in less than a minute—a 500% increase in the Springfield’s rate of fire.

To accommodate the device’s short action (it had to fit completely in the space occupied by the Springfield’s original bolt), it fired a short .30 caliber pistol sized round. This 7.62x20mm round, a cross between .32 ACP and the WWII-era .30 Carbine loads, held a 80-grain bullet over 3.5 grains of bull’s-eye powder which gave a blistering 1300fps out of a rifle barrel. This allowed the Pedersen device rounds, although pipsqueak in size, to still be lethal and accurate enough to reach out to 300 yards.

Overall, the device added 1.75 pounds to the weight of the standard Springfield rifle, but, best of all, all the all the infantryman in the field had to do to convert back over to .30.06 was pull out the device and insert the regular bolt and ammo. Two guns with the weight of one!

Of course, WWI ended before the Pedersen could be fielded in great numbers, and the lean peacetime Army brass decided it wasn’t worth keeping so most ended up smashed or burned in the 1920s, hence their great rarity today.

All images via Collectors Firearms, where the above gun is available for just $39,999

A lot of people forget that for centuries the Army has maintained both seagoing and coastal assets. Sure, there are bridging units with pontoon boats, Army Corps of Engineers dredges, and SF dive teams (trained in Key West) but I mean honest to goodness blue water Army ships.

In fact, there are more than 1,000 Soldiers in MOSs (88K Watercraft Operator, 88L Watercraft Engineer, 880A Marine Deck Officer, 881A Marine Engineering Officer) directly tied to watercraft operations and Big Green currently fields 49 oceangoing vessels (USAV’s) including:

35 1,100 ton, 174-foot Runnymede-class LCUs
6 1,000-ton, 128-foot MGen. Nathanael Greene-class tugs
8 4,200-ton, 272-foot General Frank S. Besson-class LSTs

From an interesting article put out by 7th Fleet PAO.

“We don’t call ourselves ‘sailors,’ because that title is already taken,” said Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Carmen, with the 605th Transportation Detachment, 8th Theater Sustainment Command. “But we are Army mariners, and it is a full-time job, absolutely.”

On Friday, Aug. 12, Carmen and 30 other Soldiers — about eight warrant officers and 23 enlisted in all — boarded Army Vessel CW3 Harold C. Clinger, in Hawaii, and set off on an 18-day cruise that will take them to Nagoya, Japan, to drop off gear to be used in the Orient Shield exercise.

And they go relatively well-armed:

The 272-foot USAV Clinger is a “logistics support vessel,” or LSV. The Army has eight of these cargo ships in its inventory, and each can carry a load up to 2,000 short tons, whether it’s 37 Stryker vehicles, or 24 M1A2 Abrams tanks, or 50 20-foot cargo containers.

For security, the USAV Clinger is armed with four M2 .50-caliber machine guns, two M249 Squad Automatic Weapons, or “SAWs”, and two Mk 19 grenade launchers. The enlisted crew also carries M16 rifles, while the warrant officers carry 9mm pistols.

A 12-guage shotgun is also available to protect the ship, said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael Lloyd, who serves as master maritime of operations with 8th TSC.

“Just like any mariner out there in the world, like the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine, we follow a set of drills from abandon ship, to man overboard, to fire drills, and in the case of our vessel, we also do battle drills,” Lloyd said.

More here.

Photo: LockheedMartin.com/CodeOne

The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne helicopter gunship featured a four-blade rigid main rotor, a four-blade anti-torque tail rotor, and a three-bladed pusher propeller. Powered by a 3,925 hp General Electric T64 engine, the Cheyenne had a top speed of 253 mph at sea level, which is blistering for a chopper of any make.

The AH-56 featured fixed wings, a tandem-seated pilot and co-pilot/gunner, and could carry 2,100 pounds of ordnance, usually listed as 2,010 rounds of 30mm ammunition, 780 rounds of 40mm ammunition, two FFAR pods holding thirty-eight rockets each, and six BGM-71 TOW antitank missiles.

First flown in 1961, only 10 prototypes were made before the Cheyenne program was canceled by the Secretary of the Army on 9 August 1972. The Vietnam drawdown and fact the chopper used legacy analog systems while the Pentagon was looking at going all-digital– which would have meant even more R&D– didn’t help its case. Likewise, Congress needed to allocate money to the Air Force’s A-10 program and the Marines’ AV-8A Harrier program, both in their infancy, and with three CAS initiatives going on at the same time, one had to be sacrificed.

Four still exist, all in Army Museums:

*No. 2 66-8827 is on display at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
*No. 5 66-8830 is stored at the Army Aviation Museum, Fort Rucker, Alabama.
*No. 6 66-8831 is on display at Fort Campbell.
*No. 7 66-8832 is on display at the Army Aviation Museum, Fort Rucker

Many of the technologies pioneered by the Cheyenne made their way on to other platforms, including the US Army’s current AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.

Top speed of the AH-64? 182 mph.

Click to big-up

The B-17s plastering Hitler’s Europe flew at 25,000 feet on average, and it gets kinda cold up there, especially in an unpressurized aircraft with open gun ports in the belly. How cold? Like -58F. Since they had a  partially pressurized cabin for most of the flight crew, it was the gunners who suffered the most.

These men, controlling M2 Browning .50 cals, wore electrically heated suits and heavy gloves that provided some protection against temperatures, but, with temperature so cold that skin would freeze to metal, the couldn’t take off their gloves to clear a jam without leaving hide behind on their guns.

This well used spoon shaped un-jamming tool was utilized by a B-17 tail gunner in Europe during World War II. The tool was handmade and used because the cold and gloves hampered dexterity.

(U.S. Air Force photo)

It is currently in the collection of the National Museum of the Air Force.

In a follow up to yesterday’s post on the M2 unjamming tool made by a B17 gunner, here is an interesting version of the B17G. The “G” model Flying Fortress was not so much a bomber as it was a flying anti-aircraft artillery cluster. Equipped with a remotely operated Bendix-made chin turret, the G model had 13 AN/M2 .50 cals compared to the 7 in previous models.

And some had even more.

Meet West End, tail number 42-31435, who was equipped with an experimental 6-barrel Bendix turret, giving her a total of 17 M-2 heavy machine guns.

Click to big up

Each had a cyclic rate of fire topping 850 rounds per minute (a bit spicier than the typical ground combat variant of Ma Deuce), giving West End the theoretical capability of ripping out 240 .50 BMG tracers per second if all 17 of her guns were engaged.

This aircraft was credited with 27 combat missions with the 384th Bomb Group and crash landed at RAF Manston, Kent, due to major flak damage after escorting a raid on a German V-weapons complex near Coubronne, France 6 July 1944.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then there was the blockade.

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

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

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

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

Enter July 1945

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

We all know what came next.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But was there a third option?

Anaconda 1945

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, what of the Japanese forces overseas?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suffer the POWs

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

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

Also, there is the nuclear option.

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

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

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

In conclusion

Would a rehashed Anaconda worked and brought peace by 1946?

Possibly. But would it be worth it?

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

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

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

Click to big up. Snap shot out of the CAF “blue Book” from 1975, via CAF

47 years ago today: On September 5, 1969 the S.S. Rosaldina arrived at the port of Brownsville, Texas from Latin America with six Republic P-47 Thunderbolt “jugs” brought back from the Peruvian Air Force and turned over to the then-Confederate Air Force (now the more PC Commemorative Air Force), a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and showing historical aircraft at airshows primarily throughout the U.S. and Canada.

The group currently owns 162 classic aircraft, including the airworthy #44-89136 Lil Meatie’s Meat Chopper and the static  #44-88548 (a P-47N-5RE).

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

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

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

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

More on Faurot below.

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

U.S. Army photo by John Pellino

What an aesthetic, and no, it’s not budget cuts.

Cadets from the West Point – The U.S. Military Academy participate in the USMA’s  Department of History’s 2016 Historic Weapons Shoot at West Point, N.Y., April 23, 2016.

Len Dyer of the National Armor and Cavalry Restoration Center discusses the World War I era Mark VIII Tank, of which just two are still in existence, both in the possession of the U.S. Army.

The Mark VIII was more advanced than the planned British Mark VI, though it was larger, male only (as in gun mounts, with 6-pounder 57 mm gun on each side), had a central crew compartment, and used a Liberty V12 aircraft engine for power. Designed as a joint Anglo-American project, the French were in on it as well. As such, it was called the Liberty or International at the time and some 1,500 were planned to swamp the German lines and tweak the Kaiser’s mustache in 1919.

A beast with a 10 man crew, the two aforementioned Hotchkiss 6-pounders (with 208 shells)  and five Browning M1917 water-cooled machine guns (with 13,848 machine gun rounds), it weighed 38 tons, a figure not soon seen again in a main battle tank.

In comparison, the WWI British “Flying Elephant” super heavy tank weighed 100 tons but never left the drawing board while the German’s Großkampfwagen or “K-Wagen” 120-ton leviathan was only a non working prototype when the war ended. Only 10 experimental French Char 2Cs, at 75-tons each were built in 1921, leaving the Mark VIII as the heaviest production tank in the world until the Soviets put the 45-ton T-35 into regular production in 1935)

In the end, just 100~ Mark VIIIs were made by Rock Island before production was halted, and they never saw combat. The Army did, however, maintain them for training use until WWII.

A lot of people hate colorized monochrome images. I happen to like them, however, what you see here are historical Autochrome images, an early color process (sourced from here).

The images are a stunning time capsule.

Here we see a 1927 shot by Edwin L. Wisherd of three men standing in front of a plane on the Crow Reservation in Montana.

Note the early rubber doughnut suspension tires, similar to those used by the Curtiss Carrier Pigeon and Lark mail delivery aircraft. Image: Edwin L. Wisherd/National Geographic Creative/Corbis

The visiting biplane was evidently part of a U.S. Army commemoration at Little Big Horn, which saw its 50th anniversary the previous summer.

Crow Indian Reservation, Montana – Men stand at the site of the monument to the Seventh Cavalry–the proposed Custer battle memorial site. (from left) Col. J.M.T. Portello, former field adjutant to Gen. Miles, White Man Runs Him (grandfather of Joe Medicine Crow) , E.S. Godfrey, lieutenant under Custer (by 1927 he was a general), and Curley, one of Custer’s scouts. Curley is in the biplane photo as well. Image: Edwin L. Wisherd/National Geographic Creative/Corbis

The plane pictured was cutting edge at the time– what seems to be a very early variant of the Curtiss Model 37 Falcon.

On 2 July 1926, legislation backed in large part by the Morrow panel–the Air Corps Act (44 Stat. 780) came into law under the not too impressed administration of President Calvin Coolidge. It established the Corps, stopped the bleeding that had gone on since 1919, and began a five-year plan to revamp the service. This meant replacing legacy WWI Spads, Jennys, JH-6s and P-1s with more modern aircraft, up to 1,800 of them in fact, nearly doubling the number of squadrons in the country.

One of these new types was the Curtiss factory’s Falcon, powered by a beefy 435hp Curtiss V-1150 (D-12) engine. Built in two main variants, an A3 attack model mounting as many as 6 machine guns and capable of carrying 200lbs of bombs, and the O1/O11 two-seat observation plane with twin Lewis guns in the backseater spot, deliveries started IOC in 1927– meaning the O1 shown above was brand spanking new and, in the vernacular of the time, the Bee’s Knees.

The Army wound up with 338 total variants which they used through 1937, some of which were gifted to the Philippine Army Air Corps, operating out of Zablan Airfield, and subsequently lost in the opening stages of WWII.

The Navy and Marines picked up another 150 in A3/A4 Helldiver, F8C Falcon (a greatly modified design with a Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp engine that was the the first purpose-built dive bomber to be produced for the US Navy) and O2C Helldiver variants for observation, attack and light bombing. They could carry two 116lb bombs under the wings or one 500lb bomb under the fuselage. Although some made up “Bombing Two” on Saratoga, they largely passed to the Navy Reserve in the 1930s.

Notably, they appeared in a couple of Hollywood “Wings” follow-ons, Flight (1929) and Hell Divers (1932), the latter a talkie with Clark Gable (without his iconic mustache)– who went on to serve in the USAAF in WWII, rising to the rank of Major.

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View of a Curtiss Warhawk P-40F fighter plane. Label on back: “New Curtiss Warhawk fighter for the U.S. Army Air Forces. Shown in this close-up flight photo is the U.S. Army Air Forces’ new Curtiss Warhawk P-40F fighter, the faster, heavily armed, high-climbing successor to the Curtiss P-40, Tomahawk and Kittyhawk types widely used by American pilots and made famous by the ‘Flying Tigers’ of the AVG in China and the Royal Air Force in the Middle East. The first U.S. military plane to be powered with the new American-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, the new Warhawk incorporates many advances developed in actual air combat. It is in the 400 m.p.h. class but details of its performance are withheld.” Stamped on back: “It is absolutely forbidden to reproduce, syndicate or use this photo for advertising purposes with written permission. Photo by Rudy Arnold, press photographer. P.O. Box 60, Sheepshead Bay Station, Brooklyn, N.Y. Newspaper, magazine, aerial & color photography.” Handwritten on back: “Aircraft in action.”

Courtesy of the National Automotive History Collection, Detroit Public Library

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dig the pith helmet, srsly?

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

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

Texas Warhawk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy your lunch hour today!

The fine folks at Picatinny Arsenal are coming up with a hand grenade for the 21st Century that is a lot safer to handle and gives some high tech options to the grunt end user.

The current arsenal standard, the M67 grenade, dates back to Vietnam and uses a pyrotechnic delay fuze to set off about 6.5 ounces of Comp B. The thing is, it’s right hand friendly –the pin that holds the spoon down is oriented to be pulled with the left hand, meaning southpaws are trained to hold the grenade upside down, such as thus:

The new baseball that the Army could be pitching, some five years in the making, will use a fully electronic fuze that is accurate to the millisecond, has a top-mounted pin for easy access by both lefties and righties, and is multi-purpose (both fragmentation and blast overpressure through a flip of a switch– filling a gap left in the Army’s lineup when the MK3A2 concussion grenade was retired in 1975).

The Enhanced Tactical Multi-Purpose (ET-MP) hand grenade, best yet, will be considered completely safe until armed and will be the first Insensitive Munition-qualified lethal grenade in the Army’s arsenal.

“With these upgrades in the ET-MP, not only is the fuze timing completely electronic, but the detonation train is also out-of-line,” said Matthew Hall, Grenades Tech Base Development Lead, in a release from the Army. “Detonation time can now be narrowed down into milliseconds, and until armed, the hand grenade will not be able to detonate.”

Still, I’m not too sure about giving a grenade multiple choice options that have to be chosen at night in the fight and adding electronics to a basic concept that dates back to the 13th century and earlier.

Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

Biplane above the clouds. Handwritten on photograph front: “France, 1918, De Haviland ‘4.’” Handwritten on photograph back: “De Haviland – Liberty Motor, Dear Mum: Put this away for me. Maybe Adam helped make this engine. Ted.”

Here we see a well-traveled M1911A1 .45ACP Government Issue long slide.

It’s a mismatch gun that likely became such in some long forgotten Army armory, with a (likely Great War era) Colt-marked slide and a 1943 U.S. Army-marked Remington Rand frame from the Second World War. As such, it or at least components, served in both World Wars, probably Korea, and definitely Vietnam.

How do we know the latter? Well, the gun, SN 1431274, was captured north of Da Nang in August 1965 by Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2) Kevin “Dasher” Wheatley, Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV). The weapon was recovered from rom North Vietnamese Forces who were believed to have captured it earlier from ARVN forces or the Americans.

Wheatly passed it on to war correspondent Pat Burgess as a protective weapon when Burgess suffered a cut on the elbow and had to go to Da Nang accompanied only by some sketchy ARVN troopers.

Wheatly went on to die just two months later in an incident that would see him receive the VC. His medals came into the Australian Memorial’s collection in 1993, joining the 1911 on display.

In an accompaniment to the captured 1911 from yesterday, I think this is interesting.

Ian with Forgotten Weapons takes a gander at a cottage made M1911-ish pistol that has a lot of the same features of a GI longslide, namely the long slide.

A number of these homemade garage guns were built by VC units in South Vietnam that had a hard time getting good Chicom gear shipped down the Hồ Chí Minh trail and, captured by U.S. troops, were brought back as war trophies.

The gun that Ian has, from the Gerard Ruth collection, lacks a safety (though it has a lever for one) a mag release button (though it has a rotating keeper on the bottom of the well) and is constructed with mild steel using brazing. The internals are very 1911 like–except for a lack of locking lugs on the smoothbored barrel, brazed-in breechblock and blowback action. It also has some Spanish and Soviet mechanical additions but don’t worry, they are merely ornamental in function.

Yikes is the technical term.