The Rescued Film Project stumbled across 31 rolls of film shot by a U.S. Army soldier apparently in Western Europe during the latter part of WWII. While a lot of the pictures didn’t come out, and others are in poor shape, they have a really great collection of images including this German Army marked French Renault FT.17 Tank (we called them the M1917).
The same soldier shows up in many of the images, and its speculated that he may have been the shutterbug
Anybody’s grandpa?
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Leslie Gilbert Illingworth
Born 1902 in Wales, Leslie Gilbert Illingworth took a job as a teen in the lithographic department at the Western Mail while attending the Cardiff School or Art. While at the Mail he was an assistant to noted political cartoonist J. M. Staniforth who covered political and social unrest in the UK and Wales through the First World War. After the War, Illingworth attended the Royal College of Art then took Staniforth’s old job when the master retired. He later went to write for Punch and, in 1938 when the noted Percy Fearon retired as cartoonist of the Daily Mail, Illingworth joined the big leagues just in time for the Second World War where he really came into his own.
Although he wasn’t per se a “military artist,” he covered (with dry British satire) the military events of his day.
Freedom 1940
Japan’s army arrives at New Guinea, 1942. Note the cricket bat dropped at the ‘Roo’s feet
Spirit of the Ark Royal, sunk in 1941
Free French
Stalingrad
Neutrality Patrol March 1941
Japan enters the war 1941
After the war he continued his work, but still revisited military issues as they pertained to the overall political climate
German rearmament 1950
Berlin 5 April 1948. Note the Atom Bomb on Truman’s GI belt
Illingworth remained active through 1974 when he finally retired. He was the inaugural president of the British Cartoonists’ Association and his art was some of the most stinging of the 20th Century.
He died 20 December 1979 at age 77.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Devil Dogs just before the Tarawa landings doing what Marines normally do…
Tragically, Tarawa was a hard nut to crack for the 2nd Marine Division and these leathernecks deserved every bit of happiness they got prior to hitting the beach. In just three days the Marines suffered 1,009 killed and 2,101 wounded, a casualty rate of some 10 percent.
In the Roman times such a rate was called decimation.
When the Germans took to realizing in 1940 that their ports and strategic manufacturing centers were very much capable of being targeted by Allied bombers, they began to move all sorts of things underground and hidden in the trees. In the Hartz Mountains there was a hidden airfield on a mountain top where new Messerschmidts would take off from just hours after being built. Other sites hid rocket construction. At Hamburg, Bremen, and Heligoland, giant covered bunkers for U boats were constructed, followed quickly by even more massive sites on the French Atlantic coast.
The Hamburg U-boat pen complex, Elbe II on the southern bank of the Elbe river at the Vulkanhafen, included covered locks, construction bunkers where new boats were made in dry dock, fitting out areas for after they were launched, and magazine and fueling piers.
In 1945 when the Brits took the port, they blew up the 20+ foot thick concrete roofs that had withstood multiple bomber attacks. In 1985 a group of researchers penetrated the bunker area, which was still filled with water at low tide, and found a trio of Uncle Donitz’s bad asses, the ultra-modern Type XXI U-boat, still at the docks.
treasure hunter with a torch hard at work…
These ships, U-3506, U-2505 and U-3004, had never seen service and had been in use mainly as training ships. That wasn’t unusual for the class as of the 118 that were built/building, just four actually saw a combat patrol. When the Allies got close to the bunker, their crews scuttled them on 2 May 1945 and they were largely unusable when the roof came down anyway.
If you don’t know about the Type XXI, it was among the most advanced of its day, with a 2000-ton submersible that could submerge to over 700-feet, travel 15,500 nautical miles, remain underwater for weeks due to their novel new snorkel systems, and hear 360-degrees due to their large sonar array. In fact they were so well made that the U.S. Navy took all the good parts of these boats and added them in GUPPY upgrades to Gato and Balao class subs while the Soviets and Chinese later just copied the whole design as the Whiskey, Zulu and Romeo/Ming series smoker boats of the Cold War era.
But don’t get your hopes up about going to Hamburg and getting to see this lost trio of Nassy subs. They were raided over the years by scrappers unknown who largely walked off with anything they could manhandle up a ladder, and in the 1990s the entire bunker, which today rests under a parking-lot, was filled solid with gravel and concrete, turning it into a sarcophagus.
Meh…
More on the Elbe bunker here, here and here
The former massive pens at Brest in France are off-limits as they are still on an active naval base but here is a video of them:
The Valentin submarine pens in Bremen, are still around too but don’t have any subs in them.
However the North Koreans and Chinese still operate a bunch of WWII-era technology Romeo/Mings, and they really do look fun…
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stands on the conning tower of a Romeo-class submarine during his inspection of the Korean People’s Army Naval Unit 167 in this undated photo released June 16, 2014.
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 March 11, 2015: The Teller of Tales
Here we see the white hulled training ship Tusitala under sail in the 1930s in a painting by maritime artist Joseph Arnold. At which point she was the last commercial square-rigger in American service.
Built in 1882 by the Robert Steel & Co., Greenock, Scotland, as Yard No 130, she was an iron hulled, full-rigged ship. As such, she was in that last generation of elegant windjammers that carried cargo economically around the world. She was no steamship, and relied on the wind for her forward movement.
According to a 1952 article by Roger Dudley, “In rig she was a ship in the strictest sense of the word—a three-masted vessel, square-rigged on all three masts. Her total sail area was more than 20,000 square feet; the mainsail alone being 3,200 feet and the foresail 2,600. She carried single topgallant sails below fore, main and mizzen royals.”
Named originally Inveruglas, she flew a British merchant ensign and was British Reg. No. 87394 and signal PGVL in 1883.
As Inveruglas 1884– note the figurehead she would lose in 1917
Just three years later she was sold to the Sierra Shipping Co., Liverpool, and was renamed Sierra Lucena where she made regular runs from the home islands to Australia for wool and India on the jute trade.
As Sierra Lucena around 1900
Her British service came to an end in 1907 when, renamed Sophia, she was sold to the Norwegian shipping firm of Nielsen & Co., Larvik, Norway. The company was concerned in tramping work, but also had a steady grain trade from the River Plate to Europe.
World War I found her dodging both Allied and German warships as Norway was a strict neutral, however she did not come out of the conflict unscathed. While in the River Plate in 1917, she was ran over by a steamship that shattered her bowsprit and destroyed her figurehead. By 1921, she was laid up in Hampton Roads, with her backers unable to find suitable freights for her.
In May 1923, she was bought for a token price by the New York-based “Three Hours for Lunch Club” artists and writers association lead by Christopher Morley, and renamed Tusitala in honor of novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. The meaning is “Teller of Tales.” Stevenson was known to go by the moniker himself.
The one and only Joseph Conrad wrote a congratulatory letter to the new owners:
Joseph Conrad letter
“On leaving this hospitable country where the cream is excellent and the milk of human kindness apparently never ceases to flow, I assume an ancient mariner’s privilege of sending to the owners and ship’s company of the Tusitala my brotherly good wishes for fair winds and clear skies on all their voyages. And may they be many!
“And I would recommend to them to watch the weather,” it goes on; “to keep the halliards clear for running, to remember that any fool can carry on, but only the wise man knows how to shorten sail in time … “
The writers club wanted to use the ship to cruise among the islands so loved by Stevenson, but when that proved unlikely, James A. Farrell, a former president of U.S. Steel, acquired the ship from the writers and used her on a series of commercial voyages for his Argonaut Line from New York to Honolulu via the Panama Canal, completing one of the trips in just 76 days– all under sail.
When you consider the voyage was on the order of 5,452 miles, that’s pretty respectable for a 40+ year old vessel.
Furling the royal– four hands out on the yard passing the gaskets, by Roger Dudley from her 1932 voyage
With main and mizzen royals furled and cross-jack unbent, the “Tusitala” makes the best of a fair wind (left) by Roger Dudley from her 1932 voyage
Outward boynd, the Tusitala’s sails are set and sheeted home one by one as the tug takes her to sea, by Roger Dudley from her 1932 voyage
Out on the yardarm. Two of her crew, drafted by the old windjammer’s huge lower yard, are bending the main course to its jackstay, by Roger Dudley from her 1932 voyage
Out on the yardarm. Two of her crew, drafted by the old windjammer’s huge lower yard, are bending the main course to its jackstay, by Roger Dudley from her 1932 voyage
On these trips, she would carry 2600 tons of nitrates to the islands and bring back sugar on the return trips. In 1925, she made a sprint from Honolulu to Seattle, WA, in 16 days and 9 hours.
Shot from port bow, 1920-30s
abeam shot under U.S. flag 1930s
Full rig
The full-rigged ship Tusitala returning to New York with cargo from across the South Atlantic has run out of wind. The steam tug Federal No. 1 is towing, while a second tug lies along the starboard side of the ship in order to assist in the docking. Via NYT
In 1932 she was laid up, her commercial career over. Farrell sold her to the breakers six years later when maintaining her pier side at New York’s Riverside Drive wharf proved too costly.
1938 laid up
However, naval purchasing agents on the East Coast came across the leaky old girl and acquired her in 1939 for $10,000 as a training ship.
Refitted at Staten Island for another $30,000 of MARAD funds, for the first time she carried an electrical system as well as a modern cafeteria and accommodations for up to 150 cadets.
Tusitala was turned over to the U.S. Coast Guard, who ran the government’s merchie training vessels at the time. Placed in commission but not given a pennant number, she was given an “unclassified” hull designation (WIX) which is the same as the current U.S. Coast Guard Training Barque Eagle (WIX-327) carries.
In May 1940 USCGC Mohawk (WPG-75) towed the sailing ship to St. Petersburg, Florida, where she was used during the conflict to instruct thousands of new merchant sailors and officers at the U.S. Merchant Service Training Station (USMSTS) there.
Oddly enough, one of her fellow training ships at St. Pete was the world’s last sailing frigate, the Danish-built Joseph Conrad.
According to the American Merchant Marine at War (www.usmm.org) :
Her masts were cropped, decks cleared of sailing gear, and she was towed into St. Petersburg to be tied up and used as a stationary training ship to augment class facilities. First classes held aboard this ship utilized the galley and mess room as class rooms for courses which included theory and practical instruction in cooking, baking, butchering, care and use of tools and equipment, sanitation, cooks and messmen duties at sea, and ship routine. In addition, there was instruction in boat drill, gunnery, physical education, regulations, customs, and traditions.
View of Training Station from the sea. Vessel on left TV Tusitala, right is the TV Vigil
Cadets seen in a postcard from the USMSTC– the stern of the white hulled Tusitala very visible to the left
Tusitala spent the war as part of the 7-ship USMM fleet at St. Pete under the overall command of CDR. G.F. Harrington, USMS, a World War I vet with some 40-years of swaying decks under his feet. During WWII, more than 25,000 mariners passed through St. Pete’s halls and tread the decks of the Tusitala.
When the Maritime Service took over all training functions from the Coast Guard after 31 August 1942 Tusitala was administratively decommissioned and transferred to Maritime Service control and operation– even though the latter had run her for two years already.
Trainee at the United States Maritime Service training station handling a life boat in an abandon ship drill– note the dark hulled Joseph Conrad in the background. LOC image
With the war over and the facility drawing down their fleet to just a handful of ships, she was offered free of charge to the Marine Historical Association of Mystic for their museum, who instead took the Joseph Conrad as that vessel was smaller and in more seaworthy condition.
With her last chance at salvation evaporated, the old Tusitala was towed one final time across the Gulf to Mobile, Alabama in 1948, where she was scrapped. In all she saw six decades at sea under the flags of three countries while inspiring legions of artists, writers, and mariners both young and old.
Today, the former Unites States Maritime Services Training Center facility, decommissioned in March 1950, is incorporated into the University of South Florida.
While the Tusitala is no more, the Conrad remains at Mystic Seaport and is still used for training young mariners.
Specs:
Displacement: 1200 tons nominal. 1746 GRT, 1684 NRT and 1622 tons under deck
Length: 261′ long between perpendiculars (310′ overall)
Beam: 39’5″
Draft: 23’5″ depth
Engine: Nope
Rig (1883-1938) Three masts, rigged with royal sails over double topgallant and top sails, spike bowsprit after 1917. Armament: private small arms as a commercial ship, 1940-47 various gunnery tools including 3-inch and 5-inch gun mockups.
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!
Now thats cute…
A curious piece of Italian engineering, the “Motomitragliatrice blindata d’assalto” (“Motorised Armoured Assault Machine Gun”) was apparently designed in 1935 by the Ansaldo company, a national producer of equipment and guns for the Italian Royal Army.
Note the pioneer tools– and Brixa cannon…
Weighing a total of 470 Kg, its armor could protect the operator against all small arms´ fire, including 7.92mm Mauser (if shot from a distance greater than 50 metres). A tiny Frera 250 cc engine was to provide traction with a top speed of 4.9 Km/H, and a virtual autonomy of 100 Km.
If you saw this coming at you…the terror….the terror
Powered by a 250cc motor of all things…talk about a smoker
The “Mias” could be fitted with either 2 twin-mounted Scotti 6.5mm Machine Guns or a Brixia 45mm Cannon.
Are you kidding me?
The project never got past the prototype stage.
Source http://demdeutschenvolke.tumblr.com
A WREN serving on a harbor launch in Portsmouth during World War II. Photo by Cecil Beaton, via the Imperial War Museum. (click to big up)
The Wrens were more officially the Women’s Royal Naval Service formed in 1917 then abandoned after the First World War– their 5,500 members thanked for their services and shown the door.
Reestablished in 1939, by the end of the Second World War a staggering 75,000 female sailors made up their ranks– or more than twice the current strength of the Royal Navy.
For more information visit the Association of Wrens.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Arthur Szyk
Born June 16, 1894 during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II in the Central Polish city of Łódź, then part of the Holy Russian Empire, Arthur Szyk (pronounced “Shick“) showed artistic promise as youth. His father, a textile factory manager, sent young Arthur abroad to the Académie Julian in Paris in 1909 for four years then traveled Europe and Asia, finding himself in Palestine when World War I erupted.
Drafted into the Tsar’s Army as a reserve ensign, he fought in many of the pivotal battles on the Eastern Front including the one for his vey own hometown. Artistically trained, he took to sketching what he saw.
Wounded Russian soldiers. Lodz itself lost some 40 percent of its population in the war while the Russian Army threw away one million soldiers in an effort to keep Poland in the Empire in 1915. Via the Arthur Szyk Society.
When Poland became independent once again at the end of WWI, he served as an officer in the newly formed Polish Army and fought against the Reds in the Russo-Polish War while also helping produce propaganda art for the cause.
1919 propaganda poster. Via the Arthur Szyk Society.
Once the war was over, he picked up his family and spent the next two decades in France, the UK and the states where he illustrated volumes of books, created postcards, created 38 watercolors in the Washington and his Times series, and produced the Haggadah.
Szyk’s inside cover illustration for Andersen’s fairy tales, 1944
Declaration of Independence. Note the Washington artwork– Library of Congress
When the Second World War of his generation came forth, he jumped into the effort with both feet. His old homeland overrun, with the support of the British government and the Polish government-in-exile, he began a war of the pencils against Hitler and his like.
“Liberty what the Nazis leave behind” Aug 1941. Szyk had no love for the Soviets and it should be remembered that Stalin agreed to split his homeland with Hitler, invading Poland from the East just 17 days after the Germans did.
1939 “For a total living space, comrades in arms”
Satan leads the Ball
1939, Two comrades were serving
1944, Warriors-of-the-Polish-1st-Division-Tadeusz-Kosciuszko-by-Arthur-Szyk
Wayside shrine
Tears of Rage, 1942
Two polish officers. Szyk knew firsthand the Polish army as he was one of its first officers in 1919.
The New Order
Poland Fights Nazi Dragon – Polish War Relief, 1943– Library of Congress
1939, German ‘Authority’ in Poland,
Colliers cover
His art of the time, propaganda pieces for the main part, likely did as much damage to the Axis as a battalion of Sherman tanks or a squadron of Lancaster bombers.
With the Soviets in Poland after the end of the War, Szyk made his stay in the West permanent and in 1948 became a U.S. citizen while championing Israeli independence.
He died in 1951
Arthur Szyk self portrait
“Art is not my aim, it is my means.” – Arthur Szyk
The U.S. Library of Congress as well as the United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial maintain extensive collections of his work as do at least two private associations to include the Arthur Szyk Society and Szyk.com.
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 March 18, 2015 Her Majesty’s Final Cruiser
Here we see the Minotaur-class cruiser, Her Majesty’s Ship Blake, pennant C99, of the Royal Navy as she appeared after her refit to accommodate both a fleet flag suite and a quartet of helicopters.
When the Royal Navy entered World War II, they did so with a number of modern light cruisers to include 10 11,000-ton Town-class and had another 11 improved Crown Colony-class vessels on the builder’s ways.
However, within the first couple years of the war, the fleet lost a number of these ships to include HMS Fiji and HMS Gloucester (both sunk in air attack at Crete, 22 May 1941) HMS Trinidad (scuttled following air attack off North Cape, 15 May 1942), HMS Southampton (scuttled following air attack off Malta, 11 January 1941), HMS Manchester (scuttled following torpedo attack off Cap Bon, 13 August 1942) and HMS Edinburgh (scuttled following torpedo attack, 2 May 1942).
With the RN down a quarter of their new cruisers and a long war expected, the call went out in another nine emergency ships to be funded as part of the Additional Naval Programme also known as the “something keeps happening to all of our bloody cruisers” program.
These new ships would be the Minotaur-class light cruiser.
Fundamentally an improvement of the Crown Colony-class design that was already being built, these 11,130-ton ships could make 31.5-knots which didn’t make them the fastest cruisers in the world, but the fact that they could steam at an economical 16-knots (the going rate for convoys) for 8,000 nautical miles on a single fill up made it clear they were intended for distant travels.
Two triple 6″/50 (15.2 cm) BL Mark XXIII mounts as seen on HMS Belfast. The Minotaur class repeated these and carried a third mount aft for a total of 9 tubes.Via Navweaps
Armed with 9 6″/50 (15.2 cm) BL Mark XXIII guns in 3 triple turrets, they had the same big tubes as the rest of the Commonwealth light cruiser fleet. These guns could fire a 112-pound shell to a maximum of 25,480 yards and the Minotaur-class was set up to carry as many as 1800 shells in their magazines at a rate of 6 round per minute per tube.
The thing is, by 1943, the Royal Navy was concentrating more on destroyers, and small escorts, which meant the new Minotaur‘s were put on the back burner.
Only one, HMS Swiftsure was completed during the war and even this ship just became operational in late 1944 (rushed to the Pacific she was flagship of the British Pacific Cruiser Squadron, and was selected by Admiral Cecil Harcourt to hoist his flag for the Japanese surrender.) Class leader Minotaur was transferred before she was complete to Canada who commissioned her as HMCS Ontario almost a month after Hitler ate a bullet (or went to Argentina whichever you believe). A third ship, HMS Superb,was commissioned after the war.
That left six incomplete hulls at the end of WWII, lingering.
Three of these, Mars, Hawke, and Bellerophon were cancelled, their steel broken back up and recycled.
Three floating hulls that had made it far enough to be launched, Tiger, Lion, and Blake, were left hanging out while the Admiralty decided what to do with them.
Which brings us to the hero of our story.
Laid down 17 August 1942 at the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co Ltd, Govan, Glasgow, Scotland, Blake was launched 20 December 1945– some three months after the end of World War II and work was suspended. Named after Admiral Robert Blake (1598-1657), considered the founder of what became the modern Royal Navy, of whom even Nelson wrote, “I do not reckon myself equal to Blake” she was the fifth (and last as of 2015) RN warship to bear his name.
This guy
Finally, after nine years of languishing, it was decided to complete the three floating but yet unfinished Minotaurs, Blake included, to a modified design due in large part to the perceived threat of the new Soviet Sverdlov-class cruisers.
This modification amounted to scrapping the entire armament scheme to include 6 and 5 inch guns, AAA pieces and surface torpedo tubes, in exchange for a trio of twin 3″ guns QF Mark N1 DP guns and a pair of twin 6″/50 (15.2 cm) QF Mark N5 mounts.
A good view of the twin 152mm QF Mark N5 mount forward and the twin 3″QF Mark N1 DP guns in the No.2 mount. This same gun scheme was repeated aft and was the primary and secondary teeth of the Tiger, Blake and Lion as commissioned. Via Navweaps.
The latter, only mounted in these three post-WWII British light cruisers, were the first to use complete cartridges rather than bagged powder under a shell. As noted by Navweaps, “Controlled by the Gun Direction System (GDS1) using the Type 992 radar. This system enabled the ships to engage multiple targets within a few seconds of each other and was technically very advanced for its time.”
Out of the six turrets used afloat, three used RP15 hydraulic control and three used RP53 electric control. It is believed that HMS Tiger had all hydraulic control; HMS Blake had all electric control while HMS Lion had one of each. They could fire a 133-pound shell 20 rounds per minute per tube to about 25,000 yards.
As such, the four tubes on Blake and her two full sisters could dish out 80 shells in a frantic minute while their original 9-gun Minotaur half-sisters could only fire 54.
Science!
With the three “new” cruisers entering the fleet, the RN took their half-sister baggers Swiftsure and Superb out of service and both were scrap by 1962. The Canadians followed suit with Ontario/Minotaur.
Finally commissioned 18 March 1961, HMS Blake took to the sea.
HMS Lion in Malta early 1960s. Tiger and Blake shared the same outline at the same time. Bigup and note the arrangement of the twin 3″ DP guns to the stern.
After just two years she was withdrawn and converted once more in 1965 to become one of the first modern helicopter cruisers.
While she retained her forward mounts, those aft were replaced by a hangar enormous enough to fit a quartet of Wessex (later Sea King) helicopters inside. Additionally she was given room, space and commo equipment to serve as a fleet flagship.
Stern view of Tiger, showing the same conversion that Blake endured
Further, she was given realistic anti-air protection in the form of a pair of quad GWS.21 Sea Cat missile launchers. Short-legged surface to air missiles with a range of about 5km, Sea Cat was effective enough to earn at least one confirmed kill in the Falklands.
Blake shown with a Wessex helicopter landing
Rejoining the active list in 1969, she was perhaps one of the only cruisers to have a Harrier jump jet land upon her.
Her sister Tiger was similarly converted while the Lion was cannibalized for future spare parts.
Then there were two…
Good overhead view of Blake
Blake 1979. Note the Seacat launcher amidships.
Blake endured through the 70s as something of a love boat design: big and expensive to operate and only trotted out for special occasions. She had happy if mechanically troublesome cruises in the Med, Indian, and Pacific before a 1980 refit saw her placed in mothballs, the Invincible-class “harrier cruisers” built to replace Tiger and Blake.
Blake in layup. Via Flickr
When the Argentinians moved into the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982, both Blake and Tiger were pulled out of storage and readied for use in the South Atlantic. As the Royal Marines and Paras only brought 105mm light guns with them, it was thought that the rapid fire 152mm models of Tiger and Blake may help in naval gun fire support while the extensive helicopter facilities allowed them to be lillypads for thirsty harriers and choppers.
However, the war soon proved faster than the old cruiser’s reactivation and, following the conflict, both Blake and Tiger were sold for scrap.
In all Blake spent just 15 years of her 40-year life in active fleet service and, though technically part of the RN during WWII, Korea, and the Falklands, never fired a shot in anger.
Blake was the last cruiser in the Royal Navy and, when she ran her battery before entering refit in 1979, fired the last “big gun” salvo in Britannia’s history.
HMS Blake by Ivan Berryman. “The newly converted Command Helicopter Cruiser HMS Blake leaves Grand Harbour Malta at the end of the 1960s. In the background, the old Submarine Depot ship HMS Forth lies at anchor at the very end of her long career.” Via Cranston.
The bell of the last HMS Blake, scrapped in 1982, is on display in Saint Mary’s Church, Bridgewater while numerous statutes and plaques exist for her namesake.
HMS Belfast, a Crown Colony-class cruiser preserved as a museum ship in London, is the closest living survivor to the “Shakey Blakey.”
Specs
Minotaur design
HMS Jamaica, 1945. This Crown Colony class cruiser was essentially the same scheme that the Minotaurs were designed to. Via shipbucket.
Displacement: 8,800 tons standard 11,130 tons full
Length: 555.5 ft. (169.3 m)
Beam: 63 ft. (19 m) (Superb: 64 ft.)
Draught: 17.25 ft. (5.26 m)
Installed power: 72,500 shp (54.1 MW)
Propulsion: Four Admiralty-type three drum boilers
Four shaft Parsons steam turbines
Speed: 31.5 knots (58.3 km/h)
Range: 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) at 30 knots (60 km/h)
8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km) at 16 knots (30 km/h); 1,850 tons fuel oil
Complement: 867
Armament:
3 × triple BL 6 inch Mk XXIII guns
5 × dual 4-inch / 45 QF Mk 16 HA
4 × quad QF 2 pdr
6 × single 40 mm AA
2 × triple 21-inch (530 mm) Torpedo Tubes.
Armour:
3.25 to 3.5-inch (89 mm) belt
2 inch deck
1 to 2-inch (51 mm) turrets
1.5 to 2-inch (51 mm) bulkheads
Blake as built
Blake, 1961. Note the different armament scheme than the original as above. Photo via shipbucket
Displacement: 11,700 tons (12,080 tons after helicopter conversion)
Length: 555.5 ft. (169 m)
Beam: 64 ft. (19.5 m)
Draught: 23 ft. (7.0 m)
Installed power: 80,000 shp (60 MW)
Propulsion: Four Admiralty-type three drum boilers
Four shaft Parsons steam turbines
Speed: 31.5 knots (58.3 km/h)
Range: 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km) at 16 knots (30 km/h)
Complement: 716 (885 after conversion)
Armament: As built:
2 × twin 6 in guns QF Mark N5 with RP53 (electric) control
3 × twin 3 in guns QF Mark N1
Armour:
Belt 3.5 in – 3.25 in
Bulkheads 2 in – 1.5 in
Turrets 2 in – 1 in
Crowns of engine room and magazines 2 inches.
As helicopter cruiser
Note radically different aft profile. Photo via shipbucket
1 × twin 6 in guns QF Mark N5 with RP53 (electric) RPC
1 × twin 3 in guns QF Mark N1
2 × quad GWS.21 Sea Cat missile launchers
Aircraft carried 4 × helicopters (originally Wessex then Sea King)
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!
Click to big up
F/A-18E Super Hornets from the Royal Maces of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 27 fly over Mt. Suribachi in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima during a return transit to Atsugi, Japan. VFA-27, part of Carrier Air Wing 5, is forward-deployed to Naval Air Facility Atsugi, Japan, to support security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. U.S. Navy photo by Cmdr. Spencer Abbot (Released) 150325-N-ZZ999-500
Of course you may be more familiar with this image by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal of Marines over Mt. Suribachi from 1945…
The Coast Guard has been neck deep in the fighting in every U.S. war from the 1800s to the Persian Gulf, with WWII being no exception. One of the coasties that served in that conflict was Linwood “Tick” Thumb, the oldest living veteran from that war.
He just had his 100th.
Tick served on a 83-foot “splinter boat” operating out of Hampton Roads (Little Creek) during the height of Operation Drumbeat, the German U-boat campaign on the U.S East Coast.
From the USCG story about Tick last week:
Having grown up on the water, Thumm figured he would take to the Coast Guard like the Wright brothers took to flying. After joining the Coast Guard and becoming a seaman 1st class, he tested for the Coast Guard Academy. Thumm’s proficiency in math paid off on the exam when he achieved a near perfect score on the celestial navigation portion. Having entered and successfully completed the program, he became an officer and was given command of an 83-foot cutter crew stationed at Naval Base Little Creek in what is now Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Thumm and his crew spent the first part of the war escorting convoys along the Atlantic seaboard, mostly from New Jersey to North Carolina. During one of these escorts, Thumm and the crew spotted a German U-boat, and with the help of a few depth charges, sent the U-boat to its final resting place on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. A naval panel at Fort Story in Virginia Beach investigated the encounter, but only credited them with a possible kill – a categorization Thumm attributes more to jealousy on behalf of the navy than a lack of evidence. In his mind, Thumm didn’t need the Navy to confirm the kill – his crew found half of a German officer’s body in the water and that was good enough for him.
Happy 100th Tick, thank you for your service.
Linwood “Tick” Thumm displays an oar received from the Portsmouth Federal Building’s Chief’s Mess in Portsmouth, Va., March 26, 2015. Thumm, a World War II Coast Guard veteran, had just turned 100 and was celebrating with fellow Coast Guard members and civilians. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class David Weydert)
Denmark had a very brief baptism of fire during WWII. On April 9, 1940 the German Army swept across the unfortified border while simultaneously landing paratroops (the first use of such in combat) and conducting seaborne landings as well. The Danish government, which had been controlled by socialists in the 1920s and 30s, had gutted the military and, while the rest of Europe was girding for the next war, the Danes were laying off career officers, disbanding regiments and basically burning the bridge before they even crossed it.
This made the German invasion, launched at 0400 that morning, a walkover of sorts and by 0800 the word had come down from Copenhagen to the units in the field to stand down and just let it happen. That doesn’t mean isolated Danish units didn’t bloody the Germans up a bit. In fact, they inflicted some 200 casualties on the invaders while suffering relatively few (36) of their own. (More on that in detail here)
There is an upcoming movie from Nordisk Film on that desperate fight scheduled for release next month on the 75th anniversary of that scrap and it doesn’t look half bad.
“In the early morning of April 9th 1940 the Danish army is alerted. The Germans have crossed the border; Denmark is at war against Europe’s strongest army. In Southern Jutland Danish bicycle- and motorcycle companies are ordered out, to against all odds, hold back the forces until the Danish reinforcements can be mobilized. In the fatal hours, we follow second lieutenant Sand (Pilou Asbæk) and his bicycle company – they will as the first Danish soldiers meet the enemy in combat on April 9th 1940.”
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger.
Warship Wednesday April 1, 2015: Lucky Georgios, the last man standing
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Here we see the Italian-made Pisa-class armored cruiser Georgios Averof of the Royal Hellenic Navy as she appeared in 1913, shortly after almost single-handedly routing the entire Ottoman fleet the year before.
In the early 20th Century, the Southeastern Europe, popularly known as the Balkans, was a powder keg of a number of upstart countries living in the shadow of the “sick man of Europe”– the Ottoman Empire. With more than a century of low-key warfare between the Greeks, Romanians, Serbs, Bulgars, Croats and so on to try to break free from the Sultan and his court, by about 1900 the lines had been drawn between the Turks and the Greco-Slavic nations. Combined, the Balkan countries could cough up nearly a million men under arms– more the enough to take on the Turks. However, they could not match the Turkish Navy in either the ancient Adriatic, Aegean, Ionian, Med, and Black seas.
That’s where Greece, who had a small army but an excellent naval tradition, stood alone against the Turks.
Between 1879 and 1914, the Royal Hellenic Navy was transformed into a modern force, picking up battleships and destroyers from Italy, France, the UK, and the U.S.
However, their French built pre-dreadnoughts: Hydra, Spetsai, and Psara, were exceptionally small at just 5,300-tons, and were lightly armed (3x 10-inch guns) and slow (16 knots). After winning the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the Greeks went shopping for a new mega ship with a 2.5 million gold franc donation from Greek philanthropist George M. Averoff.
George M. Averoff, the man. He left the Greek government a fortune in his will and they went warship shopping
Across the Adriatic, they inspected the Italian (by no less of naval engineer than Giuseppe Orlando) Pisa-class “second-class battleship” and fell in love. These 10,000-ton ships, technically armored cruisers, could break 23-knots through the power of 22 Belleville boilers and carried a quartet of 10″/45 cal guns backed up by eight 7.5-inchers in four twin turrets on the center line and more than a dozen smaller anti-torpedo boat pieces. Sheathed in up to 7-inches of steel plate, they could fight off ships their own size and outrun most that were larger.
The Italian cruiser Pisa or the Regina Marina, the sister of the Greek Averoff. (Click to big up)
Although they only needed a crew of about 700, they also could accommodate a battalion of naval infantry if needed for amphibious landings which is key in the far flung and disputed islands that the Greeks cruised in. Not perfect when compared to British and German ships of the day, certainly, these cruisers were still better than anything the Turks had at the time. Better yet, the Italian Navy had a third Pisa that they had ordered but were going to cancel– talk about timing.
Swapping out the 10″/45 cal guns for a set of much more modern British-made 9.2″/47 (23.4 cm) Mark X breechloaders, (which had been the standard at the time of the Royal Navy’s armored cruisers), the Greek “battleship” Georgios Averof was laid down at Orlando, Livorno in 1910. With tensions between the Balkan countries and the Turks ramping up (the Italians themselves went to war with the Ottomans in 1911 over Libya), construction progressed rapidly and just 15 months later the Averof was commissioned on May 16, 1911 and was made fleet flagship.
Postcard of her as completed.Note the very Italian scheme
When war came the very next year, the Averof led the older French battleships to first blockade and then engage the Turkish fleet off the Dardanelles. There, on 16 December 1912, the four Greek capital ships met four elderly Ottoman battleships and the largest battleship fight to take place not involving “Great Powers” occured.
Elli naval battle, painting by Vasiileios Chatzis. Charging ahead to cut off the Ottoman line
Borrowing a page from Admiral Togo’s 1905 Battle of the Tsushima Straits, the Averof raced ahead all alone at over 20-knots and crossed the Turkish T, taking on each of the enemy ships single file.
While the casualties were minimal, the Turks ran after Averof‘s big British 9-inchers hammered the flagship Barbaros Hayreddin (the old German SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm) enough to where they figured that it was either shook and jive or sink. This sharp scrap is remembered in Greece as the Battle of Elli.
Just a month later, the two fleets again met with similar outcome off Lemnos Island.
Between the two battles, the lucky Averof was hit a total of four times by Turkish shells and suffered just three casualties. It was her guns that by large part helped win the First Balkan War.
Averof 1916 during WWI
Averof color
Although Greece eventually joined the Allies in World War I, she saw little service. However across the Adriatic, her sistership, the Italian cruiser Amalfi, was torpedoed by the Austria-Hungarian submarine U-26 and sank in 1915.
Painting of the Greek Battleship Averof in Bosporus, Hagia Sophia in the background, in 1919
After the war, she became the first Greek warship to enter Constantinople as part of the Allied victory mission to that town and– soon enough — was back in the fight against the Turks in 1919 during the Greco-Turkish War where she was used to help evacuate a defeated Greek Army.
In addition, she helped safeguard the withdrawal of the White Russian exiles after the Russian Civil War, reportedly exchanging a few rounds with the Reds.
In the 1920s, as one of the last armored cruisers around (most had been mothballed, replaced by more modern designs), she was upgraded in France where she lost her obsolete torpedo tubes and half of her low-angle 3-inch guns in exchange for a decent battery of high-angle AAA weapons. At about the same time her final sistership, the Italian cruiser Pisa, was relegated to a training status in 1921, and was eventually scrapped by the Depression.
After that, Averof was the sole remaining member of her class afloat.
Averof after her refit
By WWII, she had been downgraded to the third most powerful Greek ship, after President Wilson had sold the Greeks the battleships USS Mississippi and Idaho (who served as the Kilkis and Lemnos respectively). Those American ships, though unwanted by the U.S. Navy, at 13,000-tons and with a quartet of 12″/45 and sixteen 7 and 8-inch guns, were a good deal better armed.
Averoff outside with RHS Kilkis (ex-USS Mississippi) and RHS Lemnos (ex-USS Idaho) taken pre-WWII. Note the size difference and the very 1914-ish lattice masts of the former U.S. battle wagons.
Nevertheless, when the next world war came to Greece, both the Kilkis and Limnos were sank by Hitler’s Luftwaffe while at anchor yet the 30-year old Averof was able to beat feet across the Med with three destroyers and five submarines to the join up with the British Mediterranean Fleet at Alexandria.
Averoff in WWII under British orders, note typical RN camo scheme
She spent the rest of the war, which if you are keeping count was at least her fifth, in Royal Navy service escorting convoys in the Indian Ocean and hiding from both Japanese and German submarines. In 1944, she carried the Greek government in exile home from London. As in the first World War, she came out of the Second unscathed and without losing a single man.
Averoff in WWII under British orders, note typical RN camo scheme
After 41 years at sea, she was the last pre-WWI era armored cruiser in active service in any fleet when she was finally decommissioned August 1, 1952. Held in mothballs for three decades, in 1984 she was overhauled, disarmed, and emplaced as a historical museum ship at Palaio Faliro where she is a popular tourist attraction.
Averof today
Averof is her latest dry dock. Note the rearward facing 7.5-inch turret to the port side. Averof has four of these mounting a total of 8 guns, which is a significant battery all its own.
Now, still officially on the Greek Navy’s list and with an active duty (if greatly reduced) crew assigned, she will celebrate her 114th birthday under the flag of the Hellenic Navy in May.
Averof is the last armored cruiser in existence above the water. The only two comparable pre-WWI steel blue water ships to her still around, Dewey’s protected cruiser USS Olympia at Philadelphia, and Togo’s pre-dreadnought battleship Mikasa preserved at Yokosuka.
Specs
Displacement: Full load 10,200 tons
Standard 9,956 tons
Length: 140.13 m (459.7 ft.)
Beam: 21 m (69 ft.)
Draft: 7.18 m (23.6 ft.)
Propulsion: Boilers: 22 Belleville water tube type, Engines: 2 four cylinder reciprocating steam engines, Shafts: 2 (twin screw ship), Power: 19,000 shp (14.2 MW)
Speed: 23.5 knots (43.5 km/h; 27.0 mph) maximum
20 knots operational
Range: 2,480 nautical miles (4,590 km) at 17.5 knots (32 km/h)
Complement: 670
Maximum capacity: 1200
Armor: Belt: 200 mm (7.9 in) midships, 80 mm (3.15 in) at ends
Deck: up to 40 mm (1.6 in)
Turrets: 200 mm (7.9 in) at 234mm turrets, 175 mm (6.9 in) at 190mm turrets
Barbettes: up to 180 mm (7.1 in)
Conning tower: up to 180 mm (7.1 in)
Armament: Original configuration:
4 × 234mm (9.2in) guns (2 × 2)
8 × 190mm (7.5in) guns (4 × 2)
16 × 76mm (3in) guns
4 × 47 mm (1.85in) guns
3 × 430mm (17in) torpedo tubes
After 1927 refit:
4 × 234mm (9.2in) guns (2 × 2)
8 × 190mm (7.5in) guns (4 × 2)
8 × 76mm (3in) guns
4 × 76 mm (3in) A/A guns
6 × 36mm (1.42in) A/A guns
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Much is made of how strong, heavily armored, and revolutionary the German Army’s blitzkrieg attack on France and the Lowlands was in May 1940, able to knock four Western European countries out of the war within six weeks and very nearly trap the British forces on the continent.
The thing is, ut should be remembered that most of the German armor of 1940 were very light 6-ton Panzer I (machine gun armed) 9-ton Panzer II (20mm gun armed) and 20-ton Panzer III (37mm gun) tanks. Further, the French and British actually had more tanks than the Germans. It was the better Teutonic tactics that won the day for the boys in grey, not their vehicles.
But there were some exceptions to that rule. The French had a very good tank for the time, the 29-ton Char B1 Bis.
The B1 Bis, with its 75 mm ABS SA 35 howitzer in the main hull, a 47mm gun in a single-man turret, and two 8mm Reibel machine guns, was slow (just 15mh on a good day) but very well armored for the time with 60mm steel plate– allowing it to shrug off all but a direct hit from a German Pak 40 or larger.
Therefore, although German tanks could outrun a B1, they couldn’t outfight it in an area where speed and maneuverability wasn’t a factor. Eure proved that.
(Hattip, Tales of War)
The crew of the B1 Bis “Eure” Serial 337, the tank of the Captain Billotte, leading the B1 Assault on Stonne on the 16 May 1940. The Eure was responsible for knocking oout 13 German Panzers in a row while maneuvering around the city, using the local streets to its advantage. In all the French tank was hit 140 times by small caliber rounds but not knocked out.
Chef de char : Capitaine Billotte
Pilot : Sergent Durupt
Radio : Chasseur Francis Henault
The Germans liked these tough French panzers so much they used more than 160 inherited B1’s in their own army, designating them as the Panzerkampfwagen B-2 740 (f) and keeping them in service as late as 1944.
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Here we see a Consolidated B-24D Liberator, “Moby Dick” (possibly #41-24047) of the 320th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy) , 90th Bomb Group- along with its slighly smaller sidekick.
The 320th was formed at Key Field in Mississippi in 1942 and soon shipped out to the ETO, where it flew from Tunisia then Corsica and finally France, supporting the troops at Cassino and the advance on Rome, then later Germany.
After the war the unit became a recon squadron, flying RB-29 ‘photo fortresses’ and RB-47s until it was shuttered in 1960.
Then in 1963 it was reformed as the 320th Missile Squadron (320 MS) and, assigned to the 90th Operations Group it is stationed at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming where its Missileers man silos filled with LGM-30G Minuteman III Intercontinental ballistic missiles– now that’s a great white whale all of its own.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Alphonse Mucha
Born 24 July 1860 in the small Moravian mountain town of Ivančice–a neighbor to the current and historic CZ arms concern in Brno– in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was one Alfons Maria Mucha. Taking up painting as a youth more or less as a hobby, by his twenties, he grew more serious and attended the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and later schools in Paris.
The artist
By 1895, he had become a professional poster illustrator and had even begun his own unique style of artistic impression in his depiction of the female form, taking otherwise imperfect reference models dressed in contemporary clothes and creating the highly-stylized soft featured, long-haired beauties garbed in neo-classical robes that became his hallmark.
With the coming of Spring, and today being Easter, I find these below images to be very refreshing.
Alphonse Mucha The Seasons, 1896, Spring and Summer .
…followed by Fall and winter. Note how the flowers create a halo effect, commonly seen in Mucha’s female portrayals.
Inset of “Madonna of the Lilies,” 1905…This one reminds me of someone special
Luna
The application of the artist’s eye.
The model and final artwork for a 1903 illustration
Zodiac 1896
job cigarettes ad Alphonse Mucha
Soldier’s Dream
By the 1900 Exposition Universelle where was an esteemed exhibitor, he had become acclaimed and his style soon known as Art Nouveau.
However lovely his style for commercial art was, he preferred more serious historical art depicting great battles and events– but that didn’t pay the bills. By 1910, he had found a benefactor in Chicago millionaire Charles Richard Crane, who brought luminaries such as Czech independence advocate Thomas Masaryk, Russian constitutional monarchy (Kadet) proponent Pavel Milyukov, and peacenik Maksim Kovalevsky to the U.S. to speak on Eastern European revolutionary ideals against the Tsar and Kaisers.
He toiled away on his Slav Epic for more than a decade, often working 10 hours or more everyday.
Crane financed Mucha’s dream work, a series of 20 immense panels that became known as the Slovanská Epopej (Slav Epic) that told the history of the Slavic peoples. Funded by Crane, Mucha rented part of the old historic 13th century Zborov Castle (which according to legend is built on the site of a gate into hell), near the Russian border and worked on his saga for several years until the advance of the Tsar’s Army into the region in 1915 sent him away from the castle, which became a battlefield of Slav-on-Slav violence for the next several years.
Nevertheless, before the Epic was complete, in 1919, his country had become Czechoslovakia and Mucha the Slavic patriot drew up the first currency, stamps, Army recruiting posters, and government insignias (even using a model of Crane’s wife for the 100 crown note!)
The 50 Crown note designed by Muncha
100 C note– with Crane’s old lady on it
By 1928, his Slav Epic was complete and the now-68 year old patriot donated it to the city of Prague for public display– then went on to design a stained glass window for St. Vitus Cathedral, a national landmark.
Petr Chelcicky at Vodnany: Do not repay evil with evil – 1918.Vodnany was a small town caught in the crossfire between the Hussites and the Germanic forces. They chose to flee to Petr Chelcicky, a religious peasant philosopher. When they arrived, they lay down exhausted and dieing, consumed by anger and grief, their homes burning in the background. Chelcicky moves amongst them with a Bible, offering comfort and support, asking that they do not seek vengeance.
After the Battle of Grunwald (1st Tannenberg) 1410 during the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War. The early fourteenth century was marked by military incursions by the German Order of Teutonic Knights into the land of the Northern Slavs. In response, The Polish King Wladyslaw Jagiello and the Czech King Vaclav IV signed a defensive treaty which was first acted upon at the battle of Grunwaldu in 1410 when the Slavs won an important victory. Mucha elects to illustrate not the fighting but the aftermath, with the Polish King holding his face in sorrow as he views the cost to both enemy and ally.
Defense of Sziget against the Turks by Nicholas Zrinsky, during the the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, 1566 In 1566 The Turks began advancing along the Danube into the Hungarian plains. Their advance was eventually halted at the city of Sziget by a citizens’ army let by Croatian nobleman, Nicholas Zrinsky. With the town under siege, he was obliged to fire the Old Town to deter advances. After a further nineteen days and with Zrinsky dead, the women of the city took refuge a watchtower; Zrinsky’s widow, realizing the inevitability of defeat, threw a touch into a gunpowder store, destroying the city but inflicting damage on the Turkish army which halted their progress.
After the Battle of Vitkov Hill during the Hussite wars 1420. In the early stages of the Hussite wars, the German King occupied the castle at Prague and was crowned king. A peasant army of Hus’s followers arrived from Southern Bohemia to oppose the Germans, led by a brilliant military leader, Jan Zizka of Troenov. Their position at the hill of Vitkov was under siege until relieved by a group of Czech soldiers from Prague arrived, led by a priest bearing a monstrance. The mural shows the priest at a field bearing the monstrance and surrounded by supplicating clergy, with Prague’s Hradcany Castle visible to the right.
Stained glass by Mucha at St. Vitus, 1931
Czechoslovakia became one of Hitler’s first targets and by early 1939, in violation of the Sudeten Agreements, the Germans had taken over the country (in a curious twist of fate, Crane, who funded the first U.S. oil investments in Saudi Arabia, was a big fan of Hitler’s).
Non a smile in the bunch on either side. German troops enter Prague,March 1939. Mucha would be dead within four months and his very funeral a spark of resistance in occupied Europe– one of the first.
Eager to stamp out anti-German (or pro-Czech/Slav) dissent, the Geheime Staatspolizei soon rounded up the usual suspects to include the 78-year old Mucha who was interrogated and imprisoned for several weeks under horrible conditions. This led to the artist contracting pneumonia and dying in July of that year from lung infection.
The Nazis had banned all public demonstrations during the occupation, nevertheless the people of Prague turned out by the thousands for his funeral. He is interred at the famous Vysehrad cemetery near Anton Dvorak and remembered in a huge monument there.
Fearing the Nazis would seize or destroy the Epic, the paintings were stripped from their frames, rolled up, and spirited away to be hidden in a tomb in the countryside.
After the war, the newly Communist Czech government found Mucha’s works petit bourgeois and even the Epic was kept rolled up, only finally returning to public display in 1963 in a dilapidated chateau in Moravsky Krumlov, just outside of Brno– although Prague really wants them back.
The Epic on display. Keep in mind its 20 panels
He is remembered today as one of the most well known masters of, and perhaps the inventor of Art Nouveau besides being viewed as a national hero in the Czech Republic.
As such there are many of his works online in addition to several societies, foundations, galleries and museums.
There are even hundreds who walk around with Mucha-inspired personal illustrations and a steady business in art nouveau Much ink.
Thank you for your work, sir.
During World War Two, some of the most brutal fighting took place on the more than 1000-mile long Eastern Front. All along this oft-frozen wasteland, in the midst of the largest combined arms tank vs. tank battles ever seen, snipers crawled through the rubble looking for targets of opportunity. Some 2000 of these were Soviet women.
Female snipers of 3th army, 1th Belarussian front. From left to right : 1st row down is a senior non-commission officer V.N. Stepanova (20 kills), a senior non-commission officer Y.P. Belousova (80 kills , a senior non-commission officer А.Е. Vinogradova (83 kills);
2th row is the second lieutenant Е.К. Zibovskaya (24 enemies), a senior non-commission officer К.F. Мarinkina (79 enemies), a senior non-commission officer О.S. Маrjenkina (70 enemies); 3th row is the second lieutenant N.P. Belobrova (70 kills) , a lieutenant N.А. Lobkovskaya (89 kills) , the second lieutenant V.I. Аrtamonova (kills), are a senior non-commission officer М.G. Zubchenkо (24 kills); 4th row is non-commission officer N.P. Оbuchovskaya (64 enemies), a non-commission officer А.R. Belyakova (24 enemies) Hattip Tales of War.
Most of the above seem equipped with Mosin M1891-30 Three Line rifles modified with bent bolts and PU 3.5x series fixed power rifles. Even if (as some historians have suggested) the Soviet “kill numbers” were inflated, the above Hero Snipers may still have counted for an entire company of fascist invaders rather than a battalion.
Nostrovia!
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday April 8, 2015– The Mud Lump Picket Gang
Click to very much big up. USCG Photo
Here we see an excellent bow-on shot of a 38 Foot Cabin Picket Boat CG-4371 of the United States Coast Guard as she would have appeared during World War II when all dolled up in her war paint. From 1920-1960, these boats were the local “Coasties” and fought bootleggers in the Rum Wars, the Germans, and Japanese during the real live shooting war that followed, and set the benchmark for peacetime service afterward.
Moreover, all together there were over 600 of them.
Why were they needed?
With the passage of the Volstead Act, perhaps the biggest effort at pissing in the wind in the history of the Federal Government, liquor was made the scapegoat for poor societal growth by the Temperance Movement and made thereby illegal- that should have fixed everything. Well, it only made matters far worse as the demand never went away and enterprising suppliers, many fresh from military service in the Great War and with few qualms about taking risks, began bootlegging booze by land, sea, and air. The first was risky as it was too predictable, and the final couldn’t handle the volume, which led to the serious rum-runners selecting offshore delivery as the preferred means.
It was simple, buy a surplus freighter or deep draft sailing ship (there were literally thousands of them cheap after the war) load it with legal rum in Cuba or the Bahamas if down south or good Canadian Whiskey if up north, then haul the hooch to a few hundred yards offshore of the (then) 3-mile federal limit and sell it to any enterprising small boat owner that came your way– by the case and at several times the cost. And it worked, for example, the number of quarts of rum sold in Nassau, Bahamas in 1917 was just 50,000. By 1922, it skyrocketed to 10-million. It was a boon with coastal port towns in the nearby Caribbean turning into gold rush cities and some 500,000 Americans believed involved at one stage or another in the new instant economy of bootlegging.
A schooner loaded high with whiskey on rum row.USCG Photo
The government’s answer to shut down this “Rum Row” was the USCG.
The thing is, the Coasties had few capable large craft as their offshore cutters were slow and couldn’t pursue the smaller fast boats of the rum runners headed back to shore, and the local harbor launches and rescue boats of the Coast Guard stations were likewise too slow and light (often rowboats or 36-footers Hunnewell Type lifeboats that could make 8-knots) to chase the speedy little power boats over the local mud lumps.
Therefore, while the Coast Guard quickly acquired a fleet of Navy 4-piper destroyers and sub chasers from mothballs and ordered a ton of new 165-foot, 125-foot and 75-foot gunboats, but they still needed smaller boys for when the speeds got north of 20 knots and the shoals got shallower than two fathoms. That is where the picket boats came in.
Design
Based on the classic sea bright dory fishing boats that were popular along the Jersey Coast in the late 19th Century, the Coast Guard came up with two general plans (one for a 36-foot boat, the other for a 38-footer) of fast “Cabin Picket Boats.”
A 38 foot cabin picket in their peacetime livery.USCG Photo
38 foot picket USCG Photo
Each had a wood carvel design hull with single planking and ice sheathing, either a single or double cabin, and a single gasoline engine, prop or rudder. Speeds were in the 25-knot range. They were self-bailing, had electrical lights and refrigerator, and could accommodate as many as ten coasties but only needed two to operate. With their small cabins and galley, they carried enough fuel to go out overnight and come back, venturing out to Rum Row and back several times. Too small for names, they were all given numbers.
Given a law enforcement role as primary, a first for a USCG small boat, they were tasked with patrolling and policing of harbors, shallow inlets and protected waters along the coasts. Initially the 36 footers were built to two very, um, flexible designs one with a double cabin and one with a single, and 103 were ordered from small boat builders around the country, all delivered by 1926.
From the USCG Historian’s office on the design of the 36s:
Procurement procedures for these smaller craft varied by type. In the case of the single-cabin model, a brief outline plan was distributed to boat building contractors with instructions that they retain their own naval architect to complete the boat’s final plans and specifications. With the double-cabin model, however, complete plans were drawn up and provided by the Coast Guard to prospective builders. Seven different yards were contracted for single-cabin boat construction, and six yards for double-cabin boat construction.
![36 open]()
The 38s were all built to a single plan with 68 examples created before Dec. 7, 1941 and another 470 built between then and 1944— but we’ll get to that.
Rum War
By 1924 the Coast Guard, armed with their new boats small and large and a huge influx of cash from the Hoover administration, was set loose on Rum Row. Boat crews, often called Hammerheads due to their distinctive booze smashing (and head knocking) sledges destroyed rum and whiskey alike. Off New London alone in one year, no less than 65 ships were captured with $1.5 milly in booze as well as 290 bootleggers along with them. The crews were heavily armed with BARs, M1903s and pistols because shootouts, as well as encounters with pirate ships out to rob the bootleggers themselves were increasingly common. One source cites that over 200 civilians were killed off the U.S. East Coast during the 1920s while involved in the booze campaign.
The Coast Guard was hard handed when needed and they suffered their own losses, even exacting retribution in the hanging (at the Ft. Lauderdale Coast Guard Station) of a bootlegger, James “The Gulf Stream Pirate” Alderman that killed a Coast Guardsman.
One of the spicer incidents was the capture of the SS Economy. Ensign Charles L. Duke was aboard a picket boat on the night of 3 July 1927– right before the holiday. He two sailors were patrolling New York Harbor on board the 36-footer CG-2327 when they saw a beat up old steamer pass in the night. With the ship in poor shape, and only the name “Economy” painted across her stern in fresh script, Duke decided to board her. After the ship refused to stop following two rounds from Duke’s revolver, he ordered his two sailors that, “If I’m not out of that pilot house in two minutes you turn the machine gun on them,” and jumped on the freighter with his half-empty revolver and a flashlight.
Duke boarding the Economy. USCG Painting
He seized control of the bridge, took the ship’s wheel and grounded the vessel, then waited for reinforcements the rest of the night. Finally relieved just before dawn by additional cuttermen from all over New York, they found 22 bootleggers and 3,000 barrels of hooch in what was called “perhaps the most heroic” exploit in the rum war.
For more on the Rum War at sea, the USCG in 1964 produced a very informative 229-page report here in pdf format free.
Crazy marine life
Off Brielle, New Jersey in the summer of 1933, one local angler by the name of Captain A.L. Kahn, master of the F/V Miss Pensacola II, came face to face with a Jules Verne-sized monster of the depths. You see his anchor line became tangled in a Giant Manta Devil Fish (Manta Birostris) almost capsizing the boat. The local Coast Guard station sent its picket boat, CG-2390, and unable to free the boat or beast, dispatched it with “22 shots from a high-powered rifle.”
Giant Manta Devil Fish 1933. Click to big up
More on the Manta!
The ray was towed to Feuerbach and Hansen’s Marina in Brielle, New Jersey where it was hoisted ashore on August 26, 1933 with a travel lift. In the end, the beast weighted some 5,000-pounds and measured more than 20 feet across the wing. Kahn, with likely the biggest and weirdest catch of his life, exhibited the stuffed specimen for years.
Peacetime roles.
With the bootleggers killed by repeal of the Volstead Act, and barring the occasional sea monster fight, the pickets were some of the few Rum War-era craft that were kept in full service during the Depression due to their ease of operation, versatility, and low-cost. They continued to serve as coastal patrol and search and rescue craft, assist in maritime accidents, police fishing grounds for poachers, and even go far upriver for flood relief due to their very shallow draft.
A dozen Coast Guard picket boats (double cabin 36 footers) muster beside the former CGC Yocona on the Mississippi River during The Great Ohio, Mississippi River Valley Flood of 1937. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Yocona was a 182-foot Kankakee-class stern paddle wheelers built for the Coast Guard in 1919 and stationed at Vicksburg. Click to big up
Back at war
When Pearl Harbor jump-started the U.S. into the middle of WWII, the Coast Guard and their picket boats soon found themselves unexpectedly on the front lines. Never meant for combat, they mounted no crew served weapons. Their gasoline engines would prove fireballs if any of these ships took a hit from a major caliber shell (even if the projectile itself did not break the cabin cruiser in two). Nevertheless, by 1942, the picket boats were in the thick of it and another 470 were soon built to join the 170~ already in service.
1943 photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society showing a 38 under construction near Seattle in 1942
1943 photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society showing 38 sunder construction near Seattle in 1942
Issued submachine guns, hammers (to break periscope lenses if they got close enough) and grenades (to throw in the open hatches of surfaced U-boats, the pickets mounted regular patrols in the coastal waterways and harbor mouths across the nation.
The 38 foot cabin picket boat. Click to very much big up. USCG Photo
The 38 foot cabin picket boat, CG-4371. Click to very much big up. USCG Photo
Painted in dull war schemes and loaded up with food, these tiny boats would ply the 50-fathom curve on “five days out and two days in port” patrol rotations and later a few even received some 25-pound paint can sized depth charges and WWI-era Marlin machine guns found in storage. They tended anti-submarine nets watching for frogmen, raced to the rescue of downed patrol fliers, and all too often responded to the site of successful U-boat attacks, picking up those still alive and those that were not.
In February 1942, 432,000 tons of shipping went down in the Atlantic, 80 percent off the American coast. The pickets were everywhere picking up survivors. For example:
And so it went during the war until the U-boat menace abated after 1943. Still the picket boats provided yeoman service day after day, ready to fight or save lives.
During the War, as reported by one who sailed these craft on the West Coast, the crew typically consisted of six men spread across BM, MM and unrated seamen. As they were often away from the regular full-sized bases, these men were on their own, “The crews of the patrol boats received a dollar and 20 cents per day subsistence money extra with their pay. We had to buy our own food supplies from the commissary and pay our bill at the end of each month. Each boat also had an old-fashioned icebox and a two-burner alcohol stove. We carried government vouchers in case we had to buy gasoline at a harbor away from the Alameda base.”
After the conclusion of the war, many of the most used vessels, those dating from the Rum Row era, were withdrawn.
By 1950, the Coast Guard planned to replace these old 36 and 38 footers that remained with a new class of 40-foot utility boats of which 236 were complete by 1966. With that the days of the Cabin Pickets were over, although some were passed on to the U.S. Geological Survey and other government agencies for further use.
A few are still around as private yachts and are easily recognizable by their lines.
A retired picket used as a personal yacht in Virginia 1960s
An old 38 up for sale in 2012. Not too bad a shape for a 70+ year old wooden boat built by the lowest bidder.
Today, the 40-foot utilities that replaced the picket boats were themselves phased out by the 41-footers of the 1970s which were in turn retired recently in favor of the new 45 ft. Response Boats that are a common sight along the waterways of the country. This new 174-member class still largely conducts the same mission pioneered by the venerable cabin cruisers.
The modern pickets of today.USCG Photo
Clocking in everyday.
Specs
38
38- foot
Hull numbers: CG2385-4372, later changed to 38300-38836 during WWII
Displacement: 15,700-pounds (8~ tons)
Length overall: 38 feet, 3-inches
Beam: 10.33 feet
Draft: 3 feet
Crew-2-8
Fuel: 240 gallons
Engine: One single. These included either Hall Scott Model 168 270hp V6s, 300hp Sterling Dolphins, Murray and Tregurtha 325s, although most of these after 1942 were completed with 225hp Kermath models.
Speed: 20-25 knots depending on load and engines fitted. One, CG2385, hit 26.5kts on trails.
Range; 175 miles
Cost: $10,000
36.USCG Photo
36-foot
Hull numbers: CG2200-2229 (open cabin), 2300-2372 (double cabin)
Displacement: 10,000 lbs. (5~ tons)
Length overall: 35.8 feet
Beam: 8.9 feet
Draft: 30 inches
Crew-3+
Fuel: 240 gallons
Engine: 180 HP Consolidated Speedway MR-6 six-cylinder gasoline engine
Speed: 20-25 knots depending on load and engines fitted
Range; 175 miles
Cost: $8,800
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75 Years ago today the pride of the German Kriegsmarine, the Hipper-class heavy cruiser Blücher, met an unlikely end. Built to raid British shipping and help screen Hiter’s new grand blue water navy, the massive 16,000-ton supercrusier with her 8 203mm guns and up to 3-inches of armor never saw it coming on the morning of April 9, 1940 when she sailed quietly and darked out into neutral Norwegian waters.
Without a declaration of war, Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of Norway had begun with a series of sea and air penetrations of the Scandinavian county, one of which Blucher was leading.
As the flag of Konteradmiral Oskar Kummetz, she was packed with an 800-man contingent of the 163rd Infantry Division who would be landed in the nation’s capital of Oslo and quickly seize the government. Passing through the Oslofjord in the dark of that morning, two of the ancient 28cm Krupp (!) guns mounted at Oscarsborg Fortress opened fire on the German cruiser at point blank range, damaging the ship severely and setting it alight.
Then, a hidden and unknown battery (although it had been installed in 1901!) of shore based torpedo tubes with 40-year old Whitehead torpedoes made in Austria-Hungary engaged the ship. Though they had but 220-lb warheads, the good Austrian tin fish held true and holed Blucher at 04:34.
All that is above ground of the secret Oscarborg torpedo battery. The six tubes themselves are below ground and were manned by reservists that morning that had never fired a live torpedo before!
She rolled over and sank by 0730 in 210 feet, with heavy loss of life. This allowed the the Norwegian King and government from being taken prisoner, enabling them to escape to the north and eventually Britain. In all, the Blucher had only been in service six months and 18 days.
The guns, torpedo tubes, and the Blucher, are still in their respective places as on that fateful morning 75 years ago today. That’s a lesson to never underestimate decades old but simple gear, especially if you park your brand new cruisers right in front of it.
Beginning as early as May 11, 1940, resistance groups of Frenchmen and women trapped behind German lines took it upon themselves to continue the fight to throw the “Boche” out.
Terming themselves the “Maquisards” (People that live in the “maquis” in the woods and mountains) these guerrillas fought with whatever they had at hand and went underground whenever things got too hot, often abandoning their weapons if they could not cache them for future use. This meant that very soon, the small supply of French military and sporting weapons that had been in the hands of the resistance were running short. This left them either having to capture guns from the occupiers (which happened), or get them from outside friends.
That’s where airdrops of STEN guns and other arms from the Allies came in handy. Taking only about a half dozen man-hours to build, the STEN cost about $10 to make (about $130 a pop in today’s money– cheaper than a Hi Point pistol!), it was cheap enough to literally give away.
Most wartime STEN guns were built by female British factory workers
This meant they could be made in great volume and some 5 million Stens were cranked out officially during World War Two (as well as an estimated million more in underground shops).
British Special Operations Executive (SOE) units and Jedburgh teams with the U.S. OSS Special Operations (SO) branch fanned out across Europe, making contact with those who could use a delivery or ten of high explosives and STEN guns with the idea of setting Hitler’s Europe on fire.
The French received more deliveries than any other group, making the cheap submachine gun an iconic weapon of the beret-clad insurgent.
Resistance Learning about the Sten
Resistant of the Finistère region armed with a British Sten, 1944 Click to big up
Parisian partisan with his STEN helping liberate the City of Light in 1944.
homemade stenguns
A French resistance maquis armed with a STEN gun shelters behind a truck while taking on German snipers in the town of Dreux
It wasn’t just the French resistance that was armed with the STEN. Here, Dule Bey Allemani, an Albanian resistance chief, poses with his STEN gun provided by Allied SOE agents in July 1944
Danish resistance fighters in 1945 –Note the mix of arms to include a BREN, a STEN, a number of Danish Army M1880/85 revolvers, and a couple of very Darth Vaderish Royal Danish army helmets
Termed the FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur) later in the war, by 1944 they counted some 400,000 under arms, with nearly a quarter of the members of some units equipped solely with ‘the plumber’s nightmare.’
This of course, helped them acquire some much larger and better made gear as well.
French resistance fighter holding his captured German STG 44. I wouldn’t trade a STEN for anything but…
