Rusty's Naval/Military History thread

[Geo]

He claimed he was being oppressed or something...

Hmm... A trusted pilot of one of the few modern airplanes a fledgling Polish Air Force owned?

[Buster's Uncle]

[shrugs]  My hindbrain is trying to tell me it was something about his family...

[Geo]

You sure you're not mixing up this pilot's tale and Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October"?

[Buster's Uncle]

Never read the book, and I'm pretty sure I read about this long before the movie existed.

[Buster's Uncle]

Artifacts Ahoy! Old Cannon, Saddam's Gold AK-47 Among Naval Treasures
LiveScience.com
By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer  13 hours ago



A close view of a gold-plated AK-47 captured in Iraq.



The U.S. Navy is organizing its deep archives — and highlighting bizarre artifacts such as a gold-plated AK-47 assault rifle and a mini-cannon dating back more than three centuries.

The Collection Management Division of the Naval History and Heritage Command is conducting an "artifact baseline reset," a detailed process that involves combing through the entire naval archives to make sure each item is correctly labeled, catalogued and preserved. Most of these items are not on public display, but part of the process includes photographing each artifact and putting nearly every photo online. The result is a fascinating array of items, from guns and ammunition to medals and even model ships.

"Our goal is to see more of our artifacts being used to illustrate stories about the Navy's history and heritage, and to have these images available to the public once they are all digitized," Karen France, the curator branch head of the division, said in a statement. [See Photos of the Naval Artifacts]


Curious collection

The Navy's collection includes artifacts from many of the country's conflicts, including medals from the Revolutionary War, a case of nastily sharp tools that were used to perform amputations during the Civil War, and even a conch-shell lamp painted with an image of the USS Enhance MSO 437, a mine-sweeping ship that was launched in 1952.

The jewel of the collection, however, is the Navy's set of historic weapons, France said. This collection dates back to the late 1800s, when Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren set up the Navy's first research and development program. Dahlgren liked having an archive of old weapons for reference when inventing new ones.



Julie Kowalsky holds up an experimental minigun designed by Capt. John A. Dahlgren. This mini-machine gun never went into production.


"We have weapons that are pre-American Revolution to current operations, and that collection also includes weapons made for the Navy, its allies and adversaries," France said.

Among the oldest weapons is "San Bruno," a 6-pound (2.7 kilograms) bronze cannon cast in 1686 for King Charles II of Spain. The cannon was named after an 11th-century monk and scholar, Saint Bruno.

Another oddity in the collection is a gold-plated AK-47 assault rifle from Iraq, likely used in formal ceremonies under dictator Saddam Hussein. U.S. forces seized the gun during the Iraq War.


Military experiments

Other weapons in the collection were designed for the Navy itself. These include a .69 caliber percussion rifle designed by Dahlgren himself and an experimental mini-machine gun that never reached the production stage.

Some items in the archive are decidedly low-tech, such as a ceramic grenade taken from Japan during World War II. These grenades were made near the end of the war, when metals were scarce. Artifacts from the Vietnam War include a left sandal, made from an old car tire, which was worn by a Vietcong soldier.

Several items in the collection reflect recent history. The archive holds a crumpled laptop that survived the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon, as well as fragments of stone and window glass from the building.

http://news.yahoo.com/artifacts-ahoy-old-cannon-saddams-gold-ak-47-095850996.html

[Rusty Edge]

( wiki check) Dahlgren. Yes. One and the same. Lincoln's appointment to the Ordinance Bureau.( that part I didn't remember) His son died in a cavalry raid on Richmond, designed to capture Jefferson Davis and possibly Robert E Lee.

Dahlgren designed a large cast iron canon which was used in the USS Monitor. It had a soda bottle shape. They didn't use it at full charge because one exploded during testing. Maybe they wanted something American in this new warship design. Politics triumphed over design.

Ericson had specified a band gun made of steel. ( think of a collapsed telescope) It's a barel within a barrel approach. The reinforcing barrels are expanded by heat, placed in position, and shrunk onto the main barrel, sort of like they used to do with steel tires on wooden spoked wagon wheels.

[Geo]

AFAIK, the Monitor design was drawn in the United States? Its designer already lived there at the time.

[Rusty Edge]

I don't remember. It's been about 40 years since I read a book on Ericson.
All I remember is that he was shopping his designs in Europe, and getting rejections like Christopher Columbus.

[Buster's Uncle]

UK's Royal Air Force Recreates Iconic D-Day Photos
LiveScience.com
By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer  26 minutes ago



A wartime Mustang aircraft from 2 (Army Cooperation) Squadron in flight (library image).



An RAF Tornado GR4 flies over the Normandy coast ahead of the D-Day 70th anniversary commemorations.



Top: RAPTOR electro-optical image from a modern-day Tornado GR4 and bottom: F-24 photographic mosaic created from a Mustang sortie in 1944 during the D-Day landings.



In honor of this month's 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, pilots from Britain's Royal Air Force recreated the first images taken of the fateful landings on the beaches of Normandy by their counterparts during World War II.

Two Tornado jets used modern technology to recreate the images of the French beaches Gold, Juno, Utah and Sword, where the Allies landed on June 6, 1944. On that day, Air Commodore Andrew Geddes, flying a 2 (AC) Squadron Mustang, snapped the first pictures of the D-Day landings. Two other aircraft, piloted by Flight Lieutenant R. H. G. Weighill and Flying Officer H. J. Shute, were also flying overhead at the moment when the Allies first landed on the Normandy beaches, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defence.

The squadron flew 36 sorties, or single-aircraft missions, on D-Day in order to monitor for naval bombardment. Almost 70 years later, RAF Wing Commander Jez Holmes flew one of the Tornados over France.

"After imaging the D-Day beaches from 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) using the same type of reconnaissance pod that we were flying with in Afghanistan only a fortnight ago, we flew down the beaches at 1,000 feet (300 meters), replicating Air Commodore Geddes' flight," Holmes told the U.K. Ministry of Defence. "It is difficult to imagine the apocalyptic vision that [Commodore Geddes] was faced with."

During World War II, the British squadron took these images using large, bulky cameras attached to the bottom of the aircraft. More than 30 flights would have been required to produce a panorama of the beaches of Normandy. Today, these images can be captured in a single flight, according to the Ministry of Defence.

Today, Tornado jets are equipped with a suite of precision-guided weapons and some of the best reconnaissance sensors, including the RAPTOR (short for reconnaissance airborne pod for Tornado), which can read the time on the face of London's iconic Big Ben clock from the Isle of Wight, located nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away.

The 70th anniversary of D-Day falls on Friday, June 6.

http://news.yahoo.com/uks-royal-air-force-recreates-iconic-d-day-150344139.html

[Rusty Edge]

Well, I haven't added anything because I took a break from the Mosquito book to read a historical  book that's too controversial to bring up here. I'm back into the Mosquito book, but the reading is pretty dry.

Not much to share, except that even an anchored ship is hard to sink with a heavy bomber from high altitude.

[Rusty Edge]

They outfitted some Mosquitos with a 57mm, 6 pounder canon, for sub hunting purposes.  It was called the "Tse Tse" , and worked as well as anything else.  By 1945, The Battle of the Atlantic was won, and the German surface navy was hiding in the fjords and striking at convoys to Russia.

  The fjord walls posed a danger to aircraft. So did cables strung across the fjords, which were invisible. German spotters, radar, anti-aircraft batteries and searchlights became more concentrated as the Reich collapsed into itself.  German fighters waited until the Mosquitos headed home to intercept them. It saved scarce fuel, gave the ground gunners free reign, and damaged mosquitos were easier to catch than fresh ones.   Losses mounted.

[Geo]

Cunning Krauts back then?

[Rusty Edge]

Cunning Krauts back then?

I think the Romans established that in the Tuborg forest.  The Germans were also using freighters transformed into anti-aircraft batteries. Sort of like a Q-Ship, but made to defend against airplanes rather than subs.   What appeared to be a weakly defended convoy could turn out to be a death trap.

[Green1]

Rusty, do you get into historical minis? That seems to be the rage down here and has chased off any RPGs that used to be dominant. Sad, too. The RPGers were much better partiers than the war gamers.

I have seen A LOT of naval combat minis battles. Particularly WW2 and 1700s era wooden. Mostly WW2.

[Rusty Edge]

Rusty, do you get into historical minis? That seems to be the rage down here and has chased off any RPGs that used to be dominant. Sad, too. The RPGers were much better partiers than the war gamers.

I have seen A LOT of naval combat minis battles. Particularly WW2 and 1700s era wooden. Mostly WW2.

No. Not averse, I just lived rural most of my life.  My wife has cats, and they like to turn stuff like that into toys. So I don't see myself necessarily doing that, but it might be fun to watch.