Good News Everyone!

Okay... for all you militaria nuts:
You now buy have an opportunity to possess serious piece of history.
Cue Professor.

Below, one of many photos of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Naval Historical society has kindly named the foreground vessels. The big high-value-unit you'll find astern would be the lovely and talented USS Pennsylvania.














Of course the two tin cans foreground got hosed. Pennsylvania was only slightly damaged.
In fact, here she is a few years later - bombarding Guam.
But this isn't about the ship or the two demolished destroyers... this is about the machine that helped Pennsylvania survive the day.
You can spot him... it... she?
I'm gonna go with "it".
There... it is just to the right of the Pennsylvania in the photo above.
It's a "whirley crane"; so called because it could rotate through a complete circle.
And, during the attack, it was operated by one George Walters.
You can read about him on the link. It's an impressive story.
He was, let me add, a civilian and I'd bet a union "Operating Engineers" member.
The crane however...
Is likely to be this one: An entire shipyard's coming up for auction on Wednesday - including this jewel. Run on out to Troutdale now.













Ain't she a beauty?
Now the morning paper reckons the big unit will bring in between $10,000 and $20,000.
Of course, those are heavy equipment prices.
That is why you have an edge. See, no one seems to know what a bitchen'cool thing this is.
So, here's the plan: buy it at these giveaway prices - which ain't bad even if you happen to own a shipyard or are thinking of starting one - then sell it on the crazy, Topsy-Turvy, militaria market.
If it sells... well then, maybe there are other old cranes for sale... ones that could be hauled down to the gravel pit for some... "combat points"?
At worst, hell... just put it back on the equipment market and watch the past fade away.
It's not like it's a real rarity like the Stanley Heading Machine.

Clear Your Schedule. This May Take A While...

The last post reminded me of how cool I thought the Vietnam, gun-trucks were back then but it made me regret that the only one I touched on was Eve of Destruction.
She is the only surviving example. However, lots of vet's groups have put together replicas of those they recall using surplus 5-tons and deuce-and-a-half's.
Eve wasn't the only one named for a current piece of pop culture so here we go for a look at the tunes that were on the minds of those Transportation Corps guys in the late '60's and early '70's.


This song may not have been the inspiration for the rig's name if the guys had seen this video. Love the stripes.




Next up...pop country. Jimmy Dean the sausage king.



Okay, of course Canned Heat is the name of the band. They did take their name from "Canned Heat Blues" but the band was what the lads were thinking about.

Since there's no specific song... I get to pick.
At Woodstock, August, 1969.


The one in the middle, Uncle Meat.




Iron Butterfly. Yeah, there's an interesting irony to that name but it's another band name and I'm not embedding their "signature" work (Life is just too short). You can find it (assuming you've got time to kill) here.


This Coasters tune was covered by the Rolling Stones in '65 or so. No vid for it though.


Okay, now a novelty song...


Of course, both sides were represented.
Lame, I know.














































It was number one in '65 and Rolling Stone's 2nd best (Second best?) song of all time.




Now one from the man who country music is measured against (and found wanting), former Marine, George Jones.
Anyone who doesn't agree is probably a Ted Nugent fan and blind to greatness. I'll be in prayer for them... with no great hope.
From the Mercury Records years, The Possum's drunkest, craziest period and when he wrote most of his best songs.

This one was written by fellow Beaumont, Texas boy J. P."Big Bopper" Richardson.

To conclude; back in the day I had a photo of a truck bearing this name. Rolling Stone notwithstanding, this is one of the best songs of all time - and the first use of the sitar in rock and roll (1964).
To the lost gun truck named Paint It Black...

Some things never change...

My big brother and I got a clock-radio in the mid-sixties (Clock-radios were a big thing. It's a clock - and a radio!).
This was one of the songs I remember listening to while I was going to sleep... forty-six years ago.
I posted it earlier when I talked about one of the gun-trucks from that mess in Vietnam - and there is a connection.
The vids not on that post anymore but this is the same one - intro by Jerry Lewis.

Barry's gone Christer on us but... good on him.
We're out of Iraq (Where we had no business to begin with) and all the troops are coming home.
All that are left are mercenaries... Oops, my bad. I meant rent-a-cops. No, that's not right either.
Okay, now I've got it! "Security Contractors", one of Little George's better ideas.
Let's check out Evie again... when she had it goin' on.

Hey! Conversion notwithstanding - Barry's still in the game.
Last March.

Pearl Harbor Day

Yet another date commemorating a "surprise" attack that we were actually expecting.
To be fair, what we were thinking would happen was that Clark Field in the Philippines would be bombed. Nobody said anything about destroying a fleet at anchor.
'Course, had people been paying attention, someone may have pointed out that the Japanese did the exact same thing to start the Russo-Japanese War in 1904.
No! The Port Authur attack was different. Way different. They used destroyers and torpedo boats to knock the shit out of the Russian fleet... at anchor.
See, the question is like apples and... some other kind of apples.
And, since a pompous, morbidly obese ass - who also happens to be a doctor of history - recently alluded to America's besting of "...Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan... in just 3 years and 8 months" - that would of course be the - salamander, good ole' Newt (The pastry who would be King) - I'd like to bring two facts to your attention:
On 12/7/41; China had been at war with Japan for four and a half years, the Poles and Britain (Canada, New Zealand and Australia included) for two years.
Plus, after Pearl Harbor, although we did kick serious butt in the Pacific at Coral Sea and Midway, our ground war didn't start 'till August, '42 at Guadalcanal.
Just chipping away at the old "American Exceptionalism" canard (Unless you mean "exceptionally egocentric").
Okay, enough reality regarding the country we love.
This AM, Harry Morgan died (At 96 so - as the Brits would say: "He had a good innings").
Bill Gannon, yin to Jack Webb's yang - everyone's favorite CO, Colonel Sherman Potter and Marshall Tibedeaux in "The Shootist".

That's him on the right... the one who's not John Wayne.
This date is also the sixty-seventh aniversary of the sinking of the tin-can, USS Ward.
The first in a wartime, accelerated building program, Mare Island, CA - summer, 1918.
She's also famous for something else that happened on this date.
I prattled about it a year ago last February.
Here's my ravings, complete.
"I'm a lazy man"
Krusty the Clown.
There she is, "Liberty Destroyer # 139, still in utero.
We won't contemplate the abuses that a term like "Liberty Destroyer" would undergo in the present lexicon. It would be a good screen name for someone though, someone like Obama!
The Baby, later christened "USS Ward DD-139" was notable for two reasons.
First, she was the first ship constructed in an accelerated, wartime program at the Mare Island Navy Yard in California.
Secondly, as the baby announcement above states (I'll leave that analogy now), she was built in record time; 17 1/2 days from laying the keel to launching. May 15, to June 1. July 18, 1918, she was commissioned. Eight weeks from "a ship on paper" to one that's floating in the ocean flying the ensign. Not bad.
Now, a photo album:
































She's the one in the middle.
Fast forward to 1941.
Below, the gun and crew that fired the first, American shots of the Second World War.

"A Shot for Posterity -- The USS Ward's number three gun and its crew-cited for firing the first shot the day of Japan's raid on Hawaii. Operating as part of the inshore patrol early in the morning of December 7, 1941, this destroyer group spotted a submarine outside Pearl Harbor, opened fire and sank her. Crew members are R.H. Knapp - BM2c - Gun Captain, C.W. Fenton - Sea1c - Pointer, R.B. Nolde - Sea1c - Trainer, A.A. De Demagall - Sea1c - No. 1 Loader, D.W. Gruening - Sea1c - No. 2 Loader, J.A. Paick - Sea1c - No. 3 Loader, H.P. Flanagan - Sea1c - No. 4 Loader, E.J. Bakret - GM3c - Gunners Mate, K.C.J. Lasch - Cox - Sightsetter." (quoted from the original 1942-vintage caption)
This gun is a 4"/50 type, mounted atop the ship's midships deckhouse, starboard side.


















And, a photo of the same gun, displayed at the Minnesota State Capitol (The Ward was crewed largely with men from the Minnesota Naval Reserve).


















Time marched on for the little ship that could.
Photo below, a representative bunch of the enlisted, ship's force displaying her "scoreboard".


















The photo's caption at the LOC:

"Crewmen pose with their ship's battle "scoreboard", soon after the Biak Invasion, circa June 1944. Nearly all of these men had served in Ward since the beginning of the War, and were present when she sank a Japanese midget submarine just outside Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941.
The original caption, released by Commander Seventh Fleet on 4 August 1944, reads: "Sansapor, Dutch New Guinea, falls to the Allied Forces, July 30, 1944. One might almost say - Sansapor falls to the boys from St. Paul, Minn. - as all but two of these men come from that city and the entire group has shipped together since Pearl Harbor, with the actions and results shown on their banner. As a matter of fact, they are believed to have fired the first offensive shot of the war in the Pacific, while on patrol against Japanese subs. They are L/R: (bottom row) J.L. Spratt, MM2/c; A.J. Fink, CM2/c; O.S. Ethier, MM1/c; C.W. Fenton, BM1/c; D.R. Pepin, SM1/c; J.G. LeClair; SOM2/c; F.V. Huges, SOM2/c. (Top Row) R.B. Nolde, SF1c; W.G. Grip, BM2c; H.F. Germarin, S1c; H.J. Harris, MM1c; H.K. Paynter, CMoMM; J.K. Lovsted, CMMM; W.H. Duval, CCS, (of San Diego); I.E. Holley, CSK (of Los Angeles); W.S. Lehner, SC1c; F.J. Bukrey, CM1c; and F.L. Fratta, MM1c."

Alas, everything comes to an end.
USS Ward was sunk by a Kamikaze attack near Leyte in the Phillippines, three years to the day after her moment of glory at Pearl Harbor.















So's we're not bummed out, here's a great picture of some soldiers chowing down on deck.
Ultimate coolness; riveted deck plates.

The Big Guys... and Gals

Really big ones.
See here:
"List of the largest cannons by caliber"
Notice, you're up to number eleven before you even hit the 20th century with what we consider the serious biggies; like those of the Yamoto at 18.1 inches.
The ten listed first are seriously old-school.
Just as a matter of house-keeping we'll dispense with The Tsar Cannon, the largest, with a bore of thirty-five inches and change, because it was only fired - if at all - as a ceremonial gesture.
It's the biggest but it exists as a novelty, not a tactical weapon.
The first of the runners-up: Plumhart von Steyr, of the Hapsburg Empire.
Okay, obviously Plumhart is more of a mortar than a cannon but we'll overlook that in light of the fact that it, like those following, is a bombard.
As the name implies, these monsters were used to bombard... fortress walls.
Once the range was found, simply loading and firing the same charge (30+# of black powder - for this gun) and the same 1500# projo (chiseled out of rock) again and again 'till, over time and six to eight rounds a day, would bring about the collapse of the wall and the fortress was then breached.
The etiquette of the day (14th to 15th century) held that, when the walls were breached, the defenders would give up and the siege would be lifted... theoretically.
Anyway, the above pictured, ugly bad boy sported a bore of 32 1/4"
Next up - at least of those extant is Dulle Griet coming in at just under twenty-six inches.
Her name comes from a Flemish folk tale "Mad Meg" (See her here: courtesy of Pieter Bruegel the elder)
On this gun I'm going to talk construction.
Old Plumhart above is the largest, wrought-iron bombard in the world (the Tsar Gun is cast bronze.) but this one actually has stats regarding what it was made of.
First, let me comment on the color: In the story of Mons Meg (patience) it was written that the British painted all of their royal cannon with red lead as a rust preventative.
That jarring, international-orange slathered on the above is the stuff. The bane of boatswain's mates since the days of wooden ships and iron men.
Back to bidness; You know why they're called gun barrels? 'Cause they used to be built like barrels - staves and hoops.
Old Meg consists of 32 sticks of wrought iron, 16 feet long, precisely beveled (Just like barrel staves) and held together with 61, wrought-iron rings, each of which was forged individually, welded into a circular shape just shy of the required diameter, heated white-hot and driven down over the tube.
The video at the end illustrates to concept on a smaller gun with a rolled barrel.

The structure can be seen clearly in the above photo. This is a bombard with no pedigree listed with the photo but we'll assume that the crew of men who lovingly tended her must have called her something.
The first thing to notice is the staves. Beveled - but not forge-welded. Imagine forge-welding a sixteen foot strip of iron to thirty-one others; previously welded. It wouldn't have happened.
Each of the rings were forged separately and driven on and that is where the strength of the gun lays.

Wrought iron is very cool stuff in that it has a grain - like wood.
Due to the way it's made (Was made. Now it's only available as old scrap or as a boutique product) it has a linear crystalline structure, further enhanced by microscopic slag inclusions (Also linear - between the crystals).
The end result: a very tough metal (non-brittle) with excellent tensile strength - in line with the grain - just like wood.
The staves of the gun were structurally functioning mostly to keep the barrel rigid and to hold the shape while the rings were driven on.
The rings, being forged and welded at the ends, retained all the tensile strength of the iron because simply punching the appropriate hole in a disc of of wrought iron would leave cross-grain - poor tensile strength.
Of course, none of this means anything with modern steel. It has no built-in direction even though some producers of overpriced, under-qualitied knives (Cold Steel) seem to think it does.
Which brings us to the crux of the biscuit and the reason why this is such a logical means of construction.
Not to say that modern cannon should be built this way. it's just that the more up-town technique, casting seems so much more sophisticated.
They both worked - many times over. The afore-mentioned Tsar cannon was cast from bronze.
The problem with a cast cannon is that the pressure is contained by just one unit. A monolithic, massive unit to be sure but one whose interior is invisible. A giant slag inclusion in a cast cannon could ruin every body's day if it blew out.

But, there's a lot to be said for a system where stress is parceled out in bits and pieces.
Case in point: number seven on the list with a bore of only twenty inches, "Mons Meg" (Another Meg!), so called because she was built in the Belgian city of Mons.
Mons, you may recall is where the BEF first butted heads with Kaiser Willie's lads during that golden August of 1914. The meeting which precipitated a most spectacular and orderly - although ignominious - retreat.
A seventy-thousand man contingent of the world's most professional army going against the second largest army on earth... while said 2nd largest was simultaneously fighting the 3rd largest to the south and bracing for the onslaught of the largest army off to the east. Good times...
Anyway, Mons Meg was put together in 1449 and, stories differ as to how, ended up in the possession of the Scots.
They used her to hurl big rocks at the English for a time and she served admirably.
However, she eventually experienced a blow-out.
"The gun was fired in 1680 to celebrate the arrival of James Duke of Albany and York, later King James II of England and VII of Scotland"
To be fair; the old girl was on her 240th birthday so it would make sense to figure she'd be a bit fragile.
The rumor is: the shot was loaded by an English cannoneer who may have overloaded it due out of jealousy since Mother England had no such boss ordnance.
The ball was found (According to the story) two klicks away.

Here's the damage.
Hardly a catastrophic failure. It broke one ring - didn't even bend (Looks like) the staves.
Now, the explosion of the "Peacemaker" aboard the USS Princeton in 1844 was a catastrophic failure and a good illustration of the linear vs transverse strength of wrought iron,
If Mons Meg's mishap had occurred in the heat of the moment instead of just at a ceremony, this old bitch could have still have thrown rounds down range.
Okay, I've illustrated the principle proving that a lot of little, weak parts can be better than just one big... part.

Here's a down and dirty demo of the making of a wrought iron cannon. It's a little one so the tube is a rolled sheet but the reinforcing rings are identical.
The comments are hilarious. "Why didn't they just cast it in one piece?" Like that's easier.
On the subject of of cast guns, we'll touch on "The Dardanelles Gun" to finish up.
The Dardanelles are, of course, the choke point between the Sea of Marma and the Black Sea. A bit to the west is the Hellespont, home of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
As long as there have been hotly contested chunks of real estate in the world, this has been one of them.

Anyway, the Dardanelles gun was cast - inspired by those cast by a Hungarian named Urban whose bombards knocked down the walls on Constantinople in 1453 thus making it Istanbul - in 1464.
The shift from Constaninople (formerly Byzantium) to Istanbul is lucidly explained in this video by They Might Be Giants (They did the theme song for "Malcom in the Middle" - and they might actually be giants.)
So Constantine's city fell and those Godless Muslims covered up all the mosiacs in the Hagia Sophia but... to the victors go the cool buildings.

About ten years later, this unit was commissioned.
24 7/8" bore, 18 tons (both chunks) and wicked bad.
It was, for a time set up to overlook the straits, the better to shell ships that may not be welcome in the Black Sea.
Fast forward from 1464 to 1807.
The Dardanelles Operation wherein the British thought to show those rag-heads who was boss and got their ass soundly whipped by this old antique as well as some of her sisters.
Twenty-eight Brit sailors dead and a solid Ottoman victory.
What I love about this old thing is this: One of the innovations brought to the table by the gun's designer/maker, Munir Ali, was the two piece construction seen above.

And that is where I fall in love with her.
Check out the picture. The two pieces (Probably 9 tons each as the smaller is the chamber/breech and contains a larger quantity of solid metal.) just screw together!
Now, I'm not throwing rocks at Munir Ali and his innovation at all. It's just that... I can't get my head wrapped around this concept where two parts of a whole - are threaded together - weighing nine tons apiece.
Just pick 'em up and screw 'em together. Righty - tighty, lefty - loosey.

Yeah, yeah. That's what those handy rims are for - levers and such.
Or a twenty-foot pipe wrench and teflon tape on a roll like paper towels.
Okay, gettin' silly.
Me, out.

Agents of Change... Chemical Agents That is... And Unintended Consequences

Well... unless you've been in a coma of late, you should be aware of the sudden uptick in the use of... aerosol, crowd disbursement technology.
Earlier, we saw good ole' "Tony Baloney" almost two months ago doin' his best "violation-of-everybody's-pepper-spray-protocol" coupled with ... "I thought the Bill of Rights" started with number two" shtick.
No, Tony... you're number two.
The new poster boy for the "repressive, fascist asshole, drunk on his own marginal power" movement is the fat cunt you see to the left.
That is one Lt. John Pike, a "campus charlie" (an old UofM term from my childhood) at UC Davis.
Fat boy's antics are now broadcast all over the world so I'm not going to go over them again but, if you want to get in touch with Fat John - to, I don't know... chew the fat, talk about how much people you don't like, suck - Here's his info - courtesy of Anonymous; the people no one should piss off - even though they may in their parent's garage on their sixth Mountain Dew of the night:
Phone: 530-752-3989
Cell: 530-979-0184
japikeiii@ucdavis.edu
Address: 4005 Cowell Blvd, Apt 616. Davis, CA 95618-6017
I Googled this place. It's up for sale! No price listed but, 120 units... total square-footage... 1000 times that ergo, the average apt. size is... 1000 sg ft.
This leads me to infer that boy isn't married... at 38. Unless Mrs. Pike is willing to live in a matchbox with an over-bearing dick.
Point is: He's single girls, possibly not for long. I guess he has tons of pizzas delivered to his house.Lt. Pike is quite the item now. There is an entire site where you can post you own version of his behavior at UC Davis. Note, I've helpfully provided a starting point for any who like to see him pepper-spraying... I don't know - Ayn Rand.
Anyway, enough of flipping shit at two abusive, cock-sucking cops who bring disgrace to every decent State Trooper, Sheriff's Deputy, and Police Officer in the... world.
This chemical agent thing is taking off. It's now an aid to shopping - if you can believe that.
Yeah, someone cuts you off in the check-out line, hose 'em down. You know: it is essentially a "food product".
And she's right. Why, if I was to pull a leg-of-lamb out of my freezer and - I don't know - beat her dumb-blond brains out with it - it's still essentially a food product.
Am I right? Hell, if I liked lamb, I could cook it up and chow down. No murder weapon... I mean food product.
Back to another seeming "food product". I say 'seeming' because mustard gas has nothing to do with the condiment other than, in it's original, Great War formulation (ie sulphur mustard) that's what it looked like. It was later fine-tuned into nastier versions such as nitrogen mustard which we'll bring up later.














Unlike its predecessors, chlorine and phosgene, it wasn't actually a gas.
While chlorine and phosgene were easily detectable, especially chlorine, and were readily dispersed by wind - to the extent that such dispersal could come right back at the user - mustard was a "persistent agent".
Being an oily yellow liquid resembling diesel fuel, it was spread out in a cloud of droplets at the impact of the shell carrying it.
Where it landed on exposed skin it produced severe chemical burns. In the eyes - blindness, lungs - ultimately, pneumonia.
And, it would stay in the ground, on surfaces and in water in shell holes, remaining active for several days to weeks.
For example, the owner of the ass shown in the drawing did nothing but sit on the ground were mustard was present - eleven days prior to modeling for the pic.
This poor slob just put on his glove not knowing that some was on the back of it. The photos show the aftermath: One day, two days, one week.
Nasty shit. The one consolation was that virtually no chemical agents were used during the Second War. The Japanese dropped some mustard on Chinese and the Luftwaffe dropped some on Poland very early in the war but that was it.
Fact is, Hitler had been temporarily blinded due to mustard gas in WW1 and didn't want to use it ever.
This didn't stop its manufacture, by the thousands of tons. The US, in particular made copious quantities for use in retaliation should Fritz forget himself.

"Umatilla Chemical Depot sends off last shipment of weapons"

Just last month.

The black, wavy line is the Columbia River. Portland lies a couple hundred miles to the west.
The depot itself is the brown, semi-trapezoid at the center. The town of Umatilla is in the upper right.
All those beautiful green circles - fields irrigated with center-pivot systems.
So, stuff grows there. People live there.
I've driven within a mile or two many times as this it the spot to cross over to Washington when going to the old homeland.
Then, there are things such as the title of this blog post:

"Umatilla Chemical Depot Mustard Gas Leaks, The Business of Destroying Chemical Weapons Stockpiles"


Don't sweat it. According to the map above, you only had to be five miles or more away to not be in the "Immediate Response Zone."
In the event of catastrophic failure the big worry wouldn't be the mustard so much as all the nerve agents also stored on site.
So, being this is in Washington's and Oregon's backyard, it's good that our inept, inefficient government finally got around to destroying (At great expense - after having produced it at similar expense decades ago) this stupid, nasty shit.
About fucking time.
Ultimate amount finally shit canned: 37,000 tons.
In conclusion; remember nitrogen mustard?
During WW2, the US Navy secretly transported thousands of artillery shells to Europe - just in case.
On November 18, 1943, the Germans staged an air raid on the port city of Bari in Italy.
Eighteen ships were lost including the Liberty Ship, SS John Harvey which just happened to be carrying "...2,000 M47A1 World War I type mustard gas bombs, each of which held 60-70 lb of sulfur mustard."
Several hundred Navy personnel were affected and the government covered it up until the war's end.
However, the medical officers treating the survivors noticed a decreased number of "lymphocytes" whatever those are.
This information was paired with research into medicinal uses for nitrogen mustard which eventually led to Mustine, the first chemo-therapy drug.

Time Does Fly....

Thirty-six years ago tonight; Nov. 18 1975, the Hammersmith Odeon in London.


Update:
Just ten years earlier... Them, Van Morrison on vocals.
Ten years and about six months. April 1965.
My pickup was three years old.