I would like to wish readers here in the United States a happy Independence Day, our nation’s 250th year.
Over the years I have tried to find Independence Day-related things still on topic for the 4th of July but am short of new ideas. Instead, below are two things related to writings years ago when I was first starting wwiiafterwwii.
Long ago I wrote on how the converted WWII battleship USS Mississippi (BB-41 / AG-128) was used to develop postwar naval missiles. Over the years I also covered how the French navy used captured German SAM technology and the integration of postwar weapons onto WWII US Navy hulls.
This will generally exclude project “Bumblebee”, the WWII effort which years later yielded multiple surface-to-air missiles for the US Navy. It will exclude WWII ideas cancelled while the war was still underway, or early post-WWII SAM projects like Oriole. The weapons below are forgotten “also-rans” from WWII which managed to survive postwar budget cuts but in the end never made it to service.
(Lark surface-to-air missile being test fired from the converted WWII seaplane tender USS Norton Sound several years after the war’s end.)
(A highly modified layout proposed for the unfinished battleship USS Kentucky after WWII, centered on quadruple smoothbore turrets for the unusual Zeus guided anti-aircraft gun round.)
I have a feeling some readers might find this the most boring thing I have covered. For those interested in this niche topic, I hope it is of value.
One of the weirdest idiosyncrasies of American law is that now in the 2020s, it is easier – far easier in fact – for a private citizen to import a WWII German 98k or WWII Japanese Arisaka into the USA; than it is to bring a WWII American M1 Garand back into America.
(WWII poster showing a M1 Garand rifle.) (original 1942 art by John Falter)
(M1 Garands in a Springfield Can, these being of the South Korean holdings which are now marooned there in the 2020s.) (photo via SWAT magazine)
The hydrogen peroxide-based Walter drive system for submarines was one of WWII Germany’s more exotic technologies. In three nations after WWII, it was attempted to capitalize on this.
(HMS Meteorite, the former German U-1407, three years after WWII’s end.)
(S-99, the lone Soviet “Whale”, the ultimate advancement of the WWII German AIP technology.)
This is a look at certain WWII weapons either captured on the battlefield by Israel, or seized by Israeli police. It is not exhaustive, as Israel has either used, or had used against it, pretty much every WWII weapon of the European theatre. Some things like German 98k rifles and MG-34 machine guns, or the ex-British destroyer captured at sea from Egypt, I already wrote on in wwiiafterwwii in previous years so I skipped over those. I hope the below will be informative on some other items.
(A British WWII Webley Mk.IV seized by Israeli police in Galilee during 2016.)
(Unusual Egyptian pairing of a BS-3 100mm field gun and T-34-85 tank, both WWII Soviet kit, captured by the Israeli army during 1973.)
This was an unusual incident during the Cold War era; an east bloc shipment of ex-German WWII weapons to a Latin American nation.
(A ship full of problems.)
(Guatemalan army officer with a WWII German le.IG 18 during the 1950s.)
(Militiamen of Guatemala’s Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil march with WWII German 98k rifles during 1996.) (photo by Carlos Sebastián)
During the early 1970s the US Navy tried out a unique experimental new method of preserving warships in reserve, aboard the decommissioned USS Betelgeuse (AK-260).
(photo from May 1972 issue of The Naval Reservist magazine)
I wish a Merry Christmas to all wwiiafterwwii readers, a few days early. Below is a Christmas card of the British XII Army of 1945, the first peacetime Christmas which Great Britain had since 1938.
This is a look at Cambodia’s use of WWII tanks and armored vehicles before the coming of the Khmer Rouge in 1975.
(A WWII M24 Chaffee tank of FANK, the Cambodian army, in battle at Koki Thom on 8 May 1970.) (Associated Press photo)
(The bitter end: up-gunned WWII M3A1 Whites during the last-ditch defense of Phnom Penh in late March 1975. The city fell to the Khmer Rouge three weeks later and the genocide began.)
Over the years I considered writing on this, but did not as there are other commentaries on the topic already. However some of them “mix things up” as to when and why these proposals were created, especially regarding Martin Marietta’s “Phase II” and the actual 1980s reactivations of the WWII Iowa class.
I hope that this may be of some value to show all the ideas in chronological order.
(USS New Jersey during WWII.) (photo via navsource website)
(USS New Jersey as the Interdiction Assault Ship proposal with ski jump flight decks and VLS.) (photo via US Naval Institute)
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