Among the bitter lessons learned during the costly American seizure of Japanese-occupied Tarawa in November 1943 was the need for ship-based close support in the interval between bombardment and a landing. Using the hull of the LCI (landing craft infantry) as a basis, the Navy devised the Landing Craft Support (Large) (Mark 3), or simply LCS. Entering service in 1944 and combat at Iwo Jima in February 1945, it packed the heaviest armament per ton of any warship, earning the sobriquet “Mighty Midget”. British Commonwealth forces also used it in Borneo, at Tarakan and Balikpapan.  

Of the 130 built, only five were lost—three sunk by Japanese Shinyo suicide motorboats in the Philippines and two falling victim to kamikaze aircraft off Okinawa. After supporting the Okinawa landings, the LCSs were fitted with radar and joined destroyers on picket duty against kamikaze attacks. It was while so engaged that Lieutenant Richard Miles McCool Jr., commander of LCS-122, saw the destroyer William D. Porter mortally stricken on June 10, 1945, by an Aichi D3A2, yet managed to rescue its crew without loss. The next evening two D3As hit LCS-122, but the seriously wounded McCool rallied his men to save their vessel and was subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor.   In 1949 the LCS was reclassified the LSSL (landing ship support large), and it continued to serve in Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts in foreign hands until 2007. One of two survivors discovered in Thailand is undergoing restoration to its World War II configuration at the Landing Craft Support Museum [usslcs102.org] in Vallejo, Calif.  

This story appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Military History magazine.

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In his new book Duel in the Deep (Naval Institute Press), author David Sears tells a story that he subtitles “The Hunters, the Hunted, and a High Seas Fight to the Finish.” The central incident is the tale of an outmoded four-stack destroyer, the USS Borie, and its intense fight with the German U-405 on October 31, 1943, a “swashbuckling, no-holds-barred brawl of cannons, machine guns, small arms, and even knives and spent shell casings.” Sears builds up to that that epic struggle by outlining the ebbs and flows of the Battle of the Atlantic, when Germany’s submersible craft attempted to starve Britain into submission and keep the Allies reeling by sinking the ships carrying necessary food and supplies across the Atlantic. In a high-stakes game of technological cat and mouse, both sides attempted to gain the upper hand in the contest with advanced technology and, on the Allied side, intensive codebreaking work.

Sears, who served in the U.S. Navy aboard a destroyer himself, uses diaries, letters, and contemporary newspaper interviews to bring his story to life. In this interview with World War II editor Tom Huntington, Sears talks about his book.

No larger collection of artillery had ever been brought to a war’s battlefields in the Western Hemisphere before the Civil War. More than 200,000 men, trained and educated like no other subset of soldiers in this war of amateurs, handled and operated these big guns.

The story continues that the Civil War changed the standards, rules, and results of artillery use, advancing technological, tactical, and other norms forward from the Napoleonic wars, with their smoothbore guns and inaccurate round shot, toward a present and future determined by rifled guns that could be expected to hit their targets with regularity. Artillery would dominate from here on, and the side that figured out how to use it best would surely be victorious.

Not so fast, says Earl J. Hess. The professor emeritus of history at Lincoln Memorial University and author of 30 books on the Civil War argues in his 2022 study Civil War Field Artillery: Promise and Performance on the Battlefield that these advances were overrated in determining the war’s outcome as well as the proper place of its artillery on the timeline of military history.

Let’s get right to the heart of it: The Civil War is often considered the “first modern war.” You argue that it was mostly a traditional one. Please explain. 

Anyone who views the Civil War as the first modern war has a very hard case to prove. In my view it overwhelmingly was closer to warfare during the Napoleonic era 50 years before than to World War I 50 years later. A Napoleonic soldier would have been quite comfortable on a Civil War battlefield, while a Civil War soldier would have been stunned by the battlefield created by the Great War of 1914–18. 

In light of that, what were the differences between the artillery forces of previous wars and those of the Civil War? 

Civil War artillery saw only relatively slight improvement over that used in the Napoleonic era. The biggest difference was rifling, which applied to only about half the pieces used during the Civil War. Yet, because mostly of problems with igniting long-range ordnance and problems with seeing targets at great distances, there is no proof that rifled artillery produced any noticeable results on Civil War battlefields other than the odd long-range shot that hit its target because the gun crew happened to be particularly good. 

What were the main improvements over the past? 

Another difference between Civil War artillery and that of previous decades was adding heavier ordnance to the mix. Six-pounders were phased out during the first half of the Civil War in favor of 10-pounders and 12-pounders. Also, the trend was toward eliminating all decorations and handles on the artillery tube because they caused weak points that could not resist the stress of firing as well. Sleek-looking designs, heavier ordnance, and lighter pieces for easier moving around were the trends evident by the 1850s and 1860s. All this amounts to an improvement on the age-old system of artillery, but not a revolutionary break from it. 

What were the greatest disappointments of Civil War artillery? 

Probably the greatest disappointment was the failure of rifled pieces to prove their worth on the battlefield. Their limitations became apparent to many. That is why about half the pieces used by both sides during the war still were smoothbore. Many gunners were convinced they were at least as good as the new rifles, or better. 

How much did the improvements and disappointments have to do with winning and losing the war? 

Civil War artillery failed to achieve more than a supporting role to infantry. It did not come to dominate the battlefield as would happen along the Western Front during World War I. Even in static campaigns like that at Petersburg, and despite the heavy concentration of artillery pieces along the 35-mile-long trench system at Petersburg and Richmond, the guns failed to provide a campaign-winning edge for either side. That does not mean they were unimportant, by any means. They could and did on occasion elevate their role on the battlefield to something like a decisive edge under the right circumstances. One could argue that Union guns did so on January 2, 1863, at Stones River, and Confederate guns did so at the Hornet’s Nest at Shiloh, for example. But far more common was their accomplishment in helping infantry hold a position, a much less prominent, though important, role. 

One of the issues you cover in your book is the conflict over control of the artillery between the artillery itself and the infantry. How important was that, and how did it resolve? 

Artillery was a supporting arm of the infantry, and to a lesser extent of the cavalry. It did not have the ability to operate independently, always needing support from foot or mounted troops. That is one of the reasons army culture considered it best to vest infantry commanders with the authority to command artillery. Batteries were assigned to infantry brigades and were under the infantry brigade commander’s orders and relied on his infantry brigade staff for their supplies as well. 

Some artillery officers complained of this arrangement for several reasons. The most prominent one was that it inhibited the concentration of artillery on the battlefield and thus robbed it of its potential to play a decisive role in combat. But more importantly, they complained that infantry brigade staff simply did not know how to supply batteries very well. Another important reason for their complaint was that dispersing the batteries to infantry units greatly limited advancement for artillery officers, most of whom could look forward to holding nothing higher than a captaincy of a battery. 

While historians have widely accepted the opinion of artillery officers without question, I argue that their complaint has only limited validity. The complaint about the inability to concentrate the guns to play a prominent role on the battlefield does not hold water. The most visible concentrations of guns, at Shiloh and Stones River, took place in armies that practiced dispersion of batteries to infantry brigades. The system was flexible. If infantry officers wanted to, they had no difficulty concentrating batteries for a specific job on the battlefield.

There must have been something to their complaints…

Their complaints were quite valid when it came to administrative control, rather than battlefield control. They needed their own staff to supply the batteries and to constantly train the men. 

By the midpoint of the Civil War, the major field armies of both sides began to group field artillery into units of their own, called artillery brigades in some armies and artillery battalions in others. Between battles, these units were under the control of an artillery officer appointed to his position, and he was responsible for supply and training. But during a battle, control of those units reverted to infantry commanders at the division or corps levels. This was not everything the artillery officers wanted, but it was more than they ever had before in American military history. Moreover, it essentially was the system used during the 20th century wars as well.

In the Civil War this arrangement improved the administration and upkeep of the artillery force, but it did not noticeably improve its battlefield performance, which was as good early in the war as it was later in the conflict. Even though some infantry officers foolishly ordered the guns about even though they knew nothing about how to use them, an equal number were keen students of artillery practice and could use the guns well on the battlefield.

There was a third group of infantry officers who knew little if anything about how to use artillery but were wise enough to allow their battery commanders a completely free hand in operating under fire. In other words, there is not such a clear-cut difference between the dispersion policy of 1861–62 and the concentration policy of 1863–65.

How should we think of the Civil War as it occupies the space between Napoleonic warfare and World War I? 

I do not see the Civil War as a transitional conflict between the Napoleonic wars and World War I so much as a minor variation on the Napoleonic model. The things that made the Great War the first truly modern conflict were largely or wholly absent in the Civil War. If that is transition, then one could say there was a huge leap across a big chasm between 1865 and 1914, but an easy step back from 1861 to 1815.

this article first appeared in civil war times magazine

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Land mines were used by all sides during the Vietnam War and caused significant casualties. In 1965 alone, more than one-third of U.S. Marine Corps casualties were caused by mines and explosive booby traps. A modern land mine is a concealed explosive device emplaced under, on, or even above the ground to kill or wound enemy troops, or destroy or disable vehicles.

The land mines of the Vietnam era were triggered by direct contact or command-detonated by wire. The most common contact triggers were pressure or pull (tripwire). Anti-personnel mines used a combination of blast and fragmentation effects. Most anti-vehicular mines used blast effect. Land mines are most effectively used in fixed defenses or for “area denial.” Rather than serving as a barrier to enemy movement, the purpose of a defensive minefield is to disrupt and slow an enemy’s advance and channelize him into pre-planned fields of fire and kill-zones.  

Why Land Mines?

Land mines were used by both sides in contested and remote areas. The U.S. deployed millions of air-dropped small anti-personnel “button mines” as part of the McNamara Line strategy to deter NVA infiltration into South Vietnam from North Vietnam and Laos. The explosive charge in the button mines decomposed quickly. Only slightly more effective were the BLU-43/B and BLU-44/B “Dragontooth” mines. The VC made extensive use of anti-personnel mines and booby traps in likely American/ARVN assembly areas, high ground, hedgerows, tree lines, shady areas, trail junctions, and fence lines and gates.

The VC normally did not have enough material to mine an entire fence line. U.S. troops quickly learned to bypass the gates and batter down the fence at some distance from the gate. Yet all too often a later patrol would assume that an already battered-down section of the fence was clear.

The VC, however, were highly disciplined about keeping their mines under surveillance. As soon as one patrol passed through a cleared area, the VC would move in and mine the gap. The VC were methodical about marking their mines so that their troops or local villagers would not walk into them. The markers were cleverly concealed, but known to locals. American and South Vietnamese patrols generally tried to secure cooperation of one or more locals before initiating an area sweep. That was not easy. Villagers might be VC sympathizers or intimidated by other sympathizers who would hold them accountable later.  

this article first appeared in vietnam magazine

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Types of Land Mines

Command-detonated anti-personnel directional mines were widely used. The U.S. M-18 “Claymore” mine blasted 700 steel balls in a 60-degree arc, 6-feet high, out to a range of about 150 feet. The Claymore was triggered by an electrical blasting cap via a wire with a hand generator.

The VC used any Claymore they captured. The VC and NVA were also supplied with the Chinese-made DH-10 Directional Mine, known as the “ChiCom Claymore.” Crudely made but larger and more powerful than the U.S. M-18, it was devastatingly effective when emplaced in a tree, pointed down a jungle trail. The VC also used the DH-10 to mine anticipated helicopter landing zones.  

The standard U.S. anti-personnel mines were the M-14 and M-16. Called the “Toe Popper,” the M-14 was a pressure-triggered blast mine with a relatively small charge. The M-16 was a fragmentation mine designed after the World War II German S-mine, called a “Bouncing Betty.” When triggered, either by stepping on one of the exposed pressure prongs or pulling a tripwire, a short delay fuze detonated a secondary charge which blew the main body of the mine 5 to 6 feet into the air. A second, slightly longer-delayed fuze then detonated the main charge, spraying fragmentation out to 25 meters.  

An Enduring Menace

Anti-vehicular mines were used to destroy or disable trucks, armored personnel carriers, and sometimes tanks. They were either pressure- or command-detonated by wire. Road-clearing became an almost daily ritual, especially around major bases. Sweep teams of combat engineers with mine detectors worked the roads each morning, while flank security teams screened both sides of the roads looking for evidence of digging, detonating wires, and even ambushes. It was slow and tedious.  

Although North Vietnam manufactured mines and some were supplied by China, the majority of mines used by communist forces in Vietnam were improvised. Enemy forces in Vietnam were exceptionally innovative at turning anything into a mine—including captured or unexploded ordnance such as hand grenades and mortar and artillery shells; ammunition cans; oil drums; beer and soda cans; and even bicycle frames. Triggering devices included flashlight batteries, wristwatches, field telephone hand cranks, and mousetraps.

This story appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Fishkill, New York was arguably the fulcrum of espionage efforts by Patriots in the American Revolution. Fishkill is where Founding Father John Jay coordinated counterintelligence efforts around undercover agent Enoch Crosby. Crosby’s successful efforts to infiltrate Loyalist militia networks during the war inspired the first best-selling novel in U.S. history, The Spy, by James Fenimore Cooper, published in 1821. Cooper had gleaned the exploits of Crosby from his handler, Jay, over many dinners and created a composite spy character named Harvey Birch. Crosby eventually published his own memoirs several years later, The Spy Unmasked, though unfortunately the sales of his original accounts paled in comparison to Cooper’s smash novel. 

What is largely unknown even today is the existence of the site of an invisible ink laboratory located in what is now East Fishkill. Operated by John Jay’s brother, Sir James Jay, it produced the unique, magical ink that Gen. George Washington heavily relied on for use by many of his spies. This included not only both the Culper Spy Ring of Major Benjamin Tallmadge and the Dayton Spy Ring of Col. Elias Dayton of Elizabeth, New Jersey, but also some very sensitive correspondence of diplomat Silas Deane of Wethersfield, Connecticut and Elias Boudinot of Elizabeth, New Jersey. 

Washington’s Secret Lab

The first of 32 letters involving Gen. Washington, the spymaster, and James Jay (including 10 between Washington and Jay) is an introductory letter about the invisible ink between these two Founding Fathers—to Washington from John Jay:

Fish Kill 19th Novr 1778

Sir

This will be delivered by my Brother, [James] who will communicate & explain to your Excellency a mode of Correspondence, which may be of use, provided proper agents can be obtained. I have experienced its Efficacy by a three Years Trial. We shall remain absolutely silent on the Subject. I have the Honor to be with the highest Esteem & Respect Your Excellency’s most obedient Servant

John Jay

James Jay (1732-1815) was a physician and amateur chemist, who studied and practiced medicine in Great Britain from the 1750s until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. James was knighted by King George III in 1763 for his efforts in raising money for King’s (Columbia) College of New York as well as Ben Franklin’s projected college, now the University of Pennsylvania. James was described as “haughty, proud, overbearing, supercilious, pedantic, vain, and ambitious” as well as being a notorious over-charger; eventually his medical practice “became entirely confined among his own relations.” His writings included a pamphlet written in 1772, Reflections and Observations on the Gout. James developed his invisible ink in 1775 and used it throughout the war in correspondence with his brother, John. He never disclosed the chemistry of the ink.

The Problem With INk

Invisible ink letters were already being composed using any liquid that dried to a clear color. The liquid also needed to be slightly acidic such as milk, lemon, lime or grapefruit juice as well as vinegar. When it was heated by fire, it would redevelop and allow for reading of the intended content. This reaction was able to happen because the heat weakened the fibers in the paper, thereby turning the ink brown and visible. 

James’s invisible ink, however, was unique. The skilled chemist was able to create an ink that would not react to heat. This would prove to be the bane of British leadership in New York which was headed by Gen. Sir Henry Clinton and his intelligence officers, Maj. Henry Beckwith and Major John André.

By April of 1779, the Culper Ring had possession of Jay’s invisible ink and developer, as evidenced by the fact that Abraham Woodhull, aka Culper, wrote on April 12th to Tallmadge that he had received a vial of the invisible stain. 

Washington soon after informed Boudinot he could share James Jay’s secret concoction in a May 3, 1779 letter: “It is in my power, I believe, to procure a liquid which nothing but a counter liquor (rubbed over the paper afterwards) can make legible—Fire which will bring lime juice, milk & other things of this kind to light, has no effect on it.” 

The recipe for this special ink centered around gallotannic acid. This is found in the galls of many species of oak trees. As Washington indicated to Boudinot, anyone wish-ing to develop any letter written in Jay’s invisible ink had to have the counterpart liquid, or developer, also known as the reagent.

Summer 1779 proved to be an important turning point in secret correspondence in the American Revolution. Unbeknownst to Washington, his favorite battlefield commander, Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold, had just begun correspondence with Maj. Andre in May, the month after his wedding to the fetching Peggy Shippen, daughter of a prominent Tory family. Also, that summer the British intercepted a letter of June 21st from Caleb Brewster to Tallmadge, revealing that Anna “Nancy” Strong, wife of Justice Selah Strong, was part of the Culper Ring.

Improving Secrecy

Another hapless event happened on July 3. Tallmadge was embarrassed to report by letter to Washington that he had lost his horse, some guineas and some important papers in a British surprise attack on his camp during the early morning of July 2. Washington replied to his case officer of the Culper Ring: “I have just received your letter of the 3d—the loss of your papers was certainly a most unlucky accident—and shows how dangerous it is to keep papers of any consequence at an advanced post—I beg you will take care to guard against the like in future—If you will send me a trusty person I will replace the guineas.” 

As if all this was not enough, on July 5, a letter from Woodhull in Setauket, Long Island advised his childhood friend Tallmadge that he was under suspicion and therefore could no longer go into the British army camp in New York City. He further informed of his plan to move from the city back to Setauket, adding, “I shall endeavor to establish a confidential friend [Robert Townsend] to step into my place if agreeable direct in your next and forward the ink.”

Over the next several weeks, both Washington and Tallmadge scrambled to improve the tradecraft and the secrecy of the Culper Ring. Two letters on the same day, July 25, attest to these mutual efforts. Washington wrote to Tallmadge from West Point: “All the white Ink I now have (indeed all that there is any prospect of getting soon) is sent in Phial No. I. by Colo. [Samuel] Webb. the liquid in No. 2 is the Counterpart which renders the other visible by wetting the paper with a fine brush after the first has been used & is dry—You will send these to C——r Junr as soon as possible & I beg that no mention may ever be made of your having received such liquids from me or any one else—In all cases & at all times this prudence & circumspection is necessary but it is indispensably so now as I am informed that Govr Tryon has a preparation of the same kind, or something similar to it which may lead to a detection if it is ever known that a matter of this sort has passed from me.” 

Making the Laboratory

That same day, a letter from Tallmadge to Washington demonstrates Tallmadge’s rushed efforts to create his famous code book, which is actually only four pages. The letter was written from Ridgefield, Conn., and enclosed the codes of numbers and words to correspond with the Culper spy ring. The intent was to have a reference guide for key players in the Culper espionage efforts that would not identify the participants to anyone who might intercept a letter. This way, despite interception and decoding, the opposition would still not know key individuals referred to by code names.

By spring 1780, the volume of letters between Washington and James Jay increased, as Washington had suddenly run out of the invisible ink in April. Washington wrote to Jay, who was with his brother John in Fishkill, in a bit of panic on April 9: “The liquid with which you were so obliging as to furnish me for the purpose of private correspondence is exhausted; and as I have found it very useful, I take the liberty to request you will favour me with a further supply. I have still a sufficiency of the materials for the counterpart on hand. Should you not have by you the necessary ingredients, if they are to be procured at any of the Hospitals within your reach, I would wish you to apply for them in my name. I hope you will excuse the trouble I give you on this occasion….P.S. If you should not be able to prepare the liquid in time for the bearer to bring, & will be so good as to commit it to the care of Colo. Hay he will forward it to me.”

James Jay replied to Washington on April 13, “I have the honor of yours of the 9th instant and I do myself the pleasure to send you the medicine you desire, in a little box, which I hope you will receive with this letter. I wish I could furnish you with a greater quantity, because I am afraid you may be too sparing of the little you will receive…This little however is all that remains of what I brought with me from Europe—I have now the principal ingredients for the composition by me, & the rest may be procured: but the misfortune is, that I have no place where a little apparatus may be erected for preparing it…” 

The letter goes on about his need for an appropriate laboratory to reproduce the ingredients. Jay concluded: “I shall soon have the satisfaction of sending you such a supply that you may not only use it freely yourself, but even spare a little to a friend, if necessary, without the apprehension of future want.” 

Washington’s Favorite Ink

Washington was delighted to receive more of Jay’s ink by special courier. It would be interesting to know who was entrusted with such a special, sensitive duty. A likely candidate would have been one of Tallmadge’s colleagues in Col. Elisha Sheldon’s Second Continental Light Dragoons, an elite cavalry unit in which Tallmadge was an officer.

In a letter to Jay, Washington expressed his improved state of affairs—and also his support for having an invisible ink laboratory constructed for Jay. Instead of being obvious about the content in question, Washington cloaked his wording to Jay: “I have had the pleasure of receiving your favours of the 13th & 20th of April. The Box of Medicine mentioned in the former came safe to hand, and was the more acceptable, as I had entirely expended the first parcel with which you had been kind enough to furnish me. I have directed Colo. Hay to assist you in erecting a small Elaboratory from which I hope you will derive improvement and amusement, and the public some advantages.” 

Washington then wrote to Lt. Col. Udny Hay, deputy quartermaster general, who was located at Fishkill because of the town’s supply depot for the Continental Army and patriot militia. He informed Hay that Jay asked for a day or two to build a small “Elaboratory, as he purposes making some experiments which may be of public utility and has already furnished me with some Chymical preparations from which I have derived considerable advantages I think it proper to gratify him.” 

Untraceable

Following a year and a half of “on again, off again” secret correspondence, Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold and Maj. John André met on the shoreline in the woods south of West Point on Sept. 22, 1780. On that same fateful day in 1776, Capt. Nathan Hale had been hanged as a spy by the British in Manhattan. Several days earlier, on Sept. 19, James Jay wrote the last of any existing letters between himself and Washington before war’s end. He apologized for not supplying the “medicine” sooner due to financial constraints. It was evident from the letter and its warm closing that Jay held Washington in high esteem. Years later, in 1784 Jay wrote to Washington, asking him to validate his secret service, which he did. This letter was penned from London, where he lived out the rest of his life.

The invisible ink and Tallmadge’s code book proved largely effective. None of the agents or couriers, nor Tallmadge the case officer, were positively identified or captured by the British. Details of the efforts of James Jay and the Culper Ring did not come to light until the 1930s research of Long Island historian Morton Pennypacker. The team effort of Washington as spymaster, coupled with the many brave agents and couriers (as well as Tallmadge), blended with a talented chemist in James Jay to become a formidable force against the mighty British military. They used ingenuity and creativity in their quest for freedom and independence from the British global empire.

The location of Jay’s secret laboratory is adjacent to the temporary home of John Jay which was the 1740 Judge Theodorus Van Wyck House, located in the Wiccopee hamlet of what is now East Fishkill. This was for many years on the property of today’s large IBM campus. The lab was lost to history sometime after the war, while the Van Wyck House was unfortunately demolished by IBM in the 1970s.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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The year 1873 saw the introduction of two game-changing firearms—the Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle and the Colt M1873 Single Action Army (aka “Peacemaker”) revolver. What set them apart from the array of available arms was that they were among the first chambered for center-fire metallic cartridges to be used in tandem.

Each firearm initially used its own proprietary round. The Model 1873 was chambered for the .44-40 Winchester cartridge, which went on to become one of the most popular rounds in firearms history. Purpose-built for the U.S. Cavalry, the Peacemaker was initially designed with a 7½-inch barrel, for accuracy at longer ranges, and chambered for use with the hard-hitting .45 Colt round. Not to rest on its own laurels, Colt then offered civilian versions of its revolver chambered for Winchester’s increasingly popular .44-40 cartridge, as well as the latter’s .38-40 and .32-20 rounds, thus sparing anyone who owned both firearms from having to carry two different calibers of ammunition. As attested by the images on the following pages, everyone from lawmen and outlaws to everyday cowhands and shepherds to headline entertainers were soon snapping up both manufacturers’ Model 1873s.

Another aspect that set apart the 1873s was shrewd marketing, including testimonials from famed Westerners of the era. Winchester and Colt each advertised its guns through such motivated Western dealers as E.C. Meacham, of St. Louis, and Carlos Gove, of Denver. Winchester’s 1875 catalog featured praise from Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody, who wrote the company on behalf of prospective buyers, “For hunting, I pronounce your improved Winchester the boss.” Writer Ned Buntline, whose florid dime novels birthed many of the legends associated with Buffalo Bill, tirelessly hyped both the Winchester ’73 and the Colt Single Action Army. For much of his career Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, the man who in 1934 brought outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow to ground, carried a Colt Peacemaker he dubbed “Old Lucky.” Bill Tilghman, the famed U.S. marshal out of Oklahoma, was known to carry both a Winchester ’73 and a Peacemaker, as did notorious outlaws Billy the Kid and Pearl Hart, though clearly not to either manufacturer’s detriment. 

Winchester produced a whopping 720,000 Model 1873 rifles through 1923, while Colt rolled out more than 357,000 first-generation Single Action Army revolvers through 1940. By then both companies had claimed the title “The Gun That Won the West” for their respective Models 1873. The Peacemaker is still in production, and modern-day replicas of both firearms remain popular among present-day cowboy action shooters. They’ve certainly earned their reputation. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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The two frogmen slipped into the dark cold waters of the English Channel and started swimming towards the shore. The sea was lumpy and the pair could feel the current pulling them further east than they wished. The rain was torrential and all they could see was the lighthouse beam as they swam hard for land. They came ashore opposite the village of La Rivière, staggering up the beach at a crouch, relieved that they were screened from the lighthouse’s beam by buildings and trees.

For a few moments Maj. Logan Scott-Bowden and Sgt. Bruce Ogden-Smith recovered their breath in the lee of some groynes. From the buildings above them they could hear revelry. It was the last day of 1943 and the Germans were seeing in the New Year with plenty of beer and song. 

The two Englishmen set off down the beach, heading west for nearly a mile towards the original landing spot. The intelligence briefing had stated the beach was not mined. On this stretch of the Normandy coast the strong tides and shifting sand meant they would not stay in position. The rain was now nearly horizontal, a filthy night but a perfect one for their task.

Checking his map, Scott-Bowden announced that they had reached their place of work. They were to take samples of sand from the beach in an area designated in the shape of the letter ‘W’. The sand was collected by an auger, which, when inserted into the sand and given one half turn, dredged up a core sample. These were collected in twenty 10-inch tubes held in a bandolier worn by one of the men.

Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden worked swiftly, moving up and down the beach, taking samples but glancing now and again east to check that no Germans were clearing their groggy heads with a stroll down the beach. With their samples stashed in the bandolier, the pair left the beach and began wading through the breakers. But the wind had picked up and they were flung back into the sea. They tried again but without success. Apprehension began to rise. If they were caught on the beach with their bandolier the game would be up?

A Secretive Special Forces Unit

This was one of the most crucial moments of the war.  Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden ran up the beach. With the lighthouse beam to help them, they worked out the wave pattern. On the third attempt they made it through the surf and swam furiously towards the recovery boat. Suddenly Scott-Bowden heard a cry through the wind. Turning, he saw Ogden-Smith waving an arm. “I swam back somewhat alarmed, thinking he had either got cramp or his suit had sprung a leak,” recalled Scott-Bowden. “When I got close, he shouted ‘Happy New Year!’”

Bruce Ogden-Smith and Logan Scott-Bowden belonged to one of the most secretive special forces units in the British army. To those who served it was known by its acronym, COPP, short for Combined Operations Pilotage Parties. 

COPP was the brainchild of Lieutenant-Commander Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott, who had joined the Royal Navy between the wars, partly inspired by tales he’d heard as a young boy from his uncle Henry. He’d served in the First World War and had taken part in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915, when the Allies had attempted to knock Turkey out of the war by landing on the Gallipoli peninsula. It had been a bloody failure. Thousands of British, Australian and New Zealand troops were slaughtered attempting to establish a beachhead on clifftop ridges well-fortified by Turkish soldiers. Had the British planners been better briefed about the peninsula they might not have risked such an audacious amphibious assault. To Willmott’s dismay, the British military appeared not to have learned their lesson when the Second World War started. The Norwegian campaign in 1940, in which Willmott participated, was hampered by the Royal Navy’s ignorance of the fjords as they attempted to land British troops. 

Beach Surveillance

In early 1941 Willmott was appointed navigation officer for a planned invasion of Rhodes, a strategically important island in the Mediterranean Sea. There was scant intelligence on the approach to the beaches or shoreline itself. Might there be sandbars or rocks just under the water? Were the beaches mined? Were they suitable for vehicles? Were there accessible exit points so soldiers could quickly move inland? Answers to these questions had to be found. 

Willmott requested permission from Rear Adm. Harold Tom Baillie-Grohman, in charge of overall responsibility for planning the assault, to carry out a reconnaissance from a dinghy. It was a time in the war when the British, fighting a lone battle against the Axis forces, were at their most inventive out of necessity.

Small raiding units, dubbed ‘private armies’ were being formed with the encouragement of Prime Minister Winston Churchill: the commandos, the Long Range Desert Group and the Special Boat Section [SBS], the latter commanded by Maj. Roger Courtney, an adventurer before the war who had canoed the length of the White Nile in Africa. Courtney was only too happy to paddle Willmott ashore. Their reconnaissance proved invaluable, revealing perilous aspects of the shoreline that would have hampered any amphibious assault. 

Private Armies?

Not all British senior officers approved of ‘private armies.’ Some regarded these units as unbecoming of the British military and it was another 18 months before Willmott was authorized to raise a naval reconnaissance force. It took the shambles of the Dieppe Raid in August 1942 to convince the British that better reconnaissance was imperative for future operations. Intelligence about the Dieppe coastline had been so poor that the British planners were reduced to studying prewar postcards of the coastline for clues about its topography. Three thousand Canadians and British commandos were killed or captured because of this ignorance, plus three killed in action, five wounded and three POWs of the 50 U.S. Army Rangers that took part while assigned to a commando unit.

Willmott’s unit gathered intelligence for Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of Vichy-controlled French North Africa in November 1942. As a consequence, the following month the force was expanded and officially designated COPP. 

Scott-Bowden was recruited to COPP as Willmott’s second-in-command in May 1943, a few months before Sub-Lt. Jim Booth. Scott-Bowden was a soldier but Booth volunteered from the Royal Navy, where he’d tired of life as a junior officer mine-sweeping in the North Sea. “I’d heard nothing of COPP prior to my arrival,” recalled Booth in a 2017 interview with the author. “But it was soon apparent that I was among a different breed. They were mad, really, but in a nice way. I think for most of us the motivation for volunteering was to do something different.”

New recruits to COPP underwent training at Hayling Island, off the south coast of England near Portsmouth. Willmot was ruthless in weeding out those men he judged to be deficient physically or mentally for his unit. “He was very nice but bloody tough,” said Booth. “During the autumn and winter of 1943, he led us in training every day. He was methodical in our navigational training because he knew the problems caused by poor navigation.” While Booth completed his training, Willmot and Scott-Bowden were told to report to Combined Operations HQ in London in December 1943. 

Invading France

The planning for the invasion of France was underway. A 50-mile stretch of Normandy coast had been identified as a potential beachhead. But there were concerns. “Scientists had anxieties about the beach bearing-capacity of the Plateau de Calvados beaches for the passage of heavy-wheeled vehicles and guns, particularly in the British and Canadian sectors,” said Scott-Bowden. In ancient times there been peat marshes close to the sea. These had been covered with sand over the centuries, but the Allies feared that peat was often accompanied by clay, which could be catastrophic for a large invasion force. 

The Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington wanted a conclusive estimate of how much beach trackway would be required for the invasion force. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden undertook a trial run on Dec. 22, 1943 on a beach in Norfolk, eastern England. It was an opportunity to gain valuable practical experience of using the auger to collect samples. It was also a chance for COPP to prove to sceptical Allied planners that they could do their work undetected by sentries. Having proved their point, the pair sailed to Normandy on New Year’s Eve and the real thing was as fruitful as the dress rehearsal.

“[Lt.] General [Omar N.] Bradley commander in chief of all the American [D-Day assault] forces… having heard that we had examined the British beach [Gold] wanted Omaha Beach—as it came to be known—to be examined too,” remembered Scott-Bowden.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach was five miles west of ‘Gold’ beach. Bradley and his planners already knew it posed a formidable challenge to a putative invasion force. The beach was exposed, rising gently to a low sea wall, beyond which was a no-man’s land of marshy grassland. It was overlooked by bluffs, steep in places, which were cut by five valleys, the only exit points for vehicles and all heavily guarded by German concrete bunkers. COPP was instructed to bring back as much intelligence as they could about ‘Omaha’ beach in an operation codenamed Postage Able. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden were again part of the team, accompanied by Willmot. 

However, there was a significant difference to this mission compared to the one undertaken on New Year’s Eve. This time the audacious men would be traveling in an X-craft—a midget submarine that COPP had been conducting training on for several weeks in Loch Striven, a sea loch off the west coast of Scotland.

The X-class, or X-craft submarines were powered by 4-cylinder 42 hp diesel engines of the type used in London double-decker buses, and a 30 hp electric motor. Its maximum surface speed was 6.5 knots (a knot less when submerged). The midget submarines were usually crewed by three: the commander, pilot and engineer. Some also carried a specialist diver/frogman as a fourth member of the crew. “The X-craft were 52 feet long and 5 feet in diameter,” Jim Booth recalled, adding that they could remain at sea for to 10 days. The worst aspect of the midget submarines, certainly for the six-foot Booth, was their size. “The facilities were very cramped,” he remembered. “You had a bunk, cooking facilities, a gluepot for a hot meal, and you could just about stand.”

COPP had two midget submarines—X-20 and X-23—and it was the former that sailed from Portsmouth for Omaha beach on Jan. 17, 1944 under the command of Lt. Ken Hudspeth. It was a joint effort, his pilotage skills and the navigation of Willmot. “To reach the destination precisely, at [low] speed and in the strong cross-rides of Baie de Seine, was a measure of Willmott’s remarkable navigational skill,” commented Hudspeth.

At 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 18, the midget submarine was about 380 yards from the beach. It was nearly high tide. The vessel beached at periscope depth in 8 feet of water on the left-hand sector of ‘Omaha’ beach. Willmott took a couple of bearings to be sure of their position, then turned over the periscope to Scott-Bowden. “I took a quick general view and was astonished to see hundreds of [German] soldiers at work, and how hard they were working,” he recalled. “From our low-level view and pointing slightly up due to the slope of the beach, it was often possible to see under the camouflage netting and so verify the types of [gun] emplacement being constructed.”

Inside the Submersible

That night, Scott-Bowden and Ogden-Smith swam ashore to get a closer look. “We examined the beach with our augers over a wide area as planned,” said Scott-Bowden. The pair had special instructions to investigate the shingle bank at the back of the beach to determine if it might impede the progress of armoured vehicles. “It appeared to have been man-made and was above normal high water,” noted Scott-Bowden. “There were masses of wire immediately behind and a probable minefield. We each took one stone.” The next night the pair carried out another beach reconnaissance.

During daylight on Jan. 20 the midget submarine moved along the coast, observing different areas of the beach through the periscope. Then in the late afternoon they sailed for England. It was another two hours before Hudspeth felt it safe to surface, to the relief of the five men on board (the fifth was the engineer officer). Willmott recorded in his journal that the air was “very bad (none fresh for 11 hours) and everyone showed signs of distress.”

They reached Portsmouth at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 21—after no less than five days inside X-20. Several high-ranking officers were on the quayside to greet them but when the rear hatch was opened “the reception committee took a large step back.” Scott-Bowden didn’t blame them. The stench had been unbearable. A midget submarine was no place for a soldier.

The midget submarine had gathered vital intelligence on what became known as Omaha Beach for the planning for D-Day. Its role in assisting with the invasion of Normandy was not over. A new destination for X-20 was Juno Beach, the middle of the three Anglo-Canadian landing sectors with Gold to the west and Sword to the east. Arriving off the coast on June 4, the submarine acted as a beach marker for the main amphibious assault as they approached on the morning of D-Day.

COPP’s other midget submarine, X-23, was tasked with performing a similar task at Sword beach, the eastern extremity of the invasion task force. The crews of both vessels had been ordered to Portsmouth with their craft at the end of May. “We booked into the wardroom and so we knew it [the invasion] was imminent,” said Jim Booth. “Everything had been done in the greatest secrecy, however, and while we had done a lot of training, we had no clue to the date of the invasion or the location.”

On the morning of June 2, the skipper of X-20, Lt. George Honour, assembled his crew, which comprised Booth, Lt. Geoff Lyne (chief navigator), George Vause (engineer), and First Lt. Jimmy Hodges (diver). The invasion was on, he told them. They would depart in the evening. Their operational orders were to sail the 90 miles to Normandy and then lie on the bottom of the Channel a mile off Sword beach until the early hours of D-Day on June 5. Then they would surface, erect their masts with their lights shining seaward, activate their radio beacons and guide in the invasion fleet. 

Switching on the Beacons

Booth’s job was to climb into a dinghy and erect the masts and switch on the beacons. The operation was codenamed “Gambit,” a word Honour explained to his men was a chess move in which a piece is risked so as to gain advantage later. The men laughed sardonically.

The rest of the day was one of frenetic activity as they loaded the midget submarine with equipment: 2 small CQR anchors, three flashing lamps with batteries, several taut-string measuring reels, two small portable radar beacons, an eighteen-feet-long sounding pole and two telescopic masts of similar length. Twelve additional bottles of oxygen were hauled down the access hatch, to complement the vessel’s built-in cylinders, and three RAF rubber dinghies were also brought on board.

A handful of submachine guns and revolvers (and false identification papers) were stashed inside the sub in the event they were forced to abandon the vessel and make for Nazi-occupied France. At 9:40 p.m., X-20 and X-23 sailed out of Portsmouth and rendezvoused with two naval trawlers that towed them part way across the Channel. 

The submarines slipped their tows at 4:35 a.m. June 3 and headed independently towards their respective beaches. X-23’s orders was to position itself at the point where the amphibious Duplex Drive Sherman [DD-swimming] tanks were to be launched onto Sword Beach. The pressure on the shoulders of Lt. Lynne, the navigator of X-23, was therefore immense: a slight error in position could have appalling ramifications.

The chief pre-occupation of X-23’s skipper, George Honour, was their oxygen supply; to conserve it as best he could he carried out a procedure every five hours of what submariners call “guffing through”—coming to periscope depth and raising the induction mast, then running the engine for a few minutes to draw a fresh supply of air through the boat. This brought obvious risks, particularly as they would lying just off the enemy coastline. 

At 8:30 a.m. June 4 Honour wrote in his log: “Periscope depth, ran to the East. Churches identified and fix obtained.” They had arrived at their position off Sword beach. The churches they could see were those at Ouistreham. Booth peered through the periscope. On the beach was a group Germans playing football. “Poor buggers don’t know what’s going to hit them,” he muttered.

Enough Oxygen?

In less than 24 hours the invasion would be underway—or so they thought. But when they surfaced at 1:00 a.m. Monday June 5 and hoisted their radio mast, they received bad news. “The postponement was sent out in a broadcast,” remembered Booth. “There were several messages and the phrase to let us know invasion was off was ‘Trouble in Scarborough’. [Scarborough is a coastal town in eastern England]. That caused a bit of tension because we didn’t know the length of the postponement and we weren’t sure we would have enough oxygen.” X-23 remained on the surface until 3:00 a.m. June 5. The men enjoyed the stiff wind on their faces and the fresh air in their lungs. 

Reluctantly they climbed back inside their 52-foot submarine, closed the hatch and bottomed. Honour said the lack of oxygen inside the midget submarine left him feeling like he’d drunk “a couple of stiff gins.” He added: “It was murky, damp and otherwise very horrible.” X-23 surfaced at 11:15 p.m. on Monday, June 5. They began their wireless watch. The weather was still foul.

The crew believed the invasion would again be postponed, but the message they received confirmed it was on. They dived once more, then surfaced at 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday June 6. The sea was too rough for Booth to launch his rubber dinghy so instead he rigged up the lights above the submarine. The lights flashed the letter D for Dog for 10 seconds every 40 seconds from 140 minutes before H-hour—the start time of the assault.

“We had a few problems with the boat because it was rocking and rolling,” recalled Booth. “We secured the main one, a green light, and also some red and white lights, and then because it was so cold and miserable out on deck we went down below and put the [tea] kettle on.” The radio beacon had also been activated. There was nothing else to do but have a cup of tea and wait. The tension was as unbearable as the foul air they breathed. Aircraft began bombing the German coastal positions. Soon the guns of the naval armada joined the bombardment. 

Invasion Day

Booth and his comrades went back on deck just as dawn broke on June 6. For several minutes they peered south through the murk, straining to see the armada they knew was coming their way.

“Suddenly we saw them,” recalled Booth. “It was a case of ‘bloody hell, look at that lot’! It was literally ships as far as the eye could see. A very spectacular sight.”

As the invasion fleet loomed into view another danger confronted X-23—being sunk or shelled by one of their own vessels. The commanding officer of the destroyer, HMS Middleton, Lt. Ian Douglas Cox, was standing on his ship’s brige when “a small submarine suddenly loomed out of the faint mist.” He and his lookout assumed it was an enemy vessel. Middleton gave orders for ‘full ahead.” “As we gathered speed to ram her, a figure stood up on the conning tower waving a large White Ensign,” he recalled. “We laughed nervously and sheared away.”

X-23 avoided any further unpleasant encounters and made its way to HMS Largs, the headquarters ship, where it rendezvoused with a naval trawler. A relief crew exchanged places with Booth and his comrades, who gratefully boarded the trawler. The operation had lasted 72 hours—of which 64 had been spent underwater. The men craved fresh air as much as they did sleep. Operation Gambit had indeed been a risk, but above all it had been a success.

The COPP force and the midget “X-craft” submarines were vital to the success of the D-Day landings, anddeserve more credit than has yet been given to them. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of German-occupied France on the Normandy coast, was the single most complicated human endeavor undertaken before the “computer age,” and its success is due to the incrediblecoordination of all branches of service of the Allied powers.

Popular history and films tend to focus on the June 5–6, 1944 airborne operations and the deadly ordeal the infantry assault troops suffered and endured at bloody Omaha Beach, but the ultimate goal of the operation—establishing a secure Allied foothold on the European continent in the face of fierce German resistance, was only achieved by the total commitment and supreme effort of every single member of all Allied forces taking part—on land, sea and in the air. This article recounts only one of those efforts.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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1–3. A pistol, a rifle and a shotgun

If you regularly read Wild West, you know better than to expect a rote list of Colts, Winchesters and Remingtons. That said, nearly everyone headed west craved a good pistol, rifle and shotgun. Between 1850 and ’60 the Colt revolver had an especially notable impact on the frontier experience, as did the Winchester rifle between 1870 and ’80. But in life-or-death situations, lesser-known guns could be no less critical. Following are five such pieces.

4. A 10-inch rifled pistol 

From 1810 through ’40—the era of the mountain man, the Santa Fe trade and the single-shot muzzleloader—a rifled pistol with barrel about 10 inches long—could well be a lifesaver. It was short and light enough so that a frontier dweller could carry two or, if he chose, even three or four. Four pistols, providing their owner with four fast shots before he had to reload, could deliver enough firepower to counter most threats. Moreover, the rifling made the pistol nearly as accurate as a rifled long arm. “With such a pistol,” civil engineer Newton Bosworth wrote in an 1846 treatise, “using both hands, I have never thought it a great matter to take a [prairie] chicken at the distance of 70 or 80 yards and have frequently done it at 100.”

5. Blunt & Syms six-shot dragoon pepperbox

Throughout the 1840s and ’50s the principal American makers of multibarreled pepperbox pistols were Ethan Allen and Blunt & Syms. Their products became widely popular, especially in California during the gold rush. While each turned out a .36-caliber “dragoon size” pepperbox, in a now-or-never situation the Blunt & Syms had the edge. As tests show, its trigger pull is smoother than that of Allen’s, and the B&S pistol fires the bottom barrel instead of the top, making it easier to stay on target during fast shooting.

6. A bar-hammer single-shot pocket pistol

In 1837 Ethan Allen patented a single-shot .28-caliber pocket pistol with a double-action, or “self-cocking,” trigger mechanism. Fitted with a top-mounted “bar hammer” (vs. a side hammer), the arm became so popular that at least four other gunmakers—Blunt & Syms, Bacon, Manhattan and Marston—turned out versions of it. Its light weight, double-action trigger and smooth contours, with nothing to snag on the pocket or belt, meant it could be drawn and fired in an instant. Henry Deringer’s pistols, despite their reputation, could not make the same claim. As with other single-shot pistols, users typically carried the bar hammer guns in pairs.

7. An extra-large-bore shotgun

In the late 1850s, when Memphis was an eastern terminus for the Butterfield Overland Mail, a major hardware dealer there, Lownes, Orgill & Co., was selling what it billed as “double duck guns,” with “fine laminated steel barrels—6 to 8 bore, 34 to 40 inches long.” On another occasion the firm advertised duck guns in “7 to 18 gage [sic].” Guns of 6 and 7 gauge (equivalent to .92 and .87 caliber, respectively, while the standard 12 gauge is .73 caliber) could throw heavy charges of .31- or .36-caliber balls—murderous at close range. When used with the popular Eley wire cartridge, a single discharge could be deadly at ranges approaching 100 yards, even against multiple assailants.

8. Lefaucheux 12 mm pinfire revolver

As early as 1859 firearms dealers in California and New Orleans were importing models of this revolver from France. Seemingly taking note, the Union imported more than 12,000 Lefaucheux during the Civil War, a federal inspector pronouncing it “a first-class arm, equal if not superior to the Colt.” It was shorter and handier than the typical big-bore percussion revolver, while its copper-cased, self-contained pin-fire cartridges made it far faster to reload.

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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The Civil War kicked off a demand for firearms just as industrial technology allowed gunsmiths to tinker with various designs, and numerous handguns were developed with the hopes of obtaining military contracts. Some of those weapons were sleek and well-balanced. And then there was the poorly balanced and odd-looking Navy revolver produced by the Savage Revolving Firearms Company of Middletown, Conn., which had a reputation for producing unusual and unique weapons.

The two triggers sported by the revolver were its most distinctive feature. The lower “ring” trigger was in reality more of a lever that rotated the cylinder and cocked the hammer at the same time. The upper trigger’s purpose was conventional in that it fired the weapon.

Though clumsy in appearance, the Savage Navy was a step toward double-action—meaning a revolver could be repeatedly fired simply by pulling its trigger. Revolvers at the time were single-action in that the user had to manually cock the hammer between each shot to rotate the cylinder.

The U.S. government first contracted with Savage on October 16, 1861, to buy some of the revolvers, and eventually purchased 12,000 of them. They were issued to 26 Union cavalry regiments, including units from Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Vermont, and the Potomac Home Brigade. Even some Confederate cavalry regiments from Texas and Virginia were issued Savage Navys privately bought and secretly shipped south.

Fifty Savage revolvers were even sent for use aboard the famous USS Constitution in 1861. That ship was used as a training vessel for at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. 

this article first appeared in civil war times magazine

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Perhaps the strangest love-hate relationship in the firearms business of the 19th century arose between two manufacturers with no apparent equal in their products. It came at a time when repeating arms technology was at its high-water mark. Every famed gunmaker, from Christopher Miner Spencer and B. Tyler Henry to John Browning and Arthur William Savage, was profiting from the boom. Building reputations far above their fellow competitors, Oliver Winchester and Sam Colt eventually settled into their own specialized lines of firearms.

Winchester Repeating Arms Co. got its start in the wake of the Civil War on the strength of the Henry lever-action repeating rifle, while Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co. had spent the previous few decades dominating the sidearm market with its popular line of revolvers. By 1880 Winchester, Whitney and Marlin were producing the best-known lever-action repeaters. Within a few years, in a surprising move, Colt announced it would roll out its own lever-action repeating rifle. 

The financial rationale behind Colt’s decision is unclear, as the company had achieved strong sales with its popular M1873 Single Action Army revolver and other sidearms. The driving force behind the 1883 rollout of its “New Magazine Rifle” was a patented design from noted firearms inventor Andrew Burgess. Five years earlier Burgess had designed a simple, sturdy lever-action repeater manufactured by Eli Whitney (son of the famed cotton gin inventor) and known as the Whitney-Burgess-Morse. By 1880 Whitney Arms had incorporated many of Burgess’ features into an improved Samuel V. Kennedy design, and the resulting Whitney-Kennedy lever-action repeater became the top seller of the Whitney line until that company’s bankruptcy and buyout by Winchester in 1888. The Colt Burgess incorporated further refinements from its namesake inventor.

The Colt Burgess proved a thorn in Winchester’s side, as it cut into sales of the latter’s Model 1873. The Burgess employed a modified toggle-link action akin to that of the Winchester 1873, and both were chambered for the popular .44-40 Winchester centerfire cartridge. However, the Burgess was only chambered for the .44 WCF, not either of the smaller caliber cartridges also available for the Winchester ’73, namely the .38-40 and .32-20. Colt Burgess rifles were fitted with 25 ½-inch barrels, while carbines sported a 20-inch tube.

Colt announced the debut of the Burgess in a factory-issued pamphlet. The news was said to have alarmed Winchester officials to the point they immediately began work on a prototype revolver to counter the “invasion” into their turf. Such a countermove would not have been an easy venture for Winchester, as few six-guns had matched, or could match, the vaunted Colt Peacemaker.

Though Colt only manufactured the Burgess for 16 months (1883–85), the rifle did manage to reach the American West. Famed Denver firearms dealer J.P. Lower advertised the Burgess in several regional newspapers, though he apparently wasn’t convinced of the need for it. In a May 1883 letter to the Rocky Mountain News Lower noted that as the well-received, longer range .45-70 Government cartridge was easily procurable in the region, Colt should have offered its new rifle in that caliber, as had Marlin with its Model 1881 and Whitney with its Whitney-Kennedy. In other words, he believed the Winchester 1873 and other guns already available in .44-40 had fully exploited the short-range characteristics of that caliber.

Bearing the Colt name, the Burgess did have a following. In an 1887 group portrait taken in Realitas, Texas, Ernest E. Rogers poses proudly beside his mates in Company D of the Texas Rangers, a Burgess conspicuously in hand—and we know roughly what he paid for it. In 1884 the price for a Colt Burgess carbine was $24, while rifles averaged $26. Like most other contemporary gun manufacturers, Colt offered the Burgess with any special-order features or embellishments a customer might desire—naturally, for an extra cost. In July 1883 Colt presented a heavily engraved example with an octagonal barrel as a gift to Wild West showman William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who received such freebies from virtually every known gunmaker during his heyday, largely for promotional purposes.

Most Colt Burgess rifles and carbines available to collectors today are in well-used condition, those in very good plus to excellent being quite scarce. All are highly sought-after pieces, particularly the “baby carbine,” featuring a lightweight frame and barrel, which accounts for only 972 of the 6,403 Colt Burgess rifles and carbines produced. The carbine shown above (pointing left) dates from 1883, is notable for its tinned finish and shows much wear, though it remains in excellent mechanical condition.

Whether Colt’s production of the Burgess was an intentional or merely subtle threat to Winchester for some sort of behind-the-scenes corporate hokum, we may never know, but it disappeared from the Colt line almost as suddenly as it had appeared. Winchester likely breathed a sigh of relief. By then it had competition enough. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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Warships with powerful cannons patrol the waters just off Mobile Bay. It is the summer of 1864, and Union sailors are bristling for a fight, ready to take on any vessel tempted to run the blockade in order to reach one of the last Gulf of Mexico ports still defended by the Confederacy.

Suddenly, the Northern sailors observe an unfamiliar object hovering in the sky above the Alabama coastline. Using whirring airscrews to defy gravity, the bizarre contraption emits a loud noise and belches smoke as it moves slowly toward the Union ships.

The men watch in stunned silence as the monstrous machine slowly drifts in their direction before stopping in midair and dropping a heavy object. The small dark shape falls swiftly, then strikes a Union warship, triggering a huge explosion. Bursting into flames, the vessel quickly sinks.

The Confederate “helicopter” has scored its first victory of the war.

Ancient Inspiration

That scenario is clearly imagined, but it illustrates an incredible case of what-might-have-been history. What if Confederates had invented a helicopter capable of dropping bombs?

It came closer to happening than many people realize. An innovative inventor in Alabama saw the potential for such an aircraft and actually drew up plans for how it might fly. Those drawings are preserved today in the archives of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

By January 20, 1862, Union ships had managed to prevent most vessels from entering or leaving the major Confederate port of Mobile Bay. While certainly not a complete cordon, the blockade cut off delivery of supplies and, more important, the export of cotton to other nations—a much-needed source of income for the Southern war effort.

William C. Powers believed he had the answer to breaking the blockade: a motorized airship capable of bombing the Northern fleet. Known today as the Confederate helicopter, his idea offered a revolutionary look at solving a bothersome military problem.

“Mr. Powers sees what’s going on,” said Thomas Paone, museum specialist at the National Air and Space Museum. “The federal blockade is choking off the South. He’s living in Mobile, which is dependent on seaborne trade. He starts thinking, ‘We can’t break the blockade, so what do we do? Let’s try something different.’ That thought process is fascinating to me.”

And to many historians as well. Powers’ plans and a small-scale model he built were donated by his family to the Smithsonian Institution in 1941. Since then, researchers and aeronautical engineers have pored over his design to determine the scope and feasibility of his idea.

“Powers realizes this is something that could have a military purpose,” said Roger Connor, curator of the museum’s vertical flight collection. “He was definitely laying the groundwork for something that would fly through the air.”

Powers’ concept is intriguing—especially considering it was devised 40 years before the Wright brothers succeeded in manned powered flight with a fixed-wing aircraft in 1903. He drew upon the ideas of earlier inventors, including ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci.

For propulsion, Powers used the rotational features of the Archimedean screw—originally developed to remove water from the hold of a ship. Da Vinci had also incorporated a version of the invention into his sketches for his helicopter. 

But the Confederate chopper was different. Instead of one screw, Powers included three with his design: a single twin-screw system on the top for upward motion and two separate screws on the sides to drive the airship forward. Building something that could fly up and over other things was a dream for many inventors in the 19th century.

“Vertical flight as a concept is more dominant than fixed-wing flight—essentially airplane-style flight—at this time,” Connor said. “Inventors are starting to understand that air acts similarly to fluid. There’s certainly a carryover from nautical construction to the vision for how an aircraft might perform.”

That maritime influence is evident throughout the plans and model. Paone pointed to several aspects of the design that have a distinct nautical style rather than the aviation appearances aviation enthusiasts expect to see today. 

“If you look at the drawings of the helicopter, it’s definitely got some ship-building roots,” he said. “It has a ship’s body and smokestacks like a steamer would. It has much more of a feel of a nautical craft than an aircraft.”

Other Flying Machines

Powers’ helicopter came at a time of incredible innovation. Technological improvements exploded from drawing boards as inventors on both sides sought to support the war effort. Mobile was also the home of H.L. Hunley, the first operational submarine to attack a warship in combat. It sank in 1864 shortly after destroying USS Housatonic outside Charleston, S.C.

“Unfortunately, warfare inspires innovation,” Paone said. “In addition to the Hunley, there are all sorts of improvements in the railroad, telegraph, weapons, and ironclads. They come about because of the Civil War and ripple throughout the world stage.”

At the time, Powers was not the only one thinking about taking to the air. Edward Serrell, a colonel in the Union Army, also conceived of a flying machine. As chief engineer for the Army of the James, he demonstrated how aerial reconnaissance could be accomplished by using a windup toy that flew upward of 100 feet.

Major General Benjamin Butler liked the idea and ordered Serrell to build a full-sized flying machine. He constructed a 52-foot, cigar-shaped prototype with wings and four fans for lift and propulsion. Called variously the Valomotive and Reconoiterer, the aircraft was waiting for the development of a lightweight steam engine for power when the war ended.

Serrell abandoned his plans with the cessation of hostilities and the whereabouts of his prototype are lost. His papers are conserved in the archives at the National Air and Space Museum. Serrell’s invention is detailed in the book Smithsonian Civil War: Inside the National Collection in a chapter written by Tom Crouch, curator emeritus at the museum.

Amazingly, these were not the only plans in the works for flying machines during the war. Other inventors had conceived of building motor-powered crafts capable of delivering explosive payloads on enemy positions.

Richard Oglesby Davidson of Virginia had his sights set on building an “aerostat,” an aircraft in “the form of an American eagle,” he wrote in his 1840 book on aviation theory. It featured a beak, legs made of spring and feathers painted on the fuselage. The “conductor,” or pilot, sat in a compartment inside the eagle, where he operated the wings for motion. According to the 2016 book Astride Two Worlds: Technology and the American Civil War by Barton C. Hacker, Davidson even considered installing a carbonic acid gas engine for supplemental power.

No one knows today what happened to those plans, though Davidson—who was nicknamed “Bird”—does turn up again during the Civil War. Crouch reports in his chapter in Smithsonian Civil War that the inventor made a tour of the trenches in Petersburg, Va., in 1864, where he showed Confederate troops a wooden model of his concept. He reportedly asked enlisted men to donate $1 and officers $5 so he could construct his flying machine. What happened to those plans—or the donated money—is anybody’s guess.

In 1863, Richmond dentist R. Findlay Hunt proposed building a steam-powered “flying machine intended to be used for war purposes” to Jefferson Davis. The president of the Confederate States of America was so impressed with the idea that he referred Hunt to General Robert E. Lee. After review by his engineers, the concept was deemed unworkable.

After the war, Hunt petitioned the U.S. Patent Office for protection of his design until he could perfect his idea. He purportedly built a model two years later but never applied for a patent.

Perhaps the most ambitious plan for an aircraft of war was developed by Solomon Andrews, a New Jersey physician and inventor. He actually built and tested a working model that was flown over Perth Amboy, N.J., in 1863 in an attempt to attract the attention of Union military leaders.

Called Aereon, Andrews’ flying machine was essentially an unpowered dirigible. It consisted of three large balloons tied together with a rudder for steering and gondola for passengers. It had no motor and relied solely on wind for forward movement, though Andrews claimed he could power the aircraft by using “Gravitation,” according to John Toland in the 1972 book Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters.

The balloons were approximately 80 feet in length and 13 feet wide. Each included 21 cells to prevent the gas from sloshing back and forth. In between the balloons and gondola was a 12-foot-long basket that featured a ballast car on tracks. The airship was controlled by moving the basket forward to dive and backward to ascend.

Andrews wrote several letters to President Abraham Lincoln and other officials about his flying machine. He even demonstrated how it would fly using a small model at the Capitol Building and Smithsonian Institution. By that time it was late in the war, however, and Union victory seemed imminent, so Congress opted not to fund the proposal.

Following the war, Andrews formed the Aerial Navigation Company and built a second airship that in 1866 twice flew over New York City. The firm went bankrupt during the postwar economic recession and the Aereon #2 never flew again.

“Ahead of His Time”

While all of the ideas were certainly uplifting, few of them appeared capable of getting off the ground. The dynamics of powered flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle were not well understood in the 1860s and really wouldn’t be deciphered until the Wright brothers took off from Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina at the dawn of the new century.

As for the Confederate helicopter, most aviation experts agree Powers’ design had fundamental flaws that would have prevented it from taking to the air as designed. The airscrews likely would not have generated the necessary lift, while the craft itself was too heavy for the simple steam engine Powers proposed for it.

“The propulsion aspect was not viable,” Connor says. “Powers is not on the leading edge of developing this technology. Others make further inroads than him at the time. However, he is a standout in the concept of application by understanding that it has a military purpose.”

That’s not to say that Powers wasn’t on the right flight path. Some of his ideas held promise, and one even predicted an innovation that would come about some 80 years later. According to Paone, Powers’ plans called for
lattice-style construction of wood in the aircraft’s fuselage to give it added durability. That concept was used by the British in World War II in the wings of the Vickers Wellington bomber.

“This provides incredible strength without adding lots of weight,” Paone said. “Perhaps Mr. Powers was just ahead of his time.”

Little is known about Powers. According to his family, he was an architectural engineer living in Mobile during the war. When Powers realized the South did not have enough ships to break the Union blockade, he started tinkering with vertical flight. It is believed the Confederate military was aware of his idea but was unwilling to finance something it likely perceived as an out-of-this-world scheme.

Once Powers realized his dream would not become a reality, he hid the plans and model so they would not fall into Northern hands, according to family lore. They remained largely unknown until his granddaughter, Clara McDermott, donated them to the Smithsonian for further study more than 80 years ago.

Since that time, historians and scientists have speculated about what might have been. Had Powers been given the money to test his idea, would he have eventually succeeded? That answer will never be known for certain, but Paone is excited just thinking about what was being dreamt of more than 150 years ago.

“What fascinates me is that you have people who are legitimately looking at pushing the envelope with flight,” he said. “Would this have worked? Probably not, but he’s going down this path thinking maybe he could make something fly.”

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Massachusetts-based author Dave Kindy is a self-described history nerd and remembers the centennial celebration of the Civil War. He is a frequent contributor to several HistoryNet publications, as well as Air & Space Quarterly, National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and Smithsonian.

As an instrument of war, the flail was a handheld, two-piece, jointed weapon, consisting of a wooden handle of varying length (up to 5-6 feet long) and a shorter, perhaps 1–2-feet long, heavy impact rod serving as a “striking-head” which was attached to the handle by a flexible rope, leather strap or chain links, allowing it to swing freely up and down and in a full circle.

By making a sweeping, downward blow with the flail’s handle, the weapon’s wielder greatly increased the impact energy of his blow through the increased energy generated by the centripetal force of the free-swinging “striking-head,” thereby inflicting a more powerful blow on the target. Some flail wielders even increased the lethality of their flail’s striking-head by replacing the rod with a longer-chain-linked, spiked head, orb-shaped ball, creating the Kettenmorgenstern (chain morning star).

Peasant farmers just trying to survive medieval combat added spikes and metal studs, considering any lethal enhancement a battlefield “plus” if it helped them get through a battle alive.

Flail weapons are best classified as “peasant levy’ weapons” since they evolved from the flail grain thresher, an agricultural tool typically used by farmers to separate grain from their husks (dating from ancient Roman times) through heavy beating, and therefore one of the commonly-available farming tools that peasant levies who were involuntarily conscripted into military service had readily available.

Other such peasant farming/foresting tools that could be quickly converted into military use when peasants were called up included axes, billhooks, knives, adzes and heavy mallets. Certainly, at least by the 15th century—as Czech Hussite peasant infantry who fought with flails demonstrate—flails were in use and there are accounts confirming its use through the 17th century.

Variations of the flail weapon were developed in widespread world regions. In medieval Russia and East Asia, steppe warriors wielded kisten, flails with smooth metal or bone balls attached to the haft by rope or a leather strap. Similar, flail-like, hand-wielded impact weapons were developed by the Chinese (nunchakus, three-section-staff, and the knotted-rope knout) and the Koreans (pyeongong). Yet, the most famous flail-pattern weapon may never have been part of the Medieval armored knight’s weapons array.

Today, the most popular and well-known image of the flail weapon—perpetuated by modern-era novels and films—is of fully-armored Medieval knights (literally) “flailing” away in knight-to-knight combat, bashing at each other brandishing short-hafted “morning star” flails sporting long-chain-linked, spiked balls.

Yet, today’s medieval armored knight combat historians are at odds as to whether such weapons even existed. Contemporary paintings depict such weapons, and post-medieval examples do exist, but many historians doubt if these were more than conceptual imaginings. Indeed, a short-handled, long-chained “morning star” flail, in practical use, could have been more dangerous to the flail weapon’s wielder than to the weapon’s target!

Certainly, the flail was used in medieval combat, but the version depicted in 19th century and later romantic “knighthood” novels and films was likely never used in knightly combat.

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This fantastic and detailed study reveals the origins of ancient Rome’s most iconic weapon: the gladius. Based on first-class research, this is a story of historical evolution—not only of a weapon, but of tactics, armor and indeed of Roman civilization.

Although we are all familiar with the Roman Empire ruled by powerful Caesars, the authors have chosen to take us much farther back in time to what might be called the infancy of Rome’s armies.

This debut volume focuses on the ancient monarchial and consular periods of Rome, painting a clear picture of how Roman armies developed into mighty fighting forces. Among the many fascinating topics discussed are types of insignia, how weapons were worn, and archaic fighting techniques in duels as well as in pitched battles.

The authors delve into ancient sources and archaeological artifacts to bring history to life. Many clear and detailed diagrams make the material both visually interesting and richer in an educational sense.

This book is highly recommended to anyone wishing to get a firmer grasp on the history of ancient Rome or the classical world.

The Roman Gladius and the Ancient Fighting Techniques

Volume I – Monarchy and Consular Age
by Fabrizio Casprini & Marco Saliola, Frontline Books, 2023

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One of the nation’s foremost authorities on firepower and land warfare, Robert H. Scales retired from the Army in 2001 after more than three decades in uniform, much of it influenced by his service in Vietnam. A 1966 graduate of the United States Military Academy, Scales initially served in Germany before joining the 2nd Battalion, 319th Artillery in Vietnam. Scales commanded a howitzer battery in the battalion and earned a Silver Star in 1969. He would later lead artillery units in Korea, command the Field Artillery Center at Fort Sill, and serve as the Commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Scales holds a doctorate in history from Duke University and has written a number of critically acclaimed books, including Firepower in Limited War, Certain Victory, and Yellow Smoke: The Future of Land Warfare for America’s Military. In an interview with Vietnam contributor Warren Wilkins, he discusses his experiences in Vietnam, the role of firepower in that conflict, and the defining characteristics of American war-making.

On the night of June 14, 1969, you were in command of a 105mm howitzer battery at Firebase Berchtesgaden, located on a hill on the eastern side of the A Shau Valley, when a force of approximately 100 North Vietnamese sappers attacked the base. You received a Silver Star for your actions during the battle. Tell us about that night.

My four guns and two 155mm howitzers were clustered together on this mountaintop. In May 1969, the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] attacked my sister battalion on Firebase Airborne. They destroyed guns, killed 13 soldiers, and completely eviscerated that unit. One month later, they attacked us. They attacked early in the morning, and the hole that I lived in was right on the edge of the perimeter. My battery was the first thing they attacked. The goddamn infantry that protected us had decided that they were going to be in charge of illumination. The key to defeating a night attack is illumination. So the infantry said that they would handle it, but I didn’t believe them. If you look at Berchtesgaden on Google, you will see this one lone gun at the very top of the firebase with the tube sticking up almost vertically. Well, that was my gun. I kept that gun at 1100 mils [milliradians], one-and-a-half second delay on an illumination round, pointed straight up.

We got involved in this horrendous fight, and I had to get to that gun because the infantry never fired a round of illumination. The first sergeant and I fought like hell to get to that damn gun. Finally we got to it, and I pulled the lanyard. When that illumination round went off, it changed the whole complexion of the battle. All of the sudden, the light went on and the troops started killing those guys. They [the NVA] were literally caught in the open. We fought like hell, beat them back, and killed a whole bunch of them. Our main mission as artillerymen was to shoot artillery, but an equally important mission for young gunners is to be able to defend your position. That was a lesson I learned.

Prior to the sapper attack, your battery had provided artillery support for the 101st Airborne Division during the battle for Hill 937, better known as “Hamburger Hill.” How did the employment of artillery in Vietnam compare to other American wars?

You can almost draw a graph, starting with the 25th Infantry Division at Guadalcanal, that traces the density of supporting fires dedicated to the maneuver mission up through the Pacific battles, the Battle of the Bulge and the push into Germany, and then forward to Korea. That graph or curve goes way up in terms of the ratio of firepower expended versus the maneuver forces employed. Entire ships full of ammunition were expended in 1951-52 to preserve American lives.

By the time we got to Vietnam, this idea of trading firepower for manpower really started to take hold. So when I was there, no infantry unit was allowed to maneuver outside the artillery fan. The infantry in Vietnam would literally maneuver by fire. Artillery was also used as a navigation aid, to recon by fire and clear the way as units moved through the jungle, and to fire defensive concentrations.

Speaking of “Hamburger Hill,” you’ve noted that your battery hammered that hill with thousands of 105mm rounds, air strikes blasted its slopes and summit, and yet the enemy continued to fight. Did this cause you to reconsider the efficacy of firepower on the battlefield?

When I was at Berchtesgaden, I was higher than Hamburger Hill and could look down on it through my scope. By the time our infantry had conducted their fifth or sixth assault, the top of that mountain was completely denuded. I would sit there with my scope, and we’d fire and fire and fire. If our troops got down, behind a log or something, we could shoot within 40 meters [of them] if we were very careful.

I would look through that scope, and as soon as we lifted our fires, I could see those little guys [the NVA] come out from those underground bunkers and take up positions and start shooting back. I remember saying to myself—and this has been kind of a thesis of all the books I’ve written about firepower—that firepower has a limitation. We saw this in the First World War when artillery was shocking to both sides early in the war. By 1917, there were images of the British “Tommy” [soldier] brewing tea in the middle of a barrage.

In the age of “imprecision”—before what we now call “precision” munitions—the primary impact of artillery was psychological and not physical. It’s what’s called the palliative effect of artillery. By the time I got to Vietnam [in 1968] the psychological effects of artillery had dropped off considerably, and the enemy was no longer as intimidated by our killing power as he was in 1965. Two things always amazed me about artillery—one is the enormous pyrotechnic effect of artillery going off over the enemy, and the other is the remarkably few enemy it actually kills.

So from my experience at Hamburger Hill, I learned that there is a crossover point in the use of artillery and firepower at which its ability to influence the maneuver battle diminishes considerably. If a soldier is warm and protected—in other words, if he’s down or better yet under cover—it takes an awful lot of rounds to kill him. And no matter how much artillery and firepower you pile onto that—again I’m talking about “dumb” artillery and “dumb” firepower—its ability to influence the battle diminishes with time. That was reinforced in Korea and Vietnam.

The U.S. military—particularly the Army—clearly favored firepower over maneuver in Vietnam. Was this emphasis on firepower unique to that conflict, or was it merely a reflection of what some have called the “American way of war”?

We do emphasize firepower, but the Russians do the same. Although the Russians are far more willing to sacrifice human lives than we are, they have a very similar doctrine…. In Vietnam it was a career ender if your maneuver force was caught outside the reach of your artillery. And that psychology continued all the way into Desert Storm. As late as Desert Storm, one of the cardinal tenets of the American way of war was to never exceed the limits of your artillery.

The American army was caught in a dilemma in Vietnam. We had reached the limit, before the point where we could achieve our maneuver objectives, when artillery was no longer all that helpful. So what do you do? Do you start expending more human lives to achieve your objectives because you are no longer protected by firepower? Or do you fall back under the protective arcs of your artillery and refuse to maneuver beyond that and give the enemy the advantage? And until the “precision” revolution in 1972, that’s sort of where we were.

In retrospect, do you believe that a firepower-first approach in Vietnam was justified, given the operating environment and the existing political climate, or do you agree with critics who argue that the military’s overreliance on heavy supporting fires undermined American pacification efforts and failed to address the true nature of the enemy threat?

I argue in my book [Firepower in Limited War] that in a counter-insurgency campaign, firepower has its limits. But I failed to mention the psychological impact of firepower on the civilian population and the deadening effect it has on the innocent. That is particularly important when you’re fighting a war seeking popular support. So the presence of innocents on the battlefield greatly diminishes your ability to apply overwhelming firepower. The second thing we learned in Vietnam was that, after a while, firepower becomes an inhibitor rather than a facilitator of your ability to maneuver. So the days of using light infantry as a find, fix, and finish force were greatly diminished because of its inability to move outside the arc of artillery.

The Army was on the horns of a dilemma. The center of gravity of the American military in Vietnam was dead Americans, and the NVA knew it. In World War II, Col. [Hiromichi] Yahara, who served with the Japanese army on Okinawa, wrote a series of missives in which he said, essentially, the only way you can beat America is to kill Americans. We lost in Vietnam not because we were not able to defeat the enemy in battle, or that we had too little or too much firepower, but because too many Americans died and we tired of it first, just as Ho Chi Minh predicted the French would do before us. The only way to save lives in the close fight in Vietnam was through the use of protective fires. But firepower became a millstone around our necks in terms of our ability to maneuver. It also had a debilitating effect on our ability to maintain the “hearts and minds” of the people.

So we reached a plateau in our use of firepower, beyond which we could not go, and for which we had no alternative by 1970. Anytime you put maneuver forces forward in close contact with the enemy, soldiers are going to die. Yet we got to a point by 1970-71 where, anytime an American soldier died, it would end up on the front page of the New York Times. So you have two choices to keep those soldiers safe: lock them in firebases and let the enemy run amok in the countryside and control the population, or put them out there under the protective umbrella of firepower but greatly limit their ability to maneuver. It was that juxtaposition between keeping soldiers safe—our vulnerable center of gravity—or being able to maneuver and control territory, and we were never able to reconcile that.

The traditional role of the infantry has always been to close with and destroy the enemy. American infantry units in Vietnam, however, typically sought to find the enemy so that firepower could destroy him. Did this change in tactics occur organically within individual platoons and companies in the field, or was it mandated by some higher headquarters and then codified by formal regulations?

Actually, it was both. One of the amazing things about the American way of war—and we saw this in World War II, particularly as American soldiers became more literate and as the American army became more egalitarian—is that tactical innovation in the American army, beginning in North Africa, really came from the bottom up, not the top down. That’s different than the Russian army, which is ruled by norms driven by the general staff. The American soldier, when he learns something that will keep him alive, will embrace it and proliferate it very quickly. You build a firepower system around what the soldiers are telling you makes it most effective.

In his book Firepower in Limited War, Scales examines the advantages and limitations of firepower by analyzing its effects in several pivotal recent conflicts. The book was placed on the Marine Corps Commandant’s Reading List.

Part of the reason that we rely so heavily on the artillery was that the revolution at Fort Sill [home of U.S. field artillery] was such that we came up with by far the best artillery firepower system in the world. We just were never really able to embed it into the Army’s system until our experiences in North Africa taught us how to do it and how to provide close support. But we just hit the wall in terms of our ability to do that, because the enemy has a vote.

What did the Japanese do at Okinawa? What did the Chinese and North Koreans do? What did the NVA do? They learned how to effectively counter American firepower dominance by maneuvering outside of the [firepower] range fan, hugging maneuver units so that they couldn’t bring in heavy close supporting fires, using camouflage, and going to ground.

To reduce the destructive effects of American firepower, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese would frequently “hug” American infantry units in battle. How effective was that tactic?

It was very effective. I saw that firsthand. They were literally willing to die under our artillery fan to stay in their holes, frankly longer than we ever would, in order to continue to kill us. Remember, their purpose was not to hold ground. Their purpose was to kill us.

Gen. Vuong Thua Vu, former deputy chief of the North Vietnamese Army General Staff, characterized the American practice of generating contact with enemy troops and then calling in artillery and air strikes to destroy them as an “outmoded fighting method of a cowardly but aggressive army.” Similarly, some of our Australian and South Korean allies have suggested that the American infantryman, while certainly not “cowardly,” nevertheless relied too much on firepower. How did American soldiers and Marines perform in infantry combat?

For a drafted army and to some extent a [drafted] Marine Corps, they performed remarkably well. Whenever the U.S. Army got involved in what [retired Marine Corps general and former U.S. Secretary of Defense] Jim Mattis and I call “intimate killing,” they did it remarkably well, considering what was at stake. The critics have this wrong, because I suspect if you were South Korean, or Australian, or whomever and had that firepower available to you, you would fight precisely the same way. The problem is that you want to avoid intimate killing, and in that sense the American army had it right. But the limits of technology precluded the American army from avoiding intimate contact without the cost of logistics being so great that it was no longer effective.

So I have no problem whatsoever with the tactics that the American close combat forces used in Vietnam. My critique has always been with the firepower system that supported them. I have no problem whatsoever with finding, fixing, and finishing—the three words we used to describe Vietnam combat. I do have a problem with the technology that we used in our firepower system to do the finishing part. It was always inefficient, logistically burdensome, and reached a point of diminishing returns. What the “precision” revolution has allowed us to do is reverse that.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Adelbert F. Waldron III was the highest-scoring American sniper of the Vietnam War, with 109 confirmed kills. He was also the most highly decorated, earning the Distinguished Service Cross twice, the Silver Star, and three Bronze Star Medals. Born in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1933, Waldron served in the U.S. Navy from 1953 to 1965, leaving the service as a petty officer 2nd class. In 1968 he enlisted in the U.S. Army and at age 35 completed airborne school to earn his jump wings. In late 1968 he was assigned to the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta. Upon arriving in-country, Waldron attended the 9th Infantry Division’s sniper school, established by the division’s legendary commander, Maj. Gen. Julian J. Ewell.

Waldron was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment (3-60), part of the Mobile Riverine Force (MRF) operating on the waterways of the Mekong Delta. Waldron’s better-known U.S. Marine sniper counterparts, Carlos Hathcock (93 confirmed kills), Eric R. England (98), and Charles Mawhinney (103), used bolt-action rifles. Waldron, however, used the semiautomatic M-21 sniper rifle—a 7.62mm M-14 rifle fitted with an optical scope and accurized by the Rock Island Arsenal. He frequently operated at night using a starlight scope. On several occasions he made his kills from a moving boat platform, in one case at a range of more than 900 meters.

As a Specialist 4, Waldron earned the Silver Star in January 1969 while on a reconnaissance mission in Kien Hoa Province. After establishing a night outpost, Waldron spotted enemy movement to his front. For more than three hours he engaged the VC force from his concealed position, killing 11. He withdrew only after the enemy finally detected his firing position.

As a sergeant, Waldron earned his first DSC for a combined series of 14 sniper missions during the period from Jan. 16 to Feb. 4, 1969, while serving with Company B, 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry. On Jan. 19, while his company was being resupplied near Ap Hoa, Kien Hoa Province, they were attacked by a force of some 40 VC. Under a heavy barrage of small arms and automatic weapons fire, Waldron engaged the attacking force from an exposed position, killing a number of the VC and forcing them to break contact.

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Three nights later, on the night of Jan. 22, Waldron’s unit was moving through an area heavily infested with booby traps. Pinpointing a VC probing force, Waldron engaged them, moving through open rice paddies from one firing position to another. By skillfully deceiving the communists as to the actual strength of the American unit, Waldron prevented a night assault by the main enemy element. Eleven days later, on the night of Feb. 3, a nearby South Vietnamese Army unit came under attack. Moving to the sound of the guns, Waldron spotted a VC element attempting to flank the ARVN soldiers. He broke up the attack with deadly accurate fire. Later that night he killed a VC who was collecting the weapons of his dead comrades.

Waldron received his second DSC for another combined series of 18 sniper missions in Kien Hoa Province from Feb. 5 to March 29, 1969. On Feb. 14, while his squad was on a night patrol near Ap Phu Thuan, Waldron observed a numerically superior VC force maneuvering to assault a nearby friendly unit. Moving rapidly from one position to another to deceive the enemy as to the strength of his squad, Waldron killed several VC and broke up their attack. On Feb. 26, near Phu Tuc, Waldron killed a VC rocket team preparing to fire on MRF boats. At Ap Luong Long Noi on March 8, when his company was attacked by a large VC force, Waldron killed many of the attackers and forced them to withdraw. As the official citation for his second DSC reads, “Despite adverse weather conditions, poor illumination and the pressure of arduous missions night after night, he repeatedly located and engaged many hostile elements, killing a number of the enemy.”

After returning from Vietnam Waldron served briefly as an instructor for the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit. He left the Army in 1970 and worked as a firearms instructor at a private paramilitary training school operated by former Office of Strategic Services operative and mercenary Mitchell WerBell. Waldron died in 1995 and is buried in Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Around 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 14, 1906, Washington, D.C., residents spotted an oblong shape floating across the Potomac River toward the city. The thing was immense—62 feet long, 16 feet in diameter—larger than any familiar moving object except a locomotive, with a golden sheen that glowed in the morning sun. A noisy gasoline engine drove a propeller at the nose pulling the object along. A man on a platform hanging from the rig somehow was steering the airborne conveyance.

The mysterious craft sailed up the National Mall and landed near the Washington Monument. The occupant stepped off the platform. His name was Lincoln Beachey, he said. He was a dirigible pilot, and he had taken off that morning from a new amusement park in Arlington, Va., where dirigibles were among the attractions. His destination was the White House; he had paused to make a repair. He deliberately lingered on the Monument grounds to let word spread of his airship’s presence. A crowd formed and swelled. Soon, “the drives were lined with grocery wagons, laundry wagons, automobiles, bicycles and other kinds of vehicles and the east side of the Monument was black with a mass of humanity,” The Washington Post reported. Beachey stepped back aboard, fired up the engine, and took off, circling the Monument before heading toward the White House, three blocks north.

Dirigibles descended from hot-air balloons. Brothers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier pioneered the first piloted balloon ascent over Paris in 1783. Union and Confederate forces used balloons for reconnaissance and fire control in the 1860s. But these early gasbags had to remain tethered lest the breeze carry them off. Dirigibles, introduced in the late 1600s but not practicable until nearly two centuries later, were rigid, herring-shaped, and self-propelled. To build a dirigible, artisans bolted together a wooden frame, usually of pine or spruce, over which they stretched a thin, tough skin of high-quality Japanese silk, tightly sewn and made airtight with coatings of oil or varnish.

Netting helped maintain the rigid shape. Hydrogen, a gas lighter than air, gave the ungainly airships buoyancy. Operators usually generated their own hydrogen by pouring sulfuric acid over barrels of iron filings and piping the resulting hydrogen into their airships to inflate them. Ropes held the airship in place until an “aeronaut” had mounted a wooden platform slung beneath the craft and tethered by wires and poles of bamboo, wood, or metal. The platform held a gasoline engine that drove a propeller below the aircraft’s nose.

Once untethered and on his way, the pilot controlled his craft—dirigible is derived from the French diriger, meaning “to steer”—using a large wooden rudder aft of the platform, in effect sailing on air. He controlled pitch—the angle of rise or descent—by walking forward and back on the platform. A successful dirigible pilot was hearty, daring, and willing to risk falling out of the sky to his death.

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Experimenters worked their way through steam engines—too heavy—and battery-powered electric motors—unreliable—before settling on gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont started building reliable dirigibles in 1898 and in 1901 famously circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower. German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin launched a version in 1900. The dirigible entered American popular culture as entertainment. One of the first successful airship builders, Thomas Baldwin, started out at 21 as a circus acrobat and trapeze performer. Bitten by the urge to fly, he got onto the county-fair circuit piloting hot-air balloons and in 1885 became the first American to parachute from a balloon gondola.

Designating himself “Captain Tom,” Baldwin began building dirigibles at his shop in San Francisco in 1903. Available engines proved too weak. In 1904, an unfamiliar make of motorcycle zipped past his shop. Baldwin investigated and learned that the two-wheeler ran on a powerful but lightweight four-cylinder gas engine built by Glenn Curtiss of Hammondsport, N.Y. Baldwin ordered a Curtiss engine by telegraph, mounted it on his airship, rigged a drive train to a propeller, and took to the air.

Dirigible operators transported their craft by rail, for each appearance breaking down and rebuilding the entire assembly to fit into a boxcar. Bookings focused on fairs, expositions, and amusement parks—settings that drew sizable crowds over several days, weeks, even months. In October 1904, Baldwin took his Curtiss-powered dirigible, California Arrow, to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Finding himself too heavy for his airship, he deputized skinny employee Roy Knabenshue, an experienced balloonist, to take it up. Navigating in lazy circles over the fairgrounds, Knabenshue astonished onlookers and landed safely. California Arrow was the first successful dirigible in the United States.

Baldwin set about building a fleet of dirigibles using five-horsepower Curtiss engines. He was hunting for additional hands when a youth came by in March 1905 seeking work. Growing up nearby in San Francisco, 18-year-old Lincoln Beachey had raced bicycles and motorcycles, in the process becoming an adept mechanic. Baldwin put Beachey on his ground crew. In 1905 Roy Knabenshue went home to Toledo, Ohio, to build his own dirigibles. That August, aboard Toledo II, Knabenshue departed New York’s Central Park and soared above Manhattan’s skyscrapers, putting dirigible flying on the map.

Knabenshue’s exit left Baldwin short a pilot. Beachey, compact, athletic and eager, fit the bill. He proved deft at piloting airships at county fairs and other events but, itching for more pay than Baldwin was offering, joined Knabenshue. The two worked the seasonal exhibition circuit. In June 1906, they contracted to fly at Luna Park, a new amusement park in Cleveland. One show Beachey was at 500 feet when two bamboo platform spars failed. The pilot’s platform buckled, shoving the propeller into and through the airship’s skin. The deflating dirigible dropped slowly. Beachey, woozy from inhaling hydrogen, hung on until he was about 20 feet from the ground and jumped, hitting the dirt unconscious but quickly reviving.

The Cleveland operation was part of a growing chain. Knabenshue landed a contract with a new branch in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac from the nation’s capital. “The new Coney Island,” as Washingtonians were already calling their Luna Park franchise, featured a roller coaster, a ballroom, a theater, restaurants, and an arena big enough to accommodate elephant shows and circuses. Besides its bill of concerts, dances, and extravaganzas, the park quickly became a popular setting for company picnics and amateur athletic events. An advertisement in the June 7, 1906, Washington Post urged readers to “KEEP YOUR EYE ON KNABENSHUE’S AIRSHIP June 12 to 18.” As part of his ballyhoo, the aviator told reporters he might just fly across the Potomac, land on the White House roof, and deliver a message to President Theodore Roosevelt. People scoffed. No airship had ever flown into Washington, D.C.

Beachey lobbied to make the trans-Potomac flight. He had proven a capable, daring stunt flyer and coverage of his recent misadventure in Cleveland had lent his name notoriety. If Beachey came to grief, Knabenshue reasoned, he could blame pilot error. If Beachey succeeded, their Luna Park stand stood to sell out. Knabenshue told his protégé yes and boarded a train to appear in Buffalo, where he flew in another dirigible and wound up in Lake Erie but was fished out unhurt. On June 14, Beachey inflated his airship, performed his pre-flight check, revved the Curtiss craft, and, just after 10:00 a.m., took off.

After his theatrical pause at the Washington Monument, Beachey landed at the south edge of the executive mansion’s lawn. Another crowd gathered. Gawkers jumped the low picket fence that constituted the security perimeter. President Roosevelt was two miles away, giving the annual commencement address at Georgetown University (“Don’t flinch, don’t foul and hit the line hard,” he was exhorting the graduates about the time Beachey came calling). First Lady Edith Roosevelt emerged, chatted with the pilot, and examined his dirigible. “That fellow is only seeking an advertisement,” Presidential secretary William Loeb, irked by the spectacle of an airship drawing a crowd so close to the White House, told an assistant. “He has no invitation or permit to come here.” Police shooed onlookers and told Beachey to take off. He insisted on giving Loeb a letter for the president. The message is lost to history; Loeb may have thrown it away.

Beachey took off, banking east over the Treasury Building and following Pennsylvania Avenue NW toward the Capitol. He kept his altitude low, 150 to 500 feet, to give spectators a good look. “Business in Washington was practically at a standstill,” a newspaper reported. “The streets were filled with people, the roofs of houses were covered with them and heads were protruding from every available window, all craning their necks upward to get a glimpse of the aeronaut.”

The unfamiliar sound of an engine putt-putting in mid-air and the sight of a dirigible closing on the Capitol disrupted congressional deliberations. A stampede of senators, representatives and civil servants piled outside to watch the contraption land near the Capitol’s east steps. “I guess I am about the only private individual who has ever stopped Congressional legislation,” Beachey quipped later.

Newsmen and Washingtonians of all sorts came to gape as Beachey held forth. The flight would open a new era in aerial history, he predicted. Beachey asked for volunteers to hold his machine in place and, fuel can in hand, went for gasoline. Returning, he gassed up, bounded onto the airship’s catwalk, and started the engine. Taking off, he circled the Capitol dome and flew back to Luna Park. The calm, capable “Boy Aeronaut” became an instant celebrity. The dirigible landing was the talk of the capital. “White House and Capitol Upset by an Airship,” a headline read. “Sky Pilot Soars Over City, Thousands Staring,” blared another. Witnesses took to wearing typewritten labels on their lapels that read “I Saw It!”

Beachey took fame in stride. “It was the easiest flight I have ever made,” he told reporters. “The air was just calm enough, the sights were beautiful, and everyone I saw had on a pleasant smile and a mouthful of cheers. Washington looks like a huge flower garden full of block houses and bugs as seen from the sky. The question of navigating is no longer an experiment. I can go to breakfast in my airship.”

Beachey performed for overflow crowds for the rest of the engagement at Luna Park. He soon went solo, setting records for speed and maneuvers. Winning races and mastering stunts, Beachey was soon recognized as America’s best dirigible flyer. In June 1907, he took off from seaside Revere, Mass., flew into Boston, and landed on Boston Common to cheers. Airborne again, he circled the State House’s golden dome. Over Massachusetts Bay his engine quit; fishermen rushed to his rescue and towed his craft to shore. “The distance from the earth did not cause me the least worry,” he said. “It is a hard place to adjust a cranky motor.”

Later that month, he performed at newly opened Happyland Amusement Park on Staten Island, N.Y. To promote his show, he bombarded Fort Wadsworth, nearby on Staten Island, with balls filled with passes to the park. He flew over Brooklyn, then Manhattan, landing at Battery Park. As usual, a crowd materialized. Police dispersed the onlookers and ordered Beachey to fly off. He vowed to land atop the 20-story Flatiron Building, but a propeller malfunction and uncooperative gusts dumped him into the East River. Boaters fetched him and his aircraft. Soon Beachey was back at Luna Park in Arlington. At the Washington Post’s behest, he flew to the capital, dropped passes to the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition in Norfolk, Va., again circled the Washington Monument, landed near the Post building, and returned to Luna Park.

“There’s really nothing to it,” he told a newsman. “It’s just the same as being on the ground so far as nervousness is concerned. I stand on this two-inch [thick] beam along the underside of the framework…and think nothing whatever about being 2,000 feet in the air. It’s just as safe up there as it is down here if you don’t get scared, and scared people have no business in an airship.” Beachey stuck with dirigibles until he worked an air meet in Los Angeles in 1910. Among the aircraft on hand was a fixed-wing biplane. “Boy, our racket is dead!” he told a pal.

He was right. In 1903, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright had gotten a fixed-wing aircraft aloft and soon went into biplane production. Mechanical genius Glenn Curtiss was installing his motorcycle and dirigible engines into biplanes he designed and built. On July 4, 1908, Curtiss made the first public flight sanctioned by a professional association. Two years later, he pioneered a flight from Albany to New York City. The Wrights sued, claiming he was infringing on their patent.

Curtiss, determined to prove that his airplanes stood apart from and surpassed the Wrights and other competitors, started the Curtiss Exhibition Team, in 1911 hiring the nation’s leading aeronaut, Lincoln Beachey. Beachey cracked up his first Curtiss biplane, but quickly mastered the machine. He set speed records, was the first American to loop the loop, and flew upside down. After a flight over Niagara Falls, he swooped back under the bridge across the river. He learned to combine fast climbs followed by vertical plunges that he called “Death Dips,” pulling up at the last second. He partnered on tour with famed race-car driver Barney Oldfield, flying low over Oldfield’s head as the racer steered around dirt tracks, sometimes nudging Oldfield’s hat off with a tire. At Yale University, he dropped baseballs from his plane while the Yale catcher tried to snag them. Other flyers attempted to copy Beachey’s moves but none came close and a few crashed trying. “Beachey is the most wonderful flyer I ever saw,” Wilbur Wright said.

In May 1911, back in Washington, D.C., flying a Curtiss plane in an aerial competition at Benning Race Track, Beachey left the pack to head downtown. He circled the Capitol dome, then flew over the city in swirling winds. “Five years ago, I satisfied a strong desire to circle the Capitol in a dirigible and since that time I have always wanted to do so in an aeroplane,” he told newsmen afterward. “The Capitol loomed in the distance and I could not withstand the temptation.”

Beachey was back again in September 1914, this time announcing his flight beforehand. He circled the Capitol, looped the loop three times, flew upside down, and sailed over the White House as president Woodrow Wilson watched from an upstairs window. His purpose, Beachey said, was “to bring America first in things aeronautic” and demonstrate airplanes’ military potential. The event’s excitement was marred slightly by what may have been the first mid-air collision: his plane struck and killed a carrier pigeon.

Beachey’s luck ran out on March 14, 1915. He had parted with Curtiss, put biplanes behind, and was flying a flashy single-wing aircraft of his own design. At a San Francisco airshow, after looping and flying upside down at high speed, he dove sharply, eliciting cheers and gasps that turned into screams when his aircraft’s wings broke off and his plane plunged into San Francisco Bay. “The Daredevil of the Air” was dead at 28.

Curtiss had won a contract to build planes for the U.S. Navy; the Wrights and others were building planes for the Army. World War I accelerated aircraft development, including the use of dirigibles and planes to drop bombs. In Washington, the capital’s vulnerability from the air became clear. The city no longer welcomed airborne daredevils and, over the years, layers of municipal and federal regulation restricted and controlled the capital airspace. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a “flight restricted zone” excluded aircraft lacking Federal Aviation Administration authorization from entering DC’s airspace. Anyone trying to fly an aircraft to the White House would be chased by military jets or downed by anti-aircraft fire—a far cry from that tranquil day in 1906 when Lincoln Beachey alighted in the White House yard.

Dr. Bruce W. Dearstyne is a historian in Albany, N.Y. SUNY Press published the second edition of his book The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the Empire State’s History which includes a chapter on Glenn Curtiss, and his newest book, The Crucible of Public Policy: New York Courts in the Progressive Era, in 2022.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of American History magazine.

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On February 7, 1825, Samuel Morse’s wife, Lucretia, died suddenly, at the age of 25, while Morse was working in Washington, D.C. By the time he was notified by letter and had returned home to New Haven, Conn., she had already been buried.

Perhaps motivated by his regret, in the early 1830s, Morse began perfecting his version of an electric telegraph and, with the help of researchers Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, produced a single-circuit version. By pushing a key, the operator sent an electric signal across a wire to a receiver at the other end. Soon thereafter, Morse and Vail developed the code that would translate the pulses and silences to language.

On May 24, 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Md.: “What hath God wrought!”

Indeed. Its invention forever changed communication, and with it, transformed everything. A message, a military order, a money transfer, a piece of news, that once took weeks to deliver by horse and carriage, could now be exchanged almost instantly.

On April 11, 1846, the patent shown here specified a combination of devices to move and mark a paper roll to record the incoming message; and, more importantly, the use of a magnet in the telegraph receiver to amplify the current, enabling the telegraph to receive messages over longer lines—a long-distance call.

By 1866, the first permanent telegraph cable had been successfully laid across the Atlantic Ocean.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of American History magazine.

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When World War I settled into static trench warfare, even the most advanced armored cars were effectively immobilized by the Western Front’s combination of muddy terrain, trenches, barbed wire, heavy machine guns and artillery.

To meet such challenges, in February 1915 British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill formed a Landship Committee tasked with designing an armored vehicle capable of mastering mud, bridging an 8-foot gap, climbing a 5-foot earthwork and other specifications outlined by British army Lt. Col. Ernest Swinton. Under the guidance of mechanical engineer Major Walter Wilson of the Royal Naval Air Service and agricultural engineer Sir William Tritton, the committee purchased twin “creeping grip” track assemblies from the Bullock Tractor Co. of Chicago, Ill., and fitted them beneath a boxlike crew compartment of riveted steel plates. Powering the vehicle was a Daimler-Knight 6-cylinder, 105 hp tractor engine provided by Tritton’s Foster & Co., of Lincoln, England. On discovering the Bullock tracks were too small to accommodate the vehicle’s weight, Tritton designed longer, wider tracks. He also added twin rear wheels to facilitate steering. A proposed round turret packing a 2-pounder Vickers gun was never installed.

Officially known as the No.1 Lincoln Machine or Tritton Machine, the prototype landship was nicknamed “Little Willie” (a derisive name then applied to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia). When not undergoing testing, it was kept under the strictest wraps, a backstory claiming it was a new mobile “water tank.” The abbreviated tank reference became universal for Little Willie’s descendants.

Little Willie was found to be top-heavy, but by that time a better design was in development, with a rhomboid-shaped track running above and below the superstructure and 6-pounder guns in sponsons on either side. Nicknamed “Mother,” the improved variant was further refined into the Mark I tank, which first saw combat at the Somme on Sept. 15, 1916. Today the tank’s forebear, Little Willie, is in the collection of the Tank Museum in Bovington, England.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Military History magazine.

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On May 24, 1969, a B-40 rocket hit Monitor M-92-1 of River Squadron (RIVRON 9) as it was supporting a reconnaissance mission on the My Tho River, wounding three crewmen with fragments. The monitor turned and returned fire with its 40mm and 20mm cannon while the embarked Army liaison directed artillery fire and a helicopter strike on the enemy position. Nine Viet Cong reportedly were killed during the 30-minute engagement. The monitor itself suffered no significant damage.

Introduced into service in September 1967, the monitors constituted the battleships of the Mobile Riverine Force. Heavily armed and armored, they suppressed enemy fire during ambushes and river assaults. Like the force’s armored transport carriers (ATCs), they were modified Landing Craft Mechanized 6 (LCM-6) boats from World War II. They differed from the ATCs in having the landing ramps removed and their bows rounded off to reduce water resistance.

Monitor gun turrets were armored against shrapnel and small arms fire. The hull and superstructure were better protected with an armor plate covered by 18 to 24 inches of polyurethane and welded hardened steel bars that either detonated or “shorted-out” enemy shaped charge rounds. The polyurethane absorbed the warhead’s blast stream. Below, water blisters protected against underwater damage and added buoyancy that reduced the boat’s draft.

Two sets of river monitors were built during the Vietnam War. Eight were converted into flamethrower variants called Zippos. The last 10 of the 24 built replaced their 40mm cannon with a Mk 49 105mm howitzer turret with a ring of bar armor and better superstructure protection.

The monitors were turned over to the South Vietnamese Navy on June 30, 1969. They had played a key role for two years, delivering firepower to support the troops operating along the riverbanks, but had no role in the U.S. Navy’s post-Vietnam “blue water” operations.

Monitor

Crew: 11-13
Length: 18.5m/61ft
Beam: 5.3m/17ft 6 inches
Draft: 1m/42 inches/3ft 6 inches (full load)
Displacement: 76 tons (full load)
Propulsion: 2 x 220shp GM/Detroit Diesels – 2 propellers
Top Speed: 8.5kts
Fuel: 450 gallons diesel in two tanks
Max Range: 200km/110nm@6kts
Electronics: 1 x Raytheon 1900 Nav Radar, 2 x AN/ARC-46 & 1 x AN/PRC-25 radios
Armor: Hull/Superstructure: 20mm steel splash plate covered by urethane blocks & spaced XAR-30 22mm hardened steel bars; Turrets: 22mm hardened steel armor plate 
Armament: FWD Turret: 1 x 40mm Mk 3 & M2 .50 MGs; Aft Turrets: 3 x 20mm Mk 16 cannon; Well Deck: 1 x Mk 2 Mod 1 Combined 81mm mortar/ .50 M2 MG Mount, 4 x .30 M1917 initially/later M60 7.62mm MGs, 2 x Mk 18 40mm MGs (hand cranked), crew small arms (M16s, M79s)

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

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Growing up as the son of a history teacher in western Maryland, near Fort Frederick and Antietam National Battlefield, Danny Michael took a natural interest in history. But it was during an internship at the Frazier History Museum, in Louisville, Ken. (known for its firearms exhibit), while attending graduate school at the University of Louisville, that he experienced “a lightbulb moment that firearms history could be a career.” He joined the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West as assistant curator in 2016 before being promoted to Robert W. Woodruff curator in 2020. Michael recently took time to speak with Wild West about the museum and some of his favorite firearms on display.

How did you get interested in firearms?

We had firearms in the family growing up, so they were always around to some degree. For a while an after-school hobby was target shooting a box or two of .22 through a Remington 572. I didn’t get into old guns until later, after shooting with a friend that had a collection of military rifles and then a graduation gift of a Mosin carbine.

How did the Cody Firearms Museum come to be?

I like to trace the roots of the CFM all the way to Oliver Winchester. He had a personal collection dating to at least 1871 and probably older. Eventually the Winchester company had a large refence collection, and by the 20th century it numbered in the thousands. In the late ’40s Winchester hired their first dedicated firearms curator and then later opened a museum at the factory in 1959. After a few years they decided it needed a non-factory home, and the Center of the West here in Cody was on the short list. They loaned the collection in 1976, and it was displayed as the Winchester Arms Museum until they donated it in 1988. That’s when it got its own wing of the center and opened in 1991.

At the time Bill Ruger was on the board and recognized that the collection wasn’t just about Winchester history, but about the full story of firearms. During a board meeting he colorfully offered $1 million on the spot to change the name to “anything but a firearms manufacturer.” Then we became the Cody Firearms Museum. Today naming rights are more than $1 million if anyone is interested.

For anyone who hasn’t visited in a few years, what has changed since the 2019 renovation?

Our goal with the renovation was to make firearms history more accessible to a broad audience. The prior installation was innovative for its day but starting to show its age. And it assumed a lot of knowledge on the part of the visitor—i.e., to know that a row of Winchesters is one of a kind, you have to know what a Winchester is, or the difference between an 1866 and 1873, or even what a rifle is.

So, for this installation we really tried to bring all our visitors up to speed on firearms terminology, basics and history. We also organized the galleries more thematically then solely chronologically or by manufacturer. We wanted to highlight not just the technical details but the stories that go along with them. Hopefully, now there is something for every knowledge level, including expert.

The museum has more than 7,000 firearms in its collection. How many are on display?

About 4,200 are on display right now. We rotate individual guns occasionally, especially if we get something new and exciting, like a Pedersen device, which we added to the military gallery last year.…We still have that new museum smell, since we’re only four years removed from the renovation, but we do have a dedicated rotating gallery we change out every 18 to 24 months. 

Most firearms enthusiasts recognize Winchester, Colt, Remington, etc. Are there other manufacturers in the collection that merit attention? 

Yes. Companies like Schuyler, Hartley & Graham, who sold a lot of brand names and surplus firearms to the West. Spencer stands out to me, since so many of its carbines went west, as does [Hugo] Borchardt. He is known for the [C-93 semiautomatic] pistol, but he spent the first half of his career working at companies like Winchester and Sharps.

Let’s talk about your favorites. What are some standout rifles?

The Burton light machine rifle. It is a Winchester prototype from about 1916 or ’17 that no one would know existed unless the physical one survived. For whatever reason, Winchester didn’t write much down about it except for some cards for ammo loadings—173 gr .345 bullet over ~18 grs of Dupont Bear powder for the reloaders reading this. The only other note is in an older inventory of the collection that claims the Army tested the gun in 1917. Which is all very odd, considering the rifle is a select-fire, intermediate cartridge gun with twin detachable mags. About 30 years ahead of its time.

Any special shotguns?

My favorite shotgun is a Henry-style lever-action Oliver Winchester had made in Paris in about 1866 while he was traveling in Europe. It has a Damascus barrel, a silver-plated magazine tube—though it has tarnished with age—a case-hardened receiver and aluminum side plates. At the time the cost of aluminum was higher than gold or platinum so it would have been a real showpiece. It’s about 16 gauge and in excellent condition, except for the silver tarnish. It’s also the only shotgun I know of based on the original Henry.

How about handguns?

The Winchester revolvers. Winchester developed several prototype revolvers in the 1870s meant to debut at the centennial world’s fair in Philadelphia. They never entered production, and there are 12 extant today. They have swing-out cylinders—oddly, they open to the right instead of left like most revolvers—and some have automatic ejectors. Really interesting project that never took off. A few years later they hired William Mason from Colt to make another revolver, while Colt started to make lever-action rifles—but Mason’s revolver is mechanically different, really a single-action Army.

What other items in the collection stand out?

The Winchester company archive. Along with the guns, Olin [Corp.] gave the museum the surviving company archive. So, we have documents that go all the way back to the New Haven Arms Co. in the 1860s. We get to learn a lot about the company’s history because of that. We also have the production ledgers, and many people know the museum from looking up their old Winchester. Nowadays we can also do lookups on Savage, Fox, Marlin, LC Smith and Ithacas. Another incredible non-gun is the Winchester stone that hung over the entrance to the company offices at the factory in New Haven. It’s also probably the heaviest artifact in the museum.

How do you set about researching firearms for collectors?

If someone wants to look up their old firearm, check out our records office. We have records from the previously mentioned manufacturers, but owners can find the specific model and date ranges we have available on the website. Those interested can submit an order form through the website or give us a call. There is a cost to get a letter, and the best deal is to become a [Buffalo Bill Center of the West] member. We generally have date of manufacture and original configuration data available, and, depending on make and time frame, we have customer information as well. The customer data is most common with Savage 99s and Ithacas.

Explain your History Unloaded podcast.

That was an idea [former curator] Ashley [Hlebinsky] and I started. We had the thought that we are always talking about the museum field and the artifacts at work, and these discussions might fit well as a podcast. So, we started one. We’ve recorded six seasons so far—one very long one during 2020, as we tried to keep posting for everyone working from home—and it’s mostly us talking about firearms history and the museum field. We’re planning for another season right now. It’s small, but we have fun recording them, and people keep listening.

Are there any items you’d like to add to the collection?

We do have a short list. I’d love to add a Jennings repeater to the collection. Jennings was a predecessor to the Winchester, and there are about eight variations, the rarest being the very first model, the Jennings repeater. They made maybe 12, and the only one I know of is in the Smithsonian. We have the other models and the later Smith-Jennings, so the repeater would be a great gap to fill. I also really want to add a Colt-made 1904 Maxim machine gun. There are photos of the Yellowstone garrison with them back when the Army managed the park prior to the creation of the [National Park Service]. The idea of being on tourist and ranger duty with a 1904-equipped machine gun squad is wild to me. 

What’s next for the museum?

You know we’ve really just gotten started with the renovation. We had a short year in 2019, a tough year in 2021, and the floods in the park hurt visitation for 2022. So, I’d love to have a solid season in the short term. But we’re planning for major storage upgrades to care for the artifacts, and we’re always looking at ways to update and improve the new galleries. Plus, one of these days I really want to do an exhibit of the Winchester Wingo [indoor wing shooting] machine. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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