Archive for the ‘History’ Category

Assassins (random gun crankery).

Friday, January 19th, 2024

Some time back, I wrote about the guns of the presidential assassins.

GunsAmerica has an article up by Will Dabbs (who also writes for American Handgunner and is rapidly becoming the gun writer who amuses me the most): “The Assassination of William McKinley: Of Hopeless Causes and One Seriously Pathetic Pistol“.

Given the gun’s advanced age and questionable personality, I lack the fortitude to fire it. However, I am reasonably certain that the gun would be soft-shooting and easily pointed. So long as you mind the spurred hammer it should run well from concealment.

Czolgasz chose a truly horrible handgun for his mission. A coat button actually successfully deflected one round, while the other took eight days to end the life of his victim. McKinley’s wounds would have presented a technical challenge to a proper trauma surgeon today but should have been reliably survivable. McKinley’s obese habitus and a previously undiagnosed cardiomyopathy found on autopsy undoubtedly contributed to his death.

Dr. Dabbs’s article includes photos of the musuem display (which is not the actual gun, but an identical one) and the actual gun (which is kept in storage, along with the handkerchief Czolgasz used to conceal the gun, and which is “available for viewing by appointment only” in the Buffalo museum).

Hattip on this to Active Response Training and their “Weekend Knowledge Dump- January 19, 2024“. You really should be reading Greg Ellifritz, or at least these Friday Weekend Knowledge Dumps.

From KRTraining’s blog: “Annual Maintenance Tasks“. Or gun related things you should be checking at the start of the year.

Replace batteries in optics, flashlights, smoke detectors, and anything else that uses batteries.

As a personal thing, I remind my teams at work to check and replace the batteries in their smoke, carbon monoxide, and other detectors twice a year, at the time change. I think I picked this tip up from one of the fire prevention associations by way of “Dear Abby” (or “Ann Landers”, I disremember which one).

Obit watch: January 12, 2024.

Friday, January 12th, 2024

Russell Hamler, the last surviving member of Merrill’s Marauders.

After Pearl Harbor, Japan’s armed forces overran Southeast Asia, capturing Hong Kong, Singapore and Indochina. An American general, Joseph Stilwell, was forced into a humiliating retreat from Burma (now Myanmar). Allied leaders agreed in 1943 to send a force back into Burma, into what Winston Churchill called the “most forbidding fighting country imaginable.” It would be a long-range penetration unit, challenging Japanese control of the northern half of the country. The men would have only the weapons and supplies they could carry on mules or on their backs, with additional supplies dropped occasionally by parachute from planes.

The dense bamboo, tangled vines and banyan trees of the jungle, where men marched single-file in stifling tropical heat and humidity, was as much an enemy as the Japanese. Dysentery and malaria were endemic and rendered many men unfit for combat.
Mr. Hamler trekked until he wore holes in his boots, then walked on bare feet before receiving new footwear in one of the parachute drops, he recalled in an interview published in 2022 with Carole Ortenzo, a retired Army colonel and a member of Mr. Hamler’s extended family. Leeches sucked blood from his limbs and bugs “bored into your arms,” he recalled.
The Army supplied mostly K-rations, providing just 2,830 calories a day to men who were burning far more energy. Famished soldiers, Mr. Hamler recounted, dropped grenades into rivers, skimmed the dead fish and cooked them in their helmets.
“There had to be absolute silence at night in the jungle because any noise invited shelling from the Japanese,” Mr. Hamler said. Pairs of men dug foxholes nearby so one could sleep while his buddy stood sentry. When it was time to switch roles, the sentry tugged a rope attached to the sleeping man to wake him without uttering a sound.

Early in the fighting at Nhpum Ga, Mr. Hamler was hit in the hip by a mortar fragment and lay immobilized in his foxhole for more than 10 days, until Americans from the Third Batallion broke through to the village — by that point christened “Maggot Hill” by the Americans — and the Japanese retreated. The Marauders counted 400 enemy corpses. The Marauders lost 57 men, with 302 wounded. General Merrill himself suffered a heart attack just before the siege and was evacuated.

In May 1944, three months after the Marauders entered Burma, the airstrip in the town of Myitkyina, the mission’s key objective, fell to the Americans and Chinese troops who had reinforced them. In August, the heavily fortified town itself was captured. The Marauders were disbanded one week later. All told, the unit suffered 93 combat fatalities in Burma and 30 deaths from disease. Another 293 men were wounded and eight were missing. Most startling, an additional 1,970 men at one point were hospitalized with sicknesses, including 72 with what was described as “psychoneurosis.”
Mr. Hamler had been evacuated after the battle of Nhpum Ga in April to northern India, where he spent five weeks recuperating in a hospital. He was transferred back home to Pennsylvania and served as a military policeman until he was discharged in December 1945. He was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

He was 99.

It has been a bad few days for writers.

Lawrence sent over a report that David J. Skal died after a car accident on January 1st. I can’t find a trustworthy link for this, though it is confirmed by Wikipedia and the SF Encyclopedia.

Skal was a prominent cultural critic, who specialized in the horror genre. I was a pretty big fan of what I’ve read of his work: I particularly liked Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen and Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, but I feel like just about anything he wrote is worth picking up. (I haven’t read his Claude Rains book yet. I actually didn’t know he’d written one.)

He also appears in a lot of DVD commentary tracks. His Wikipedia entry has a good list. And he was from Garfield Heights, so he counts as another good Cleveland boy.

Terry Bisson, prominent SF and fantasy writer, although that may be minimizing his work somewhat.

Three things I want to link to:

  1. “They’re Made Out Of Meat”, a Bisson story that I find absolutely hilarious.
  2. Michael Swanwick’s profile of Terry Bisson.
  3. I didn’t know that the New Yorker had profiled him, but they did back in October.

(This is another obit where reliable links have been hard to find, and a second one Lawrence tipped me off to.)

Edward Jay Epstein, writer who the NYT describes as a “professional skeptic”. His first book was Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth which started out as his master’s thesis:

His book raised doubts about the commission’s finding that Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin, basing them largely on what Mr. Epstein considered serious deficiencies in the panel’s investigation. “Inquest” was published a few months before “Rush to Judgment” by Mark Lane, another in a tsunami of books that suggested that the commission had been hampered by time constraints, by limited resources and access, and by Justice Warren’s demand for unanimity to make its conclusions more credible.
“It was the only master’s thesis I know of that sold 600,000 copies,” Professor Hacker, who now teaches at Queens College, said in a phone interview.

Mr. Epstein had an insatiable curiosity, writing about anything and everything, from the economics of Hollywood to the rape accusation against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, by a Manhattan hotel maid in 2011. (Mr. Epstein suggested that it had been a political setup staged to embarrass him. Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the maid ultimately settled her lawsuit against him.)

Bud Harrelson, shortstop for the Mets. (Hattip to pigpen51 on this.)

Harrelson played in the major leagues for 16 seasons, 13 with the Mets; he appeared in 1,322 games with the team, the fourth most in franchise history. (Ed Kranepool tops the list with 1,853 games played, followed by David Wright and Jose Reyes.)
Standing 5 feet 10 inches and weighing between 145 and 155 pounds at varying times, he wasn’t much of a threat at the plate. He had a .236 career batting average and hit only seven home runs. But he possessed outstanding range in the field and a strong arm. He won a National League Gold Glove Award in 1971 for his fielding, appeared in two All-Star Games and was inducted into the Mets’ Hall of Fame in 1986.

He played on the 1969 “Miracle Mets” team, and famously got into a brawl with Pete Rose in 1973.

Adan Canto. THR. IMDB.

Georgina Hale, British actress. Other credits include “The Bill”, “Doctor Who”, several “T.Bag” TV movies, and “Voyage of the Damned”.

Brian McConnachie, comedy writer and occasional actor.

Tracy Tormé. I usually don’t do obits for celebrity children just because they are celebrity children, but Mr. Tormé seems to have carved out a niche for himself as a TV and film writer.

Obit watch: January 5, 2024.

Friday, January 5th, 2024

Glynis Johns. IMDB.

Wow:

A year later [1963 – DB], she starred in her own short-lived CBS sitcom, Glynis, in which she played a mystery writer and amateur sleuth, and later, she was Lady Penelope Peasoup opposite Rudy Vallee as Lord Marmaduke Ffogg on the last season of ABC’s Batman.

Yes, she did do a guest spot on “Murder She Wrote“.

Wow^2: she was “Sister Anne” in “Nukie“.

Stephen Sondheim wrote “Send in the Clowns”, in “A Little Night Music”, with shorter phrasing to accommodate her. Although her voice, alternately described as smoky or silvery or wistful, was lovely, she was unable to sustain notes for long.

Be that as it may, I find her performance of that song incredibly haunting.

Maj. Mike Sadler has passed away at 103.

Mr. Sadler was one of the first recruits and the last surviving member of the S.A.S. from the year of its founding, 1941. Like a navigator at sea, he used stars, sun and instruments to cross expanses of the Libyan Desert, a wasteland almost the size of India, whose shifting, windblown dunes can be as changing and featureless as an ocean.
Compared with the commandos he guided on truck and jeep convoys — volunteer daredevils who crept onto Nazi airfields; attached time bombs to Messerschmitt fighters, Stuka dive bombers, fuel dumps and pilot quarters; then sped away as explosions roared behind — Mr. Sadler was no hero in the usual sense. Comrades said he might not have fired a single shot at the enemy in North Africa.
But he got his men to the targets — and out again. Without him, they said, the commandos could not have crossed hundreds of miles of desert, found enemy bases on the Mediterranean Coast, destroyed more than 325 aircraft, blown up ammunition and supply dumps, killed hundreds of German and Italian soldiers and pilots, or found their way back to hidden bases.

Mr. Sadler was intrigued by desert navigation. “What amazed me,” he told Mr. Rayment, “was that even with the vast, featureless expanses of the desert, a good navigator could pinpoint his exact location by using a theodolite, an air almanac and air navigational tables, and having a good knowledge of the stars.”
He spent weeks studying navigation techniques, including use of a theodolite — a telescopic device, with two perpendicular axes, used mainly by surveyors, for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. It was not unlike the sextant used by mariners to fix positions at sea.

In one of the epic stories of the North Africa campaign, Mr. Sadler and two sergeants escaped from the Germans and, with only a goatskin carrying brackish water, crossed 110 miles of desert on foot in five days. Hostile Bedouins stoned them, bloodying their heads, and stole their warm clothing, leaving them to shiver through freezing nights.
Starving except for a few dates, they were exposed to windblown sands that scraped them like sandpaper, a relentless sun that burned and blistered their faces, and swarms of flies that enveloped and tormented them. On the hot sands, their feet were masses of blisters after a few days. When they finally reached Free French lines, they looked like half-dead castaways in rags.
“We had long hair and beards and were looking very bedraggled,” Mr. Sadler recalled. “Our feet were in tatters — I don’t think we looked very much like soldiers.”

After his North Africa adventures as a desert navigator, Mr. Sadler returned to England and in 1944 parachuted into France after the Allied invasion of Normandy. He participated in sabotage operations against German occupation forces and won the Military Cross for bravery in action behind enemy lines.

Anthony Dias Blue, noted wine guy.

Mr. Blue was no populist. But he believed that good wine needn’t be expensive or difficult to appreciate; all that people needed, he said, was a guide, like him, to show them what was worth buying.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Monday, December 25th, 2023

All of my readers this year have been good. So I’m not going to post any of the accordion versions of “I Saw Three Ships” I found on YouTube.

A short one from AvE:

May 2024 be better for everyone than 2023.

“Thank’ee,” said Scrooge. “I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you!”

Christmas Eve gun crankery.

Sunday, December 24th, 2023

A short one for you. My book buddy in the Association sent me scans from a 1928 Smith and Wesson catalog, along with a scan of a letter from the great Walter Roper. This was a very nice Christmas present, and one I can’t thank him enough for.

You will find each of our arms fully described in the catalog we are enclosing but we want you to ask any questions you may wish about either guns or ammunition, as it will be a real pleasure to help you select a revolver.

The past was another country.

I don’t want to reproduce the whole thing, as I’m not sure about the copyright status and I don’t want to make my book buddy mad. However, I thought people might find this one page interesting, and I think it qualifies as fair use. Keep in mind, this is 1928 data.

Obit watch: December 22, 2023.

Friday, December 22nd, 2023

For the historical record: NYT obit for Bob Pardo (archived). Previously.

Robert M. Solow, who won a Nobel in economic science in 1987 for his theory that advances in technology, rather than increases in capital and labor, have been the primary drivers of economic growth in the United States, died on Thursday at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 99.

No disrespect to Dr. Solow, but: he did not win a Nobel in economic sciences. The prize he won is The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It is not one of the five prizes established by Alfred Nobel: it was established in 1968 and first awarded in 1969. It is not a Nobel prize, and again with all due respect to Dr. Solow and his accomplishments, it should not be referred to as a Nobel prize.

That the prize is not an original Nobel Prize has been a subject of controversy, with four of Nobel’s relatives having formally distanced themselves from the Prize in Economic Sciences.

I’m sorry, but this is one of my many pet peeves. You would not believe how much it costs to keep my pet peeves in Purina Peeve Chow.

Obit watch: December 18, 2023.

Monday, December 18th, 2023

Lieutenant Colonel John Robert Pardo (USAF – ret.) passed away on December 5th, at the age of 89.

Captain (at the time) Pardo was a principal in of the most unusual flying stories to come out of the Vietnam war. On March 10, 1967, he was flying a bombing mission over Vietnam in an F4-C Phantom. Also flying with Cpn. Pardo and his weapons officer (1st Lt. Steve Wayne) was another Phantom flown by Capt. Earl Aman and 1st Lt. Robert Houghton. They were bombing a heavily defended North Vietnamese steel mill.

Both planes were hit by ground fire during the bombing run. Capt. Aman’s plane was the most seriously hit of the two. It lost a lot of fuel. So much fuel that there was no way Capt. Aman’s plane could make it out of enemy territory.

In a selfless act to save his fellow airmen, Pardo pushed Aman’s jet using the nose of his aircraft against Aman’s tailhook — a retractable hook on the underside of the plane used to assist with landing.
Pardo helped Aman’s Phantom decrease altitude by 1,500 feet per minute and guided the plane back into friendly territory.
Both aircrews then safely ejected over the Laotian border and were rescued by friendly forces.

This maneuver became famous as the “Pardo Push”.

Though it would seem his command would be greatly pleased with his selfishness, Lt. Gen. William Wallace ‘Spike’ Momyer, commander of the 7th Air Force in Vietnam, would reprimand him for sacrificing his multimillion-dollar jet in a rescue.
Facing a court-martial, Pardo was saved from punitive actions by his wing commander, Col. Robin Olds, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Ltc. Pardo was awarded the Silver Star for his actions, but it was awarded twenty years later. Why, I do not know.

Aside from his Silver Star, his awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, Purple Heart, Air Medal with twelve Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Meritorious Service Medal.

And he was a good Texas boy. Born in Herne, died in College Station.

Here are two videos from the ‘Tube. One short:

One a bit longer:

San Antonio Express News (archived), which provides a few interesting details:

Fifteen years earlier, in 1952, Air Force Brig. Gen. Robinson Risner, a longtime San Antonio resident and Korean War fighter ace, had done something similar, pushing a crippled F-86 out of enemy territory to open water 60 miles away. The pilot of the damaged plane, Lt. Joe Logan, bailed out but drowned when he became tangled in the lines of his parachute.

But Pardo unknowingly had put himself on a collision course with an Air Force general who had earlier gained notoriety for criticizing the Tuskegee Airmen, the group of pioneering Black aviators who served with distinction during World War II.
Reports circulated that Lt. Gen. William Wallace “Spike” Momyer, commander of the 7th Air Force in Vietnam, wanted Pardo court-martialed for the risky maneuver.
Pardo was not court-martialed, but Momyer told Col. Robin Olds, Pardo’s wing commander, not to decorate him. That didn’t bother Pardo.
“I didn’t do it to get a medal,” he said.

Super brief historical note, suitable for use in schools.

Wednesday, December 6th, 2023

I’ve written before about the Halifax explosion.

I did not know that Damn Interesting had also done an article, and since Alan Bellows is a much better writer than I am, I would encourage you to read it.

(Also, if you feel like it, I’d encourage you to throw a few dollars at Damn Interesting. They’ve missed their goals for the past couple of months and I’m a little worried about the continuing viability of the site.)

Obit watch: December 1, 2023.

Friday, December 1st, 2023

Sandra Day O’Connor, a good El Paso girl (thanks, Rich!). WP.

You know who writes really good obits? Murray Newman writes really good obits, thought it probably helps that his obits are for people he knew personally. Anyway, he put up another excellent one for former Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal, who passed away November 23rd. I have not seen this reported elsewhere.

The Remington plant in Ilion, New York. My brother forwarded some tweets yesterday, and Mike the Musicologist found press coverage, but I prefer the Outdoor Life link.

The Ilion plant had been making guns since 1828. I have seen references (but can’t back them up) to this being the oldest continuously operating manufacturing plant making the same product in the United States. At the time of the announcement, they were making the Remington 870 shotgun and the Model 700 bolt-action rifle.

Remington (well, the new “RemArms, LLC”, which is one of the parts that emerged from bankruptcy) is moving all of their production to their new facilities in Georgia, and plans to shut down the plant in March of next year. However, the tweets my brother sent over were from people who said they’d already been laid off.

Frankly, this doesn’t surprise me, though I feel bad for the people who get fired right before Christmas. (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.) New York is consistently hostile to firearms, so moving everything out of there seems like a good decision. It also sounds like a lot of the equipment is old and needs replacement or refurbishment. I’m surprised that they apparently aren’t offering Ilion employees jobs and relocation allowances to move to Georgia, but the linked article says the employees were represented by the United Mine Workers of America. That could have been another factor: move to Georgia and get cheap non-union labor. (Hi, Lawrence!)

It should be interesting to watch this play out. I’m wondering if Remington also plans to move their museum to Georgia as well.

Obit watch: November 30, 2023, part 1.

Thursday, November 30th, 2023

Henry Kissinger. NYT. WP. LAT. McThag. Henry Kissinger official website.

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

–Tom Lehrer

Yes, I know…

Wednesday, November 29th, 2023

Kissinger obits tomorrow, when I have a chance to search the ‘Tube for that Python bit.

Coffee mugs.

Saturday, November 11th, 2023

“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”

–Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC

Just how pale and insipid shoreside coffee is when compared with robust Navy joe is illustrated by an incident which occurred when a lady invited two hash-marked sailors to “tea.” Having heard than Navy men like their coffee strong, she added an extra amount of coffee and allowed it to boil twice as long as normal. The visitors nodded approvingly when the beverage was served. When time came to leave, one turned gallantly to his hostess and remarked, “Ma’am, I wanna tell you that was the finest tea I’ve ever tasted.”

–Seabeecook.com, quoting an article from the August 1949 “All Hands” magazine

When we talk about the Navy, battleships, submarines, and aircraft carriers get all the love. And let’s fact it, those are sexy. Things like the LCS, maybe less so.

But someone has to support those ships. Somebody’s got to deliver fuel and mail and toilet paper and repair parts and coffee and a million other things.

Those people serve just as heroically as the folks on the sexy ships. Sometimes, they go in harm’s way as well.

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