"Are you Combat Fit?"

 I shamelessly cribbed this from "Art of Manliness".  I had heard of the "Old Style PT" test when I joined the Army in 1985 and running in boots, but they went away from that because of the injuries they caused, sure it was "Hardcore", but it caused a lot of injuries and it did effect unit readiness so they changed the standards.   When I was in the service, the standard was 40 pushups. 40 situps and 2 miles in 18 minutes was the minimum standard for the 18 through 25 year group.  I wasn't a sprinter, but I was a long distance runner, I ran 10K's every day just for fun so the 2 mile run was a piece of cake for me.  I wasn't the fastest runner because I wasn't built that way but I could run for a long time.  I quit running when I tore my knee for the 2nd time in 1993, and it never healed right.  I tore it the first time in desert Storm, during a nigh-time movement and got a lot of scar tissue in it and the 2nd one kinda put a fork in it especially when I was too macho and rushed the physical therapy due to the pressure of my job at the time.  I miss running and now I am told that I will need knee replacement surgery, the price of being really fat at one time for many years and working on concrete for many years.  Now I have lost a bunch of weight, triple digits stuff, but the damage is done.....

Are You Combat Ready?

 

As we detailed earlier this year, the Army’s physical training test has gone through several iterations over the decades, and swung between two different areas of emphasis: combat readiness and physical fitness.

In the years during and after WWII, the Army’s robust PT test aimed to test all-around functional fitness and consisted of 5 events: pull-ups, push-ups, squat jumps, sit-ups, and a 300-yard run.

But the Korean and Vietnam wars showed the military that the test was still lacking; while it gauged physical fitness, it didn’t sufficiently correlate to the kinds of physical tasks required of soldiers in combat.

So in 1969, the Army codified a new test in FM 21-20: Physical Readiness Training. As the name of the field manual implies, the emphasis of the new test was on combat readiness; in addition to gauging soldiers’ strength, muscular endurance, and aerobic/anaerobic capacities, the Physical Combat Proficiency Test (PCPT) was also designed to assess their agility, coordination, and ability to actually perform what the Army calls “warrior tasks.” It didn’t just test physical fitness, but physical skill. The test involved 5 events: low crawl, horizontal ladder, dodge/run/jump, grenade throw (substituted with a man-carry for combat support personnel), and a 1-mile run, and participants had to complete the events in their uniform pants and boots.

In the years after the introduction of the PCPT, an emerging emphasis on aerobic fitness in the wider culture (see: jogging), a concern over rising obesity rates in new recruits, and the integration of women into the military, led the Army to create a new PT test. Introduced in 1980, the Army Physical Fitness Test required just 3 events: sit-ups, push-ups, and a 2-mile run, and could be completed in a PT uniform of shorts and sneakers. As is reflected in the name change, the APFT was designed only to assess general fitness and health, and was thought to introduce greater parity for male and female soldiers.

The APFT has come in for plenty of criticism, and the PCPT is still considered by many to be the high-water mark for the Army’s physical training tests — a true assessment of all-around functional fitness and physical skill.

If you’d like to take the Physical Combat Proficiency Test yourself (combat boots optional), below we offer a condensed version (sans the manual’s administrative details). It does require some equipment (another reason it was done away with) — 4 obstacles (simple to make, or borrow a few sawhorses) for the run, dodge, jump event and a target for the grenade throw. But it’s a fun, interesting test that will give you an idea as to whether or not you’re “combat ready.”

If you take the test, let us know how it went and how you did by sharing a photo and/or your score with @artofmanliness on Twitter or Instagram!

The Physical Combat Proficiency Test 

The Physical Combat Proficiency Test is the primary Army Physical Fitness Test and is the standard test for the measurement of physical fitness and selected physical skills. To successfully complete this test requires agility, coordination, strength, and endurance. There are two versions of the Physical Combat Proficiency Test as follows:

a. For all personnel to be tested other than those undergoing individual training the skills tested are crawling, traversing, throwing, dodging, jumping, and running. These skills are measured by five events including the 40-yard low crawl; horizontal ladder; dodge, run and jump; grenade throw; and 1-mile run.

b. For personnel undergoing BCT, AIT, and CST these same skills are measured with the exception of throwing. Weight carrying is substituted and the 150-yard man carry is used in place of the grenade throw. This version of the test is known as the Physical Combat Proficiency Test — Modified.

40-Yard Low Crawl – Test Event No. 1

Instructions. The 40-yard low crawl tests your ability to crawl rapidly and is a measure of your endurance.

You are to assume a prone position at the starting line with your elbows and chest resting on the line. When I give you the starting signal “GO,” you are to crawl the length of the course, and when you are near enough to the end line of your lane, reach out and touch it with your hands; and immediately turn around by spinning on your stomach and crawl back to the starting line. Time is measured from the word “GO” until your hand touches the finish line. You must crawl low, keeping some part of your trunk on the ground at all times. This means either your hips, your stomach, or your chest on the ground. You are allowed to choose your own method of crawling, as long as the form used permits ground contact with at least one part of the trunk throughout the crawl and a low silhouette is maintained.

You can be stopped for breaking ground contact, for failure to maintain a low silhouette, and for diving or lunging at the start, on the turnaround, or at the finish. You will be warned by the scorer if you commit a violation. After the third warning you will be halted and required to rerun the course. Should you again be warned three times, you will be disqualified from the event and receive no score.

Horizontal Ladder – Test Event No. 2

Ladder dimensions: height, 9 feet; length, 20 feet; width, 16 feet.

Instructions. The horizontal ladder tests the shoulder girdle area and general body coordination.

Upon my signal step up unto the supports and grasp the first rung with both hands using the forward grip. On the command “GO” swing your feet off the support and at the same time begin forward progress grasping the next rung and propelling your body forward, you must alternate your hands grasping each rung of the ladder. When you reach the end of the ladder, turn around and come back. Continue to traverse the ladder until you hear the command “STOP” at the end of a one-minute period. The lapse of time will be announced at 15-second intervals. You will be scored on the distance traversed or “walked” on the ladder during the one-minute period. If you tire and desire to stop before the expiration of the one-minute period, you may do so. In order to receive credit for the last rung, you must actually have your body weight suspended from it, rather than merely touching the rung. If you accidentally lose your grip and fall off during the first trip down the ladder, to include the act of turning around, you will be stopped and permitted to go to the end of the line to attempt the event a second time. On the second attempt the rung count starts at zero. If you fall off a second time, at any place on the ladder, no further attempts are permitted and you are scored with the number of rungs from your second attempt.

You will be stopped and required to rerun the event if you use the supports at either end of the ladder to assist you in turning around, or use the starting blocks to rest, or as a stop to secure a better grip. On the second attempt, should you again use the supports or the footrests, you will be stopped and receive the score achieved to that point.

Dodge, Run, and Jump – Test Event No. 3

Instructions. The dodge, run, and jump tests your ability to rapidly change directions while running and to jump a six-foot-wide ditch.

On the starting command “GO” begin running from the starting line as fast as possible. Run between the first two obstacles following the directional arrows. Jump the ditch and run between the last two obstacles circling completely around the last obstacle. On the return, follow the directional arrows, continuing to weave in and out between the obstacles, jump the ditch, negotiate the last two obstacles, circle the last obstacle, and start your second trip. Follow the same route as on your first trip. At the end of your second complete round trip, you will finish at the same line from where you started. Make your run as fast as possible. You cannot use your hands to assist by grasping the obstacles and you must jump the ditch. Directional arrows appear on both sides of the obstacle. Go the way the arrows point. You will be scored on your ability to rapidly dodge and run around the obstacles and to jump the ditch.

If you intentionally touch any of the obstacles, fail to clear a ditch, or run out of the pattern, you will be stopped and required to rerun the course. Should you again commit one of these offenses you will be disqualified and receive no score. Time ends when you cross the finish line on your last trip.

Grenade Throw – Test Event No. 4

Instructions. The grenade throw tests your ability to throw both for distance and accuracy.

You are to throw seven grenades at the target which is 90 feet from the throwing line. The first two grenades are for practice and will not count on your score. The remaining five grenades will be scored. At my signal you are to throw one grenade at a time, attempting to have each grenade hit the center of the inner circle. You must throw from the kneeling position. In throwing, you may use any overarm motion desired. When it is your turn to throw, assume the kneeling position and watch me. I will be stationed in rear of the target area with this flag. Watch the flag signal; when the flag goes up, secure a grenade; when I drop the flag, make your throw. In throwing, take time to aim. Each of your grenades will be scored as follows:

• 8 points for hits in the inner circle
• 7 points for hits in the inner middle circle
• 6 points for hits in the outer middle circle
• 5 points for hits in the outer circle
• 1 point if your grenade hits inside the square but fails to hit inside the circle area

A grenade hitting on any line will score the next higher value.

The 150-Yard Man-Carry – Test Event No. 4a

This event is used in place of the grenade throw for BCT, AIT, and combat support training in USATC’s.

Instructions. You are now paired with a man of approximately your own weight. Do not change ranks or partners. The starting commands are: mount, get set, and go. On the command to mount, you are to lift your partner using the carry position of your choice. When ready, you may place your lead foot on the starting line. At the command “GO” move to the finish line at the far end of the course as fast as possible. If you fall, drop your partner, or he becomes unbalanced, you may pick him up or rebalance your load and continue the event. If this action is necessary, move rapidly as you are being timed. When you finish the event, lower your partner to the ground and both move behind the ready line and reassemble in rank order. The odd number ranks will carry their partners down the course, and after all the odd numbered men have completed the event, then even numbered men will carry their partners back up the course.

One-Mile Run – Test Event No. 5

Instructions. The one-mile run tests your endurance and your ability to make a prolonged run.

You will run in a group of 36 men. Another group of 36 men will start at the same time on the opposite side of the track. At the start, all runners will be to the rear of the starting line. At the command “GO” each man will start running around the one-quarter-mile track; each man setting his own pace and running to the right of the stakes marking the track. Four laps around the track equal one mile. You will start at this line, and after running four laps around the track, you will finish at this same line. As you complete each lap, an official will announce the number of laps remaining to be run. Try to pace yourself and do not run all-out on the first lap. You will be scored on your ability to run the mile in the shortest possible time.

Scoring the Test

In the use of Part I of the scorecard, to convert raw scores to point scores, go down the proper event column until the actual performance in time or rungs is reached. The point value to be awarded is opposite in the first column at the extreme left of the card.

The minimum total point standard for all users of the PCPT is 300 points. Personnel in the following categories are required to attain 300 points and the additional minimum event point scores as follows:

1. Combat and combat support. A minimum of 60 points in each of the five events (Fig. 1). Failure to attain these standards on any one event constitutes test failure regardless of total score.
2. Combat service support. A minimum of 45 points in each of the five events (Fig. 2). In order to score a total of 300 points it will be necessary to score more than 45 points on some or all events. Failure to attain these standards on any one event constitutes test failure regardless of total score.

 

The Tyranny of Moral Minorities...

 I clipped this off "FrontPageMag", Work has been busy again....

 

When pilots and flight attendants announced the end of the mask mandate in-flight, most passengers cheered. Everyone except the media which claimed the masked were the victims.

Biden, in an unexpected moment of sanity, said, "it's up to them” whether people wear masks.

But since Biden has as much impact on the policy of his administration as the shoeshine guy at Union Station, the DOJ and the CDC have triggered a legal challenge to the federal court ruling.

Biden and the entire D.C. elite don’t like wearing masks. Most people don’t. Universal masking is mandated to accommodate a vocal minority, most of whom are not immunocompromised or otherwise especially vulnerable, but who still demand that everyone accommodate them.

This tyranny of minorities has long since come to define the Democrat coalition which knits together single-issue victimhood voters whose pet issue, whether it’s police shootings, green energy, racial justice, men pretending they’re women, or the right of teachers to sexually indoctrinate kindergartners against the wishes of their parents, must take precedence.

That is why the Biden administration will fight for an otherwise unpopular mask mandate.

Democrat political authority comes from the moral authority of defending oppressed minorities. The old Democrat party which asserted that it represented an oppressed majority being kept down by men of wealth has made way for a coalition of increasingly implausible minorities.

That’s the wide gap between the party of Jackson and of Obama. And it’s Obama’s party now.

Beyond the racial minorities of the civil rights movement, the moral minority consists of wealthy white elites, their sexual fetishes, cultural obsessions, and neurotic tics. Masking is just the latest neurotic tic that the decadent element that makes up its ruling base demands of all of us.

From police defunding to mandatory masking to men roleplaying as women, the outré demands are a minority even within the Democrat coalition. But the minority of minorities, by banding together, take something that only 2% of the country might want and turn it into something that the 31% of Americans who identify as Democrats are obligated to support on the party line.

And if the Democrats win, the will of the 2% is ruthlessly imposed on the 98%.

Each minority horse trades intersectional political acceptance for its cause in exchange for supporting everyone else’s causes. The black nationalists get slavery reparations and police defunding while the men who wear dresses get to be on the women’s swim team. Feminists get abortion until the last nanosecond of birth and environmentalists can have the EPA regulate  backyard puddles. And wealthy hipster remote workers can make everyone wear masks.

Everyone gets what they want but the tradeoff is they all get even more things they don’t.

Fanatics and extremists are willing to make that tradeoff while terrorizing everyone else. The echo chamber of cancel culture is really a cooperative of crazies acting in concert to protect their own special privilege because they know perfectly well that in a healthy society and political culture their brand of insanity would never receive a hearing, let alone a mandate.

And they know that their best offense is by destroying norms to normalize their insanity.

The minority of minorities coalition forces Democrats to accept crazy premises and then to vocally defend them even when they don’t believe in them. Civil rights, once rooted in recognizable arguments about racial equality, has soured into esoteric culture wars. The simplicity of lunch counter sit-ins has given way, as it was always going to, to deconstructionist lists of grievances written by academic committees with their own specialized vocabularies.

Leftists still speak with the moral authority of victimhood even when they’re millionaires, but the moral language, once so clear and simple, pitting workers against bosses, black protesters against fire hoses, continues to be appropriated for every new incomprehensible cause.

Obama’s rise promised to revive the old moral assertions of civil rights for a new generation, instead he buried them under new layers of irony, postmodern exercises in egotistical empowerment, and deconstructionism, delighting the media while alienating Americans.

In the Biden era, the moral assertions weaponized for social media have become fumblingly ineffective. The Left declares that it must wield power in order to protect the power of corporations like Disney and the right of teachers to push sex ed to kindergartners. The remoteness of these causes from any classic paradigm of the oppressors and the oppressed reflects the distance that the Democrats have traveled from any notion of democracy.

The tyranny of minorities also ‘minoritizes’ morality into siloed causes that few can relate to.

Intersectionality labors to sell the various causes to those who have already bought into the coalition. The entertainment industry rushes to turn the incomprehensible trending mishmash of causes categorized as identity politics talking points into songs and shows to sway the public.

Morality requires universally agreed on values which moral minorities attack at every turn. The great effort to transform the existence of moral minorities into its own moral authority through intersectionality requires unsustainable amounts of messaging and outright intimidation. Cancel culture terrorizes people into not speaking or even thinking for fear they’ll run afoul of constantly changing codes that no one except their cultural oppressors can even keep track of.

Totalitarian states deploy mass propaganda like this either at the height of enthusiasm for their revolutions or at their insecure decline when everyone is starting to lose faith in the revolution. And it’s been a generation since even the faithful believe in the cause rather than the anti-cause characterized by a rotating cast of conservative hate objects in the media and social media.

The best evidence that the minority of minorities cause has become incomprehensible even to its adherents is the extent to which it relies on anti-cause outrages rather than a utopian vision.

What does the Biden administration stand for? What are MSNBC, Jon Stewart, and their cast of celebrity activists fighting for? Tellingly, the very title of Stewart’s failed new Apple TV show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, signaled this inability to articulate a positive vision of his politics.

A country faced with real problems has less patience for the moral narcissism of elites.

The tyranny of moral minorities uses an assembly line of victimhood to assert their right to absolute power, but both the causes and the problems have become alien to the crises, inflation, crime, and despair, that threaten to dominate the American body and soul.

The Old Left could have met economic crises with class warfare, but the Postmodern Left has lost any tenuous hold it ever had on economic issues. Even its familiar prescriptions of social welfare are centered around the preoccupations of its coalition with green energy nuttery, racial equity supremacy, and gender and transgender politics so that mere economics takes a backseat to what has become the far more exciting Marxism that puts identity over money.

How can you do class warfare when you’ve become a movement of billionaires whose supreme causes are electric cars that cost more than the average annual income, the sexual fetishes of wealthy men, and the fussiness of remote workers who don’t like being around other people?

It’s getting increasingly hard to disguise the fact that leftist revolutions aren’t about liberating the majority, but about enslaving it to the cultural obsessions of a tiny minority.

You can only dress up the tyranny of an upper class in oppressed drag for so long.

The moral minorities aren’t out to liberate anyone, including themselves, but to force everyone to use the words they want, to eat and dress like them, and to live like them.

There’s a leftist term for that, it isn’t revolution or liberation: it’s colonialism.

When 2% of the country gets to tell everyone else how to live, that’s true oppression.

Now their masks, literal and metaphorical, are coming off and they fear that more than anything else because power can simply be defined as a question of who has to accommodate whom?

In the sky or on the ground, in the classroom or the office, the answer is all too clear.

 

"A Gentlemans Rifle in the Trenches of WWI"

 I ran across this article reading my American Rifleman magazine, and I found it fascinating.  it is on my bucket list to visit this and the Imperial War Museum once all this Covid restrictions and other stupidity is relaxed.  I also want to check out the "HMS Belfast, she is a museum ship in the Thames River.  We will see though.

This .303 British Royal Grade Holland & Holland single-shot, serial No. 26069, was used by the Irish Guards as a sniping rifle during World War I. It is shown here with period trench maps, a German stick grenade, British binoculars and some German 8 mm Mauser cartridges.

Photo by Jonathan Green

It was London, it was September, it was raining.

Outside the Brigade of Guards Museum, near Buckingham Palace, the statue of Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis stands 15' high—a tribute to Britain’s greatest field commander of the 20th century. His trademark sheepskin is faithfully reproduced in a half-ton of bronze, and even here he manages to wear it like a dinner jacket. England’s greatest combat soldier was also known as the best-dressed man in the regiment.

As the rain pelted harder, plastering the brown beech leaves to the paving stones and forming tiny waterfalls in the creases of the jacket, Alexander—or “Alex,” as he was known to all—took no notice. He kept his eye fixed firmly on the entrance to the museum, and suddenly that seemed like a heck of a good idea as the sky opened up and the cold rain came down in sheets.

The Guards regiments are among Britain’s most famous icons. They are the soldiers in red tunics and black bearskins who mount the guard on Buckingham Palace, among other places. What is less well-known is that they are also elite soldiers who have fought the king’s wars around the world for centuries. The oldest regiment is the Scots Guards, followed by the Grenadiers and the Coldstreams. The Irish Guards—Alexander’s regiment—and the Welsh are the youngest.

Inside the museum, one tableau after another depicts their exploits at Waterloo, Dunkirk, South Africa, Flanders. The displays, colorful at first, turn slowly sodden and muddy as all the gentility was wrung out of warfare, and red tunics were replaced by khaki (in South Africa) and brown service dress in the mud of Flanders. The display from the First World War includes bits of webbing, barbed wire, grenades, a bayonet. The stuff looks muddy even when it isn’t.

There is also a rifle. Not a Lee-Enfield, No. 1 Mk III, as might be expected, but a classic single-shot, break-action rifle of the type favored, before the war, for stalking stag in Scotland. It is of obviously fine pedigree, but has seen much hard use. The bluing is worn to a silver sheen and the stock is scratched and battered.

If you crouch down and peer closely, with the light exactly right, you can still read on the receiver “Holland & Holland.” It is an aristocrat among firearms, a “gentleman’s rifle”—a Royal Grade single-shot stocked in English walnut and finely checkered. At one time, the receiver displayed graceful engraving, although it is now worn almost completely away. Four years of trench warfare will do that.

The story of how H&H rifle No. 26069 journeyed from the Bruton Street showroom to the Guards Museum is really one of convergence of the great names in pre-war England, in the military, in literature and in gunmaking. It involves Harold Alexander, Britain’s greatest soldier of the 20th century, and Field Marshall Lord Roberts, one of its greatest of the 19th; it involves Rudyard Kipling, Poet Laureate of the Empire and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature; and of course Holland & Holland, England’s greatest riflemaker.

The story begins with Lord Roberts in South Africa, fighting the Afrikaners in Britain’s first, and one of its bloodiest, military campaigns of the 20th century. There, Roberts renewed his acquaintance with Rudyard Kipling, an old friend from India.

Roberts was an Ulsterman, a gentleman of Anglo-Irish descent. For reasons no one has adequately explained, Ulster (Northern Ireland) has produced a disproportionate number of great British generals. The Duke of Wellington was an Ulsterman, as was Montgomery, among many others. In the South African campaign, the army’s Irish regiments performed spectacularly. To recognize their contribution, Queen Victoria ordered—on Roberts’ advice—the formation of a regiment of Irish Guards to join the Scots, Grenadiers and Coldstreams.

When he heard the news, Harold Alexander (also from Ulster) was 9 years old. He immediately decided that his future would lie with the Irish Guards. The son of the Earl of Caledon, he attended school at Harrow, went on to the military academy at Sandhurst, and joined his new regiment in London in 1911. He was a 22-year-old first lieutenant when the war broke out in 1914.

One of his fellow officers was the Earl of Kingston, and they shipped off to France together. In the Earl’s kit was the H&H rifle. It came to be there in a rather convoluted way.

As war in Europe approached, many Germans made last-minute visits to London to order rifles from the English gunmakers. One ordered a stalking rifle, and even provided a fine Voigtlander scope to be mounted on it. Ordered in 1913, it was barely finished when the Germans marched into Belgium. H&H could not ship a rifle to an enemy country, so the firm re-barreled the rifle to .303 British and fitted it out as a sniper rifle. A member of Parliament, Colonel Hall Walker, bought it and passed it on to Lieutenant the Earl of Kingston of the Irish Guards.

Recruit No. 26069 was in the quartermaster’s stores when the regiment went into action for the first time and was still there, amid the chaos of retreat, advance and retreat, before the war settled down to the hell of the trenches. By that time, the Earl of Kingston had been wounded and invalided back to England. Alexander fought with the regiment through the Retreat to Mons, was wounded in the First Battle of Ypres and returned home to convalesce. What happened then can be pieced together from scraps of information that have survived.

From the hospital, Kingston wrote to the commander of the battalion, Jack Trefusis, inquiring about his rifle. On January 6, 1915, Trefusis replied:

“My dear K.

It has been in QM Stores for ever so long and I have only just this moment heard of it. It was a thing we have wanted badly for a long time, and if we had only known of it in the last trenches we were in I have no doubt we should have accounted for a platoon of Germans. However we go back into the trenches on Friday and the rifle will be put into the most skillful hands I can find and a careful account of the bag that is made with it which I will report to you occasionally ... .”

The war was then barely four months old and Trefusis’s last paragraph is chilling:

“There is no officer here who was here with you except myself and Antrobus, and very few men. Poor Eric Gough was the last and he was killed last week.

“P.S.: I see I have never actually thanked you for letting us have the rifle, but I do enormously, it will put us on a more equal footing with those damned snipers, who are just as bad here as ever they were.”

Photos courtesy of Holland & Holland

 

As a military art form, sniping goes back several centuries, but it really flowered during the American Civil War. Not by coincidence, this was the first large-scale conflict in which trenches were used; trenches and snipers go together like coffee and cream. In the case of the British Army, through the late 19th century it fought mostly wars of movement until encountering the Boers in South Africa in 1899. Sniping was not a major factor, and while the British Army underwent a drastic reformation as a result, and became the best army of its size in the world, it still paid scant attention to sniping as it went to war in 1914.

Not so the Germans. When the German Army invaded Belgium, it had an estimated 20,000 sniping units ready to go. The Mauser Model 98 made an ideal sniper rifle; as well, when hostilities began the Germans collected thousands more accurate sporting rifles and sent them to the front. The British had but a handful of trained snipers, and few rifles with which to snipe. The German Army very quickly dominated “No Man’s Land” and the forward British trench lines. Trefusis’s rueful letter to the Earl of Kingston gives an idea of the havoc wrought by the German snipers.

When H&H rifle No. 26069 went into service with the Irish Guards and began to take its toll on the Germans, the call went out for more of the same. The War Office in London turned to H&H and the other fine rifle makers with orders for sniper rifles.

At the time, British gunmakers made three types of rifle: doubles, single-shots and bolt-actions. The doubles were mostly big-game rifles for Africa and India; bolt-actions went to the colonies, while single-shots—both break-action and falling block—were the classic stalking rifles for stag in the Scottish Highlands. As such, they were built to be accurate. Since the supply of Oberndorf Mauser actions had dried up for the British, they naturally built their sniping rifles to patterns like No. 26069.

This pre-World War I scope from a Holland & Holland catalog is of German origin. Riflescopes were a problem for the British early in the war, and No. 26069 bears a German Voigtlander supplied by the German customer who ordered the rifle.

A major problem was the supply of telescopic sights, and here the Germans, with their advanced optics industry, had a huge advantage. The War Office went so far as to try to smuggle scopes out of Germany by various underhanded means, but without notable success. This remained a problem until 1916, when British companies, like Aldis (of rangefinder fame), became capable of supplying telescopic sights in reasonable quantities. Until then, the gunmakers made do with whatever they had in inventory or obtained from civilian sportsmen.

The work went slowly at first, and by July 1915, H&H had fitted out only 10 more sniper rifles. Gradually, however, the pace picked up.

Another problem facing troops on the Western Front was the fact that German snipers concealed themselves behind pieces of armor plate. Early in the war there was little in the way of armor-piercing ammunition for standard rifles, and, again, the War Office turned to the London gunmakers. Figuring that any gun that could handle a Cape buffalo would punch through armor plate, Holland’s and the others shipped over 2,000 so-called “elephant guns.” These were a mixed blessing. While they demolished the armor well enough, the loud report combined with the smoke and belching flame revealed the shooter’s position to the enemy and brought down a rain of return fire.

Meanwhile, as H&H et al worked behind the scenes, rifle No. 26069 slogged on, killing Germans. Two weeks after his first letter to the Earl of Kingston, Jack Trefusis wrote again:

“The rifle has been an immense success and every Commander from C-in-C downwards has sent down to ask me about it, with the result that two are to be issued to each battalion.

“The sergeant major uses it and the score of Germans is for certain four killed and eight wounded in three days use ... . Those who were killed or wounded were fired at from a range of 800 yards. So it has been a great success.”

In March 1915, recovered from his wound, Lt. Alexander was promoted to captain, helped to form a second battalion of Irish Guards and returned to France commanding its No. 1 company. One of his officers was a subaltern named John Kipling.

Lt. Kipling was Rudyard’s son. Denied a commission because of his poor eyesight, the novelist appealed to his old friend Lord Roberts, who was now Colonel of the Regiment of the Irish Guards. Roberts’ influence was still immense, and he obtained a commission for the boy. Within a month, the battalion went into action at the Battle of Loos, where 800,000 men were ordered to breach a German position after a four-day bombardment by 1,000 guns. Five days and 45,000 casualties later, the attack was called off.

The unit that penetrated deepest into German territory was No. 1 Company of the 2nd Irish Guards under Captain Harold Alexander. When they withdrew, they left the body of Lt. John Kipling, shot through the head. He was one of 10,000 British soldiers whose bodies were never recovered from the all-swallowing mud of that battlefield.

In deep sorrow, and as a memorial for his son, Rudyard Kipling, Britain’s foremost author, agreed to write the official history of the regiment, The Irish Guards in the Great War, and the “telescope rifle” found its way into literature:

“Casualties from small-arm fire had been increasing owing to the sodden state of the parapets; but the Battalion retaliated a little from one ‘telescopic-sighted rifle’ sent up by Lieutenant the Earl of Kingston, with which Drill-Sergeant Bracken ‘certainly’ accounted for three killed and four wounded of the enemy. The Diary, mercifully blind to the dreadful years to come, thinks, ‘There should be many of these rifles used as long as the army is sitting in the trenches.’ Many of them were so used: this, the father of them all, now hangs in the Regimental Mess.”

Alexander and the Irish Guards also saw action at the Somme and Passchendaele, Cambrai, the retreat from Arras and, finally, Hazebrouk. In this battle, Alexander commanded the second battalion and helped save the channel ports from German attack, but the battalion was annihilated as a fighting force.

Rifle No. 26069 soldiered on with the 1st Battalion, accounting for who knows how many German soldiers. It helped win the sniping war, and the men of the Irish Guards came to love the trim little “gentleman’s rifle” because it saved so many of their lives. In 1918, it was retired from active service and given a place of honor in the regimental officers’ mess before being turned over to the Guards Museum.

There, it became part of a permanent display depicting the valor and the unspeakable horror of the war on the Western Front. And there it was, that rainy morning in September, when I took refuge from the London weather by ducking into the museum. When I emerged after a couple of hours, the weather had cleared and it was breezy and cool. Alexander’s statue, so stern in the rain, now appeared to be smiling in the sunshine.

During the Second World War, when he rose to the rank of field marshall and commanded the Allied advance up through Italy, Alex was always cheerful, always a gentleman, no matter how bad things became. When you have men like George Patton under your command, I expect good humor is invaluable. The plaque on the statue describes him as Britain’s finest battle commander of that war. Montgomery would have disagreed, but Alexander would have smiled and shrugged. His tombstone reads merely “Alex”; longer names are for lesser men.

I strolled along Bird Cage Walk, through St. James’s Park and up toward Mayfair. It is a pleasant walk up to Berkeley Square and 31-33 Bruton Street, home of Holland & Holland. The former director of the firm, David Winks, was waiting for me on an upper floor where the company’s own collection of classic guns resides.

Winks was in charge when the curator of the Guards Museum approached H&H in 1992 and asked them if they would take rifle No. 26069, much battered by the war and deteriorated after 75 years of benign neglect, and return it to its former glory.

David Winks agreed to clean it up but flatly refused to return it to pristine condition, although it could easily have been done.

“Those are honorable scars, honorably earned,” Winks told me.

“It would have been wrong to touch it.”

Monday Music Berlin "Masquerade"

 I'm changing things up this week, we are traveling down to the Gunshine Sunshine State to visit my Sister in Law, My Brother is out of the Country again so we made a quick decision to drop by and say "HI" for a couple of days to keep her company. and I am planning on getting some Reading done

  Well anyway, I was driving and the spousal unit was asleep in the Focus and this song came on on my Sirius/XM and I really liked it.  I remember Berlin from their song from the "Top Gun" movie which I didn't really care for, but their song"The Metro" I really liked and I did a Monday Music on it. 

 The genesis of Berlin was the new wave rock band the Toys, formed in 1976 in Orange County, California, by John Crawford (bass guitar), Dan Van Patten (drums), Chris Ruiz-Velasco (guitar), and Ty Cobb (vocals). After a few shows, the band changed its name to Berlin, discharging Cobb as lead singer in the process. After a brief time where Toni Childs was lead singer, Terri Nunn joined the band after answering an ad through the Musicians Contact Service in Hollywood in 1979. Despite its name, Berlin did not have any known major connections with the sometime capital of Germany; the name was chosen to make them seem European and exotic. As lead singer, Nunn would eventually take the Berlin name as her alternate moniker. The band was inspired by the keyboard-oriented groups Kraftwerk, Devo, Sparks and The Screamers. 

   

Pleasure Victim is the second studio album by American new wave band Berlin. It was originally recorded in 1982 and released in October of that year by M.A.O. Records and Enigma Records. After the second single, "Sex (I'm A...)", received considerable attention, the album was re-released on January 26, 1983, by Geffen Records in the United States and by Mercury Records internationally. The album marked the return of lead singer Terri Nunn to the group. To date, it is Berlin's best-selling album and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on February 9, 1993, becoming the band's only album to be certified platinum.

"Sex (I'm A...)" peaked at number 62 on the Billboard Hot 100, while subsequent singles "The Metro" and "Masquerade" reached numbers 58 and 82, respectively.The album itself peaked at number 30 on the Billboard 200 in May 1983.

Masquerade

• This song is about older actors and musicians who never made it in the entertainment industry, which is "the masquerade." The lyrics, "[they] knock on doors and empty halls" is a reference to the auditioning process.
• The line, "Past eight by tens in shattered frames" references essential "headshot" photographs actors/actresses and some musicians need in the industry. The "shattered frames" symbolize shattered dreams. >>
  Essentially this is about all the broken hopes and dreams of potential stars that have gone to Hollywood and came away with nothing.... or less. Inspired by the successes of Hollywood, they come seeking their fortune, doing everything they can to get that one role to make them a star. "But tomorrow never comes..." Meaning they never find that one role. Yet more hopeful stars always come in, hence "The masquerade never ends.
   
  Terry Nunn, the Singer was an aspiring Actress and she had some minor roles and she never hit it big, I surmise this is the inspiration for this song.
   
  
                                           The Video from "Masquerade"
  
  
  This is the video of Terry Nunn audition for "Princess Leia" from Star Wars in 1976
  
  
  
  

 

 

 

"A Collapse of Economic Rationality"

 I shamelessly snagged this from "SSG", a Next generation Think Tank.  My Apologies for not posting for the past few days, I have been working a lot of hours, My employer is flying the crap out of our planes, and a plane flying is a happy plane, but we are busy with continual maintenance checks between flights and predictive maintenance.  Eh...It pays the bills but I am tired.

 

One of economics’ most infamous theories is that people will, on average, behave rationally in accord with their economic interests. This is demonstrably untrue as a universal law: many people destroy their wealth in order to pursue things like divorce, which they want more than they want the wealth. On average it is supposed to be true, though: by the time you reach whole societies, in general economic rationality is supposed to rule. We have come to the point at which this is definitely not true, not for any of the three great powers of the world. As a consequence, economic recession is becoming increasingly likely.

Russia’s war with Ukraine is explainable in terms of Russian interests, just as the pursuit of a ruinous divorce is explicable in terms of personal interests. Russia hoped to force Ukraine into neutrality so that it would serve as a permanent buffer state between itself and NATO. The failure of the Russian army to perform effectively* has led them to pursue their fallback objective of securing eastern Ukraine as a buffer state. (The Security Studies Group had assessed this to be their mission from the start, because it was the only one achievable with the force structure they deployed. The thrust on Kyiv was a decapitation strike that failed due to fierce Ukrainian resistance, becoming a diversionary mission enabling the envelopment of Ukrainian forces in the east. Even the diversion had to be abandoned in the face of steep losses.)

Russia has elected to suffer significant economic harm in order to attain this end. Yet the harm to the whole world’s economic order should not be underestimated. Ukrainian crops are not getting planted in much of the country; both Ukrainian and Russian fertilizer elements are not being produced or sold at normal rates (though nations like Brazil are dodging the Russian sanctions in order to feed their people). The inflationary cost on food prices will be steep even in the wealthy parts of the world. In places like Yemen, this conflict will lead to famine and death. Our government has not chosen to take the obvious steps to limit this harm, but has instead doubled-down on ethanol production this year.

China, meanwhile, has chosen to pursue a round of lockdowns in major cities like Shanghai that is so inexplicable in terms of health policy that top independent thinkers like Richard Fernandez and Ross Kennedy are speculating about hidden motives. Regardless of just why China is doing it, it has led to a disruption of shipping so severe that it will take months to unravel, ensuring another supply chain shock coming soon and lingering for a while. The economic effects globally will be both bad and lingering.

Here at home, our administration is focused on symbolism rather than economically rational goals. Having opened by killing the Keystone energy pipeline, they then closed public lands to oil and gas leases until forced to open at least some by court order. As consequence, gasoline prices look set to stay above $4/gallon for the foreseeable future, and our nation’s natural gas stockpiles are depleted. This is supposedly in pursuit of a ‘clean energy’ agenda, but it is incoherent: the ethanol production process relies on very dirty energy, and the lack of clean-burning natural gas is imperiling legitimate investments in cleaner energy. None of what they are doing makes very much sense, neither as a way of protecting the national interest nor even as an advancement of their agenda.

Market analysts I have consulted are estimating the probability of America’s economy slipping into recession between thirty and forty percent. The Security Studies Group estimates that probability as far higher. No one is behaving economically rationally, as all the major players are choosing to spend resources and position on political goods rather than economic goods. None of the leadership of the three great powers can be quickly replaced — if indeed they can be replaced at all. There are tough times coming because of this.

 

* One issue that the Russian adventure has laid bare is the fragility of the battalion as a combat team. Organizing into “Battalion Tactical Groups” (BTG) was an error because the battalion has too few people to suffer significant losses and remain combat effective. The United States made the same move to shrink its self-sustaining military organization below the division level, first with the Regimental Combat Teams (RCT), then with the Army’s larger Brigade Combat Teams (BCT). All of these organizations are attempts to make a smaller force deployable on its own, which means giving that group integrated support units like air and/or air defense assets, fire supports, and the ability to integrate units like Psychological Operations. A brigade-sized unit is at least three times the size of the battalion-sized units, and therefore more capable of continuing operations in the face of losses because there are more people involved in every function. The Russians committed too few troops to attain their ends — about half what the United States deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom I — but they also deployed those too-few troops in fragile units that broke under stress. Some of them are currently being refitted, but some of them are too broken even for that. These, like the British elements savaged by Colonial forces at Cowpens, will have to be broken up and redistributed among other still-operational military units.

 

The Airports and Airlines quickly goto"Mask Optional"after courtruling

 People are soo tired of "Mask Mandates", I heard of cheering on airplanes when pilots announced the rulings while in the middle of the flights.  The CDC is pushing for the DOJ to reinstate the mandates, I guess we are not "worthy enough" yet.

s

The U.S. airline industry has quickly adapted to a recent decision by a Federal judge in Florida determining the mask mandate exceeds the authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

In a decision handed down on April 18, judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle concluded the mandate violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The court remanded the mask mandate to the CDC for further proceeding. 

Initially, there was confusion whether the judge’s ruling would take immediate effect, but the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) quickly stated it would no longer enforce mask use on public transpiration and at transportation hubs. 

After TSA announced its decision, U.S. airlines followed suit and stated that masks for passengers and employees would be optional going forward. Many airports have also dropped masks requirements, but not all have opted to rescind the mandate. 

Both the TSA and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that the CDC continues to recommend that people wear masks in indoor public transportation settings. 

Psaki called the court’s decision disappointing and noted the Justice Department (DOJ) would make any determinations about litigation. So far, the DOJ has not responded to the judge’s decision. 

Prior to Judge Mizelle’s decision, the administration opted to extend the mask mandate from April 18 to May 3. 

 

 

5 Critical Knife Skills.

 I saw this in "Art of Manliness", I use blades as part of my job and when I do my Boy Scout stuff.  This article is a really good article with a lot of good information in it for us "Woodsy" folks.

Your belt knife is your main tool for bushcrafting and as such it really must be multifunctional in nature in and of itself. A knife that is too small will not be good for processing firewood if needed, and a knife that is too big will not be good for fine carving and shaping wood. One would hope to have multiple tools at any given time and, in this case, one can really refine the belt knife to a certain set of criteria, one that is more suited to the finer tasks; an axe and saw will do the heavy work. This may not always be the case and may not always be feasible, so it is best to stay in the 4″–5″ range with a full tang and a carbon steel blade. This will give your knife maximum versatility.

You should be able to accomplish five main tasks with your belt knife:

1. Creating fire lay materials
2. Starting a fire
3. Cutting saplings
4. Felling a tree
5. Creating notches

That said, many knife-craft skills are important, and many overlap each other in some way. Therefore, the items on this list of skills are the ones I believe to have the most direct effect in an emergency if you are left with only having your trusty belt knife as a tool. To that end fire and shelter will be more important to you than most other things, so the skills you must initially own are based on this premise.

1. Creating Fire Lay Materials

You’ll use your knife to create fire lay materials. There are three elements of any fire lay: tinder, kindling, and fuel. With this in mind you have to look at how your knife can be used to process all three effectively and safely, while still bearing in mind the tool itself is a resource to be conserved as much as possible.

The number one rule in our conservation theory is don’t use your knife unless you have to. Look for wood of the correct size to create kindling and fuel that is just lying about the forest floor.

Now of course many times the best things will either not be available or be in an unusable condition when we need them most, so you will need to use your knife. For creating tinder materials you want to find inner barks of trees like cedar or poplar if possible. These will be highly combustible and can be worked by hand once harvested to create the bird’s nest or tinder bundle.

You want to avoid as much as possible using the blade of your knife for this process and so a 90-degree sharp spine—which means the spine is squared off to be sharp on the corners, not unlike a cabinet scraper—becomes a sure bonus for your sheath knife. You can also use this 90-degree spine to shave smaller stick materials like fatwood and softer species to create fine shavings that can be used as kindling and have less effect on the knife by conserving the blade edge as well. See FIGURE 2.5 for an example of using a knife to shave tinder.

For kindling material and fuel wood we may need to baton, or strike the back of the tool or knife with a wooden mallet or baton for processing, the blade of our knife to split material along the grain to reduce the diameter as well as possibly baton across the grain to reduce the length if we cannot simply break it by hand or use the fork of a tree for leverage to snap the length. See FIGURE 2.6 for an example of batoning with a knife.

Batoning is an indispensable skill if you are ever left with only a knife to process wood. First, try to use material that is free of knots and small in diameter, and if possible, do not use a knife without a full tang. When you need to baton to split the grain, keep impact blows in the center of the blade and centered in the material. Once you have initially split the grain, you should be able to place a wooden wedge of material in the split and baton that to complete the task.

A good rule of thumb for splitting is to never split a log that is so large it will not allow at least an inch of the side of the blade to protrude from the split once the knife disappears into the split. If you have to strike the knife again, strike the tip, never the handle. Have some sort of anvil under the material in case the knife goes cleanly through a split. This prevents the blade from striking the ground, causing potential damage.

2. Starting a Fire

Your knife is an important part of your re-starting capability when it comes to combustion. You can use its spine to strike a ferrocerium rod, which is a mixed metal rod containing pyrophoric elements like iron and magnesium that produce hot sparks when materials are quickly scraped from the rod with a sharp object harder than the rod. It is also possible to use your knife as a steel for flint-and-steel ignition (provided you are using a high-carbon steel blade). See FIGURE 2.7 for examples of ferrocerium rods.

Using the back 90-degree spine of the knife to strike a ferrocerium rod accomplishes several important and often overlooked things. First, it means you do not have to worry about carrying a separate striker, most of which are inadequate for the task anyway. You can get much better leverage on your knife to strike the rod.

The true function of the ferrocerium rod is to be used as an emergency ignition tool, so you want the maximum amount of material to be removed from the rod with a single strike (this is the reason I believe a soft, large rod is better than a smaller or harder rod of this type). You can bring maximum power and maximize the surface area being pushed against the rod with a knife blade. See FIGURES 2.8 AND 2.9 for examples of striking a ferrocerium rod. For an example of a flint-and-steel kit, see FIGURE 2.10.

3. Cutting Saplings

Cutting saplings becomes necessary for shelter building as green wood may be preferable. The flexibility of green wood has distinct advantages when making dome-type structures. Cutting a sapling is as easy as taking advantage of the tree’s own weaknesses. Bend the sapling over, stressing the fibers, and cut into them at an angle toward the root ball. See FIGURE 2.11 for an example.

4. Felling a Tree

When we talk about felling a tree with a knife we are obviously not felling a fifty-year-old tree that would require an axe or axe/saw combination. Rather we’re talking about felling trees of more manageable sizes, typically up to 4″–5″ in diameter that, unlike saplings, are not able to just be bent over and shear cut. For this discussion of what boils down to emergency knife use, you only need to harvest material that is large enough in diameter to be structural or good fuel. This technique is also known as beaver chewing, where you will baton your blade, creating a V notch around the tree, steadily reducing the diameter until you can push the tree over for further use or processing. See FIGURES 2.12 AND 2.13 for examples of felling a tree. 

5. Creating Notches

Notching of material is used for everything from building a structure to manipulating a pot over fire to creating trap components. Think about the Lincoln Logs you may have had as a youngster. The simple notches are what held everything together without the use of cordage or other fasteners. You may combine cord with a notch to better bind them but the notch makes interlocking of wood components possible.

In my mind the most important yet rudimentary notches are the 7 notch, the log cabin notch, and the V notch. With these three simple notches many other things can be constructed. See FIGURES 2.14 THROUGH 2.16 for examples. 

_______________________________________

Happy Easter!

 He Has Risen

Ever wondered how Aircraft was detected before RADAR?

 This was a fun post for me, I have blogged before about RADAR , I dealt with ELINT while I was in the service and my specialty was the Soviet Army and East Germans, those were who our threats were.   I don't do that stuff anymore and haven't for a very long time, but I did enjoy it immensely while I did it. 

Detecting and locating the approaching enemy aircraft during a war is integral in making sure that the troops are prepared in case of enemy assault, regardless of what they had with them— bombs, chemical weapons, maybe paratroopers. It’s great that radar (radio detection and ranging) was invented, thus, making it easier for soldiers to locate exactly where these planes are. Before it was made, however, people had to rely on what was available for us to use: eyes and ears. Just like any other primitive ways that our ancestors used in their time, experiments were done, too, to enable humans to do beyond what our bodies allowed us.

Human Spotters

Before radar and all the other machinery inventions before it, the capability of detecting aircraft during the times of war was the responsibility of human spotters. They were often positioned in open fields, shorelines, rooftops of tall buildings, and hills so they could monitor and spot approaching enemy aircraft and send warnings. However, the effectiveness of this method was reliant on many parameters: the eyesight and hearing quality of the observers, their alertness, the visibility of the surrounding atmosphere (if it was raining or foggy), the level of light, as well as the size, color, configuration, and noise level of the aircraft.

 

Assuming it was the perfect and most ideal conditions and the human spotter was able to detect the aircraft as soon as humanly possible, it would only allow a few minutes for the soldiers to prepare a response before the plane reached their position. Usually, observer networks were placed up far in advance, and information was transmitted through a radio relay network, but the method was still not always reliable.

Acoustic Location

From mid-World War I until the early years of World War II, the acoustic location was used for passive detection's of aircraft by picking up the noise of their engines. How passive acoustic location worked was that sound or vibrations created by the detected object were analyzed to determine its location. At the same time, horns were used to increase the observer’s ability to localize the direction of the sound. These techniques, during that time, had the advantage as sound refraction allowed them to “see” around corners and over hills.

One of the experimental ‘personal sound locators’ tested by the Dutch military research station at Waalsdorp.

According to the reports, Commander Alfred Rawlinson of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve first used the equipment as he needed a means of locating the German Zeppelins during cloudy days. He improvised an apparatus made from a pair of gramophone horns that he mounted on a rotating pole.

The instruments were usually made of large horns or microphones connected to the operators’ ears through a tube. Imagine a stethoscope but supersize it. From there, an extensive network of sound mirrors that were used from World War I through the Second World War was developed. These sound mirrors worked with a combination of microphones that had to be moved to find the angle that maximizes the amplitude of the sound. Two sound mirrors at different positions were usually set up to generate two different bearings, allowing the operator to use triangulation to point out the direction of the sound source.

The height-locating half of the Czech four-horn acoustic locator. 

Although the equipment seemed crude by today’s standards, they were able to provide a fairly accurate fix on the approaching planes so guns could be directed at them before they arrived or even when they were out of sight due to low visibility.

 

 

                                           Dover Radar Station during WWII

During the half part of World War II, radar became an alternative to these acoustic location techniques and equipment. Both the United Kingdom and Germany knew that they were working on radio navigation and its countermeasures, known as the Battle of the Beams. Their interest in radio-based detection and tracking led to the use of radar. Britain, however, never really admitted that they were using radar and showed publicly that they were using acoustic location.

The Swingate transmitting station is a facility for FM-transmission in the village of Swingate, near Dover, Kent (grid reference TR334429). For many years there were three lattice towers with a height of 111 metres (364 ft). This station was one of the first 5 Chain Home Radar stations completed in 1936 and was originally designated AMES (Air Ministry Experimental Station) 04 Dover. The FM transmitting antennas are attached to what was the middle tower; microwave link dishes and mobile telephone antennas were spread across all three towers. The south tower was dismantled in March 2010, as a result, only two remain. The Swingate towers no longer have the three cantilever platforms that were fitted originally.

  The Sparse construction made it difficult for the Germans to strike the towers and cause any real damage despite the accuracy of their bombers due to the fierce resistance by the RAF and the huge cost that is incurred every time the Germans went after the towers.

In the Battle of Britain, both sides were already using radars and control stations to up their air defense capability. At the same time, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan were also developing their own detecting systems. The acronym “RADAR” was not used until 1940, when the US Navy coined the term as an acronym meaning Radio Direction And Ranging. Even after this innovation, the acoustic location stations did not cease operation and acted as a backup to radar. After the war, radar has been so developed that audio aircraft detection equipment was totally obsolete.

At the same time, using sound to accurately detect objects moved from the air to beneath the waves become SONAR, or Sound Navigation And Ranging for submarines and surface vessels to navigate and find targets.