Picture of the day

This block of muskets still in their storage racks came up in a fisherman's net off NFLD a few years ago. Note that the iron screws have rusted away leaving a few of the brass butt plates still attached. Does anyone know what happened to it?

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Rob said:
This block of muskets still in their storage racks came up in a fisherman's net off Halifax a few years ago. Note that the iron screws have rusted away leaving a few of the brass butt plates still attached. I assume they are British Army Brown Bess muskets. Does anyone know what happened to it?

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Turned in for a free camera during a gun amnesty......................................Just kidding, good question Rob
 
The Buffalo was apparently an adaptation of the Caribou. Also a success - 19 different militaries bought at least one each.

Cameroon:

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Togo:

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Egypt (?):

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And of course, the weird-ass USAF/RCAF "cushion-landing version:

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Here's the rest of the story - (Click on the link to see detailed pictures of the rifles during the conservation process)

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/civil-war-rifles-recovered-by-canadian-fishermen.141550/

"This cargo was likely dumped by a Blockade Runner before being boarded by the Union Navy."

The Story

The future for a crate of rifled muskets that have spent the past 150 years underwater is starting to look bright after years of conservation work.

The archaeology department at Memorial University in St. John’s Newfoundland has been working since 2011 to save a crate of 20 Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled muskets that were delivered to Canada via fishing trawler after an extended period on the bottom of the Atlantic.

When the Enfields first came to the surface in 2012, they were one solid mass.

The rifles were brought to the surface by the Newfoundland Lynx, a 222-foot stern trawler operating on the famous Grand Banks fishing grounds. Once the sea life-encrusted crate was brought ashore, they reached out to local authorities.

“When Ocean Choice International dredged up these guns just inside the 200-mile limit, they contacted us,” Martha Drake, Newfoundland’s Provincial Archaeologist, told Guns.com.

Originally taken to The Rooms Provincial Museum in St. Johns, Drake realized that the task of saving the guns, exposed to the air for the first time in over a century, exceeded their capacity.

“It’s a really complicated project between the wood of the box, and the components of the rifles themselves,” said Drake, explaining that to stabilize the rifles would take years of treatment in a special tank. That’s when Memorial University of Newfoundland was brought in.

Dr. Barry Gaulton, who heads up the archaeology department at MUN, told Guns.com the Enfields were not your typical project.

“The crate of rifles found when fishermen working off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks hauled up the unusual catch. The heavily-concreted and silt-filled crate of rifles was about 5 feet long and weighed approximately 600 pounds,” said Gaulton.

The rifles, still in the crate they have been in since around the 1850s-60s, are housed in a large container filled with a chemical solution that includes a bulking agent and corrosion inhibitor designed to stabilize the relics.

Periodically, the guns are raised and lowered back into the solution using a chain and hoist a few times a year.

“The ongoing conservation has revealed a remarkably intact case of P53s,” said Gaulton.

Historic combat arm

The Enfield P53 was the standard longarm of the British Army for two decades, seeing service in the Crimean War, the New Zealand Land Wars, and the Sepoy Munities. It remaining in service with the Queen’s allies into the late 19th Century.

Firing a .577-caliber ball or bullet from a 29-inch long .58-caliber barrel, it could make aimed shots out to 500-yards in the hands of a skilled marksman. The barrel was held to the wooden stock by three metal bands, which has led to the rifle being referred to as the “3-band Enfield.”

P53 Enfields were so popular, in fact, that both the Union and Confederate Army carried them to one extent or another during the Civil War.

A similar crate of 20 Enfields was pulled up off Georgia in the 1980s by an archaeological diver and has been tied to the Confederate blockade-runner CSS Stono. Those rifles have been undergoing conservation since then and are at Swee####er Creek State Park.

However, spending decades under the sea has taken a toll on the Newfoundland crate.

The on-going process

“The seawater has unfortunately eaten away the iron barrels and lock plates but all the brass furniture is in a remarkable state of preservation, as are the wooden stocks,” explained Gaulton.

Now the riddle of exactly when the guns were made, and for whom they were intended– be it Civil War-era American forces or British troops in Canada– could be solved by inspectors’ marks seen for the first time since they left England as over 300 pounds of silt has been removed through the soaking process.

“Each piece of hardware has a different inspectors mark,” Memorial’s Archaeological Conservator, Donna Teasdale, explained. “For example, all of the butt plates bear the mark E over a crown 29. All of the trigger guards bear the mark E over a crown 28 and all of the visible top trigger plates bear the mark E over crown 25.”

Teasdale says she has also found evidence that the crate may have been lined with lead or a lead alloy and she hopes to stabilize the crate of Enfields intact, without having to separate each rifle, but the process still has a while to go.

“This soaking process will take many years and is done to prevent the wood from collapsing, cracking, or warping once dry and also to prevent any remaining iron from staining the wood surface,” she said.

And we will check back to see just what they find.

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Brookwood
 
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The crew of B-29 Superfortress 42-24598 "Waddy's Wagon", 20th Air Force, 73rd Bomb Wing, 497th Bomb Group, 869th Bomb Squadron, the fifth B-29 to take off on the first Tokyo mission from Saipan on November 24, 1944, and first to land back at Isley Field after bombing the target. Crew members, posing here to duplicate their caricatures on the plane, are : Plane Commander, Captain Walter R. "Waddy" Young, Ponca City, Oklahoma, former All-American end; Lieutenant Jack H. Vetters, Corpus Christi, Texas, pilot; Lieutenant John F. Ellis, Moberly, Missouri, bombardier; Lieutenant Paul R. Garrison, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, navigator; Sergeant George E. Avon, Syracuse, New York, radio operator; Lieutenant Bernard S. Black, Woodhaven, New York, Flight Engineer; Sergeant Kenneth M. Mansie of Randolph, Maine, Flight Technician; and gunners - Sargeants Lawrence L. Lee of Max, North Dakota; Wilbur J. Chapman of Panhandle, Texas; Corbett L. Carnegie, Grindstone Island, New York; and Joseph J. Gatto, Falconer, New York. All were killed when "Waddy's Wagon" was shot down attempting to guide a crippled B-29 back to safety during a mission against the Nakajima aircraft factory in Musashino, Japan on January 9, 1945.


More about the pilot, Waddy Young - http://www.soonersports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=31000&ATCLID=208405628
 
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The sharp edge of combat.
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Filipino guerilla leader shows US Army Pvt. how she used her long knife to silently kill Japanese soldier.

She reminds me of a librarian I knew.
 
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Either early AEW Wellington or someone really didn't like seagulls.I wonder what happened to it?I never heard of this .

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I found this:

There was an article in Flypast in April 1987 entitled 'The First AWACS' which described a Wellington with a modified ASV equipment whch was used as an airborne control for Beaufighters trying to shoot down Heinkel He 111s which were air-launching V1s.

However, there was also a Wellington equipped with a specifically designed radar for controlling interceptions. This was known as ACI (Air Controlled Interception) as opposed to GCI (Ground Controlled Interception) which was the name for the ground radar stations which guided night fighters. This Wellington, R1629, was equipped with a rotating dorsal aerial array, the purpose being to try and counter the threat from Fw 200 Condors in the NW Approaches. TRE designed the radar with the design, manufacture and installation of the aerial blade with mouting and turning gear the responsibility of RAE Farnborough. Trials were carried out off The Lizard in April 1942.

A change of role came the following month, with plans to use the aircraft to control interceptions of E-boats by MGBs or aircraft. Trials were carried out from Bircham Newton. With the introduction of 10 cm ASV from January 1942, the project was considered obsolete and was dropped. A full account appeared in the Air-Britain magazine, Aviation World, in Spring 2004 and in 'Air controlled interception' by R Hodges in Radar Development to 1945 edited by R W Burns.
 
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