"Firing into the Brown" #73 - Huey's and gates and stuff...

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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Was there ever a sight that more represented the conflict in Vietnam than massed Huey's?? I'm an old hippy*  but still remain gob smacked at the sheer impact of such sights as this of a sky full of them in support of ground troops..

Photo Credit: The Associated Press

..a lot of people forget that the Australians also did their bit in Vietnam..  and got their air lifts as well.. 

"1965-07-14. Troops of 1st battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR), take up defensive positions after leaving United States Iroquois helicopters that carried them into Viet Cong infested country during operations north of Saigon. The helicopters air-lifted the Australians into action from the Bien Hoa air base".

"Air mobile" love this one.... straight out of Full Metal Jacket, Platoon or Hamburger Hill...😏

"Hueys prepare to pick up members of Company A, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry to airlift them to a reported enemy ammunition dump in Thang Binh province, 24 miles north of Chu Lai, Jan. 17, 1968".

Just astonished at the number of roles they were adapted to do..  gun ship, troop carrier, first aid, air ambulance, recue..  the list goes on..  they even fitted them with rockets for close ground support..

More than 16,000 of them built to date#.. 

"7,013 UH-1s served in Vietnam and of these 3,305 were destroyed. In total, 1,151 pilots were killed, along with 1,231 other crew members" (source Wiki).

If I was to embark upon another period or project - this would be the one..  only at skirmish level though..

* I'm not really.. I was about 5 years too late, but that was the time and music that I still most associated with as a spotty youth, so bear with.. 😁

# Amazingly, the Huey still remains in production!

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Bit of a grey day when I visited, but I finally made it to the Landport Gate.. 😀

The gate is now part of the perimeter for one of the Royal Navy's sports grounds, but is actually owned by English Heritage..

Note the Crown above the gate - I have read elsewhere that this is all that remains of the previous gate that was demolished when this one was built to replace it.. 

Still imposing - but not as well looked after as I think it deserves..  I'm guessing those arches on the sidewalls are not fireplaces, but passing points - somewhere for pedestrians to stand when a wagon or wide load is going through - or maybe sentry positions? The smaller arches at the back are doorways, and now open to the outside of the structure but I'm guessing that they may originally have led to guard rooms perhaps..

Better view of one of the doorways..

Side view of the gate - following - excuse the exercise mattresses! Guessing the damage you see is from where additional building works that were originally on the side of the gates was removed..  you can see the outside of that side opening I mentioned above

..originally the whole thing would have been much wider - the "wings" on this gate have been removed - if you compare it with this picture, following, you can see how much of it has now gone..  the wings on either side look to have been the same size again as the central arch section.

... a bit of local news.. 😏

It pays to embiggen this one..  a "blackguard horse"..   😁

Lastly - for this gate - this is fascinating..  there's a bit of artistic imagination gone into this, but it looks remarkably accurate..

St. James's Gate next I think..  but all in good time..  😏

More interesting reading:

• Keys to The Fortress - Gosport's History

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 "Laters", as the young people are want to say... 

PS. All the freebies mentioned last week are still available - they go in the recycling if no takers..

"Firing into the Brown" #9 - Books, Blitzkrieg, rebasing and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another, smorgasbord-style, update...

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One of the undoubted joys of the easing up of COVID restrictions in the UK is the ability to go browsing in physical bookshops again..

So it was that with half an hour to waste the other Saturday I found myself in a proper bookshop surrounded by the smell of books (Amazon is brilliant, but it can't do that.. 😀) and with a well stocked military history section to browse, and I spotted this one..

I've not come across the author before, but the blurb was enough to get me intrigued so I invested a tenner, and have just started it..  time will tell if my money would have been better spent over the bar for a couple of pints, and whether the 'myths and realities' aren't anything we haven't heard before..!

Any of my reader read it? Should I be worried by the fact that despite the book being about the fall of France the cover picture is from Barbarossa??  😟

German Schnelltruppen, supported by Schutzenpanzerwagen Sd.Kfz. 251/1 and 10 (armoured personnel carriers), move into a burning Russian village at an unknown location during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, sometime between June 26th and July 1st, 1941.(Colourised by Royston Leonard UK)

The picture deserved repetition - the colorisation definitely adds to the impact..

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Good news, the rebasing of the 15mm WW2 German forces are complete...

Heer first..  officers/commanders on the left (mounted on 2p's) regulars on the right on penny's

Selection of supports - recon motorbikes and a "door knocker", 37mm anti tank gun..

Slightly out of period camouflage on the heer... all I can say is that it was a good idea at the time! 😁

Transport, soft and hard, and AFV's

Those vehicles are beginning to show their age... compare the Opel in front (Peter Pig) with the one behind (Zvezda)

Love this fellow..  full of Prussian vim and vigour...

"Entschuldigung, wo geht es zur Meuse?" 😀

Now they're done, I'd better get a game on then!

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This one's for DC - crank it up loud, man..  ☮😁

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Maigret is on a fact finding and sharing trip to the US where he is being handed off by one police force to another on a cross continent trip - each force seemingly being relieved to hand him on so they can get back to work, when he stops over in a small southern town where a coroners court is in seating to come up with  finding on the death of a young girl under mysterious circumstances..

Five soldiers are under suspicion, and surprisingly (even to himself) Maigret is sucked into the ongoing investigation, and finds himself asking questions that he thinks need to be asked and aren't..

Simenon is quit e interesting in this book as Maigret thinks on his view of America and American's, and how very different they are from European's - the book was published in 1949, so at this time both Europe and America would have had a closer relationship and knowledge of each other than before the war..

Good book - prefer it when Maigret is in France - he seems slightly like a fish out of water when he is away from France and Madam Maigret..  😊  Rate this one as an 8/10.

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...

"Firing into the Brown" #8 - Huey's, books, more rebasing and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update...

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Couple of years ago I read the Max Hastings history of the Vietnam war (or rather "wars" as you can probably differentiate between the French Colonial war, the civil war between north and south, and then the increasing American involvement) and was hugely taken with the section where he recounted the experiences of just one of the Huey pilots who had been assigned to Vietnam after basic training.. came back to me again the other day, so I thought I'd go off and do some reading round the subject..

"Though Cobra's and Huey's were the same loaded weight, 9,500 pounds, the latter were quieter and smoother in the gunship role, carrying sixty-two rockets and four thousand mini-gun rounds. Never in history had so many tactical helicopters been deployed – nor would be again. ‘There were times when over a hundred were in the air over a battle,’ said Hickman [who was an American Huey pilot in Vietnam]. ‘When you saw a ten-ship lift going into an assault with four supporting gunships and a smoke ship, it was just awesome.’*" 

*Is it just me who is reminded of the "Tears in rain" (also known as the "C-Beams speech") monologue at the end of Bladerunner? 😊

How amazing is that picture?!

Over 30 years Bell made more than 16,000 UH1 "Huey" helicopters - the US Army had  between 7 and 12,000 alone in Vietnam (depending on your source) providing a number of roles of which the three main appear to be "slick" the troop carrier model (carrying approximately 12 soldiers), the "dust-off" or medical extraction model, and the gun ship which could be armed with any number of variations of gun and rocket. The UH-1H model, was the most-produced Huey variant, with 5,435 units manufactured, and the one most likely to be encountered in Vietnam.

My reading would indicate that natural wastage could account for at least 1,000 of them a year, as a result of damage, wear, crashes, accidents, etc. The Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, reckon a total of 11,846 helicopters were shot down or crashed during the war, while the Vietnam Memorial Fund reports 5,000 were destroyed - difficult to identify cost, but I think they were about $4.5/5M each, no one ever said modern war was 'cheap'...

I was within a gnats whisker of another project and re-reading that the other day, and then being prompted to read up on this iconic helicopter has not helped..! 😀

 

If anyone hasn't, and fancies reading further - then these are all hugely recommended - not a one of them is less than 9/10 in my humble, but nonetheless unchallenged, opinion.. 

• Max Hastings "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975"
  
• Robert Mason "Chickenhawk"- Huey pilots account of his war in Vietnam and after ..  troubled life, brilliant book...
  
• Michael Herr "Dispatches" - Herr was a war correspondent for Esquire magazine and the book describes the author's experiences in Vietnam. I'm a bit of an old hippy, must have read this about the time it came out..

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The seventh book in this beyond compare series. O'Brian fans call reading the entire series a 'circumnavigation', so this is my second - but whereas for the first one I raced through them all, practically one after another as I wanted to know what happened to lucky Jack Aubrey in the next book, for this circumnavigation I'm taking my time and enjoying them..

At the end of the previous book (which was set during the Anglo American, War of 1812), Aubrey and Maturin (along with Maturin's intended Diana Villiers) had escaped from the American's to a British frigate which had then engaged one of the American heavy frigates in combat and won the day - safe in British held territory, Jack awaits news from home and a ship to return. 

When they finally get a ship home they are chased by two American privateers, Maturin has managed to snatch some very valuable intelligence papers and it is clear that either he, or Diana who has absconded with a large diamond, is the target..

Back in England at last, but without a ship, and penniless again due to a poor business investment Jack is saved (in more ways than one!) by a mission Maturin is asked to undertake, and in which he asks for Jack as captain of the ship needed to take him to the site of the mission in the Baltic.

After a successful conclusion to the mission, their ship is wrecked on the way home, and they are captured, and imprisoned by the French - Maturin is then identified as a spy by one of the American intelligence officers and all is not looking good, but there is then a final and surprising turn...  brilliant!!  9/10

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Rebasing is proceeding apace..  the following after the first coat of "Forest green"..

They have since had a second coat, and flocking has started...

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 "Laters", as the young people are want to say...