Category: The Green Machine
Infantry: Snake smells them, leaves area.
Airborne: Lands on and kills the snake.
Armor: Runs over snake, laughs, and looks for more snakes.
Aviation: Has Global Positioning Satellite coordinates to snake. Can’t find snake. Returns to base for refuel, crew rest and manicure.
Ranger: Plays with snake, then eats it.
Field Artillery: Kills snake with massive Time On Target barrage with three Forward Artillery Brigades in support. Kills several hundred civilians as unavoidable collateral damage. Mission is considered a success and all participants (i.e., cooks, mechanics and clerks) are awarded Silver Stars.
Special Forces: Makes contact with snake, ignores all State Department directives and Theater Commander Rules of Engagement by building rapport with snake and winning its heart and mind. Trains it to kill other snakes. Files enormous travel settlement upon return.
Combat Engineer: Studies snake. Prepares in-depth doctrinal thesis in obscure 5 series Field Manual about how to defeat snake using countermobility assets. Complains that maneuver forces don’t understand how to properly conduct doctrinal counter-snake ops.
Navy SEAL: Expends all ammunition and calls for naval gunfire support in failed attempt to kill snake. Snake bites SEAL and retreats to safety. Hollywood makes fantasy film in which SEALS kill Muslim extremist snakes.
Navy: Fires off 50 cruise missiles from various types of ships, kills snake and makes presentation to Senate Appropriations Committee on how Naval forces are the most cost-effective means of anti-snake force projection.
Marine: Kills snake by accident while looking for souvenirs. Local civilians demand removal of all US forces from Area of Operations.
Marine Recon: Follows snake, gets lost.
Combat Controllers: Guides snake elsewhere.
Para-Rescue Jumper: Wounds snake in initial encounter, then works feverishly to save snake’s life.
Quartermaster: (NOTICE: Your anti-snake equipment is on backorder.)
C-17 Transport pilot: Receives call for anti-snake equipment, delivers two weeks after due date.
F-15 pilot: Mis-identifies snake as enemy Mil-24 Hind helicopter and engages with missiles. Crew chief paints snake kill on aircraft.
F-16 pilot: Finds snake, drops two CBU-87 cluster bombs, and misses snake target, but get direct hit on Embassy 100 KM East of snake due to weather (Too Hot also Too Cold, Was Clear but too overcast, Too dry with Rain, Unlimited ceiling with low cloud cover etc.) Claims that purchasing multi-million dollar, high-tech snake-killing device will enable it in the future to kill all snakes and achieve a revolution in military affairs.
AH-64 Apache pilot: Unable to locate snake, snakes don’t show well on infra-red. Infrared only operable in desert AO’s without power lines or SAM’s.
UH-60 Blackhawk pilot: Finds snake on fourth pass after snake builds bonfire, pops smoke, lays out VS 17 to mark Landing Zone. Rotor wash blows snake into fire.
B-52 pilot: Pulls ARCLIGHT mission on snake, kills snake and every other living thing within two miles of target.
MinuteMan Missile crew: Lays in target coordinates to snake in 20seconds, but can’t receive authorization from National Command Authority to use nuclear weapons.
Intelligence officer: Snake? What snake? Only four of 35 indicators of snake activity are currently active. We assess the potential for snake activity as LOW.
Judge Advocate General (JAG): Snake declines to bite, citing grounds of professional courtesy.
Signal: Tries to communicate with snake…fail repeated attempts. Complains that the snake did not have the correct fill or did not know how to work equipment a child could operate. Signal Officer informs the commander that he could easily communicate with the snake using just his voice.
Commander insists that he NEEDS to video-conference with the snake, with real-time streaming positional and logistical data on the snake displayed on video screens to either side. Gives Signal Corps $5 Billion to make this happen. SigO abuses the 2 smart people in the corps to make it happen, while everybody else stands around, bitches, and takes credit.
In the end, General Dynamics and several sub-contractors make a few billion dollars, the 2 smart people get out and go to work for them, and the commander gets what he asked for only in fiber-optic based simulations. The snake is forgotten.
Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester fought her way through an enemy ambush south of Baghdad, killing three insurgents with her M-4 rifle to save fellow soldiers’ lives — and became the first woman since World War II to win the Silver Star medal for valor in combat.
The then-23-year-old from Bowling Green, Ky., won the award for skillfully leading her team of military police soldiers in a counterattack after about 50 insurgents ambushed a supply convoy they were guarding near Salman Pak.
The medal, rare for any soldier, underscores the growing role in combat of U.S. female troops in Iraq’s guerrilla war, where tens of thousands of American women have served.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
On Tuesday, President Obama awarded 24 soldiers with the Medal of Honor who had been overlooked, or rather, discriminated against, for heroic actions they took in wars going back to Vietnam, Korea, and World War II.
That these men were not given the honor they deserved when they should have is a terrible injustice.
But a new form of discrimination in awarding medals appears to be forming.
The Global War on Terror encompassing both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the longest engagement in our nation’s history, and yet it has yielded the lowest number of Medal of Honor awards of all wars. And while racial discrimination is being fixed when it comes to awarding medals, “discrimination by rank” seems to have taken its place, according to a number of military veterans I spoke with.
“Awards are watered down and often handed out based on rank,” said Matthew Bell, a former Marine staff sergeant who served in Iraq. Officers and senior enlisted tend to get higher awards, he said, while a “junior Marine who exposes himself to incoming fire while killing 20 insurgents with an E-tool gets a Certificate of Commendation.”
While an exaggeration, this is sadly not far from what others told me.
“One of my fellow team leaders shot and killed the driver of a dump truck full of explosives driving into our patrol base, ultimately saving the lives of my entire platoon,” said Christopher Brown, a former Marine corporal who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. “The [suicide vehicle bomb] still detonated, but rather than detonating on impact with the house it came to a rolling stop in the driveway.”
The bomb wounded twenty but no Marines were killed. “The lance corporal who saved our lives received no award, while our Lieutenant who was calling in to higher on a disconnected radio handset received a Bronze Star.”
Now of course, the nature of warfare is certainly changing. There are less battlefield deaths, better gear to protect soldiers, and improved tactics in place. But there definitely “is a military awards problem,” according to one Army captain I spoke with.
When asked if there were “quotas” in place for military awards — or caps for certain ranks to receive specific decorations — the captain couldn’t say.
“Quotas are highly illegal, and even harder to prove,” the captain told me. “You have to have an email from a commander stating he is using a quota system.”
“My unit(RCT-1 Security Platoon ’04) were/was all put up for [Navy Achievement Medals] for running 112 missions in a month,” said Joe Schacht, a Marine veteran of Iraq. “Not a big deal, but it was downgraded to a [Certificate of Commendation] because they ‘couldn’t justify giving 30 Marines in the same platoon a NAM.’ Our lieutenant and platoon sergeant, of course, got their Bronze Star.”
This uneven distribution of awards is a common complaint, as an article in Stars and Stripes from June 2000 shows:
A recent review by the Stars and Stripes of the way the Bronze Star was awarded to U.S. personnel involved in the airstrikes on Yugoslavia found that the Air Force awarded 185 of the medals, the vast majority going to officers and top commanders. Only 25 enlisted Air Force troops got the nod. Of all the medals awarded, only one in 10 actually was in the combat zone.
…
One lieutenant colonel received the medal, for example, “for responding to supply requests at a moment’s notice” at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Another senior officer got a Bronze Star for presenting his “bed-down briefing” to top brass, such as then-NATO commander Gen. Wesley K. Clark, on where troops and aircraft were being positioned at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Others got it for helping to plan strike missions.
And what of the Medal of Honor? The nation’s highest honor should be reserved for only the most incredible battlefield heroics, but the difference from previous wars is rather striking when looked at side-by-side with wars of the past decade.
Just look at this chart, which shows the number of Medal of Honors awarded (prior to the 24 Tuesday), via Leo Shane of Military Times:
Leo Shane/Twitter
Of the 249 awarded for action in Vietnam, three were earned for actions in a city known as Huế. The besieged city saw some of the bloodiest and worst fighting of the war, and while there are distinctions, there was a similar battle during the Iraq War in Fallujah.
The difference: Not a single Medal of Honor to emerge from the 2004 battle there.
It’s certainly not due to lack of heroics. One of the most famous and controversial cases is that of Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who was submitted for the Medal of Honor after jumping on a grenade inside a house, saving the lives of four Marines. He was instead awarded the Navy Cross.
And then there is the less-known case of Lance Cpl. Christopher Adlesberger, who upon entering an insurgent-infested house as a private first class, pushed forward despite the death of his point man and the wounding of two others.
Adlesberger, wounded in the face by grenade fragments, then single handedly cleared a stairway and a rooftop, throwing grenades and shooting at insurgents while under blistering fire. “Adlesberger was killing insurgents so they couldn’t make it up the roof,” said platoon corpsman Alonso Rogero, in his written statement of events. “The insurgents tried to run up the ladder well, but PFC Adlesberger kept shooting them and throwing grenades on top of them.”
He died a month after his heroics in that Fallujah house, but Adlesberger was posthumously recommended for the Medal of Honor. The award recommendation from 3rd Battalion 5th Marines originated with 1st Lt. Dong Yi and moved up the chain of command, with concurrence from Adlesberger’s battalion commander, regimental commander, and division commander.
Two years later, when his recommendation reached the MEF Commander, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, it was downgraded to the Navy Cross, the nation’s second highest award. The document examined by Business Insider did not include any comments or reasoning as to why.
(Sattler did not respond to multiple emails from Business Insider).
“The simple fact is, nobody even knew how to write up any of that stuff, and it never crossed anybody’s mind,” Sgt. Maj. Justin LeHew told Marine Corps Times Dan Lamothe last November. “ … If I’m writing, and I look back at what I wrote in my hip-pocket notebook in the middle of combat on some of these guys, my guys are wearing [Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medals with “V”] for what some guys got Silver Stars for that were out there.”
——————————————————————————— So paint me shocked by this! The awarding of medals has always been an act of luck, favoritism and rank in my brief experience in the Army. I am also sure that it is true of every other Army since day one. Grumpy
“Many GIs in Vietnam thought the night belonged to the enemy, but in the Mekong Delta, darkness belonged to Bert Waldron.” –Major John Plaster
Think back to the last time you felt truly frustrated and helpless. At some point in their lives, everybody finds themselves in circumstances utterly beyond their control. It’s a terrifying sensation.
Perhaps you were the subject of bullying. Maybe you were a little kid and got lost. For the Vietcong in the Mekong Delta in 1969, the engine behind their nightmares was SSG Bert Waldron.
SSG Waldron was a broken man imbued with a dark gift. Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1933, Waldron came of age amidst chaos and despair. The product of a dysfunctional home, young Bert despised his stepfather. This antipathy drove the kid into the nearby forest in search of peace and solitude. There Bert Waldron came to think of the wilderness as home.
Bert Waldron’s life could be a case study of the effects of nature versus nurture. By his 23rd birthday, the man had been married three times. His unique emotional milieu apparently made him all but impossible to live with. Waldron enlisted in the US Navy and served during the Korean War. He left the Navy in 1965 after twelve years to try his hand at civilian life.
With the country embroiled in an increasingly bitter land war in Southeast Asia and life out of uniform not to his liking, Waldron enlisted again, this time in the Army. He completed Basic Training at Fort Benning and five months later was in Vietnam.
Waldron’s prior service in the Navy earned him Staff Sergeant’s stripes, but he still had very little experience with practical soldiering. Once in country, SSG Waldron attended a brief eighteen-day sniper course taught by members of the Army Marksmanship Unit. I don’t know exactly what they taught during those two and one-half weeks, but it took. In short order, SSG Bert Waldron became a holy terror behind a sniper rifle.
SSG Waldron was assigned to the 3d Battalion, 60th Infantry, Regiment, 9th Infantry Division under LTG Julian Ewell. Operating in close conjunction with the Navy’s Mobile Riverine Force, SSG Waldron and his fellow snipers cruised the murky waterways of the Mekong looking for trouble. Waldron’s prior service as a sailor made him a perfect fit for this joint operation with the Brown Water Navy. More often than not Waldron staged onboard ATC’s or Armored Troop Carriers. These heavily armed and armored riverine vessels were called Tango Boats and offered US forces a prickly platform for operations throughout the myriad shallow waterways of the Mekong Delta.
The Mekong was heavily populated and teeming with VC. Charlie typically played to his own strengths, conducting many operations under cover of darkness when American air power and artillery support could not be readily brought to bear. Then Bert Waldrop and his snipers hit the battlefield with high-tech sniper rifles equipped with starlight scopes. The result was unfettered carnage.
War Stories
It takes unimaginable courage to strike out alone into the jungle in the middle of a firefight, but that was exactly Bert Waldron’s forte. In January of 1969, Waldron and his unit came under intense night attack by a force of forty well-armed VC. When his unit found itself in danger of being overrun SSG Waldron pressed out into the jungle alone to hunt. Using his accurized M21 sniper rifle and AN-PVS-2 starlight scope he could spot the enemy maneuvering in the deep foliage and pick them off as opportunity allowed. During the course of the engagement, SSG Waldron savaged the attacking force and broke the back of the assault. This fight earned him a Bronze Star with “V” device.
Three nights later SSG Waldron discovered a large VC force moving tactically. He tracked the enemy unit using his night vision system until he gained an advantageous position to attack. SSG Waldron then sniped and maneuvered, engaging from various angles to convince the VC they were facing a larger, more organized force. Three hours later he had killed eleven of the Cong and forced them to leave the field. This night’s work earned him the Silver Star.
Eight days later SSG Waldron and his spotter were set up near Ben Tre scanning the darkness around their rice paddy with their starlight equipment. They encountered a seventeen-man VC patrol and took out their lead scout as he emerged from the treeline. Calls for artillery support were denied because of a nearby friendly village. At a range of more than 500 meters and under cover of darkness SSG Waldron killed eight VC with eight rounds from his sniper rifle. The surviving members of the VC combat patrol melted back into the jungle to safety.
Four days after that SSG Waldron was deployed in support of an ARVN unit in contact. He discovered a group of six VC attempting to outflank the ARVNs and gain a position of advantage. SSG Waldron then meticulously killed all six of the insurgents, picking them off one by one in the darkness with his sniper rifle and night vision gear.
In one nineteen-day period, SSG Bert Waldron conducted fourteen successful nocturnal sniper operations. For his dedication, valor, and ruthlessness he was awarded his first Distinguished Service Cross. By now the VC were beginning to appreciate that horrible feeling of helplessness. Where previously they could move and operate in the darkness with relative impunity, now SSG Waldron and his snipers brought death from unexpected quarters. Their efforts began to take a toll.
SSG Waldron’s effectiveness as a sniper clearly spawned from some innate skill. He had only had eighteen days’ worth of formal sniper training. During one engagement a VC sniper was peppering a passing Tango Boat from the top of a coconut tree some 900 meters distant. While the boat’s crew struggled to find the hidden sniper with their heavy crew-served weapons, SSG Waldron killed the man with a single round from his M21 rifle…while the boat was in motion. The Physics behind making a one-round kill from a moving boat against a camouflaged adversary nearly a kilometer distant strains credulity. However, the details were verified.
For these and similar actions SSG Waldron was awarded his second Distinguished Service Cross. Waldron’s reputation exploded among both Allied forces and the Cong, earning him the respectful nickname Daniel Boone. After eight months in country, the 9th ID rotated home and SSG Waldron with them. By the time he left Vietnam Bert Waldron had 109 confirmed kills, fully 12% of all the kills logged by all of the division’s snipers. Until Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle broke his record in 2006, SSG Bert Waldron was the deadliest American sniper in history.
The Weapon
The Army adopted the M14 rifle as a replacement for the WW2-era M1 Garand in 1959. A gas-operated, magazine-fed design, the M14 really reflected the previous generation’s technology. At 44 inches long the M14 was found to be unduly bulky for the bitter close-range jungle fighting that characterized the war in Vietnam. By the mid-1960’s the M14 was being replaced in SE Asia by the lighter, more maneuverable M16.
The US Army is indeed a majestically cumbersome beast. In 1955 the US Army Marksmanship Training Unit (USAMTU) embarked on a quest to incorporate snipers into the Infantry squad. In the malaise of the early 1960s, this initiative was discontinued. However, the exigencies of combat in Vietnam renewed interest in the art. That exposed the need for a dedicated precision sniper rifle.
While the Marines were using modified bolt-action hunting rifles, the Army contracted with Rock Island Armory to build up 1,435 National Match M14 rifles with Redfield 3-9x Adjustable Ranging Telescope (ART) sights. The ART was the brainchild of 2LT James Leatherwood and included both range finding and bullet drop compensation in its mechanism. This new rifle was formally designated the XM21 and first issued in 1969. An improved version with a fiberglass stock was classified the M21 in 1975 and served until 1988 when it was replaced by the bolt-action M24.
The AN/PVS-2 starlight scope was the first truly successful man-portable passive night vision weapon sight fielded by the US Army. This device amplified ambient starlight to produce a usable image in the absence of an active IR emitter. While such stuff is commonplace today, it was radical indeed in 1967 when it was first deployed to Vietnam. When combined with the early SIONICS suppressors fielded in 1969 the AN/PVS-2 offered American snipers a literally unprecedented capacity to own the night in Vietnam.
The Rest of the Story
Like so many true professional warriors, Bert Waldron found himself ill-suited to peacetime life at home. He served as a senior instructor for the US Army Marksmanship Training Unit (USAMTU) until his discharge in 1970. Along the way he met Mitch WerBell III through the commander of the USAMTU, COL Robert Bayard. and accepted a position as a counter-sniper advisor with Cobray International, WerBell’s weird creepy paramilitary training school in Georgia.
Mitch WerBell dabbled in overthrowing third world governments for a time and made quite a few enemies along the way. In 1975 COL Bayard was found murdered outside an Atlanta shopping mall. His killer was never apprehended. Throughout it all Bert Waldron’s name was a persistent fixture.
For the next two decades, Waldron worked in the shadows, plying the dark skills he mastered in Vietnam into a livelihood. Along the way his final marriage self-destructed and he was investigated by the FBI. In October of 1995, Bert Waldron died of a heart attack at age 62. His ex-wife Betty said this of him, “Bert was a wonderful soldier. He loved his country, he would have died for his country, but he had a lot of problems as a human being.”
Bert Waldron was a “Break Glass in Case of War” type of soldier. America desperately needs such men. It is simply figuring out what to do with them when the bullets aren’t flying that seems to be the perennial challenge.
The crew of the 4″/50-caliber deck gun on the Wickes-class destroyer U.S.S. Ward (DD-139) sank a Japanese two-man midget submarine at 6:45 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941. This is the gun and these are the men who fired the first shots that day. U.S. Navy photo
In remembrance of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, this poster was designed by Allen Sandburg and issued by the Office of War Information in 1942. The poster featured a quotation from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain….”
The standard, popularized narrative about Dec. 7, 1941, emphasizes the Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor. Because of the spectacular explosion of U.S.S. Arizona, and the extremely high loss of life on Battleship Row, it is understandable that so much attention continues to be directed toward that single part of the attack. But the Japanese also targeted every other military installation on Oahu that day. From Wheeler Army Air Field to the Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay to the Marine Corps Air Station at Ewa, Japanese aircraft bombed and strafed military facilities across the entire island. What happened at those other locations is every bit as important as what happened around the Pearl Harbor Navy Base because lives were lost there as well, and the face of history was changed forever. But at each of those locations, U.S. personnel also fought back. They did so in the air, on land and at sea, and they did so with some of the guns that would ultimately win the war against Japan.
The first shots of Dec. 7, 1941, were fired by Americans, not the Japanese. At 6:45 that morning, the Wickes-class destroyer U.S.S. Ward (DD-139) sighted a Japanese two-man midget submarine tailing the cargo ship Antares just a few miles south of the entrance to Pearl Harbor. Ward then brought the submarine under fire with one of its 4“/50-caliber deck guns, scoring a direct hit on the starboard side of the sub’s tower that caused flooding and consequently, sinking. The Minnesota Naval Reservists manning that gun are remembered as the men who fired the opening shots on the “Day of Infamy.”
(l.) Marine Corps Tech./Sgt. Henry H. Anglin, the non-commissioned officer in charge of the Photography Section of Marine Corps Air Station Ewa, stands in front of the airfield’s dispensary on Dec. 8, 1941. Anglin is holding the Japanese 7.7 mm slug that wounded him during the attack the day before. Photo courtesy of Mike Wenger (r.) Sergeant Carlo A. Micheletto of Marine Utility Squadron (VMJ) 252 was delivering rifle fire with his M1903 Springfield when a Japanese fighter strafed him at Marine Corps Air Station Ewa on December 7th. He was 26 years old when he was killed in action.
Seventy minutes later, the first wave of the Japanese air raid started when bombs began to fall and torpedoes began to slice the waters of Pearl Harbor. Despite the early encounter between U.S.S. Ward and the Japanese midget submarine, soldiers, sailors and Marines were caught “flat-footed” by the attack when it began at 7:55 a.m. But even as explosions echoed across Oahu and combat aircraft roared overhead, some Americans on the ground began to fight back. Private First Class Melvin Thompson was on guard duty at the front gate at Marine Corps Air Station Ewa, seven miles west of Ford Island, when nine Japanese fighters, led by Lt. Cmdr. Shigeru Itaya from the aircraft carrier Akagai, began strafing the airfield. They had been given the mission of reducing Babasu Pointo Hikojo, the so-called “Barber’s Point Airdrome,” and so they came in low and fast over Ewa, attacking Marine aircraft on the ground there. Infuriated by this, Thompson walked out of the guard shack, drew his M1911A1 .45-cal. pistol, and opened fire on one of the passing fighters. At the same time, 27-year-old Lt. Yoshio Shiga’s section of nine fighters from Kaga came in over Ewa. From the cockpit of his A6M2 Zero, Shiga saw PFC Thompson facing off against him. The sight of the lone Marine shooting a handgun at a high performance combat aircraft strafing with 7.7 mm machine guns and 20 mm cannons left a powerful impression. Years later, Shiga remembered Thompson’s tenacity and fighting spirit and described the lone Marine as “the bravest American I ever met.”
U.S. M1903 Springfield Rifle
Melvin Thompson was not the only Marine returning fire at Ewa that morning. In a photograph that is now quite well-known, five enlisted Marines can be seen crouching near the foundation of a swimming pool under construction, each armed with a firearm that would do a great deal of fighting on December 7th—the M1903 Springfield bolt-action rifle. All over the field, Marines pumped fire into the air at the attacking enemy aircraft. One of those men was Sgt. Duane W. Shaw, the driver of the airfield’s fire truck. As the attack began, he attempted to drive the fire truck to the flight line to put out fires among the aircraft parked there, but the bright red vehicle attracted too much attention. All four of the fire truck’s tires were quickly shot out and the rest of the vehicle was punctured by holes from Japanese bullets before Sgt. Shaw could reach the burning flight line. Undeterred, he bailed out of the fire truck with his ’03 and started shooting. Nearby, Sgt. Carlo A. Micheletto of Marine Utility Squadron (VMJ) 252 was trying to put out fires among parked aircraft from his squadron when the final strafing attack commenced. With his ’03 Springfield in hand, the 26-year-old sergeant sought cover behind a pile of lumber and began directing rifle fire at passing enemy aircraft. One of the attackers soon thundered in toward the lumber pile firing its 7.7 mm machine guns, and a single bullet struck Micheletto in the head, killing him instantly. He was one of four Marines who made the ultimate sacrifice at Ewa Field on Dec. 7, 1941.
Two U.S. Marines who were part of the Ford Island Naval Air Station Police force are seen here on a motorcycle patrol in March 1942. They have parked on the quadrangle formed by the station’s Administration Building, Enlisted Barracks, Dispensary and the island’s shoreline. The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise (CV-6), which is moored at Ford Island’s Berth F-2, can be seen in the background. An ANM2 .30-cal. machine gun has been mounted to the motorcycle’s sidecar using the Mk. 9 Gun Mount Adaptor system.
From the swimming pool at Ewa, to emergency fighting positions that were hastily thrown together on Ford Island, the M1903 rifle put rounds into the air during both waves of the December 7th attack. For the Navy and the Marine Corps, the ’03 remained the standard-issue rifle, and it continued to serve in many of the Army units that were stationed in the Territory of Hawaii despite the standardization of the M1 Garand five years earlier. In fact, it was present on the morning of December 8th, when two Hawaii National Guardsmen walked down the beach near Bellows Army Airfield to investigate something that had washed ashore overnight. They were Lt. Paul C. Plybon and 20-year-old Cpl. David Akui from Company G, 298th Infantry Regiment. What the two soldiers found was one of the midget submarines that had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor the day before. It had not managed to find its way into the harbor during the December 7th attack and, after depleting its batteries, drifted through the night, eventually washing up on the beach at Waimanalo Bay. By coincidence, the men of the 298th Infantry were nearby at Bellows Army Airfield, which is why Lt. Plybon and Cpl. Akui were sent to investigate. As they approached the derelict midget submarine, Akui noticed a Japanese man lying in the sand. It was 23-year-old Ens. Kazuo Sakamaki. Akui approached the Japanese submariner with his ’03 rifle at the ready and proceeded to take him into custody. Sakamaki was the first Japanese prisoner of war captured by the U.S. military during World War II.
Marine PFC Melvin Thompson drew his M1911A1 .45 ACP pistol and opened fire on Japanese fighter aircraft attacking Marine Corps Air Station Ewa. It made the Japanese after-action report.
While the M1911A1 pistol and the M1903 rifle fought effectively on December 7th, the big hero of U.S. small arms that day was the ANM2. This derivative of John M. Browning’s short-recoil-operated, belt-fed machine gun was specifically engineered for use in aircraft and came in .30-cal. and .50-cal. versions that were sometimes referred to with the nickname “Stinger.” The origin of the ANM2 dates back to a requirement issued shortly after the end of World War I. Springfield Armory produced the first version as the Model 1922, but after a series of interwar budget cuts ended government production, Colt Patent Firearms Co. began manufacturing it in 1931 as the M2. When it was standardized for “Army/Navy” use in 1933, the “ANM2” nomenclature took its final form. For the most part, the .30-cal. Stinger had the physical appearance of a downsized M1919 series .30-cal. machine gun because of the slightly smaller dimensions of its receiver, barrel and barrel shroud. This brought the ANM2’s weight down to a mere 23 lbs., compared to the 31-lb. weight of the M1919A4, but the similarities ended there. In addition to having a different receiver and barrel than the M1919, the ANM2 included a backplate equipped with spade grips and a different feed cover, extractor, barrel extension and bolt. These parts were specially engineered to allow the gun to feed from either the left or right side of the receiver, a feature that made the ANM2 .30-cal. particularly well-suited for use in aircraft. The gun’s 1,300 round-per-minute (r.p.m.) cyclic rate of fire made it an especially dangerous gun because it gave the operator the ability to deliver the highest possible volume of fire during the typically brief windows of opportunity presented during modern aerial combat scenarios. Although the modest dimensions of its lightweight barrel meant that it did not did not possess the same heat dissipating characteristics as the M1919A4’s heavy barrel, the ANM2 was intended to operate in flight at high altitudes where cooler temperatures and fast-moving airflow would prevent overheating.
By December 1941, the ANM2 .30-cal. machine gun was being supplemented in both Army and Navy service with the harder-hitting ANM2 .50-cal. machine gun. Like the smaller .30-cal. Stinger, the .50-cal. version, at 61 lbs., was still lighter than its ground combat counterpart, the 84-lb. M2 Heavy Barrel. The ANM2 .50-cal. aircraft machine gun also offered a significantly higher cyclic rate of fire (than the ground model) that approached 850 r.p.m., and it could also feed from either the left or right.
At several locations across Oahu, ANM2 machine guns were swiftly put to good use against the Japanese air raid. With enemy fighters and dive-bombers swarming Ewa Field, M/T/Sgt. Emil S. Peters rushed to a Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless dive-bomber belonging to VMSB-232, and climbed into the aircraft’s radio-operator/gunner position. The 47-year old Marine then proceeded to direct accurate machine gun fire at the enemy using the aircraft’s single, flexible mount ANM2 .30-cal. Stinger. Before it was all over, Sgt. Peters had brought down two Japanese D3A1 “Val” dive-bombers.
U.S. Marines and U.S. Navy sailors occupy an improvised fighting position that was thrown together on Ford Island in the aftermath of the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack. In addition to four M1903 rifles, the position is armed with an ANM2 .50-cal. aircraft machine gun mounted on an instructional/training tripod. Based on earlier Browning machine gun designs, the ANM2 could be fed from either the left or right side and had a higher rate of fire than the infantry versions of the Browning.
On Ford Island, sailors and Marines retrieved .30-cal. and .50-cal. ANM2 machine guns from ordnance storage lockers for the three patrol squadrons stationed there, and they mounted them in expedient positions made of sandbags, wood and sometimes even tent canvas. Because both calibers of ANM2 were set up on flexible pintle yokes for use in hard mounts on aircraft like the PBY Catalina, the men also had to haul out special training tripods that allowed the guns to be set up at chest height. Photographic evidence showing these positions on Ford Island reveals that the ANM2 .30-cal. machine guns were equipped with spade grips and the Navy’s flash hider specifically designed for night firing. The ANM2 .50-cal. machine guns that appear in photographs from December 7th are all mounted using an adaptor system that was equipped with a rubberized buttpad fixed to the back end of the cradle assembly, a pistol grip/trigger mechanism on the side of the cradle and a tower for mounting a telescopic site. To supply these ANM2 fighting positions with ammunition, an ad hoc ammunition-loading station was established on the island where sailors went to work belting .30-cal. and .50-cal. cartridges.
Fourteen miles to the northeast, at Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay, sailors were doing the same thing: setting up temporary fighting positions for ANM2 machine guns. In one area of the air station a ditch had been dug for the installation of a sewage line, and five sailors set up a .30-cal. Stinger and a .50-cal. Stinger in it. They did not have the training tripods, so they used some of the framing structures in the ditch as field-expedient platforms and tied sections of rope to secure the guns.
In one section of Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay, a temporary fighting position was set up in a ditch that had been dug for the installation of a sewage line. Lacking training tripods for the .30-cal. and .50a-cal. Stinger machine guns, these five sailors improvised a way to secure the guns by tying sections of rope to framing structures that had been built in the ditch.
Nearby on the parking ramp for Patrol Squadron (VP) 11, C.P.O. John William Finn directed his sailors in setting up several ANM2 machine guns and their instructional/training tripods. As the squadron’s highest ranking aviation ordnanceman, he was not only familiar with the operation of the guns, he also had full access to them and the ammunition they needed. During the following two hours, Finn personally operated a .50-cal. Stinger, delivering effective machine gun fire against Japanese aircraft attacking Kaneohe. Because he was firing from an exposed position, the 32-year-old chief drew return fire and suffered painful wounds, but he kept on fighting. Then, after the raid was over and after he had received cursory medical attention, he supervised the rearming of returning PBY flying boats. Nine months later, Finn was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions above and beyond the call of duty on Dec. 7, 1941.
Second Lieutenant Kenneth M. Taylor (l.) and 2nd Lt. George S. Welch of the 47th Pursuit Squadron both scored victories in aerial combat over Oahu while flying P-40B Warhawk fighters on Dec. 7, 1941, and they both received the Distinguished Service Cross in recognition for what they did that day.
The Army also put the ANM2 Stinger to good use that day—namely, the U.S. Army Air Corps. When the attack began, aircraft of the 47th Pursuit Squadron were temporarily based on the north shore of Oahu, at the auxiliary airfield near Haleiwa, to conduct remote field gunnery training. As bombs began to fall on Wheeler Army Airfield, a group of pilots from the squadron rushed the 10 miles to Haleiwa and took to the air to oppose the enemy, but they faced a unique challenge: only .30-cal. ammunition was available there. Second Lieutenant George S. Welch and 2nd Lt. Kenneth M. Taylor both took off in B model P-40 Warhawk fighters, which were each armed with two ANM2 .50-cal. machine guns in the cowling and two ANM2 .30-cal. machine guns in the wings. When they first joined the unfolding air battle above Oahu that morning, only their wing guns were loaded. Second Lieutenant Harry W. Brown also took to the sky, but in an A model P-36 Hawk, which was armed with two ANM2 machine guns mounted in the cowling—one .50-cal. and the other .30-cal. For Brown, only the .30-cal. ANM2 was loaded. Nevertheless, he scored two aerial victories with it that day.
(l.) Aviation Ordnanceman (AOM) Jesse Rhodes Waller boards a PBY Catalina at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in August 1942. Waller is holding an ANM2 .30-cal. machine gun in a Mk. 9 Gun Mount Adaptor. This hard mounting system consisted of a pintle yoke, ammunition box holder, brass catcher and link catcher. (r.) Second Lieutenant Harry W. Brown of the 47th Pursuit Squadron would use an ANM2 .30-cal. machine gun in his P-36 Hawk fighter to score two aerial victories against Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941.
Once in the air, Taylor and Welch climbed to 8,000 ft. in their P-40s and flew south to Barber’s Point. There, they observed a formation of 12 Aichi D3A1 “Val” dive-bombers and, despite six-to-one odds, they both attacked. Although each man shot down one enemy dive-bomber, they quickly ran out of .30-cal. ammunition. Both pilots then flew 13 miles to the north, landed at Wheeler Army Airfield and taxied to an ammunition replenishing point. There, ground crewmen reloaded their wing-mounted ANM2 .30-cal. machine guns, and gave both P-40s a full load of .50 caliber. They did not take on fuel—just the .30-cal. and .50-cal. ammunition that let them get back into the fight. The two pilots then roared into the air again and began dogfighting over Wahiawa. By the end of the air battle, Welch had shot down four enemy aircraft, and Taylor had scored two confirmed kills with two probables. In recognition for their extraordinary heroism in action, and their coolness under fire against overwhelming odds, George Welch and Kenneth Taylor both received the Distinguished Service Cross. Harry Brown was awarded the Silver Star for the “expertness in battle” he demonstrated from the cockpit of his P-36.
These three young airmen proved that American fighting spirit was strong on the “Day of Infamy,” and that the ANM2 aircraft machine gun was a fearsome and dangerous arm. During the following 44 months, the Empire of Japan would encounter it, as well as the other guns of Pearl Harbor, over and over again during a campaign that would ultimately carry U.S. forces all the way to Tokyo Bay.
