War

The Great Sieges of Malta – Guns of Iron & Brass with Men of Steel

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Post date October 13, 2018
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The Knights Hospitilers were in a way like the GOT Nights watch

http://www.returnofkings.com/130048/the-great-siege-of-malta

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The other WWII Siege by the Axis

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The Great Siege of Malta (Maltese: L-Assedju l-Kbir) took place in 1565 when the Ottoman Empire tried to invade the island of Malta, then held by the Knights Hospitaller.
The Knights, with approximately 2,000 footsoldiers and 400 Maltese men, women and children, withstood the siege and repelled the invaders.
This victory became one of the most celebrated events in sixteenth-century Europe. Voltaire said, “Nothing is better known than the siege of Malta”, and it undoubtedly contributed to the eventual erosion of the European perception of Ottoman invincibility and marked a new phase in Spanish domination of the Mediterranean.^[3]
The siege was the climax of an escalating contest between a Christian alliance and the Islamic Ottoman Empire for control of the Mediterranean, a contest that included the Turkish attack on Malta in 1551, the Ottoman destruction of an allied Christian fleet at the Battle of Djerba in 1560, and the decisive Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

The Knights of Malta

The Knights Hospitaller are also known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, or Knights of Malta, Knights of Rhodes, Knights of Saint John, and Chevaliers of Malta.
By the end of 1522, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan, had forcibly ejected the Knights from their base on Rhodes after the six-month Siege of Rhodes.
From 1523 to 1530 the Order lacked a permanent home. They became known as the Knights of Malta when, on 26 October 1530, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Grand Master of the Knights, sailed into Malta’s Grand Harbour with a number of his followers to lay claim to Malta and Gozo, which had been granted to them by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V^[4] in return for one falcon sent annually to the Viceroy of Sicily and a solemn Mass to be celebrated on All Saints Day. Charles also required the Knights to garrison Tripoli on the North African coast, which was in territory that the Barbary Corsairs, allies of the Ottomans, controlled. The Knights accepted the offer reluctantly.
Malta was a small, desolate island, and for some time, many of the Knights clung to the dream of recapturing Rhodes.
Nevertheless, the Order soon turned Malta into a naval base. The island’s position in the centre of the Mediterranean made it a strategically crucial gateway between East and West, especially as the Barbary Corsairs increased their forays into the western Mediterranean throughout the 1540s and 1550s.

Jean Parisot de Valette

In particular, the corsair Dragut was proving to be a major threat to the Christian nations of the central Mediterranean. Dragut and the Knights were continually at loggerheads. In 1551, Dragut and the Ottoman admiral Sinandecided to take Malta and invaded the island with a force of about 10,000 men.
After only a few days, however, Dragut broke off the siege and moved to the neighboring island of Gozo, where he bombarded the Cittadella for several days.
The Knights’ governor on Gozo, Gelatian de Sessa, having decided that resistance was futile, threw open the doors to the Cittadella. The corsairs sacked the town and took virtually the entire population of Gozo (approximately 5,000 people) into captivity.
Dragut and Sinan then sailed south to Tripoli, where they soon seized the Knights’ garrison there. They initially installed a local leader, Aga Morat, as governor, but subsequently Dragut himself took control of the area.
Expecting another Ottoman invasion within a year, Grand Master of the Knights Juan de Homedes ordered the strengthening of Fort Saint Angelo at the tip of Birgu (now Vittoriosa), as well as the construction of two new forts, Fort Saint Michael on the Senglea promontory and Fort Saint Elmo at the seaward end of Mount Sciberras (now Valletta).
The two new forts were built in the remarkably short period of six months in 1552. All three forts proved crucial during the Great Siege.
The next several years were relatively calm, although the guerre de course, or running battle, between Muslims and Christians continued unabated.
In 1557 the Knights elected Jean Parisot de Valette Grand Master of the Order. He continued his raids on non-Christian shipping, and his private vessels are known to have taken some 3,000 Muslim and Jewish slaves during his tenure as Grand Master.^[5]
By 1559 Dragut was causing the Christian powers such distress, even raiding the coasts of Spain, that Philip II organized the largest naval expedition in fifty years to evict the corsair from Tripoli.
The Knights joined the expedition, which consisted of about 54 galleys and 14,000 men.
This ill-fated campaign climaxed in the Battle of Djerba in May 1560, when Ottoman admiral Piyale Pasha surprised the Christian fleet off the Tunisian island of Djerba, capturing or sinking about half the Christian ships. The battle was a disaster for the Christians and it marked the high point of Ottoman domination of the Mediterranean.

Toward the siege

Fort St. Angelo

After Djerba there could be little doubt that the Turks would eventually attack Malta again.
Malta was of immense strategic importance to the Ottoman long term plan to conquer more of Europe, since Malta was a stepping stone to Sicily, and Sicily in turn could be a base for an invasion of the Kingdom of Naples.^[6]
In August 1560, Jean de Valette sent an order to all the Order’s priories that their knights prepare to return to Malta as soon as a citazione (summons) was issued.^[7]
The Turks made a strategic error in not attacking at once, while the Spanish fleet lay in ruins, as the five-year delay allowed Spain to rebuild their forces.^[8]
Meanwhile, the Spaniards continued to prey on Turkish shipping. In mid-1564, Romegas, the Order’s most notorious seafarer, captured several large merchantmen, including one that belonged to the Chief Eunuch of the Seraglio, and took numerous high-ranking prisoners, including the governor of Cairo, the governor of Alexandria, and the former nurse of Sultan Suleiman’s daughter.
Romegas’ exploits gave the Turks a casus belli, and by the end of 1564, Suleiman had resolved to wipe the Knights of Malta off the face of the earth.

Suleyman I

By early 1565, Grand Master de Valette’s network of spies in Constantinople had informed him that the invasion was imminent. De Valette set about raising troops in Italy, laying in stores and finishing work on Fort Saint Angelo, Fort Saint Michael, and Fort Saint Elmo.^[9]

The armies

The Turkish armada, which set sail from Constantinople on 22 March, was by all accounts one of the largest assembled since antiquity.
According to one of the earliest and most complete histories of the siege, that of the Order’s official historian Giacomo Bosio, the fleet consisted of 193 vessels, which included 131 galleys, seven galliots (small galleys) and four galleasses (large galleys), the remainder being transport vessels, etc.^[2]Contemporary letters from Don Garcia, the Viceroy of Sicily, give similar numbers.”^[10]
The Italian mercenary Francisco Balbi di Correggio, (serving as an arquebusier in the Spanish corps), gave the forces as:^[1]

The Knights Hospitaller	The Ottomans
500 Knights Hospitaller	6,000 Spahis (cavalry)
400 Spanish soldiers	500 Spahis from Karamania
800 Italian soldiers	6,000 Janissaries
500 soldiers from the galleys (Spanish Empire)	400 adventurers from Mytheline
200 Greek and Sicilian soldiers	2,500 Spahis from Rouania
100 soldiers of the garrison of Fort St. Elmo	3,500 adventurers from Rouania
100 servants of the knights	4,000 “religious servants”
500 galley slaves	6,000 other volunteers
3,000 soldiers drawn from the Maltese population	Various corsairs from Tripoli and Algiers
Total: 6,100	Total: 28,500 from the East, 40,000 in all

The Knight Hipolito Sans, in a lesser-known account, also lists about 48,000 invaders, although it is not clear how independent his work is from Balbi’s.^[11] Other contemporary authors give much lower figures.
In a letter written to Philip II only four days after the siege began, de Valette himself says that “the number of soldiers that will make land is between 15,000 and 16,000, including seven thousand arquebusiers or more, that is four thousand janissaries and three thousand spahis.”^[12]
On the other hand, in a letter to the Prior of Germany a month after the siege, de Valette writes, “This fleet consisted of two hundred and fifty ships, triremes, biremes and other vessels; the nearest estimate we could make of the enemy’s force was 40,000 fighting men.”^[13]
That de Valette gives the enemy fleet as 250 vessels, a number much above anyone else’s, shows that the Grand Master himself was not above exaggeration.
Indeed, a letter written during the siege by the liaison with Sicily, Captain Vincenzo Anastagi, states the enemy force was only 22,000 and several other letters of the time give similar numbers.^[14]^[15]
However, Bosio arrives at a total of about 30,000, which is consistent with Balbi’s “named troops.”^[16] Another early history gives essentially the same figure.^[17]

The siege

Arrival of the Ottomans

Before the Turks arrived, de Valette ordered the harvesting of all the crops, including unripened grain, to deprive the enemy of any local food supplies. Furthermore, the Knights poisoned all wells with bitter herbs and dead animals.
The Turkish armada arrived at dawn on Friday, 18 May, but did not at once make land.^[18] The first fighting broke out on 19 May.^[19]
A day later, the Ottoman fleet sailed up the southern coast of the island, turned around and finally anchored at Marsaxlokk (Marsa Sirocco) Bay, nearly 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the Grand harbour region.
According to most accounts, in particular Balbi’s, a dispute arose between the leader of the land forces, the 4th Vizier serdar Kızılahmedli Mustafa Pasha,^[20] and the supreme naval commander, Piyale Pasha, about where to anchor the fleet. Piyale wished to shelter it at Marsamxett Harbour, just north of the Grand Harbour, in order to avoid the sirocco and be nearer the action, but Mustafa disagreed, because to anchor the fleet there would require first reducing Fort St. Elmo, which guarded the entrance to the harbour. Mustafa intended, according to these accounts, to attack the poorly defended former capital Mdina,
which stood in the centre of the island, then attack Forts St. Angelo and Michael by land. If so, an attack on Fort St. Elmo would have been entirely unnecessary. Nevertheless, Mustafa relented, apparently believing only a few days would be necessary to destroy St. Elmo.
After the Turks were able to emplace their guns, at the end of May they commenced a bombardment.
It certainly seems true that Suleiman had seriously blundered in splitting the command three ways. He not only split command between Piyale and Mustafa, but he ordered both of them to defer to Dragut when he arrived from Tripoli.
Contemporary letters from spies in Constantinople, however, suggest that the plan had always been to take Fort St. Elmo first.^[21] In any case, for the Turks to concentrate their efforts on it proved a crucial mistake.
While the Ottomans were landing, the knights and Maltese made some last-minute improvements to the defences of Birgu and Senglea.
The Ottomans set up their main camp in Marsa, which was close to the Knights’ fortifications.^[22] In the following days, the Ottomans set up camps and batteries on Santa Margherita Hill^[23] and the Sciberras Peninsula.^[24]The attacks on Birgu began on 21 May, while Senglea was first attacked a day later.^[25]

Map of Malta at the time of the Great Siege

Capture of Fort St. Elmo

“

The darkness of the night then became as bright as day, due to the vast quantity of artificial fires. So bright was it indeed that we could see St Elmo quite clearly. The gunners of St Angelo… were able to lay and train their pieces upon the advancing Turks, who were picked out in the light of the fires.”

”

— Francisco Balbi, Spanish relief soldier^[26]

Having correctly calculated that the Turks would seek to secure a disembarkation point for their fleet and would thus begin the campaign by attempting to capture Fort St Elmo, de Valette sent reinforcements and concentrated half of his heavy artillery within the fort.^[27]^[28]
His intent was for them to hold out for a relief promised by Don Garcia, Viceroy of Sicily. The unremitting bombardment of the fort from three dozen guns on the higher ground of Mt. Sciberras began on 27 May,^[29] and reduced the fort to rubble within a week, but de Valette evacuated the wounded nightly and resupplied the fort from across the harbour.
After arriving in May, Dragut set up new batteries to imperil the ferry lifeline. On 3 June, a party of Janissaries managed to seize the fort’s ravelin and ditch.^[27]^[30] Still, by 8 June, the Knights sent a message to the Grand Master that the Fort could no longer be held but were rebuffed with messages that St Elmo must hold until the reinforcements arrived.^[27]
The Turks attacked the damaged walls on June 10 and 15, and made an all out assault on June 16, during which even the slave and hired galley oarsmen housed in St Elmo, as well as the native Maltese soldiers, reportedly fought and died “almost as bravely as the Knights themselves.”
Two days later, Dragut was seen in a trench cannon emplacement arguing with the Turkish gunners about their level of fire.
At Dragut’s insistence a cannon’s aim was lowered, but the aim was too low, and when fired its ball detached part of the trench which hit Dragut in the head, killing him,^[31] (although according to Bosio, it was a lucky shot from Fort St. Angelo that mortally wounded him.^[27])
Finally, on 23 June, the Turks seized what was left of Fort St. Elmo.^[27] They killed all the defenders, totaling over 1,500 men, but spared nine Knights whom the Corsairs had captured, and a few others managed to escape.^{[citation needed]}
Although the Turks did succeed in capturing St. Elmo, allowing Piyale to anchor his fleet in Marsamxett, the siege of Fort St. Elmo had cost the Turks at least 6,000 men, including half of their Janissaries.^[27]

Dragut Reis

Mustafa had the bodies of the knights decapitated and their bodies floated across the bay on mock crucifixes. In response, de Valette beheaded all his Turkish prisoners, loaded their heads into his cannons and fired them into the Turkish camp.^{[citation needed]}

Panic

By this time, word of the siege was spreading. As soldiers and adventurers gathered in Sicily for Don Garcia’s relief, panic spread as well.
There can be little doubt that the stakes were high, perhaps higher than at any other time in the contest between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. Queen Elizabeth I of England wrote:^[32]

“

If the Turks should prevail against the Isle of Malta, it is uncertain what further peril might follow to the rest of Christendom

”

All contemporary sources indicate the Turks intended to proceed to the Tunisian fortress of La Goletta and wrest it from the Spaniards, and Suleiman had also spoken of invading Europe through Italy.^{[citation needed]}
However, modern scholars tend to disagree with this interpretation of the siege’s importance.
H.J.A. Sire, a historian who has written a history of the Order, is of the opinion that the siege represented an overextension of Ottoman forces, and argues that if the island had fallen, it would have quickly been retaken by a massive Spanish counterattack.^[27]
Although Don Garcia did not at once send the promised relief (troops were still being levied), he was persuaded to release an advance force of some 600 men.
After several attempts, this piccolo soccorso (Italian: small relief) managed to land on Malta in early July and sneak into Birgu, raising the spirits of the besieged garrison immensely.

The Senglea Peninsula

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On 15 July, Mustafa ordered a double attack against the Senglea peninsula.
He had transported 100 small vessels across Mt. Sciberras to the Grand Harbour, thus avoiding the strong cannons of Fort St. Angelo, in order to launch a sea attack against the promontory using about 1,000 Janissaries, while the Corsairs attacked Fort St. Michael on the landward end.
Luckily for the Maltese, a defector warned de Valette about the impending strategy and the Grand Master had time to construct a palisade along the Senglea promontory, which successfully helped to deflect the attack.
Nevertheless, the assault probably would have succeeded had not the Turkish boats come into point-blank range (less than 200 yards) of a sea-level battery of five cannons that had been constructed by Commander Chevalier de Guiral at the base of Fort St. Angelo with the sole purpose of stopping such an amphibious attack.
Just two salvos sank all but one of the vessels, killing or drowning over 800 of the attackers. The land attack failed simultaneously when relief forces were able to cross to Ft. St. Michael across a floating bridge, with the result that Malta was saved for the day.

The siege of St Michael, showing the Christian Knights cut off from the sea and surrounded in their remaining fortresses of Birgu, St Angelo and St Michael.

The Turks by now had ringed Birgu and Senglea with some 65 siege guns and subjected the town to what was probably the most sustained bombardment in history up to that time. (Balbi claims that 130,000 cannonballs were fired during the course of the siege.)
Having largely destroyed one of the town’s crucial bastions, Mustafa ordered another massive double assault on 7 August, this time against Fort St. Michael and Birgu itself. On this occasion, the Turks breached the town walls and it seemed that the siege was over, but unexpectedly the invaders retreated.
As it happened, the cavalry commander Captain Vincenzo Anastagi, on his daily sortie from Mdina, had attacked the unprotected Turkish field hospital, massacring the sick and wounded. The Turks, thinking the Christian relief had arrived from Sicily, broke off their assault.

St. Michael and Birgu

After the attack of 7 August, the Turks resumed their bombardment of St. Michael and Birgu, mounting at least one other major assault against the town on 19–21 August. What actually happened during those days of intense fighting is not entirely clear.
Bradford’s account of the climax of the siege has a mine exploding with a huge blast, breaching the town walls and causing stone and dust to fall into the ditch, with the Turks charging even as the debris was still falling.
He also has the 70-year-old de Valette saving the day by leading towards the Turks some hundred troops that had been waiting in the Piazza of Birgu. Balbi, in his diary entry for 20 August, says only that de Valette was told the Turks were within the walls; the Grand Master ran to “the threatened post where his presence worked wonders. Sword in hand, he remained at the most dangerous place until the Turks retired.”^[33]
Bosio also has no mention of the successful detonation of a mine. Rather, in his report a panic ensued when the townspeople spied the Turkish standards outside the walls. The Grand Master ran there, but found no Turks.
In the meantime, a cannonade atop Ft. St. Angelo, stricken by the same panic, killed a number of townsfolk with friendly fire.^[34]

Fort St. Michael and Mdina

Mdina

View of Mdina (left) and map of the city’s fortifications as they were in 1565 (right)

The situation was sufficiently dire that, at some point in August, the Council of Elders decided to abandon the town and retreat to Fort St. Angelo. De Valette, however, vetoed this proposal.
If he guessed that the Turks were losing their will, he was correct. Although the bombardment and minor assaults continued, the invaders were stricken by an increasing desperation.
Towards the end of August, the Turks attempted to take Fort St. Michael, first with the help of a manta(similar to a Testudo formation), a small siege engine covered with shields, then by use of a full-blown siege tower.
In both cases, Maltese engineers tunneled out through the rubble and destroyed the constructions with point-blank salvos of chain shot.
At the beginning of September, the weather was turning and Mustafa ordered a march on Mdina, intending to winter there. However the attack failed to occur.
The poorly-defended and supplied city deliberately started firing its cannon at the approaching Turks at pointlessly long range; this bluff scared them away by fooling the already demoralised Turks into thinking the city had ammunition to spare.^[35]
By 8 September, the Turks had embarked their artillery and were preparing to leave the island, having lost perhaps a third of their men to fighting and disease.

Gran Soccorso

On 7 September, Don Garcia had at last landed about 8,000 men at St. Paul’s Bay on the north end of the island. The so-called Grande Soccorso (“great relief”) positioned themselves on the ridge of San Pawl tat-Tarġa, waiting for the retreating Turks. It is said that when some hot-headed knights of the relief force saw the Turkish retreat and the burning villages in its wake, they charged without waiting for orders from Ascanio della Corgna. Della Corgna had no choice but to order a general charge which resulted in the massacre of the retreating Turkish force. The Turks fled to their ships and from the islands on 13 September. Malta had survived the Turkish assault, and throughout Europe people celebrated what would turn out to be the last epic battle involving Crusader Knights.

Aftermath[edit]

Lifting of the Siege of Malta by Charles-Philippe Larivière(1798–1876). Hall of the Crusades, Palace of Versailles.

Great Siege Monument by Antonio Sciortino in Valletta

The number of casualties is in as much dispute as the number of invaders. Balbi gives 35,000 Ottoman deaths, which seems implausible, while Bosio estimates 30,000 casualties, including sailors. Modern estimations from military historians using Turkish archives have put the number of casualties at 10,000 from combat and disease, though it is generally agreed that there were likely far more losses amongst the various volunteers and pirates, which the Turkish sources would not have noted.^[36]The knights lost a third of their number, and Malta lost a third of its inhabitants. Birgu and Senglea were essentially leveled. Still, 9,000 defenders had managed to withstand a siege of more than four months in the hot summer, despite enduring a bombardment of some 130,000 cannonballs.
Jean de Valette, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, had a key influence in the victory against Ottomans with his example and his ability to encourage and hold together people as one man. This example had a major impact, bringing together the kings of Europe in an alliance against the previously seemingly invincible Ottomans; the result was the vast union of forces against Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto seven years later. Such was the gratitude of Europe for the knights’ heroic defense that money soon began pouring into the island, allowing de Valette to construct a fortified city, Valletta, on Mt. Sciberras. His intent was to deny the position to any future enemies. De Valette himself died in 1568 after suffering a stroke while praying in a chapel.

In literature and historical fiction[edit]

Notes[edit]

Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Wikipedia’s style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (October 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

^ Jump up to:^a ^b Francesco Balbi di Correggio / translated by: Ernle Bradford (1965). The Siege of Malta, 1565. London.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Giacomo Bosio, Histoire des Chevaliers de l’ordre de S. Iean de Hierusalem, edited by J. Baudoin (Paris, 1643).
Jump up^ Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. II (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1995).Great Siege of Malta
Jump up^ Abbe de Vertot, The History of the Knights of Malta vol. II, 1728 (facsimile reprint Midsea Books, Malta, 1989).
Jump up^ Godfrey Wettinger, Slavery in the Islands of Malta and Gozo, (Publishers Enterprise Group: Malta, 2002), p. 34
Jump up^ Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1984). The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. p. 854. ISBN 0-87169-162-0.
Jump up^ Carmel Testa, Romegas (Midsea Book: Malta, 2002), p. 61.
Jump up^ Braudel, op cit.
Jump up^ “Malta prepares for an imminent Ottoman invasion”. Heritage Malta. 17 May 2015. Archived from the original on 1 February 2016.
Jump up^ Coleccion de Documentos Ineditos Para La Historia de Espana, vol. 29 (Madrid, 1856).
Jump up^ Arnold Cassola, The 1565 Great Siege of Malta and Hipolito Sans’s La Maltea (Publishers Enterprise Group: Malta, 1999).
Jump up^ Coleccion, op. cit., p. 367
Jump up^ Celio Secondo Curione, A New History of the War in Malta, translated from the Latin by Emanuele F. Mizzi (Tipografia Leonina: Rome, 1928).
Jump up^ Giovanni Bonello, Histories of Malta, Volume III, Versions and Perversions (Patrimonju Publishing Ltd: Malta, 2002)
Jump up^ Coleccion, op. cit.
Jump up^ Giacomo Bosio, op. cit.
Jump up^ Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turke (London, 1603).
Jump up^ “Hostile Ottoman fleet anchored in Malta today”. Heritage Malta. 18 May 2015. Archived from the original on 1 February 2016.
Jump up^ “Rash decision ruins the day”. Heritage Malta. 19 May 2015. Archived from the original on 4 February 2016.
Jump up^ Aurel Decei Istoria Imperiului Otoman, Ed. Ştiinţifică şi enciclopedică, Bucureşti 1978, page 185
Jump up^ Coleccion, op. cit., pp. 6–7
Jump up^ “Ottoman troops land in Malta”. Heritage Malta. 20 May 2015.
Jump up^ “Birgu attacked: Greek betrays Order of St John”. Heritage Malta. 21 May 2015.
Jump up^ “Liberated prisoners enrolled as soldiers”. Heritage Malta. 24 May 2015.
Jump up^ “Turks planning to sabotage Fort St Elmo”. Heritage Malta. 22 May 2015.
Jump up^ Grant, R.G. (2005). Battle a Visual Journey Through 5000 Years of Combat. London: Dorling Kindersley. p. 133.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Sire, H. J. A. (1993). “5”. The Knights of Malta. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. pp. 68–70. ISBN 0-300-05502-1.
Jump up^ “Refugees ordered to leave Fort St Elmo”. Heritage Malta. 25 May 2015.
Jump up^ “Fort St Elmo under fire: Renegade reveals Ottoman plan”. Heritage Malta. 27 May 2015.
Jump up^ “Ravelin of Fort St Elmo taken over by Ottomans”. Heritage Malta. 3 June 2015.
Jump up^ Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1984). The papacy and the Levant. vol. 4. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. p. 860. ISBN 9780871691620.
Jump up^ Felix Pryor, Elizabeth I: Her Life in Letters, (University of California Press, 2003), p.39.
Jump up^ Francisco Balbi, The Siege of Malta 1565, translated by H.A. Balbi (Copenhagen, 1961).
Jump up^ Bosio, op. cit., p. 552.
Jump up^ Grima, Noel (15 June 2015). “The Mdina siege of 1429 was ‘greater than the Great Siege’ of 1565”. The Malta Independent. Archived from the original on 15 August 2015.
Jump up^ Arnold Cassola, The 1565 Ottoman Malta Campaign Register, (Publishers Enterprise Group: Malta, 1998), p. 111.

References[edit]

Bradford, Ernle, Ernle Bradford (1961). The Great Siege: Malta 1565. Wordsworth 1999. ISBN 1-84022-206-9.
Bradford, Ernle, The Sultan’s Admiral: The Life of Barbarossa, London, 1968.
Correggio, Francesco Balbi di (1568). The Siege Of Malta 1565. Copenhagen 1961.
Correggio, Francesco Balbi di Francesco Balbi di Correggio translated Ernle Bradford (1568 translated 1965). “chapter II”. The Siege Of Malta 1565. Penguin 2003. ISBN 0-14-101202-1. Check date values in: |date= (help)
Currey, E. Hamilton, Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean, London, 1910
Pickles, Tim. Malta 1565: Last Battle of the Crusades; Osprey Campaign Series #50, Osprey Publishing, 1998.
Rothman, Tony, “The Great Siege of Malta,” in History Today, January 2007.
Spiteri, Stephen C. The Great Siege: Knights vs. Turks, 1565. Malta, The Author, 2005.
Wolf, John B., The Barbary Coast: Algeria under the Turks, New York, 1979; ISBN 0-393-01205-0

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John Dillinger

One Really Bad Dude
Back in the Days of Real Gangsters of America. Mr. D was the King of the Publicity for these folks.
Here is his story:
John Herbert Dillinger (/dɪlɪndʒər/; June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster in the Depression-era United States. He operated with a group of men known as the Dillinger Gang or Terror Gang, which was accused of robbing 24 banks and four police stations, among other activities. Dillinger escaped from jail twice. He was also charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest during a shootout, prompting him to return fire; despite his infamy, it was Dillinger’s only homicide charge.
He courted publicity and the media of his time ran exaggerated accounts of his bravado and colorful personality, styling him as a Robin Hood figure.^[1] In response, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover developed a more sophisticated Bureau as a weapon against organized crime, using Dillinger and his gang as his campaign platform.^[1]
After evading police in four states for almost a year, Dillinger was wounded and returned to his father’s home to recover. He returned to Chicago in July 1934 and met his end at the hands of police and federal agents who were informed of his whereabouts by Ana Cumpănaş (the owner of the brothel where Dillinger had sought refuge at the time). On July 22, 1934, the police and the Division of Investigation^[2] closed in on the Biograph Theater. Federal agents, led by Melvin Purvis and Samuel P. Cowley, moved to arrest Dillinger as he exited the theater. He drew a Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocketand attempted to flee, but was killed. This was ruled as a justifiable homicide.^[3]^[4]

Early life

Family and background[edit]

John Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903, in Indianapolis, Indiana,^[5] the younger of two children born to John Wilson Dillinger (1864 –1943) and Mary Ellen “Mollie” Lancaster (1860–1907).^[6]^:10
According to some biographers, his German grandfather, Matthias Dillinger, emigrated to the United States in 1851 from Metz, in the region of Lorraine, then under French sovereignty.^[7] Matthias Dillinger was born in Gisingen, near Dillingen in present-day Saarland. John Dillinger’s parents had married on August 23, 1887. Dillinger’s father was a grocer by trade and, reportedly, a harsh man.^[6]^:9 In an interview with reporters, Dillinger said that he was firm in his discipline and believed in the adage “spare the rod and spoil the child”.^[6]^:12
Dillinger’s older sister, Audrey, was born March 6, 1889. Their mother died in 1907 just before his fourth birthday.^[6]^[8]Audrey married Emmett “Fred” Hancock that year and they had seven children together. She cared for her brother John for several years until their father remarried in 1912 to Elizabeth “Lizzie” Patel (1878–1933). They had three children, Hubert, born 1912, Doris M. (1918–2001) and Frances Dillinger (1922–2015).^[8]^[9]
Reportedly, Dillinger initially disliked his stepmother, but he eventually came to fall in love with her. The two eventually began a relationship that lasted 3 years.^[10]

Formative years and marriage[edit]

As a teenager, Dillinger was frequently in trouble with the law for fighting and petty theft; he was also noted for his “bewildering personality” and bullying of smaller children.^[6]^:14 He quit school to work in an Indianapolis machine shop. His father feared that the city was corrupting his son, prompting him to move the family to Mooresville, Indiana, in 1921.^[6]^:15Dillinger’s wild and rebellious behavior was unchanged, despite his new rural life. In 1922, he was arrested for auto theft, and his relationship with his father deteriorated.^[6]^:16–17
His troubles led him to enlist in the United States Navy, where he was a Fireman 3rd Class assigned aboard the battleship USS Utah,^[11] but he deserted a few months later when his ship was docked in Boston. He was eventually dishonorably discharged.^[6]^:18–20
Dillinger then returned to Mooresville where he met Beryl Ethel Hovious.^[12] The two were married on April 12, 1924. He attempted to settle down, but he had difficulty holding a job and preserving his marriage.^[1]
Dillinger was unable to find a job and began planning a robbery with his friend Ed Singleton.^[6]^:22 The two robbed a local grocery store, stealing $50.^[6]^:26 While leaving the scene, the criminals were spotted by a minister who recognized the men and reported them to the police. The two men were arrested the next day. Singleton pleaded not guilty, but after Dillinger’s father (the local Mooresville Church deacon) discussed the matter with Morgan County prosecutor Omar O’Harrow, his father convinced Dillinger to confess to the crime and plead guilty without retaining a defense attorney.^[6]^:24Dillinger was convicted of assault and battery with intent to rob, and conspiracy to commit a felony. He expected a lenient probation sentence as a result of his father’s discussion with O’Harrow, but instead was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison for his crimes.^[8] His father told reporters he regretted his advice and was appalled by the sentence. He pleaded with the judge to shorten the sentence, but with no success.^[6]^:25 (During the robbery, Dillinger had struck a victim on the head with a machine bolt wrapped in a cloth and had also carried a gun which, although it discharged, hit no one). En route to Mooresville to testify against Singleton, Dillinger briefly escaped his captors, but was apprehended within a few minutes.^[6]^:27 Singleton had a change of venue and was sentenced to a jail term of 2 to 14 years. He was killed on August 31, 1937, by a train when he passed out, drunk, on a railroad track.^[13]

Prison time[edit]

Within Indiana Reformatory and Indiana State Prison, from 1924 to 1933, Dillinger began to become embroiled in a criminal lifestyle. Upon being admitted to the prison, he is quoted as saying, “I will be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get out of here.”^[6]^:26 His physical examination upon being admitted to the prison showed that he had gonorrhea. The treatment for his condition was extremely painful.^[6]^:22 He became embittered against society because of his long prison sentence and befriended other criminals, such as seasoned bank robbers like Harry “Pete” Pierpont, Charles Makley, Russell Clark, and Homer Van Meter, who taught Dillinger how to be a successful criminal. The men planned heists that they would commit soon after they were released.^[6]^:32 Dillinger studied Herman Lamm‘s meticulous bank-robbing system and used it extensively throughout his criminal career.^{[citation needed]}
His father launched a campaign to have him released and was able to get 188 signatures on a petition. Dillinger was paroled on May 10, 1933, after serving nine and a half years. Dillinger’s stepmother became sick just before he was released from the prison, and died before he arrived at her home.^[6]^:37 Released at the height of the Great Depression, Dillinger had little prospect of finding employment.^[6]^:35 He immediately returned to crime.^[6]^:39
On June 21, 1933, he robbed his first bank, taking $10,000 from the New Carlisle National Bank, which occupied the building at the southeast corner of Main Street and Jefferson (State Routes 235 and 571) in New Carlisle, Ohio.^[14] On August 14, Dillinger robbed a bank in Bluffton, Ohio. Tracked by police from Dayton, Ohio, he was captured and later transferred to the Allen County Jail in Lima to be indicted in connection to the Bluffton robbery. After searching him before letting him into the prison, the police discovered a document which appeared to be a prison escape plan. They demanded Dillinger tell them what the document meant, but he refused.^[8]
Dillinger had helped conceive a plan for the escape of Pierpont, Clark and six others he had met while in prison, most of whom worked in the prison laundry. Dillinger had friends smuggle guns into their cells, with which they escaped, four days after Dillinger’s capture. The group, known as “the First Dillinger Gang,” comprised Pete Pierpont, Russell Clark, Charles Makley, Ed Shouse, Harry Copeland, and John “Red” Hamilton, a member of the Herman Lamm Gang. Pierpont, Clark, and Makley arrived in Lima on October 12, where they impersonated Indiana State Police officers, claiming they had come to extradite Dillinger to Indiana. When the sheriff, Jess Sarber, asked for their credentials, Pierpont shot Sarber dead, then released Dillinger from his cell. The four men escaped back to Indiana, where they joined the rest of the gang.^[8]

Bank robberies[edit]

Dillinger is known to have participated with The Dillinger Gang in twelve separate bank robberies, between June 21, 1933 and June 30, 1934.^{[citation needed]}

Relationship with Evelyn Frechette[edit]

Evelyn “Billie” Frechette met John Dillinger in October 1933, and they began a relationship on November 20. After Dillinger’s death, Billie was offered money for her story and eventually penned a memoir for the Chicago Herald and Examiner in August 1934.^[15]

Escape from Crown Point, Indiana[edit]

Dillinger was finally caught by Matthew “Matt” Leach, the chief of the Indiana State Police, and imprisoned within the Crown Point jail sometime after committing a robbery at a bank located in East Chicago on January 15, 1934. The local police boasted to area newspapers that the jail was escape-proof and posted extra guards to make sure. What happened on the day of Dillinger’s escape on March 3 is still open to debate. Deputy Ernest Blunk claimed that Dillinger had escaped using a real pistol, but FBI files make clear that Dillinger carved a fake pistol from a potato. Sam Cahoon, a trustee that Dillinger first took hostage in the jail, believed that Dillinger had carved the gun with a razor and some shelving in his cell. However, according to an unpublished interview with Dillinger’s attorney, Louis Piquett and his investigator, Art O’Leary, O’Leary claimed to have sneaked the gun in himself.^[16]
On March 16, Herbert Youngblood, a fellow escapee from Crown Point, was shot dead by three police officers in Port Huron, Michigan. Deputy Sheriff Charles Cavanaugh was fatally wounded in the battle and died a few hours later. Before he died, Youngblood told the officers that Dillinger was in the neighborhood of Port Huron, and immediately officers began a search for the escaped man, but no trace of him was found. An Indiana newspaper reported that Youngblood later retracted the story and said he did not know where Dillinger was at that time, as he had parted with him soon after their escape.^[17]
Dillinger was indicted by a local grand jury, and the Bureau of Investigation (a precursor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation)^[2] organized a nationwide manhunt for him.^[18] After escaping from Crown Point, Dillinger reunited with his girlfriend, Evelyn Frechette, just hours after his escape at her half-sister Patsy’s Chicago apartment, where she was also staying (3512 North Halsted).
According to Billie’s trial testimony, Dillinger stayed with her there for “almost two weeks,” but the two actually had traveled to the Twin Cities and moved into the Santa Monica Apartments, Unit 106, 3252 South Girard Avenue, Minneapolis, on March 4 (moving out on March 19)^[19]^[20] and met up with Hamilton (who had been recovering for the past month from his gunshot wounds in the East Chicago robbery), and mustered a new gang, and the two joined Baby Face Nelson‘s gang, composed of Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll and Eddie Green.^{[clarification needed]}
Three days after Dillinger’s escape from Crown Point, the second Dillinger Gang robbed a bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A week later they robbed First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa.^{[citation needed]}

Lincoln Court shootout[edit]

This section may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Please consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding or removing subheadings. (June 2015)

Dillinger and Billie eventually moved into apartment 303 of the Lincoln Court Apartments, 93-95 South Lexington Avenue (now Lexington Parkway South) in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Tuesday, March 20, using the aliases “Mr. & Mrs. Carl T. Hellman”. The three-story apartment complex (still in operation)^[21] had 32 apartments — 10 units on each floor, plus two basement units.^[22]^[23]
Daisy Coffey, the landlord/owner, would testify at Frechette’s trial that she spent most evenings during the Hellmans’ stay furnishing apartment 310, which enabled her to observe what was happening in apartment 303 directly across the courtyard. On March 30, Coffey went to the FBI’s St. Paul field office to file a report, including information about the couple’s new Hudson sedan parked in the garage behind the apartments. The building was placed under surveillance by two agents, Rufus Coulter and Rusty Nalls, that night, but they saw nothing unusual, mainly due to the blinds being drawn.^[24]
The next morning at approximately 10:15, Nalls circled around the block looking for the Hudson, but observed nothing. He parked, first on Lincoln (the north side of the apartments), then on the west side of Lexington, at the northwest corner of Lexington and Lincoln, and remained in his car while watching Coulter and St. Paul Police detective Henry Cummings, pull up, park, and enter the building.^[25] Ten minutes later, by Nalls’s estimate, Van Meter parked a green Ford coupe on the north side of the apartment building.^[26]
Meanwhile, Coulter and Cummings knocked on the door of apartment 303. Frechette answered, opening the door two to three inches. She said she was not dressed and to come back. Coulter told her they would wait. After waiting two to three minutes, Coulter went to the basement apartment of the caretakers, Louis and Margaret Meidlinger, and asked to use the phone to call the bureau. He quickly returned to Cummings, and the two of them waited for Frechette to open the door. Van Meter then appeared in the hall and asked Coulter if his name was Johnson. Coulter said it was not, and as Van Meter passed on to the landing of the third floor, Coulter asked him for a name. Van Meter replied, “I am a soap salesman.” Asked where his samples were, Van Meter said they were in his car. Coulter asked if he had any credentials. Van Meter said “no,” and continued down the stairs. Coulter waited 10 to 20 seconds, then followed Van Meter. As Coulter got to the lobby on the ground floor, Van Meter opened fire on him.^[27] Coulter hastily fled outside, chased by Van Meter. Eventually, Van Meter ran back into the front entrance.
Recognizing Van Meter, Nalls pointed out the Ford to Coulter and told him to disable it. Coulter shot out the rear left tire. While Coulter stayed with Van Meter’s Ford, Nalls went to the corner drugstore and called first the local police, then the bureau’s St. Paul office, but could not get through because both lines were busy.^[28]^[29] Van Meter, meanwhile, escaped by hopping on a passing coal truck.^[30]
Frechette, in her harboring trial testimony, said that she told Dillinger that the police had showed up after speaking to Cummings. Upon hearing Van Meter firing at Coulter, Dillinger opened fire through the door with a Thompson submachine gun, sending Cummings scrambling for cover. Dillinger then stepped out and fired another burst at Cummings. Cummings shot back with a revolver, but quickly ran out of ammunition. He hit Dillinger in the left calf with one of his five shots. He then hastily retreated down the stairs to the front entrance.^[31] Once Cummings retreated, Dillinger and Frechette hurried down the stairs, exited through the back door and drove away in the Hudson.
The couple drove to the apartment of Eddie Green at 3300 South Fremont in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Green called his associate Dr. Clayton E. May at his office in Minneapolis, 712 Masonic Temple (still extant). With Green, his wife Beth, and Frechette following in Green’s car, Dr. May drove Dillinger to 1835 Park Avenue, Minneapolis, to the apartment of Augusta Salt, who had been providing nursing services and a bed for May’s illicit patients for several years, patients he could not risk seeing at his regular office. May treated Dillinger’s wound with antiseptics. Eddie Green visited Dillinger on Monday, April 2, just hours before Green would be mortally wounded by the FBI in St. Paul. Dillinger convalesced at Dr. May’s for five days, until Wednesday, April 4. Dr. May was promised $500 for his services, but received nothing.

Return to Mooresville

After leaving Minneapolis, Dillinger and Billie traveled to Mooresville to visit Dillinger’s father. Friday, April 6 was spent contacting family members, particularly his half-brother Hubert Dillinger. On April 6, Hubert and Dillinger left Mooresville at about 8:00 p.m. and proceeded to Leipsic, Ohio (approximately 210 miles away), to see Joseph and Lena Pierpont, Harry’s parents. The Pierponts were not home, so the two headed back to Mooresville around midnight.^[34]
On April 7 at approximately 3:30 a.m., they rammed a car driven by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Manning near Noblesville, Indiana, after Hubert fell asleep behind the wheel. They crashed through a farm fence and about 200 feet into the woods. Both men made it back to the Mooresville farm. Swarms of police showed up at the accident scene within hours. Found in the car were maps, a machine gun magazine, a length of rope, and a bullwhip. According to Hubert, his brother planned to pay a visit with the bullwhip to his former one-armed “shyster” lawyer at Crown Point, Joseph Ryan, who had run off with his retainer after being replaced by Louis Piquett.^{[citation needed]}
At about 10:30 a.m. on April 7, Billie, Hubert and Hubert’s wife purchased a black four-door Ford V8, registering it in the name of Mrs. Fred Penfield (Billie Frechette). At 2:30 p.m., Billie and Hubert picked up the V8 and returned to Mooresville.^{[citation needed]}
On Sunday, April 8, the Dillingers enjoyed a family picnic while the FBI had the farm under surveillance nearby.^[34] Later in the afternoon, suspecting they were being watched (agents J. L. Geraghty and T. J. Donegan were cruising in the vicinity in their car), the group left in separate cars. Billie drove the new Ford V8, with two of Dillinger’s nieces, Mary Hancock in the front seat and Alberta Hancock in the back. Dillinger was on the floor of the car. He was later seen, but not recognized, by Donegan and Geraghty. Eventually, Norman, driving the V8, proceeded with Dillinger and Billie to Chicago, where they separated from Norman.^[34]
The following afternoon, Monday, April 9, Dillinger had an appointment at a tavern at 416 North State Street. Sensing trouble, Billie went in first. She was promptly arrested by agents, but refused to reveal Dillinger’s whereabouts. Dillinger was waiting in his car outside the tavern and then drove off unnoticed.^[35] The two would never see each other again.^{[citation needed]}
Dillinger reportedly became despondent after Billie was arrested. The other gang members tried to talk to him out of rescuing her, but Van Meter knew where they could find bulletproof vests. That Friday morning, late at night, Dillinger and Van Meter took Warsaw, Indiana police officer Judd Pittenger hostage. They marched him at gunpoint to the police station, where they stole several more guns and bulletproof vests. After separating, Dillinger picked up Hamilton, who was recovering from the Mason City robbery. The two then traveled to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where they visited Hamilton’s sister Anna Steve.^{[citation needed]}

Hiding in Chicago[edit]

By July 1934, Dillinger had dropped completely out of sight, and the federal agents had no solid leads to follow. He had, in fact, drifted into Chicago where he went under the alias of Jimmy Lawrence, a petty criminal from Wisconsin who bore a close resemblance to Dillinger. Working as a clerk, Dillinger found that, in a large metropolis like Chicago, he was able to lead an anonymous existence for a while. What he did not realize was that the center of the federal agents’ dragnet happened to be Chicago. When the authorities found Dillinger’s blood-spattered getaway car on a Chicago side street, they were positive that he was in the city.^[8]
Dillinger had always been a fan of the Chicago Cubs, and instead of lying low like many criminals on the run, he attended Cubs games at Wrigley Field during June and July.^[36] He’s known to have been at Wrigley on Friday, June 8, only to watch his beloved Cubs lose to Cincinnati 4-3. Also in attendance at the game were Dillinger’s lawyer, Louis Piquett, and Captain John Stege of the Dillinger Squad.

Plastic surgery

According to Art O’Leary, as early as March 1934, Dillinger expressed an interest in plastic surgery and had asked O’Leary to check with Piquett on such matters. At the end of April, Piquett paid a visit to his old friend Dr. Wilhelm Loeser. Loeser had practiced in Chicago for 27 years before being convicted under the Harrison Narcotic Act in 1931. He was sentenced to three years at Leavenworth, but was paroled early on December 7, 1932, with Piquett’s help.^{[citation needed]} He later testified that he performed facial surgery on himself and obliterated the fingerprint impressions on the tips of his fingers by the application of a caustic soda preparation. Piquett said Dillinger would have to pay $5,000 for the plastic surgery: $4,400 split between Piquett, Loeser and O’Leary, and $600 to Dr. Harold Cassidy, who would administer the anaesthetic. The procedure would take place at the home of Piquett’s longtime friend, 67-year-old James Probasco, at the end of May.^{[citation needed]}
On May 28, Loeser was picked up at his home at 7:30 p.m. by O’Leary and Cassidy. The three of them then drove to Probasco’s place. Dillinger chose to have a general anaesthetic. Loeser later testified:

I asked him what work he wanted done. He wanted two warts (moles) removed on the right lower forehead between the eyes and one at the left angle, outer angle of the left eye; wanted a depression of the nose filled in; a scar; a large one to the left of the median line of the upper lip excised, wanted his dimples removed and wanted the angle of the mouth drawn up. He didn’t say anything about the fingers that day to me.^[38]

Cassidy administered an overdose of ether, which caused Dillinger to suffocate. He began to turn blue and stopped breathing. Loeser pulled Dillinger’s tongue out of his mouth with a pair of forceps, and at the same time forcing both elbows into his ribs. Dillinger gasped and resumed breathing. The procedure continued with only a local anaesthetic. Loeser removed several moles on Dillinger’s forehead, made an incision in his nose and an incision in his chin and tied back both cheeks.^{[citation needed]}
Loeser met with Piquett again on Saturday, June 2, with Piquett saying that more work was needed on Dillinger and that Van Meter now wanted the same work done to him. Also, both now wanted work done on their fingertips. The price for the fingerprint procedure would be $500 per hand or $100 a finger. Loeser used a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid—commonly known as aqua regia.^[39]^{[page needed]}
Loeser met O’Leary the following night at Clark and Wright at 8:30, and they once again drove to Probasco’s. Present this evening were Dillinger, Van Meter, Probasco, Piquett, Cassidy, and Peggy Doyle, Probasco’s girlfriend. Loeser testified that he worked for only about 30 minutes before O’Leary and Piquett had left.
Loeser testified:

Cassidy and I worked on Dillinger and Van Meter simultaneously on June 3. While the work was being done, Dillinger and Van Meter changed off. The work that could be done while the patient was sitting up, that patient was in the sitting-room. The work that had to be done while the man was lying down, that patient was on the couch in the bedroom. They were changed back and forth according to the work to be done. The hands were sterilized, made aseptic with antiseptics, thoroughly washed with soap and water and used sterile gauze afterwards to keep them clean. Next, cutting instrument, knife was used to expose the lower skin…in other words, take off the epidermis and expose the derma, then alternately the acid and the alkaloid was applied as was necessary to produce the desired results.^[40]

Minor work was done two nights later, Tuesday, June 5. Loeser made some small corrections first on Van Meter, then Dillinger. Loeser stated:

A man came in before I left, who I found out later was Baby Face Nelson. He came in with a drum of machine gun bullets under his arm, threw them on the bed or the couch in the bedroom, and started to talk to Van Meter. The two then motioned for Dillinger to come over and the three went back into the kitchen.

Peggy Doyle later told agents:

Dillinger and Van Meter resided at Probasco’s home until the last week of June 1934; that on some occasions they would be away for a day or two, sometimes leaving separately, and on other occasions together; that at this time Van Meter usually parked his car in the rear of Probasco’s residence outside the back fence; that she gathered that Dillinger was keeping company with a young woman who lived on the north side of Chicago, inasmuch as he would state upon leaving Probasco’s home that he was going in the direction of Diversey Boulevard; that Van Meter apparently was not acquainted with Dillinger’s friend, and she heard him warning Dillinger to be careful about striking up acquaintances with girls he knew nothing about; that Dillinger and Van Meter usually kept a machine gun in an open case under the piano in the parlor; that they also kept a shotgun under the parlor table.^[41]

O’Leary stated that Dillinger expressed dissatisfaction with the facial work that Loeser had performed on him. O’Leary said that, on another occasion, “that Probasco told him, ‘the son of a bitch has gone out for one of his walks’; that he did not know when he would return; that Probasco raved about the craziness of Dillinger, stating that he was always going for walks and was likely to cause the authorities to locate the place where he was staying; that Probasco stated frankly on this occasion that he was afraid to have the man around.”^{[citation needed]}
Agents arrested Loeser at 1127 South Harvey, Oak Park, Illinois, on Tuesday, July 24. O’Leary returned from a family fishing trip on July 24, the day of Loeser’s arrest, and had read in the newspapers that the Department of Justice was looking for two doctors and another man in connection with some plastic work that was done on Dillinger. O’Leary left Chicago immediately, but returned two weeks later, learned that Loeser and others had been arrested, phoned Piquett, who assured him everything was all right, then left again. He returned from St. Louis on August 25 and was promptly taken into custody.^[42]
On Friday, July 27, Jimmy Probasco jumped or “accidentally” fell to his death from the 19th floor of the Bankers’ Building in Chicago while in custody.^{[citation needed]}
On Thursday, August 23, Homer Van Meter was shot and killed in a dead-end alley in St. Paul by Tom Brown, former St. Paul Chief of Police, and then-current chief Frank Cullen.^{[citation needed]}

Polly Hamilton, Dillinger’s last girlfriend[edit]

Rita “Polly” Hamilton was a teenage runaway from Fargo, North Dakota.^[6] She met Ana Ivanova Akalieva- Ana Cumpănaş(aka Ana Sage) in Gary, Indiana, and worked periodically as a prostitute (in Anna’s brothel) until marrying Gary police officer Roy O. Keele in 1929.^[6] They later divorced in March 1933.^[6]
In the summer of 1934, the now twenty-six-year-old^[1] Hamilton was a waitress in Chicago at the S&S Sandwich Shop located at 1209 ½ Wilson Avenue. She had remained friends with Sage and was sharing living space with Sage and Sage’s twenty-four-year-old son, Steve, at 2858 Clark Street.^[6]
Dillinger and Hamilton, a Billie Frechette look-a-like,^[1]^[6] met in June 1934 at the Barrel of Fun night club located at 4541 Wilson Avenue. Dillinger introduced himself as Jimmy Lawrence and said he was a clerk at the Board of Trade.^[6] They dated until Dillinger’s death at the Biograph Theater in July 1934.^[1]^[6]

Informant betrays Dillinger[edit]

Division of Investigations chief J. Edgar Hoover created a special task force headquartered in Chicago to locate Dillinger. On July 21, Ana Cumpănaș (a/k/a Anna Sage), a madam from a brothel in Gary, Indiana, also known as “The Woman in Red” contacted the FBI. She was a Romanian immigrant threatened with deportation for “low moral character”^[43] and offered agents information on Dillinger in exchange for their help in preventing her deportation. The FBI agreed to her terms, but she was later deported nonetheless. Cumpănaş revealed that Dillinger was spending his time with another prostitute, Polly Hamilton, and that she and the couple would be going to see a movie together on the following day. She agreed to wear an orange dress,^[44] so police could easily identify her. She was unsure which of two theaters they would be attending, the Biograph or the Marbro.^[8] On December 15, 1934, pardons were issued by Indiana Governor Harry G. Leslie for the offenses of which Anna Sage was convicted.^[45]
Sage stated that on Sunday afternoon, July 22, Dillinger asked her if she wanted to go to the show with them, he and Polly.

She asked him what show was he going to see, and he said he would ‘like to see the theater around the corner,’ meaning the Biograph Theater. She stated she was unable to leave the house to inform Purvis or Martin about Dillinger’s plans to attend the Biograph, but as they were going to have fried chicken for the evening meal, she told Polly she had nothing in which to fry the chicken, and was going to the store to get some butter; that while at the store she called Mr. Purvis and informed him of Dillinger’s plans to attend the Biograph that evening, at the same time obtaining the butter. She then returned to the house so Polly would not be suspicious that she went out to call anyone.

The crowd at Chicago’s Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934, shortly after John Dillinger was killed there by law enforcement officers.

A team of federal agents and officers from police forces from outside of Chicago was formed, along with a very small number of Chicago police officers. Among them was Sergeant Martin Zarkovich, the officer to whom Sage had acted as an informant. At the time, federal officials felt that the Chicago police had been compromised and therefore could not be trusted; Hoover and Purvis also wanted more of the credit.^[44] Not wanting to take the risk of another embarrassing escape of Dillinger, the police were split into two groups. On Sunday, one team was sent to the Marbro Theater on the city’s west side, while another team surrounded the Biograph Theater at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue on the north side.^[8]

Death and Shooting at the Biograph Theater[edit]

FBI photograph of the Biograph Theater taken July 28, 1934, six days after the shooting, the only night Murder in Trinidad played^[46]

A Dillinger death maskmade from an original mold, and eyebrow hair, on display at the Crime Museum in Washington, D.C. Note the bullet exit mark below the right eye.

Grave at Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana; at least the fourth marker to be replaced since 1934, due to souvenir seekers chipping away at them

Sage, Hamilton, and Dillinger were observed entering the Biograph at approximately 8:30 p.m.,^[4]^[45]^[47] which was showing a crime drama Manhattan Melodrama, starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and William Powell. During the stakeout, the Biograph’s manager thought the agents were criminals setting up a robbery. He called the Chicago police, who dutifully responded and had to be waved off by the federal agents, who told them that they were on a stakeout for an important target.^[8]
When the film ended, Purvis^[48] stood by the front door and signaled Dillinger’s exit by lighting a cigar. Both he and the other agents reported that Dillinger turned his head and looked directly at the agent as he walked by, glanced across the street, then moved ahead of his female companions, reached into his pocket but failed to extract his gun,^[6]^:353 and ran into a nearby alley.^[44] Other accounts stated Dillinger ignored a command to surrender, whipped out his gun, then headed for the alley. Agents already had the alley closed off, but Dillinger was determined to shoot it out.^[49]
Three men pursued Dillinger into the alley and fired. Clarence Hurt shot twice, Charles Winstead three times, and Herman Hollis once. Dillinger was hit from behind and fell face first to the ground.^[50]
Dillinger was struck four times, with two bullets grazing him and one causing a superficial wound to the right side. The fatal bullet entered through the back of his neck, severed the spinal cord, passed into his brain and exited just under the right eye, severing two sets of veins and arteries.^[3] An ambulance was summoned, although it was soon apparent Dillinger had died from the gunshot wounds; he was officially pronounced dead at Alexian Brothers Hospital.^[8]^[50] According to investigators, Dillinger died without saying a word.^[51]
Two female bystanders, Theresa Paulas and Etta Natalsky, were wounded. Dillinger bumped into Natalsky just as the shooting started.^[34]^[44] Natalsky was shot and was subsequently taken to Columbus Hospital.^[52] Winstead was later thought to have fired the fatal shot, and as a consequence received a personal letter of commendation^[specify] from J. Edgar Hoover.^[44]
Dillinger was shot and killed by the special agents on July 22, 1934,^[4]^[53]^[54] at approximately 10:40 p.m, according to a New York Times report the next day.^[47]Dillinger’s death came only two months after the deaths of fellow notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde.There were reports of people dipping their handkerchiefs and skirts into the pool of blood that had formed, as Dillinger lay in the alley, as keepsakes.^{[citation needed]}

Aftermath[edit]

Dillinger’s body was available for public display at the Cook County morgue.^[55]An estimated 15,000 people viewed the corpse over a day and a half. As many as four death masks were also made.^[56]
Dillinger’s gravestone has been replaced several times because of vandalism by people chipping off pieces as souvenirs.^[57] Hilton Crouch (1903-1976), an associate of Dillinger’s on some early heists, is buried only a few yards to the west.

John Dillinger’s 1911 Machine Pistol. Altered to fire full auto. His Fully Automatic 45.
His Gangs Guns
Image result for john dillinger guns Thats a lot of Firepower there!
NSFW Stuff
There is an Old Urban Legend that Old John was a very well endowed kinda of a Guy. Due in part to this photo. Myth has it that after his demise. It was removed and sent to the Smithsonian in a jar with preservative fluid.
Image result for john dillinger body
Obviously some folks believed this!

This great Nation & Its People

This makes sense to me & I feel better now!

Post author By Grumpy
Post date October 12, 2018
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Are We On The Verge Of Civil War? Some Words Of Reassurance

by Morris P. Fiorina

Friday, September 28, 2018

Ordinary Americans are much less hysterical than America’s elites.
Recent articles here and here by Victor Davis Hanson—my colleague at the Hoover Institution–paint a frightening picture of the United States as a country teetering on the edge of civil war. In addition to being an exceptional prose stylist, Hanson is an active combatant in today’s political wars, so his impressions are understandable. As a data guy and a noncombatant, however, I am happy to report that the available data provide grounds for feeling much more sanguine about the state of our country. Although they are noisy and harmful to our politics, the kinds of people Hanson criticizes are many fewer in number than generally believed. They are what political scientists call the political class, a small minority of self-appointed activists, demonstrators, donors, partisan media commentators and office-seekers. Given that such people are the public face of politics, many Americans understandably take them as representative, but they are statistically abnormal—what we call “outliers.”
To understand contemporary American political life, you should begin with the realization that most of the people blabbering on cable television, venting on Facebook, and/or fulminating on Twitter are abnormal. They are abnormally interested and involved in politics, they tend to occupy the policy extremes, and they are abnormally opinionated (yes, many readers of Hanson’s article and this one are probably abnormal). Consider some numbers. As of today, there are about 235 million eligible voters in the United States. About one percent of them subscribe to either The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Liberals rail against Fox News and conservatives against MSNBC; they should take consolation in the fact that the Fox viewing audience is about one percent of the eligible electorate while news shows on MSNBC fall short of that. Sean Hannity’s is the highest-rated political show on cable television with an audience of about 1.5 percent of the eligible electorate. On the other end of the spectrum Rachel Maddow gets a bit over one percent. Anderson Cooper 360 draws in a paltry 0.4 of one percent. Granted, these small audiences may spread the word to some non-subscribers and non-viewers, but even taking such second-order effects into account, the simple fact is that the ranks of the politically interested are surprisingly thin.
Some suggest that the internet and social media have replaced the older print and electronic media, but the available research does not support that suggestion. If “hundreds of millions of people” really were doing politics on social media, I would share Hanson’s worries, but such a claim overstates the number of social media activists by several orders of magnitude. A 2013 Facebook study that tracked Bing toolbar searches found that 96 percent of the users clicked on zero or one opinion column in a three-month period. In 2017 the Pew Research Center reported that less than four percent of adults consider Twitter an important source of news. (Twitter audiences are exaggerated, but for what it’s worth, President Trump reportedly has 53 million followers; Katie Perry has about twice that many.) Studies of fake news conclude that its impact is minimal.
Researchers have studied the concept of “filter bubbles” or “ideological silos.” This is the fear that the availability of politically slanted media outlets on the internet allows people to isolate themselves and consume only news and opinion consistent with their ideological preferences. Research like the Facebook study noted above fails to find much reason for concern, mainly because most Americans don’t search out any political news, let along limit themselves to ideologically congenial news. Other research finds that internet audiences are, in fact, less politically homogeneous than people’s face-to-face networks. In my personal experience I’ve concluded that the two kinds of people most likely to exist in ideological silos are academics and journalists.
In many respects the American electorate has changed surprisingly little in more than six decades. In 2016 about 10 percent of the eligible electorate made a campaign contribution—to any campaign at any level, the same figure as in the 1950s. Despite media hype about Obamamania in 2008 and Trump rallies in 2016, less than 10 percent of the eligible electorate attended any kind of campaign meeting or rally in those years, the same figure as six decades ago. As for people who knock on doors or make phone calls for campaigns, we are talking about two to three percent of the eligible electorate, the same small proportion as in the Eisenhower era.
Turning from interest and activity to beliefs and preferences, an examination of the ideological distribution of the American public finds that roughly 40 percent consider themselves moderates, 35 percent conservatives and 25 percent liberals. These figures are virtually the same as those from 1976, when the Democrats nominated an Evangelical Christian from Georgia and the Republicans a country club moderate from Michigan. On issue after issue the American public chooses centrist positions. The 2016 Republican platform position on abortion was “never, no exceptions. Twenty percent of the public holds that position. The Democratic platform was “anytime, for any reason.” Thirty percent of the public holds that position. The other fifty percent of the public says “sometimes, for some reasons,” a position not offered by either party.
The big change in our politics is that the parties have sorted. Historically they have been “big tents,” including disparate viewpoints and different kinds of people. But beginning in the 1960s the Democrats began shedding their conservative wing and during the Reagan era the Republicans followed suit as liberals left the party. Our parties today look like the British Labour and Conservative Parties in their heydays, except in a much larger, more heterogeneous country where two ideological parties cannot begin to represent the diversity of American public opinion.
In recent years there has been a great deal of commentary about Americans becoming tribal, adopting partisanship as an identity and attributing nothing but good to their own party and nothing but bad to the other party. One widely cited study reported that more people now even say that they would be unhappy if their child married someone from the other party. Well, in the 1950s, 75 percent of Americans claimed affiliation with either the Democratic or Republican parties; today that figure stands at only 60 percent. Numerous studies find that normal Americans are unhappy with both parties: Americans now rate the other party and their own party more negatively than they used to. Support for a third party is at an all-time high (although there is little agreement on what kind of third party). The proportion of people unhappy if their child married someone from the other party is about the same as the proportion of Red Sox fans who would be unhappy if their child married a Yankee fan or vice versa. And Democrats and Republicans agree that they would unhappy if their child married someone from their own party if that person talked about politics a lot. Partisanship has become more tribal within the political class, but considerable evidence suggests that most normal people are unhappy with that development.
How do the preceding observations square with the facts that party lines in voting seemingly have hardened? Split-ticket voting has dropped significantly, and those who have a party affiliation vote that affiliation 90 percent of the time. These developments are consistent with a hardening of partisanship but also are natural consequences of party sorting. If voters face a choice between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican for every office, one important reason to split your ticket or support a particular candidate from the other party has disappeared. Consider West Virginia in 2012. Republican Mitt Romney overwhelmed President Obama by almost 27 percentage points. At the same time Democratic Senator Joe Manchin thumped his Republican opponent by 24 percentage points. Did this display of massive ticket-splitting indicate that West Virginia voters were unusual, or was their opportunity to vote for a pro-gun, pro-life Democrat what was unusual today? If there were more conservative Democrats and more liberal Republicans in our states and congressional districts, party lines in voting would be less distinct.
Finally, some words about immigration, a major bone of contention between Republicans and Democrats in the political class, although surprisingly, less important than commonly believed among normal Americans. Although the U.S. is an immigrant nation, today’s emphasis on ethnic identity politics understandably leads many people to conclude that today’s immigration differs from that of previous eras, with more negative implications. But the kinds of controversies the United States now is experiencing are strikingly similar to those that accompanied earlier large waves of immigration. Hanson certainly is correct in asserting that political pressures to assimilate are much lower today, but societal pressures remain strong. The evidence indicates that despite the rhetoric of ethnic identity group activists and today’s celebration of diversity, the American melting pot continues to boil. Ongoing studies report, for example, that English language acquisition is proceeding at a rate comparable to, if not faster than, that in the early 20^th Century; in particular, by the third generation Latinos are English-dominant or fully bilingual.
According to some eminent demographers, the U.S. Census Bureau has inadvertently stoked the fires of nativism with questionable projections about the United States becoming a majority-minority country by mid-century. Richard Alba strongly criticizes Census Bureau practices, noting that a child with one non-white grandparent goes into the non-white box, as will his or her children. For example, Senator Ted Cruz is half-Cuban married to an anglo white, so his daughters are one-quarter Hispanic. Under current practices in 2045 the Census Bureau will record the children of Senator Ted Cruz’ daughters as Hispanic even if they are only one-eighth Hispanic by that point. Inter-ethnic and inter-racial marriages have dramatically risen, producing increasing numbers of children of mixed-race or ethnicity. Many of them will come to identify as white, not minority. In addition, history shows that whiteness is an ever-evolving concept. In the 1840s native-born Americans did not view Irish immigrants as white; nor did they consider my Italian grand-parents to be white in 1910. Today, all the myriad ethnic groups from earlier migrations are simply “Euro-whites.”
Our country is experiencing rapid social changes that naturally create social problems and political controversies. The American citizenry has worked through these kinds of problems in the past (most recently in the 1960s) and I am optimistic that they will continue to do so, despite the efforts of members of the political class to keep political controversies alive and allow societal problems to fester. Whenever you are feel discouraged about America, turn off CNN, log off your computer, and go walk the aisles of Walmart.

Morris P. Fiorina is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

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Shamelessly Stolen from -My Daily Kona, Difference between AR-15 and AK 47….and Nagants

Post author By Grumpy
Post date October 12, 2018
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I saw a video while I was surfing YouTube. I saw the difference between the M-16, and the AK 47. It was a very educational video.
I have fired both kinds and still own one of them. I was trained on the M-16 pattern rifle, I am very comfortable with that platform. I know it’s strength, I know its weaknesses.

Here is the latest incarnation of this rifle. Like I said, I love the versatility of this rifle. This rifle has gone through 3 changes since I bought it back in 1991.
I still am considering buying a shorty stock and a shorty barrel. My Brother who is used to the M-4 platform calls my rifle “A Musket” due to the length.

This is my same rifle that had the same style for 15 years. Tactically not such a good configuration. I had changed the barrel to an A-2 barrel with the same style handgrips, pistol grips and rear stock.

This is the rifle back in original configuration that I bought it back in 1991. I had kept all the old parts when I upgraded.

I have also owned an AK-47 type rifle for several years back in the mid 90’s. But I had to sell it to pay some bills. I hated doing it, and basically I had to choose which rifle I had to give up.
I liked the rifle, I liked the reliability and the ease of use of the AK-47 pattern rifle, it is an easy rifle to shoot and operate.

I also own a Mosin Nagant, I bought this rifle back in the late 90’s. This rifle was made in the Soviet Armory in the Urals, when the Germans invaded, the Soviets moved whole industries across the urals to protect it against the fascisti invaders. This rifle is classified as a model 31/59

This rifle Model 1891/59 Carbine: Commonly called “91/59s,” the M1891/59s were created by shortening M1891/30 rifles to carbine length, with rear sight numbers partially ground off to reflect reduced range. These rifles are almost clones of the M38 except for the ground off M91/30 rear sight.
The “1891/59” marking on the receiver suggests the carbines were created in or after 1959. It was initially thought that Bulgaria or another Soviet satellite country performed the conversions in preparation for a Western invasion that never came.
Recent evidence suggests that the M91/59 was indeed produced in Bulgaria from Soviet-supplied wartime production M91/30s. Total production of the 91/59 is uncertain; figures as low as one million and as high as three million have appeared in the firearms magazines.

A lot of people disparage the Mosin type rifles as ” Old…….obsolete…can’t survive against a modern assault rifle..” I disagree, this rifle will work when all other will not. Also the 7.62X54R round is no slouch, It will flat out knock down anybody it hits.
Also the recoil is rough compared to the AR pattern and AK pattern rifles. Another reason for the rifle is you could rearm your tribe with a few Nagants for extra rifles until newer rifles are acquired. Then you can put the rifles back in storage until the next time.
This is the video I saw that started this post…..so there:P…..

I remembered posting this when I first started blogging.

AK vs. AR vs. Mosin Nagant
Written by Head of the old Headsbunker.com, also known as “Ezra Coli” on the various message boards.

There’s an ever present, unending debate over which is best, ARs or AKs, raging across the internet and in gun shops every day sending bile and bitter insults spewing both ways. This debate has turned fathers against sons, best friends against one another, and……..well you get the point.
The author is of the opinion that there are of course pros and cons to each family of rifle, and I refuse to engage in what is “best”. As one who loves them all, especially the AK and AR series, I thought I’d pass on some of the knowledge I have gained over the years concerning these wildly different weapons.
As a bonus, I’ll toss in my knowledge of another favorite family of weapons at the Bunker, just because they are very popular these days and I often ramble about them. So, here, for the aid of those hammering one another in the debate, is some unbiased, non-slanted, untainted raw knowledge about the AK, the AR, and the Mosin Nagant.

Stuff you know if you have an AK	Stuff you know if you have an AR	Stuff you know if you have a Mosin Nagant
It works though you have never cleaned it. Ever.	You have $9 per ounce special non-detergent synthetic Teflon infused oil for cleaning.	It was last cleaned in Berlin in 1945.
You are able to hit the broad side of a barn from inside.	You are able to hit the broad side of a barn from 600 meters.	You can hit the farm from two counties over.
Cheap mags are fun to buy.	Cheap mags melt.	What’s a mag?
Your safety can be heard from 300 meters away.	You can silently flip off the safety with your finger on the trigger.	What’s a safety?
Your rifle comes with a cheap nylon sling.	Your rifle has a 9 point stealth tactical suspension system.	You rifle has dog collars.
Your bayonet makes a good wire cutter.	Your bayonet is actually a pretty good steak knife.	Your bayonet is longer than your leg.
You can put a .30″ hole through 12″ of oak, if you can hit it.	You can put one hole in a paper target at 100 meters with 30 rounds.	You can knock down everyone else’s target with the shock wave of your bullet going downrange.
When out of ammo your rifle will nominally pass as a club.	When out of ammo, your rifle makes a great wiffle bat.	When out of ammo, your rifle makes a supreme war club, pike, boat oar, tent pole, or firewood.
Recoil is manageable, even fun.	What’s recoil?	Recoil is often used to relocate shoulders thrown out by the previous shot.
Your sight adjustment goes to “10”, and you’ve never bothered moving it.	Your sight adjustment is incremented in fractions of minute of angle.	Your sight adjustment goes to 12 miles and you’ve actually tried it.
Your rifle can be used by any two bit nation’s most illiterate conscripts to fight elite forces worldwide.	Your rifle is used by elite forces worldwide to fight two bit nations’ most illiterate conscripts.	Your rifle has fought against itself and won every time.
Your rifle won some revolutions.	Your rifle won the Cold War.	Your rifle won a pole vault event.
You paid $350.	You paid $900.	You paid $59.95.
You buy cheap ammo by the case.	You lovingly reload precision crafted rounds one by one.	You dig your ammo out of a farmer’s field in Ukraine and it works just fine.
You can intimidate your foe with the bayonet mounted.	You foes laugh when you mount your bayonet.	You can bayonet your foe on the other side of the river without leaving the comfort of your hole.
Service life, 50 years.	Service life, 40 years.	Service life, 100 years, and counting.
It’s easier to buy a new rifle when you want to change cartridge sizes.	You can change cartridge sizes with the push of a couple of pins and a new upper.	You believe no real man would dare risk the ridicule of his friends by suggesting there is anything but 7.62x54r.
You can repair your rifle with a big hammer and a swift kick.	You can repair your rifle by taking it to a certified gunsmith, it’s under warranty!	If your rifle breaks, you buy a new one.
You consider it a badge of honor when you get your handguards to burst into flames.	You consider it a badge of honor when you shoot a sub-MOA 5 shot group.	You consider it a badge of honor when you cycle 5 rounds without the aid of a 2×4.
After a long day the range you relax by watching “Red Dawn”.	After a long day at the range you relax by watching “Blackhawk Down”.	After a long day at the range you relax by visiting the chiropractor.
After cleaning your rifle you have a strong urge for a stiff shot of Vodka.	After cleaning your rifle you have a strong urge for hotdogs and apple pie.	After cleaning your rifle you have a strong urge for shishkabob.
You can accessorize you rifle with a new muzzle brake or a nice stock set.	Your rifle’s accessories are eight times more valuable than your rifle.	Your rifle’s accessory is a small tin can with a funny lid, but it’s buried under an apartment building somewhere in Budapest.
Your rifle’s finish is varnish and paint.	Your rifle’s finish is Teflon and high tech polymers.	Your rifle’s finish is low grade shellac, cosmoline and Olga’s toe nails.
Your wife tolerates your autographed framed picture of Mikhail Kalashnikov.	Your wife tolerates your autographed framed picture of Eugene Stoner.	You’re not sure there WERE cameras to photograph Sergei Mosin.
Late at night you sometimes have to fight the urge to hold your rifle over your head and shout “Wolverines!”	Late at night you sometimes have to fight the urge to clear your house, slicing the pie from room to room.	Late at night, you sometimes have to fight the urge to dig a fighting trench in the the yard to sleep in.
There you have it. In the end, it is clear to any open minded inquirer that the Mosin Nagant is the most superior weapon of all time, but the AR and the AK come out as a draw when compared side by side.

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How Rhodesia Made Their FALs Great With This One Weird Halbek Device!

Post author By Grumpy
Post date October 12, 2018
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They may of had their problems / big mistakes at time, Like trusting Western Politicians. But generally these really hard nosed folks were not stupid! Like here for example:

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Smith & Wesson Model 10-2

Post author By Grumpy
Post date October 12, 2018
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Smith & Wesson - MODEL 10-2 - MFG 1961-1962 - SERIAL #C556023 - Picture 3

Smith & Wesson - MODEL 10-2 - MFG 1961-1962 - SERIAL #C556023 - Picture 4

Smith & Wesson - MODEL 10-2 - MFG 1961-1962 - SERIAL #C556023 - Picture 5

Smith & Wesson - MODEL 10-2 - MFG 1961-1962 - SERIAL #C556023 - Picture 6

Smith & Wesson - MODEL 10-2 - MFG 1961-1962 - SERIAL #C556023 - Picture 7

Smith & Wesson - MODEL 10-2 - MFG 1961-1962 - SERIAL #C556023 - Picture 8

Smith & Wesson - MODEL 10-2 - MFG 1961-1962 - SERIAL #C556023 - Picture 9

Smith & Wesson - MODEL 10-2 - MFG 1961-1962 - SERIAL #C556023 - Picture 10

Well I thought it was funny!

Post author By Grumpy
Post date October 12, 2018
No Comments on Well I thought it was funny!

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The Gun of the Week

A Winchester Model 70 XTR Sporter Magnum,
50th Anniversary 1 of 14 Sample Guns, Engraved Blue 24″ Beautiful Bolt Action Rifle, MFD 1987
The reason why I chose this Rifle over the others are many! As my readers no doubt know being some smart cookies. That I am a Bolt Man. Also I am a fan of the Winchester Model 70.
So what more can I say?
But Enjoy
Grumpy
Winchester Model 70 XTR Sporter Magnum, 50th Anniversary 1 of 14 Sample Guns, Engraved Blue 24