Some years ago I wrote on ARM Netzahualcoyotl, the last WWII Gearing class in service worldwide. Mexico also was the very last user of the WWII Fletcher class, however unlike Mexico’s FRAM-modernized Gearing, in 2001 ARM Cuitláhuac remained “frozen in time” to a WWII technology level.
(USS John Rodgers (DD-574) during WWII.)
(ARM Cuitláhuac, the former USS John Rodgers, in 2000. It was the last Fletcher still in service anywhere in the world.)
Air America, the now-famous “front company” airline of the CIA, flew WWII aircraft alongside modern types during the Vietnam War. By now Air America has already been thoroughly written on elsewhere. Less well-known is a similar setup in the same timeframe, also using WWII aircraft: Continental Air Services Incorporated.
(C-46 Commando during WWII.)
(C-46 Commando of CASI at Long Tieng, Laos during 1975.)
For Stalingrad, covered in part 1, Josef Stalin had an idea (however wrong) but no ship. Meanwhile in the United States after WWII, the US Navy had an incomplete ship, USS Hawaii, but was looking for ideas on how to finish it.
(USS Guam during WWII.) (photo via All Hands, the US Navy’s magazine)
(End of the road for USS Hawaii on 20 June 1959 as it is towed to the scrapyard.)
I have not done a 2-part series for a while and these are two ships I have been wanting to write about for some time.
USS Hawaii and Stalingrad were two warships of roughly the same type and of similar firepower, both born (directly or indirectly) out of WWII. Both were made at different times for totally different reasons, each had a unique life and in the end, neither was finished.
(How it started: artist’s rendition of the Soviet battlecruiser Stalingrad.)
(How it ended: the never-finished Stalingrad for use in weapons tests.)
The Spanish CETME is a well-known Cold War assault rifle, and the West German G3 even more so. It is less known that both trace their lineage to a WWII German assault rifle which did not see combat.
(The WWII German StG-45(M) assault rifle.) (photo via Forgotten Weapons website)
(Spanish soldier during the 1950s with a CETME Modelo A, the StG-45(M)’s postwar “child” firing aluminum ammunition.)
(The Heckler & Koch G3, a 7.62 NATO descendant of the two above firearms. This particular one was used in a shootout with Kenyan police in February 2022.) (photo via Nation newspaper)
Heinkel’s He-274 high-altitude reconnaissance-bomber did not serve one single day in Luftwaffe colors during WWII, however after the war it was a useful addition to the rebuilding French air force.
I would like to wish a Merry Christmas to all wwiiafterwwii readers.
Below is the Rocket, the newspaper of Redstone Arsenal, AL from 23 December 1952 – 7 years after WWII and 71 years ago today. Santa Claus is on a JB-2 Loon. If the Loon looks like a WWII German V-1 buzz bomb, there is a good reason, because that is what a Loon was.
Depending where a person might be reading this, the 1969 conflict between El Salvador and Honduras is called Guerra de las Cien Horas (100 Hours War), the Fútbol War, or the Soccer War.
Beyond the (often incorrect) cause cited, this war is famous for the dogfights between Mustangs and Corsairs. A quarter-century after WWII ended, this would be the final time that WWII fighter planes would ever meet in the skies anywhere.
(Honduran Corsair)
(Salvadoran Mustang)
By now the air aspect of the conflict is beaten to death; indeed there are entire books covering it. On the other hand little is usually said about the war’s ground fighting, which included WWII-vintage M3 Stuart tanks.
(Salvadoran M3A1 Stuart tank parading a captured Honduran flag during 1969.)
WWII was obviously a war of monoplanes. The conflict was fought by types like the Corsair, the Spitfire, the Hellcat, the Mustang, and so on; and ended with Me-262 jets already in combat. None the less all the major nations had biplanes in differing roles and some served in the USA’s military past the war.
(A pre-WWII photo feature of the N3N-3 Canary trainer.)
(N3N-3 Canary after WWII. The markings, 48-star flag flying, and the automobile styles in the parking lot would seem to date this between the end of the Korean War in 1953 and Alaskan statehood in 1959.)
The USSR’s most-produced tank of WWII, and most successful during that war, was the T-34. After WWII many nations received this tank, one of the more obscure ones being Laos.
(Soviet soldiers with a T-34 during WWII.)
(Lao T-34 during the 2010s.)
(Ex-Lao T-34s in the Russian Federation during 2020.)
The path by which these T-34s came to Laos and then “returned” to Russia is quite winding and interesting.
For starters, they didn’t really “return home”, at least not in the strictest sense of the words. They are all Czechoslovak post-WWII production, having first gone through Vietnam.
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