The post-WWII career of USS Killen (DD-593) is an interesting example of how the USA’s Cold War atomic tests, along with sloppy record-keeping and the unavoidable passage of time, resulted in a public relations mess at the turn of the millennium.
(USS Killen at sea in the Pacific during WWII)
(Wreckage of USS Killen on the Caribbean seafloor in the 21st century)
The ongoing Syrian civil war, which began in March 2011, is of course dominated by Cold War-era (and even 21st century) weapons, however, there is an astonishing mix of WWII gear – both Axis and Allied – in use. Some of these weapons had previously not seen combat for decades.
(Syrian rebel with a WWII German StG-44 assault rifle.)
(Yugoslav-made M18/43F, a copy of the WWII German leFH 18M howitzer, in action with Jaish al-Fatah rebels.)
(A Syrian rebel with a WWII Mosin-Nagant 91/30 – retrofitted with a modern scope – takes aim in 2014.)
(Rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) distribute WWII French MAS-36 rifles.)
(Syrian government soldier with a WWII Soviet 61-K anti-aircraft gun in October 2015.)
(A Kingfisher scout plane catapults off the cruiser USS Detroit (CL-8) during WWII.)
(Abandoned Kingfishers lay in a US Navy storage lot in 1946, a year after WWII ended)
Because most photos of battleships concentrate on the inter-war and WWII era, it’s generally assumed that catapults and seaplanes were always a fixture on them, but this isn’t accurate.
If one considers the “battleship era” starting with the Spanish-American War in 1898 and ending with the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 , it was only half a century that that this type of warship ruled the seas. Of that, seaplanes aboard battleships had an even shorter run, about 24 years. For context, there were US Navy sailors who enlisted before battleship catapults existed and retired after they were already gone.
(North Korean troops march with WWII PPSh–41 submachine guns in 2016.)
In North Korea’s formative years (1945-1949) it’s army’s weapons were entirely WWII vintage; a mixture of Japanese, Chinese, and Soviet types. During the Korean War, the same was true, and in the immediate aftermath very obsolete Soviet guns and the ex-Japanese weaponry was discarded, but the others remained.
This is a look at WWII weapons in North Korean use after the Korean War and following the mass emergency rearmament the USSR and China undertook in the mid-1950s. It is not an exhaustive list, but rather some of the main types of WWII weapons that remained in use in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and even beyond; in some cases to the present time.
(North Korean T-34-85 tank filmed during 2012.)
Originally designed as a carrier-based gun dogfighter, the F4U Corsair, and it’s later attack variant, the AU-1, was used heavily as a ground attack plane during WWII, and almost exclusively in that role during the Korean War.
(The first prototype Vought Corsair during WWII.)
A wide variety of weapons not originally envisioned were successfully used by the Corsair: air-to-ground rockets, napalm tanks, radar, depth charges, cluster munitions, and so on.
Easily the most unusual was something that could have never been envisioned by Vought’s engineers when they designed the plane; a guided missile.
(French navy Corsair with SS.11 guided missiles aboard.)
(Zhang’s Gate, the old entrance to Mukden Arsenal)
For people interested in Japanese firearms of WWII, the name Mukden Arsenal is familiar. The history of the facility after Japan’s defeat is less well known. Under various names, it did survive for some time, producing an odd mix of WWII weapons after the war’s end.
(Mukden Arsenal proofmark during WWII)
