Posts tagged ‘FRIDAY FOTO 2018’
FRIDAY FOTO (December 28, 2018)
Macbeth, Act IV, Scene II
(U.S. Army photo by Sergeant Connor Mendez)
This photo, taken December 12, 2018, shows Army Special Forces (Green Beret) snipers sprinting uphill during advanced skills sniper training at Fort Carson, Colorado.
The camouflage outfit they wear is known as a ghillie suit. We’ve written about ghillie suits several times in the past. Designed to look like heavy foliage in a forest or field, it was originally developed by Scottish gamekeepers as a portable hunting blind and first adopted for war in 1916. The name derives from a Scottish word for “lad” or “servant.”
Speaking of Scotland, these ghillie men remind us of a key scene in William Shakespeare’s drama, Macbeth, by longstanding theater world superstition, referred to simply as “the Scottish play.”
In Macbeth, the murderous title character has usurped the crown of Scotland and fears retribution, but three witches — or weird sisters — conjure an apparition that promises Macbeth will never be defeated until Birnam Wood marches to fight him at Dunsinane Hill.
Since trees can’t uproot themselves and march, Macbeth thinks he has nothing to fear, but later in the play he is defeated by an army emerging from the woods using felled branches as camouflage — so it looked like the woods were walking indeed.
FRIDAY FOTO (December 21, 2018)
One Man Light Show.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sergeant Corban Lundborg)
This seems like a good photo choice for the longest night of the year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere).
Here we see Air Force Technical Sergeant Chris Hibben swinging a chemical light stick during night vision training conducted at the Grand Bara Desert, Djibouti — which, it turns out, is in the Northern Hemisphere — on December 14, 2018.
Let’s see a Jedi do that with a light saber.
FYI, 4GWAR will have a photo essay on the Christmas season and the military around the world for Christmas Eve. Hope you’ll visit.
FRIDAY FOTO (December 14, 2018)
Dashing Through the Snow.
(U.S. Army photo by Staff Sergeant Felix Fimbres)
Army Reserve soldiers practice navigating through snowy terrain during winter warfare training at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin on December 8, 2018.
This is the second photo we’ve seen in recent weeks of Army troops in winter warfare training wearing camouflage white on their lower half only. (See photo below).
Does anyone know the logic behind this? Camouflage protection in snowy woods? The white jackets are on back order?
(U.S. Army photo by Alejandro Pena)
In this photo, Army paratroopers of the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) er breached a simulated enemy obstacle during infantry platoon live-fire training at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska on November 8, 2018. Were the white uniform tops on back order?
FRIDAY FOTO (December 7, 2018)
Narrow Margin.
(U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Grant G. Grady)
If you ever wondered how they get Navy fighter jets to and from an aircraft carrier flight deck, this is how they do it — carefully. Note the roiled waters below indicate the flat top is in motion during this everyday — but still hazardous — operation.
We assume these two F/A-18E Super Hornets are on their way up to the flight deck from the hangar deck since the accompanying caption supplied by the Navy said the sailors were guiding the 24-ton (when fully-loaded) multi-role fighters onto an aircraft elevator.
To get a sense of how quickly these elevators move, check out this short YouTube video from a carrier (USS Abraham Lincoln) tied up in port. To see the process for loading, securing and raising aircraft — while at sea — click here.
This FRIDAY FOTO was taken December 3, 2018 aboard the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the Indian Ocean.
FRIDAY FOTO (November 30, 2018)
Underwater Promotion.
Army astronauts Colonel Andrew “Drew” Morgan (left) and Lieutenant Colonel Anne McClain prepare to be promoted to their current ranks while underwater following required training in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Sonny Carter Training Facility in Houston, Texas.
This photo was taken in September, but now Lieutenant Colonel McClain is in Star City, Russia, preparing for a December 3 launch on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station.
“I am so happy that I’m going to have six months in space,” McClain — who is part of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s small astronaut detachment — said during an early November teleconference press briefing. “We’re not just going to space to visit, we’re going to go there to live.”
A West Point graduate, test pilot and combat helicopter pilot, McClain was selected for NASA’s human spaceflight program in 2013, along with fellow West Pointer, Colonel Morgan, a medical doctor, Special Forces emergency physician and former Army parachutist and skydiver. His space mission is slated for launch in July.
If her launch goes as planned, McClain will be the first active-duty Army officer in space since 2010. Her three-person crew is expected to launch from Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft and rocket.
“Feeling the thrust of the rocket is going to be something that I am really looking forward to,” she said. “It is going to be a completely new experience.” McClain, 39, of Spokane, Washington, will serve as a flight engineer for Expedition 58/59.
While her crew prepares to lift off on a rocket similar to one that suffered a malfunction October 11 — triggering an automatic abort and emergency landing, McClain says she’s not worried. The Soyuz rocket, she noted, has had an amazing track record. Before last month’s incident, the rocket’s previous aborted mission was in 1983.
“I saw that October 11 incident, not as a failure, but as an absolute success,” she said. “What this really proved was that the Russian launch abort system is a really great design and for that reason we have that backup plan.
McClain’s crew also received a debriefing from both astronauts in the aborted mission — Air Force Colonel Nick Hague and his Russian counterpart, Alexey Ovchinin.
FRIDAY FOTO (November 23, 2018)
Lightning Strike.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sergeant Cory D. Payne)
We haven’t used an Air Force photo for the Friday Foto in a while so we decided on this visually arresting shot, taken November 19, 2018.
It shows a formation of Air Force F-35 Lightning IIs performing aerial maneuvers during a combat power exercise over the Utah Test and Training Range.
The F-35 program is a family of single-seat, single-engine, all weather, multi-role stealth fighter jets for the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force — as well as foreign partners: Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Norway and Denmark.
The fifth (latest) generation radar-evading jet has been called the most expensive weapons system in history, and its development was beset by multiple delays before it was deemed combat ready. That changed last month, when a Marine Corps jet launched from the amphibious warship USS Essex struck targets in Afghanistan.
FRIDAY FOTO (November 16, 2018)
Airborne Medical Assistance.
(U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Scott Bigley)
Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Nicholas Glass looks out from an MH-60S Seahawk helicopter over the landscape near Turbo, Colombia. This photo was taken November 14, 2018, during a medical support mission to Central and South America as part of the Enduring Promise initiative.
Sponsored by U.S. Southern Command, the 11-week mission is working with health and government partners in Ecuador, Peru and Honduras, as well as Colombia. The embarked medical team will provide care on board the USNS Comfort hospital ship and at land-based medical sites, helping to relieve pressure on national medical systems caused, in part, by an increase in cross-border migrants fleeing a severe economic crisis in Venezuela. The economic collapse of once oil-rich Venezuela has led to severe shortages of food, medicine and basic goods. Many of those fleeing the country said they cannot get the operations and medical care they need.
SHAKO/FRIDAY FOTO: Devil Dogs
The Devil Dogs’ Dogs
(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Corporal Bernadette Plouffe)
Marine Corps military working dogs rest at the feet of their handlers aboard the USS Wasp in the South China Sea on October 1, 2018.
O.K., this is kind of an unusual format for the 4GWAR blog, but since November 10 marks the U.S. Marine Corps’ 243rd birthday, we seized on the opportunity to combine the regular Friday Foto for November 9, with a SHAKO feature on a World War I battle that has taken its place with other iconic engagements like Iwo Jima and Tripoli in the history of the Corps.
The nearly month-long Battle of Belleau Wood (June 1-26, 1918) was the first major engagement of American troops on the Western Front in World War I. It also is one of the most significant battles fought by the U.S. Marines, earning them France’s highest military award and the nickname Devil Dogs from the Germans.
Marines in close combat as depicted in Franc-Earle Schoonover’s Belleau Wood. (National Museum of the Marine Corps collection)
The 4th Marine Brigade, some 9,500 men, was assigned to the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, one of the U.S. units rushed to France just a few months after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. The Marine Brigade consisted of two regiments — the 5th Marines and the 6th Marines — each with three 800-man rifle battalions and a machine gun company.
On June 1, a major German offensive moved south to the Marne River, where they were held at Chateau Thierry by French troops reinforced by the U.S. Army. One of the leading German assault regiments, the 461st Imperial German Infantry, occupied Belleau Wood, a former hunting preserve about 50 miles northwest of Paris. It was a nearly impenetrable forest of dense underbrush, trees, boulders and ravines.
In early June, the Marine Brigade was dug into a defensive line near Belleau Wood, facing a wheat field. More than 2,000 Germans with 30 machine guns were dug in amid the trees and rocks. There were 100 more Germans with at least six machine guns concentrated in the nearby village of Bouresches.
Retreating French troops advised the Marines to withdraw. “Retreat? Hell we just got here,” snapped a company commander with the 5th Marines, Captain Lloyd Williams, whose remark became part of Marine Corps lore.
Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly. (Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections)
The Marines took and held Bouresches and drove the Germans out of the woods. But success came at a horrendous cost. Relying on their celebrated marksmanship (“Every Marine a Rifleman”) the Marines advanced about 400 yards across the wheat field without concentrated artillery support. Heavy German machine gun and artillery fire cut the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Marines to shreds. The 6th Marines’ 3rd Battalion managed to make it to the edge of the woods before enemy fire stalled the advance. In the confusion of battle, another iconic Marine Corps legend was born when Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly — who had earned the Medal of Honor twice, in Peking in 1900 and Haiti in 1915 — turned to his men and growled “Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
By nightfall on the first day of battle, both Marine battalions suffered debilitating casualties. Six officers and 222 enlisted men of the 4th Marine Brigade were killed in action. Another 25 officers and 834 men were wounded. This amounted to more casualties than the Marines had suffered in their entire history up until that day, Norwich University professor David Ulbrich observed in an anniversary piece for War on the Rocks.
As the Marines moved into Belleau Wood itself, the fighting seemed especially grim, with hand-to-hand fighting, fixed bayonets and poison gas attacks, noted Michael Ruane in a Washington Post column last May. The headline on his piece noted: “The Battle of Belleau Wood was brutal, deadly and forgotten. But it forged a new Marine Corps.”
Exploding shells splintered the trees, raining down a deadly shower of wood splinters and metal shrapnel. The Americans and Germans grappled in hand-to-hand combat with knives, rifle butts, bayonets and entrenching shovels.
Tree Damage, Belleau Wood, circa 1918. An inscription on the photograph reads “Every tree in Belleau Wood bears the scars of battle.” (From the collection of Adolph B. Miller (COLL/1068), United States Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections.)
After three weeks of heavy combat, the Germans were driven out of Belleau Wood. The Marines reached the northern edge of the woods on June 26, sending out the report; “Woods now U.S. Marine Corps entirely.
The victory at Belleau Wood had saved Paris and the French were delirious with joy. The French government renamed Belleau Wood, the “Bois de la Brigade de Marine” and both the 5th and 6th Marine regiments were awarded the Croix de Guerre.
The Germans, too were impressed with the Marines. An official German report described the Marines as “vigorous, self-confident and remarkable marksmen.” Captured German soldiers and their letters described the Marines as Teufelhunde, or Devil Dogs.”
Marines train with gas masks in France. (Photo: Marine Corps History Division)
FRIDAY FOTO (November 2, 2018)
‘neath Arctic Skies.
(U.S. Navy photo by Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Kevin Leitner)
The amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7), passes under the Northern Lights during exercise Trident Juncture 2018 in the Norwegian Sea, October 26, 2018.
Some 250 aircraft, 65 vessels and up to 10,000 vehicles — as well as an estimated 50,000 troops from 31 countries — are taking part in the biggest NATO exercise since the Cold War.
The massive exercise is taking place through November 7 in central and eastern Norway, the surrounding areas of the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea — including Iceland and the airspace of Finland and Sweden (two non-NATO members).
NATO officials say the goal of the operation is to ensure that NATO forces are trained, able to operate together, and ready to respond to any threat from any direction. While they deny the exercise is aimed at sending a message to an increasingly belligerent Russia, Moscow sees it differently.
“Even if NATO says otherwise,, Trident Juncture is really preparation for large-scale armed conflict in regions bordering the Russian Federation,” Lieutenant General Valery Zaparenko, former deputy chief of the Russian general staff, told RT, Moscow’s government-funded television station, the New York Times reported.
4GWAR’s Arctic Nation series will focus on Trident Juncture and other arctic news this weekend.
FRIDAY FOTO (October 26, 2018)
Close Quarters Combat
(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sergeant Donald Holbert)
In this frozen moment of time, Marine Corps Corporals Matthew Teutsch and Brett Norman participate in hand-to-hand and close quarters combat training at Camp Pendleton, California The photo was taken October 2, 2018.
While we’re sure this confrontation led to some rough maneuvering before somebody went down, we can’t help but imagine what the face-off might have sounded like:
“Come any closer and I’ll poke you with my stick rifle!”
“Oh yeah? Try it and I’ll stick you with my plastic composite knife.”
All joking aside, this is a magnificent action photo.
4GWAR 