I thought those guys did search & rescue and maybe hassled the smugglers…? That looks like seriously nasty ordnance going on there. Or is Pete F playing with fireworks on the poop deck again?
Holy mackerel… what’s that on the front? A 105mm? It looks like it’d be right at home in a carrier group…
Gun might be the Italian autoloading 76 mm unmanned auto loader.
ReplyDeleteIt is.
DeleteUSCGC MELLON, equipped with 76mm Oto Melera (replacing 5in38), deck mounted torpedo tubes (3 tubes, two mounts on all 12 cutters), was one of three cutters equipped with SAM, fired a Harpoon missile during testing (the only one to do so) just as the Cold War cooled. Newest ("large") cutters have a 57mm deck gun.
ReplyDeleteDavid
They pulled the Harpoons and SUBROC missiles about 15 minutes later, and the Mellon was mothballed in 2020.
DeleteI was on the CGC Boutwell. That 76mm had a habit of jamming. We were stuck offshore one night during REFTRA in San Diego because the gun jammed with a live round in the barrel. The GM's HATED that thing! On the other hand, the gun it replaced would rattle the fillings out of the crew's teeth and shatter all the lightbulbs in the forward part of the ship! I experienced that on the pre-FRAM CGC Midgett...
DeleteThat's for stopping all the illegal drug runners in the Gulf of America!!!!
ReplyDeleteI suppose, given the horsepower of today's cartels... they're going to need that heavy metal ordnance...
ReplyDeleteThe Coast Guard is going head to head in the Arctic and Bering Sea with the slant eyes and Ivan on a regular basis.
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