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Posted on 09/29/2026 3:30:04 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
Sal covers the reports of 8 marines wounded in an attack on a "non-US Navy" ship. W*T*H: Did the U.S. Military Turn a Civilian Freighter into an Armed Escort?
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May or may not.
There’s a long history of armed merchant ships, here are a couple of articles about World War II usage, although American usage went back to the Spanish American war.
https://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-083.php
https://navyhistory.au/the-armys-defence-of-merchant-shipping-1939-45/
Lack of information won't stop the handwringing and hanky grabbing.
Loose lips sink ships.
Commerce raiders are very effective.
They didn't do so hot with “The Graf Spee'' and ""Bismark''.
I mean Merchant raiders.
Q ships?
PAR35 wrote: “There’s a long history of armed merchant ships, here are a couple of articles about World War II usage, although American usage went back to the Spanish American war.”
Actually, in American History, the use of armed merchant ships is older than the Constitution. That phrase, “Letters Of Marque and Reprisal” referred to issuing letters to legitimize civilians to arm their ships and capture ships of opposing powers. The ‘Letters’ were intended to protect such ships and crews from being executed as pirates since these letters established that the bearers were acting in an official capacity autorized by their governments.
As an aside, the fact that these ships could be legally armed with cannon destroys the liberal myth that our Founding Fathers did not intend for civilians to possess ‘weapons of war’.
Come on now, way behind 18th century times. If satellite trackers are off or ships from India/China sanctioned in advance, then that ship is a a target (These goat fornicators have heat radiation tech across the whole straight) by default.
TRUE! More Merchant sailors were killed per capital in WW2 the US Marines..
That's what I think they were on board to do. Hope they bag boatloads of Iranians and Houthis.
And those were the then-current version of ‘crew served weapons’, too.
I thought marines were first created in olden times to protect the officers from the crew.
Sounds like a play on ‘The Oregon Files’ (Clive Cussler/DuBrul).
Sal has TDS.
The Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University Of Oklahoma had their own cannon in the 1960s. There are photographs in the University 1965 yearbook. It was a working cannon too.
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