In 1943 the Harlem Hellfighters 369th regiment was broken up and organized into the 369th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Battalion and the 870th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion.
The African American 870th AAA AW Btn was shipped to Okinawa, Lt. Col. W. F. Lucas commanding.
The 870th was to guard one of the airfields to be built in Southern Okinawa after the island was over run at the end of Apr 1945.
The IJA & May rains put an end to that plan. 3/
870th AAA AW Btn was armed with 16 each 40m autocannons and M-51 quad-Maxon mount .50 caliber machine guns in four batteries with four of each weapons. 4/
When the 870th Harlem Hellfighters arrived at Okinawa. Their 40mm and .50 caliber weapons were taken away from them. They were issued rifles, carbines, machine guns, bazookas and mortars and sent to Kerama Retto.
The group of islands was a major Naval base with a problem. 5/
The problem was that the islands in the group had not been properly cleared of Japanese resistance by the assault troops.
While more than 350 IJA suicide boats were captured or destroyed at Kerama Retto. When the 77th Division infantry battalion was withdrawn. The garrison 6/
...crewing them came out to contest American control of Kerama Retto.
On 11 May a landing party lead by USN Cmdr Drexler, the C.O. of LST Flotilla 47 went to Aka Shima and was ambushed by hold out Japanese soldiers.
Drexler's bayonetted body was recovered the next day. 7/
Midnight 11/12 May a Japanese infantry force assaulted Tokashiki town with rifles, Bangalore torpedo's and satchel charges
On the 16 May 1945 at Zamami Shima a USMC SCR-270 radar fuel was set on fire by infiltrators.
The ensuing fire badly burned 3 officers and 31 enlisted.
8/
With all of this going on, the 870th was converted to infantry to mop up the Japanese the 77th Infantry Division left behind.
This is a short description of their work from the late 1945 report Antiaircraft Activities of the Pacific War. 9/
This is the Tenth Army After Action report Anti-aircraft Staff Section describing the 870th's infantry work in Kerama Retto.
10/
And this is the description of the 870th's infantry work in the article "Activities of the Tenth Army AAA," Anti-Aircraft Journal July-Aug 1949. See the passage from Pages 9 - 10 below.
11/
This map of the US Navy seaplane sectors searched from Kerama Retto gives you an idea of how vital the work of "Harlem's Hellfighters" was in securing the island group was in WW2...and how little recognized.
In WW2 according to US Army Medical department statistics, the US Army ground forces in NW Europe and the Mediterranean took 65% of their casualties from Artillery.
In 2025, Russia is taking 75% from drones.
2/
Drones are now more lethal in Ukraine than artillery was in the WW2, the most artillery heavy war in human history to date.
Drones have replaced, and then some, tube artillery, rockets and mortars as the indirect fire "King of Battle."
Strategypage -dot- com has a new article out on the decline of Russian that civil infrastructure that makes Frederick Lanchester smile.
Russian Civil Infrastructure Attrition🧵
1/
Text from the article:
"Russia wants to end the Ukraine War via negotiations with the United States. This will work if done from a position of strength. The current Russian situation is weak and getting weaker.
2/
...Russian forces in Ukraine are stalled and too weak to launch another offensive, even a small one.
It will get worse. The Russian economy is starting to collapse in some or many areas because of disinvestment.
3/
The semiconductor industrial base is the foundation of 21st century economic & military power.
The USSR only ever produced single detector element technology like Long Wavelength Infrared (LWIR) Infrared Line Scan (IRLS) or scanning infrared Search and Track (IRST) like those on the MiG-29 Fulcrum A.
2/
The USSR never produced any of the classic nodding or spinning mirror LWIR Forward Looking Infrared (FLIRs) sensors that the US introduced during the Vietnam war.
In fact there is no evidence Russia was able to sustain any of the large Soviet semiconductor industry.
3/
The vast majority of US military aid to Ukraine was in fact spent inside the USA to replace vastly overpriced by the Biden Adm. National Guard & Air Guard surplus weapons.
Spending aid money buying Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) to replace NG surplus Humvees
...was just one of the aid grifts @JakeSullivan46 NSC crew played to pretend they were helping Ukraine while not offending Russia & buying US Defense contractor kit.
Pres. Trump is literally parroting Russian reflexive control scripts from Biden Adm.
This should not be a surprise as I've pounded on the fact for 2 years that Russia has mapped & fed to each specific US tribal & professional demographic the data to eat up messages/memes Russia wants those groups to believe.
This @sambendett thread here makes Russia seem like a poor kid looking through a candy store window at the "candy" of Ukrainian ground resupply drones.
I mean, seriously, Russia is now introducing a camel transport corps because the Russian startups and big defense contractors cannot produce supply UGV's at scale to deliver potable water to front line troops.
This 🧵by @GrandpaRoy2 demonstrating the increasing battlefield obsolescence of tube artillery in the face of fiber optic fiber guided FPV drones is a useful jumping off point the following:
66% of RuAF AFV's & equipment killed in Jan 2025 were victims of drones
Back in November 2024 I did a long thread on how drones were an "effectiveness revolution" on the battlefield and we would see drones displacing other battlefield weapons because of it.