Non-standard, substitute standard, and captured weapons in British and Commonwealth service

Discussion in 'Weapons, Technology & Equipment' started by TTH, Mar 16, 2012.

  1. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    The Long Lee Again: the RN

    The Long Lee has been alluded to before here. Considering that the Long Lee had been superseded in front line service well before WWI, I am surprised that so many were still around in WWII, but as we have seen the Home Guard and equivalents in Australia and New Zealand had quite a few of them. Another major user of the Long Lee was the Royal Navy. Photographs of arms lockers and armed parties of major warships show SMLEs, Lanchesters, etc., but many smaller vessels, training units, and other shore-based establishments made do with the Long Lee, at least for a time. This was a repetition of the situation in the Great War, when shortages forced the RN to get by with Arisakas, Winchesters, Mausers,and some Long Lees while the Army got the good stuff. (How many times do armed forces have to learn the same old lessons before they really learn them?) Some of the rifles in these pictures may not even have charger guides.
    large_000000(8).jpg large_000000(10).jpg
     

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    Last edited: Jun 7, 2022
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  2. AlanDavid

    AlanDavid Junior Member

    Hi TTH

    Excellent photos as always!

    As you say, I don't think any of the LLE's have been converted to CLLE, so they will still be sighted for MkVI ammo.

    Out of interest what does the IWM description say of the photo of the two Jack Ta's next to each other with HMS cap tally's. Date, place and so on?

    Regards

    Alan
     
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  3. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Indians at Stamshaw
    File:Men of the Royal Indian Navy, at Stamshaw Training Camp, Portsmouth. 8 July 1942. A10555.jpg - Wikimedia Commons


    MEN OF THE ROYAL INDIAN NAVY, AT STAMSHAW TRAINING CAMP, PORTSMOUTH. 8 JULY 1942.



    [​IMG] MEN OF THE ROYAL INDIAN NAVY, AT STAMSHAW TRAINING CAMP, PORTSMOUTH. 8 JULY 1942.. © IWM (A 10555) IWM Non Commercial License


    (Why have just 1 link when I can post 3 all relating to the same photo? :) )
     
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  4. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Thanks, glad you approve. I usually include photo descriptions but forgot them this time. Fortunately Owen has made up one of the deficiencies.

    And I am still waiting for The Book.
     
  5. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Just watched a vid on the M1 Garand with armoured piercing rounds go straight through the Russian Vant ballistic shield
     
  6. ceolredmonger

    ceolredmonger Member

    Is the 'Line Thrower' a specific dedicated converted piece or a standard rifle? I know the ammunition was specific and the thrown 'rod' would damage rifling and wear the bore. (I'm not near my references).
    I'm surprised there would be significant quantities of unconverted non-charger loading LMLEs after the 1stWW.
     
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  7. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    I'm surprised too. But then again there were even a few .303 Martinis and antique Sniders kicking around, especially out in the colonies.
     
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  8. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    French 7.5mm Rifles for the Home Guard?

    It is definitely established that in 1940 the Home Guard received some French Berthier and Lebel rifles in caliber 8mm Lebel. These weapons were obtained from French troops repatriated from Dunkirk and Norway, maybe from interned French ships, and probably also from the large Polish contingent evacuated from western France during the last days of the French campaign. I was recently browsing on the Intl Ammo collectors site when I stumbled on an old post by the late lamented Tony Edwards which adds a new twist to this story. In Tony's words:The Home Guard were certainly issued with French 7.5mm rifles and MGs that had come back with the French from Dunkirk. Now, this is most interesting. The French had long intended to shift from the awkward and obsolescent 8mm round to the newer 7.5mm MAS rimless, but the outbreak of war caught the French before the process was complete. The FM 24/29 had been in service in large numbers for a decade but the rifle to go with it, the MAS 36, had only come into service a couple of years before the outbreak of war. Even as late as May 1940 only a part of the French Army had received the new weapon and most units were still using the Berthier and Lebel. I knew that some MAS 36s had made it to Britain during the 1940 evacuations--there are pictures of Polish troops on shipboard with them and Free French troops training with the MAS 36 in the UK--but Tony's posting on the IAA site is the first indication I've seen that French 7.5mm rifles saw service in British hands. And if any researcher would have known it, it would have been Tony. (I should note that the French also had a not very large number of the Mannlicher Berthier M07/15/34, a conversion of the Berthier to 7.5mm.) If anyone here knows anything more about this I'd be glad to hear it.
     
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  9. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Browning Water Cooled .50 Caliber MGs

    The US Browning .50 caliber heavy machine gun was one of the most successful Allied weapons of WWII. The most common and best remembered versions of the protean Browning .50 were the plain M2 air-cooled gun, which was used on most American combat aircraft, and the air cooled M2 HB (heavy barrel), widely used as an anti-aircraft, vehicular, and infantry ground gun. Both the M2 air cooled aircraft and M2 HB guns were used by British forces, as they were by many other Allies. I may get to those later. Right now I would like to look at the more obscure water-cooled versions of the .50 Browning. The original version of this weapon was the M1921, essentially a .30 caliber M1917 scaled up to handle the .50 cartridge. The Colt company, which had the American license for John Browning’s designs, produced a commercial version of the water-cooled .50 M1921 as the MG 52. There were several variants of the MG 52, some with the spade grips of the M1921 and others with a pistol grip like that on the M1917. In 1932 or so an improved version of the .50 Browning was adopted by US forces as the M2. The water-cooled M2 can be most easily distinguished from the M1921 by the longer barrel and water jacket and by the configuration of the muzzle and foreend. I don’t know for certain if any M1921s went to British forces, but the MG 52 seems to have done since several photographs show guns identified as MG 52s aboard wartime vessels. Significantly, the ships in question served with non-British Allied navies. The Commandant Dubuc was a French minesweeping sloop, built at Nantes in 1940 and then commandeered in the UK post-Dunkirk and turned over to the Free French. The Newport was one of the old four-piper destroyers given to Britain in 1940. It spent most of its wartime career with the Royal Norwegian Navy. Both ships had refits in British yards, when I would presume that the Colt MG 52 .50 calibers (a non-standard type which the RN proper probably didn’t want to bother with) were installed for LAA defense. Note that the gun on the Dubuc has spade grips while the one on Newport is a pistol grip variant. As for the water cooled version of the M2, the lend lease figures at Hyperwar show over 12,000 delivered to Britain, plus 42 to Canada. This seems like a fantastically high number to me. Certainly photographic evidence does not suggest that any such numbers served in active combat theaters in British hands. Some M2 WCs (Water Cooled to you) did serve on shipboard with the RN, presumably on US-built vessels. There were several anti-aircraft ground mounts for the M2 WC, the most common being a big and very heavy single mount (often seen with a gunshield) and a combination twin-triple mount with the 37mm gun M1. The Tonga Defence Force got some of the combination 37mm/.50 caliber pieces, and some of the single mounts were used by the Australians. Certainly the most conspicuous use of the .50 M2 WC came in Burma. Special Force’s house LAA unit, 69 LAA, formed several troops which provided AA defense for Chindit strongholds. At least one of these, X Troop, was armed with the .50 M2 WC and used it in action at White City.
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Oct 15, 2022
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  10. Quarterfinal

    Quarterfinal Well-Known Member

    13 FFR in December 1943:

    upload_2022-10-17_9-19-42.jpeg
     
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  11. L. Allen

    L. Allen Member

    Is that an Mg42 in the Bren position front of the Carrier with a Pan Fed bren on the AA mount?
     
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  12. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Zoomable image here on IWM site.
    IWM NA 9785

    THE BRITISH ARMY IN ITALY 1943
     
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  13. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    It is indeed an MG 42. The attached IWM image shows a Grenadier Guards carrier in Tunisia with an MG 42 in the front sponson and a .30 Browning M1919A4 in the rear compartment (trust me, I've zoomed it). Carriers in the field could and did carry almost anything. Besides Brens and Vickers MMGs I have seen carriers equipped with the .50 Browning M2 HB, the.303 Browning Mk II aircraft gun, twin Vickers Ks, the Besa, the Chatellerault FM 24/29 (Free French), and twin .30 Browning M1917A1s (US carriers in the Philippines).

    Grenadier Gds nr Kasserine Tunisia 2-24-43 carrier w MG42.jpg
     
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  14. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    75mm Field Gun M1917

    This weapon had a curious history. As noted in the post on the 75mm M1916, the US entered WWI with almost no field guns fit for service. The M1916, the planned weapon, turned out to be an expensive turkey and none got into action. We settled on the 75mm M1897 as an alternative, but it took so terribly long to get a production line up and running in the States that no US-made 1897s made it to the front line before the Armistice. Yet a potential solution was right under the obtuse nose of General Crozier, our chief of ordnance (who must have been worth twenty divisions to the Germans). The 18-pdr field gun, a proven weapon, was already under production here by Bethlehem Steel. When the '16 and '97 flopped we could have just adopted the 18-pdr as was. When we turned to it at last in desperation, ordnance insisted on rechambering it for French 75mm ammunition. The adaptation was quite successful but once again too late to get guns into service in the field before the end of the war. As of 1939 the US Army had 900 75mm M1917 guns on hand. About half of these were mounted on the original carriage with wooden wheels and the rest had been modified for motor traction (M1917A1 carriage). Two hundred horse-traction guns were sent to the Finns. Britain also got 395 M1917s. Some guns (among them some of the British batch) were sent to the Greeks but only a few of those got into action. Most of the remaining weapons seem to have gone to US forces in the Philippines and Java, where they were lost. The Finns reportedly liked the M1917 and found it reliable and accurate. The British designated the guns as 75mm Converted Mk I (horse traction) and 75mm Converted Mk I* (motor traction, M1917A1 carriage). I suspect that Britain got very few of the former since all the photos I have seen of the M1917 in British hands are of the motorized version. Some were issued to field regiments in 1940, and the RAF Regiment got some later. It is possible that some of the guns intended for the Greeks were used by British and Anzac gunners on Crete; the descriptions of the odd types used there are vague and conflicting. The M1917 could fire the standard range of US 75mm ammunition but the online authorities differ about performance. The RA 39-45 site says the M1917 could range to over 12,000 yards maximum and the Finnish army site says 10.6-10.7 kilometers, but those figures sound awfully long for a gun with a pole trail. Wikipedia says max range was 8,100 yards. A couple photos show an 1917 being emplaced by gunners of 59th Division during a 1940 exercise, the others show RAF gunners training on an M1917 in 1942.
    large_H_004389_1.jpg large_H_004390_1 75mm M1917 Yorkshire Sept 1940.jpg RAF manning M1917 75mm.jpg large_CH_017930_1.jpg 75mm Gun M1917 on Carriage M1917A1.jpg
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2022
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  15. Quarterfinal

    Quarterfinal Well-Known Member

    upload_2022-11-30_8-52-24.jpeg

    upload_2022-11-30_8-52-54.jpeg

    "Weapon training should always include enough familiarization of the enemy's weapons. Firstly, you need to know how they can be Made Safe; secondly, you may need to be able to use them yourselves in a hurry .... particularly if you've used up most of your ammo capturing them in the first place."

    Afternote: Attributed as 2 Sherwood Foresters. Is their ammo belt upside down.....?
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2022
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  16. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    Curious second photo; is the gunner wearing a helmet liner or could he be Indian? Similar headgear has recently appeared on the French SAS in Tunisia thread.
     
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  17. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    The loader is not Indian. British officers of course led Indian troops, but I don't believe British and Indian rankers were usually mixed in the same unit. And that thing on the gunner's head might be a bandage.
     
  18. Quarterfinal

    Quarterfinal Well-Known Member

    Looks it:
    upload_2022-11-30_21-34-26.jpeg
    The 'British' belt appears to have tracer every 5th bullet, unlike the German paratrooper's above. I think the gunner is just wearing a headwrap of some type
     
  19. EKB

    EKB Well-Known Member

  20. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    And even a captured German 20mm Solothurn anti-tank gun in the rear compartment behind the driver.
     

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