Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Jan 2025Today’s Q&A is brought to you by the fine folks at Patreon, and by Penguin Brutality: https://www.varusteleka.com/en/search…
01:11 – Was the Vickers .50 any good, and why did the British use four different heavy cartridges instead of consolidating?
07:35 – The Sten and its single-feed magazine design
10:27 – Owen versus Sten, and German use of the Owen.
14:38 – British wartime work on an “assault rifle” sort of weapon?
15:44 – Why no British semiauto rifle during WW2? – Jonathan Ferguson on British semiauto rifle trials: Q&A 43 (feat. Jonathan Ferguson): Mil…
18:04 – EM2’s automatic bolt closure system
20:46 – Did the British use other allied weapons besides American ones?
23:15 – Is the PIAT a Destrucitve Device under US law and why?
26:07 – Bren vs Degtyarev
27:50 – Why not make the Sten in .45 to use Thompson ammo?
29:37 – Did the British get M3 Grease Guns?
31:01 – British SMG in .455?
32:03 – Sten vs Lanchester
33:26 – Was there an LSW version of the EM1/EM2 planned? EM1 Korsac: The Korsac EM1 – a British/Polish Bul…
34:25 – Why wasn’t the BESA in .303?
36:34 – Biggest British missed opportunity during the interwar period?
38:40 – British naval service small arms
41:45 – Did .280 cartridge development begin during the war?
43:24 – Impact of MP44 on British post-war small arms development?
44:25 – Gallilean sights on the Enfield
46:25 – Why is there a semiauto selector on the Sten?
49:17 – Did American soldiers use British small arms?
50:29 – Why did the British choose the Lee action over the Mauser action?
51:16 – Which was better, Sten or Grease Gun?
52:34 – Why did the whole Commonwealth not switch to the No4 Enfield?
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June 9, 2025
Q&A: British Small Arms of World War Two
June 8, 2025
Day Two – Panzers Stuck in Europe‘s Biggest Traffic Jam! – Ten Days in Sedan
World War Two
Published 7 Jun 2025May 11, 1940: Our WW2 documentary continues as the Battle of France rages and German Panzers rumble through the Ardennes. The Battle of Sedan is on the horizon and Heinz Guderian has one objective: break the French defences! But all is not well for the Germans as Europe’s largest-ever traffic jam threatens to stall the Blitzkrieg.
00:00 Intro
00:51 The Ardennes Advance
08:55 The Air War
15:05 Conclusion
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The Canadian Retribution at Normandy | History Traveler Episode 196
The History Underground
Published 16 Feb 2022Throughout the Battle of Normandy, the Canadians of the 3rd Infantry Division and the Germans of the 12th SS Panzer Division found themselves locked in a battle of attrition that would mark some of the most vicious fighting of the entire campaign. After suffering a blow at Buron and Authie (as seen in the last episode) the fight shifted over to a place that has now become legendary in Canadian military history: Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse. In this episode, we’re joined by Paul Woodadge of @WW2TV to show a small part of one of the most epic fights in the battle to take Normandy.
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June 7, 2025
The 12th SS Massacre of the Canadians in Normandy | History Traveler Episode 195
The History Underground
Published 9 Feb 2022In the days after D-Day, the Canadians of the 3rd Infantry Division found themselves up against the German 12th SS Panzer Division as they were making their way south through Normandy. Tragically, some of these men would find themselves as the victims of one the battle’s worst atrocities at a place called Abbey Ardenne. In this episode, we’re joining Paul Woodadge of @WW2TV as we retrace the final steps of these men as they made their way to a tragic fate at the hands of Kurt Meyer and a division of the most fanatical fighters that Germany threw into the Battle of Normandy.
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June 6, 2025
Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space, RIP
The career of Marc Garneau is summarized by Tom Spears for The Line:
Astronaut Marc Garneau, with a camera in hand, floats in the hatchway that leads from Unity to Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 (PMA-3), which leads to Endeavour. Garneau, STS-97 mission specialist representing the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and his four crew mates went into the International Space Station (ISS) following hatch opening. The photograph was taken with a digital still camera, 8 December 2000.
NASA photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Marc Garneau died Wednesday, at the age of 76. His passing was announced by his wife, Pam, who said that he’d been surrounded by family at the end, and had received excellent care during an unspecified short illness. (Other reports have cited cancer as the ailment.) The news was met with an immediate outpouring of grief from Canadians from across the political spectrum, as befitted a man of his profile and stature.
He had earned that profile gradually over the decades. Back in 1983 Garneau was a young naval officer with a fine pedigree — graduate of Royal Military College, PhD in electrical engineering from Imperial College London — but unknown to most Canadians. Then he joined our country’s first group of astronauts, becoming an instant celebrity.
Even more sudden was his first assignment. He was named to a space shuttle crew that would fly the following year — lightning-fast career advancement, considering he had not yet undergone the usual training as a mission specialist in NASA’s astronaut school.
That vaulted him ahead of many more senior astronauts, and he felt it keenly. He told the Ottawa Citizen years later that he felt his colleagues’ eyes “boring holes in my back” as he walked by them. Crewmate Dave Leestma later recalled how the rookie gained the respect of those around him through quiet competence.
Indeed, Garneau always looked calm, but his mother, Jean, said as he prepared for a second flight in 1996: “There’s a lot of controlled excitement there, and happiness … He figures he’s very, very lucky.”
[…]
“Everybody was always brutally honest about how they screwed up … about how we let the team down,” Garneau says. “If we’re not going to be very honest with each other, if we’re going to find excuses … Nobody tries to evade responsibility.”
Given his background and experience, I wonder how he was able to handle being a member of the Liberal government of the day, where evading responsibility was perhaps their top competency.
“All the Little Ships” (1964 – CBC Telescope)
Royal Canadian Navy / Marine Royale Canadienne
Published 5 Jun 2025🇨🇦 Honouring 80 Years of Courage at Sea ⚓
To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the Battle of the Atlantic, the Hamilton Naval Association is proud to reintroduce a long-lost Canadian treasure: “All the Little Ships”.
Originally aired in 1964 on CBC’s Telescope, this rare film features recently retired Admiral Harry DeWolf aboard HMCS Haida as he tells tales not only of HMCS Haida but of “All the Little Ships” of the wartime RCN. Never-before-seen footage shot by Bill Pugsley, a wartime officer who resigned his commission so he could serve two years on the lower deck, as a gunner, and document it.
🎥 A story of sacrifice, memory, and Canada’s naval legacy — rediscovered. A special thank you LCdr Doug Martin (Ret’d, former CO of HMCS Star).
The opinions expressed in this video are those of the original creators and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Royal Canadian Navy. Any references to outside organizations, products, or services do not constitute endorsement or affiliation.
#WeTheNavy #CanadaRemembers #HelpLeadFight
Former Putin advisor claims nuclear strike is an appropriate reaction to Ukraine attacks
Mark Steyn surveys the media reaction to Sergey Markov’s foaming-at-the-mouth threats of nuclear escalation in the Russo-Ukraine conflict:
Here’s a cheery headline from the Russian press:
Markov: an attack on Russia’s strategic aviation is grounds for the use of nuclear weapons.
That would be Sergey Markov, former advisor to Tsar Vlad, who admittedly is somewhat partial to nuke-rattling: in the early stages of the Ukraine war, he threatened to nuke the UK, for what reason I forget — the exciting new Islamic blasphemy laws? the paedo rape gangs?
This time, however, Mr Markov was responding to the weekend’s Ukrainian drone strike deep inside Russia. By “deep”, I mean Siberia. Which supposedly took out forty of Putin’s 120 strategic bombers using drones smuggled into the country via trucks which then fanned out and parked within range of various air bases.
Which is brilliant and innovative, in the sense that Castro blowing up a third of the USAF during the Cuban missile-crisis negotiations would have been. Right now, the only thing standing between the planet and the Third World War is Vladimir Putin’s forbearance. And, as all the smart people assured us in the spring of 2022, the Russian not-so-strongman was “dying” (Christopher Steele, sole proprietor of Dossiers R Us) or dead, either of which condition can make one’s nuclear-war judgment a little erratic. Headline from the UK Daily Mirror, almost exactly three years ago:
Vladimir Putin may already be dead with body double taking his place, MI6 chiefs claim
That headline is 100 per cent accurate if you remove the words “Vladimir” and “Putin” and replace them with “Joe” and “Biden” respectively. Incidentally, analyse each nation’s advances in body-double technology by comparing “Biden”‘s ability to host a G7 with “Putin”‘s ability to host a BRICS summit. That’s the way to bet if it comes to World War Three. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – Zakarpattia), was in Kiev to meet with Zelenskyyyy the day before Operation Bring It On. He had the affect of a chap who knew what was coming — although one notes he has yet to make good on his comparatively less ambitious pledge to sink Greta Thunberg’s Gaza boat.
Forty years ago, everybody claimed to be super-worried about imminent mushroom clouds. A bestselling poster of the day:
Anyone care to remake the above with Senator Graham and Victoria Nuland, She-Wolf of the Donbass? Ah, but maybe it doesn’t work as well with Deep State non-household-names in the leads. It’s not so long since Lindsey was telling Zelenskyyyy to resign, but he’s apparently back on board. And, more generally, most western media were happy to report the drone strike as more of a poke in the eye to Trump than to Putin. Headline from National Review:
Country That Allegedly Had No Cards to Play Keeps Finding New Cards to Play
This is in reference to Trump’s jibe from February that Ukraine had “no cards to play”. The question then arises: Where did Z find these “new cards”? When Pete Hegseth took over as US Defence Secretary, he quickly confirmed what every sentient creature had long suspected — that the Pentagon had been micro-managing Ukraine’s end of the war for the previous three years. Are they still doing so? In defiance of their nominal commander-in-chief?
Juno Beach Landings | D-Day Normandy June 6, 1944
World War II – Epic Battles
Published 30 Jun 2021Juno Beach was assigned to the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. It was one of the five invasion beaches of Normandy on D-Day and the second deadliest beach after Omaha.
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QotD: D-Day landing on Sword Beach
A few hours before the Canadians aboard the Prince Henry climbed into that landing craft, 181 men in six Horsa gliders took off from RAF Tarrant Rushton in Dorset to take two bridges over the River Orne and hold them until reinforcements arrived. Their job was to prevent the Germans using the bridges to attack troops landing on Sword Beach. At lunchtime, Lord Lovat and his commandos arrived at the Bénouville Bridge, much to the relief of the 7th Parachute Battalion’s commanding officer, Major Pine-Coffin. That was his real name, and an amusing one back in Blighty: simple pine coffins are what soldiers get buried in. It wasn’t quite so funny in Normandy, where a lot of pine coffins would be needed by the end of the day. Lord Lovat, Chief of Clan Fraser, apologized to Pine-Coffin for missing the rendezvous time: “Sorry, I’m a few minutes late,” he said, after a bloody firefight to take Sword Beach.
Lovat had asked his personal piper, Bill Millin, to pipe his men ashore. Private Millin pointed out that this would be in breach of War Office regulations. “That’s the English War Office, Bill,” said Lovat. “We’re Scotsmen.” And so Millin strolled up and down the sand amid the gunfire playing “Hieland Laddie” and “The Road to the Isles” and other highland favorites. The Germans are not big bagpipe fans and I doubt it added to their enjoyment of the day.
There was a fair bit of slightly dotty élan around in those early hours. As I mentioned during On the Town, I knew a chap who was in the second wave of gliders from England, and nipped out just before they took off to buy up the local newsagent’s entire stack of papers — D-Day special editions, full of news of the early success of the landings. He flew them into France with him, and distributed them to his comrades from the first wave so they could read of their exploits.
But for every bit of dash and brio there were a thousand things that were just the wretched, awful muck of war. Many of those landing craft failed to land: They hit stuff that just happened to be there under the water, in the way, and ground to a halt, and the soldiers got out waist-deep in the sea, and struggled with their packs — and, in the case of those men on the Prince Henry, with lumpy old English bicycles — through the gunfire to the beach to begin liberating a continent while already waterlogged and chilled to the bone.
The building on the other side of the Bénouville Bridge was a café and the home of Georges Gondrée and his family. Thérèse Gondrée had spent her childhood in Alsace and thus understood German. So she eavesdropped on her occupiers, and discovered that in the machine-gun pillbox was hidden the trigger for the explosives the Germans intended to detonate in the event of an Allied invasion. She notified the French Resistance, and thanks to her, after landing in the early hours of June 6th, Major Howard knew exactly where to go and what to keep an eye on.
Shortly after dawn there was a knock on Georges Gondrée’s door. He answered it to find two paratroopers who wanted to know if there were any Germans in the house. The men came in, and Thérèse embraced them so fulsomely that her face wound up covered in camouflage black, which she proudly wore for days afterward. Georges went out to the garden and dug up ninety-eight bottles of champagne he’d buried before the Germans arrived four years earlier. And so the Gondrée home became the first place in France to be liberated from German occupation. There are always disputes about these things, of course: some say the first liberated building was L’Etrille et les Goélands (the Crab and the Gulls), subsequently renamed — in honour of the men who took it that morning — the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada house. But no matter: the stylish pop of champagne corks at the Café Gondrée was the bells tolling for the Führer‘s thousand-year Reich.
Arlette Gondrée was a four-year old girl that day, and she has grown old with the teen-and-twenty soldiers who liberated her home and her town. But she is now the proprietress of the family café, and she has been there every June to greet those who return each year in dwindling numbers […] The Bénouville Bridge was known to Allied planners as the Pegasus Bridge, after the winged horse on the shoulder badge of British paratroopers. But since 1944 it has been called the Pegasus Bridge in France, too. And in the eight decades since June 6th no D-Day veteran has ever had to pay for his drink at the Café Gondrée.
Mark Steyn, “June 6th, 1944”, SteynOnline, 2024-06-06.
June 5, 2025
Rate of Fire: What Determines it and How to Change It
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Jan 2025What determines the rate of fire of a machine gun, and how can that rate of fire be determined or changed from a design perspective? Let’s talk about pressure, mass, and distance …
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June 4, 2025
The Korean War Week 50 – Trapped in the Triangle: Korea’s Killing Zone – June 3, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 3 Jun 2025The MacArthur Senate Hearings continue this week, with US Secretary of State Dean Acheson now in the hot seat. He takes a rather confusing barrage of questions, and yet manages to signal to the world at large, i.e. the Chinese, that the US is open to negotiations to end the war. The war still continues in the field, of course, with the UN forces’ Operation Piledriver in action, driving into the “Iron Triangle” and trying to trap as much of the enemy as possible.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:07 Recap
01:35 Acheson Speaks
05:44 Operation Piledriver
09:10 Attacks Begin
10:53 A Unifying JCS Directive
16:54 Summary
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Remarkable Victory – The Bomber War Episode 5 – Jan to June 1944
HardThrasher
Published 28 Feb 2024In which the USAAF and RAF finally start to Get Good at their jobs and tie up their respective campaigns for literally the first time.
00:00 – 04:01 – Introduction
04:06 – 08:12 – Forward Operating Base
08:15 – 11:30 – Changes in Command
11:32 – 16:16 – Doolittle’s Plan
16:20 – 22:25 – Big Week
22:34 – 29:32 – Aftermath
29:35 – 32:06 – Berlin
32:09 – 33:59 – Overlord
34:02 – Survivor’s Club
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QotD: Conquest empires
Specifically, metal.
Soft metals are not for conquest empire. Gold, silver, copper, tin, etc, may be used for plates or posts or jewellery or skin scrapers, but they are not war fighting metals. Even the lightest leather armour or layers of feather padding makes them practically valueless for war fighting. Metal only becomes an imperial material when it can be made hard enough for combat purposes.
The first such metal is Bronze, which is made by combining different metals in compounds. Copper compounded with enough tin (usually 5-10 percent) makes Bronze. Bronze can make armour and weapons and even axles and bearings. But copper (mined in mountains) and tin (usually from swamps) and the charcoal needed to melt them (from forests) combined in sufficient quantities for mass production (cities supported by taxed farmers), require extensive trade routes, and probably a stable currency of some sort. But once these elements can be combined, empires can give up on mere Security, and enter Conquest.
All the early Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, Persian, Greek, Roman, Indian and Chinese empires that we now scrawl across maps with lines to show how they conquered the territories of other empires are based on this simple concept. The Hittites with their Bronze, Egyptians with their chariots, and Romans with their Steel: being only different developments from the same basic “metal technology” roots.
Yet this is where motive becomes uncertain. All these empires got into conquest, but in many cases they did it either to continue their security (by pushing the dangerous boundaries ever further), or to protect the trade that made their system work. Conquest for the sake of conquest was certainly an element — particularly with rulers like Alexander the Great — but the original reason why Phillip of Macedon and his predecessors had developed the world’s most efficient fighting machine had more to do with constant threats from Persians and Greeks and other “barbarians” than with any desire to get into the conquest game itself. Sometimes things done for security lead to expanded boundaries for security, which then lead to expanding further for conquest. (Often because the system developed for paying those fighting for security requires conquest to pay them off … see Julius and many later Caesars!)
Nigel Davies, “Types of Empires: Security, Conquest, and Trade”, rethinking history, 2020-05-02.
June 3, 2025
Ukraine’s strategic strikes against Russian airbases
CDR Salamander on the lessons to be learned from the latest dramatic turn in the Russo-Ukrainian war with Ukraine carefully avoiding letting their American supporters know about the attack before it went in:
[This] picture from 2012 of Norfolk is what I want you to think about.
We talked about the superbly executed Ukrainian attack on Russian bomber bases for most of yesterday’s Midrats, and what keeps coming to mind for me is not the details of that attack, but the stark warning it is giving us.
The threat of drone strikes isn’t a new warning, but in my mind it intersect almost perfectly with the self-inflicted vulnerability of the US Navy’s fleet — its concentration.
The growing utility of attack drones isn’t an insight that is unique to the Russo-Ukrainian War. The topic has come up here and on Midrats for almost two decades. We’re not alone. Heck, broad thinking people like our friend Matt Hipple was pondering it over at CIMSEC thirteen years ago a few months before the picture at the top of the post was made.
I’ll tie in the picture a bit, but let’s take a moment to give the Ukrainians credit where credit is due. They executed precision strikes against the RUS bomber fleet across the entire two-thirds of the Euro-Asian landmass.
We will find out more details, a dozen or 40+ high-demand/low-density strategic bombers were taken off the battle line. RUS is not building any more of them. As missile carriers, they have been a cornerstone of the city terrors for most of the last four years. You would be hard-pressed to find a more honorable, or legitimate target.
Streiff over at Red State has a good summary with what we think we know as of Sunday afternoon:
The airbases are the home to Russia’s fleet of Tu-22, Tu-95M, and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers as well as AS-50 battle management aircraft. They were located from the Siberian Far East to the Arctic Circle. The furthest target, Belaya Airbase in Irkutsk, is over 2700 miles from Ukraine.
Reports indicate that at least 41 aircraft were hit. The unofficial tally indicates 24 Tu-22, 8 Tu-95MS, and 5 Tu-16 were hit. MiG-31 fighters and Il-76 transports were also hit. To put this in context, open-source data says Russia’s bomber inventory is about 58 Tu-22, 47 Tu-95MS, and 15 Tu-160. These planes are the ones used to launch most of the missiles fired at Ukrainian cities.
By any standard, this was a devastating attack. Nearly half of the Tu-22, a quarter of the Tu-95MS, and a third of the Tu-160 fleet, representing just over 30 percent of Russia’s strategic bomber force, were damaged or destroyed in one attack. When you consider the operational readiness rate, Russia probably has less than 50 aircraft capable of flying … on the bright side, they have plenty of aircraft to cannibalize for parts. The Tu-22 and Tu-95MS production lines are closed, and the Tu-160 production is one, yes, one per year. For all intents and purposes, this represents a permanent decrease in the size of the Russian strategic bomber fleet.
Before we discuss what the USA needs to take away, let’s look at the top-4 primary and second-order effects this will have on the Russian Federation.
First Order Effects
- Fewer raiding assets to use against UKR.
- The weakest leg of their nuclear triad (bombers are dual use) is even weaker.
- PSYOP defeat as RUS now know even their most valuable weapons, stationed deep into RUS rear, are vulnerable.
- Paranoia elevated into an already paranoid national psyche under duress of year four of a grinding war.
Second Order Effects
- Inefficiencies in both civilian logistics and manpower are the natural response to every tractor-trailer being a weapons delivery vehicle at range … and the need to defend important bases as a result, sinks into an already stressed nation.
- Loss of face. RUS launched a war of choice against nation 1/4th its size and much weaker than it from any measure, and four years on, still has only made marginal progress. Now that nation proved it can operate with impunity anywhere inside RUS. The “R” in BRICS is not impressing its friends.
- It shouldn’t, but this is going to get the nuclear autists the jitters. All theory, but yes, UKR took out one-third or more of the fully mission capable nuclear capable bombers that form one leg — but as mentioned above the weakest leg — of RUS’s nuclear deterrence. Those who work in the theory-dominated nuclear world will have all their gauges twitching, yes, but in the end analysis, it won’t matter.
- UKR morale just got a big boost. Wars of attrition usually last until one side or the other loses either the material ability or the will to fight. At least from the “will” line of operation, that decisive point just shifted to the right.
Simply a superb operation. How do you defend against weapons like this disguised in a trailer’s false roof?
Exercise Tiger: The WW2 Cover-Up Before D Day
The History Chap
Published 23 May 2024Exercise Tiger 1944, was a large-scale dress rehearsal for the D-Day landings, off the Slapton Sands in England, that went horribly wrong. Over 700 US servicemen were killed, more than were killed on Utah beach on D-Day itself! With D-Day imminent, Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, ordered the disaster to be hushed up.
Following a friendly fire incident on Slapton Sands on the 27th April 1944, a convoy carrying US troops was attacked in the early hours of the 28th by German E-Boats. In what is called the Battle of Lyme Bay, two ships in the convoy were sunk resulting in the loss of over 700 US servicemen. Whilst rumours suggest that there were many casualties resulting from the friendly fire on Slapton Sands, the US Army has always remained tight-lipped. To this day, the mystery remains as to what extent the casualty figures were covered up.
In the 1980’s, a Sherman tank was raised from the seabed. It now stands at the end of Slapton Sands (near the village of Torcross) as a memorial to the young men who died 6 weeks before D-Day during Exercise Tiger.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:42 D-Day 1944
1:40 Slapton Sands
2:30 Civilian Evacuation
3:22 Military Build-up
4:58 Exercise Tiger
6:07 Live Fire Disaster
7:37 Convoy T-4
9:15 Spotted by Germans
10:03 E-boat attack
11:41 Battle of Lyme Bay
14:06 Casualty Figures
14:43 D-Day Compromised?
15:37 Cover-up?
17:00 D-Day Success
18:08 Exercise Tiger Remembered
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