Forgotten Weapons
Published on 12 Apr 2019This Bren is lot #1013 at Morphy’s April 2019 auction:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/cana…The John Inglis company in Toronto first opened in 1859 as a metalworking shop, and grew steadily over the decades under first John Inglis, and then later his sons. Inglis did substantial amounts of military work during World War One, but the Great Depression hit it hard, and both William and Alexander Inglis died in 1935 and 1936 respectively. The company went into receivership but was purchased by one Major James Hahn (DSO) and a group of business partners in November of 1936. Hahn and his associates saw an opportunity to use this large manufacturing facility to make machine guns for the military, and they were successful – in October 1938 they were awarded a contract to make 5000 MkI Bren guns. More contracts would follow, and by the height of World War Two the company had some 15,000 employees and more than a million square feet of floor space.
Among many other projects, Inglis was contracted to make small arms for sale to the Nationalist Chinese government under Chiang Kai Shek – both High Power pistols and Bren guns in 8mm Mauser (to fit the Chinese standardization on that cartridge). A batch of 8mm ZB-30 light machine guns were brought in from the Far East to use as a pattern, and Inglis engineers were able to successfully redesign the Bren to use that cartridge and magazine.
Where the story gets hazy is in trying to determine how many were made and for whom. The Chinese guns are marked in Mandarin on the receivers, and have “CH” prefix serial numbers, like the Chinese contract High Power pistols. However, two additional variations exist without those Chinese markings. Some are marked “7.92 Bren MkI” and “Inglis 1943” (or 44 or 45), and others – like this one – are just marked “7.92 Bren MkI”. The dated ones are typically referred to as Resistance guns, intended to be supplied to European resistance units for whom 7.92mm ammunition was more readily available than .303 – although information on how many guns were supplied in this way (if any) is difficult to find. The last group is generally called “sterile”, and it is not clear what their purpose is. This particular example is one of 23 that were registered in the US in the early 1960s to Interarms, and it does appear that they were associated with some clandestine US military activities. The serial numbers of those 23 Interarms guns range from 1-5343 to 2-8045, suggesting a production of 13,000 or perhaps as many as 28,000 guns – that is quite a lot to be undocumented and missing.
Hopefully, more information will turn up in the future to shed light on the purpose and use of these 8mm Brens. We do know for sure that many thousands did go to Chinese forces, and some were brought into the UK, where in the 1960s they were used in the development of the 7.62mm NATO L4 version of the Bren.
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April 13, 2019
Canadian 8mm “Sterile” Bren Gun
April 12, 2019
Machine-guns: light, medium, heavy, or sub?
Lindybeige
Published on 2 Mar 2016Machine-guns – do you know the difference between light, medium, and heavy? What is a ‘submachinegun’?
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LindybeigeMany people are hazy over the differences between the various types of machine-gun, and here I ramble on for ten whole minutes about the distinctions. It is a bit of a moving target, as terminology alters as technology does, but the terms used in World War Two are still reasonably current.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
For the detail-minded, don’t panic: he’s taken to task in the comments on this video for a few of the howlers you may have noticed on the way by.
April 11, 2019
What happens if you block access to all of Google’s IP addresses?
The answer is … not a lot, or at least not quickly. So many companies use Google’s services in the background that even if you can get a particular site to work for you, it’ll very likely be as slow as a mid-90’s dial-up connection. Stephen Green reports on someone’s live experiment with a Google-less internet:
Behind the scenes, [Gizmodo’s Kashmir] Hill’s specialty VPN blocked her devices from trying to ping Google’s servers more than 15,000 times — in just the first few hours. After a week, it had stopped more than 100,000 attempts to share data with Google. And to repeat, this is after Hill had stopped using any of Google’s apps or services. The company has its tendrils all throughout the internet.
As Hill describes the process in her report to Gizmodo:
I migrate my browser bookmarks over to Firefox (made by Mozilla).
I change the default search engine on Firefox and my iPhone from Google — a privilege for which Google reportedly pays Apple up to $9 billion per year — to privacy-respecting DuckDuckGo, a search engine that also makes money off ads but doesn’t keep track of users’ searches.
I download Apple Maps and the Mapquest app to my phone…
I switch to Apple’s calendar app.
I create new email addresses on Protonmail and Riseup.net (for work and personal email, respectively) and direct people to them via autoreplies in Gmail.
Hill did literally everything an internet-connected human being can do to disconnect themselves from Google. But you don’t have to be a Google customer in order to have the company garner 100,000 little bits of data about you every single week. Or as Hill herself says, “Google, like Amazon, is woven deeply into the infrastructure of online services and other companies’ offerings, which is frustrating to all the connected devices in my house.”
The fact is, you aren’t Google’s customer: You and your data are Google’s product, served up on an electronic platter to advertisers and God-Only-Knows-Who-Else… even if, like me, you’ve boycotted all of the company’s little data-sniffing products.
As a libertarian, I have philosophical issues with the whole idea of antitrust. But when a company grows so big and so pervasive that you can’t avoid becoming its tool — even when going to the extreme lengths Hill went through — then I can draw only one conclusion, expressed in three words.
Break. Them. Up.
Dutch F-16 nearly shoots down … itself
I didn’t think this was even remotely a possibility:
General Dynamics F-16AM Fighting Falcon
of the Netherlands Royal Air Force
Photo by Aldo Bidini via Wikimedia Commons.
The Netherlands’ Defense Safety Inspection Agency (Inspectie Veiligheid Defensie) is investigating an incident during a January military exercise in which a Dutch Air Force F-16 was damaged by live fire from a 20-millimeter cannon — its own 20-millimeter cannon. At least one round fired from the aircraft’s M61A1 Vulcan Gatling gun struck the aircraft as it fired at targets on the Dutch military’s Vliehors range on the island of Vlieland, according to a report from the Netherlands’ NOS news service.
Two F-16s were conducting firing exercises on January 21. It appears that the damaged aircraft actually caught up with the 20mm rounds it fired as it pulled out of its firing run. At least one of them struck the side of the F-16’s fuselage, and parts of a round were ingested by the aircraft’s engine. The F-16’s pilot managed to land the aircraft safely at Leeuwarden Air Base.
The incident reflects why guns on a high-performance jet are perhaps a less than ideal weapon. The Vulcan is capable of firing over 6,000 shots per minute, but its magazine carries only 511 rounds — just enough for five seconds of fury. The rounds have a muzzle velocity of 3,450 feet per second (1050 meters per second). That is speed boosted initially by the aircraft itself, but atmospheric drag slows the shells down eventually. And if a pilot accelerates and maneuvers in the wrong way after firing the cannon, the aircraft could be unexpectedly reunited with its recently departed rounds.
April 10, 2019
M37: The Ultimate Improved Browning 1919
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 8 Mar 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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In November of 1950, the US Ordnance Department requested an improved version of the Browning 1919 air cooled machine gun for use in tanks. The new version was to be able to feed from either the left or right, a feature which was unimportant for an infantry gun but much more relevant when mounting guns into the tight spaces of an armored vehicle. An interim conversion of existing guns to the M1919A4E1 pattern came first, followed by manufacture of all-new guns by the Rock Island Arsenal and Saco-Lowell company from 1955 until 1957.
The design of the gun fell to Bob Hillberg at High Standard. He came up with a clever set of reversible plugs to change the bolt between left and right hand feed, as well as a captive recoil spring, manual safety, improved top cover and rear cover latches, and several other strengthened parts. He also incorporated a charging handle extension with integral manual hold open and a link ejection chute that could be mounted to either side of the gun. His T153 design was formally adopted as the M37, in caliber .30-06. A 7.62mm NATO version (the M37E1) followed as well. The M37 would serve into the late 1960s on the M48 and M60 tanks as well as several helicopters.
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April 6, 2019
Springfield Arms Double Trigger Navy Revolver
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 6 Mar 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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The Springfield Arms Company existed only for a brief period in 1850 and 1851, making revolvers designed by its chief engineer, James Warner, before being driven out of business by Colt patent lawyers. During that time, Springfield (no relation to the arsenal) made a variety of models in .28, .31, and .36 caliber and with a variety of barrel lengths and other features (including a well-designed safety notch to allow the guns to be carried fully loaded safely). In an attempt to avoid patent infringement, Warner separated the cylinder rotation and firing mechanisms into two different triggers on some models, including this Navy pattern example. The front trigger would rotate and lock the cylinder, and then it would trip the rear trigger which released the sear and fired the gun. This was not sufficient to save him from copyright infringement suits, though, and only about 125 of the double-trigger Navy revolvers were made.
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
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April 4, 2019
Ingram M10 & M11 SMGs: The Originals from Powder Springs
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 3 Apr 2019These SMGs are lots 1069 (M10/45), 1070 (M10/9), and 1067 (M11) at Morphy’s April 2019 auction:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/ingr…After the commercial failure of Gordon Ingram’s M6 submachine gun in the early 50s, he would radically change the layout of his designs. Instead of a Thompson-lookalike Ingram’s M10 (the M7, M8, and M9 doing experimental prototypes only) would be a boxy and compact affair with a Czech-style telescoping bolt. It found little interest until a meeting between Gordon Ingram and Mitch WerBell resulted in WerBell demonstrating it to excited military audiences in Vietnam in 1969.
WerBell was an ex-OSS man who had started a company called Sionics, selling suppressors to the US military. He thought the combination of Ingram’s submachine gun and his suppressor would be a fantastic package, and he found plenty of interest among special operations personnel in Vietnam. He would create the Military Armament Corporation based at his farm in Powder Springs, GA and entice Ingram to join as his chief engineer. The result would be the .45ACP M10, a 9mm version of the M10 (made for use with subsonic 9mm ammunition), and a scaled-down .380 ACP M11 submachine gun.
MAC would have a short life, with all its assets sold at a bankruptcy auction in April 1976 – but it had plenty of time to create what would become an iconic gun – the Big MAC. Many imitations and copies would follow, but Powder Springs was the home of true original Ingram M10 and M11 submachine guns!
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Forgotten Weapons
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April 3, 2019
Tank Chats #45 Major General Sir Percy Hobart | The Funnies | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 10 Feb 2018Welcome to the first in the Tank Chat Funnies mini-series!
In Tank Chats #45 David begins a series on one of his personal interests, the Funnies of the 79th Armoured Division. However the 79th and its Funnies would have been nothing without its inspirational leader Major General Percy Hobart, so David starts with the man and we promise will follow very shortly with his machines.
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April 2, 2019
James May’s Things You Need To Know – Series 2 – Episode 5 – Engineering (S02E05)
Uninsulated Crimp
Published on 10 Apr 2013James May gives a straightforward guide to some of science’s big ideas, explaining everything from evolution and Einstein to engineering and chemistry.
March 30, 2019
The EU’s copyright regulation is a stalking horse for online censorship and control
To the amazement of many non-EU observers, the European Parliament passed blatantly authoritarian and corporatist changes to the rules on copyrights that will have potentially vast impact on the internet across the world, not just inside the EU. At City A.M., Kate Andrews explains why this is such bad news for all internet users:
The two most controversial points in the law – Article 11 and Article 13 – are almost certain to stifle digital activity, and interfere with the free way that people currently use online platforms.
Article 11, known as the “link tax”, would make online platforms compensate press publishers for links and article content posted on their sites.
As my colleague Victoria Hewson highlighted in her latest briefing, this approach has been “widely criticised as a distortive measure that seeks to prop up a declining industry”.
As many local and national newspapers decline in readership and revenue, governments have become increasingly protectionist in their attempts to “rebalance” the sector, by cracking down on online platforms.
The link tax has little merit, even if rebalancing is the goal. News outlets which require payment for readership already have logins and paywalls to protect their content from free access.
[…]
Article 13 will also be distortive to the market, as it makes online platforms increasingly liable for copyright infringement.
As Hewson’s briefing notes, major online platforms already have routine screening processes for content that violates copyright law or their own rules. But the new regulations “remove the protection for platforms previously available if they removed violating content promptly on receiving notice of it, and contravene fundamental rights such as free expression and freedom from monitoring”.
The Directive claims that safeguards – including pastiche, parody, and quotations – will be protected, and that meme content has been excluded.
But the algorithms which these platforms will have to implement to adhere to Article 13 are going to struggle to see the difference between infringement and fair use when comparing uploads to content that is registered as copyrighted.
March 29, 2019
How Does it Work: Long Stroke Gas Piston
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 28 Mar 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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The long stroke gas piston system was in its heyday about 50 years ago, and was popular in both rifles and machine guns. The principle is that the gas piston is fixed to the bolt carrier, and both cycle rearward for the full length of the cartridge upon firing. The system was used in such distinguished designs as the M1 Garand, Kalashnikov, Browning Automatic Rifle, and ZB/Bren light machine guns among others. By including the mass of the gas piston in the reciprocating parts, the long stroke system potentially carries more momentum when cycling, this improving extraction and feeding. This generally comes at the cost of increased perceived recoil, as the extra mass impacting the rear of the receiver at the end of travel is felt by the firer.
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754
March 28, 2019
Parker Hale M85: Traditional Sniper in a Modern World
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 27 Feb 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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The 1985 competition to pick a new sniper rifle for the British military came down to a closely fought contest between the Accuracy International PM and the Parker Hale M85. The M85 was a fantastically accurate rifle, every bit the equal of the AI submission and to this day there are still people who were involved in the trials who insist that the M85 should have been selected. Ultimately, the decision came down to the logistical issues surrounding the rifle, where AI’s chassis system was superior to Parker-Hale’s traditional construction. Despite being defeated, Parker Hale sold some 800 M85 rifles – nearly as many as the military contract would have procured (and in fact, a few M85s were purchased by several military units).
If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend checking out Steve Houghton’s newly released book, The British Sniper: A Century of Evolution. It can be found at:
https://www.swiftandboldpublishing.co…
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754
March 24, 2019
Major Fosbery’s Automatic Revolver: History and Mechanics
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 9 Aug 2017http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
George Fosbery, V.C., was a decorated British officer with substantial combat experience in India when he decided to design a better sidearm in 1895. True semiautomatic handguns were in their very early stages of development at that time, and Fosbery thought that one could have a more durable, more powerful, and simpler weapon by using a revolver as a foundation. He began experimenting with a Colt SAA, but soon moved to using Webley revolvers when he found the Colt internals insufficiently durable for his conversion.
What Fosbery did was to relocate the barrel and cylinder into an upper assembly which could move independently of the grip and trigger of the gun. Upon firing, the energy of recoil would push the upper assembly rearwards, re-cocking the hammer and indexing the cylinder to the next chamber. This gave the shooter the rapid fire of a double action revolver with the excellent trigger pull of a single action revolver.
The gun was introduced at the Bisley shooting matches, where it proved quite popular as a target gun. By the time production began in the early years of the 20th century, however, semi-auto handguns had improved significantly, and the opportunity for the Webley-Fosbery to be a big seller had already passed. Still, British officers were required to provide sidearms chambered for the .455 service cartridge, and more than a few opted to purchase Webley-Fosberys.
Thanks to Mike Carrick of Arms Heritage magazine for providing this Webley-Fosbery for this video! See his regular column here: https://armsheritagemagazine.com
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March 21, 2019
Tank Chats #44 T14 and A33 (Excelsior) Assault Tanks | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 13 Jan 2018The Second World War American T14 and British A33 (Excelsior) Assault tanks were made to the same specification as one another, neither ever went in to service and only one of each were made. They both survive at The Tank Museum.
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