Category Archives: Crew-Served

What we’re getting into in Syria….

A French soldier holds an SA-7 Strela (Grail) tube in Mali. Click to enlarge. Image: French Army.

…is about what we got into in Libya. By waiting until the tiny sliver of the opposition that had something in common with American values had been exterminated by the ruthless regime, and until the only functional opposition remaining was hard-core Islamist, we’re going to be sending arms that will be used against Americans and our allies, not only by these groups and all their islamist-warrior pals, but also by moslem terrorists.

The unintended consequences of the foreign policy of dithering-away-any-advantage in Libya are what our allies, the French, are dealing with in Mali, and it’s pretty ugly. Qaddhafi’s tens of thousands of MANPADS are turning up in terrorist hands in the poor, bedraggled, and now war-torn African nation. So far, nos amis have captured a launch tube, a battery, and several copies of an Arabic-language manual covering all the major Russian MANPADS. A story based on AP reporting:

The manual… adds to evidence for the weapon found by French forces during their land assault in Mali earlier this year, including the discovery of the SA-7′s battery pack and launch tube, according to military statements and an aviation official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment.

The knowledge that the terrorists have the weapon has already changed the way the French are carrying out their five-month-old offensive in Mali. They are using more fighter jets rather than helicopters to fly above its range of 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) from the ground, even though that makes it harder to attack the jihadists. They are also making cargo planes land and take off more steeply to limit how long they are exposed, in line with similar practices in Iraq after an SA-14 hit the wing of a DHL cargo plane in 2003.

Header of Page 313 (start of the SA-7 section) of the captured manual.

The Malian terrorists, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” as they style themselves, were training international terrorists to attack aircraft with the SA-7 missile. The elderly SA-7 was ineffective against military aircraft even in the 1980s, and so it’s probable that this training was intended to facilitate terror attacks on civil jetliners.

In Timbuktu, SA-7 training was likely part of the curriculum at the ‘Jihad Academy’ housed in a former police station, said Jean-Paul Rouiller, director of the Geneva Center for Training and Analysis of Terrorism, one of three experts who reviewed the manual for AP. It’s located less than 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the Ministry of Finance’s Budget Division building where the manual was found.

Neighbors say they saw foreign fighters running laps each day, carrying out target practice and inhaling and holding their breath with a pipe-like object on their shoulder. The drill is standard practice for shoulder-held missiles, including the SA-7.

Here’s the manual in question: http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-papers-dangerous-weapon.pdf

The manual does note that the weapon has a secondary military use, even if it does not destroy many aircraft. It does change their flight profiles, causing them to fly higher and degrading air support to ground troops.

Rare Survivor: Coast Artillery Base-End Station

Dang! We missed it – 8″ barrel

2 Replies

The barrel is still in the 1970s-80s temperate camouflage.

Nope, this isn’t, say, a tube for an Artillery Luger (we already got one) or a Smith M29, nor is it something to SBR your AR with. It’s not 8 inches long, it’s 8 inches in diameter. From land to land. Repeat after us: “that is one BFG.”

Somebody is now in a position to say: we’ll see your Barrett .50 and raise you 7 1/2″. A rare, apparently not demilled, 1978 barrel for the Vietnam-era M110 8″ howitzer was on eBay earlier this month, for sale in San Pedro, California. The gun probably once stalked the deserts of Fort Irwin or the National Training Center, before being surplused. The seller did say he was selling without the breech block.

Somebody bought it for $4,000, less than we’ve paid for some much smaller hardware. According to the seller, that was his reserve, and barely more than the scrap value of the barrel.

Of course, it’s the bare barrel, missing not only the vehicle that hauled it but also the elevating, traversing and recoil mechanisms. And it’s not exactly man-portable: removing this testament to Watervliet Arsenal’s metal-shaping skills from its resting place in the weeds in San Pedro must have involved riggers, heavy equipment, and a truck big enough to haul the 26’6″, 7 1/4 ton monster away.

Interesting to us, the nomenclature engraved on the barrel appears to be M201. We thought the barrel was the “M2A1.” Could Watervliet have made a typo?

But if you collect US military arms, that’s one hell of a collection centerpiece. Or you can just park it in the front garden and keep the damn kids off your lawn. (Laugh if you will: we once knew a retired general who kept an MG08 on sled mount at the top of the walk in front of his tidy split-level. He said it cut down, not only on kids chasing stray balls, but Jehovah’s Witnesses chasing stray souls as well. Wish we could remember his name; he’d been on Patton’s staff as a junior field grade).

The M110 was a self-propelled version of a WWII howitzer that used the same chassis and trails as the 175mm Long Tom. The WWII 8-inch’s projectile and barrel were based on a WWI-vintage British 8-inch howitzer design. The M110 entered service in 1963 alongside the M107 SP version of the Long Tom, and left active duty by 1990, leaving the USAR in 1994 as all USAR combat-arms units were disbanded or reconstituted in the National Guard (while support and service-support units flowed the other way). The guns and howitzers alike were deployed in Divisional, Corps and Army Artillery units. (The Army-subordinate units were later called “Echelons Above Corps” in one of those military jargon changes that gets some O-6 his retirement Legion of Merit). They were one of the principal delivery systems envisioned for W33 and W79 tactical nuclear warheads and GB nerve agent (aka Sarin), before the US’s unilateral chemical disarmament in 1970 and unilateral tactical nuclear disarmament in 1992. This video is an overview of the then-new SP guns and the development of their chassis.

This barrel is from an M110A2, the muzzle brake being used only on the A2 variant. The A2s were not new production, except for the barrels (like this one from 1978). The chassis and mechanism (elevation, traverse, recoil, etc) came from the M107s that were being decommissioned at that time.

What sent the 8-inch (aka 203mm) howitzer and before it, the 175mm gun, to the showers, was the march of technology. New 155mm projos could fly farther and hit harder, making the bigger guns obsolete (yes, they could have chosen to make the larger projos fly even farther and hit even harder, They didn’t, choosing to use the technology to simplify and streamline logistics while keeping combat power and reach at least the same as it had been). The MLRS took away some other big-gun use cases; and US abandonment of chemical and nuclear weapons pulled the rug out from under one of the major justifications for this weapon.

Occasionally you see an M110 chassis for sale (or a recovery vehicle built on the same chassis, which must be useful if you have a lot of tanks). But the barrels are exceedingly rare, and not just for the reason you’d think (that the USG insisted the SP guns be thoroughly demiled before sale). You see, many of the retired 8 inch/203mm barrels got a new lease on life as a new kind of weapon entirely: they were used to form the casings of the deep-penetrating GBU-28 “bunker buster” bomb.

Marine mortar accident: the heads roll

Part of being in command is bearing responsibility. That came home for three Marines recently as they all were relieved of their posts, as the investigation into the mortar accident on the range at Hawthorne Army Depot, NV continues.

We’ve previously covered the accident here, here, here and here. Seven Marines were killed and eight more injured when a 60mm mortar blew up during a night live fire. After initially ruling it out, the investigation seems to have settled on a double feed during a “SPENDEX” as having caused the accident — one violation of safety rules. The high casualty count resulted from another violation: a human chain passing the “fire for effect” rounds, putting more men than the crew, who would normally be the only ones in blast radius, in danger.

The battalion commander, company commander, and the battalion’s weapons warrant officer were all sacked last week. New commanders will be selected and the unit will deploy on schedule.

Just for the record, the Marines killed were:

Cpl. Aaron J. Ripperda, 26
Lance Cpl. David P. Fenn II, 20
Lance Cpl. Roger W. Muchnick Jr., 23
Lance Cpl. Joshua C. Taylor, 21
Lance Cpl. Mason J. Vanderwork, 21
Lance Cpl. William T. Wild IV, 21, and
Pfc. Joshua M. Martino, 19.

It seemed to us that their names deserved mention. Training for combat can be quite hazardous; we recall one SF Group that went for years on a streak of killing one Group member on every major exercise or training deployment. The chain was only broken in Flintlock 84, where no one died but scores were hospitalized. (The same hard-luck group lost a team leader to a random Libyan terror attack while he was on leave, lost several guys in the back of still-not-debugged Black Hawk helicopters that burned in during that system’s early years, and had several guys shot down in another helicopter — by the US Air Force). The guys that are dead in training accidents are just as dead as the guys whose names are written on war memorials. Their families feel their absence; their mothers grieve.

Rest in peace, Marines.

Wray-O. Wray-ay-ay-O!

Come, Mister Tally Man, tally me machinegun. Auction come, and de guns are all sol’.

Alright… we’ll stop channeling Harry Belafonte presently. (If you don’t know who Belafonte is — was? — congratulate yourself and have a drink on us. But accept that you probably also don’t know the song we’re referring to). And actually, they’re not all sold. Several drew no bids.

On the other hand, if you’re here, you probably know the auction we’re referring to, the incredible Richard Wray collection of select Class III and other rare guns. Wray was the founder of a successful firm, and his collection contained not one, but dozens of guns that could by themselves anchor a great collection. There were 191 lots in the auction all told: machine guns, normal Title I guns, and a couple lots of accessories, including four ultra-rare 100-round Bren gun drum magazines.

Ian at Forgotten Weapons has beaten us to the punch with an auction report, so we’ll send you over there for his take; then come on back and read ours, in which we’ll take care not to duplicate his insights. We do have a few bullet points about the auction:

The auction was extremely well presented by Cowan’s. Something to bear in mind, if you’re like an acquaintance whose gun collection made no impression on his only son, who wanted to be (we are not making this up) a ballet dancer. (Well, that’s how the Oddfather, Rahm Emanuel, got his start, so you never know).

Want a timewaster: go to the auction catalog and make note of the prices made good. Bet you can’t check out just one. Note that these prices include a “buyer’s premium,” a surcharge on the sale that goes to the auctioneer. The auctioneer also gets a percentage rake-off of the seller’s money.

In our experience, auction catalogs’ estimates always low-ball most guns. The Wray auction was no exception. Why? When they’re making the catalog, their objective is to get the most possible eyeballs, and bidders, attracted to the collection. You can’t criticize that, it’s just good business. So that Lot X, Y or Z sold for more than the upper range estimate is not necessarily significant. The size of the delta may be significant and may point to new trends in the market.

We thought the Chauchat at under $5k was a hell of a bargain. Yeah, it’s a scroungy gun, but it has incredible historical cachet. So does the Benet-Mercié, the first American Army light machine gun and only the second type-classified American MG (the first was a Maxim, some of which were made by Colt and some imported, and one of which would sell for crazy ridiculous money if it came up at an auction); but the B-M sold for nearly $30k.

The ultimate lowball bidder walked off with a transferable Hotchkiss Brande. It’s not a historic gun, as it’s an interwar oddball, and it’s not in a readily-available-cheap shooting caliber, 7x57mm. But it went for $284. And came with four spare barrels and other accessories. (What are the odds that it’s the only one on the register?) That sound you just heard was Ian kicking himself (unless it was his bid).

The most in-demand guns are American military guns of the WWII and later era, and German WWII iron. WWI guns — often even better shooters — sold at a discount relative to War Two stuff, although “discount” isn’t exactly the word. More like the WWII guns draw a premium.

Likewise, aerial guns and AA guns have a lot less sales mojo than ground guns. If you want a WWII gun, you can start a whole collection of Japanese or Italian aerial guns for the price of one German MG34 or MP40. But the MP40 will probably appreciate faster. A 1936 Ford and a prewar Alfa Romeo 8C are both technically classics, and both appreciate, but the legendary 8C, thanks to cachet and rarity, appreciates at an accelerating rate.

Corollary to the above: as crazy as these prices are, the smart money says they’re going higher.

Wray had some incredible rarities, like this Swiss StG 51. Never heard of it? Most people haven’t. This prototype was (obviously) based on the FG42, and was apparently one of the way stations on the way to the excellent, for its day, StG 57. Bragging rights cost its new caretaker $23k, and that’s before he invests in reloading 7.5 Swiss kurz.

Even some of the non-NFA guns were rare and ran bids up pretty high. This ordinary looking Mauser Broomhandle is actually a Chinese copy in .45 ACP. It went for nearly seven grand. Note to self, place a want ad for machinists in Craigslist Shanghai.

Screen shot 2013-04-30 at 8.14.26 PM

That’s about it for now. One lesson that’s scarcely new — John Ross’s monumental novel of the gun culture, Unintended Consequences, addresses it using a college paper by protagonist Henry Bowman — is that the Class III market remains dreadfully distorted by government regulation. Cascading on top of the natural rarity of these often 100-year-old items is the rarity caused by multi-tier taxation and regulation, and a manufacture and import ban of 25 years’ standing. That means that some of the buyers are very likely speculators, expecting the guns to appreciate.

Of course, the 1986 manufacture ban was inserted at the last minute by a voice vote in one house, with a quorum absent. So there is considerable political risk in investing in Class III iron, making the investment a speculative one. Dicta in the Heller opinion suggest that Class III weapons stand outside the penumbras (if you will) of Constitutional protection; your $5, 10, 20 or 50 thousand dollar investment (and that guy’s $284 Hotchkiss) is one midnight voice-vote away from being zeroed out by your lords and betters.

Update: this post has been edited to correct the caliber of the StG 51.

How accurate was a .50 in WWII?

We’re familiar with the feats of marksmanship pulled off by snipers using scope-equipped .50 machine guns in Vietnam (this was also done in Korea, but less has been written about it). The Vietnam successes, particularly the late GySgt. Carlos Hathcock’s, paved the way for the development of purpose-built .50 sniper rifles (it’s no coincidence that the M82 Barrett came to fruition at the exact time that the word of Hathcock’s then-15-year-old-feats spread far and wide among serving soldiers and Marines).

With all the ingenuity that was displayed in World War II, why wasn’t the M2HB used as a sniper weapon? A look at some wartime data from the Heavy Barrel’s close cousin, the aerial M2, might be instructive. The interesting website LoneSentry (which was this week’s W4) has a relevant document. They seem to alternate publishing press releases of new kits for modelers with fascinating original documents from the World War II era. And they’ve reprinted numerous excerpts from a 20th Air Force set of B-29 crew notes, which we’ll snag a short excerpt of:

There are several factors to consider in arriving at an answer to the question of how long a burst it is practical to fire. The ammunition has a high degree of accuracy. At 600 yards, when fired from an accuracy rifle held in a V-block, it will group in a circle 18″ in diameter. When fired single shot, using an aircraft machine gun on a tripod mount, tests have shown a 20″ circle of fire.

This is a Mann accuracy device, used for ammunition testing by the Army (this particular one is in 7.62 NATO on a Springfield acton). These were made in all calibers, and ammunition lots had to pass an accuracy test for acceptance. Image: CMP (which has some of these for sale as collector curiosities).

So that’s the purpose of their investigation — how long a burst makes sense for an aerial gunner to fire. And the first thing they establish is that the theoretical accuracy of the ammunition, fired from a (presumably Mann) accuracy rifle, as roughly 2.87 MoA. (Angular calculation from here, using values of 1800 feet [600 yd] and 1.5 ft [18"]). Using the same calculator to solve angle for longer ranges, using that theoretical accuracy established at 600 yards, we get about a yard dispersion at 1200 yards and 43 inches and change at 1500. Again, this is the theoretical accuracy of the ammunition. Using single shots from an actual MG on a ground tripod (presumably with T&E, although the record doesn’t say) we see a slight degradation which makes that 1200 and 1500 yard shot on a man-sized target problematical (and with iron sights, functionally impossible). In single-shot mode, the differences between the ANM2 aerial machine gun (several variations of which are seen here) and its M2HB ground counterpart are not telling.

The information file goes on to address burst fire, of less interest vis-a-vis sniping but interesting in its own right.

In a burst of 10 or 12 on the same mount the group was approximately five feet. When longer bursts were fired, it was observed that the gun soon lost accuracy, even though it remained relatively stationary in the mount. When over fifty rounds were fired, in one burst, the projectiles tumbled in flight and dispersed over a 75 foot area at 600 yards.

Why is that? Does the barrel get “shot out” that quickly? Not exactly.

When the barrel has been overheated, it will be found that it cannot be relied upon for further accuracy even though the lands and grooves measure up well and the barrel, to all appearances, seems good. If the exterior of the barrel has a burned appearance, it should be tested by ordnance before further use. When a barrel becomes over-heated it expands to such an extent that the muzzle velocity decreases several hundred feet per second. This decrease continues as the barrel continues to expand, until a point is reached where tumbling of the projectiles takes place and controlled fire is reduced to a few hundred feet.

If an enemy flew his plane to within “a few hundred feet” of a B-29, self-preservation was not high on his agenda. Pilots — German and Japanese alike — who excelled at attacking 4-engined day bombers tended to make fast, slashing, attacks from straight ahead — ahead high, if they could get up there (most of the Japanese fighters were doing well to get to the B-29′s bombing altitude). Pilots who settled in at short range to shoot the four engines out one at a time were in the convergence zone of several guns from that bomber and his cell mates, and their careers tended to the truncated.

The gunner instructors who wrote the document reached this conclusion:

The accuracy of the fire delivered, therefore, depends not only on how steadily the gun is held, but also on the length of the burst, and the condition of the barrel. If a gunner fires short bursts of three to five rounds, constantly using his sights, he will have a tight group and a high degree of accuracy. This is the most effective method of firing your machine guns.

Now, this has always been the advice for ground gunners using air-cooled guns, but it’s enlightening to see aerial gunners getting the same instruction. The ANM2′s principal differences with the M2HB were: a lighter barrel and a ventilated, full-length barrel shroud, on the theory that an aerial gun would be bathed in fast-flowing cooling air. (And, at bomber altitudes, cold air: 50 to 60 degrees below zero F). But they still suffered extreme accuracy degradation, and bullet tumbling, when long bursts were fired.

Many a Japanese fighter pilot's last sight on Earth. Note the upper turret is trained forward, the lower, aft. And yes, it embiggens. Bill Crump photo (CAF).

Many a Japanese fighter pilot’s last sight on Earth, although this photo, of the only surviving airworthy B-29, was taken at far lower altitude. Note that the upper turret is trained forward, the lower, aft; they can both be controlled by the bombardier in the nose. And yes, the picture embiggens. Bill Crump photo (CAF).

The 20th Air Force was the one that operated B-29s against Japan, first from Chinese bases and then, after the successful Marianas campaign, from Saipan and Tinian. To bring it full circle, its commander was General Curtis LeMay, who was an absolute gun nut, and as Chief of Staff of the Air Force would drive the US adoption of its longest-serving small arm: the M16 series.

Update: 60mm Mortar Stand Down

News media are reporting that the Marines or the DOD as a whole have ordered a stand down of all 60mm Mortar live fires.

We’re trying to get our mitts on the message. Meanwhile, there are two possible explanations for this:

They’ve already learned something about the Henderson Army Depot accident that casts doubt on M224 mortars or on ammunition. This is unlikely, so early in an investigation. For example, if they knew it was the ammunition, they could order a check fire on that particular stock number (NSN or DODIC) or even on the suspect lot.

They are acting out of caution until the investigation begins to point to a probable cause. This is the explanation Occam’s Razor suggests here.

Update circa 1300R:

We’re hearing that it was a single round and it went off in the tube, and there are no signs of a double load or other operator error. While they’re still examining the physical evidence, every 60mm round worldwide is going to be visually inspected. This will be done very rapidly; everyone knows how important these weapons are in ground combat.

We’ve also been told verbally that two Marines have died in the hospital. One was included in the initial count of 7 killed, and one passed away last night from his injuries, bringing the total to 8. RIP, Marines.

There but for the Grace of God…

Update II circa 1400R: USMC Safety of Use Message

Subj: Deadline Safety of Use Message Suspending Employment of the M224A1 60mm Mortar System.

Suspension of mortar system will be in effect until released by the [Marine Corps] Safety Center.

This is a deadline safety of use message suspending employment of the
M224A1 60mm mortar system resulting in the accident that occurred while the
mortar was being fired in the handheld mode.

3- Using units shall immediately discontinue the use of the M224A1 60mm
mortar system, TAMCN E10657m, ID NR 08206B until further notice.

4- An investigation has been initiated. All Commanders will return and
retain the M224A1 60mm mortar in their respective unit areas until further
notice.

This does not apply to US Army mortar use. However, the Marines have identified two lots of ammunition as suspect. The Army has also suspended use of those particular lots.

Seven Marines killed, seven injured, possible mortar kB!

Marines in M120 live fire by night (file)

No infantry weapons are more devastating than the very simple, muzzle-loading, smoothbore, gravity fired trench mortar. Normally they’re devastating to the enemy, but initial reports out of Nevada indicate that a round somehow cooked off in a tube, killing the Marines crewing the gun and spreading death and injury around the area.

Seven Marines were killed and seven wounded late Monday during a training exercise at Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada, according to a military and defense officials.

A senior defense official said it appears that a mortar round exploded inside a firing tube instead of flying out. The official, speaking on background, cautioned that initial reports could change on the cause.

via 7 Marines killed in blast at Nevada training center.

In combat, mortars are often emplaced in a pit, but on a training range they’re often on line, for convenience of command and instruction, and because counterfire is not a possibility. Given the extreme simplicity of the mortar, and the quality controls in US ammunition manufacture, accidents are rare. Many millions of rounds are fired without mishap.

In the past, the few accidents we have seen have resulted from crew drill errors (two live rounds in the tube, if trigger fired, or a live round dropped on a dud round) more often than ammunition quality failures.

The M224 is the smallest standard mortar, but it is superior to the Vietnam era 81mm. It can be configured for patrol (l) or employed for direct and indirect fire from a prepared or hasty position (r).

The US currently fields three mortar systems; although Army Special Forces also trains on obsolete and foreign mortar systems, we do not believe these Marines were using anything non-standard. The three are the M120 120mm mortar, which replaced the 107mm (4.2 inch) mortar; the M252 Improved 81mm mortar, and the M224 60mm lightweight mortar. Improvements in the range and lethality of mortars have been remarkable, with both range and lethality roughly doubling in the last 20 years. This means that the new 60 has the range and power of the old 81, and the new 81 approaches the range and lethality of the old 107. The 120 gives infantry battalions organic firepower they never had, including range to 12,000 meters (with rocket-assisted projectiles), and dual-purpose improved conventional munition warheads.

Despite their smooth bores, mortars can be extremely accurate (the projectiles are fin-stabilized). In mortar training, informal competitions for accuracy and volume of fire are common.

Another important mortar mission is illumination. Nowadays, that’s usually infrared illum, invisible to the naked eye.

The limited information released so far makes it impossible to tell which mortar system was involved in the accident. The base in question is often used for pre-deployment live fires and reserve component live fire training because of its desert location and ample range area.

The crews of mortars range from 3 men for the M224 to 5 for the M120 (or its track0mounted M121 sibling), but it’s customary to have extended crews during range fire, or for other men to be observing and waiting their turn to crew (while only a few men in a company or battalion are on the mortar crew, every infantryman learns how to crew the guns). All three mortars have the power to kill and maim that many men, close in.

The M120 does have a muzzle device which is intended to prevent a double feed (it was actually copied from a Russian idea — spasibo, Ivane). Only the 60mm mortar is trigger fired.

We regret the loss of life and offer our condolences to the slain Marines’ families, and our best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery to the wounded Marines.

Update circa 1500R (EST)

A few more details are trickling out. Here’s an LA Times story. Take-away: the accident happened just before 10PM and the Marines were active-duty men from the 2nd MEF at Camp Lejeune. (The rest of the article is filler and an ill-informed attempt to tie the accident to the unrelated ammo storage dump at the same base). This video (caution: autoplay) from the Associated (with terrorists) Press quotes the depot’s safety officer, ID’s the mortar as a 60, confirms that the accident was unrelated to the ammo storage facility, and raises casualty count to 7 dead and 9 injured (one of whom succumbed to his wounds. Not clear if he is counted among the 7).

We reiterate our condolences and best wishes for survivors.

Update 2

It didn’t take too long for a [censored] politician to do a little jig on the Marines’ still undug graves, by way of suggesting that his opponents were somehow to blame. The USMC is not amused.

Auction Action

Every once in a while we like to call out an auction with some cool stuff in it. How is this for some cool stuff?

This was the collection — well, part of the collection — of the late Richard Wray. His collection includes some 200 weapons, 90 of them Class 3 weapons comprising a history of the development and deployment of the 20th Century machine gun. His other weapons include such rarities as a Mexican Mondragon semi-auto rifle, a weapon so rare we’ve only seen it in pictures. Jack Lewis of Cowan’s Auctions teases the auction, coming in April, with some great photographs and scanty description.

It’s remarkable what range and quality of weapons there are here, including a llot of large crew-served guns: Water-cooled Browning, a bunch of Maxims including distinctive Russian (1905 and 1920) and German (MG08 and 08/15) models and their British Vickers cousins, a Lewis gun with an unusual AA sight; and a Danish Madsen, once a huge worldwide commercial success, with bipod and rare tripod. Tripod mounted, magazine fed guns of any kind or nationality are rare.

And those are just the guns in your face in this photo. Right behind them is a rarity! An Austrian Schwarzlose, a blowback-operated, tripod-mounted machine gun of the Great War. But that’s as common as a 10/22 compared to some of the other vintage pieces, like this M1913 Parabellum machine gun. This air-cooled weapon was used by the air forces of the German Empire, primarily as a flexible gun by observers and gunners on two-seaters, large bombers, and Zeppelins (yes, we’re aware that technically the Zeps were operated by the Navy). This rare bird is complete with the much rarer optical sight, gun mount and belt spool, and is in stunning condition (click to embiggen the picture).

But we haven’t hit the real rarities yet. Sure, there are strange Japanese and Italian light and medium machine guns, which are rarer by far than the collection’s standard SMGs like a Sten and an MP 38 or 40. But they can’t compare to this baby: the Benet-Mercié Machine Rifle of 1909, complete with the rare Warner & Swasey “Telescopic Musket Sight” of 1908 (the sniper variation of which we discussed in this blog last month) and the even rarer tripod adapter. This Hotchkiss derivative replaced the superior M1904 Maxim whose introduction we also previously discussed, citing an article written by an officer involved, Parker K. Hitt (is it just us, or is Hitt a great name for an infantry ofifcer?).

At the time of the Mexican Punitive Expedition (1916) and the US entry into World War I (1917) this forgotten gadget was the standard US Army and Marine machine gun, and because nothing was too good for the troops, they got next to nothing: both services could inventory mere dozens as we declared war on a nation that had put a machine gun every few yards along its battle front for three plus years. (According to an article from the American Rifleman, 670 were made, by Springfield Armory and Colt. The auction gun in the photo is a Springfield piece).

They were used in the Philippines and Haiti as well as in Mexico. In Europe, our doughboys would be equipped, mostly, with weapons bummed from Britain and especially France. (It wasn’t that much of an imposition on our hosts: the French were running out of living Frenchmen to issue guns to, and by 1917 the bedraggled remnants of what had been Europe’s largest and strongest army were mutinous). The Benet-Mercié is fundamentally a Hotchkiss, which might have come from the pen of Rube Goldberg. The troops generally disliked it, although the Warner & Swasey prismatic telescopic “musket sight” got mixed reviews. The American Rifleman article explains how the gun turned off infantrymen:

The Chauchat notwithstanding, it is fortunate that our troops did not have to go into combat against the Germans with the “daylight gun.” A well-known small arms authority of the day, Edward C. Crossman, noted the following: “I remember one cold day how a government inspector and I lugged one of the government Benet-Mercie machine guns out of the great Colt factory where they were made and set it up in a testing yard. Although the gun was in the hands of a most skilled man, a man there on purpose to inspect machine guns—that gun broke six parts in the first 20 shots. It broke extractors and firing pins as fast as we could put them in—because the weather was cold, and the chilled parts were brittle. Imagine tumbling out in the chill dawn of a winter’s day with the Huns coming over No Man’s Land, and having your machine gun break apart the first rattle of shots!”

The “Daylight gun” nickname came from the difficulty of reassembling a dismantled Benet-Mercié. Even the feed strips could be put in a right way or a wrong way, and inserted the wrong way, they wouldn’t work. Later Hotchkiss models would resolve some of those problems. The Empire of Japan’s troops used Hotchkiss-based machine guns very effectively — by day or night. But they had the luxury of more years of development; the USA had new Browning designs waiting in the wings, and the Hotchkiss action and its brass feed strips were an evolutionary dead end.

The Past is Another Country: The Fire Book, 1584 A.D.

We’ve explored a few old sources here, under our The Past is Another Country category, but we don’t think we’ve gone this far back before. Through the good graces of the University of Pennsylvania — egads! We’re saying good things about one of the gormless-DOD-suit-producing Ivies — we have the Feüer Büech, an Old or Middle German version of the 1970s hippie mischief manual, the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

It’s one of the treasures of the Penn library, and is considered “Manuscript Codex 109.” They have a photographic, full-color facsimile of every page online. The default of the image is 1/8 normal size, but you can blow them up to full size if you like.

The library site also provides vital meta-information about the book. It is a handwritten, German cursive script document with about 22 lines per text page. There are 235 pages and 34 illustrations, two of which seem to have been cut out of another book and pasted in (remember, in all history before Gutenberg, books were handcrafted, expensive, and rare treasures. It’s surprising there isn’t more such recycling in evidence). The Feuer Buech may be related in some way to another Fireworks Book that’s held by the State Library in Berlin, and that one may date to 1420.

(Given the impermanence of things made by the hand of man, and what’s happened to Berlin over the past century, it’s astounding that this older book has survived).

Lavishly illuminated with what appear to be watercolors, it’s what a book was when they were ultra-valuable, one-off, hand-copied items. And this one is right up our alley: it’s the medieval equivalent of a demo and pyro manual!

The accessibility of the material is somewhat limited, unfortunately: it’s written in a medieval version of fraktur script, and in an archaic version of German. So at first it’s hard to figure out what letters spell out the words, and then once you think you have succeeded in that, you may have a word that is not a cognate of its modern German analogue. Decoding such a text is rather a tough bit of work. Fortunately, there are illiustrations.

Occasionally, a heading is clear enough. For example, the one on Page 16 r. promises that the text below will explain “Das Ziel der büch,” the objective of the book, but we’re not at all sure we’re breaking out the sub-head clearly: “To explain, how a halberdier develops a knowledge of fire and learns how to test that fire out.” (Probably every single detail of that is wrong).

Unfortunately, it does not seem that there’s an online transcription of this work easily discoverable. Since we can hardly be the first ones interested in this ancient codex, and odds are some of our predecessors have a better knowledge of old German script and language than ours (which is functionally nil), then there has to be scholarship on this document out there in the medievalist community. Yes?

Fire arrow

One of the many interesting illustrations is this fire arrow, on a page hand-numbered 83. A conical base of the arrow serves in place of fins, to move the center of pressure aft and provide stability. The arrow appears to have been made of all metal (which makes a certain amount of sense, as it’s supposed to be a host and delivery means for flaming stuff), and we’ll also say it does not appear to be the sort of arrow one would nock and fire from a longbow.

The incendiary material is tightly bound high and low to the arrow, and fluffs out in the middle. Our best guess is that this was meant to be fired from some kind of arquebus, in the sense of that word indicating a crew-served, large crossbow. As most of these weapons were constructed from wood and rope or rawhide, firing flaming stuff from them must have been interesting.

The cannoneer

The last illustration is a man loading a cannon: a hint of things to come. It’s hard to deduce too much from the illutration, which falls far below the aesthetic and proportional standards of classical antiquity’s art, but it’s possible that it represents a brass or bronze barrel with iron bands, mounted on a surprisingly modern-looking field carriage. Powder kegs, cannon balls, and loading and swabbing tools would have been familiar to any gunner from the age of muzzle-loading cannon, all the way to the second half of the 19th Century. It’s hard to tell if a curious structure on the dorsal aspect of the breech of the cannon represents a touch hole, or something else.

Several illustrations of men like this one show them carrying sticks with primitive cannon fuse on the end, and having what appear to be cloth “matches” hanging on their clothing.

The medieval era was not, as is commonly supposed, bereft of thought and common sense. In fact, a great many social institutions that still shape our society (for instance, the university) began then. Middle-ages mobile and siege warfare, far from being a pale imitation of classical antiquity, was highly developed and sophisticated.

Hat tip, the Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal, who warns us: Do Not Try to Recreate This 16th-Century German Cat Bomb at Home. The cat-incendiary is similar to fire-animals noted in a number of period manuscripts, creatures that would sometimes be released by hand and sometimes actually catapulted over walls with siege engines.

Good ideas never die, but that’s probably because bad ideas never do, either. The Russians cooked up a weirdly analogous weapon in what they called the Great Patriotic War: the dog mine. It was hard on the dogs, of course, and had other unintended consequences — but that’s another story.

WeaponsMan

Quiet Professionals, Noisy Machinery