Historians forget quite easily that Britain had 5 major victories against the axis before the USA joined the war. East African campaign mainly colonial troops, Battle of Britain, Malta, North Africa Rommel was effectively defeated by the time the US arrived. The battle of the Atlantic had been sorted by Britain. Britain was the bastion of Freedom in the West at that stage and unfortunately successive USA and European governments have undermined Britain.
Britain was not the only country. Do forget our brothers from all over the world from Canada to New Zealand auz South Africa. Plus so many more .... we were never alone our true frends never stood by .
You’re right but it probably felt that way for a time. And America couldn’t help us because they didn’t have the fire power in 1940, although FDR didn’t admit that ‘til much later and Pearl Harbour. We were all caught with our pants down, weren’t we?
8.50 the Bren is “light machine gun” it could be carried and fired, making it a kind of heavy assault rifle. Water cooled machine guns are very cumbersome.
11:40 The German helmet was a better all round design, however the Brodie was developed specifically for trench warfare against incoming shrapnel and ease of manufacture, a big consideration.
Feld Marschall Von Paulus, the defender of Stalingrad for the Nazis, agreed with you. When asked after the war which, in his opinion was the most important battle, and obviously expecting him to say Stalingrad his interlocutors were astonished when he announced: "The Battle of Britain".
I joined the British Army aged 16 in the early 1970’s we were told by our instructors that the doctrine was for accurate single shot fire rather than the point and shoot of an automatic SMG which would climb as you fired so most rounds go high if you not careful. We even had to do exercises “called pokey drills” to strengthen your arms as the standard 7.62mm L1A1 SLR weighted in at 9.5lbs and 44 inches long overall
There was no need to "carry ten spare barrels", each Bren gun was issued with one spare barrel. Apparently one hot barrel would cool within the time it took for the other to overheat.
The LE Had a short magazine because the British Army have always prioritised single shot accuracy over multiple round bursts which are notoriously inaccurate, hence no requirement for the long magazine. Every British soldier is trained in the principles of marksmanship and British infantry in WW2 were trained to 'Hunt' the german MG42 gunner with all 10 trained riflemen using these very accurate LE rifles. Once the MG gunner was killed german infantry sections would usually withdraw if not supported. Long magazines are also harder to count rounds and suffer from spring wear. Snipers were still using modified Lee Enfields until the end of the 20th Century. The Bren was superb in every way and was still in use up until the 90s in a modified form as the LMG. I carried one of the bloody things in the 80s and i can confirm they are superb and every other soldier wants to 'have a go' with the Bren/LMG..... But then no other bastard wants to help clean it afterwards lol.
I used to carry the LMG too. Heavy thing to lug around, but you could handle it (unless you had a long run. As I was 6foot 5 and very fit it was all mine, lol. Just like the Bren and the Mk4 Enfield, the LMG and SLR shared a common round and the mags were interchangeable in a firefight. (Many of the boys wanted to 'borrow' one of the LMG 30rnd mags for the SLR.... it did look cool, lol) The STEN was a beast if you weren't careful. Accidents were very common - Just like the replacement the Sterling SMG (So from Angry Tubes to Silly Metal Gun)... Carried one of those too at one point. The PIAT was a spigot gun. You cooked the mechanism (a big fuck off spring) slotted the PIAT round in the channel. When the spring was released it hurled the round at the target with terrific force... although short ranged... it was a fairly effective anti tank round. That was replaced with the Charlie G (The Karl Gustaf recoiless rifle) A bloody big heavy thing that was a bit better.... ;) British Infantry were always taught accuracy of volume. During my service ('83-'94) we usually only went into action with 80 rounds... with a few bandolier packed away (if you were lucky). 80 rounds doesn't last ling if you blaze away... hence to fire discipline training. The LMG had a lot more ammo which was spread out among the section too. Hope that ramble helps you a bit :)
My only critique of your comment is that "Short Magazine Lee Enfield" doesn't mean a Lee Enfield with a short magazine, it's a shortened version of the MLE
Your missing the point. The magazine was loaded with 5 round strip clips. What's the point of having a 20 round mag when you have to load 4 strip clips into it
A man I knew from my local pub was a WW2 Bren gunner, he told me he only had one misfire during the entire war when a German prisoner being led back from the front started to argue and fight with the British guards "So I dropped the Bren down and fired and it just clicked" This was at a range of 10 ft or so and it would have cut the prisoner in half. The man was quickly subdued by his guards and my friend in amazement pointed his Bren skywards and pulled the trigger, it fired 10 rounds or so absolutely faultlessly. I often wonder if this German realised how lucky he was.
One thing I will say here, dont EVER "feel dumb" for asking a question.......I'm a tour guide on a historic warship nowadays, I have done that for over 35 years now, and so many people have said to me during that time "this might be a stupid question, but......" and my answer is ALWAYS the same, if you dont know something, and you want to find out, ask a question.... there is no such thing as a stupid or dumb question as far as I'm concerned, if you dont know, and you WANT to know, ask the question, how else will you find out or learn? It's to your credit that you want to learn and are doing something about it....I always try to answer any and all questions I get asked, sometimes I've been asked things I dont know the answer to, and I've had to go and look it up for myself, and that's great, because the one thing I am absolutely certain of, is that I dont know it all, and there's always something new to learn.......
@ my dad always said “a lawyer will tell you you should never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer.” But that is talking about lawyers, not people.
There is no such thing as a dumb question until you ask it for the third time, and then that may be equally attributed to the inability of the person answering the question to explain it adequately! 🤷♂️
@dexstewart2450 It’s not the English who refer to the UK or Britain as ‘England’, it’s Americans and some Europeans, even Germany did it. So annoying, even to the English!
Plus, if British Isles had fallen, ther'd be no need for a North Africa campaign, Germany would have had control of the Suez, the entire Mediterranean, AND the middle east. US would have had no ability to re-supply USSR via Iran (which was the route that most of the lend lease armaments and food to USSR). Germany would have had access to all the oil from the middle-east (that would have a MASSIVE impact on Germany)
P.I.A.T (Projector Infantry Anti Tank) This operated similar to a Mortar, it used the spigot principle. The back of the tube has a large spring inside that drives a rod. When cocked the rod is inside the weapon, and a bomb can be fitted in the tray. When fired, the rod springs forward into the tail of the bomb firing a small charge. The bomb flies off and the back pressure re cocks the spring, but only if you are holding it correctly. If not held correctly and you absorb too much of the recoil it may fail to re cock. It is cocked at the start by turning the butt side ways and using your feet to push back and cock it. You can then re secure the butt ready to fire it. It had limited range, but the bomb was a hollow charge type so had reasonable armour penetration.
You didn't need a bigger magazine Connor with the Lee Enfield SMLE . You didn't remove the magazine, you used 5 round stripper clips & pushed them through the breech into the magazine. I love this rifle. The mad minute where you blasted away had Germans thinking they were facing machine guns. The way the bolt worked meant you could keep it in the firing position as you worked the bolt, other than say the German Mauser where you had to move it away from your face to work the bolt. The Bren had a slow rate of fire, but was accurate as hell. I loved firing these too. And yeah, looks well cool The Projectile, Infantry, Anti Tank used a spring to fire the grenade. It wasn't rocket propelled. 303 is the British round, (bullet) .303 inch
@@Geoff-j4b no its mostly not :) .22, .38, .45, .50 .. thats the part of an inch. Like european 5.56mm is metric .. american equivalent is .223 (of an inch).
@@Geoff-j4b While the British were using .303, the US were using .30. Only when NATO was formed did they move to 7.62mm and then 5.56 - and old Ma Deuce (the .50) is still a key support weapon.
@philhallbrook7008 In intense combat, the No4 would start with 10 rounds in the Magazine. Then when empty, in order to keep up the firepower only one 5 round clip would be loaded before resuming firing. This had little effect on the overall rate of fire, but shortened the reloading pause at the cost of having more of them
The Brodie helmet was introduced during World War One when most injuries to soldiers in the trenches were caused by artillery shrapnel raining down from above. It was designed specifically with the wide brim to give protection against this hazard from above.
I tried the Sten as National Service soldier, when I pulled the trigger at a target about 20 feet away, a stream of bullets left a stripe across it! Terrifying. The Bren was lovely to fire. Not too heavy to carry and no kick back into the shoulder. The discharge reloaded the next round. The barrel would become too hot after some time and changeover was quick and simple . We were told when both became too hot we should urinate on them! The magazine held 72 rounds. The wheel on the side is the sight range setter.
The PIAT was basically a spigot mortar - hence short range. It is NOT rocket propelled, but it does have an explosive hollow charge projectile - like modern AT weapons.
One thing about the Sten SMG not mentioned in this video is that the Sten was ridiculously easy and cheap to make, it also stripped down into very small parts. This meant that not only could we equip our troops with them but they could also be dropped in parts all over occupied territory, letting us arm Partisans and French Resistance units to hit the Germans from behind. That meant that its relative unreliability and poor ergonomics don't really matter when any gun at all is an advantage and you're ambushing unsuspecting people at short range.
The PIAT was not a RPG, it was a spring loaded spigot mortar that ‘threw’ the projectile, which was a shaped charge that sent a jet of molten metal forward into the target.
@@johnritter6864 It had at least one major advantage over other antitank systems that depended on rocket propelled warheads, like bazookas and RPGs...PIAT had no back blast, and so could be fired from within small spaces like bunkers and buildings.
@@johnritter6864 You just had to pop the next bomb in - the previous one compressed the spring, ready to fire. The spring didn't throw the bomb, it was there to absorb the recoil.
@johnritter6864 the force of the recoil recocked it. All the user had to do was place another round in the breech. No second man needed. No wires to connect to the missile. No backblast and no smoke giving position away.
Yes, Connor, you can make a fully automatic "machine pistol"...funnily enough, it is called a machine pistol, and the first one was made by Austria in WW1. And that is a hollow point bullet at 10:05...they were invented in the 19th century, originally to make the bullet lighter so that it would travel faster. However, it was later found that another effect of the hollow point is that the bullet expands outward when it hits, which transfers more of the energy to the target and increases stopping power. It also prevents the bullet from going through a target...which is called overpenetration...which can be important in situations where the bad guys are mixed in with the people you do not want to shoot, like a hostage rescue for instance. And the PIAT was not a rocket propelled grenade...it was a spigot mortar...which is sort of similar to a rifle grenade in some ways. As far as the recoil of firing the PIAT, it had a massive spring in the back which drove the spigot forward to set off the small propellant charge in the base of the bomb, and then that same massive spring would absorb enough of the recoil so that the operator's shoulder could handle it. The big advantage of the PIAT was that it had no back blast like an RPG or Bazooka, and so could be safely fired from inside enclosed spaces like buildings.
Yes, the Mauser C96 (but first after a rip-off version of it had been made full auto and sold on the Chinese market) pistol with its holster/shoulder stock and Luger. Russian Stechkin and Scorpion, Mac 10 and Mac 11 from the US. The H&K VP70. I think the Glock 18 is the only “modern“pistol that falls into this category as far as I know.
@@jonaslidstrom7006 I believe you forgot the Beretta 93, which is also capable of being fired on full-auto. It even has a swing-down extra grip at the muzzle. The H&K VP70 wasn't a full-auto pistol. However, it was the first pistol with "plastic" parts and had an 18-round magazine. MsG
during the First World War, the British Infantryman was trained to fire the "mad minute" which required the soldier to be capable of firing between 15 to 18 AIMED shots per minute with the standard Lee-Enfield .303 rifle. Just imagine the fire power of a British rifle battalion, say 600 men, all capable of firing 15 to 18 shots per minute, that's an absolute hail of lead! German troops in 1914, encountering this for the very first time, believed that the British units they were fighting were actually armed with machine guns! I have had the "dubious" pleasure of using and firing the 303, the Sten, the Bren and on one memorable occasion, the Webley.....and yes, the 303 DOES kick, as 17 year-old me found out, all those years ago!
Many of those who used them in anger in two world wars were about your age. My father volunteered under age for the first. I went straight from school at 18.
Worth noting that modern standards for how you handle your kit during the mad minute are not those trained for a British soldier pre WW1 to get in excess of 40 shots per minute. They're also optimised (eg gunsmithed) weapons not the generic service rifle handed out to recruits.
So many unfinished questions when you've almost worked out what you want to ask!!!...Love watching your inquisitive mind working overtime and your reactions Connor!!!
A bazooka and RPG are all rocket-type weapons and need space behind them when fired, so firing from a building could be hazardous. A PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti-Tank) is a spigot-fired weapon similar to a mortar. The official range of a PIAT was 750 yards or 2250 feet but it was considered reliable up to 100 yards or 300 feet. It used a spring to cast the ammunition then fired a propellent some feet away. The recoil reset the PIAT for the next firing. However, the initial firing was physically demanding. Many people misunderstand that only the initial firing did require the cocking of the weapon. The spring casting of the ammunition allowed the PIAT to be fired from within a building.
I'm no firearms expert but the Mk.III Webley cartridge is a Hollow Point. When the bullet hits the target, namely a body, the force, directed by the cavity on the head of the bullet, causes an outward force. This rips apart any muscle or bone. Most bullets simply leave a small entry wound. A hollow point leaves a gaping hole and is therefore ideal for close quarter combat.
The hollow point also leaves a regular entry wound. The magic will happen as you said on the inside as a hollowpoint will peel back like a flower, ripping more flesh and muscle due to the expansion of size and leave a bigger hole on a "soft target". Now, once a hollowpoint hits a "hard target", for example, bone it will either break up or stop dead on the hard target either way it loses all it's energy and will not exit the body. A regular bullet, if it hits a bone, it will deflect and continue to exit the body as it basically held it's shape and most of the energy until that point but it still held enough to continue going. So yes, hollowpoint is better for close quarters, especially in a hostage situation due to it having a lower risk of it going through the enemy and into a civilian. Though if there were no civilians in the area or if you're in an open area of combat, a standard bullet will be better due to it retaining it's shape and energy after hitting a target making it better for penetration
the sticky grenade was basically a lightbulb in a sock covered in sticky tar, when it made contact it would stay together while being thrown. Then on contact the glass would shatter giving it a wet sock level of contact on Armor
The sten had a pistol grip that could be clipped on in exchange of the standard stock. If I remember correctly the USA wanted $200 (or £200 ?) for a thompson and they wanted paying in gold as they thought we were finished and a sten cost fifteen shilling (under a £1)
The magazine has a spring which, as the gun is reloaded pushes the next round into the breech. There is a limit to its strength and ten was the maximum it could move. The spring is in the bottom of the magazine and is a simple long v shape. To conserve the life of this spring we never loaded more than one clip of 5 rounds. This as a National Service soldier in the 1950. The rifle and bayonet shown are WW1. WW11 had the wooden part covering the end of the barrel removed. Non infantry units bayonet was a simple, short round spike.
The entire British Army was not in Britain at that time. It was spread around the globe in the far east, the Indian continent, north Africa, middle east, Europe. It would still have fought Hitler. And, of course, we had an "underground" army. It would not have been so easy to take and keep the UK.
People always compare hitlers invasion of Russia to napoleon's. But because we never got to see it, people don't realise that britain would have been hitlers spain
No invasion barges. The channel to cross and the small matter of the largest naval force around at that time who on learning invasion was imminent would immediately turn for home to block said channel. So 2 problems there. Tigers in the narrow lanes and roads of Kent facing a very hostile public most of the older men having been through WWI trained , proven soldiers and capable of mounting strong defences. The Battle of Britain was without a shadow of a doubt one of the most critical moments in British history and maybe he'd eventually have taken her, but they'd have paid a very heavy price
@@beefy8269 Yes and No. Germany did have invasion craft. several thousand of them. Certainly nothing compared to what war organised for D-day. We knew about them prior to the battle of Britain and expected an invasion to follow after finding they were being amassed in France. Had the battle of Britain fallen to the German attack. Invasion was certain. The Germans had a lot of tanks that would have been sent not just tigers. At the time of the battle of Britain the Uk did not have many large tanks such as the Churchill, Cromwell, Sherman that could stand up to the Tigers. Germany had very few Tigers and may not have needed to send many of them. Panzer 3 and 4 tanks were far more common and were capable of taking on the Cruiser tanks and medium tanks the UK had in reserve. Panzer 3/4 tanks were a lot faster and smaller than Tigers and came in many variants that were ideal for fighting in towns. Then there are the tank destroyers like the Stug that actually had a better kill to death ratio than the tigers overall. The Uk did have a lot of ww1 veterans but many of them would have been old men or incapable of fighting not that would likely stop them if it came to actual invasion. The Uk also had the ring of steel situated around south England. This composed of every old artillery piece, museum weaponry and experimental vehicle that was left for them to use to mount a defence. On average each weapon had 10 shells each. We had lost most of our equipment in France after Dunkerque. The royal navy was huge yes and very capable. But it was spread out over the globe in several areas and most of it in either Gibraltar or Malta. Possibly off chasing one or more of Germanys larger warships so were far from home. The Germans could keep them occupied long enough to mount the invasion and cram the channel with enough U-boats that you could practically walk from France to Dover without getting wet. Just goes to show how royally screwed we were at the time and yet we came out on top despite the odds working against us.
@amandarhodes4072 Excellent reply , rhanks so much for that, obviously your very well read on our darkest hour.Where were the invasion barges kept? I can't remember ever reading about them being a target for the RAF, which I'd have thought would have some sort of priority be pretty difficult to RV them all in one place?
The tree stump was a palm tree. From the cut mark on the top left of the stump I would suspect that the Japanese cut it down to build one of their bunkers. The photo is of Australian troops advancing along the northern coast of New Guinea circa 1943/44 BTW, I have fired the Bren gun and was more accurate with it than I was with the SMLE. It is unbelievably accurate, even for a 13 year old, which i was at the time. (Might explain why I was more accurate with a weapon resting on bipods, than with an unsupported rifle.) Additionally, as it it used the same ammunition as the .303 SMLE, this helped simplified resupply. Do you realise that the US also used this helmet design into 1942, The colour photo of the soldier near the truck wheel is actually of a US soldier.
I think it's quite a thought about the Battle of Britain...... Stalingrad bled the German Army almost to death, because for whatever his deranged reasoning was, Hitler would not allow the Germans to retreat and regroup, he ordered them to stand and fight on the ground they occupied, ground which as it eventually proved, they couldn't hold..... Stalingrad occupied German(i.e. Hitler's) thinking, especially as he accepted his country's inability to defeat the RAF, meaning he postponed and then eventually cancelled the planned invasion of the UK. Thus his western flank remained open, vulnerable so that when he undertook his main objective, the invasion of Russia, he obliged his generals and his army to fight a war on two fronts, one of the classic "don't do" dictums of modern warfare. In all fairness, in their different ways both battles were hugely instrumental in Hitler's eventual defeat, and I certainly wouldnt like to specify that one was more significant than the other, despite being just a little bit biased, being A) British and B) ex-RAF, having done 13 years service between 1965 and 1977.
@MichaelHill-we7vt I think you have to bear in mind that with the British out of the war, the North African campaign would be over. Consquence of this would be a months earlier attack on Russia that would not get halted by winter. Plus, Rommels Afrika Corps would be in that fight. The battle of Moscow was a close run thing. Many historians believe it would have fallen with Rommels forces adding their weight.
@@billbuckley8423 I mean it would have been won by the germans had Barbarossa started when it was meant to, it was the italian fuck ups in greece and north Africa that both drew away many german forces but also fully delayed the start of the operation until after greece finally fell. It is also likely we would have seen far more veteran units(more so than there was already) for Barborossa with the likes of the fallschirmjäger and other air corps able to focus to the east. On the flip side to this, I dont think we would have seen an automatic KO from the germans winning at Moscow, as the despite what Stalin said at the time, I would very much imagine he would have retreated to fight on, a new capital being established at Stalingrad. This ignoring the tfact much of the production facilities would have been moved behind the ural mountain range, plus allied lend lease would still be arriving via Murmansk and Archangelsk. On the flip flip side, lend lease would have greatly reduced assuming the UK fell, Not only because of closer U boat bases (they had those in norway anyway) but even just the fact the staging for such convoys would take much longer, and they would have a much harsher sea to sail through (which is no small thing to state considering the Atlantic both now and at the time). HOWEVER on the triple flip side, The UK losing the battle of britian was very unlikely, even assuming they won the airwar (with the state of the luftwaffe high command, or therefore lack of command, being ignored), that doesnt explain away both the monumental task of both driving off the royal navy and also somehow supplying the german army with enough supplies while also supplying enough manpower to fight what would have been brutal hedgerow to hedgerow fighting similar to the escape from Normandy later in 44 with the bocage fighting.
If the Anglo-sphere had fallen or surrendered, there would have been no longer any strategic interest or platform into Europe by the United States. Instead they would have focused fully on defeating Japan in the Pacific after Pearl Harbour. Hitler would have had no reason to declare war on the USA as the Brits would have longer been receiving arms and supplies from America. In fact, many of the weapons, tanks and planes the Brits used were American manufactured such as the Browning machine gun, Sherman tank and mustang fighter aircraft.
Many machine guns are basically machine pistols just with a slightly longer barrel and a large stock. The term machine pistol is usually reserved for weapons that fire actual pistol rounds.
Just to add about the sten, since I havent seen it elsewhere in the commends. But its a truly the simplest gun on the battlefield, You could fully strip that weapon in about 30 seconds, you can field strip it in about 10, anyone could be trained on it very easily and very quickly, it was designed in mind of the fact if it was being used as soon as it was made, there is a decent chance the Germans were invading already and ammunition would be in short supply, hence it was chambered to take the same 9mm parabellum ammunition as the Germans. This fact lended itself very well with it being supplied to resistance fighters who could often scavenge for more ammunition with relative ease. Same again for commando units who made great use of the sten. A less considered fact about the, and why it had its iconic horizontal magazine feed is so that it could be used from the hip or from the prone position.
Okay so to answer nearly all your questions: well yes you can make a gun which is like the same size as a pistol, the Steyr "Repetierpistole M1912/P16" which is as big as the semi-auto cousin the Steyr M1912, that is without the extended mag (note that its reloaded by stripper-clips), it could fire around about 800 rounds per minute, this machine pistol was one of the first ever to be designed and made and was used in the Austro-Hungarian Army during WW1, also using ATRs (Anti-Tank Rifles) in WW2 they would aim for under the track and at the engine since once the engine was hit the tank could catch on fire, potentially cooking the ammo, the Boys ATR was also slightly larger in cartridge firing 13.2×99mm (.50 Cal is 12.7x99mm), also those RPG's you were talking 'bout are actually not 'RPGs' that is a PIAT a mechanized grenade launcher, reason why it is called like that is because it uses mostly a spring-loaded mechanism to launch with a bit of a propellant charge or gunpowder, it wasn't made for Anti-tank persay but Anti-Infantry purposes.
As for AT Rifles, Its a mix of ammunition type, propellent size, propellent to bullet ratio, barrel length, among other things. Fun fact, the boys and its .55 round found later lease of life in WW2 as a heavy sniper rifle, still well suited to disabling lighter vehicles, such as half tracks and targeting combatants behind solid cover. Many AT rifles did in fact. As for aiming them, there is a fantastic training video for the boys on youtube I would highly recommend. But generally you would be aiming for weakpoints or shots that might otherwise disable the tank. So like as you said, tracks are absolutely a valid target, but other primary targets from the front were the drivers viewport, the turret ring and generally any other optic they could see, from the side you had far more leeway, but generally again the turret ring and the engine would be prime targets. It wasnt encouraged but it is worth nothing that the boys and other AT rifles could often penetrate the armour of interwar and early WW2 tank designs. This is why we would see the later rise of both field and factory modifications of german armour in particular, but soviet as well to add additional armour plates either directly to the armour surface or in the case of the germans, in the form of armoured skirts which had an added benefit of helping to make the oncoming round "tumble" (in practice making the round turn sideways greatly reducing its penetrative effect).
Just to tack on about the PIAT, when the spigot mortar was first shown off to the upper echelons including Churchill, it almost killed them. Though I personally think the single greatest weapon that came from the spigot mortar was the Hedgehog launcher, which absolutely sealed the fate of many uboat crews during the course of the Battle of the Atlantic. I dont want to say it changed the course of the battle because that credit is more deserved by the tactics of western approaches command, that and asdic/sonar, however the Hedgehog certainly played a large role in that too. That and the spigot mortar had immense "giggle factor" for a lack of a better term, from the Churchill AVRE with its flying dustbin, to the Australian Matilda's armed with them in the pacific.
The Boys rifle was a .55 caliber, the .50 cal like the Barrett sniper rifle you know is only .50 cal. Smaller case, smaller powder charge. Basically the Boys rifle was effectively the equivalent of an "ackley improved" .50 BMG. Special rounds too for armour piercing. They were sometimes used as long range sniper rifles, which possibly had something to do with the development of the Barrett, although you could argue that that ties back to either the Winchester .50 cal anti tank rifle, or Captain Bill Brophy's conversion of a Russian 14.5mm to .50cal to create the first "true" .50 BMG sniper rifle during the vietnam war. The PIAT was effectively a horizontally firing mortar, which is why it's got massive recoil. Mortars have the tripod with the big plate to transfer that recoil into the ground. RPG's are rocket propelled grenades instead, creating a backblast from the rocket that offsets the recoil of the projectile. but this makes them highly visible and stirs up a lot of dust.
the RPG is a recoiless gun. once the projectile has left the barrel, deployed its fins and its a distance away, a sustainer motor kicks in and it goes downrange.
A PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) is not an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade). It uses a shaped charge warhead with a small propellant charge ignited by a spigot (internal spike) fired with a spring.
5:05 The main difference between a clip and a magazine is that a clip is used to load ammunition into a magazine, while a magazine is used to feed ammunition into a firearm: Clip A metal or plastic device that holds rounds of ammunition together to make them easier to load into a magazine or cylinder. Clips can be pre-loaded or reused. Magazine A spring-fed device that holds ammunition and feeds it into the firearm's chamber during shooting. There are two types of magazines: detachable and internal. Detachable magazines can be removed from the firearm and inserted when needed. Internal magazines are part of the firearm and are not removable. They would have to carry around longer clips or more bullets.
Britain was the only Nation resisting Germany for a full year after France fell. Eventually America started supplying are small island. We shall not forget the British grit, determination and courage that saved are small island, and to the lives lost that made us who we are today. Thank you America and thank you too the gritty brits who served and protected us.
USA’s industry had surpassed Britain’s long before ww1, just after the Great Depression, it had stagnated and reversed a bit. Our payments supported the rebirth of American industry and pulled them out of the Great Depression, even whilst slowly draining our coffers on top of expenses for the war and supplies to the USSR on top of that. Even after the war, our debt had to be restructured so we could continue paying the US for wartime loans and such. A very complicated mess, but absolutely necessary to keep us in the fight and had the Americans not profited so much, they likely would not have been able to aid us to the extent that they did. As I said, very complicated issue
It wasn't the only nation fighting the Nazis. There was Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa too, who were independent countries and declared war independently. It was the nearest nation.
@ when people say Britain alone, they always mean Britain and the British commonwealth. No Brit ever takes credit from the brave men and women that fought with us from the commonwealth and Empire
4:32 being heavy means it’s better for putting one’s weight behind the bayonet, moreover the reason they didn’t extend the magazine it is because it’s less practical for shooting over the parapet. The 20 round magazine did exist though in WW1. The sten and Thompson was equipped by every sergeant who wanted it rather than sticking to their rifle (usually to avoid being hit by snipers). A smaller sten would not be practical due to not having space for a spring.
A guy from my dads reg knocked a german tank out with a piat, but he never knew about it. The tank machine gunner got him before the projectile hit the tank.
Just thought I'd answer some of the questions you had, and some of the things the original video got wrong, with my experiences using these guns, and educating the public as a reenactor. Correcting the original video: The Lee Enfield is not significantly longer than other rifles, it was less than an inch longer than the Kar98k and M1 Garand. The image they use is a Magazine Lee Enfield Mk.I, not a Short Magazine Lee Enfield No.1 Mk.III*, or Rifle No.4 Mk.1 as used in World War 2. The Webley revolver was not the standard issue sidearm of World War 2, that was the No.2 Enfield (though they look very similar). Commonwealth troops did carry the Webley, I even have a modified Canadian made 1937 pattern holster because the standard one wouldn't fit the Webley that Canada still used. the RAF and Royal Navy still used the Webley as well, but the army used the No.2 Enfield. Gonna be a bit nit-picky, the "Brodie" (not really called that in British service, even as a nickname) was not exactly the same between the wars. The shell stayed mostly the same, but the liner and chinstrap changed significantly between the Mk.I and Mk.II. We also changed to the Mk.III "Turtle" during the war, mostly during D-Day. Little more anecdotal, but the Mk.II helmet is NOT comfortable at all, there's a reason soldiers were issued the "cap comforter" to wear under the helmet. To be fair, my liner is original, very old and the leather is rock hard. Never had issues with hearing or vision in a Mk.II. The No.5 Rifle saw VERY limited Service in World War 2, in Norway. The name "Jungle Carbine" comes from post-war, during the Malayan Emergency. The Lanchester was not intended just for the Navy, it's just that only the Navy chose to adopt it. 9mm Parabellum was far from standard for submachine guns. The US used .45 ACP, France used 7.65 Longue, the USSR used 7.62 Tokarev. The 9mm was more standard in the Axis, with both Germany and Italy using it. (Realised this was in a comment later in the video, but I wrote it already and don't want to delete it lmao) The Lanchester was not simple, that's why the Sten was made. In fact, the name for the Sten project originally was something like "Lanchester improvement project". I don't know much about sticky bombs, but they weren't common. Soldiers carried No.36 Mills Bombs, and No.77 White Phosphorus more than anything else Answering questions: The reason the Lee Enfield uses 10 rounds is because that is the most you can use while still having a comfortable prone position. British doctrine of the time heavily relied on lying prone, which is why the magazine for the Sten is on the side, and on the top for the Bren. There are fully automatic pistols, most famously the Glock 18, but it goes as far back as the German M712 "Schnellfeuer", a fully automatic C96. The Bren No.2 gunner (also known as the loader) would carry one spare barrel in a dedicated bag. Essentially, you use one barrel until it gets just hot enough that another few rounds would damage it, but still not enough to actually cause any issues. You replace it, and use the new one until the old one cooled down enough to use, which it usually would by the time the other is getting hot. In the early 20th century, a standard type of ammunition wasn't really decided on. Most weapons still used round-tipped or flat ammunition, until Germany adopted the pointed tip which has become standard. Most of those rounds shown were used in Webley pistols from pre-World War 1. Really, a helmet is a helmet is a helmet. The guy who's wearing it doesn't care as much about whether or not it protects slightly more or less than the enemies, it doesn't really matter. The Mk.II is great for things falling onto your head, which when you think about the fact that it was designed for World War 1, where you already had protection from the side and all you need to worry about is things on your head, it makes sense. The Mk.II has better visibility as well. The US M1 Helmet and British Airborne HSAT (though I love it) in my experience do obscure your view a little, never had that issue with my Mk.II. Mobility is also important, when looking up from a prone position, you don't want the helmet in your back not letting you look up. The US helmet has about the same coverage as the German one, it's a lot deeper than the Mk.II. The Mk.II is a lot like the US one, almost a combination of the US, German and British in some ways. Anti-tank rifles had a few ways of being more powerful, mostly by cramming much more gunpowder into the round. Guns like the Pzb. 39 used a standard sized bullet in a much larger casing, allowing for more gunpowder, and therefore a faster, more powerful shot. The Boys ATR in specific used a .55 calibre round, or 13.9x99mm. the .50 BMG is obviously .50 calibre, or 12.7x99mm. Interestingly, the .50 calibre was designed for a machine gun (hence the name .50 Browning Machine Gun) which was used in World War 2, and is still used today. Early shaped-charge style weapons had loads of different versions, the PIAT was just one. It worked more like a mortar as many have already said, with a spring inside which fires it. There is no rocket propulsion. Also, RPG does not stand for "Rocket-Propelled Grenade", it is the Romanised abbreviation of the Russian name for their own weapons "Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyot" meaning "hand-held antitank grenade launcher". .303 just means that the bullet is 0.303 inches in diameter. The Lanchester only has one barrel, the other holes are air-cooling vents, and support for the large cooling shroud, so yes, you're right. Honestly couldn't say for sure why the sticky bomb was round, my best guess is that since it's being thrown, it means it will always, no matter how it lands, have a good amount touching it. With a geometric pattern, it could hit a corner of the shape and not stick at all. The video showed it being thrown from a very close range, meaning chances are it had too long of a fuse from that distance, so it fell off before detonating. Good pick of guns, but if you had a rifle, chances are you wouldn't have a pistol. At least not an issued pistol like the Webley. Sure, you can pick one up, but it'll most likely be a stolen German one, or a traded American one. Pistols were mostly for officers, though it's a bit of a myth that one one else had them. The Bren is honestly not as heavy as it seems, if you hold it right. When not using it, you carry it with the handle down by your side, much like the drill for carrying a rifle. This relieves the strain on your muscles if you carried it like a modern rifle. When firing, you are almost always in a prone position, or using it on a surface, so you don't need to worry about weight then. Honestly your arms would probably get more tired with a rifle, since even prone you have to hold it up while the Bren has a bipod. Different calibres (more accurately, nations) used different methods of naming ammunition. Some nations used inches, others used millimetres. The way to tell is the position of the decimal (unless you're getting into much larger guns, such as naval guns or artillery). So a .22 is a 0.22 inch diameter round, and a 7.62 is 7.62mm in diameter.
Stalingrad was basically a sinkhole for German troops. The Battle of Britain proved that Germany wouldn't be unstoppable, and meant that they were forced to reconsider. I agree in the sense that Britain falling was more important than Stalingrad. As a Brit myself, I love watching you react to stuff like this
The thing about the Lee Enfield is.... Its capacity was already twice the size, most other bolt action rifles held 5 shots, the Lee Enfield could carry 10, but also you wouldn't want more capacity, the well to hold the extra shots would require more resources and the UK was already struggling for metal, but also it would result in more misfires likely. The smaller capacity would also help with ammo conservation
The PIAT was a precursor to an RPG and had a heavier warhead then the MK1 bazooka. It was handheld spigot mortar which used an enormous spring to dampen the recoil much like the buffer tube on a modern AR type rifle. Because it didn't use a rocket motor it could be fired under cover or in buildings with no risk of injuring friendly troops. Unfortunately it was a technological dead end because it was operating at the very limit of recoil the human body could handle so there was no way to increase range or firepower. The MK2 bazooka and later RPG7 far surpassed it in both.
The piat was apparently a nightmare to use in a war zone. There’s a famous VC cross winner who used it to knock out several tanks, Jeremy Clarkson does a special on him. It seems to be ridiculously difficult to load if not in perfect condition
@damedusa5107 most of the stories about it's problems were made up later by people who never used it and are not supported by first hand accounts. It wasn't any heavier than the Boyse rifle it replaced me it's recoil impulse while powerful was more gradual so more comfortable. It's lack of back blast meant troops didn't have to expose themselves to fire it like the Bazooka and could even fire it prone from under bushes. The later models were fitted with tangential sights so they could use it as an indirect fire weapon like a traditional mortar which made troops assaulting in steep terrain like northern Italy extremely happy. While it was designed as an anti tank weapon it saw a lot of use against enemy machine gun positions and was used extensively in urban combat fro breaching partition walls because it was safe enough to use inside buildings. In short the troops loved them because they were versatile and effective.
.303 is, more or less, point 303 of an inch in diameter. The recoil of a 303 bullet in a Lee Enfield rifle is considerable. As a 14 year old, if you didn't hold the butt hard against your shoulder, would likely break the shoulder due to the recoil.
I found this. The British .303 rifle round (also known as the .303 British or 7.7×56mmR) was widely used during WWII. Here are its dimensions: Cartridge Dimensions: Overall Length: Approximately 78.11 mm (3.075 inches) Bullet Diameter: 7.92 mm (0.312 inches) Neck Diameter: 8.64 mm (0.340 inches) Base Diameter: 12.04 mm (0.474 inches) Rim Diameter: 13.72 mm (0.540 inches) Case Length: 56.44 mm (2.22 inches) The round had a rimmed case, which helped with reliable feeding in bolt-action rifles like the Lee-Enfield. It was commonly loaded with a 174-grain bullet during WWII, but variants existed for specific applications.
My dad was in the Royal Army in the 1950s and had a Bren Gun issued to him, but also he had a Lee Enfield short rifle as a backup. 303 refers to the 0.303 (inch) calibre round fired by the weapon. Smg = submachinegun. ACP = Automatic Colt Pistol round. When the military in the UK switched to standard 7.62mm ammunition, some Lee Enfields and many Bren Guns were converted to the new size round, because of accuracy or effectiveness.
No he wasn't in the Royal Army. The Navy and Air force Are Royal, Raised by the Monarch, the Permanent Army was raised by Parliament in the civil war, so not Royal. However There are Royal Regiments in the Army.
A couple of advantages of the Bren gunn that often don't get mentioned are: a relatively lower rate of fire ment the barrels didn't heat up as fast and could go longer between changes and have fewer interruptions in laying down fire. Barrels would last longer before replacement therefore require less logistical support. They were simpler to manufacture - and could be supplied in greater numbers. The German "zipper" machine gunn MG42 was more intricate, higher rates of fire required more cleaning and barrels had to be changed often and wore out quickly. It also exhausted ammunition supplies quickly..
Normaly don't comment but did serve as an armourer in the british army and also love my Millitary history, seemed rude not to comment Q's not seen Answers To:- The 303 comes from the cailbre of the round 0.303" (Inches) (approx 9mm, (1 Inch = 25mm (approx)) ) On the rounds Question (bullets) the one in the centre is ofc a "Hollow point round" (Actually trained on the bren in cadets before joining) The PROPER manual way to fire the bren gun for prolonged periods was to change the barrel when it started to overheat (to prevent misfires) for THE spare when this was done the operator ofc carried on having at it, the gunners mate would then urinate on the hot barrel (water bottle was second option best not to waste fresh water) Surprised the Broady got a mention it was a bad helmet But awsome for the war effort as it is simply a steel disc pressed into shape, the german helmet was far better but cost the same as about 50 broadys to make if i rem. right Also Surprising not mention in the video you watched was the fact that the Sten gun was a fav. in the espionage / resistance Field due to the fact you could easily break it down and carry it in pockets/bags
5.00 it’s a question of weight v firepower. The Lee Enfield took 2 5-round clips. The clips were lighter than carrying magazines and loaded much faster than individual rounds. The rate of accurate fire was such that the invading Imperial German Army was stopped by them in 1914 at the Battle of the Marne, believing they had run into lines of machine guns, forcing the Germans to turn south instead of North and West to take Paris. The advance then stalled forcing them to dig-in. A ten round capacity was enough.
The PIAT isn't a rocket launcher or a Recoilless rifle (which is what the rpg is) It's launching rounds with a spring and a charge ignited as its launched. So you have a big heavy spring and bolt coming back into the shooter.
Technically speaking America was on the side of Britain (YOU were on OUR side) not engaging until the end of 1941. Thanks very much for your support, late though it was.
The Lee-Enfield could take 10 rounds, the M1 Garand took 8, and most rifles carried 5. .303 inch (7.7mm) is British rifle calibre, equivalent to US .30-06 (7.62mm). Trying to make a machine-gun pistol sized is virtually impossible, hence the submachinegun - using pistol ammunition. Water-cooling is very efficient, but the water-jacket of such weapons makes them very heavy - great for fixed positions, not so good for moving quickly. Usually air-cooled machineguns, came with two spare barrels, which was all you needed. The PIAT worked on a spigot mortar principle - A spring drove the firing-pin into the propellant in the tail of the bomb, the recoil driving the pin back for the next shot. With an adapter-plate it could also fire mortar-bombs, giving it a HE/smoke capability. The design was better than a rocket in some ways, because there is no back-blast. The Lanchester was a direct copy of the German MP. 28, with the barrel being the central hole, and the others drawing air into the shroud for cooling. The sticky bomb was actually rejected by the army, until Churchill heard about it - it was a disaster
The greatest weopen we had was radar, communications, and a system of spotting german aircraft and monitoring them, prioritising them. This system was ready and perfected for 8 years, the germans didn't know about it and sent planes over completely unaware what they were going into. Our planes would have been flying around blind and basically running out of fuel. Our radar and communication systems saved us.
One aspect of the Battle of Britain that is frequently overlooked was the Recovery and Repair of downed RAF fighters, many downed Hurricanes and Spitfires that would otherwise have needed newly built aircraft to replace them were fairly quickly repaired and returned to service.
The Germans knew about radar and in 1940 were ahead of the UK in radar development. What was the great secret was the way the information from the radar was managed filtered and presented to the fighter controllers in such a way to permit successful interceptions to take place. It was like the first concept of the internet.
Piat had spring to propel the round so had no gas to defuse out the back like the bazooka . 303 was the calibre of the round used by commonwealth troops in the majority of weapons
I believe you are completely correct in saying that the Battle of Britain air war was indeed more crucial than Stalingrad . There are too many scenarios to include but no D Day no U.SAF bombing raids from U.K no cracking of the German codes and so much more
@@sas60che "WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood" I don't wish to be callous but to me it seems the blood was spilt by soviet incompetence. What would Russia have done without the lend lease.
@@DarthBill-h6f Without American lend lease (according to experts ) Russia would still have won. The war would certainly have taken at least a year extra but Russia would still have won.
10:05 "Does this have a dent in it?" Yes, hollow point. When the round impacts, it spreads out more, transfering it's energy to the target faster making it a much more devastating round. Also known as dumdums. Soldiers sometimes score the jacket on their rifle rounds for a similar effect.. Though it would be a warcrime IIRC. 14:20 Yep, big gun goes through a fair bit of steel. Though as the video said, only really useful vs armoured cars and the earlier tanks and then usually not from the front, depending on the model. 17:00 Piat is not an RPG.. it works like a spigot mortar, there is no rocket motor 20:20 Yes, just the centre, the rest for cooling. 24:00 303 is the british equvilant to a 30.06 (thirty-aught-six) in the US (Garand / BAR / Springfield) 26:00 .22 is calibre which is 0.22of an inch. 30cal 0.3" (303 or 30.06 are about 30cal but of a different design) 50 cal is 0.5" (or about 12.7mm), Modern military rounds are in mm with 5.56(being close to .22 in diamater but as a rifle round is traveling much much faster) and 7.62 being standard rounds throughout NATO. Bullets work by transfering energy to a target. The more energy it puts into the target, the more damage it will do. Unintuitively, bullets that pass trough targets too easily do less damage. If you see any balistic gel being shot in slow motion, you see a cavity form where the bullet is dumping the energy into it.. That cavity is what does the damage when shot, not the little piece of metal going straight through you. Though fragmentation and tumbling rounds are obviously going to do even more damage. Lets not even get into explosive tipped rounds. People are scary.
Just on the point of helmets, I think arguably your right. As proven by the sheer fact later helmet designs would appear to follow designs closer to the stahlhelm. Thought I would say as an own of a M1 Helmet, I think that is a very close second. It is also worth mentioning that each countries designs came from each countries experiences in war. In particular for the British, this would harken back to the blood filled days of WW1 where they were particularly concerned about fragmentation shells and other bits of raining debris, hence the wider rim you see on the helmet to help protect from that like a very small umbrella. It is also worth noting that these helmets were very unlikely to save you from direct fire and were certainly more geared toward anti fragmentation and maybe some lower calibre rounds.
Spare barrels for the Bren could have been carried by multiple people. Just put a couple in a backpack. A water cooling system all has to be carried by one person. Changeable barrels spreads the weight around
The pistol round with a hole in it is a Dum Dum round only for use against native adversaries, the round hits and spreads, 0.45" hole in front hole as big as your fist or larger in the back, they are illegal under the Geneva convention I believe.
The mags were small on the enfield series of rifles to allow accurate fire from prone position as british doctrine during that time focused on accurate fire in a short amout of time. same case with the sten which is why it loads from the side rather than from the bottom of the reciever as you could load it when aiming an lying down.
The 10 round Lee Enfield was usually only loaded with 5 rounds. The spring in the removable magazine would perish over time when fully loaded. Sten and Bren were the ammo hogs, for bolt action rifles 10 is plenty.
Barrel changes Vs water cooling - the weight of the barrels is less than the weight of water coolant. Some German SMGs had a higher rate of fire but needed more frequent barrel changes so were no different in rate of fire.
MGs, not SMGs. SMGs typically don't have changeable barrels, they are not used in the same way to deliver a 'beaten zone' of firepower. For Conor's benefit, an MG is a machine gun - an SMG is a sub-machine gun (usually firing pistol ammunition, as opposed to rifle ammunition from an MG). .45 calibre ACP has a diameter of 0.45 inches (ACP = Automatic Colt Pistol, i.e. for weapons designed by John Browning, originally for the Colt range of pistols, e.g. the 1911 Government - the classic US automatic pistol).
7:00 You do actually raise a valid point here, and it kind of was attempted by the British army just after the war ended. It was called the Viper mk1 and it was an experimental submachine gun, derived from the sten, which was designed to be fired one handed. The trigger was placed just underneath the magazine (which stuck out to the side just like a sten), and had a specially shaped butt stock with which the user would clamp it under their armpit. The design was never adopted but it's still an interesting footnote in firearms history.
The Sten was a designed as a cheaper alternatiive to the Lanchester submachine gun. .303 round is a 7.6962mm round as we used Imperial measurements back then. Please coirrrect me if i am wrong but the American 30cal round was the closest at 7.62mm
Connor, the Wembley cartridge with the "indentation" is what is called a "hollow point." A hollow point bullet is a type of expanding bullet with a hollow cavity at the tip that increases the bullet's stopping power. When a hollow point bullet hits a soft target, it expands and transfers more of its energy into the target over a shorter distance.
1. Big advantage of the Sten was that it could be fired lying down. The German MP 38 and 40 with the magazine hanging below the rest of the gun was difficult to fire whilst lying prone. 2. The Bren: my old man, wartime Corporal Substantive Sergeant, reckoned he could get an entire magazine into a 1 inch square at 100 yards, on single shot. Still being used in the Falklands War. 3. Lee Enfield: in a 'mad minute' a well trained infantryman should fire 15 rounds into a target 300 yards away. The record was 36, aimed, rounds per min. 4. The Webly was treated as a 'toy' by soldiers, who only came across it when they had to clean one for the Officer who 'owned' it. 5. Brodie helmet was designed to protect against shrapnel and was being replaced by the 'Turtle' helmet towards the end of WW2. 6. The PIAT was a Spigot Mortar, big advantage was that there was no 'flash' to show the placement of the firer. Supposed to be better than the Bazooka. 7. The 303 was a bullet with a diameter of 0.303 inches. 8. The Sticky Bomb was detested.
If you look at the photo at 8:40 and then at the picture at 17:52 you can see where the painter has used the photo to create part of the picture. On the right hand side is the soldier using the tree stump to fire his bren gun and in the background can be seen the light tank! The painter has used a bandage around the bren gunners head to add a bit of action.
The PIAT shell was propelled by a spring, making it silent and no cloud of smoke to give away the firer's position. The drawback was a short range and difficulty resetting for then next shot
303 is The Ammunition of the Lee-Enfield, arguably one of the best rifles at the beginning of WW2 (although the US did later bring in the M1 Garand which was also an excellent rifle).
A 303 is a 7.7. So similar to a 7.62 round. But it had a rim. An older design than what the Germans were using. The British did look at moving to the 303 rimless. But with war looming and many stores of the 303 and rifles available decided to stick with the standard 303. A very powerful round. But showing its age compared to other rounds of the era
Britain had tried to switch to a rimless round way back in 1913, the .276”, the Enfield P.13 had been designed to use it, service trials were scheduled to begin in late 1914 and if successful would have seen the Lee Enfield fully replaced in British service by 1919, unfortunately W.W.I got in the way and the Army decided that switching your service rifle and standard round during a war wasn’t a smart idea.
@ That’s true, and the .303” was still being used by the British Army as late as the early seventies, the Lee-Enfield No4 rifle wasn’t fully replaced by the 7.62 L1A1 until the mid sixties, the Vickers HMG wasn’t withdrawn until the late sixties and the Lee-Enfield sniper rifle in .303” wasn’t replaced until 1972.
@ That’s true, and the .303” was still being used by the British Army as late as the early seventies, the Lee-Enfield No4 rifle wasn’t fully replaced by the 7.62 L1A1 until the mid sixties, the Vickers HMG wasn’t withdrawn until the late sixties and the Lee-Enfield sniper rifle in .303” wasn’t replaced until 1972.
The flat top rounds are wad cutters which opend out flat in the wound causing a lot of damage the one that's a hollow point will open like a flowers petals and come apart, for military use they are now ileagal as are called dumdum the round head round or full metal jacket round are the ones that are are in use after ww2
The machine pistol is real thing! Water cooling can provide more seamless continued fire than changing barrels. But you need a lot of water. It's generally only seen in older, heavier guns that aren't meant to be portable. The different bullet types on the webley, I believe, are just experimenting with shapes The German helmet probably is the best for protection. An AT rifle typically saw use on tracks of a vehicle, or in ambush, waiting for a clear, non-angled shot on the thinner side armour. A bigger bullet weighs more. More mass takes more force to slow down, and therefore can get through more stuff. The armour the PIAT was facing was mostly heavier steel. Steel is better armour than aluminium because it's denser, and that means it can take more beating. The RPG (better English acronym: HATG, handheld anti-tank grenade is the original name in Russian) started as a handheld grenade. It later became mounted with a recoilless rifle, which gave it some range (as it turns out, you can't throw it very far). Modern RPGs have rockets in them, an are also launched by a recoilless rifle. They don't need all the gas to go into throwing the warhead (bomb) because it goes far on its own. The PIAT was a shaped-charge warhead. It had a copper lining inside the big front bit. When the precession cap/fuse hit something, explosives would melt the copper and turn it into a hypersonic jet of death. The idea of aluminium filings for anti-tank jobs was tried. It turns out that the aluminium gets hot and coagulates. However, the British developed a new kind of explosive shell: HESH. High-explosive Squash-head would flatten C-4 or some other squishy explosive against armour, and explode. This would make the other side of the armour it hit break apart, and turn the inside of a tank into a blender. "Where'd the crew go? Everywhere."
'Three-oh-three' refers to the caliber of the weapon/ammunition, 0.303 of an inch. It would be close to that used in the Browning '30 cal' M1917 machine guns of the period that used a 0.3 of an inch caliber round.
The Lanchester and the Stirling that followed, both have an air cooling shroud around the barrel, so yes there is only one barrel hole. The Short Lee-Enfield .303 (size in inches of the rounds) would be my choice, with the Bren a close second. I fired both of these as a cadet and we were told to put our berets against our shoulders when firing the .303. Bren was great fun and very accurate with single shot. I also fired the 7.62mm SLR, 9mm Browning pistol and the Stirling SMG. Also got to fire a Bofors 40mm AA gun with blank shells (Breakup) across Portsmouth Harbour.
20:25 side holes are for cooling, only central one is barel, rest is cooling shroud. why have shroud instead of "naked" barrel? for hand safety, it keeps from burning hands on it while still allows air flow to cool it. water cooled ones have main disadvantage compared to air shrouded ones - weight, even tho water cooled cool better.
The barrel cooling issue is a terrain issue if you are in Northern Africa water is key so sometimes they pee’d on them The dent makes it a crude hollow point
If you had a 20 round capacity on the Lee Enfield the height off the ground would be a few inches higher so if you were to be laying prone and needing to be as close to the ground as possible so you don’t become a target you don’t want something too tall. Same reason the M1 had a smaller capacity. We are talking trench warfare not modern building to building combat. That rifle I do believe was used all the way until the 60s. My grandad trained using it when he went into the marines.
Your opening conclusion was also shared by albert speer after he was released from prison he was asked what was the most pivotal battle for germany during the war ( expecting him to say stalingrad ) apparently they was disgusted when he said the battle of britain
Yes but the war was a German Russian American war as Britain had a much smaller contribution to the war effort like Italy. WW2 was a battle of these 3 superpowers. Therefore I don't believe that the battle of Britain was very important
@sas60che so let's assume the Germans succeeded and invaded the british Isles there would be no build up in Britain to retake Europe , no supplying the French, Danish and Norwegian resistance movements , no sharing of scientific and atomic secrets shared with the Americans , your also forgetting the nations of Canada, south Africa, new Zealand and Australia that supplied men to fight around the world to say it was a German Russian and american only war is very shorted sighted
Have you looked at the economic contribution from the British side during WW2. Im sure last time I saw the figures Britain was outproducing and shipping material to the Soviet Union@@sas60che
@sas60che British empire contributions: -gained access to and broke enigma machine -decimated the kriegsmarine and luftwaffe -sent supplies to the USSR making their tanks 40% of the USSRs medium and heavy tanks at moscow -only allied jet fighter -only allied long range bomber -hobarts funnies -advanced radar -creation of the commandos -creation of the SAS -pushed the axis out of Africa and into Italy -killed more than the USA, possibly more than the USSR since most of their count is those that died of hunger, cold, disease -split the atom to make the atom bomb -was 90% of the navy on D-day -half the troops on D-day -created a tank that one shots tigers -mobilised more men and personnel
You should have a look at the role Oil played in the war: North African Campaign denied the oil of the ME to Hitler, which then made it vital to take Soviet oil. The USA supplied something like 80% of the oil used by the Allies
In a section attack a rifle men of the time used 10 rounds working as a section 2 fire teams and a gun group the bren attacking a machine gun for example plus 10 mag dont jam as much as a 20 mag , also its the bren gun where the fire power comes from in a section the rifles are for 1 shot 1 kill
Ha, you basically worked it out yourself straight after. You are a clever guy and I know sometimes you are hard on yourself but you shouldn’t be! You are just capable of thinking for yourself and sometimes other people can take that for someone being dim but it’s cleverer than someone just thinking what everyone else is thinking and not using their brain. Love your reactions. X
"Pistol size machine gun?" They exist The boys AT rifle and other AT rifles were basically the grandads of what is referred to in modern times as an "anti material rifle", same as the big 50 cal rifles you mentioned. At the time of its construction, tanks generally had pretty thin armour and while you would use an AT rifle to destroy important parts of a tank, you could penertrate a tank normally if you desired.
Truing to answer your questions as you go: The match up of the small arms to the US arsenal is basically: Lee Enfield similar to M1 Garand - I'd take the Garand. Sten similar to the M3 grease gun. Bren similar to BAR, but the Bren is more modern and a bit better. Don't bother about the pistols, almost every officer would carry an Enfield rifle or Sten - to be less obvious to enemy snipers. Those hollow and flat tip "Man-stopper" bullets were designed to maximise injury, illegal in war, and reserved mainly for colonial police operations. Developed after encountering tribal warriors hopped up on drugs. That anti-tank rifle's a brute, likely to break your shoulder. But a one-shot kill against enemy snipers. It's about twice the size of a regular rifle .55 inch calibre and the piece weighs in around 30 pounds. The PIAT is a mortar that shoots a hollow charge anti tank bomb. Same job as a bazooka, but it's a gun, not a rocket launcher. Another complete brute to fire, because it's a massive gun. (Strictly a spigot Mortar). Yes it sprays a white hot jet through the armour of enemy tanks, which must have been an utterly awful way to go. .303 is the calibre of British ammunition .303 of an inch. Very similar to US .30-06. 303 refers to the ammunition, but rifles that fired it ware also knowns as 303s. Similar to how the Browning M2 is sometimes called a .50 Cal'. The Lanchester has one barrel and the rest of the holes are for cooling. I can't speak much about the sticky bomb's shape. But with 2 pounds of explosive, there's a fair chance that the thrower's in the blast radius. Take the BREN gun, a man portable automatic rifle, though it really needs a crew of two.
I think that you're correct about the Battle of Britain. If Britain had be conquered, North Africa would have fallen and the Germans would have controlled the Suez Canal which was crucial to the war effort of the Allies, Italy would not have fallen, and their contribution would have been important to Hitler. America probably wouldn't have joined the war, as there was nowhere to locate their bases in Western Europe, or at least not been as effective. No Britain, no D-Day, and Germany could have continued to concentrate their main efforts on the Eastern Front.
Historians forget quite easily that Britain had 5 major victories against the axis before the USA joined the war. East African campaign mainly colonial troops, Battle of Britain, Malta, North Africa Rommel was effectively defeated by the time the US arrived. The battle of the Atlantic had been sorted by Britain. Britain was the bastion of Freedom in the West at that stage and unfortunately successive USA and European governments have undermined Britain.
US was determined to have the British empire dissolved.
And the Australians fought alone for some time against the Japanese.
Nearly as much damage as the Tories.
@@paulwilson2651 that remark isn’t that far from the truth, the Tories are enemies of working people’s .
@@paulwilson2651And Labour
I think it was MArshall Zhukov who first said that Hitler's greatest mistake was not finishing off Britain.
The empire polish flyers French resistance fighters
@@gregwood8670no 😂
Britain was not the only country. Do forget our brothers from all over the world from Canada to New Zealand auz South Africa. Plus so many more .... we were never alone our true frends never stood by .
We seemed alone but we had everyone
You’re right but it probably felt that way for a time. And America couldn’t help us because they didn’t have the fire power in 1940, although FDR didn’t admit that ‘til much later and Pearl Harbour. We were all caught with our pants down, weren’t we?
8.50 the Bren is “light machine gun” it could be carried and fired, making it a kind of heavy assault rifle. Water cooled machine guns are very cumbersome.
10.00 the MkIII is a hollow-point ball, very nasty against a soft target.
11:40 The German helmet was a better all round design, however the Brodie was developed specifically for trench warfare against incoming shrapnel and ease of manufacture, a big consideration.
Feld Marschall Von Paulus, the defender of Stalingrad for the Nazis, agreed with you. When asked after the war which, in his opinion was the most important battle, and obviously expecting him to say Stalingrad his interlocutors were astonished when he announced:
"The Battle of Britain".
I joined the British Army aged 16 in the early 1970’s we were told by our instructors that the doctrine was for accurate single shot fire rather than the point and shoot of an automatic SMG which would climb as you fired so most rounds go high if you not careful. We even had to do exercises “called pokey drills” to strengthen your arms as the standard 7.62mm L1A1 SLR weighted in at 9.5lbs and 44 inches long overall
@Mr9ig It's why Britian took the FAL as the SLR and deleted fully automatic when the rest of the world kept it.
The worst move the MOD did was to get rid of the SLR. They could have 'bullpupped' it very easily.
@petem68 Yes but cost of that and converting to Nato .556 would not have been viable.
It would get ripped out the mag
Nope to smog handgun
There was no need to "carry ten spare barrels", each Bren gun was issued with one spare barrel. Apparently one hot barrel would cool within the time it took for the other to overheat.
I was going to comment the same...
Agreed.
The same with the MG34/42 - and the current GPMG (FN MAG). You have one spare barrel, even in sustained fire mode. 200 rounds and swap.
There's a risk of hot barrels warping and becoming unusable though
firing the LMG (bren) was great
The LE Had a short magazine because the British Army have always prioritised single shot accuracy over multiple round bursts which are notoriously inaccurate, hence no requirement for the long magazine. Every British soldier is trained in the principles of marksmanship and British infantry in WW2 were trained to 'Hunt' the german MG42 gunner with all 10 trained riflemen using these very accurate LE rifles. Once the MG gunner was killed german infantry sections would usually withdraw if not supported. Long magazines are also harder to count rounds and suffer from spring wear. Snipers were still using modified Lee Enfields until the end of the 20th Century. The Bren was superb in every way and was still in use up until the 90s in a modified form as the LMG. I carried one of the bloody things in the 80s and i can confirm they are superb and every other soldier wants to 'have a go' with the Bren/LMG..... But then no other bastard wants to help clean it afterwards lol.
Ah, my father once said "the best LMG isn't the one you're cleaning!"
I used to carry the LMG too. Heavy thing to lug around, but you could handle it (unless you had a long run. As I was 6foot 5 and very fit it was all mine, lol.
Just like the Bren and the Mk4 Enfield, the LMG and SLR shared a common round and the mags were interchangeable in a firefight.
(Many of the boys wanted to 'borrow' one of the LMG 30rnd mags for the SLR.... it did look cool, lol)
The STEN was a beast if you weren't careful. Accidents were very common - Just like the replacement the Sterling SMG (So from Angry Tubes to Silly Metal Gun)... Carried one of those too at one point.
The PIAT was a spigot gun. You cooked the mechanism (a big fuck off spring) slotted the PIAT round in the channel. When the spring was released it hurled the round at the target with terrific force... although short ranged... it was a fairly effective anti tank round. That was replaced with the Charlie G (The Karl Gustaf recoiless rifle) A bloody big heavy thing that was a bit better.... ;)
British Infantry were always taught accuracy of volume. During my service ('83-'94) we usually only went into action with 80 rounds... with a few bandolier packed away (if you were lucky). 80 rounds doesn't last ling if you blaze away... hence to fire discipline training. The LMG had a lot more ammo which was spread out among the section too.
Hope that ramble helps you a bit :)
My only critique of your comment is that "Short Magazine Lee Enfield" doesn't mean a Lee Enfield with a short magazine, it's a shortened version of the MLE
Your missing the point. The magazine was loaded with 5 round strip clips. What's the point of having a 20 round mag when you have to load 4 strip clips into it
@@farmaccount1653the PIAT wasn't a spigot gun, it was a spigot mortar, there is a difference lol
A man I knew from my local pub was a WW2 Bren gunner, he told me he only had one misfire during the entire war when a German prisoner being led back from the front started to argue and fight with the British guards "So I dropped the Bren down and fired and it just clicked" This was at a range of 10 ft or so and it would have cut the prisoner in half. The man was quickly subdued by his guards and my friend in amazement pointed his Bren skywards and pulled the trigger, it fired 10 rounds or so absolutely faultlessly. I often wonder if this German realised how lucky he was.
Safety catch?
@Stannington probably just one of those things...
@Stannington More likely not properly cocked. You wouldn't get a click with the safety catch on.
One thing I will say here, dont EVER "feel dumb" for asking a question.......I'm a tour guide on a historic warship nowadays, I have done that for over 35 years now, and so many people have said to me during that time "this might be a stupid question, but......" and my answer is ALWAYS the same, if you dont know something, and you want to find out, ask a question.... there is no such thing as a stupid or dumb question as far as I'm concerned, if you dont know, and you WANT to know, ask the question, how else will you find out or learn? It's to your credit that you want to learn and are doing something about it....I always try to answer any and all questions I get asked, sometimes I've been asked things I dont know the answer to, and I've had to go and look it up for myself, and that's great, because the one thing I am absolutely certain of, is that I dont know it all, and there's always something new to learn.......
The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.
Nice 🙂
I've always said that the only dumb question is a question that you already know the answer to.
@ my dad always said “a lawyer will tell you you should never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer.” But that is talking about lawyers, not people.
There is no such thing as a dumb question until you ask it for the third time, and then that may be equally attributed to the inability of the person answering the question to explain it adequately! 🤷♂️
Who do you do tours of?
You're right in my opinion, had England fallen, there wouldn't have been a springboard in which to launch a second front.
England ? There are other countries here, not just them
@dexstewart2450 It’s not the English who refer to the UK or Britain as ‘England’, it’s Americans and some Europeans, even Germany did it. So annoying, even to the English!
Had "England" fallen, the Germans would have had Scotland, Wales, Ireland, to contend with. The Romans needed Hadrian's Wall for a reason.
Plus, if British Isles had fallen, ther'd be no need for a North Africa campaign, Germany would have had control of the Suez, the entire Mediterranean, AND the middle east. US would have had no ability to re-supply USSR via Iran (which was the route that most of the lend lease armaments and food to USSR). Germany would have had access to all the oil from the middle-east (that would have a MASSIVE impact on Germany)
@@RoastLambShanksOnly for limiting passage!
P.I.A.T (Projector Infantry Anti Tank) This operated similar to a Mortar, it used the spigot principle. The back of the tube has a large spring inside that drives a rod. When cocked the rod is inside the weapon, and a bomb can be fitted in the tray. When fired, the rod springs forward into the tail of the bomb firing a small charge. The bomb flies off and the back pressure re cocks the spring, but only if you are holding it correctly. If not held correctly and you absorb too much of the recoil it may fail to re cock. It is cocked at the start by turning the butt side ways and using your feet to push back and cock it. You can then re secure the butt ready to fire it. It had limited range, but the bomb was a hollow charge type so had reasonable armour penetration.
Thank you for this information. My collarbones shudder at the thought of this thing.
You didn't need a bigger magazine Connor with the Lee Enfield SMLE . You didn't remove the magazine, you used 5 round stripper clips & pushed them through the breech into the magazine. I love this rifle. The mad minute where you blasted away had Germans thinking they were facing machine guns. The way the bolt worked meant you could keep it in the firing position as you worked the bolt, other than say the German Mauser where you had to move it away from your face to work the bolt.
The Bren had a slow rate of fire, but was accurate as hell. I loved firing these too. And yeah, looks well cool
The Projectile, Infantry, Anti Tank used a spring to fire the grenade. It wasn't rocket propelled.
303 is the British round, (bullet) .303 inch
Don't confuse the yanks thier ammo is in metric.
@@Geoff-j4b no its mostly not :) .22, .38, .45, .50 .. thats the part of an inch. Like european 5.56mm is metric .. american equivalent is .223 (of an inch).
@@Geoff-j4b While the British were using .303, the US were using .30. Only when NATO was formed did they move to 7.62mm and then 5.56 - and old Ma Deuce (the .50) is still a key support weapon.
@@markhill3858 the USA hates metric, but are getting there 9mm at a time
The PIAT round contains a propellant charge, and there is a fixed firing pin at the end of the spigot.
Piat was great for urban ambush. other weapons could not be fired in confined spaces. And it had a big punch
The reason the mag is five rounds is that's the most you can push from a clip with your finger - so reloading is much faster
But the mag is 10 rounds, two stripper clips
@philhallbrook7008
In intense combat, the No4 would start with 10 rounds in the Magazine. Then when empty, in order to keep up the firepower only one 5 round clip would be loaded before resuming firing. This had little effect on the overall rate of fire, but shortened the reloading pause at the cost of having more of them
The Brodie helmet was introduced during World War One when most injuries to soldiers in the trenches were caused by artillery shrapnel raining down from above. It was designed specifically with the wide brim to give protection against this hazard from above.
I tried the Sten as National Service soldier, when I pulled the trigger at a target about 20 feet away, a stream of bullets left a stripe across it! Terrifying. The Bren was lovely to fire. Not too heavy to carry and no kick back into the shoulder. The discharge reloaded the next round. The barrel would become too hot after some time and changeover was quick and simple . We were told when both became too hot we should urinate on them! The magazine held 72 rounds. The wheel on the side is the sight range setter.
The PIAT was basically a spigot mortar - hence short range. It is NOT rocket propelled, but it does have an explosive hollow charge projectile - like modern AT weapons.
One thing about the Sten SMG not mentioned in this video is that the Sten was ridiculously easy and cheap to make, it also stripped down into very small parts. This meant that not only could we equip our troops with them but they could also be dropped in parts all over occupied territory, letting us arm Partisans and French Resistance units to hit the Germans from behind. That meant that its relative unreliability and poor ergonomics don't really matter when any gun at all is an advantage and you're ambushing unsuspecting people at short range.
The PIAT was not a RPG, it was a spring loaded spigot mortar that ‘threw’ the projectile, which was a shaped charge that sent a jet of molten metal forward into the target.
Must have been awful to use. Imagine trying to reload that in combat
@@johnritter6864 It had at least one major advantage over other antitank systems that depended on rocket propelled warheads, like bazookas and RPGs...PIAT had no back blast, and so could be fired from within small spaces like bunkers and buildings.
@@iKvetch558 This is true but I think from an overall point of view I would have prefered the weapons used by the US and Germans
@@johnritter6864 You just had to pop the next bomb in - the previous one compressed the spring, ready to fire. The spring didn't throw the bomb, it was there to absorb the recoil.
@johnritter6864 the force of the recoil recocked it. All the user had to do was place another round in the breech. No second man needed. No wires to connect to the missile. No backblast and no smoke giving position away.
Yes, Connor, you can make a fully automatic "machine pistol"...funnily enough, it is called a machine pistol, and the first one was made by Austria in WW1.
And that is a hollow point bullet at 10:05...they were invented in the 19th century, originally to make the bullet lighter so that it would travel faster. However, it was later found that another effect of the hollow point is that the bullet expands outward when it hits, which transfers more of the energy to the target and increases stopping power. It also prevents the bullet from going through a target...which is called overpenetration...which can be important in situations where the bad guys are mixed in with the people you do not want to shoot, like a hostage rescue for instance.
And the PIAT was not a rocket propelled grenade...it was a spigot mortar...which is sort of similar to a rifle grenade in some ways. As far as the recoil of firing the PIAT, it had a massive spring in the back which drove the spigot forward to set off the small propellant charge in the base of the bomb, and then that same massive spring would absorb enough of the recoil so that the operator's shoulder could handle it. The big advantage of the PIAT was that it had no back blast like an RPG or Bazooka, and so could be safely fired from inside enclosed spaces like buildings.
Exactly right, as far as I recall anyway
Yes, the Mauser C96 (but first after a rip-off version of it had been made full auto and sold on the Chinese market) pistol with its holster/shoulder stock and Luger. Russian Stechkin and Scorpion, Mac 10 and Mac 11 from the US. The H&K VP70. I think the Glock 18 is the only “modern“pistol that falls into this category as far as I know.
Thank you for the PIAT explanation, I was about to type it out and you saved me the time
@@jonaslidstrom7006 I believe you forgot the Beretta 93, which is also capable of being fired on full-auto. It even has a swing-down extra grip at the muzzle. The H&K VP70 wasn't a full-auto pistol. However, it was the first pistol with "plastic" parts and had an 18-round magazine.
MsG
@@gionncaomhinmorpheagh4791 You right. I was thinking about it, didn’t remember the name, started to type and forgot all about it. :)
during the First World War, the British Infantryman was trained to fire the "mad minute" which required the soldier to be capable of firing between 15 to 18 AIMED shots per minute with the standard Lee-Enfield .303 rifle. Just imagine the fire power of a British rifle battalion, say 600 men, all capable of firing 15 to 18 shots per minute, that's an absolute hail of lead! German troops in 1914, encountering this for the very first time, believed that the British units they were fighting were actually armed with machine guns! I have had the "dubious" pleasure of using and firing the 303, the Sten, the Bren and on one memorable occasion, the Webley.....and yes, the 303 DOES kick, as 17 year-old me found out, all those years ago!
There's a soldier in "Forgotten voices of WWi" that says they were shooting 20 rounds a minute at mons,etc
Many of those who used them in anger in two world wars were about your age. My father volunteered under age for the first. I went straight from school at 18.
@@petegarnett7731 indeed, it's reckoned that approximately a third of a million British soldiers who served in the First World War were under age.....
Records for the mad minute amongst practicioners can get up around 40 rounds per minute. The 18 shots is a minimum standard.
Worth noting that modern standards for how you handle your kit during the mad minute are not those trained for a British soldier pre WW1 to get in excess of 40 shots per minute. They're also optimised (eg gunsmithed) weapons not the generic service rifle handed out to recruits.
So many unfinished questions when you've almost worked out what you want to ask!!!...Love watching your inquisitive mind working overtime and your reactions Connor!!!
A bazooka and RPG are all rocket-type weapons and need space behind them when fired, so firing from a building could be hazardous. A PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti-Tank) is a spigot-fired weapon similar to a mortar. The official range of a PIAT was 750 yards or 2250 feet but it was considered reliable up to 100 yards or 300 feet. It used a spring to cast the ammunition then fired a propellent some feet away. The recoil reset the PIAT for the next firing. However, the initial firing was physically demanding. Many people misunderstand that only the initial firing did require the cocking of the weapon. The spring casting of the ammunition allowed the PIAT to be fired from within a building.
I'm no firearms expert but the Mk.III Webley cartridge is a Hollow Point. When the bullet hits the target, namely a body, the force, directed by the cavity on the head of the bullet, causes an outward force. This rips apart any muscle or bone. Most bullets simply leave a small entry wound. A hollow point leaves a gaping hole and is therefore ideal for close quarter combat.
Ditto the flat heads. Shock value on impact.
The hollow point also leaves a regular entry wound. The magic will happen as you said on the inside as a hollowpoint will peel back like a flower, ripping more flesh and muscle due to the expansion of size and leave a bigger hole on a "soft target". Now, once a hollowpoint hits a "hard target", for example, bone it will either break up or stop dead on the hard target either way it loses all it's energy and will not exit the body. A regular bullet, if it hits a bone, it will deflect and continue to exit the body as it basically held it's shape and most of the energy until that point but it still held enough to continue going. So yes, hollowpoint is better for close quarters, especially in a hostage situation due to it having a lower risk of it going through the enemy and into a civilian. Though if there were no civilians in the area or if you're in an open area of combat, a standard bullet will be better due to it retaining it's shape and energy after hitting a target making it better for penetration
@ Thanks for the information! All the information I have gathered is from reading articles and I’m no expert!
the sticky grenade was basically a lightbulb in a sock covered in sticky tar, when it made contact it would stay together while being thrown. Then on contact the glass would shatter giving it a wet sock level of contact on Armor
The sten had a pistol grip that could be clipped on in exchange of the standard stock. If I remember correctly the USA wanted $200 (or £200 ?) for a thompson and they wanted paying in gold as they thought we were finished and a sten cost fifteen shilling (under a £1)
The magazine has a spring which, as the gun is reloaded pushes the next round into the breech. There is a limit to its strength and ten was the maximum it could move. The spring is in the bottom of the magazine and is a simple long v shape. To conserve the life of this spring we never loaded more than one clip of 5 rounds. This as a National Service soldier in the 1950.
The rifle and bayonet shown are WW1. WW11 had the wooden part covering the end of the barrel removed. Non infantry units bayonet was a simple, short round spike.
The entire British Army was not in Britain at that time. It was spread around the globe in the far east, the Indian continent, north Africa, middle east, Europe. It would still have fought Hitler. And, of course, we had an "underground" army. It would not have been so easy to take and keep the UK.
People always compare hitlers invasion of Russia to napoleon's.
But because we never got to see it, people don't realise that britain would have been hitlers spain
No invasion barges. The channel to cross and the small matter of the largest naval force around at that time who on learning invasion was imminent would immediately turn for home to block said channel. So 2 problems there. Tigers in the narrow lanes and roads of Kent facing a very hostile public most of the older men having been through WWI trained , proven soldiers and capable of mounting strong defences.
The Battle of Britain was without a shadow of a doubt one of the most critical moments in British history and maybe he'd eventually have taken her, but they'd have paid a very heavy price
@@beefy8269 Yes and No.
Germany did have invasion craft. several thousand of them. Certainly nothing compared to what war organised for D-day. We knew about them prior to the battle of Britain and expected an invasion to follow after finding they were being amassed in France.
Had the battle of Britain fallen to the German attack. Invasion was certain.
The Germans had a lot of tanks that would have been sent not just tigers.
At the time of the battle of Britain the Uk did not have many large tanks such as the Churchill, Cromwell, Sherman that could stand up to the Tigers. Germany had very few Tigers and may not have needed to send many of them. Panzer 3 and 4 tanks were far more common and were capable of taking on the Cruiser tanks and medium tanks the UK had in reserve. Panzer 3/4 tanks were a lot faster and smaller than Tigers and came in many variants that were ideal for fighting in towns. Then there are the tank destroyers like the Stug that actually had a better kill to death ratio than the tigers overall.
The Uk did have a lot of ww1 veterans but many of them would have been old men or incapable of fighting not that would likely stop them if it came to actual invasion. The Uk also had the ring of steel situated around south England. This composed of every old artillery piece, museum weaponry and experimental vehicle that was left for them to use to mount a defence. On average each weapon had 10 shells each. We had lost most of our equipment in France after Dunkerque.
The royal navy was huge yes and very capable. But it was spread out over the globe in several areas and most of it in either Gibraltar or Malta. Possibly off chasing one or more of Germanys larger warships so were far from home. The Germans could keep them occupied long enough to mount the invasion and cram the channel with enough U-boats that you could practically walk from France to Dover without getting wet.
Just goes to show how royally screwed we were at the time and yet we came out on top despite the odds working against us.
@amandarhodes4072
Excellent reply , rhanks so much for that, obviously your very well read on our darkest hour.Where were the invasion barges kept? I can't remember ever reading about them being a target for the RAF, which I'd have thought would have some sort of priority be pretty difficult to RV them all in one place?
@beefy8269 tigers? There was no such thing in 1940.. you are correct on the RN though.
I am an British vet I carried what we called the LMG. (bren) now 7.62 NATO no.more 303 i carried the bren in the 80s&90s
The tree stump was a palm tree. From the cut mark on the top left of the stump I would suspect that the Japanese cut it down to build one of their bunkers. The photo is of Australian troops advancing along the northern coast of New Guinea circa 1943/44
BTW, I have fired the Bren gun and was more accurate with it than I was with the SMLE. It is unbelievably accurate, even for a 13 year old, which i was at the time. (Might explain why I was more accurate with a weapon resting on bipods, than with an unsupported rifle.) Additionally, as it it used the same ammunition as the .303 SMLE, this helped simplified resupply.
Do you realise that the US also used this helmet design into 1942, The colour photo of the soldier near the truck wheel is actually of a US soldier.
I think it's quite a thought about the Battle of Britain...... Stalingrad bled the German Army almost to death, because for whatever his deranged reasoning was, Hitler would not allow the Germans to retreat and regroup, he ordered them to stand and fight on the ground they occupied, ground which as it eventually proved, they couldn't hold..... Stalingrad occupied German(i.e. Hitler's) thinking, especially as he accepted his country's inability to defeat the RAF, meaning he postponed and then eventually cancelled the planned invasion of the UK. Thus his western flank remained open, vulnerable so that when he undertook his main objective, the invasion of Russia, he obliged his generals and his army to fight a war on two fronts, one of the classic "don't do" dictums of modern warfare. In all fairness, in their different ways both battles were hugely instrumental in Hitler's eventual defeat, and I certainly wouldnt like to specify that one was more significant than the other, despite being just a little bit biased, being A) British and B) ex-RAF, having done 13 years service between 1965 and 1977.
The significance is that if the Battle of Britain had been lost, there would have been NO Stalingrad standoff.
@MichaelHill-we7vt I think you have to bear in mind that with the British out of the war, the North African campaign would be over. Consquence of this would be a months earlier attack on Russia that would not get halted by winter. Plus, Rommels Afrika Corps would be in that fight. The battle of Moscow was a close run thing. Many historians believe it would have fallen with Rommels forces adding their weight.
@@billbuckley8423 I mean it would have been won by the germans had Barbarossa started when it was meant to, it was the italian fuck ups in greece and north Africa that both drew away many german forces but also fully delayed the start of the operation until after greece finally fell. It is also likely we would have seen far more veteran units(more so than there was already) for Barborossa with the likes of the fallschirmjäger and other air corps able to focus to the east.
On the flip side to this, I dont think we would have seen an automatic KO from the germans winning at Moscow, as the despite what Stalin said at the time, I would very much imagine he would have retreated to fight on, a new capital being established at Stalingrad. This ignoring the tfact much of the production facilities would have been moved behind the ural mountain range, plus allied lend lease would still be arriving via Murmansk and Archangelsk.
On the flip flip side, lend lease would have greatly reduced assuming the UK fell, Not only because of closer U boat bases (they had those in norway anyway) but even just the fact the staging for such convoys would take much longer, and they would have a much harsher sea to sail through (which is no small thing to state considering the Atlantic both now and at the time).
HOWEVER on the triple flip side, The UK losing the battle of britian was very unlikely, even assuming they won the airwar (with the state of the luftwaffe high command, or therefore lack of command, being ignored), that doesnt explain away both the monumental task of both driving off the royal navy and also somehow supplying the german army with enough supplies while also supplying enough manpower to fight what would have been brutal hedgerow to hedgerow fighting similar to the escape from Normandy later in 44 with the bocage fighting.
If the Anglo-sphere had fallen or surrendered, there would have been no longer any strategic interest or platform into Europe by the United States. Instead they would have focused fully on defeating Japan in the Pacific after Pearl Harbour. Hitler would have had no reason to declare war on the USA as the Brits would have longer been receiving arms and supplies from America. In fact, many of the weapons, tanks and planes the Brits used were American manufactured such as the Browning machine gun, Sherman tank and mustang fighter aircraft.
Many machine guns are basically machine pistols just with a slightly longer barrel and a large stock.
The term machine pistol is usually reserved for weapons that fire actual pistol rounds.
Also, if you loose off more than three (some say four) rounds in a burst, you are doing it wrong. Schwarzaneggar is a clown, lol.
Just to add about the sten, since I havent seen it elsewhere in the commends.
But its a truly the simplest gun on the battlefield, You could fully strip that weapon in about 30 seconds, you can field strip it in about 10, anyone could be trained on it very easily and very quickly, it was designed in mind of the fact if it was being used as soon as it was made, there is a decent chance the Germans were invading already and ammunition would be in short supply, hence it was chambered to take the same 9mm parabellum ammunition as the Germans.
This fact lended itself very well with it being supplied to resistance fighters who could often scavenge for more ammunition with relative ease. Same again for commando units who made great use of the sten.
A less considered fact about the, and why it had its iconic horizontal magazine feed is so that it could be used from the hip or from the prone position.
Okay so to answer nearly all your questions:
well yes you can make a gun which is like the same size as a pistol, the Steyr "Repetierpistole M1912/P16" which is as big as the semi-auto cousin the Steyr M1912, that is without the extended mag (note that its reloaded by stripper-clips), it could fire around about 800 rounds per minute, this machine pistol was one of the first ever to be designed and made and was used in the Austro-Hungarian Army during WW1, also using ATRs (Anti-Tank Rifles) in WW2 they would aim for under the track and at the engine since once the engine was hit the tank could catch on fire, potentially cooking the ammo, the Boys ATR was also slightly larger in cartridge firing 13.2×99mm (.50 Cal is 12.7x99mm), also those RPG's you were talking 'bout are actually not 'RPGs' that is a PIAT a mechanized grenade launcher, reason why it is called like that is because it uses mostly a spring-loaded mechanism to launch with a bit of a propellant charge or gunpowder, it wasn't made for Anti-tank persay but Anti-Infantry purposes.
As for AT Rifles, Its a mix of ammunition type, propellent size, propellent to bullet ratio, barrel length, among other things. Fun fact, the boys and its .55 round found later lease of life in WW2 as a heavy sniper rifle, still well suited to disabling lighter vehicles, such as half tracks and targeting combatants behind solid cover. Many AT rifles did in fact.
As for aiming them, there is a fantastic training video for the boys on youtube I would highly recommend. But generally you would be aiming for weakpoints or shots that might otherwise disable the tank. So like as you said, tracks are absolutely a valid target, but other primary targets from the front were the drivers viewport, the turret ring and generally any other optic they could see, from the side you had far more leeway, but generally again the turret ring and the engine would be prime targets. It wasnt encouraged but it is worth nothing that the boys and other AT rifles could often penetrate the armour of interwar and early WW2 tank designs.
This is why we would see the later rise of both field and factory modifications of german armour in particular, but soviet as well to add additional armour plates either directly to the armour surface or in the case of the germans, in the form of armoured skirts which had an added benefit of helping to make the oncoming round "tumble" (in practice making the round turn sideways greatly reducing its penetrative effect).
Just to tack on about the PIAT, when the spigot mortar was first shown off to the upper echelons including Churchill, it almost killed them. Though I personally think the single greatest weapon that came from the spigot mortar was the Hedgehog launcher, which absolutely sealed the fate of many uboat crews during the course of the Battle of the Atlantic.
I dont want to say it changed the course of the battle because that credit is more deserved by the tactics of western approaches command, that and asdic/sonar, however the Hedgehog certainly played a large role in that too.
That and the spigot mortar had immense "giggle factor" for a lack of a better term, from the Churchill AVRE with its flying dustbin, to the Australian Matilda's armed with them in the pacific.
The Boys rifle was a .55 caliber, the .50 cal like the Barrett sniper rifle you know is only .50 cal. Smaller case, smaller powder charge. Basically the Boys rifle was effectively the equivalent of an "ackley improved" .50 BMG. Special rounds too for armour piercing.
They were sometimes used as long range sniper rifles, which possibly had something to do with the development of the Barrett, although you could argue that that ties back to either the Winchester .50 cal anti tank rifle, or Captain Bill Brophy's conversion of a Russian 14.5mm to .50cal to create the first "true" .50 BMG sniper rifle during the vietnam war.
The PIAT was effectively a horizontally firing mortar, which is why it's got massive recoil. Mortars have the tripod with the big plate to transfer that recoil into the ground. RPG's are rocket propelled grenades instead, creating a backblast from the rocket that offsets the recoil of the projectile. but this makes them highly visible and stirs up a lot of dust.
the RPG is a recoiless gun. once the projectile has left the barrel, deployed its fins and its a distance away, a sustainer motor kicks in and it goes downrange.
A PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) is not an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade). It uses a shaped charge warhead with a small propellant charge ignited by a spigot (internal spike) fired with a spring.
5:05
The main difference between a clip and a magazine is that a clip is used to load ammunition into a magazine, while a magazine is used to feed ammunition into a firearm:
Clip
A metal or plastic device that holds rounds of ammunition together to make them easier to load into a magazine or cylinder. Clips can be pre-loaded or reused.
Magazine
A spring-fed device that holds ammunition and feeds it into the firearm's chamber during shooting. There are two types of magazines: detachable and internal. Detachable magazines can be removed from the firearm and inserted when needed. Internal magazines are part of the firearm and are not removable.
They would have to carry around longer clips or more bullets.
a clip is a strip of ammunition that goes inside of an internal magazine, a magazine is removable
A water cooled gun needs 3-4 people to move it. It's only use is at a fixed position. The Bren like a few LMGs only needed 1 spare barrel
Britain was the only Nation resisting Germany for a full year after France fell. Eventually America started supplying are small island. We shall not forget the British grit, determination and courage that saved are small island, and to the lives lost that made us who we are today. Thank you America and thank you too the gritty brits who served and protected us.
We didn't half pay for the help though. One of the reasons we ended up bankrupt & the USA became more industrially powerful...
USA’s industry had surpassed Britain’s long before ww1, just after the Great Depression, it had stagnated and reversed a bit. Our payments supported the rebirth of American industry and pulled them out of the Great Depression, even whilst slowly draining our coffers on top of expenses for the war and supplies to the USSR on top of that. Even after the war, our debt had to be restructured so we could continue paying the US for wartime loans and such. A very complicated mess, but absolutely necessary to keep us in the fight and had the Americans not profited so much, they likely would not have been able to aid us to the extent that they did. As I said, very complicated issue
It wasn't the only nation fighting the Nazis. There was Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa too, who were independent countries and declared war independently. It was the nearest nation.
@ when people say Britain alone, they always mean Britain and the British commonwealth. No Brit ever takes credit from the brave men and women that fought with us from the commonwealth and Empire
Nice thanks, 😊 from a Brit.
4:32 being heavy means it’s better for putting one’s weight behind the bayonet, moreover the reason they didn’t extend the magazine it is because it’s less practical for shooting over the parapet. The 20 round magazine did exist though in WW1. The sten and Thompson was equipped by every sergeant who wanted it rather than sticking to their rifle (usually to avoid being hit by snipers). A smaller sten would not be practical due to not having space for a spring.
A guy from my dads reg knocked a german tank out with a piat, but he never knew about it. The tank machine gunner got him before the projectile hit the tank.
Just thought I'd answer some of the questions you had, and some of the things the original video got wrong, with my experiences using these guns, and educating the public as a reenactor.
Correcting the original video:
The Lee Enfield is not significantly longer than other rifles, it was less than an inch longer than the Kar98k and M1 Garand. The image they use is a Magazine Lee Enfield Mk.I, not a Short Magazine Lee Enfield No.1 Mk.III*, or Rifle No.4 Mk.1 as used in World War 2.
The Webley revolver was not the standard issue sidearm of World War 2, that was the No.2 Enfield (though they look very similar). Commonwealth troops did carry the Webley, I even have a modified Canadian made 1937 pattern holster because the standard one wouldn't fit the Webley that Canada still used. the RAF and Royal Navy still used the Webley as well, but the army used the No.2 Enfield.
Gonna be a bit nit-picky, the "Brodie" (not really called that in British service, even as a nickname) was not exactly the same between the wars. The shell stayed mostly the same, but the liner and chinstrap changed significantly between the Mk.I and Mk.II. We also changed to the Mk.III "Turtle" during the war, mostly during D-Day.
Little more anecdotal, but the Mk.II helmet is NOT comfortable at all, there's a reason soldiers were issued the "cap comforter" to wear under the helmet. To be fair, my liner is original, very old and the leather is rock hard.
Never had issues with hearing or vision in a Mk.II.
The No.5 Rifle saw VERY limited Service in World War 2, in Norway. The name "Jungle Carbine" comes from post-war, during the Malayan Emergency.
The Lanchester was not intended just for the Navy, it's just that only the Navy chose to adopt it.
9mm Parabellum was far from standard for submachine guns. The US used .45 ACP, France used 7.65 Longue, the USSR used 7.62 Tokarev. The 9mm was more standard in the Axis, with both Germany and Italy using it. (Realised this was in a comment later in the video, but I wrote it already and don't want to delete it lmao)
The Lanchester was not simple, that's why the Sten was made. In fact, the name for the Sten project originally was something like "Lanchester improvement project".
I don't know much about sticky bombs, but they weren't common. Soldiers carried No.36 Mills Bombs, and No.77 White Phosphorus more than anything else
Answering questions:
The reason the Lee Enfield uses 10 rounds is because that is the most you can use while still having a comfortable prone position. British doctrine of the time heavily relied on lying prone, which is why the magazine for the Sten is on the side, and on the top for the Bren.
There are fully automatic pistols, most famously the Glock 18, but it goes as far back as the German M712 "Schnellfeuer", a fully automatic C96.
The Bren No.2 gunner (also known as the loader) would carry one spare barrel in a dedicated bag. Essentially, you use one barrel until it gets just hot enough that another few rounds would damage it, but still not enough to actually cause any issues. You replace it, and use the new one until the old one cooled down enough to use, which it usually would by the time the other is getting hot.
In the early 20th century, a standard type of ammunition wasn't really decided on. Most weapons still used round-tipped or flat ammunition, until Germany adopted the pointed tip which has become standard. Most of those rounds shown were used in Webley pistols from pre-World War 1.
Really, a helmet is a helmet is a helmet. The guy who's wearing it doesn't care as much about whether or not it protects slightly more or less than the enemies, it doesn't really matter. The Mk.II is great for things falling onto your head, which when you think about the fact that it was designed for World War 1, where you already had protection from the side and all you need to worry about is things on your head, it makes sense. The Mk.II has better visibility as well. The US M1 Helmet and British Airborne HSAT (though I love it) in my experience do obscure your view a little, never had that issue with my Mk.II. Mobility is also important, when looking up from a prone position, you don't want the helmet in your back not letting you look up. The US helmet has about the same coverage as the German one, it's a lot deeper than the Mk.II. The Mk.II is a lot like the US one, almost a combination of the US, German and British in some ways.
Anti-tank rifles had a few ways of being more powerful, mostly by cramming much more gunpowder into the round. Guns like the Pzb. 39 used a standard sized bullet in a much larger casing, allowing for more gunpowder, and therefore a faster, more powerful shot. The Boys ATR in specific used a .55 calibre round, or 13.9x99mm. the .50 BMG is obviously .50 calibre, or 12.7x99mm. Interestingly, the .50 calibre was designed for a machine gun (hence the name .50 Browning Machine Gun) which was used in World War 2, and is still used today.
Early shaped-charge style weapons had loads of different versions, the PIAT was just one. It worked more like a mortar as many have already said, with a spring inside which fires it. There is no rocket propulsion. Also, RPG does not stand for "Rocket-Propelled Grenade", it is the Romanised abbreviation of the Russian name for their own weapons "Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyot" meaning "hand-held antitank grenade launcher".
.303 just means that the bullet is 0.303 inches in diameter.
The Lanchester only has one barrel, the other holes are air-cooling vents, and support for the large cooling shroud, so yes, you're right.
Honestly couldn't say for sure why the sticky bomb was round, my best guess is that since it's being thrown, it means it will always, no matter how it lands, have a good amount touching it. With a geometric pattern, it could hit a corner of the shape and not stick at all. The video showed it being thrown from a very close range, meaning chances are it had too long of a fuse from that distance, so it fell off before detonating.
Good pick of guns, but if you had a rifle, chances are you wouldn't have a pistol. At least not an issued pistol like the Webley. Sure, you can pick one up, but it'll most likely be a stolen German one, or a traded American one. Pistols were mostly for officers, though it's a bit of a myth that one one else had them. The Bren is honestly not as heavy as it seems, if you hold it right. When not using it, you carry it with the handle down by your side, much like the drill for carrying a rifle. This relieves the strain on your muscles if you carried it like a modern rifle. When firing, you are almost always in a prone position, or using it on a surface, so you don't need to worry about weight then. Honestly your arms would probably get more tired with a rifle, since even prone you have to hold it up while the Bren has a bipod.
Different calibres (more accurately, nations) used different methods of naming ammunition. Some nations used inches, others used millimetres. The way to tell is the position of the decimal (unless you're getting into much larger guns, such as naval guns or artillery). So a .22 is a 0.22 inch diameter round, and a 7.62 is 7.62mm in diameter.
The glock 18 is kind of like a submachine gun pistol, it has a switch that allows it to go from semi auto to full auto
Stalingrad was basically a sinkhole for German troops. The Battle of Britain proved that Germany wouldn't be unstoppable, and meant that they were forced to reconsider. I agree in the sense that Britain falling was more important than Stalingrad.
As a Brit myself, I love watching you react to stuff like this
The thing about the Lee Enfield is.... Its capacity was already twice the size, most other bolt action rifles held 5 shots, the Lee Enfield could carry 10, but also you wouldn't want more capacity, the well to hold the extra shots would require more resources and the UK was already struggling for metal, but also it would result in more misfires likely. The smaller capacity would also help with ammo conservation
The PIAT was a precursor to an RPG and had a heavier warhead then the MK1 bazooka. It was handheld spigot mortar which used an enormous spring to dampen the recoil much like the buffer tube on a modern AR type rifle. Because it didn't use a rocket motor it could be fired under cover or in buildings with no risk of injuring friendly troops. Unfortunately it was a technological dead end because it was operating at the very limit of recoil the human body could handle so there was no way to increase range or firepower. The MK2 bazooka and later RPG7 far surpassed it in both.
The piat was apparently a nightmare to use in a war zone.
There’s a famous VC cross winner who used it to knock out several tanks, Jeremy Clarkson does a special on him.
It seems to be ridiculously difficult to load if not in perfect condition
@damedusa5107 most of the stories about it's problems were made up later by people who never used it and are not supported by first hand accounts. It wasn't any heavier than the Boyse rifle it replaced me it's recoil impulse while powerful was more gradual so more comfortable. It's lack of back blast meant troops didn't have to expose themselves to fire it like the Bazooka and could even fire it prone from under bushes. The later models were fitted with tangential sights so they could use it as an indirect fire weapon like a traditional mortar which made troops assaulting in steep terrain like northern Italy extremely happy. While it was designed as an anti tank weapon it saw a lot of use against enemy machine gun positions and was used extensively in urban combat fro breaching partition walls because it was safe enough to use inside buildings. In short the troops loved them because they were versatile and effective.
.303 is, more or less, point 303 of an inch in diameter. The recoil of a 303 bullet in a Lee Enfield rifle is considerable. As a 14 year old, if you didn't hold the butt hard against your shoulder, would likely break the shoulder due to the recoil.
I found this. The British .303 rifle round (also known as the .303 British or 7.7×56mmR) was widely used during WWII. Here are its dimensions:
Cartridge Dimensions:
Overall Length: Approximately 78.11 mm (3.075 inches)
Bullet Diameter: 7.92 mm (0.312 inches)
Neck Diameter: 8.64 mm (0.340 inches)
Base Diameter: 12.04 mm (0.474 inches)
Rim Diameter: 13.72 mm (0.540 inches)
Case Length: 56.44 mm (2.22 inches)
The round had a rimmed case, which helped with reliable feeding in bolt-action rifles like the Lee-Enfield. It was commonly loaded with a 174-grain bullet during WWII, but variants existed for specific applications.
My dad was in the Royal Army in the 1950s and had a Bren Gun issued to him, but also he had a Lee Enfield short rifle as a backup.
303 refers to the 0.303 (inch) calibre round fired by the weapon. Smg = submachinegun. ACP = Automatic Colt Pistol round.
When the military in the UK switched to standard 7.62mm ammunition, some Lee Enfields and many Bren Guns were converted to the new size round, because of accuracy or effectiveness.
No he wasn't in the Royal Army. The Navy and Air force Are Royal, Raised by the Monarch, the Permanent Army was raised by Parliament in the civil war, so not Royal. However There are Royal Regiments in the Army.
There wasn't the Royal army.
A couple of advantages of the Bren gunn that often don't get mentioned are: a relatively lower rate of fire ment the barrels didn't heat up as fast and could go longer between changes and have fewer interruptions in laying down fire. Barrels would last longer before replacement therefore require less logistical support. They were simpler to manufacture - and could be supplied in greater numbers.
The German "zipper" machine gunn MG42 was more intricate, higher rates of fire required more cleaning and barrels had to be changed often and wore out quickly. It also exhausted ammunition supplies quickly..
Normaly don't comment but did serve as an armourer in the british army and also love my Millitary history, seemed rude not to comment
Q's not seen Answers To:-
The 303 comes from the cailbre of the round 0.303" (Inches) (approx 9mm, (1 Inch = 25mm (approx)) )
On the rounds Question (bullets) the one in the centre is ofc a "Hollow point round"
(Actually trained on the bren in cadets before joining) The PROPER manual way to fire the bren gun for prolonged periods was to change the barrel when it started to overheat (to prevent misfires) for THE spare when this was done the operator ofc carried on having at it, the gunners mate would then urinate on the hot barrel (water bottle was second option best not to waste fresh water)
Surprised the Broady got a mention it was a bad helmet But awsome for the war effort as it is simply a steel disc pressed into shape, the german helmet was far better but cost the same as about 50 broadys to make if i rem. right
Also Surprising not mention in the video you watched was the fact that the Sten gun was a fav. in the espionage / resistance Field due to the fact you could easily break it down and carry it in pockets/bags
5.00 it’s a question of weight v firepower. The Lee Enfield took 2 5-round clips. The clips were lighter than carrying magazines and loaded much faster than individual rounds. The rate of accurate fire was such that the invading Imperial German Army was stopped by them in 1914 at the Battle of the Marne, believing they had run into lines of machine guns, forcing the Germans to turn south instead of North and West to take Paris. The advance then stalled forcing them to dig-in. A ten round capacity was enough.
The PIAT isn't a rocket launcher or a Recoilless rifle (which is what the rpg is)
It's launching rounds with a spring and a charge ignited as its launched. So you have a big heavy spring and bolt coming back into the shooter.
MG Pistol, Micro Uzi, Skorpion, and Barretta 93R.
The PIAT uses a spting to fire the projectile, hence the short range and no gas.
Technically speaking America was on the side of Britain (YOU were on OUR side) not engaging until the end of 1941. Thanks very much for your support, late though it was.
US troops only started coming too Britain early /mid 1942.
The Lee-Enfield could take 10 rounds, the M1 Garand took 8, and most rifles carried 5.
.303 inch (7.7mm) is British rifle calibre, equivalent to US .30-06 (7.62mm).
Trying to make a machine-gun pistol sized is virtually impossible, hence the submachinegun - using pistol ammunition.
Water-cooling is very efficient, but the water-jacket of such weapons makes them very heavy - great for fixed positions, not so good for moving quickly. Usually air-cooled machineguns, came with two spare barrels, which was all you needed.
The PIAT worked on a spigot mortar principle - A spring drove the firing-pin into the propellant in the tail of the bomb, the recoil driving the pin back for the next shot. With an adapter-plate it could also fire mortar-bombs, giving it a HE/smoke capability. The design was better than a rocket in some ways, because there is no back-blast.
The Lanchester was a direct copy of the German MP. 28, with the barrel being the central hole, and the others drawing air into the shroud for cooling.
The sticky bomb was actually rejected by the army, until Churchill heard about it - it was a disaster
The greatest weopen we had was radar, communications, and a system of spotting german aircraft and monitoring them, prioritising them. This system was ready and perfected for 8 years, the germans didn't know about it and sent planes over completely unaware what they were going into. Our planes would have been flying around blind and basically running out of fuel. Our radar and communication systems saved us.
One aspect of the Battle of Britain that is frequently overlooked was the Recovery and Repair of downed RAF fighters, many downed Hurricanes and Spitfires that would otherwise have needed newly built aircraft to replace them were fairly quickly repaired and returned to service.
The Germans knew about radar and in 1940 were ahead of the UK in radar development. What was the great secret was the way the information from the radar was managed filtered and presented to the fighter controllers in such a way to permit successful interceptions to take place. It was like the first concept of the internet.
Piat had spring to propel the round so had no gas to defuse out the back like the bazooka
. 303 was the calibre of the round used by commonwealth troops in the majority of weapons
I believe you are completely correct in saying that the Battle of Britain air war was indeed more crucial than Stalingrad . There are too many scenarios to include but no D Day no U.SAF bombing raids from U.K no cracking of the German codes and so much more
Agreed.
Germany was beaten by Russia and to a lesser extent America and not by Britain. Britain could never beat Germany.
@@sas60che "WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood" I don't wish to be callous but to me it seems the blood was spilt by soviet incompetence. What would Russia have done without the lend lease.
@@DarthBill-h6f Without American lend lease (according to experts ) Russia would still have won. The war would certainly have taken at least a year extra but Russia would still have won.
@@sas60che The ALLIES won. Not one single nation
10:05 "Does this have a dent in it?"
Yes, hollow point. When the round impacts, it spreads out more, transfering it's energy to the target faster making it a much more devastating round. Also known as dumdums.
Soldiers sometimes score the jacket on their rifle rounds for a similar effect.. Though it would be a warcrime IIRC.
14:20 Yep, big gun goes through a fair bit of steel. Though as the video said, only really useful vs armoured cars and the earlier tanks and then usually not from the front, depending on the model.
17:00 Piat is not an RPG.. it works like a spigot mortar, there is no rocket motor
20:20 Yes, just the centre, the rest for cooling.
24:00 303 is the british equvilant to a 30.06 (thirty-aught-six) in the US (Garand / BAR / Springfield)
26:00 .22 is calibre which is 0.22of an inch. 30cal 0.3" (303 or 30.06 are about 30cal but of a different design) 50 cal is 0.5" (or about 12.7mm), Modern military rounds are in mm with 5.56(being close to .22 in diamater but as a rifle round is traveling much much faster) and 7.62 being standard rounds throughout NATO. Bullets work by transfering energy to a target. The more energy it puts into the target, the more damage it will do. Unintuitively, bullets that pass trough targets too easily do less damage. If you see any balistic gel being shot in slow motion, you see a cavity form where the bullet is dumping the energy into it.. That cavity is what does the damage when shot, not the little piece of metal going straight through you. Though fragmentation and tumbling rounds are obviously going to do even more damage. Lets not even get into explosive tipped rounds. People are scary.
10:06 hollow point. Also 303 refers to 0.303 inch round diameter when England still used imperial sizes.
Just on the point of helmets, I think arguably your right. As proven by the sheer fact later helmet designs would appear to follow designs closer to the stahlhelm. Thought I would say as an own of a M1 Helmet, I think that is a very close second. It is also worth mentioning that each countries designs came from each countries experiences in war. In particular for the British, this would harken back to the blood filled days of WW1 where they were particularly concerned about fragmentation shells and other bits of raining debris, hence the wider rim you see on the helmet to help protect from that like a very small umbrella. It is also worth noting that these helmets were very unlikely to save you from direct fire and were certainly more geared toward anti fragmentation and maybe some lower calibre rounds.
Spare barrels for the Bren could have been carried by multiple people. Just put a couple in a backpack. A water cooling system all has to be carried by one person. Changeable barrels spreads the weight around
The pistol round with a hole in it is a Dum Dum round only for use against native adversaries, the round hits and spreads, 0.45" hole in front hole as big as your fist or larger in the back, they are illegal under the Geneva convention I believe.
The mags were small on the enfield series of rifles to allow accurate fire from prone position as british doctrine during that time focused on accurate fire in a short amout of time. same case with the sten which is why it loads from the side rather than from the bottom of the reciever as you could load it when aiming an lying down.
The 10 round Lee Enfield was usually only loaded with 5 rounds. The spring in the removable magazine would perish over time when fully loaded.
Sten and Bren were the ammo hogs, for bolt action rifles 10 is plenty.
I had German helmet, British helmet, some bullets and one of the bayonets you showed in the 3rd minute. RIP grandad. ❤
Barrel changes Vs water cooling - the weight of the barrels is less than the weight of water coolant.
Some German SMGs had a higher rate of fire but needed more frequent barrel changes so were no different in rate of fire.
And, re comparative weights, only one spare barrel was carried, not ten!
MGs, not SMGs. SMGs typically don't have changeable barrels, they are not used in the same way to deliver a 'beaten zone' of firepower.
For Conor's benefit, an MG is a machine gun - an SMG is a sub-machine gun (usually firing pistol ammunition, as opposed to rifle ammunition from an MG).
.45 calibre ACP has a diameter of 0.45 inches (ACP = Automatic Colt Pistol, i.e. for weapons designed by John Browning, originally for the Colt range of pistols, e.g. the 1911 Government - the classic US automatic pistol).
7:00 You do actually raise a valid point here, and it kind of was attempted by the British army just after the war ended. It was called the Viper mk1 and it was an experimental submachine gun, derived from the sten, which was designed to be fired one handed. The trigger was placed just underneath the magazine (which stuck out to the side just like a sten), and had a specially shaped butt stock with which the user would clamp it under their armpit. The design was never adopted but it's still an interesting footnote in firearms history.
The Sten was a designed as a cheaper alternatiive to the Lanchester submachine gun. .303 round is a 7.6962mm round as we used Imperial measurements back then. Please coirrrect me if i am wrong but the American 30cal round was the closest at 7.62mm
Connor, the Wembley cartridge with the "indentation" is what is called a "hollow point." A hollow point bullet is a type of expanding bullet with a hollow cavity at the tip that increases the bullet's stopping power. When a hollow point bullet hits a soft target, it expands and transfers more of its energy into the target over a shorter distance.
As for the holes on the MP18 clone, I can only say the word "recoil vents".
Cooling holes
1. Big advantage of the Sten was that it could be fired lying down. The German MP 38 and 40 with the magazine hanging below the rest of the gun was difficult to fire whilst lying prone.
2. The Bren: my old man, wartime Corporal Substantive Sergeant, reckoned he could get an entire magazine into a 1 inch square at 100 yards, on single shot. Still being used in the Falklands War.
3. Lee Enfield: in a 'mad minute' a well trained infantryman should fire 15 rounds into a target 300 yards away. The record was 36, aimed, rounds per min.
4. The Webly was treated as a 'toy' by soldiers, who only came across it when they had to clean one for the Officer who 'owned' it.
5. Brodie helmet was designed to protect against shrapnel and was being replaced by the 'Turtle' helmet towards the end of WW2.
6. The PIAT was a Spigot Mortar, big advantage was that there was no 'flash' to show the placement of the firer. Supposed to be better than the Bazooka.
7. The 303 was a bullet with a diameter of 0.303 inches.
8. The Sticky Bomb was detested.
If you look at the photo at 8:40 and then at the picture at 17:52 you can see where the painter has used the photo to create part of the picture. On the right hand side is the soldier using the tree stump to fire his bren gun and in the background can be seen the light tank! The painter has used a bandage around the bren gunners head to add a bit of action.
The PIAT shell was propelled by a spring, making it silent and no cloud of smoke to give away the firer's position. The drawback was a short range and difficulty resetting for then next shot
303 is The Ammunition of the Lee-Enfield, arguably one of the best rifles at the beginning of WW2 (although the US did later bring in the M1 Garand which was also an excellent rifle).
The PIAT isn't a bazooka, it's a Spigot (spring) mortar. The British 303 and the American 30-06 are both . 30 caliber but the 30-06 is a rimless round
A 303 is a 7.7.
So similar to a 7.62 round.
But it had a rim. An older design than what the Germans were using. The British did look at moving to the 303 rimless. But with war looming and many stores of the 303 and rifles available decided to stick with the standard 303. A very powerful round. But showing its age compared to other rounds of the era
Britain had tried to switch to a rimless round way back in 1913, the .276”, the Enfield P.13 had been designed to use it, service trials were scheduled to begin in late 1914 and if successful would have seen the Lee Enfield fully replaced in British service by 1919, unfortunately W.W.I got in the way and the Army decided that switching your service rifle and standard round during a war wasn’t a smart idea.
@ I suppose with probably huge stock piles of rounds already stored with a war looming , it was a sensible decision to continue with what they had.
@ That’s true, and the .303” was still being used by the British Army as late as the early seventies, the Lee-Enfield No4 rifle wasn’t fully replaced by the 7.62 L1A1 until the mid sixties, the Vickers HMG wasn’t withdrawn until the late sixties and the Lee-Enfield sniper rifle in .303” wasn’t replaced until 1972.
@ That’s true, and the .303” was still being used by the British Army as late as the early seventies, the Lee-Enfield No4 rifle wasn’t fully replaced by the 7.62 L1A1 until the mid sixties, the Vickers HMG wasn’t withdrawn until the late sixties and the Lee-Enfield sniper rifle in .303” wasn’t replaced until 1972.
@@mrjockt money can be the only excuse, that late.
The 10 round mg is already twice what most bolt-actions have.
It can't be much longer, else it would interfere with prone shooting.
The flat top rounds are wad cutters which opend out flat in the wound causing a lot of damage the one that's a hollow point will open like a flowers petals and come apart, for military use they are now ileagal as are called dumdum the round head round or full metal jacket round are the ones that are are in use after ww2
The machine pistol is real thing!
Water cooling can provide more seamless continued fire than changing barrels. But you need a lot of water. It's generally only seen in older, heavier guns that aren't meant to be portable.
The different bullet types on the webley, I believe, are just experimenting with shapes
The German helmet probably is the best for protection.
An AT rifle typically saw use on tracks of a vehicle, or in ambush, waiting for a clear, non-angled shot on the thinner side armour. A bigger bullet weighs more. More mass takes more force to slow down, and therefore can get through more stuff.
The armour the PIAT was facing was mostly heavier steel. Steel is better armour than aluminium because it's denser, and that means it can take more beating.
The RPG (better English acronym: HATG, handheld anti-tank grenade is the original name in Russian) started as a handheld grenade. It later became mounted with a recoilless rifle, which gave it some range (as it turns out, you can't throw it very far). Modern RPGs have rockets in them, an are also launched by a recoilless rifle. They don't need all the gas to go into throwing the warhead (bomb) because it goes far on its own.
The PIAT was a shaped-charge warhead. It had a copper lining inside the big front bit. When the precession cap/fuse hit something, explosives would melt the copper and turn it into a hypersonic jet of death. The idea of aluminium filings for anti-tank jobs was tried. It turns out that the aluminium gets hot and coagulates. However, the British developed a new kind of explosive shell: HESH. High-explosive Squash-head would flatten C-4 or some other squishy explosive against armour, and explode. This would make the other side of the armour it hit break apart, and turn the inside of a tank into a blender. "Where'd the crew go? Everywhere."
'Three-oh-three' refers to the caliber of the weapon/ammunition, 0.303 of an inch. It would be close to that used in the Browning '30 cal' M1917 machine guns of the period that used a 0.3 of an inch caliber round.
.303 is a imperial measurement meaning almost a third of an inch. A substantial round that stops just about anyone.
The Lanchester and the Stirling that followed, both have an air cooling shroud around the barrel, so yes there is only one barrel hole.
The Short Lee-Enfield .303 (size in inches of the rounds) would be my choice, with the Bren a close second. I fired both of these as a cadet and we were told to put our berets against our shoulders when firing the .303. Bren was great fun and very accurate with single shot. I also fired the 7.62mm SLR, 9mm Browning pistol and the Stirling SMG. Also got to fire a Bofors 40mm AA gun with blank shells (Breakup) across Portsmouth Harbour.
@21:38 What would you suggest, a square? Think about it, It allows the most optimal chance of 'sticking' to something.
best to have it land on top so gravity is not your enemy.
The Piot ant tank grenade fires by compressing a spring and is not rocket powered, hence the recoil.
20:25 side holes are for cooling, only central one is barel, rest is cooling shroud. why have shroud instead of "naked" barrel? for hand safety, it keeps from burning hands on it while still allows air flow to cool it. water cooled ones have main disadvantage compared to air shrouded ones - weight, even tho water cooled cool better.
The barrel cooling issue is a terrain issue if you are in Northern Africa water is key so sometimes they pee’d on them
The dent makes it a crude hollow point
If you had a 20 round capacity on the Lee Enfield the height off the ground would be a few inches higher so if you were to be laying prone and needing to be as close to the ground as possible so you don’t become a target you don’t want something too tall. Same reason the M1 had a smaller capacity. We are talking trench warfare not modern building to building combat. That rifle I do believe was used all the way until the 60s. My grandad trained using it when he went into the marines.
Your opening conclusion was also shared by albert speer after he was released from prison he was asked what was the most pivotal battle for germany during the war ( expecting him to say stalingrad ) apparently they was disgusted when he said the battle of britain
Yes but the war was a German Russian American war as Britain had a much smaller contribution to the war effort like Italy. WW2 was a battle of these 3 superpowers. Therefore I don't believe that the battle of Britain was very important
@sas60che so let's assume the Germans succeeded and invaded the british Isles there would be no build up in Britain to retake Europe , no supplying the French, Danish and Norwegian resistance movements , no sharing of scientific and atomic secrets shared with the Americans , your also forgetting the nations of Canada, south Africa, new Zealand and Australia that supplied men to fight around the world to say it was a German Russian and american only war is very shorted sighted
Have you looked at the economic contribution from the British side during WW2. Im sure last time I saw the figures Britain was outproducing and shipping material to the Soviet Union@@sas60che
@sas60che
British empire contributions:
-gained access to and broke enigma machine
-decimated the kriegsmarine and luftwaffe
-sent supplies to the USSR making their tanks 40% of the USSRs medium and heavy tanks at moscow
-only allied jet fighter
-only allied long range bomber
-hobarts funnies
-advanced radar
-creation of the commandos
-creation of the SAS
-pushed the axis out of Africa and into Italy
-killed more than the USA, possibly more than the USSR since most of their count is those that died of hunger, cold, disease
-split the atom to make the atom bomb
-was 90% of the navy on D-day
-half the troops on D-day
-created a tank that one shots tigers
-mobilised more men and personnel
@@sas60che
USAs contributions:
-build tanks that can't take a hit
-lose more men than the british despite being in the war for only 2 years.
You should have a look at the role Oil played in the war: North African Campaign denied the oil of the ME to Hitler, which then made it vital to take Soviet oil. The USA supplied something like 80% of the oil used by the Allies
In a section attack a rifle men of the time used 10 rounds working as a section 2 fire teams and a gun group the bren attacking a machine gun for example plus 10 mag dont jam as much as a 20 mag , also its the bren gun where the fire power comes from in a section the rifles are for 1 shot 1 kill
4:58 Trench Warfare meant you were crouching and generally keeping as flat as you could, magazine too long means you cannot fire prone.
X
Ha, you basically worked it out yourself straight after.
You are a clever guy and I know sometimes you are hard on yourself but you shouldn’t be! You are just capable of thinking for yourself and sometimes other people can take that for someone being dim but it’s cleverer than someone just thinking what everyone else is thinking and not using their brain.
Love your reactions.
X
"Pistol size machine gun?"
They exist
The boys AT rifle and other AT rifles were basically the grandads of what is referred to in modern times as an "anti material rifle", same as the big 50 cal rifles you mentioned. At the time of its construction, tanks generally had pretty thin armour and while you would use an AT rifle to destroy important parts of a tank, you could penertrate a tank normally if you desired.
Truing to answer your questions as you go:
The match up of the small arms to the US arsenal is basically:
Lee Enfield similar to M1 Garand - I'd take the Garand.
Sten similar to the M3 grease gun.
Bren similar to BAR, but the Bren is more modern and a bit better.
Don't bother about the pistols, almost every officer would carry an Enfield rifle or Sten - to be less obvious to enemy snipers.
Those hollow and flat tip "Man-stopper" bullets were designed to maximise injury, illegal in war, and reserved mainly for colonial police operations.
Developed after encountering tribal warriors hopped up on drugs.
That anti-tank rifle's a brute, likely to break your shoulder. But a one-shot kill against enemy snipers.
It's about twice the size of a regular rifle .55 inch calibre and the piece weighs in around 30 pounds.
The PIAT is a mortar that shoots a hollow charge anti tank bomb. Same job as a bazooka, but it's a gun, not a rocket launcher.
Another complete brute to fire, because it's a massive gun. (Strictly a spigot Mortar).
Yes it sprays a white hot jet through the armour of enemy tanks, which must have been an utterly awful way to go.
.303 is the calibre of British ammunition .303 of an inch.
Very similar to US .30-06.
303 refers to the ammunition, but rifles that fired it ware also knowns as 303s.
Similar to how the Browning M2 is sometimes called a .50 Cal'.
The Lanchester has one barrel and the rest of the holes are for cooling.
I can't speak much about the sticky bomb's shape.
But with 2 pounds of explosive, there's a fair chance that the thrower's in the blast radius.
Take the BREN gun, a man portable automatic rifle, though it really needs a crew of two.
Our helmets were shite
I think that you're correct about the Battle of Britain. If Britain had be conquered, North Africa would have fallen and the Germans would have controlled the Suez Canal which was crucial to the war effort of the Allies, Italy would not have fallen, and their contribution would have been important to Hitler. America probably wouldn't have joined the war, as there was nowhere to locate their bases in Western Europe, or at least not been as effective. No Britain, no D-Day, and Germany could have continued to concentrate their main efforts on the Eastern Front.