The Cold War simmered for over 40 years and during this time the we saw the birth of many of the worlds most iconic arms, such as the AK47, FN FAL, and M16. However, the efficient and effective NATO caliber SMG of this era, the Sterling submachine gun, has been largely swept into the shop-bin of firearms history.
Submachine guns, essentially just compact, pistol-caliber select fire carbines, were born in the final months of the First World War as an answer to the madness of trench warfare. By the Second World War, these handy little guns were everywhere.
Submachine guns were used pervasively to equip tank crews, paratroopers, and squad leaders mostly due to their smaller profile and high rate of fire when compared to full size rifles. Great Britain had three sub machine guns during the War: the Lanchester, the Tommy gun, and the ubiquitous STEN. One of these designs was obsolete, the second was heavy and expensive, and the third was more of an emergency design, neither accurate nor desired. In 1944, with WWII raging, the British General Staff requested a replacement for these weapons that would address and correct all these flaws in one gun.
Like most firearms, the revolver suffers from a very annoying limitation that affects virtually anyone using it in the field: once you fire every chamber, the gun needs to be reloaded. Most of the time (meaning range time), reloading is a minor albeit sometimes irritating inconvenience and time is a no issue. Sometimes however, a bad person or animal is attempting to end your existence and, under the stress of this real-life situation, time is a priceless luxury. It was for just these occasions that the speedloader was created.
The first revolver speedloader patented was that of William H. Bell in 1879. Bell’s device was a simple metal disk with a rotating locking mechanism that held six revolver rounds. When used with a top-break revolver of the time, such as the Smith and Wesson Lemon squeezer, the speedloader would drop six ready rounds in the cylinder extremely rapidly. It is unclear if Bell’s device ever was manufactured, but it certainly seems like the first of its species.
In 1893, one Mr. William de Courcy Prideaux, a subject of Queen Victoria, patented a device he referred to as a ‘cartridge-packet holder’. This device was a circular disc through which 12 spring-steel fingers protruded in six pairs. Each pair held one .455 caliber round for the British Webley style revolver. A later 1914 improved design added a bridge-like handle to the rear of the plate.
Prideaux’s device became popular with professional army officers and discerning Webley owners..
In the past month, the “fearless and supreme leader” Kim Jong-un of North Korea, marshal of the Korean People’s Army (and voted sexiest man alive by The Korean Worker magazine two years in a row), was been photographed in public with his loyal and most trusted bodyguards—and they had some interesting hardware. Seen escorting the people’s joy, two camouflaged soldiers armed seemed to be armed with standard 5.45×39mm AK74 rifles. What was non-standard about said AKs however were the huge (loaf of bread) sized helical magazines attached in place of the common banana clip.
Were they real? Where did they come from? What are they? Do they work? Keep reading.
Read more in my column at GUNS.com
When it comes to defending a fixed position, such as a trench or pillbox, from an advancing horde of enemy foot soldiers, the best solution for the individual soldier is a machine gun. This we’ve known for some time. The problem with machine guns though, is that they overheat after the first thousand rounds and aren’t much good without a replacement barrel after that. Well, if you’re a Guns.com reader it should come as no surprise that John Moses Browning came up with the ultimate answer to this problem a long time ago, even before his legendary M2 won the hearts and minds of the American people, and it was called the M1917 machine gun.
Think you can hit a bouncing target from a moving platform 1000+ meters away? Marines assigned to Scout Sniper Platoon, Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 3/2, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), and Sailors assigned to the USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), conduct a live-fire exercise while at sea, to practice defending the ship against small boat attacks. The 26th MEU operates continuously across the globe, providing the president and unified combatant commanders with a forward-deployed, sea-based quick reaction force. The MEU is a Marine Air-Ground Task Force capable of conducting amphibious operations, crisis response and limited contingency operations.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, April 17
Here we see that most ignored class of naval warship, the humble minesweeper. This particular one had more of a history that others. With a war coming in 1941, the US Navy designed and ordered built a huge class of auxiliary minesweepers to help keep the harbors, coasts, and sea lanes clear from those infernal devices. Dubbed the YMS-1 (Yard Mine Sweeper) class, they were simple 136-foot long boats with twin GM disels, sweep gear, and a 3″ gun for those special moments. A 32-man crew of bluejackets would man the rails. In all some 481 of these boats would be ordered from 1941-45 from 35 different yacht makers around the country. Eighty YMS minesweepers were ordered from US yards for transfer under lend-lease to the UK as the BYMS-class minesweeper, and one of these is the subject of this article.
The simple wooden hulled ship was ordered in 1941 from Ballard Marine Railway Co., Inc., Seattle, WA. Commissioned as HM J-826 in February 1943, she served in the Royal Navy. Renamed HM BYMS-2026 in 1944, she finished the war in the Med before being decommissioned in 1946 and laid up at Malta. Struck from the Royal Navy Register 10 June 1947, she was returned to U.S. custody 1 August 1947. The US Navy disarmed her and removed her sweeping and communication gear then sold her to a British businessman the same year. I mean Uncle Sam already had hundreds of these wooden boats, why bring back another one?
Her sistership, USS YMS-328, one of the few YMS ships still around was bought after the war by a fellow named John Wayne who is considered to be something of a classic actor or sorts. Rechristened the Wild Goose, she still plies the California coastline.
The businessman named her Calypso and after use as a ferry in the Malta area, leased her to a former French Naval officer named Jacques-Yves Cousteau for one British pound per year in 1950. Over the next 47 years Cousteau made several improvements to the minesweeper including changing the accommodations to include 27 in Captain’s Quarters, Six Staterooms & Crew Quarters, adding Photo & Science Labs, an underwater observation chamber, a small helicopter landing pad (on a 136 foot ship!), a Yumbo 3-ton hydraulic crane, and waterscooter and minisub storage holds.
Calypso
After decades of wandering the world’s oceans in Cousteau’s real life aquatic, Calypso was sunk in a January 1996 accident in Singapore where she lay on the harbor floor for 8 days before being raised and salvaged. Sadly she has not sailed under her own power since then.
Jacques Cousteau speaking about life on Calypso, the search for on Atlantis and cognac in a great Blank-on-Blank 1978 interview by Roy Leonard on WGN Radio, from the Roy Leonard Audio Archive.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997 and for the past 16 years the Calypso has been in turns neglected and then restored, then neglected again while legal battles over which group owned the ship ensued. Currently it is owned by the Equipe Cousteau Association who is raising money for a restoration and conversion to a museum ship.
The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed. – Jacques Cousteau
original plans, YMS class sweepers
Specs:
Displacement 270 t.
Length 136′
Beam 24′ 6″
Draft 8′
Speed 15 kts.
Complement 32
Armament: One 3″/50 dual purpose gun mount, two 20mm mounts and two depth charge projectors (removed in 1947) (Post 1950- Spearguns and swagger)
Propulsion: (as designed) Two 800bhp General Motors 8-268A diesel engines, Snow and Knobstedt single reduction gear, two shafts.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO)
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
The most common accessory that the well-dressed gentleman in the 1850s carried was a walking cane. This simple object was a status symbol among those with taste, the equivalent of the rapier carried by nobles during the Renaissance period. You simply did not leave home without it—so what better place to hide a gun?
For the sixty or so years of the Victorian era, every gentleman with clean fingernails went about town with a walking cane. These canes were simple accessories (though they could often be quite ornate in appearance) and didn’t have a specific purpose other than as a fashion accessory, a symbol of taste, wealth and class.
However, the piece of mind that comes with traveling with a nice, sturdy stick in your hands was certainly an aspect of these early canes function/popularity as this period also saw one of the most notorious rises in street crime ever seen in the modern Western world. And with the canes marking these gentlemen as targets for ruffians as much as defending against them, you could see why it soon became fashionable to have not only a cane, but also one that held a means of protection. This led to cane swords, but these were largely outpaced by the rise of small, concealable pistols, used both by citizens as well as by the criminal elements.
Why bring a sword to a gunfight? This line of thinking led to canes that were in fact, working firearms.
