Comments by "Scott Kenny" (@ScottKenny1978) on "A Rare Navy Stopgap: the CLLE MkI Naval Enfield" video.

  1. Or an interesting set of duties held by one officer. Go watch the Sub Brief on the NR-1, where Admiral Rickover on the Atomic Energy Committee gave orders to Admiral Rickover in Bureau of Ships to make a nuclear powered deep submergence vessel. (Same Admiral Rickover, just doing two different jobs).
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  2. Yep. The US Army and Navy were completely separate entities for a very long time, only brought into a single purchasing system sometime in the 1950s. The M2 Browning .50cal is actually the first weapon designed for both, that's where the AN/M2 designation comes from. (Yes, the 1911 and 1903 were bought by the Navy, but the Navy didn't have any design inputs to them.)
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  3.  @51WCDodge  had a couple of officers that would have said something like that.... 🤣 Shooting a small target from a moving ship or boat is a challenge. Especially when it's a couple hundred pounds of explosives, you want to be a good 100+ yards away for that. My shooting buddy was an Engineman on a Minesweeper in Vietnam, he spent a lot of time clearing Haiphong harbor after 1972. He said the EOD divers were chain smoking, some of the mines were "touchy" and had to be blown in place, while they had to disarm and pick up all the mines that didn't have to be blown in place. A little surreal seeing guys chain smoking next to stacks and stacks of mines on the fantail.
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  4. I would imagine that his Mad Minute was pretty impressive...
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  5. At the time, the British were building a few ships for the Japanese (Kongo class, IIRC), probably took the rifles and ammunition in trade for some of the costs of construction.
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  6.  @TheArgieH  oof, an ammunition ship is a nightmare. Closest example I could find was the Texas City Disaster, when a ship carrying 2300+ tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer blew up in 1947. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster
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  7.  @docnele  late production Hudson/Studebakers and AMC cars are pretty nuts, too. Hudson and Studebaker would trade engines and chassis, so there are original Hudsons with Studi engines and Studies with Hudson engines. As for the AMCs, they'd take parts from whoever had a surplus. Cadillac, Ford, Chrysler, etc.
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  8.  @docnele  yeah, the AMCs are notoriously hard to work on due to them taking whatever extra production a company had. But they made pretty good engines, especially the big inline 6cylinders. I have a 1994 Jeep Cherokee with the 4.0L (244ci), and it has 180k miles on it. Only major repair has been replacing the water pump gasket. That engine is a descendant of the AMC 258ci (4.3L). In fact, you can put a 258 crank into a 4.0L without any machine work. It's a common thing, and I plan to do it myself when I finally rebuild the 4.0L.
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  9.  @spooksmalloy  there's also the Dutch and Norwegians. Even in official descriptions, HMS X is always a UK ship, while HNLMS is Dutch and HNoMS is Norwegian. Even though His/Her Majesty's Ship is common to all of them.
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  10. And the MLE was "Emily"
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  11. This rifle was specifically to use Army ammunition.
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  12. MkVIIIz is specifically low flash ammo.
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  13.  @dickybird6916  Mk7Z was designed to replace the old Dum-Dum soft point ammo, and the Mk3, 4, and 5 rounds. Interestingly, the Soviet 5.45 military ammunition is designed much like the Mk7Z bullet, steel core with a lead filler to make the bullet very tail-heavy and tumble on impact.
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  14.  @51WCDodge  happened a lot before WW1, particularly in India and Africa. And probably in China, though I'm less familiar with the events over there. Particularly before ships had fixed gun mounts, you'd have a lighter gun like a Swivel gun dismounted from the ship and put on a ground carriage, and crewed by naval types.
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  15. If he can find an example!
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  16. Welding would be an issue, you'd have to re-heat-treat the receiver and make sure it didn't warp in the process. But these were riveted on. As long as the holes are in the center of the part, they don't take any strength away. It's the same idea as holes in aircraft parts.
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  17. Though looking at the simplicity of it (remove dust cover, install a charger bridge, replace rear sight leaf) compared to the Army CLLE, I suspect that this was a minimum cost conversion that might have been doable at the ship armory level.
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  18.  @bjrnegillarsen1380  sure, for this example. Though if there was a small surplus of guns, I suppose it would be better to send some letters out to the ships saying "you will receive a full set of replacement rifles configured for the new ammunition as well as a full load of ammunition for them, plus a small excess for training and function checking. Once the new rifles have been checked and racked, put your old rifles into the crates for delivery to the factory for conversion. Make sure you use up the old ammunition."
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