Comments by "Michael Wright" (@michaelwright2986) on "Royal Armouries" channel.

Well, I loved this. I was struck by the nerdpower of the detail that McKinley was shot by a first model, third variation, as opposed to the second variation on the table, and then the details just kept on coming--all in the context of social and political history. As a presentation of artifacts, that's a triumph of museology. Champion.
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This is a really persuasive answer, but I can't find any reference to such things online, using two search engines. The power of "gun" (in quotes as a search term) is reduced by the fact that "gun" is the name of a part of a bosun's call. Could we get a reference, please? Is it perhaps a term used in a language other than English?
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@5Andysalive That's right, but I frequently find the sound level a bit low on Jonathan's excellent videos. Better than the ear-blasting level of some YouTubers, and kind of fits with the low-key presentation; but my ancient ears do struggle quite often.
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White Baker talks about a "half-pound percussion shell"; I don't know what that means. If he's talking about the projectile, then presumably it's a true 2 bore/gauge, but you'd expect a gent of the 19th c. would have respected the distinction between shell and (solid) shot. I believe there is a US usage of "shell" to mean a cartridge. But you couldn't rule out the possibility that a British explorer would load a big mother like that with projectiles with a bursting charge, for when the beast has to be stopped come what may.
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@r.awilliams9815 Thank you very much for the information.
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The maker's name on the Art Deco piece has a lot to be said for it. After deciding they were going to put on their name, they went big and made it a feature. The typeface is really interesting--of its era, but with a hint of the handmade and irregular, and they've kept it dignified with no abbreviations at all. I guess they were thinking of this gun staying in a family for a long time, and with old weapons, we're really glad when they're properly signed. Overall decoration would have been good, too, but I kind of like they way they've gone loud and proud--"We are the Famous Fabrique Nationale, from Herstal, in Belgium. Remember Us".
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4:25ish: "This has damage, but it is original damage." And it's not a Lee Enfield, but that too is an original misnaming. Wonderful new horizons in authenticity.
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I have read (somewhere, some decades ago) that there was a bit of blundering with the procurement, and IIRC there was a Hispano belt feed version which the RAF did not adopt, and then had to develop its own. I have certainly got this at least a bit confused, so I'd be glad if someone who knows could give the proper story, if there is one.
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@CHRISTIEMALRYLIBRARY Not a man to take chances, evidently.
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@massivepileup Is that one of the things bearers were for?
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The British Army was surprisingly open to foreign designs and ideas. You get the impression that Victorians were all stuffy and sceptical about Johnny Foreigner, but there's a great openness to American influence, and later Czech, to go along with pretty advanced stuff in the School of Musketry. No NIH syndrome.
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Well, I didn't know. This evidently has the same capacity for endless discussions as Bf/Me 109. And pub quiz questions like "How many AK-47s have been made?"
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@donlove3741 My understanding is that the Brits were already buying P40s and went to NAA and asked if they could build more P40s for them (such manufacture by multiple companies was common, and originally US acquisition policy). NAA said "We can do better than that," and did, in, as you say, remarkably short time. Even with the Allison, the P51 was an excellent aircraft at low level.
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When is an Enfield a Mauser? When it's made in a really tiny calibre.
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Jonathan's explanation is ingenious, but wrong. These are, in fact, pairs of Transylvanian duelling pistols. In a Transylvanian ceremonial duel, the seconds loaded each pistol mechanism, and then screwed them together on the common barrel. The principals then took one end each of the assembled apparatus, and at the drop of the umpire's handkerchief both fired, as near simultaneously as possible. The results were rarely fatal, but the participants were likely to be wounded by flying pieces during the self-disassembly that inevitably occurred. These wounds resulted in scars, which were worn as a badge of honour, like the scars of German university duels with edged weapons.
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At the last minute I saw the t-shirt: Martini Henry Singles Only. Bravo, Sir!
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Yeah, I was a bit disappointed it was a lirpaloof, as I never owned one and would have liked to hear a bit about it.
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When I heard "pill-lock pistol" I immediately thought of the companion self-defence weapon, the bollock knife (or ballock dagger). And yes, that is a bona fide, fair dinkum, technical term. Any clue what was the composition of the priming compound? As there was some still in the flask, I do hope it got analysed. And, as for the proportion of female gunmakers, my hobbyhorse is that, although the patriarchy is real, it is a mistake to assume that it was worse the further back you go. There's a fairly common thought that the status and opportunities of women declined in the Renaissance, and again in the 19th c. But I do hope Ann Patrick retained a significant role in the new merged company.
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Not a dolphin, but a Lockless Monster.
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Pedantry on the inventor's given name (sorry, done too much proof reading in my life). At 1:37 there's a caption in which he is "Guiseppe": "Typo!" I think, only to see at 2:00 that it's spelt "Guiseppe" on the gun itself. But at 17:20, on the patent, his name is given with the normal spelling "Giuseppe". Totally inconsequential, unless it's any use tracing the dude. I first though "self defence," but an ideal self-defence weapon is easy to carry at all times, which this palpably isn't. An assassination weapon? Or is it just a case of "Because I can" ?
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I think you just throw them in the laundry. The purpose is to keep acids in skin oil off the artifact. In libraries, their use is deprecated on manuscripts and early books, because parchment or early paper isn't attacked by acids (some of the inks were acidic), and they make the person handling the book clumsy. Only needed for industrially produced papers of the 19th c. and later, which can be self-destructing because of the residual acid, to start with. There was a time when some libraries liked to make a thing of them, because of ceremonial and Precious Objects. I imagine they'd be really important for metal objects (and at least they keep off fingerprints), but for some other things the risk of damage by clumsiness would be higher than the harm of contamination with precious bodily fluids.
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Good grief! I remember indoor fireworks in England, when I was a child. Everything was coal burning then, so I suppose they didn't make much difference to the air quality.
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Appear in many movies. Product placement, perhaps?
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2nd Lt Hammond is recorded as "not mustered" but I misheard it as "not mustard" and thought that was rather an informal way to record an adverse HR judgment.
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There is a chance these might have been dinkum self-defence weapons. Prince George got about a bit and wouldn't always have wanted a large escort, so it's possible that one or both of these in the pockets of a great coat would have been a good precaution.
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@Shaun_Jones If you ask the Royal Armouries very nicely, they will show you the experimental howdah-mounted Oerlikon.
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I haven't seen the original reasoning, but I wonder if it was more about logistics than cost. Use up all the ammunition in the first half hour of battle, thanks to semi-automatic feed, and then where will the re-supply come from? As I say, I don't know if that was the stated reason, but it seems like a reasonable concern.
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@PassportToPimlico I think it started with the RAF just wanting a fighter. They were talking with North American about bombers, and asked them if they could manufacture P-40s (which were good fighters, about equivalent to the Hurricane). NAA said they could do a better fighter with the same engine. RAF Mustangs with the Allison engine were used for Army Co-Operation (because of the notorious high altitude limitations of the Allison without a turbo-supercharger); Army Co-Operation at that time was NOT a high status role. So the origins were pretty unglamorous, but various people had the idea of putting in a Merlin, with its high performance mechanical supercharger, and with the addition of fuel tanks everywhere, and six .50" calibre guns (replacing a mixture of calibres), it became the best escort fighter of the war. The P-38, BTW, was a purely US origin design: it did have the turbo-superchargers the Allison needed for high altitude, but the installation wasn't satisfactory in Europe. Yes, they did think of putting Merlins in the P-38, but various US interests successfully resisted putting nasty foreign engines in a US design.
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@colbeausabre8842 For sure, the air war in the Pacific was fought at lower altitudes and the P-38 did well (also, over water two engines are reassuring). And there's always that balance between improvement and interruption of production, which on the whole the Allies got right and Germany got wrong (at first). But in the European theatre, the P-38 was tried and, surprisingly, turned out to be a bit broke. But nationalism and NIH were always part of the over-determination of decisions.
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Perhaps a multi-shot firearm like this would be especially useful in defence? I'm thinking of 18th c. tactics with the charge over about 100 metres, with the defence only having time to fire one round with muzzle loaders; a repeater would change that calculation a great deal, if it worked and was affordable.
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These things were obviously in production for a long time, but were many actually sold? The percussion revolver looks pretty practical: nine shots is good, and the shotgun would be something to try in "Oh bugger" moments. But the centrefire weapons just look grotesquely awkward as a practical weapon. But I don't know: did people really use them?
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So the British keeping semi-automatic fire is also an economy measure, but economy of what we'd now call the weapon system, the gun and its ammunition. Given that most of the shots in a burst would be well off target, it's sensible, though I don't suppose, in the emergency circumstances, anybody did a serious comparative analysis of the relative impacts on saving on gun manufacture versus ammunition manufacture.
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Sonofabitch just isn't a British insult. It's known, of course, so we can appreciate famous statements by eminent Americans ("Fill your hand, you son of a bitch"; "Your job is not to die for your country; it's to make the other poor son of a bitch die for his" {alternative expressions are available}), but it just wouldn't spring to mind at the sight of the letters SOB. If, on the other hand, anyone were to suggest that these soldiers were to be called Teams Working with Allied Troops, they would be drowned in waves of derisive laughter.
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So, just to simplify matters, there are THREE designations "Mk. IV" applying to Webley revolvers. Webley's Mk IV in the service revolver series; the gun is adopted, and happens to be Mk IV in the quite separate Army sequence. Then there is Webley's Mk IV pocket revolver (they having two different lines, which seem never to get mentioned in the naming of parts), which gets adopted with the manufacturer's name, not a separate military designation. That military naming is, by then, completely out of line with the standard designation for Army revolvers, but it would, I guess, have been far too easy to call it Revolver No. 3. Of course, they couldn't have called it Revolver No. 2 Mk 1, because that would have been to admit that the Enfield was a knock-off. Glad to be able to clear that up for everyone.
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