In World War Two the British used
the Bren gun as their standard section light machinegun and the Germans had something called
the MG34 which was later replaced by MG42, which was
essentially the same weapon but a cheaper easier-to-make version. And I'm going to be calling it the Spandau
by the way because that's what people at the time called it. Now I know modern revisionists and pedants will
say it technically wasn't a Spandau it wasn't made in the Spandau factory. They're quite right. But since everyone at the time called it a Spandau
and Spandau was a much better word I'm going to be calling it that.
I hope you can forgive me. So Bren gun vs Spandau. Which was better? Now a hell of a lot has been written and said about how the Bren gun was rubbish and
the Spandau was just ace. By large, if any piece of equipment was used
by the Germans then people will say that it was just ace because it was
German and that's somehow just ace. In fact a lot of German equipment had
a lot of problems and a lot of British equipment was really good. And it remains the case that the Bren gun was used right away to the end of the war and well beyond. In fact it was discontinued completely I think in the
British army in something bizarre like 2006. They were still using them in the
Falklands War in 1982 and they are still today making Bren guns. So if Bren guns were no good, they wouldn't have lasted the test of time, would they? Not everyone copied the MG34.
Sorry, the Spandau. I said I was going to be calling it a Spandau.
Never mind. Not everyone copied that after the war so if it
was so flipping marvelous Why didn't everyone go over to using that? So what were the differences between the two weapons? Well, the Spandau was terrifying - not that it's exactly a wonderful thing to be shot at by a Bren, but it was terrifying to be shot at by a Spandau. They sprayed bullets at something like 1200 rounds per minute. So fast, in fact, that you didn't hear distinct
rounds being fired at you. There was just this constant noise of bullets
whizzing past you. Some people discribe the sound as ripping calico or linoleum. I ever heard them reffering to it as linoleum guns
or burp guns. They sound a bit like a zip being done up fast.
It's sort of a... brrr brrr brrr noice. Whereas with Bren gun you could hear
ta ta ta ta ta ta ta. You could hear the individual rounds being fired. Not only did they fired so much faster, but they sprayed out about the place. The Spandau was not an accurate weapon. It was an
"area denial weapon" if you like. So there you are: you're in a hedge and you can see across this field there's another hedge. And in the next field you can see guys launching an attack. So you spray that field brrrrrrrrr with a load of rounds from your Spandau and everyone in that field feels in danger. There are bullets flying all over the shop.
You don't know where the next one is going to be. Could be it's heading straight for you. So "AH"! You throw yourself onto the deck.
You are suppressed. And that attack grinds to a hold. So in defence, Spandaus are really good because you can make an attack by the enemy grind to a hold in a way that you can't really with a Bren gun
because the Bren gun was very accurate. It was as accurate
as a rifle. There were even occasionally in use for sniping
when you set them to single shot. And if you did fire a burst.... Ta ta ta ta ta All those would go to the same point. So you couldn't have suppressed an entire field. Even if you did fire very effectively.
Because you only had twenty... about 27, 28 rounds typically in the magazine. You'd have to stop to reload pretty soon. So they just weren't as devastating in defence. So what's so great about Brens then? Well, one is they are really accurate. And reliable, you could change the barrels very quickly. And you could use them in attack so much
more readily because they were easy to pick up and carry, you could
fire them from the hip or you could fire them like a rifle from a shoulder. again, very accurately. I've seen a video of someone trying to fire a Spandau he puts it down by his centre of gravity
somewhere around waist height leans into it, braces himself and fires and he just goes "Shhhhh". He's just pushed back
by this constant force of "brrrrr" of bullets. You couldn't really use them very effectively in
close combats. But you could go in to a house with a Bren gun,
start shooting about the place. You could accompany your troops into battle and you could also shoot them in, give them covering fire right to the last minute. So for instance, a load of infantry - your infantry - are going to
make an attack coming in from the side. You put the Bren gun here and this is where the enemy are, and you want
to suppress them. so you fire "ta ta ta ta ta ta" at the enemy to suppress them whilst your guys
come right in. Your guys get right close to him, right close up to the enemy and then they start throwing the grenades and so forth and in with the bayonets, and the job is done. But if you're spraying bullets all over the place really fast you can't give that accuracy of covering fire
to your guys. So the British way of putting a flanking Bren
and going in with the infantry at right angles didn't really work so well for the Germans who had to mount frontal attacks, because of that inaccuracy. Rifleman Bowlby in "The Recollections
of Rifleman Bowlby" - which is a book that I read very recently - he describes how during an attack he tried to a escape a Spandau's fire by getting behind a hedge that he saw. And he ran towards the hedge and realised:
"I'm not gonna make it... I'm not gonna get to the hedge."
But he saw a ditch in front of the hedge - dived into it only to find out that
in fact it wasn't a ditch. It was just 1 inch deep, and he was
lying face down 80 yards away from a Spandau, in
full view of it. And they fired loads and loads of bullets at him. All of which missed. And he was lying there for about three quarters of an hour. Every few minutes they gave him a burst. And he was fine at the end of it.
They never hit him. If they'd been using a Bren he would
have been dead. So when you do suppress the enemy,
they have gone down to the ground, You could then start picking people off with the Bren
in a way you can't with a Spandau. Because though it's brilliant to suppressing a large area
it's not good at attacking an individual point. So which is better then?
Well Sydney Jary in 19 Platoon he said that in defence the Spandau was way better
as an individual weapon. Sydney Jary's 19 (18) Platoon by the way -
highly recommended book which is actually a standard text in Sandhurst,
the officer training school for the British Army. He said that if you are going up against enemy
who are firing Spandaus at you They are so terrifying, and they are just
so much more effective than a Bren. But in attack a Bren gun is at least as good. He also noted, as two other writers, that the Germans fought quite differently.
He never - Sydney Jary - in all his experience as an infantry platoon leader,
he said he never ever saw the Germans fire their rifles. They relied entirely on the section machine gun. So a German section esentially was
a Spandau team and some riflemen whose job was to protect the Spandau team and keep
it supplied with ammunition. Which was a no small feat because
it tore through ammunition. You had to carry a huge amount of ammunition. You see Germans advancing, they're all carrying
these great big ammunition boxes with belts of 250 rounds in. And they are
all clomping down the street carrying these things, because they know that they are going need to supply their section machine gun. So they pretty much didn't do any fighting
on their own. Which meant that the total firepower of the section wasn't so very different actually because you've got a Spandau firing rather than one Bren gun
and 5 Lee-Enfield rifles. And of course the more weapons
that are being fired the more pairs of eyes there are behind them, the more
angles they can cover, the more likely they are to spot
some enemy somewhere. So, in fact it's another different and
in some ways better way better way to fight to have less firepower dispersed amongst
a greater amount of men rather than rely on this one gun. And again Sydney Jary and others note
again and again that if a German section lost it's machine gun
for whatever reason the weapon jammed, or the gunners
were killed, or whatever As soon as that gun was knocked out of action
the fight just went out of the section they just thought: "Oh, well, my job is supplying
and guarding that thing... and it's gone so I don't like it anymore.
Oh, I feel safe when that thing is firing and making it's very loud noise and spraying
bullets about the place. I now don't feel safe." And they left. So if you could defeat just one weapon in whole the section,
you could defeat the section. So which was better? Neither was entirely better.
They were different. In defence the Spandau could be
really really frightening but in attack the Bren was at least as good and let's not forget that the British
consistently won. From 1944 (the Normandy landings) onwards every single day the British Army
and the Allies in general, but I'm using the example of the British,
advanced. Sometimes it was only a few hundered yards
in a day. Other days it was miles. The Germans had shortening supply lines, the advantage of defence, supposedly terrific equipment,
very well trained and motivated troops etc etc etc... And yet they consistently lost. Well, if the Bren wasn't good at it's job then
that wouldn't have been true, would it? ta ta ta Oh, there was something else I meant to say and that is, that the British did actually experiment
with their own equivalent of the Spandau - It was called the Vickers K gun - a gun that
could fire very fast and it was very useful for anti-aircraft use, but wasn't normally used as a section machine gun.
But was sometimes issued to specialist troops like Commandos, the SAS,
Long Range Desert Patrol, scouting units and so forth. But for ordinary infantrymen it wasn't found
to be the way they wanted to fight. What would happed is that the section
machine gun would go forward, the men would go forward and spray bullets about the place,
it would be all terribly successful let's say and then they would run out of ammunition. And then the attack would grind to a hold. If you are attacking, that's a huge problem. If you are
defending you can sit tight and spray away and have a team of guys supplying you with
ammunition and it's not so bad. But if you are going forwards, going
further and further away, lengthening your lines of supply and you run out
of ammunition, then what do you do? Do you fall back? In which case all that ground you've gained has been wasted,
all that work has been wasted, the enemy will just infiltrate forwards
and retake it. Or do you sit tight where you are, with
no bullets to defend yourself and hope that other men will go back and risk
their lifes to bring ammunition forwards? They did try it and they found
it just wasn't for them. Subs by IvanRezny
