Britishmuzzleloaders discussion: the Pattern 1908 to Pattern 1937 Transition: why?

having a rough go of it there in a bit well what do you think of your coach other stuff what grenades right bags Bren bags what's up what's a bread man good said light machine gun ran late machines yes run the light Chico never heard of it all I know it's this rightful of me this one well times have changed a bit mate oh well what are you yeah with your rifle there get with the program he's covering fire so I can get these over that okay [Music] hello and welcome to bloke on the British muzzleloaders range I'm here with Rob in Western Canada very very happy to be here very very grateful for him hosting me to talk about areas of mutual interest there maybe one or two a couple somewhere along the line right what we're going to talk about today has that little sketch might have indicators the difference in kit from the 1908 pattern to the 1937 pattern and the philosophy around that and and how it how it developed over time and why now probably wanna take us quickly through the salient points of of Euro eight pattern gear certainly there's a number of points that come to mind the first off is its construction it's made out of cotton webbing which is the first of its kind in British and Empire service as far as a full set of equipment goes the secondly its intended for the exclusive use of chargers in relation to the smle these in total of 10 small pouches hold a maximum of 150 rounds although as we've discussed amongst ourselves the actual battle load or the actual textbook load was 120 the others perhaps as far as economics go is that this is a one piece set of equipment that by undoing the belt buckle and perhaps the shoulder straps here to let the the braces through I can take this on and off like a coat mm-hmm it's an extremely efficient design in terms of the way it carries all of its components together and in that sense it ends up being the most advanced set of personal equipment leading into the Great War mm-hmm and indeed it lost until just before the second world war broke out and Prague were probably in territorial service even a little little beyond that now I'm wearing a 37 pan equipment I'm dressed and equipped as for sort of late war --is-- 1944 1945 and the obvious thing you'll notice is I've got nowhere to put my rifle ammunition that's the big serious change I mean these patches are huge and if I was to drop rifle ammunition in there I would struggle to get down and get at it it will fall out the Chargers because they're not the most stable things in these these are well designed well sized pouches that keep the charges together stop the ammunition getting out of order and so on the big change that drove this has nothing to do with the rifle per se this is a set of equipment which is based around the Bren gun because when this was adopted there was no such thing as a light machine gun in in British infantry use everything was focused around the rifle here these pouches are sized for Bren gun match now late war I would have been carrying in the left pouch - Bren gun mags with 28 rounds each because they short loaded them they will hold 30 but they can it was more reliable they only held 28 which are for the section Bren gun I'll be carrying if issued one or more grenades in here which you can get up fairly easily I would be carrying 50 rounds in a bandolier folded up in there I've only got one bandolier with me unfortunately and another band earlier slung round from my own rifle so I'm actually carrying far more ammunition for the brand for my own rifle this second bandolier in here is not for me it's for the gun is for refilling Bren mags it was different early early war you'd find people carrying carrying three mags but always 50 rounds for the rifle and the rifle had been reduced in significance from something where you're carrying 120 rounds on paper to something where you carrying 50 rounds on paper because everything revolved around the Bren gun contrary to popular myth there's a myth that goes around that the the second war German infantry section was the the was machine-gun centric yeah that everything revolved around the machine did GPL what effectively was the GPMG in the light roll the mg34 42 and in the in the in the MIT according to myth the British doctrine was that the that the machine gun supported the rifleman whereas the Germans it was the other way the other way around which unfortunately is actually not true and it's it's clear from doctrine from from from the pamphlets and from what happened on the ground that in fact the the Bren was the sections main firepower everyone was to be trained in its use and every everyone was carrying ammunition for it unlike the Germans the Germans had a more had a basically three guys who were carrying the gun and operating the gun and carrying most if not all of the ammunition if there was extra ammunition above their allocation that will be spread around but they had no way to carry it and remember you don't actually everyone seemed Vietnam films with belts all around the shoulders but you actually don't want to do that as far as possible so carrying extra belted ammunition for the the universal machine gun in German servicemen carrying it in your hand because they didn't have pouches here you've got typically a gun group is is three men the guy operating it the section two in command and the number two on the gun and what the number two on the guns job is to run around with a pair of these which are called utility pouches getting full mags from members of the rifle group which depending on the size of section is basically everyone who's not in the gun group it would typically be five to seven men I don't have any magazine carry magazine it's all online now your brand magazines friend gone max why didn't you say so bother it was obvious now he would be shifting full mags from the guys pouches to the gun and empty mags back and then the beer being refilled now as our little vignette showed these bandoliers are a bit crappy but I said I suspect that that the idea was most of the time you would be hoping that there was a convenient point to reload because honestly these are these taps and everything they are a bit of a pain in the backside you do have 5 10 rounds up though so you'll need to put in another charger is is slightly reduced the fact that the ammunition is intended to be carried for the Bandler I think also speaks to the emphasis on the Bren gun yeah in that the individual man with a hundred and fifty or I mean even up to 250 rounds of rifle ammunition I carried in some operations during the First World War the fact that you're relying on a Bandler of 50 rounds as a rifleman also indicates the importance of the Bren gun hmm because it is the the weapon that perpetuates the fight not the rifleman as we find in the early part anyway of the great war you know the rifleman is the only thing essentially apartment I mean not withstanding artillery but it's the rifleman that fights and wins the battle whereas we get through the Great War and into the Second World War and it is the they're like machine guns it's it's much more of a wide panoply of weaponry that allows that rifleman to get where he needs to be ie on to the enemy position and when the Lewis gun was adopted Lewis gun for those who don't know have these 47 round drums he's got nowhere to put it as a rifleman you couldn't slap one on he'll land on it he'll break it the ammo will go everywhere so they had to have dedicated people their job was like like the germs encircle war to carry ammunition I mean you've studied how the Lewis sections in World War one went and would you mind giving a brief summary well certainly I the beginning of the Great War a platoon is a very homogeneous grouping of four sections of all riflemen mm-hm through the middle of the Great War we see the introduction of the Lewis gun first at battalion then down to company level but ultimately in early early 1917 there's a document entitled SS 143 which is that training pamphlet which outlines the very beginnings of platoon level tactics and doctrine and what we see is the Lewis gun being devolved down to the platoon level individual sections within the platoon give are given separate roles you know one of which of course is that Lewis gun section and that Lewis gun section its primary role is to man operate and protect the Lewis gun as it itself supports the platoon as it operates other sections include the rifle grenade section the bomb section and the rifle section and as a group of just straight riflemen but in that we have much like you described the the Germans section or the the group I believe they call it in that the ammunition for its light machine gun was carried by a bunch of other people within in the hand money buying tax exactly as a way to organically support the section the Lewis gun in the Great War it hasn't got machine-gun tactics as smaller unit Tigers haven't quite arrived there yet and the platoon with its various types of sections each providing its own support within that altitude battle that is the level at which the machine gun is used so we have say the luxury but the lowest gun needs a lot of ammunition and carried in awkward magazines it needs a lot of spare parts it needs a lot of people to support it so the lowest gun if we were to move forward the Lewis gun would not be a good section weapon because too many med would be required to operate it and keep it in light at that level you have a gun group of 6 or 7 and a rifle group of 3 yeah which doesn't make any sense or sold so it's interesting though tracing that evolution of machine guns especially as they progress through the Great War down beyond into the Second World War and the tactical level at which they're employed gets lower and lower and lower and as I mentioned everyone was trained in the use of the brain gun as a section weapon there were special people trained more there was a Bren gun proficiency badge that could be awarded and that was more for sort of advanced use of the tripod for firing on fixed lines anti-aircraft rolled and and things like that and as an interesting a sight there's something that comes up in American lessons learned documents over and over and over again is that the every man should have been trained on the on the VAR which they weren't doing and they there's some lessons learned documents in the second Boer War saying look if there's only one man left standing he's got the VA up provided it's still running which they weren't always but even as late as career they would say everyone should be trained on the beer it was sort of treated what was an automatic rifle rather than a light machine gun it was treated almost like an individual so there's a specialist weapon whereas the Bren was everybody was trained in its use and it's actually the Germans trained everyone in in in the light machine gun role so the if the if the gunner got hit they could just pick up shift up and pick up and yeah and as a this is entirely reflected in all the gear this is actually just unhooked maybe yeah sort of the the apart from the the philosophy behind it in the in the Universal poaches intended to carry the Bren gun mags and everything but there's also some differences between the 37 pattern and the 1908 pattern that not necessarily revolve around magazines maybe talk a little bit about what those differences might be okay well it's quite a modular system these patches can be replaced by cartridge carriers which are basically pretty much these these pouches on on a hanger to fit on on on this kit 20 rounds per side which was for non infantry armed with the rifle so guys operating three inch mortar Vickers machine gun crews and so on who had a rifle their primary role was doing something else and they had no need to carry Bren pouches round the back it's all cross straps and various we got we've got our interaction tool cover there late war one when it's all it's all hung off you see various configurations being worn at various times you got a small pack or have a sack that is on the top that can be attached down the side like this and then a large pack put on these shoulder straps and and hooked up and what's interesting for balance and this isn't fully fully loaded this kit but it effectively the weight of grenades and ammunition in here should be balanced by the weight of mess tins eating kit food in the back it's for its era it's a fairly clever universal system whereas what the German stuff was quite simple based around sort of First World War tech and the Swiss were the same not to mention the fact that it was made of leather leather yeah the French were solar this is actually kind of combined system thinking in the equipment which also goes into the uniform that goes with it I mean the these are short they call them a blouse some reason they're a very short little tunic to save material service dress goes all the way down to the thigh so it's made to be cheaper it's a kind of baggy in the legs apparently based around ski suits of the area which we will of course have to try when weather permits one point I might interject with back to the battle here the amount of ammunition carried for the individual it's also important to realize that coming into the era in which World War two lands there's a philosophy change in the army and in one word that is mechanization mmm-hmm that the BEF at the beginning of the war was highly mechanized yeah if not merely completely by either armoured vehicles or trucks and the BEF that march into France in 1940 was such an organization and having that level of mechanization inherit down to a low level within the army in general also allows for the the carriage or the more immediate having of ammunition close at hand on a mobile platform whether it be a Bren carrier or a truck of some sort so the knit was thought anyway that the necessity simply to have 150 rounds on you simply wasn't there because chances are in any given action you wouldn't go through that much you would fight an action with your 50 or some degree of Roundsman around that number but then you could easily the trucks or the Bren carriers would come up and deliver you more mmm even under fire because they were armored whereas that luxury didn't involve I didn't exist during the Great War and it was a question of if the ammunition had to get to you they had to be carried yeah by other manpower or animal power so the philosophy as you discuss it was also highly based on the mechanization that was intended the army to have mm-hmm and actually uh another place reflected in the position of the basic pouches here they're mounted kind of high on the belt the first pattern were mounted a couple of inches lower but it was difficult to sit in a vehicle with them because they wore them quite round the front actually another point is that due to shortages of webbing at the start of World War two they made basic pouches to fit oh eight pattern and they made a leather version of this called 39 pattern which unlike 14 pattern in the First World War was not used in combat by British troops - to anyone's knowledge at the moment but other Allied forces Free French free - forces have been seen using it but it's exactly the same stuff made in leather like believed they actually put it together in something like 24 hours when asked they just basically copied it in in leather making tech one final point regarding an allocation of ammo between rifle and brenda's in some of the pamphlets it mentions that the ammunition allocated for the rifle can also be used for refilling Bren mags if required I mean this is how much the the Bren was more important than the rifle in it in the doctrine which really puts lie to this absolutely this myth that would you look at the tactics as you mentioned you look at the information available it becomes very clear that it is in fact a myth yeah in British and Empire / Commonwealth armies that the Bren gun was ancillary to the rifleman or the rifle group now that was the emphasis in the Bren gun was a facilitator which it was indeed but it's clear that everything that the individual rifleman is doing and carrying in some way shape or form will ultimately support and feed and keep the Breton action and I suspect that a section in a tight spot who've got thirty rounds remaining it's probably going to be in one bro mag sure and the rifles are going to be hoping not to need them so hope that was at least vaguely interesting thanks so much Rob for the discussion and for hosting me here in Switzerland if you're not aware Rob how could you not be aware of Rob of British muzzleloaders if you are watching bloke on the range it's just the depth and detail he goes into in there's no-one else doing anything like that ah there's one other man doing that know in this detail though and Rob is also he's the only person that could have got me dressed up fully so thank you very much to my patrons who have helped fund this thank you very much to yo the works with gunroom in the UK who was very helpful and generous in respect of the of the watch the equipment here and Rob Rob has patrons as well so if you don't already support him on patreon please consider doing so and see you again sometime bye you

Channel: Bloke on the Range

Views: 20,507

Keywords: weapons (interest), shooting (sport), milsurp, britishmuzzleloaders, british, muzzleloaders, 303, lee enfield, lee, enfield, 1937, pattern, patt, 1908, webbing, web, smle, no.4, number 4

Id: hu1yuJ9bR4c

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 20 2018